The Discovery of the Xinjiang Mummies and Studies of the Origin of the Tocharians

In the last 16 to 17 years, Chinese archaeologists have unearthed about 100 well-preserved corpses of ancient human beings from the burial ruins all over Xinjiang45, the oldest of which dates from 4, 000 B. P.. For example, in 1980 the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology found a female mummy in the Lop-nor area (along the Tieban 铁板 River, a section of the Kongque 孔雀 River which flows into Lop-nor), who had a good-looking face, deep eye sockets, high nose, and brown hair and had died at an age between 40 and 45. The sheepskin she is wrapped in has been tested as dating from 3880 ± 95 В. P. (dendro chronologically adjusted).46 In 1987 Dolkun Kamberi reported47 the excavation of the ancient graves in Zaghunluq Village in Chärchän County, which was carried out in September, 1985 and led to the finding of an infant mummy having full hair from Grave 1 and one male together with three female corpses from Grave 2. The С-14 tests of the relics from these graves show that these ancient residents in the south Tarim Basin lived 3,000 years ago. And most recently, 27 (including 4 well preserved) mummies were unearthed from 34 graves in Subeixi 苏贝希 Village in Shanshan 鄯善 County, Turfan Prefecture. They are considered to the ancient Former Jushi 前车师 (anciently pronounced *Kio-si, similar to Kusiññe, the ancient name of Kucha in an adjective form) people from the Western Han (206 В. С.-8 A. D.) period. Among them a male mummy has a sharp knife wound on his abdomen, which has been sewn up with thick hairs. It seems that early people were able to undergo surgical operations on outer injuries. 48

Exciting news of discoveries of ancient mummies along the Silk Road often appear in Chinese and foreign newspapers and periodicals. A lot of exhibitions have been held, arousing great interest among the public.

The most notable, however, is the ethnic character of these ancient residents. Most of them belong to the White (Caucasian) race. On the other hand, according to archaeologist Chen Ge’s 陈戈 study49, the Neolithic Age in Xinjiang was from 5,000 to 3,000 В. С., the Bronze Age from 2,000 to 1,000 В. C., and the Early Iron Age began around 1,000 В. C.. So the early period of activity of these white people was equal to the turn of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages and earlier than the generally accepted dating of the opening of the Silk Road by about 2, 000 years. 50

Besides these mummies of white people, the physical anthropologist Han Kangxin 韩康信 has observed and measured the human bones from various ancient graves since the late seventies. Western and Russian scholars did similar work in the past51, but the bone materials they used were very few and lacked reliable records of archaeological excavations. Han’s subjects include nearly 200 skulls from seven archaeological sites, viz., the cemeteries in (1) Gumugou 古墓沟 in the lower Kongque Valley, (2)Alagou 阿拉沟 in the Tianshan Mountains, (3) Yanbulake 焉不拉克 in Liushuquan 柳树泉，Hami County, (4) the east suburb of Loulan ruins, (5)Pula 普拉 in Luopu Mountains, (6) Xiangbaobao 香宝宝, Tajik County, and (7) Tudunmu 土墩 (mound graves) in the upper Ili Valley. Han’s studies have resulted in finding that the ethnic features of the peoples along the Silk Road in the Western Regions are not the same. They belong to at least three distinct types of Europeans, namely (1) the Proto-Europeans, (2) the East Mediterranean Type or Indo-Afghans, and (3) the Central Asian Bi-River (Amu Darya and Syr Darya) Type or Pamir-Ferganians. 52

Among the three types of the Europeans, the earliest is the Proto-Europeans, who can be represented by the 18 human skulls (dating from 3,800 B. P.) collected in the lower Kongque Valley. In addition to the obvious European features such as long and narrow shae, highly prominent brow ridge and nasal bone, and so on, these sulls still have some primitive characteristics such as backward sloping forehead, low and wide face, deep eye sockets, wide nose, etc. They prove that by the Bronze Age (or even earlier) at the latest, Europeans of a somewhat primitive shape had gone deep into the Lop-nor area, the hinterland of Xinjiang. In terms of ethnic affiliation, they had much in common with the peoples represented by the human bones excavated from South Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and as far as the lower Volga dating from the Chalcolithic or Bronze Ages. In terms of the origin of the human races, it is most likely that they are related to the late sapiens of Cromagnon type in Paleolithic Eastern Europe, for the skulls of the latter, which were found in the late Paleolithic graves around Voronezh in the Don Valley, have some morphological characteristics very similar to the skulls found in the Kongque Valley.

In addition to the various types of the Europeans mentioned above, the Mongolians fron the East also appeared in ancient Xinjiang. The relics of the earliest Mongolian people in scattered groups available today are from the Hami area and date from around 3,000 B. P..53 The massive immigration of the Mongolians probably began in the Han or even later periods.

In a word, according to the direct observations of the mummies excavated in Xinjiang and the physical anthropological studies of the human bone materials mentioned above, most of the ancient residents in Xinjiang were white people, and their languages must have belonged to the Indo-European language family.54Such a conclusion also can be drawn from Chinese historical sources. For example, in the “Account of the Western Regions” (Xiyu zhuan 西域传) in History of the Han(Han shu 汉书), Yan Shigu 颜师古 made a comment on “Wusun”: “The Wusun [People] have the most strange physical shape among the various foreign peoples in the Western Regions. Today’s foreigners with green eyes and red hair, looking like rhesus monkeys, originally came from the Wusun.” Obviously, this is a Chinese description of the foreigners in the Western Regions who were Europeans. In linguistic terms, around the turn of this century a great number of manuscripts written in Indo-European languages were discovered (and continue to be discovered up to this date). The languages in these manusripts include Sanskrit, Gāndhārī, Sogdian, Pahlavī, Parthian, Khotanese, Tumshuqese, and Bactrian. The most notable is Tocharian (Agnean-Kuchean language), which is an Indo-European language totally different from the above Indo-Iranian langrages and is divided into A and В dialects. This language spread to the areas of Karashahr, Kucha, and Khoco. 55 Its written documents date from 6-8th century A. D., but some evidence shows that it came into being as early as in the 3rd century A. C..56

The name of Tocharian comes from twγry in Maitrisimit, the famous Uighur Buddhist drama. This old Indo-European language has some characteristics related to Centum languages such as Celtic, Italian, Germanic, Greek and Hittite. Such questions as what is the position of Tocharian in the Indo-European language family, where do the “Tocharians” come from, what is their relationship with the West, India, Sogdia, and Tuhuoluo 吐火罗 (Tukkara, Tochari, tuγri, and so on; in Chinese also written as 吐呼罗, 覩货逻, 兜佉勒, etc.) mentioned in Chinese sources, can we relate “the Tocharians” to the “Yuezhi” 月支 people who are reported by Chinese historians to have immigrated westward and founded the Kushan Empire, and what does the “old country of the Tocharians” (Duhuoluo guguo 覩货逻故国) in Chapter 12 of Da Tang Xiyu ji [Accounts of the Western Regions in the Great T’ang Dynasty]大唐西域记 mean, although debated for several decades, have not been fairly answered so far. The socalled “Tocharian problem”, which is a linguistic, historic and archaeological one, is the most difficult to solve in the studies of historical liguistics and ancient Central Asian history.57

We think that the scientific studies of the Xinjiang mummies will bring new bopes to the solution of the “Tocharian problem”, especially the problem of the origin of the Tocharians.

As to the origin of the Tocharians, we should relate it to the problem of the origin of the Indo-Europeans, which has been the subject of lively discussions recently. In the 50-70’s of this century, the “Kurgan” hypothesis advanced by Marija Gimbutas, who traced primitive Indo-Europeans back to the South Russian steppes, was most influential.58 J. P. Mallory still adheres to the idea that the Ukraine is the home of Indo-European languages.59 However, an English scholar Colin Renfrew has discussed this problem from a new angle. Acсording to the “Cultural Process” theory of the “New Archaeology” and using the approach of historical linguistics, he says that the basic way Indo-European language spread was by the gradual expansion of agriculture. Around 7, 000 B. P., the first agricultural economy emerged in the radial region from the Jordan Valley through East Anatolia to Mesopotamia. The home of the Indo-European, according to Renfrew, was Middle Anatolia. With the development of the economy and population growth of its main branch, the Indo-European language gradually spread out. 60 Long ago, W. B. Henning maintained that the Guti people, who often appear in cuneiform documents, were the ancestors of the Tocharians61, Recently, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov developed Henning’s ideas and further affirmed that the Tocharians had settled in the Near East by 3,000 В. C..62

Of course, the relationships among nationality, race, language and culture are very complicated. It is totally unwise to relate them to one another at will so far scholars have not reached a consensus on who the descendants of the primitive Europeans in Central Asia (including Xinjiang) are. 63 However, modern genetics has already attested the interrelation between genetic and linguistic data and the coincidence of the pedigree charts of human races and world languages. 64 The reconstructions of prehistoric languages in recent years, such as that made by V. M. Illiċ-Svityċ, A. Dolgopolsky, V. Shevoroshkin, J. Greenberg and M. Ruhlen, have also demonstrated that there is a tendency to unanimity among the results of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic studies. 65 If we follow the suggestions of L. Cavalli-Sforza and other scholars, analyze the DNA of Xinjiang mummies, adopt new techniques of molecular archaeology, refer to the results of modern group genetics66, make cross-disciplinarу examinations of funerary accessories such as textile fabrics, spindles, wheels, horse gear, and so on which have been unearthed along with the mummies, and compare Xinjiang mummies with others found all over the world, such as the 5,200-year-old “Ice Man” discovered on the border between Austria and Italy in 1991, the 2,000-year-old female corpse found in Pazyryk in Russian Altaic area67, and so on, a new knowledge of the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural characteristics of the white people in ancient Xinjiang will surely be gained. Until the results of these researches come out, we can not make sure who on earth are these 3,000-4,000-year-old ancient residents represented by the Xinjiang mummies, although it seeme most likely that they have some relationship with the Tocharians and Tocharian language.

Most recently, according to the excavations in the Dereivka ruins in Ukraine and in the Sintashta-Petrovka ruins in Kazakhstan, an American anthropologist David Anthony has put forward the idea that human beings first domesticated horses in the Ukrainian prairie about 6, 000 years ago, and that chariots were first invented in the South Russian steppes in 4, 000 Β. P..68 Furthermore, he says that the primitive Indo-European language was spread east and west by the first horse-riding people. It can be imagined that further studies of the mummies and their accessories excavated in Xinjiang might finally offer some evidence to link the ancient white people in this area with some pre-historic cultures in West Asia or the Eurasian Continent, and give more details of the spread of Indo-European language, thus making a great or even crucial contribution to the study of the origins of Tocharian and Indo-European languages.

Another name in Chinese sources which can be related with Tocharian people and language is “Yuezhi”. The problem of Yuezhi (along with that of “Wusun”) has also been studied for many years. 69 Some scholars think that the ancient pronounciation of “Yuezhi” was zngiwǎt-t’ia, reflecting on original *ZguJa, so it can be considered to the equal to the Scythians. 70 In recent years, however, most scholars have maintained that the Yuezhi people were a branch of the Tocharians. 71 Both “Yuezhi” and “Wusun” were tribal unions. The Yuezhi were not the Scythians but a powerful nomadic tribal union in the period from the 5th century В. С. to the 4th centuty A. D., spreading in the area north of Hetao [The Great Bend of the Yellow River]河套 and south of the Altai Mountains, keeping a close relationship with the Altaic (in the geographic sense) “Scythians”, which can be proven by the texture fabrics, pongee with phoenix pattern, lacquer wares and bronze wares with veins like the Chinese character 山(pronounced shan and meaning “mountain”) unearthed from the Pazyryk tombs. 72 As to the physical features of the pre-Kushans who crossed the Amu Darya, occupied Bactria and founded the Kushan Empire, Russian scholars A. N. Zelinsky and Y. G. Rychkov think that they belonged to “north-Europoids”, who spread in the vast area from Europe to Sayano-Altai and emerged in Bactria and Badakhshan along with the arrival of the Yuezhi people. 73 It might be helpful to solve this problem if we analyzed the human bones from the famous Yuezhi tombs (dating from about 1st century В. C.) in Tillya-Tepe in North Afghanistan. 74

Xinjiang Buddhist caves are located along the road from Kashgar through Kucha and Karashahr to Khoco (Turfan). Among them the most important ones, namely those in Kucha and Khoсо, are all related to the Tocharians. In the last more than 10 years, Chinese scholars have made a thorough study of the history and cave arts of Kucha. 75 Most recently it has been noted that there are quite a few personal images in dark color in the wall-paintings depicting Tocharians, which reminds us of the accounts about black people with deep eyesockets in Han wood slips and Yilin [Forest of Changes]易林 compiled in the Han period. The late anthropologist and historian Yang Ximei 杨希枚 studied these people and thought them to be a special people living in the ancient Northwest. 76 If Yang’s opinion is reasonable, the Tocharian-Yuezhi people might include the various types of the Eruopean mentioned above. Some anthropologists divide the Europeans into “Northern People” and “Southern People”. The Indo-Mediterraneans, who belong to the “Southern People”, have black-colored skin, dark-colored and undulant hair, and heavy beard, still living in present South Europe, North Africa, Arabic Peninsula, Iraq, South Iran, and North India.lt was reasonable for the Tocharians to absorb these people into themselves for they were such a big tribal union which crossed the Eurasian continent and traveled a very long distance. Certainly, to confirm this historical fact, we should make further examinations of the human bones and corpses excavated in Xinjiang and other places in Northwest China by means of physical anthropology and molecular archaeology.

As early as 1938, E. Sapir said: “I suspect strongly that at least two distinct IE languages appeared in Chinese Turkestan and West China at a quite early date and that these two languages belonged to distinct branches of IE.” 77 The studies of Tocharian for nearly 60 years have already verified the suspicions of this great linguist. We believe that the thousand-year-old puzzle of Tocharian will be solved in next century through unremitting efforts of several generations, the continuing development of archaeology, anthropology, genetics, and linguistics, and the constant emergence of new materials.

Appendix

The main character of the neolithic culture in Xinjiang is microlithic artifacts, which are distributed north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, along the edges of the Tarim Basin, and in the low-lying area around Lop-nor. Type 1 of Xinjiang microlith, consisting of cuneiform and columnar small stone cores and edge-aligned and cut-short stone leaves, belongs to the microlithic tradition in North China, Northest Asia, and Northwest America, which is also found from Siberia to Russian Europe. Type 2 of Xinjiang microlith, i.e. the geometric microlith, developing parallely with Type 1, was originally centered in West Asia and spread to Central Asia of the Former USSR, Afghanistan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Qinghai. In Middle Afghanistan, however, there were also non-geometric microlithic stone leaves. It seems that the Pamirs is the intermediate area of these two microlithic types. So far we do not have any knowledge about the ethnic features of the Xinjiang residents in that early time. In 1987, a few clipped stone implements were found in three places on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin. They were collected from the ground in very small amounts, but probably dated from the Paleolithic Age. See Wu Zhen 吴震, “Xinjiang xinshiqi shidai wenhua de chubu tantao” [Preliminary Researches in the Neolithic Culture of Xinjiang]新疆新石器时代文化的初步探讨, Guangming ribao [Bright Daily]光明日报, March 28, 1962. Wang Binghua 王炳华, “Xinjiang xishiqi wenhua chubu yanjiu” [Preliminary Studies on the Microlithic Culture of Xingiang]新疆细石器文化初步研究, in Ganhanqu Xinjiang disiji lunwenji [Essays on the Quaternary Period of Arid Xinjiang]干旱区新疆第四纪论文集 (Ürünqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 1985), pp.174-182.Teilhard de Chardin, “On the Presumable Existence of a World-Wide Sub-Arctic Sheet of Human Culture at the Dawn of the Neolithic”, Bull. Geol. Soc. China, 19 (1939), 333-339. Huang Weiwen 黄慰文, John W. Olsen, Richard W. Reeves, Sari Miller-Antonio, and Lei Jiaqiang 雷加强, “Xinjiang Talimu pendi nanyuan xin faxian de shiqi” [New Discoveries of Stone Artifacts on the Southern Edge of the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang]新疆塔里木盆地南缘新发现的石器, Renleixue xuebao [Acta Anthropologica Sinica]人类学学报7. 4(November, 1988), 294-301.

中文提要

新疆古尸的新发现与吐火罗人起源研究

随着新疆丝路沿线的考古工作的开展，有大量保存完好的古代人类遗体出土，其中年代最早的距今已有4000年（约公元前2000年）。这类遗体过去虽亦多次有所发现，但没有引起学术界的广泛关注。近二十余年的新发现则在国际学术界产生了深远的影响，这方面的研究可以说方兴未艾。

这些古代居民从体质特征看大都属于白种人（高加索人种），属铜器时代和早期铁器时代。人类学家韩康信从20世纪70年代开始，对出自新疆不同古代墓地的人骨进行了观察和测量，也证明新疆古代居民的人种类型以欧洲人种为主，并且表明至少在青铜时代甚至更早，具有某些古老形态的欧洲人种成分的居民已经深入到新疆腹地。这些新的发现和研究为解决吐火罗人的起源问题带来了新的希望。

本文引用大量中外文献，运用考古学、人类学、语言学的新成果，对吐火罗人起源问题以至印欧语和印欧人起源问题的研究现状进行了系统评述，认为新疆古尸所代表的古代居民与吐火罗人和吐火罗语有渊源关系，并从跨学科角度，特别是从分子考古学和遗传学角度，对未来的研究工作进行了全面展望。

（原载The Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol.23, 3-4, 1995）