thumb|upright=1.25|The "Xiaohe Mummy", exhibited in Xinjiang Museum, is one of the oldest Tarim mummies, dating more than 3800 years ago. Another mummy from the same place is the "[[Princess of Xiaohe".]]
The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BCE to the first centuries BCE, with a new group of individuals recently dated to between and 1700 BCE. The Tarim population to which the earliest mummies belonged was agropastoral, and they lived in what was formerly a freshwater environment, which has now become desertified.
Zhang et al. (2021) found that these early mummies (dating from 2,135 to 1,623 BCE) had high levels of Ancient North Eurasian ancestry (ANE, about 72%), with smaller admixture from Ancient Northeast Asians (ANA, about 28%), but no detectable Western Steppe-related ancestry. They formed a genetically isolated local population that "adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert." These mummified individuals were long suspected to have been "Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists", related to the Afanasievo or BMAC cultures, but "the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population." Zhang et al. (2025) investigated a Late Bronze Age site in the far west of the Tarim Basin, dated 1600 to 1400 BC. Its inhabitants overwhelmingly descended from the Sintashta and Andronovo population, with additional ancestry from BMAC (10%) and Tarim_EMBA (12%). Nearly all subjects belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup R-M17. They are candidates as the Iron Age predecessors of the Tocharians. The rather recent easternmost mummies at Qumul (Yanbulaq culture, 1100–500 BCE), provide the earliest mummies of "Mongoloid" appearance found in the Tarim Basin, as well as others of "Europoid" features.
Archaeological record
thumb|upright=1.5|The [[Tarim Basin, with the Taklamakan Desert, and area of the Tarim mummies (<small></small>) with main burial sites.]]
thumb|Sir [[Aurel Stein in the Tarim Basin, 1910]]
At the beginning of the 20th century, European explorers such as Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq and Sir Aurel Stein all recounted their discoveries of desiccated bodies in their search for antiquities in Central Asia. Since then, numerous other mummies have been found and analyzed, many of them now displayed in the museums of Xinjiang. Most of these mummies were found on the eastern end of the Tarim Basin (around the area of Lopnur, Subeshi near Turpan, Loulan, Kumul), or along the southern edge of the Tarim Basin (Khotan, Niya, and Cherchen or Qiemo).
According to , the earliest Tarim mummies, found at Qäwrighul (Gumugou) and dated to 2135–1939 BCE, were classified in a craniometric analysis as belonging to a "Proto-Europoid" type, whose closest affiliation is to the Bronze Age populations of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Lower Volga. A revised craniometric analyses by on the early Tarim mummies (Qäwrighul) failed to demonstrate close phenetic affinities to "Europoid populations", but rather found that they formed their own cluster, distinct from the European-related Steppe pastoralists of the Andronovo and Afanasievo cultures, or the inhabitants of the Western Asian BMAC culture. Later Tarim mummies displayed varying affinities with Andronovo-like, BMAC-like or Han-like populations, suggesting different waves of migration into the Tarim basin.
Notable mummies are the tall, red-haired "Chärchän man" or the "Ur-David" (1000 BCE); his son (1000 BCE), a 1-year-old baby with brown hair protruding from under a red and blue felt cap, with two stones positioned over its eyes; the "Hami Mummy" (c. 1400–800 BCE), a "red-headed beauty" found in Qizilchoqa; and the "Witches of Subeshi" (4th or 3rd century BCE), who wore black felt conical hats with a flat brim. Also found at Subeshi was a man with traces of a surgical operation on his abdomen; the incision is sewn up with sutures made of horsehair.
Many of the mummies have been found in very good condition, owing to the dryness of the desert and the desiccation it produced in the corpses. The mummies share many typical Caucasian body features, and many of them have their hair physically intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided. Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate a common origin with Indo-European neolithic clothing techniques or a common low-level textile technology. Chärchän man wore a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. Textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who examined the tartan-style cloth, discusses similarities between it and fragments recovered from salt mines associated with the Hallstatt culture. As a result of the arid conditions and exceptional preservation, tattoos have been identified on mummies from several sites around the Tarim Basin, including Qäwrighul, Yanghai, Shengjindian, Shanpula (Sampul), Zaghunluq, and Qizilchoqa.
It has been asserted that the textiles found with the mummies are of an early European textile type based on close similarities to fragmentary textiles found in salt mines in Austria, dating from the second millennium BCE. Anthropologist Irene Good, a specialist in early Eurasian textiles, noted the woven diagonal twill pattern indicated the use of a rather sophisticated loom and said that the textile is "the easternmost known example of this kind of weaving technique".
Haplogroups
thumb|left|upright=.5|Burial XHM66 from Xiaohe cemetery, with boat-shaped coffin and mummified remains dressed in woollen garments.
A 2008 study by Jilin University showed that the Yuansha population has relatively close relationships with the modern populations of South Central Asia and Indus Valley, as well as with the ancient population of Chawuhu.
Between 2009 and 2015, the remains of 92 individuals found at the Xiaohe Tomb complex were analyzed for Y-DNA and mtDNA markers. Genetic analyses of the mummies showed that the maternal lineages of the Xiaohe people originated from both East Asia and West Eurasia, whereas the paternal lineages all originated from West Eurasia. The East Eurasian mtDNA carried by the Tarim mummies is mtDNA haplogroup C and the particular subclade found in the Tarim mummies originates from southeast Siberians like Udeghe and Evenks and not from East Asians, who carry mtDNA haplogroup C at a far lower rate and carry different subclades of mtDNA C. which is now most common in Northern India and Eastern Europe; the remaining one belonged to the exceptionally rare paragroup K* (M9) from Asia.
The geographic location of this admixing is unknown, although south Siberia is likely.
Zhang et al. (2025) investigated a Late Bronze Age site in the far west of the Tarim Basin, dated 1600 to 1400 BC. Nearly all subjects belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup R-M17. One sample of Y-DNA extracted from a late Iron Age individual belonged to haplogroup Q1a2. The genetic profile of the Afontova Gora 3 individual represented about 72% of the ancestry of the Tarim mummies from Xiaohe, while the remaining 28% of their ancestry was derived from Ancient Northeast Asians (ANA, Early Bronze Age Baikal populations). Tarim_EMBA mummies from Beifang have a slightly higher amount of ANA ancestry and can be modelled as having 89% Xiaohe-like ancestry and about 11% ANA ancestry. The Tarim_EMBA mummies are thus one of the rare Holocene populations who derive most of their ancestry from the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE, specifically the Mal'ta and Afontova Gora populations), despite their distance in time (around 14,000 years). More than any other ancient population, the Tarim mummies can be considered as "the best representatives" of the Ancient North Eurasians.
Tests on their genetic legacy also found that several groups in Central Asia and Xinjiang derived varying degrees of ancestry from a population related to the Early Bronze Age Tarim mummies. Pamiri Tajik groups show the relative highest affinity with the Tarim_EMBA mummies, although their main ancestry is linked to BMAC and Iron Age groups from Central Asia.
thumb|center|upright=3.5|Genetic ancestry and admixture of ancient populations of Eurasia. The Tarim mummies (<small></small>) are unrelated to the [[Afanasievo culture (<small></small>). They are instead mainly descended from the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE, 72%), with relatively minor Baikal EBA admixture (28%), and remained essentially in genetic isolation. "The Tarim mummies' so-called Western physical features are probably due to their connection to the Pleistocene ANE gene pool". By the time of the late Iron Age, as the cities established in the Western Tarim Basin became cosmopolitan hubs of the Silk Road, this Andronovo-related ancestry is no longer detected.]]
Mallory and Mair (2000) propose the movement of at least two "Caucasian" physical types into the Tarim Basin. The authors associate these types with the Tocharian and Iranian (Saka) branches of the Indo-European language family, respectively. However, archaeology and linguistics professor Elizabeth Wayland Barber cautions against assuming the mummies spoke Tocharian, noting a gap of about a thousand years between the mummies and the documented Tocharians: "people can change their language at will, without altering a single gene or freckle".
On the other hand, linguistics professor Ronald Kim argues that the amount of divergence between the attested Tocharian languages necessitates that Proto-Tocharian must have preceded their attestation by a millennium or so. This would coincide with the timeframe during which the Tarim Basin culture was in the region.
In 1995, Mair claimed that "the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucasoid, or Europoid" with east Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 3,000 years ago while the Uyghur peoples arrived around the year 842. In trying to trace the origins of these populations, Victor Mair's team suggested that they may have arrived in the region by way of the Pamir Mountains about 5,000 years ago.
Mair has claimed that:
Mair and Mallory’s research have been extensively criticized within academia for their role in providing an implicit foundation for white supremacy and Nazism within scholarship. Notably, the phenotypes found within the mummies are not homogeneous and many do not align with “European” features. Furthermore, physical features alone are not grounds for determining migration patterns and the cranial features alone examined in the remains outside of Tarim cannot be used to determine phenotypes. Mallory has since distanced himself from earlier ties to racist publications.
There are also cultural, genetic, and phenotypic connections to the modern Uyghurs. Thornton and Schurr noted that the broader linguistic replacement by Uyghurs cannot be construed as outright replacement. Uyghur phenotypes themselves have been previously (and inconsistently) classified as “European”, “Mongoloid” and “Caucusoid” (classifications now widely recognized by anthropologists as pseudoscientific). Furthermore, traditional Uyghur techniques for producing clothing are understudied; in particular with regards to the felting process and its relationship to that of the clothing found on the mummies.
In 1995 Mair also wrote that “I also hope to bring some of the corpses for a traveling exhibition to several museums in the United States and Europe. That way, modern men and women who are curious can see for themselves what their ancestors of the hundred-and-thirtieth generation back looked like”. A passage criticized by Thornton and Schurr for the emphasis on placing the mummies as ancestral to Europeans and fulfilling a Chinese nationalist agenda over that of the Uyghurs.
B. E. Hemphill's biodistance analysis of cranial metrics (as cited in and ) has questioned the identification of the Tarim Basin population as European, noting that the earlier population forms their own distinct cluster and having closer affinities to two specimens from the Harappan site of the Indus Valley civilisation, while the later Tarim population displays closer affinities with the Oxus River valley population.
Han Kangxin, who examined the skulls of 302 mummies, found the closest relatives of the earlier Tarim Basin population in the populations of the Afanasevo culture situated immediately north of the Tarim Basin and the Andronovo culture that spanned Kazakhstan and reached southwards into West Central Asia and the Altai.
It is the Afanasevo culture to which trace the earliest Bronze Age settlers of the Tarim and Turpan basins. The Afanasevo culture (c. 3500–2500 BCE) displays cultural and genetic connections with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the Eurasian Steppe yet predates the specifically Indo-Iranian-associated Andronovo culture (c. 2000–900 BCE) enough to isolate the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization.
Mair concluded:
thumb|The [[Tarim Mummies have a strong genetic proximity with Ancient North Eurasians (here represented by the MA-1 human specimen of the Mal'ta-Buret' culture ()]]
note the existence of an additional physical type at Alwighul (700–1 BCE) and Krorän (200 CE) different from the earlier one found at Qäwrighul (1800 BCE) and Yanbulaq (1100–500 BCE), while finding no evidence of significant Steppe-related contributions to these remains:
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From Libby Rosof (1997) "Penn Researcher Finds Chinese Mummies' Surprising Roots":