The Tocharians - Indo-Europeans of the East

[The Lawspeaker]

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The Tocharians - Indo-Europeans of the East

The Tocharians were an Indo-European people and the easternmost branch of Indo-European culture. Despite their eventual location in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang province in western China, their cultural and linguistic links to Central and Northern Europe are stronger than to the neighbouring Indo-Iranians, a parallel branch of Indo-Europeans who dominated the Eurasian steppes until the Mongol and Turkic expansion of the Middle Ages. Around the same time, in the 9th century, the Tarim Basin was overrun by Uyghur Turks, who destroyed the Tocharian people and assimilated their remnants.

The Tocharians are frequently associated with a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin, which date from 1900 BCE to 200 CE. Physical anthropologists propose the movement of at least two Europoid physical types and associate these types with the Tocharian and Iranian (Saka) branches of the Indo-European language family, respectively.

It is the Afanasevo culture to which Mallory & Mair trace the earliest Bronze Age settlers of the Tarim and Turpan basins. The Afanasevo culture (c. 3500-2500 BCE) displays cultural and genetic connections with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the Eurasian Steppe yet predates the specifically Indo-Iranian-associated Andronovo culture (c. 2000-900 BCE) enough to isolate the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemisation. Within this culture, over 90% of the Bronze Age period mtDNA haplogroups and Y-DNA haplogroups were of European origin and a study determined that at least 60% of the individuals overall (out of the 26 Bronze and Iron Age human remains' samples of the study that could be tested) had light hair and blue or green eyes.

The Roman historian Pliny the Elder reports a curious description of the Seres (in the territories of northwestern China) made by an embassy from Taprobane (Ceylon) to Emperor Claudius, saying that they "exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and made an uncouth sort of noise by way of talking", suggesting they may be referring to the ancient Indo-European populations of the Tarim Basin.

The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.

[GeistFaust]

I remember reading about them they also supposedly had many converts to Buddhism and Nestorainism.

[Valedictorian]

Underrated thread. I wonder what might have been their most representative phenotypes? East Nordid? or maybe a Nordo-Mongolid mix seems most likely?

[Div]

Tocharians, they weren't at all related to Iranics due to them being a centum group. I think they were both Buddhist and a modified version of local Zoroastrianism. They did have some interesting phenotypes. Sadly they were wiped out by the floods of mongoloids that came out of the Altai mountains. Also there are two versions of Tocharian: A and B you can find the different kinds on some link on google, I haven't looked at it in years.

[Token]

Underrated thread. I wonder what might have been their most representative phenotypes? East Nordid? or maybe a Nordo-Mongolid mix seems most likely?

Based on Afanasevo remains, fully caucasoid wogs with broad faces and very tall stature.

[Veslan]

Underrated thread. I wonder what might have been their most representative phenotypes? East Nordid? or maybe a Nordo-Mongolid mix seems most likely?

Vast majority of them were Caucasoids and rather light pigmented.
Mummies:





Depictions:



(Tocharian on the left, Chinese on the right):

Modern Uyghurs with visible Indo-European influence:










Pigmentation based on DNA samples (Yuezhi culture):


My classification would be: mainly in the Nordic and Paleo-European range.

[Root]

Tocharian language



geographically it was the most eastern indo-european group belonged to the centum branch (celtic, germanic, romance, hellenic)














sounds something like between Celtic, Albanian, Slavic, Indo-Iranian

[Yaglakar]

"Around the same time, in the 9th century, the Tarim Basin was overrun by Uyghur Turks, who destroyed the Tocharian people and assimilated their remnants."

This is false. Tocharian language as a means of communication became obsolete in 7th-8th centuries. Xinjiang was largely Turkicised before Orkhon Uighurs arrived there. Late Tocharian/Kuchian writings have numerous grammatical errors, and numerous Turkic loanwords pointing to the fact that the language was falling into disuse and late Tocharian served as a language of priesthood something like Latin in vernacular majorities in Europe. Old Uighurs/Toquz Oghuz did not overrun anything, their core relocated from Mongolia to Gansu and northern Xinjiang, where part of old Uighurs already lived together with a plethora of other Turkic groups. Southern Xinjiang was administered by Tibetans before they were driven out. Tocharians were not numerous, Indo-Iranic groups like Sogdians (escaping from Islamic purges) and Khotanese Sakas outnumbered them by a big margin. This is clear from administrative documentation (names on documents) and Uighur envoys to China and elsewhere (again names on orders and missions). There are some Buddhist texts though that were directly translated to Uighur from Tocharian. We know because the authors tells us themselves on top of those manuscripts, my name is this or that, this has been translated from Tocharian to Uighur. That is about the only evidence of some sort of contact.

[Dna8]

Nice thread

[Steppe Timelord]

Nice thread

Indeed.
Tocharians predated IE satem/centum split though, thus they had no relation with any centum or satem IE language. They were basically PIE mirror, transplant in the farther east.
Personally I think they looked like the proto-european high-broad faced yamnayas, as it is said on wikipedia. So Pontid or gingerish version of it would be commonplace today. Possibly proto-nordid, but I really believe proto-nordids resulted after mixing with EEF types for some reason. Yamnaya were more brunn-taurid combinations as they were modelled genetically, 1 west asian great grandfather, 2 scottish grandfathers or some sort, it was said on eupedia. This is the explanation of red hair among uyghurs. Coming from IEs.