Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries by Brian Haughton (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

Chinese mummies is known as the Beauty of Loulan. The perfectly preserved Loulan female body was discovered by Chinese archaeologists in 1980, near the ancient town of Loulan, situated on the northeastern edge of the Taklimakan desert. This woman, who died at the age of 40 around 4,800 years ago, was only 5-feet 2-inches tall, and had European features including a steep nose bridge, high cheekbones, and blondish-brown hair, which had been rolled up under a felt headdress. She was wearing a woolen shroud and leather boots, and buried with her in the grave was a comb and a beautiful straw basket that contained grains of wheat. Another expedition to the Loulan region in 2003, by the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute, revealed some remarkable finds. Excavations were undertaken at a cemetery consisting of a sand mound measuring 25 feet in height, located 110 miles from the ancient town of Loulan. A particularly interesting find at the grave site was made close to the center of the mound, and proved to be another impressive mummy. Contained in a boat-shaped coffin, the female mummy had been wrapped in a woolen blanket and was wearing a felt hat and leather shoes. She had been buried with a red-painted face mask, a bracelet containing a jade stone, a leather pouch, a woolen loincloth, and ephedra sticks. Ephedra is a medicinal shrub that was used in the Zoroastrian religious rituals of Iran, so there was perhaps some connection between these two areas.

A further group of mummies found in the Tarim Basin region consisted of one man, three women, and a baby, and have become known as the Cherchen Mummies. The four adult bodies, thought to date to around 1000 B.C., were dressed in the same color, with red and blue cords wrapped around their hands, perhaps indicating a close kinship. Chercean Man, the male mummy, was more than 6-feet tall and died at the age of 50. He had long, light brown, braided hair; a thin beard; and multiple tattoos on his face. The man was buried with no less than 10 different styled hats and was dressed in a purple and red two-piece suit. Similar to Cherchen Man, the main female burial had numerous tattoos on her face, and was almost 6-feet tall. She was wearing a red dress and white deer skin boots, and had her light brown hair gathered in two long plaits. There was also a three-month-old baby buried with the adults, who was wearing a blue felt bonnet, and had blue stones covering its eyes. Buried beside the infant were a cow-horn cup and a nursing bottle made from a sheep's udder. The family is thought to have died in some sort of epidemic.

What has fascinated archaeologists most about these discoveries is the amazing preservation of the brightlycolored and patterned European-looking clothing the people were wearing. Dr. Elizabeth Barber, professor of linguistics and archaeology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, has made a detailed study of the textiles recovered from the Tarim Basin and found striking similarities to Celtic tartans from northwest Europe. She has also proposed that the tartan from the Tarim mummies and that from Europe share a common origin in the Caucasus mountains of southern Russia, where the earliest evidence for such fabrics dates back at least 5,000 years. The rich array of textile finds from western Chinese mummy burials includes robes, caps, shirts, cloaks, tartanweave trousers, and striped woolen stockings. At Subeshi on the northern route of the Silk Road, three female mummies, dating from around 500 to 400 B.C., were found with enormously tall, pointed hats, and have since become known as the Witches of Subeshi.

But who were these apparently European peoples and what were they doing in western China? The mummies are scatterred over such a wide geographical area and date range that there can be no question that they are a single tribe. They seem to represent several eastward migrations from different areas over a thousand or more years. There are some ancient sources referring to groups inhabiting the areas of the Tarim basin, where mummies have been found, which may give a clue to the origins of at least some of the mummy people. First millennium B.C. Chinese sources mention a group of "white people with long hair" known as the Bai people. The Bai lived on the northwestern border of China, and the Chinese apparently bought jade from them. Another group on the northwestern borders of China were the Yuezhi, mentioned in 645 B.C. by the Chinese author Guan Zhong. The Yuezhi also supplied the Chinese with jade, which they got from the nearby mountains of Yuzhi at Gansu. After being defeated by the nomadic Xiongnu people, the majority of the Yuezhi migrated to Transoxiana (part of southern Asia equivalent to modern Uzbekistan and southwest Kazakhstan) and later to northern India, where they founded the Kushan Empire. Depictions of Yuezhi kings on coinage have suggested to some that this group may have been a Caucasoid people.

The final group who inhabited this area were the Tocharians, who represent the easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language (a language group comprising most of the languages of Europe, India, and Iran). Some scholars argue that the Tocharians and the Yuezhi were in fact the same people under different names, though there is no proof of this at present. The areas of western China where European-type mummies have been found, in the northeastern part of the Tarim basin, and further east in the area around Lopnur, correspond well to the later distribution of the Tocharian language. Chinese writings mention that the Tocharians had blond or red hair, and blue eyes. Frescoes from Buddhist caves in the Tarim Basin dating to the ninth century A.D. show a people with

distinctly European features. The Tocharians remained in the Tarim basin and later adopted Buddhism from northern India, their culture surviving at least until the eighth century A.D., when they seem to have been assimilated by the Uighur Turks of the