In the autonomous region of Xinjiang, in the Tarim Basin, there is an archaeological site known as Small River Cemetery No. 5. It is the final resting place of some 200 or so mummies, bodies buried under boat hulls, preserved by the dry desert air. Carbon tests done at China’s Beijing University show the oldest dates to 3,980 years ago.
The cemetery was discovered in 1934 by
a Swedish archaeologist and then forgotten until relocated by a Chinese expedition team around 2000. Archaeologists have since been excavating and have made amazing discoveries.
“As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials,” says Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, and Tarim Basin expert, “they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet (4 meters) tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.”
The mummies, many reduced to desiccated corpses, astonished everyone by having European features, with brown hair and long noses. The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.
Tracking the Ancestors
The mummies’ Western appearance has given the local Uighur tribes, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, reason to claim that the area was always inhabited by their people. But some of the mummies, including a well-preserved female known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by geneticist Li Jin at Fudan University, Shanghai, and he claims that their DNA contains markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.
To further cloud the issue, a recent report from Changchun’s Jilin University published in the scientific journal BMC Biology theories that the people were of mixed ancestry, with both European and Siberian genetic markers. It also proposes that they probably came from outside China.
“Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe,” notes Mair – and boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and other similar symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe.
The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. Beneath, tiny woolen loincloths for the men and skirts made of string strands for the women. Within each boat coffin were grave goods, including woven grass baskets, skilfully carved masks and bundles of ephedra, a herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.
The cemetery was discovered in 1934 by
a Swedish archaeologist and then forgotten until relocated by a Chinese expedition team around 2000. Archaeologists have since been excavating and have made amazing discoveries.
“As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials,” says Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, and Tarim Basin expert, “they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet (4 meters) tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.”
The mummies, many reduced to desiccated corpses, astonished everyone by having European features, with brown hair and long noses. The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.
Tracking the Ancestors
The mummies’ Western appearance has given the local Uighur tribes, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, reason to claim that the area was always inhabited by their people. But some of the mummies, including a well-preserved female known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by geneticist Li Jin at Fudan University, Shanghai, and he claims that their DNA contains markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.
To further cloud the issue, a recent report from Changchun’s Jilin University published in the scientific journal BMC Biology theories that the people were of mixed ancestry, with both European and Siberian genetic markers. It also proposes that they probably came from outside China.
“Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe,” notes Mair – and boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and other similar symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe.
The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. Beneath, tiny woolen loincloths for the men and skirts made of string strands for the women. Within each boat coffin were grave goods, including woven grass baskets, skilfully carved masks and bundles of ephedra, a herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.
The scientists are still working on how the bodies got to the cemetery – there are no known settlements nearby, so they theorize the people probably lived elsewhere and reached the burial ground by boat on rivers still flowing before the desert took over. One reason for the mummies’ good state of preservation is that the Tarim Basin was already quite dry when the Small River people entered it 4,000 years ago. They probably lived at the edge of survival until the lakes and rivers on which they depended finally dried up around 400AD.
Buried Pleasure
Another unique aspect of the find is the ritual grave goods the mummies were buried with. In the women’s coffins, the archaeologists encountered life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with blade-like tops. The Chinese archaeologists concluded these were not the oars they had seemed at first sight, but rather symbolic sex symbols that matched those above the women’s boats.
“The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with symbolism,” says Mair. In his view, the obsession with procreation reflected the importance these people attached to fertility. “This interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols is a believable analysis,” he says. Mair is of the opinion that this veneration of procreation could be due to a particular respect for fertility, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.
Living in the harsh surroundings of the Tarim Basin, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great”, adds Mair. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become inbred, notes Mair. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have [probably] been particularly revered.”
Mystery of the Sands
But regardless of how they got there and how they survived in the grueling conditions, their origin remains a mystery. All the male mummies who had their DNA analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe.
Since both the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr Zhou Hui and his team from Jilin University concluded that the European and Siberian populations had probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.
“The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery is unknown, but it could have been Tokharian,” says Mair. Tokharian is an ancient member of the Indo-European family of languages, and manuscripts written in the language have been discovered in the Tarim Basin. Also, the language was spoken there from about 500 to 900AD. Tokharian has been described as more closely related to the “centum” languages of Europe than to the “satem” languages of India and Iran.
How the mummies got where they lie today, how they lived and why they died are all questions still waiting to be answered. But researchers are gradually working out the answers as they continue to search beneath the sands of the Taklimakan Desert.
Buried Pleasure
Another unique aspect of the find is the ritual grave goods the mummies were buried with. In the women’s coffins, the archaeologists encountered life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with blade-like tops. The Chinese archaeologists concluded these were not the oars they had seemed at first sight, but rather symbolic sex symbols that matched those above the women’s boats.
“The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with symbolism,” says Mair. In his view, the obsession with procreation reflected the importance these people attached to fertility. “This interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols is a believable analysis,” he says. Mair is of the opinion that this veneration of procreation could be due to a particular respect for fertility, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.
Living in the harsh surroundings of the Tarim Basin, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great”, adds Mair. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become inbred, notes Mair. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have [probably] been particularly revered.”
Mystery of the Sands
But regardless of how they got there and how they survived in the grueling conditions, their origin remains a mystery. All the male mummies who had their DNA analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe.
Since both the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr Zhou Hui and his team from Jilin University concluded that the European and Siberian populations had probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.
“The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery is unknown, but it could have been Tokharian,” says Mair. Tokharian is an ancient member of the Indo-European family of languages, and manuscripts written in the language have been discovered in the Tarim Basin. Also, the language was spoken there from about 500 to 900AD. Tokharian has been described as more closely related to the “centum” languages of Europe than to the “satem” languages of India and Iran.
How the mummies got where they lie today, how they lived and why they died are all questions still waiting to be answered. But researchers are gradually working out the answers as they continue to search beneath the sands of the Taklimakan Desert.
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