In China’s most western province, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in central Asia, is a desert known as "if you go in, you won't come out” or "Desert of Death" or "Place of no return", the Taklamakan Desert.
The Taklamakan is roughly 90,000 sqare miles in size and is dominated by the Tarim Basin, the largest of its kind in the world. The area's main ethnic population today are Uyghurs, Han Chinese, Kazakhs and a variety of smaller central Asian nationalities. The capital is Urumqui. Other main cities are the oasis cities Kashgar, Yorkand and Khoton, Turfan and Kuqa in the north and Dunhuang and Loulan in the east.
In the mid 20th century the desert revealed a mystery. Well preserved mummies of an unknown people were found. They were not of Chinese origin. Some of the mummies are some 4,000 years old and many of them show European features.
These mystery people lived in the Tarim Basin, which at the time was covered with vegetation, from around 1,800 BC to the 8th century AD when they were assimilated by Uighur Turks. Archeological finds connected to them made it clear that there was an ancient civilization which was named Tocharian and the people were referred to as the Tocharians. The Greek historians thought they were a Scythian tribe. Details about the Tochari however were sparse and the ancient world did not known were they exactly lived.
They spoke Tocharian, which is one of the most obscure branches of the Indo-European language group. The existence of the Tocharian languages and alphabet was not even guessed at, until chance discoveries in the mid 20th century brought to light fragments of manuscripts in a then-unknown alphabetic syllabary that turned out to belong to a hitherto unknown branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
Many of the mummies have been found in very good condition, due to the dryness of the desert. They share European features (slender, elongated bodies, angular faces, recessed eyes), and many of them have their hair intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided. Their clothing, also well preserved, points towards a common European Iron Age technology.
Tocharian texts and many frescoes from the Tarim Basin have been found and attribute to a high standard of the civilization. Unfortunately very often the faces on these frescos were vandalized in the past due to their "European" features.
There is evidence both from the mummies and from Chinese written records, that attest to the unique features of the early inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. The Roman historian Pliny mentions a people with flaxen hair and of uncommon tall proportions, who were living on the western fringes of Seres (“silk” or “from where silk is coming”). It seems that the Tocharians were also engaged in the silk trade. Two routes of the ancient Silk Road led through their territory in the Tarim Basin.
A later Chinese account describes the Tocharians, known in Chinese as Yuezhi as living “north of India". Their land is at a high altitude; the climate is dry; the region is remote. There are so many riding horses in that country that the number often reaches several hundred thousand. City layouts and palaces are quite similar to those of Daqin (the Roman empire). The skin of the people there is reddish white. People are skilful at horse archery. Local products, rarities, treasures, clothing, and upholstery are very good, and even India cannot compare with it."
The presence of Indo-Europeans in the Tarim Basin in the 1st millennium BC suggests that cultural exchanges happened between Indo-European and Chinese populations at a very early date. It has been suggested that such activities as chariot warfare and bronze-making may have been transmitted to the east by these Indo-European nomads.
These theories would go against the idea that the East and West developed their civilizations independent of each other, but suggest, on the contrary that, some form of transmission may have happened.
Textile analysis from material found on mummies has shown some similarities to the Iron Age civilizations of Europe dating from 800 BC, including woven twill and tartan patterns strikingly similar to Celtic tartans from Northwest Europe. One of the unusual finds with one of the mummies was a distinctively pointy hat of a kind worn by Celtic priests or wizards (druids) and which later is found in many European cultures of Medieval times. This may suggest very ancient Indo-European roots for this garment.
Some ethnologists think that the ancient Scythians tribes were the forefathers of the Celts before they left the Asian steppes and became the leading cultural force in central Europe and parts of northern Europe. This theory would also connect the Tocharians to a later Celtic civilization.
More research is still needed to confirm these theories and reveal the mysteries of the Taklamakan. In the meantime, the spectacular mummies and archeological finds of the area can be examined in the Xinjiang provincial museum in Urumqui.
