8:45
In the southern part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region lies a vast depression known as the Tarim Basin. The Tarim Basin is one of the most landlocked places in the world. It's almost as far from the ocean as you can get anywhere on Earth. And right in the center of that basin lies the Taklamakan Desert, which stretches 130,000 square miles. That is bigger than the entire state of New Mexico. It's surrounded by the Tian Shan Mountains to the north, the Kunlun Mountains to the south, and the Pamirs to the west. These huge mountain ranges block almost all rain from the desert, making it one of the driest places in the
country. In the central region, an average of only 10 mm of rain falls each year. European explorers making their way through the unforgiving Taklamakan come across an extraordinary site. They began finding vast areas filled with carved wooden vessels that looked a lot like modern-day canoes, the last thing you'd expect to find in the desert. Stranger still, the vessels were often accompanied by what looked like oars stuck into the earth so they pointed straight up to the sky.
It wasn't until they looked more closely that they realized these vessels weren't empty. They were coffins. These sites are actually massive graveyards, some containing hundreds of bodies. The burials span over 2,000 years with the earliest dating back to 2100 BCE. The bodies are incredibly well preserved, so much so that some mummies were found with their eyelashes still intact. Unlike a lot of other cultures that mummified their dead on purpose using elaborate rituals and chemicals and all this other stuff. The mummies here are just a byproduct of the environment.
It's so dry in the desert that basically it just stops the decomposition process leaving behind these extraordinary mummified remains. One thing that really stuck out was that many of the mummies seem to have had blonde or red hair, blue eyes, and stood well over 6 ft tall. Because these features are typically found in populations farther west, debate immediately sparked about where these people came from. Could they have traveled here? If they had, where did they come from? Intriguing objects buried alongside the mummies provide glimpses into their lives.
The mummies were buried with numerous grave offerings including grains such as wheat, barley, and millet. Also found were the bones and horns of herd animals like cows, sheep, and goats. Some people were even buried with pieces of cheese hung around their necks. We can't be exactly sure why these grave goods were left behind. It could be that they were offerings to some sort of deity or that they might accompany the dead into the afterlife. But they do tell us a great deal about how these people lived. Based on the animal remains, these were probably successful farmers raising flocks of various animals they could use for food and for hides. In fact, many of
the coffins have animal skins stretched over them possibly to protect the body. The evidence of livestock leads experts to wonder whether the Tarim Basin mummies may have descended from ancient nomads. The Yamnaya people were an incredibly powerful culture that mastered animal husbandry roughly 5,000 years ago. Over time, they began migrating east en masse sweeping across Europe and interbreeding with various other cultures. In the span of a few centuries, they made up about half of the genetic makeup of Central Europeans. There were also the Afanasievo people who farmed herds of cattle and sheep and horses in the Altai Mountains and eventually spread all the way across
Siberia and Mongolia. They're sometimes considered an eastern offshoot of the Yamnaya. Could another wave of migration have taken them farther south into the Tarim Basin? Did the mummies descend from the Afanasievo cultures? That scenario seems unlikely when you look at funerary practices. The Yamnaya would typically inter their dead in pits that were then covered by wooden planks and earthen mounds called kurgans. The Afanasievo rituals also involved building these impressive kurgans on top of the deceased. These would then be surrounded by a ring or a square of stones.
There's no evidence to suggest that the Yamnaya or Afanasievo ever interred their dead in boat-shaped coffins. So, it's not likely that the Tarim Basin mummies belong to either culture. In the search for information about the mysterious burials, experts turned to one of the mummies' most surprising features, their clothing. Thanks to the incredible preservation, we can even see how well dressed some of these mummies are. One example of that stands out is the man from Hami. He was found with a spectacular collection of hats. They had this sophisticated ornamental stitching. He even had a beret made using the earliest known example of nalbinding. That's a technique kind of like crocheting that is still done in some
countries today. The man from Hami isn't the only Tarim Basin mummy famous for headwear. In the lost city of Subashi, a group of women were discovered, all buried wearing tall, pointed black hats. Today, they're known as the witches of Subashi. The textiles from both of these sites reveal potential clues about where these people may have come from. Among the fabrics recovered from the burial of the man from Hami, were plaids that were made using a diagonal twill weave.
These fabrics match those found in Celtic sites around Europe dating from approximately the same period. The hats found with the witches of Subashi also echo European fashions, like the tall pointed hats called hennins. These similarities beg the question, how could these trends have reached the Tarim Basin? Did Europeans migrate here? Are the mummies of European descent? The answers may lie in one of the world's most famous trade routes. People often talk about the Silk Road as though it's this one highway that used to be there, but it wasn't one road. It was a vast network of routes that stretched over 4,000 miles, and it
linked the powerful civilizations of Rome and China. It emerged about 130 BCE, and for over 1,500 years, traders used it to carry silk to the west, while textiles and precious metals went to the east. The Silk Road cut through some of the most imposing landscapes in the world, including the Gobi Desert, the Pamir Mountains, and crucially, the Tarim Basin. Could the Silk Road be connected to the mummies? Are they possibly the bodies of distant travelers who died during the long journey along the trade route?
A team of international researchers comes together determined to devise a study that could reveal where the mummies came from. Using tooth and bone samples from 13 of the Tarim mummies, they set out to conduct a thorough genomic analysis, the first such analysis of any prehistoric population in the region. Genomic studies look at a person's entire genetic makeup rather than individual genes. These data are then compared to those from other populations to understand how any given sample fits into the grand scheme of human history.
The samples taken from the mummies were compared to several sets of ancient DNA, as well as to modern populations. And contrary to earlier theories, the genomic study proved that these people did not migrate to the basin from Russia or Europe. They were without a doubt local. Not only were they local to the Tarim Basin, the mummies had links to the land going back nearly 200 generations. And the study also found that these people were extremely inbred. Mummies found in cemeteries almost 250 miles apart shared DNA as closely as siblings would. Given their location, it's very possible that these people came into contact with merchants traveling along the Silk Road, which meant access to goods from all over Europe and Asia.
And this would explain the textiles found in some of the graves. And despite not intermarrying with these travelers, it seems as though the Tarim people were welcome to their ideas and maybe even their fashion trends. The Tarim Basin culture was a population that was genetically isolated, yet still open to outside influences. They stand as an extraordinary example of a people who seemingly welcomed cultural exchange while maintaining their own unique traditions.
