Where did the Tarim mummies come from?

The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BC to the first centuries BC, with a new group of individuals recently dated to between c. 2100 and 1700 BC.

How did the Tarim Basin form?

The Tarim Basin is the result of an amalgamation between an ancient microcontinent and the growing Eurasian continent during the Carboniferous to Permian periods.

How old are the Tarim Basin mummies?

Found in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang mostly in the 1990s, the mummies’ bodies and clothes are strikingly intact despite being up to 4,000 years old. Naturally preserved by the dry desert air, their facial features and hair color can clearly be seen.

What happened to the tocharians?

The Tocharians were an fascinating ancient Indo-European-speaking people living in westernmost China and parts of Central Asia. They were part of the distinct Tocharian branch, an own branch of the Indo-European family. They later got replaced and assimilated by Mongoloid Turkic people, later known as the Uyghurs.

What is the oldest mummy found?

Spirit Cave Mummy The Spirit Cave Mummy is the oldest known mummy in the world. It was first discovered in 1940 by Sydney and Georgia Wheeler, a husband and wife archaeological team. The Spirit Cave Mummy was naturally preserved by the heat and aridity of the cave it was found in.

What was the cultural identity of the Tarim Basin mummy?

The mysterious Tarim mummies of China’s western Xinjiang region are relics of a unique Bronze Age culture descended from Indigenous people, and not a remote branch of early Indo-Europeans, according to new genetic research.

Was the Tarim Basin a sea?

The Tarim Basin (Xinjiang Province) in northwestern China hosts the Taklamakan Sand Sea, the second largest sand desert of the world. Most of these cities existed in the northwest and west of the lake where the Tarim and Konqi Rivers flowed towards the ancient Lop Nur (Fig. 1).

Where does the Tarim River flow?

Takla Makan Desert
The river gives its name to the great basin between the Tien Shan and Kunlun mountain systems of Central Asia. It flows for most of its length through the Takla Makan Desert. The word tarim is used to designate the bank of a river that flows into a lake or that is undifferentiable from the sands of a desert.

Was the Tarim Basin a lake?

The Lower Tarim Basin is an arid plain composed of alluvium and lake sediments and is bordered by massive mountain ranges. The basin is the driest region of Eurasia. The predominant part of it is occupied by the Taklamakan Desert, whose sand area exceeds 270,000 square kilometres (100,000 sq mi).

Are Uyghurs descendants of Tocharians?

The modern Uyghur language is not descended from Old Uyghur; rather, it is a descendant of the Karluk languages spoken by the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The modern descendants of the Uyghur Khanate are the Yugur. Some Uyghur nationalists claim that they are descended from the Tocharians.

What language did phrygians speak?

The Phrygian language (/ˈfrɪdʒiən/) was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, spoken in Anatolia (modern Turkey), during classical antiquity (c. 8th century BC to 5th century AD). Plato observed that some Phrygian words resembled Greek ones. Modern consensus views Phrygian to be closely related to Greek.

Why do mummies have their mouth open?

The ancient Egyptians believed that in order for a person’s soul to survive in the afterlife it would need to have food and water. The opening of the mouth ritual was thus performed so that the person who died could eat and drink again in the afterlife.

What languages were spoken in the Tarim Basin?

Nevertheless, “Tocharian” remained the standard term for the languages of the Tarim Basin manuscripts and for the people who produced them. A few scholars argue that the Yuezhi were originally speakers of Tocharian who later adopted the Bactrian language.

When were the first Tarim mummies found?

The earliest Tarim mummies, which may not be connected to the Tocharians, date from c. 1800 BC. By the 2nd century BC, these settlements had developed into city-states, overshadowed by nomadic peoples to the north and Chinese empires to the east.

What is the Tarim Basin and how is it formed?

The melted water forms rivers which flow down the mountains and into the Tarim Basin, never reaching the sea. Surrounded by desert, some rivers feed the oases where the water is used for irrigation while others flow to salt lakes and marshes.

Where does the Tarim River start and end?

The Yarkand, Kashgar and Aksu Rivers join to form the Tarim River which runs along the north side of the basin. Formerly it continued to Loulan, but some time after 330AD it turned southeast near Korla toward Charkilik and Loulan was abandoned. The Tarim ended at the now-dry Lop Nur which occupied a changing position east of Loulan.