.png)  Location of the Tarim mummies ( ), with other contemporary cultures c. 2000 BCE
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| Geographical range | Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin |
|---|---|
| Period | Bronze Age |
| Dates | c. 2100 BCE – 1 BCE |
| Preceded by | Afanasievo culture |
| Followed by | Tocharians |
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The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BCE to the first centuries BCE,[1][2][3] with a new group of individuals recently dated to between c. 2100 and 1700 BCE.[4][5] The Tarim population to which the earliest mummies belonged was agropastoral, and they lived c. 2000 BCE in what was formerly a freshwater environment, which has now become desertified.[6]
A genomic study published in 2021 found that these early mummies (dating from 2,135 to 1,623 BCE) had high levels of Ancient North Eurasian ancestry (ANE, about 72%), with smaller admixture from Ancient Northeast Asians (ANA, about 28%), but no detectable Western Steppe-related ancestry.[7][8] They formed a genetically isolated local population that "adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert."[9] These mummified individuals were long suspected to have been "Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists", ancestors of the Tocharians, but this has now been largely discredited by their absence of a genetic connection with Indo-European-speaking migrants, particularly the Afanasievo or BMAC cultures.[10]
Later Tarim Mummies dated to the Iron Age (1st millennium BCE), such as those of the Subeshi culture, have characteristics closely resembling those of the Saka (Scythian) Pazyryk culture of the Altai Mountains, in particular in the areas of weaponry, horse gear and garments.[11] They are candidates as the Iron Age predecessors of the Tocharians.[12] The rather recent easternmost mummies at Qumul (Yanbulaq culture, 1100–500 BCE), provide the earliest Asian mummies found in the Tarim Basin, and have a mix of "Europoid" and "Mongoloid" mummies.[13] [2]
- ^ Wong, Edward (18 November 2008). "The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn't Care to Listen To". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
- ^ a b Mallory & Mair 2000, p. 237.
- ^ Wade, Nicholas (15 March 2010). "A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 June 2011.
- ^ School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, China, (2021). "The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies", in ENA, European Nucleotide Archive.
- ^ Shuicheng, Li (2003). "Ancient Interactions in Eurasia and Northwest China: Revisiting J.G. Andersson's Legacy". Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. 75. Stockholm: Fälth & Hässler: 13. "Biological anthropological research indicates that the physical characteristics of those buried at Gumugou cemetery along the Kongque River near Lop Nur in Xinjiang are very similar to those of the Andronovo culture and Afanasievo culture people from Siberia in Southern Russia. This suggests that all of these individuals belong to the Caucasian physical type. Additionally, excavations in 2002 by Xinjiang archaeologists at the site of Xiaohe cemetery, first discovered by the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman, uncovered mummies and wooden human effigies that clearly have Europoid features. According to the preliminary excavation report, the cultural features and chronology of this site are said to be quite similar to those of Gumugou. Other sites in Xinjiang also contain both individuals with Caucasian features and ones with Mongolian features. For example, this pattern occurs at the Yanbulark cemetery in Xinjiang, but individuals with Mongoloid features are clearly dominant. The above evidence is enough to show that, starting around 2,000 BCE some so-called primitive Caucasians expanded eastward to the Xinjiang area as far as the area around Hami and Lop Nur. By the end of the second millennium, another group of people from Central Asia started to move over the Pamirs and gradually dispersed in southern Xinjiang. These western groups mixed with local Mongoloids resulting in an amalgamation of culture and race in middle Xinjiang east to the Tianshan."
- ^ Doumani Dupuy, Paula N. (November 2021). "The unexpected ancestry of Inner Asian mummies". Nature. 599 (7884): 204–206. Bibcode:2021Natur.599..204D. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02872-1. PMID 34707262. S2CID 240072156.
The basin holds several intact Bronze Age cemeteries of a founding population known as the agropastoral Xiaohe culture, which formed around 2100 BCE in what were then freshwater environments (the Bronze Age spanned from about 3000 to 1000 BCE).
- ^ Zhang 2021, "Using qpAdm, we modelled the Tarim Basin individuals as a mixture of two ancient autochthonous Asian genetic groups: the ANE, represented by an Upper Palaeolithic individual from the Afontova Gora site in the upper Yenisei River region of Siberia (AG3) (about 72%), and ancient Northeast Asians, represented by Baikal_EBA (about 28%) (Supplementary Data 1E and Fig. 3a). Tarim_EMBA2 from Beifang can also be modelled as a mixture of Tarim_EMBA1 (about 89%) and Baikal_EBA (about 11%).".
- ^ Nägele, Kathrin; Rivollat, Maite; Yu, He; Wang, Ke (2022). "Ancient genomic research – From broad strokes to nuanced reconstructions of the past". Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 100 (100): 193–230. doi:10.4436/jass.10017. PMID 36576953.
Combining genomic and proteomic evidence, researchers revealed that these earliest residents in the Tarim Basin carried genetic ancestry inherited from local Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, carried no steppe-related ancestry, but consumed milk products, indicating communications of persistence practices independent from genetic exchange.
- ^ Zhang 2021.
- ^ Zhang 2021, "Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo, or to have originated among the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert.".
- ^ Li, Xiao; Wagner, Mayke; Wu, Xiaohong; Tarasov, Pavel; Zhang, Yongbin; Schmidt, Arno; Goslar, Tomasz; Gresky, Julia (21 March 2013). "Archaeological and palaeopathological study on the third/second century BC grave from Turfan, China: Individual health history and regional implications". Quaternary International. 290–291: 335–343. Bibcode:2013QuInt.290..335L. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2012.05.010. ISSN 1040-6182.
The whole graveyard including tomb M2 belongs to the Subeixi culture, associated with the Cheshi (Chü-shih) state known from Chinese historical sources (Sinor, 1990). Archaeological and historical data attest it as society with a developed agro-pastoral economy, that existed in and north of the Turfan Basin (Fig. 1) during the first millennium BC. The Subeixi weaponry, horse gear and garments (Mallory and Mair, 2000; Lü, 2001) resemble those of the Pazyryk culture (Molodin and Polos'mak, 2007), suggesting contacts between Subeixi and the Scythians living in the Altai Mountains.
- ^ Mallory, J.P. (2015). "The Problem of Tocharian Origins: An Archaeological Perspective" (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers: 24.
- ^ Benjamin, Craig (2018). Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE. Cambridge University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-108-63540-0.
... the fact that in cemeteries such as Yanbulaq both Europoid and Mongoloid mummies have been found together, also indicates some degree of interaction between existing farming populations and newly arrived nomadic migrants from the West.