Caucasian Mummies of China

[Daco Celtic]

"Archaeological discovery of mummies in the Taklamakan desert of Western China dating back 4,000 years has captivated the imaginations of researchers, who were surprised to discover that they were caucasians from Europe. The answers to the mystery of who these white mummies were might be found in the later history of Xinjiang province; in the Chinese written records of blue eyed and red bearded merchants such as the Yuezhi and the Sogdians from the West and in the manuscripts written in a mysterious Indo-European language known as Tocharian. Clearly there were both Iranic and Tocharian peoples living in Western China in later times, and the Tarim mummies must have been the ancestors of some if not all of them.

The inhospitable Tarim basin became a vital route for merchants, at the crossroads between East and West, the basin is skirted by oasis towns which were stations for anyone traveling on the Silk Road.The caucasian, Europoid mummies and the ancient Indo-European languages of the region challenge popular misconceptions about the limits of European civilisation in the Bronze Age. The material excavated suggests the area was active for thousands of years, with diverse languages, lifestyles, religions, and cultures present."

[Aileron]

Interesting....

[Dick]

Nice thread. My two cents; cheekbones look mongoloid. The “Red hair” could be due to natron, a salt used to mummify that can turn the hair and skin a different colour or just mummification processes in general (see also the blonde and ginger Egyptian mummies)

[Daco Celtic]

bump

[Oghuz]

Tokharians

[jingorex]

that 6500 year gap he mentions fits in nicely with the hiawatha crater and meteor impact 13k years ago in greenland.

i believe we are still missing gigantic gaps in human history.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...ct-time-humans

[Sarmatian]

...they were caucasians from Europe.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Those ancient folk weren't from Europe. In fact they were living closer to original PIE populations.

[Oghuz]

What the hell is wrong with these people? Those ancient folk weren't from Europe. In fact they were living closer to original PIE populations.

They were driven to China from Caspian region by Thraco-Iranians. Tokharians later became Yuezhi, Kushan and now Uyghurs.

[Synapsid]

They were driven to China from Caspian region by Thraco-Iranians. Tokharians later became Yuezhi, Kushan and now Uyghurs.

Uyghurs have Iranic BMAC/Farmer related ancestry that the Indo-Iranians of Xinjiang Introduced. For examples, Iranian type J2 Y-DNA is common in modern Ugyhurs. So they don't have just tokharian ancestry.

[Chelubey]

Nice thread. My two cents; cheekbones look mongoloid. The “Red hair” could be due to natron, a salt used to mummify that can turn the hair and skin a different colour or just mummification processes in general (see also the blonde and ginger Egyptian mummies)

Possibly you are right. I have not seen black-haired mummies.
Hair is likely to lose color over time.
I also saw one mummy of a Turkic man - 1000-1500 years old. It looked typologically exactly the same: brown hair color, uncertain racial type(Mongoloidity of that mummy was not evident, although it obviously was), and so on.
It seems to me that there is more cheap hype than reality.