Unearthed lying on her side as though in sleep, a single tuft
of red hair falling across her head and ragged moccasins on her feet, the Beauty
of Loulan is considered to be one of the best preserved mummies ever found.
Roughly 3800-years-old and discovered in the sands of Xinjiang
province in western China, her emaciated features betray a facial bone structure
that is surprisingly similar to Caucasian looking women.
A team of American and Chinese researchers working in a
laboratory in Sweden used DNA samples to date and profile her mummy, confirming
she and other mummies are of Indo-European descent.
Project leader Victor Mair told Aljazeera.net his work on
helping to fill in the genetic jigsaw puzzle of human migration is
"extremely important because they link up eastern and western Eurasia at a
formative stage of civilisation (Bronze Age and Early Iron Age) in a much closer
way than has ever been done before".
Central Asian migrants
A professor of Chinese language and literature at the
University of Pennsylvania in the United States, Mair and his researchers now
believe that the mummies' ancestors migrated from Central Asia into the Tarim
Basin approximately 5000 years ago.
 |
|
The Tarim Bain's
alkaline soils and
dry air are ideal for mummies
|
Crossing the forbidding Pamir Mountains, which border modern day Pakistan and
China, they then settled on the edge of the basin before slowly fanning out
across the Taklamankan desert.
In more recent times the location for China's nuclear weapons
tests, Mair wrote, "the fact people can subsist in the Tarim Basin at all
is due to their intrepidity and adaptability".
Though inhospitable, the dry atmosphere and alkaline soils are
a key factor in the preservation of hundreds of mummies discovered there since
the 1970s, including the extremely well-preserved 3000-year-old Cherchen Man.
Nationalist mummies?
First investigating the mummies in the late 1980s when he came
across them in a museum in Xinjiang, it was only recently that Mair was allowed
to remove bone samples for testing overseas.
Earlier tests on the clothing of the mummies had already
linked the particular twill weave of their garments to similar textile designs
found in ancient tombs in central Europe.
But what was still needed was a DNA test to confirm everyone's
suspicions.
Often hesitant to let foreign researchers take archaeological
remnants out of the country after witnessing the pillaging of national monuments
by foreign troops and archaeologists in the nineteenth century, the Chinese
government has also been reluctant to release the samples for fears they would
bolster the claims of Uighur groups seeking independence from China.
|
"In terms of contemporary nationalism it
really is irrelevant... It is always fallacious to use these kinds of
materials to substantiate contemporary claims"
Dru Gladney, Xinjiang specialist at the
University of Hawaii
|
Though unlikely candidates for nationalistic ping-pong balls, the
almost 4000-year-old corpses have become a symbol for activists hoping to
discredit China's claim to the region.
In 2004, Chinese scientists at Jilin University in eastern
China also concluded that the mummies' DNA came from Indo-Europeans, and not
East Asians.
Dru Gladney, a Xinjiang specialist at the University of
Hawaii, told Aljazeera.net that when the mummies were first found, "Uighur
nationalists hoped this would irrefutably document that they were the indigenous
peoples of Xinjiang rather than the Chinese".
"In terms of contemporary nationalism it really is
irrelevant. Chinese claims are from the Han dynasty while Uighurs want to claim
direct descent from the Uighur kingdom. It is always fallacious to use these
kinds of materials to substantiate contemporary claims," he adds.
Politics
Campaigning for an independent East Turkestan - a
reference to a short period in modern history when the region declared
independence from China - Uighur websites have claimed the mummies as the
forefathers to a Uighur kingdom founded in the seventh century BC in an area now
straddling modern day Mongolia and Xinjiang.
 |
|
Scientists hope to
unlock more
mysteries with easing restrictions
|
Uighur activists believe the mummies undermine China's ties to the region, which
Beijing says were cemented as far back as the Han Dynasty, (206BC-AD220).
Comparing the mummies' DNA with that of present day
inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, Mair found the modern day Uighur, Kazakh and
Kirghiz ethnic groups did carry some genetic similarities with the mummies,
but "no direct links".
"Central Asia is a zone of admixture, not a heartland or
reservoir for genetic diversity," wrote Mair.
Science beats politics
An apparent victory for science over politics, in recent years
a cooling of rhetoric over the nationalistic relevance of 4000-year-old human
remains has meant that scientists have been able to carry out further tests.
Writing how "any attempt at a serious and impartial
inquiry into the origins and identity of the mummies must simply remain
oblivious to such tendentiousness and calumniation", Mair told
Aljazeera.net that earlier attempts to take samples had met with resistance.
On one trip collecting 52 samples from the mummies, officials
suddenly changed their minds and would only permit him to take five out of the
country.
Mair says much still remains unknown about the mummies'
backgrounds and is hoping with the lifting of political red tape, he may finally
unlock mysteries buried for thousands of years.
