Who were the mummies in the Tarim Basin? If the findings were so revolutionary what could have been the reason of keeping them in museum storages without any publication for such a long time?
At the end of the 1980s, 3000-year-old mummies who were perfectly preserved began appearing in the Desert of Taklamakan. They had very long blonde or red hair, European traits, and did not seem to have herald from the Chinese people. Archaeologists began to think that the Tarim mummies were civilians from the historical civilization at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. The mummies were tested for any DNA evidence to match their previous lives and placed in Museums for everyone to see. However, little has yet to be written about them since the discovery came in the late 20th century and archaeologists are still in the process of unraveling the mysterious stories behind the mummies. The Tarim mummies have been linked to the trading activities that arose in the Silk Road that connected China with Europe (Mallory, & Mair, 2000).
Has the Silk Road trading started much earlier than it was anticipated?
The region that separated Europe and China is not a hospitable place. Much of it comprised of the Taklamakan Desert that is amongst the most hostile areas on the planet. There is almost no rainfall, little vegetation, sandstorms, and many people have died in the place. The locals called it the “Land of Death” with very few of them willing to travel there since nothing good comes out of it. It was thus a surprise when trading activities began to thrive in the region following the rise of the ancient civilization of the West and China. The tales of the Silk Road started with explorers such as Marco Polo, who fired the people’s imagination with his stories. Now China has embarked on building the greatest construction and economic development project in the world by establishing the New Silk Road (Renfrew, 2014). The nation wants to redesign the ancient trading routes to modern transits.
References
Mallory, J. P., & Mair, V. H. (2000). The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, with 190 illustrations, 13 in color. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Renfrew, C. (2014). Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on East-West Exchange in Antiquity. V. H. Mair, & J. Hickman (Eds.). University of Pennsylvania Press.
