"Chinese Cemetery - North of Tibet" Topic

link

Interesting story about a 2000 BCE cemetery in Western China, north of the Tibetan border. The grave markers are tree trunks and the bodies and the artifacts are amazingly preserved.

Steve
Cavalcade Wargames
cavalcadewargames.com

Interesting…..and a potential basis for a pulp scenario or two.

A Classical Dictionaery and a book on the Huns written many decades ago which described various tribes and their physical and cultrual athnic features both had European ethnic peopel living in this area.

A very good link. Thanks

During the period from the Three Kingdoms to the Tang, the Jie nomads were described as red heads with green eyes. The Uighur Turks were also said to often have green eyes.

The area is now known as Xinjiang (Sinkiang), but was briefly also known as East Turkestan. Articles about the original discovery can be found in JSTOR, and in accounts of the 'Back of Beyond'.

Interesting article. (in middle of a terrifying desert (?))
Definitely an easy terrain piece for a pulp scenario- a mound with sticks in it, perhaps with a hole already dug by grave robbers to flavor the story.

Back in 1998, Nova aired "Mysterious Mummies of China", which can be seen in its entirely (8 parts, I think) on YouTube:

YouTube link

This covered similar finds at another site, Wupu, just a few years before the Small River site was re-excavated.

Tantalizing as the idea may be, I think that researchers have yet to clearly show continuity beteen these older sites and the historical Tocharians to which Rudy alludes. Dr. Mair apparently believes so, but felt hats are not something to.. erm, hang your hat on. There's still work to be done.

Allen

I'm always interested in the propaganda that follows the discovery of history. I recently read John Man's book on the Terracotta Army that touches on the subject. Fascinating stuff.

As aecurtis suggests a lot of work has to be done but there is some evidence supporting the Tocharian presence from 2009 see

PDF link

However this evidence has complicated matters even further as the results shows a mixture Male DNA is Indoeuropean but the female DNA is east Asian This suggests that invaders intermingled with an existing population that was not Indo european. maybe this new discovery can help

The Tocharians have been known since Ptolemy's time who used that term to describe a people who combined with others such as the Scythians to attack the Bactrian Greeks, Tokarian mummies dating back 2000 years were found in 1910 and have "european features" They are in the Urumqi museum and I have seen the red and light hair but the skins are too darkened to show the original complexion Remember that the "Indo Europeans" include a lot of peoples not only Germanic and Celtic but Slavic Persian ( Iranian) and Northern Indian. The are also has had settlements from a lot of different peoples among which are the Mongols and Khushans

What further complicates the issue is that it is still in China. The recent discovery is close to Lop Nor and if this name seems familiar it should as it is the site of the Chinese Nuclear Test Facility where a lot of surface A and H Bomb tests were conducted. It is still a very sensitive place,

The area is also politically sensitive as seen by the recent riots. China (i e Beijing) is very concerned with what they call "Ethnic tensions ", The region is loaded with oil and other resources and is vital to future economic development. The local minority ( Chinese term not mine ) are mainly Turkish people most notably the Uighur's who claim descent from a mixture of the Tocharians and other Indo Europeans with later Turkic settlers. Chinese authorities will be reluctant to publish anything supporting that claim.

The article rightly describes the desert as terrifying but at the same time it is fascinating to see as I have been fortunate enough to do. The area was originally under a sea so there are lots of hills and rocks some carved into fantastic shapes by the wind. While there are sand dunes in places the majority is rocky making it very difficult to walk on Camels hate going off the paths. There is a constant wind and the constant silence is overwhelming particularly for a city boy like me. Outside some small area it is literally empty no trees no vegetation no people then add in summer highs of 40 plus and freezing winters . An unprepared person would last a few days at most