Ancient Tribe Frozen In Time Gets A DNA Test That Finally Unveils Their True Identity

For years, experts have speculated over the identity of the mummies unearthed in the Xiaohe cemetery, a series of burial sites in China’s Taklamakan Desert. With their atypical physical appearances and clothes, they didn’t seem to be native to the area — so how had they ended up in these parched graves?

Were the Xiaohe mummies remnants of a civilization that’d migrated from the west, introducing a new way of life that soon spread across China? Or were they natives of this desert land, with a different story to tell? Now, scientists have revealed the results of a genetic study that resolves the issue once and for all.

Today, the Tarim Basin, home to the Taklamakan Desert, is a bleak and unforgiving terrain. Located in Northwest China, it covers an area of almost 400,000 square miles, stretching from the Tibetan Plateau in the south to the Tian Shan mountains in the north. And with some parts seeing just 0.4 inches of rain every year, it’s a far from hospitable place.

In fact, standing in the middle of the Taklamakan Desert, you’re about as far away from the planet’s seas as it’s possible to get. But this doesn’t mean that the Tarim Basin’s always been dry and devoid of life. Thousands of years ago, experts believe, the region was crisscrossed by rivers that supported a network of ancient communities.

As time passed, though, the courses of those waterways altered, carrying their life-giving waters away from the settlements that’d come to rely on them. As a result, it’s believed, the civilization that had thrived in the Tarim Basin fizzled out. But it didn’t exactly disappear without a trace.

In the early 1900s a number of mummies were found at different locations across the Tarim Basin. Thought to date from between 2100 B.C. and the first century B.C., they were clearly relics of an ancient civilization. And on closer inspection, it appeared that they had a strange story to tell.

Buried in the dry environment of the Taklamakan Desert, the mummies remained in a remarkably well-preserved state despite their great age. And from the beginning, their discovery stirred up much controversy and confusion. Though they were found in the heart of Central Asia, you see, these ancient humans appeared to be different to the modern indigenous population.

In fact, with their seemingly light hair and Caucasian features, the mummies looked to be non-Asian in appearance. And that wasn’t all. According to reports, the human remains were also clad in fabrics such as felt, wool, and leather — all textiles that aren’t typically associated with China at that time.

It was the beginning of a period of theorizing and speculation that would last for more than 100 years. If the Tarim Basin mummies were native to the area, experts wondered, then what could account for their unusual appearance and clothes? And if they weren’t, then how’d they ended up so far from home?

Over the years, one hypothesis was that these people’s forebears were Indo-Europeans who’d moved east into the area. After all, there were indications that these were the remains of farmers, long before it was common practice in the area. Perhaps, then, they’d brought those farming skills with them from foreign lands?

As experts tried to understand the story of the Tarim Basin mummies, one group concentrated on the remains found at a location known as Xiaohe Cemetery. First discovered by a Chinese hunter in 1910, this remarkable burial ground is believed to date back to the Bronze Age. And over the years, more than 300 tombs have been identified across the site.

Initially, Xiaohe was excavated by Folke Bergman, a Swedish archaeologist working in the region during the 1930s. There, he discovered a burial mound topped with vertical wood poles, as well as monuments shaped like oars. And beneath these, he found a dozen bodies, each in a perfect state of mummification.

Though Bergman was fascinated by the find, nothing else came of his work for several decades. Then, in 2003 experts from the Xinjiang Cultural Relics & Archaeology Institute returned to Xiaohe to continue exploring the complex. And in the time since, over 30 mummies have been unearthed from the burial mound.

One of the most impressive finds, undoubtedly, was that of a female mummy dubbed Princess Xiaohe. Buried in a casket shaped like a boat, she was dressed in elaborate clothing made from felt, leather, and string and crowned with a head of flaxen hair. At the time, archaeologists were struck by her beauty — a quality that seemed not to have faded in death.

But while the princess was certainly mesmerizing to look at, her mummy posed the same problem as the others found across the Tarim Basin. With her non-Asian appearance and unusual textiles, she seemed out of place in this far-flung and isolated location. So how had she and her kin wound up in coffins in the Taklamakan Desert?

Well, on October 27, 2021, a study was published in the journal Nature that sought to answer this long-running question. In an effort to establish the origin of the Tarim Basin mummies, an international team of researchers working in China, the U.S., Germany, and South Korea had conducted an extensive genetic investigation. And the results were something of a surprise.

At Jilin University and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology in Changchun and Beijing respectively, researchers extracted DNA from the bones or teeth of the ancient mummies. And with these samples, they were able to analyze the genomes of 18 different individuals, learning more about the genetic heritage of those who’d once lived in the Tarim Basin.

Among these individuals were 13 mummies excavated from the most ancient parts of Xiaohe Cemetery, believed to date from around 2000 B.C. Would genetic research prove that these people were non-natives who’d migrated east to the Tarim Basin? In order to solve the mystery, researchers checked the DNA samples against a database of over 300 known genomes.

According to the study, this database included genetic data from ancient populations as well as modern groups of people, collected at locations across the planet. And in the end, the researchers were left in little doubt: the mummies from Xiaohe Cemetery had no connection with Indo-European migrants at all.

Instead, the study found, the 13 individuals were exclusively descended from the hunter-gatherer societies that’d once thrived in modern-day Russia. Known as the Ancient North Eurasians, or ANE, these people largely died out around 8000 B.C. — though some isolated pockets remained. And today, their genetic material survives in indigenous communities as far afield as the Americas.

But if the Xiaohe people didn’t come from the west, how did they have knowledge of advanced processes such as farming? After all, substances including wheat and millet were found in some of the burial sites, along with dairy produce and animal bones. And at the time, these were more commonly associated with the agricultural societies of Eurasia.

Well, experts believe that these skills, not previously known to have existed in China at the time, came about as the result of cultural exchange, rather than migration. In fact, molecular archaeologist Christina Warinner, a co-author of the study, believes that this research could reveal some fascinating truths about the evolution of concepts and ideas.

Speaking to Nature during October 2021, Warinner talked about how the research shows “the really diverse ways in which populations move and don’t move, and how ideas can spread with, but also through, populations.” In the case of the Xiaohe people, this was evidenced in the way that farming knowledge filtered down from the civilizations of Eurasia to the Tarim Basin.

But if the two societies were interacting enough to share ideas, you might wonder, wouldn’t there also have been interbreeding — and a blending of genetic material — between them? Well, not necessarily, as it turns out. According to experts, one didn’t automatically follow the other in the ancient world.

“Just because those people are trading, [it] doesn’t necessarily mean that they are marrying one another or having children,” Washington University archaeologist Michael Frachetti told Nature. So, it’s possible that the people of the Tarim Basin remained genetically isolated from surrounding communities despite maintaining close cultural ties with them.

So why did the new practice of agriculture thrive in a region where few were familiar with it? Seoul National University’s Choongwon Jeong, another of the study’s co-authors, has a theory. Speaking to Live Science in October 2021, he explained that activities such as farming and herding cattle may have been better suited to the Tarim Basin than some traditional pursuits.

“Probably such cultural elements were more productive in their local environment than hunting, gathering and fishing,” Jeong said. “Our findings provide a strong case study showing that genes and cultural elements do not necessarily move together.” In fact, the ancient people of the Tarim Basin may have been embracing certain elements of agriculture long before their Eurasian cousins arrived.

In 2014 it was revealed that a type of fermented cheese had been discovered in Tarim Basin tombs believed to date back almost 4,000 years. And that wasn’t all. Experts then decided to perform tests on calcium deposits taken from the teeth of the ancient mummies. The goal, Nature reports, was to determine exactly how long dairy had been a part of the local diet.

Surprisingly, the results suggested that the consumption — and by implication farming — of cow, goat, and sheep milk dated back to the days of the first inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. Speaking to Nature, Warinner explained, “This founding population had already incorporated dairy pastoralism into their way of life.”

Of course, the mummies discovered at Xiaohe were just a fraction of those recovered from the Tarim Basin as a whole. And according to the 2021 study, the story begins to get a lot more complex when we look at the bigger picture. So what exactly did the researchers find?

While studying the 13 samples taken from Xiaohe Cemetery, it turns out that researchers also looked at some genomes from a little further afield. Specifically, they analyzed DNA taken from five individuals who were buried around 5,000 years ago in the Dzungarian region, some 500 miles to the north of the Tarim Basin.

Despite being close neighbors of the Xiaohe people, though, these Dzungarians were found to have a distinctly different genetic makeup. Like their southern cousins, experts discovered, they were descended from the ANE people who once inhabited the wilds of South Siberia. But their heritage also differed in one significant way.

According to the study, the Dzungarians had a secondary genetic line. In addition to their ANE ancestry, they were also descended from the Afanasievo, a migratory people from South Siberia’s Altai-Sayan mountains. And this society, in turn, had its own fascinating heritage — one that links to the speculation that’s surrounded the Xiaohe civilization for generations.

Today, the Afanasievo are regarded by archaeologists as the oldest known people to have thrived in South Siberia. But where did they come from? Well, experts believe that they’re descended from another, even older, culture known as the Yamnaya, an Indo-European group thought to have migrated east from Russia.

In fact, some have viewed the Afanasievo’s use of western technology such as wheeled vehicles and metals as evidence that the culture was largely Indo-European in nature. So the theories about migrants may, at least in part, be true — they just settled a few hundred miles north of the Tarim Basin.

Might the Afanasievo, then, have been the ones responsible for the cultural exchange that shaped the people of the Tarim Basin? While studies such as this have shone a light on these ancient tribes, experts admit that there’s much work left to be done. And it seems that the people of Xiaohe didn’t entirely abandon their old way of life while they embraced the new ideas of the west.

According to Warinner, the rivers that flowed through the Tarim Basin remained an important part of the ancient communities that settled there. Speaking to Live Science, she said, “It was like a river oasis.” And this connection, experts believe, was celebrated in the oar and boat motifs that can be seen throughout the Xiaohe burial sites.

The society that thrived in Xiaohe, then, appears to have been a melting pot — if not of genetic influences then certainly of cultural ones. And as well as taking on elements of new technology that existed beyond the Tarim Basin, these people also still retained their own identity.

So what’s next for the mummies of Xiaohe and beyond? According to the study, these genome analyses have proved crucial in understanding the populations that lived in Asia thousands of years ago. And with further investigation, this knowledge can only deepen, revealing a fascinating story about how humans came to be the way we are.