Old Stone Age Culture Has Been Discovered in China

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Hate to say it:

But it is only speculated that the Philistines spoke an Indo-European language. It is based on the notion that they were "Sea Peoples" who originated from the Aegean area.

Xinjiang region in northeast China is where the modern Uighurs live, and have lived for thousands of years.

But the mummies in the region belong to the Tocharian peoples who lived there MANY thousands years. Were not particularly "advanced" but were oddly european looking. And their language was Indoeuropean. Related to both north Indian languages, and Iranian to the south, and to most ancient and to most modern European languages to the west. They were light auburn haired folks. One lovely lady mummy looked much like actress Liv Ulman in her prime.

They were later absorbed by Turkic speaking nomads who became the modern Uighurs- who lived in the region for most of historic time until now. Uighurs, like the Turkic peoples of neighboring Kazahkistan have a language akin to Turkish (the Turks of modern Turkey came from that central asian region only one thousand years ago). And though Uighurs and Kazahks have black hair they have an intermediate look. Kinda in between east asians like the Han Chinese, on one hand...and like the middle eastern and European of the west on the other.

The Han Chinese are indeed famous for slowly expanding and absorbing and assimilating surrounding ethnic groups for the last several thousand years. Only about one forth to one third of the modern nation state of China is really "China proper" (home to Han Chinese) but even that one third is a vast nation in physical size as well as in population.

Yes -the Hittites are solidly shown to have been Indoeuropean speakers. The Philistines we just dont know.

As the Aegean area had been colonized by prehistoric Indo-Europeans, it's a good guess.

Is there any information website that can more intuitively see the changes in the distribution of various ethnic groups over time?
This is a void in my special interest that I've always wanted to fill.
I don't need very cutting-edge information, just general education.
There are few of these in Chinese sources.

Any online encyclopedia will prove useful

Try the Britannica.

A good place to start is the work of Cavalli-Sforza. He is an Italian human population geneticist.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.94.15.7719

His work in the late 1990s formed the basis of the human genome project
https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project

and also the National Geographic Genome project
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/page ... enographic

And finally numerous DNA testing labs that are building a world-wide database of human population genetics
https://www.23andme.com/en-int/
https://www.ancestry.com.au/dna/?stay&e ... arch+Brand

Yes, not sure if you have heard of the "Lolan beauty" skeleton remains and its involvement with Chinese government attempts to erase history
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/worl ... mummy.html

The link you gave is not stable with my internet connection.
But I put the English version of this title into a Chinese search engine, and I can search for relevant results. Although there is no Chinese content talking about it.

This article has me very confused.

Loulan is described as "exotic" in ancient Chinese cultural works. This kind of work exists today in our education.
I searched for "Loulan Mummy" in the Chinese version, and in the introduction of the Chinese version, it was clearly written that "this is reminiscent of a Greek girl". The restoration map provided in the data is also completely similar to the appearance of a mixed race.

I did a more extensive lookup. This post is unquestionably filtered. This is a particularly strict filtering, and I can't get around it.
The title of this article was mentioned in a Chinese niche government-leaning civil political forum. Nothing is cited. That discussion revolved around how the West created rumors to question China's sovereignty over Xinjiang.

For the article itself, I can only see a small passage quoted in the English discussion, and cannot view the full content. If you could give a brief overview of what he was about it would help me find more information.

Yes. If you can find books by Cavilla-Sforza in your country they make a good starting point in learning about whats been learned about ancient human migrations.

From the link
By Edward Wong
Nov. 18, 2008
URUMQI, China — An exhibit on the first floor of the museum here gives the government’s unambiguous take on the history of this border region: “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” says one prominent sign.

But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story.

One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese.

The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang.

At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire?

Uighur nationalists have gleaned evidence from the mummies, whose corpses span thousands of years, to support historical claims to the region.

Foreign scholars say that at the very least, the Tarim mummies — named after the vast Tarim Basin where they were found — show that Xinjiang has always been a melting pot, a place where people from various corners of Eurasia founded societies and where cultures overlapped.

Contact between peoples was particularly frequent in the heyday of the Silk Road, when camel caravans transported goods that flowed from as far away as the Mediterranean. “It’s historically been a place where cultures have mixed together,” said Yidilisi Abuduresula, 58, a Uighur archaeologist in Xinjiang working on the mummies.
The Tarim mummies seem to indicate that the very first people to settle the area came from the west — down from the steppes of Central Asia and even farther afield — and not from the fertile plains and river valleys of the Chinese interior. The oldest, like the Loulan Beauty, date back 3,800 years.

Some Uighurs have latched on to the fact that the oldest mummies are most likely from the west as evidence that Xinjiang has belonged to the Uighurs throughout history. A modern, nationalistic pop song praising the Loulan Beauty has even become popular.

Image
In Kashgar, China, veiled women passing a wall with Uighur writing that promoted the nation’s fight against “terrorism and criminal acts.”
Credit...Gilles Sabrie
“The people found in Loulan were Uighur people, according to the materials,” said a Uighur tour guide in the city of Kashgar who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of running afoul of the Chinese authorities. “The nationalities of Xinjiang are very complicated. There have been many since ancient times.”

Scholars generally agree that Uighurs did not migrate to what is now Xinjiang from Central Asia until the 10th century. But, uncomfortably for the Chinese authorities, evidence from the mummies also offers a far more nuanced history of settlement than the official Chinese version.

By that official account, Zhang Qian, a general of the Han dynasty, led a military expedition to Xinjiang in the second century B.C. His presence is often cited by the ethnic Han Chinese when making historical claims to the region.

The mummies show, though, that humans entered the region thousands of years earlier, and almost certainly from the west.
What is indisputable is that the Tarim mummies are among the greatest recent archaeological finds in China, perhaps the world.

Four are in glass display cases in the main museum here in Urumqi, the regional capital. Their skin is parched and blackened from the wear and tear of thousands of years, but their bodies are strikingly intact, preserved by the dry climate of the western desert.

Some foreign scholars say the Chinese government, eager to assert a narrative of longtime Chinese dominance of Xinjiang, is unwilling to face the fact that the mummies provide evidence of heterogeneity throughout the region’s history of human settlement.

As a result, they say, the government has been unwilling to give broad access to foreign scientists to conduct genetic tests on the mummies.

“In terms of advanced scientific research on the mummies, it’s just not happening,” said Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania who has been at the forefront of foreign scholarship of the mummies.

Mr. Mair first spotted one of the mummies, a red-haired corpse called the Cherchen Man, in the back room of a museum in Urumqi while leading a tour of Americans there in 1988, the first year the mummies were put on display.

Since then, he says that he has been obsessed with pinpointing the origins of the mummies, intent on proving a theory dear to him: that the movement of peoples throughout history is far more common than previously thought.
Mr. Mair has assembled various groups of scholars to do research on the mummies. In 1993, the Chinese government tried to prevent Mr. Mair from leaving China with 52 tissue samples after having authorized him to go to Xinjiang and to collect them.

Image
Mummies in western China have revealed ancient migration patterns.
Credit...The New York Times
But a Chinese researcher managed to slip a half-dozen vials to Mr. Mair. From those samples, an Italian geneticist concluded in 1995 that at least two of the mummies had a European genetic marker.

The Chinese government in recent years has allowed genetic research on the mummies to be conducted only by Chinese scientists.

Jin Li, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai, tested the mummies in conjunction with a 2007 National Geographic documentary. He concluded that some of the oldest mummies had East Asian and even South Asian markers, though the documentary said further testing needed to be done.

Mr. Mair has disputed any suggestion that the mummies were from East Asia. He believes that East Asian migrants did not appear in the Tarim Basin until much later than the Loulan Beauty and her people.

The oldest mummies, he says, were probably Tocharians, herders who traveled eastward across the Central Asian steppes and whose language belonged to the Indo-European family. A second wave of migrants came from what is now Iran.
The theory that the earliest mummies came from the west of what is now modern China is supported by other scholars as well. A textile expert, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, in a book called “The Mummies of Urumchi,” wrote that the kind of cloth discovered in the oldest grave sites can be traced to the Caucasus.

Han Kangxin, a physical anthropologist, has also concluded that the earliest settlers were not Asians. He has studied the skulls of the mummies, and says that genetic tests can be unreliable.

“It’s very clear that these are of Europoid or Caucasoid origins,” Mr. Han, now retired, said in an interview in his apartment in Beijing.

Of the hundreds of mummies discovered, there are some that are East Asian, but they are not as ancient as the Loulan Beauty or the Cherchen Man.

The most prominent Chinese grave sites were discovered at a place called Astana, believed to be a former military outpost. The findings at the site span the Jin to the Tang dynasties, from the third to the 10th centuries.

Further clouding the picture, a mummy from the Lop Nur area, the 2,000-year-old Yingpan Man, was unearthed with artifacts associated with an entirely different part of the globe. He was wearing a hemp death mask with gold foil and a red robe decorated with naked angelic figures and antelopes — all hallmarks of a Hellenistic civilization.

Despite the political issues, excavations of the grave sites are continuing.

Mr. Abuduresula, the Uighur archaeologist, made a trip in late September to the desert site at Xiaohe, where 350 graves have been discovered. The bottom layer of graves dates back nearly 4,000 years. More recent graves point to a matriarchal herding society that worshiped cows, Mr. Abuduresula said.

Somewhere in those sands, he said, archaeologists have discovered a woman as striking as the Loulan Beauty. She is called the Xiaohe Princess, and even her eyelashes are intact.

This makes sense and opens up more complex historical events at the time in relation the origin of the Loulan mummy.

Modern European archaeologists are fascinated by a number of theories
1. A popular myth about the lost legion of Rome that was stationed in the far east
2. Tocharian settlers/traders who were Indo-European speakers who moved east. The problem is this language group is extinct so its difficult to identify their origins (Corded ware? Yamnaya? Indo-Iranian? Scythian?)
3. They were simply traders from central Asia who had got absorbed.

In terms of point 3 its interesting you mention "Greek" looking. When Alexander the Great invaded Central Asia (Bactria) he was surprised to find colonies of Greeks in the lands that make up Afghanistan today. Indeed the Indian emperor Ashoka had his edicts imprinted on iron pillars two of the languages included Greek and Phoenician.

Usually, in order to maintain stability among ethnic groups, Chinese officials do not spread negative information about a certain ethnic group. Therefore, the description used in the relevant statement is "Xinjiang".
A fact that is known by Chinese without official propaganda but who are interested in politics or are familiar with Xinjiang is that there are more police forces in the Xinjiang region (the police are usually Uyghurs. It is a taboo for Han police to have violent clashes with Uyghurs); one from A person from Xinjiang, even if he is Han, is subject to more security checks in other areas.

The official propaganda news is that there is a terrorist organization called "East Turkic" in Xinjiang. Unofficial political enthusiasts believe that the political concept of "Eastern Turkism" has some connection with "Pan-Turkism" in Turkey.

A fact that may surprise people from other cultures is that the proportion of ethnic minorities in China has been increasing. In my understanding, there are two main reasons for this:
A. Ethnic minorities, especially those culturally different from the Han, are less restricted by the family planning policy. There have been some inhumane law enforcement incidents about family planning among Han people in the past, and the same incidents will not happen among ethnic minorities.
B. The preferential treatment for minorities makes almost all children of interracial families choose to register as minorities. According to the family tree, my own ethnic origin is actually less than 1/16 personally. The preferential treatment of minorities in education has driven more young minorities to leave their congregations for the big cities, and generated cross-ethnic cultural and ancestry exchanges. This is not a fair approach, but it can promote integration between ethnic groups.



Chinese data show that "Xiaohe Princess" is "a beauty with European Caucasian characteristics".
In 2005, Chinese scientists' genetic research on the mummies showed that "the vast majority of these mummies have DNA characteristics of both Asian and Western European populations, and the Asian populations are mainly from northern China and the Baikal region, and Western European populations mainly from Europe”
The researchers believe that "this suggests that people from the East and the West began to interact, mingle, and have blood interactions as early as 4,000 years ago, when there are no written records."
All of the above are all present in the first search result for "Xiaohe Princess".

@Skinned wolf

Your description of the treatment of minorities appears to be in stark contrast to western media. But I will stay clear of this topic as I don't want you get in trouble.

Yes the interaction of western and eastern peoples in western China is indisputable. Not just in the genes of the people living in the region, but also the archaeology and history.

What is perhaps less acknowledged is the interaction between India and China by the Chinese in prehistoric times. Did you know when Premier Xi Jinping visited India a few years ago he held his meeting with the Indian prime minister in a place in southern India called Mahabalipuram. The meeting location was not an accident.

Southern India in the last few hundred years has had little to do with China, Indeed Chinese tourists to India avoid the south of the country. But in prehistoric times there was a thriving sea trade between China and India but primarily with the south of India in what is the Tamil kingdoms.

This sea trade bought with it a number of interactions which explain premier Xi's decision to meet in the southern part of India
1. Chinese fishing nets identical to those used in China 2000 years ago are still in use in the southern state of Kerala
2. The tamil word for tea is Chai. Tamil is the oldest living language in India
3.Chinese coins are found in abundance on the coast dating back to between 300BC to 300AD
4, The chinese have old knowledge of the island of ceylon which has archaeological traces of Chinese boats visiting from before Christ
5. The temples of mahabalipuram show Chinese men, particularly soldiers which indicates Chinese soldiers were present in southern India at least 2000 years ago
6. Chinese martial arts originated in south India - the ancient form is known as Silambam and Kalaripayattu
7. Mahabalipuram is the birth place of Bodhidarma the buddhist sage who bought Buddhsim to China and Japan. Among his contributions are supposed to be Shao Lin, Kung Fu, and in Japan he introduced Zen and meditation.
8. The tamil language is remarkably similar to Korean and Japanese.
9. Spices have been common in the cuisine of southern China
10. There are ancient hindu gods in China and Japan
11. The religion, architecture and science of most the kingdoms in South East Asia (particularly Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia) were south Indian hindu.

Well. I wonder why the media chose this point. It seems that propaganda is always for the fight rather than concern for our actual problems.




This does not seem to be an official visit, and there is not much information about it. There is an official media article about it.

Patriarch Bodhidharma is also mentioned in the article. It seems that this was one of the reasons this location was chosen.

He hinted that Xi wants India to drop the dispute and build good relations with China.




The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a geographic isolation between China and India. Land transport connections would be quite difficult, which is why "Xuanzang's westward journey" was seen as a feat. Communication by sea is a more reasonable route.
Although I often use India as my country in strategy games and have read a lot about Hinduism and Jainism, Tamil is really my blind spot.
I didn't find too many results for ancient Tamil in Chinese sources. There is some confusion about the Indian translation in Chinese, maybe I didn't find the correct translation.


Ceylon has always been an object of communication in ancient China. In the documents of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), Ceylon was called the "Lion Kingdom". Some Chinese monks traveled to Ceylon to exchange Buddhism.
In a family tree survey in Fujian, China, a shocking discovery was made that a Chinese woman "Xu Shiyin'e" was actually a descendant of the ancient royal family of Ceylon. A Ceylon prince was sent to China in ancient times and left behind due to some accidents, and then established a family in China. An ancient burial complex about him has been discovered.