Tarim mummies 2000-3000 year old

[Karachi]

Look at these mummies from the Tarim basin in western china, these are 2000-3000 year old mummies but it looks like many of them died just weeks ago. They clearly knew how to perverse bodies:







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[Karachi]

^ these people could be related to the original indo european or indo aryan people who came towards south asia from central asia, thats how original central asians probably looked like before mongol/turkic expansion in the region

[Insaaf_انصاف]

Wow, this is incredible ....

[Insaaf_انصاف]

^ these people could be related to the original indo european or indo aryan people who came towards south asia from central asia, thats how original central asians probably looked like before mongol/turkic expansion in the region

They more look like chinese

[Karachi]

Wazir Warrior,

They are not Chinese, I guess these people are the ancestors of modern-day Uyghurs.

yeahs thats true, they are probably related to them, but modern Uyghurs have also mixed with (asian) looking people

[Karachi]

I wonder if Kalash/nuristani people have anything to do with them, not sure

[Karachi]

actually i just read on Wikipedia their culture is 1900 BC

so these mummies could be almost 4000 years old. amazing, its old as ancient egypt times. its like looking back in time. The blonde girl is so well preserved you could easily make out how she looked

[Karachi]

from wikepedia:, apparently they are of R1a haplogroup:

DNA sequence data[9] shows that the mummies had a Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) characteristic of western Eurasia in the area of East-Central Europe, Central Asia and Indus Valley.[10]

A team of Chinese and American researchers working in Sweden tested DNA from 52 separate mummies, including the mummy denoted "Beauty of Loulan." By genetically mapping the mummies' origins, the researchers confirmed the theory that these mummies were of West Eurasian descent. Victor Mair, a University of Pennsylvania professor and project leader for the team that did the genetic mapping, commented that these studies were:

...extremely important because they link up eastern and western Eurasia at a formative stage of civilization (Bronze Age and early Iron Age) in a much closer way than has ever been done before.[11]

An earlier study by Jilin University had found an mtDNA haplotype characteristic of Western Eurasian populations with Europoid genes.[12]

In 2007 the Chinese government allowed a National Geographic team headed by Spencer Wells to examine the mummies' DNA. Wells was able to extract undegraded DNA from the internal tissues. The scientists extracted enough material to suggest the Tarim Basin was continually inhabited from 2000 BCE to 300 BCE and preliminary results indicate the people, rather than having a single origin, originated from Europe, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley and other regions yet to be determined.[13]

However, In 2009, the remains of individuals found at a site in Xiaohe were analyzed for Y-DNA and mtDNA markers. They suggest that an admixed population of both west and east origin lived in the Tarim basin since the early Bronze Age. The maternal lineages were predominantly East Eurasian haplogroup C with smaller numbers of H and K, while the paternal lines were all West Eurasian R1a1a. The geographic location of where this admixing took place is unknown, although south Siberia is likely"

Physical anthropologists propose the movement of at least two Caucasoid physical types into the Tarim Basin. Mallory and Mair associate these types with the Tocharian and Iranian (Saka) branches of the Indo-European language family, respectively.[16]

B. E. Hemphill's biodistance analysis of cranial metrics (as cited in Larsen 2002 and Schurr 2001) has questioned the identification of the Tarim Basin population as European, noting that the earlier population has close affinities to the Indus Valley population, and the later population with the Oxus River valley population. Because craniometry can produce results which make no sense at all (e.g. the close relationship between Neolithic populations in Ukraine and Portugal) and therefore lack any historical meaning, any putative genetic relationship must be consistent with geographical plausibility and have the support of other evidence.[17]

Han Kangxin, who examined the skulls of 302 mummies, found the closest relatives of the earlier Tarim Basin population in the populations of the Afanasevo culture situated immediately north of the Tarim Basin and the Andronovo culture that spanned Kazakhstan and reached southwards into West Central Asia and the Altai.[18]

It is the Afanasevo culture to which Mallory & Mair (2000:294–296, 314–318) 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 satemization.[19]