The mystery of the Tarim mummy - a discovery that changes history

 During excavations in the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region of China, archaeologists came across an extraordinary discovery - Tarim mummies. These finds, dating from around 1800 B.C. to the first centuries AD, revealed the remains of agropastoral people who lived around 2000 BC. What is particularly surprising is that all the mummies are Caucasian, distinguished by their tall height and blond hair.

A 2021 genetic study found that these early mummies had high levels of northern Eurasian ancestry (ANE, about 72%) with less input from ancient northeast Asians (ANA, about 28%). These finds were recorded already in the early 20th century by European explorers such as Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq and Sir Aurel Stein​​.

The Yanbulaq cemetery contained 29 mummies, dating from 1100 to 500 B.C., of which 21 were of Asian origin and eight had Caucasian physical characteristics similar to those found at Qäwrighul​​. In 1995, Victor Mair claimed that the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucasian and that East Asian migrants arrived in the eastern parts of the Tarim Basin around 3,000 years ago.

Genetic analysis from 2009 to 2015 showed that the maternal genetic lines of the Xiaohe people came from both East Asia and Western Eurasia, while the paternal lines were all from Western Eurasia​​.

Mallory and Mair in 2000 proposed shifting at least two physical types of Caucasians to the Tarim Basin, associating them with the Tocharian and Iranian (Sarmatian) branches of the Indo-European language family. However, professor of linguistics Ronald Kim argues that the discrepancies between the attested Tocharian languages require that Prototokharian preceded their attestation by at least a thousand years, which coincides with the period during which the Tarim Basin culture was present in the region​​.

These discoveries shed new light on the history of the region, revealing complex origins and cultural influences in the Tarim Basin. These finds are one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, radically changing our understanding of the history of Eurasia and the cultural interactions between its various regions. Currently, Tarim's mummies can be seen in a museum in Urumqi, China, which constitutes an important element of the cultural and historical heritage of the region.