A Celt in China: The Mysterious Origins of Cherchen Man
Cherchen Man, who died around 1000 BC, appears to be as Scottish as square sausage – tall, dark-haired, clad in a red tunic and tartan leggings and sporting a beard as ginger as a burning fox. His DNA attests to his Celtic origins. So why on earth, then, was his mummified corpse discovered buried in the barren sands of the Taklamakan Desert, in the far-flung Xinjiang region of western China?
It’s a question that still has experts scratching their heads, especially since Cherchen Man is just one of hundreds of ancient desiccated corpses of European origin found in the Tarim Basin in western China over the last 25 years. His remains, along with others, are now kept in a museum in the Xinjiang provincial capital of Urumqi, which also houses a reconstruction of how this intrepid traveller might have looked before he died.
It had been well known and accepted that Celtic influence stretched far and wide at the civilization’s peak around 300 BC, from Scotland in the north to Ireland in the west, southern Spain and Italy in the south and parts of Poland, Ukraine and central Turkey in the east. But few experts expected to discover the remains of humans of Celtic descent in central Asia, almost as far east as Tibet. They’ve been described as among the most important archaeological finds of the past quarter century, and point to an ancient connection having evidently existed between east and west as early as the Bronze Age.
They’re among the most important archaeological finds of the past quarter century, and point to an ancient connection between east and west as early as the Bronze Age.
The burial site of Cherchen Man and his people bore other hallmarks of Celtic culture, such as large standing stones that look like British dolmens. He was found buried with what appears to be his family – three women and a baby, all of whom have equally European features. One woman’s hair is light brown, and it looks like it was freshly brushed and braided before her mummification. An even older Tarim mummy than Cherchen Man is the 4,000-year-old Loulan Beauty – discovered near the town of Loulan – who too has long, flowing fair hair, and features that look to be of Nordic origin. All of these European migrants seem to have been peaceful folk, since very few weapons have been found in their graves, or valuable goods that suggest evidence of a caste system. Nonetheless, they might have done well to learn the meaning of the name of the Taklamakan Desert before they made their long journey there – “you go in,” it translates, “and never come out.”
Picture by Farrukh Younus. All rights reserved.
Read 7 comments, or leave your own
videosBlogpost
Related Content
- The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West
- Coins of the Celts
- Genetic Britain: How Roman, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Genes Make up the UK's DNA
- Interview: Marika Vicziany on her Quest to Save Kashgar's Historic Sites
- Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History
Comments
It would be nice if there could be a DNA database on these people that present day people could be tested against. They may have descendants all over the world by now.
I wonder if the DNA tests for these mummies could be added to the National Geographic world-wide project now under way?
No new comparison needs to be done. If haplogroups could be assigned to them, it would add much information to the maps of human migration on this project.
How can we suggest this be done?
and I would suggest that they compare these DNA with the Neanderthal's
I -well , actually, Emma - beg to differ. Those mummies might be Caucasian, but are definitely not Celts. Mais ceux qui ne font rien ne se trompent jamais... ;)
Okay, so we admittedly played up the Celtic angle in this story a little too eagerly - any excuse for a couple of good Scots stereotype puns (I'm Scottish, so I'm allowed to make them...). Whatever the DNA origin of these individuals - Celtic, Swedish, Finnish or Italian - as Emma also points out, it doesn't detract from the most remarkable part of the Cherchen mummies story: namely that contact did occur in the Bronze Age between Europeans and the Chinese, many, many years before it was popularly believed.
Her point about both Chinese and Europeans treating it as a taboo subject is interesting: "The Chinese don’t want ancient European influence to discredit their civilisation’s independent greatness and Europeans want a past in which we don’t constantly invade and rule foreign lands." If there have been conscious efforts to manipulate the truth about the Cherchen mummies in different ways, is it any wonder that some of the facts have become obscured along the way?
Elaine, you could be onto something regarding the neanderthals - the 'ginger as a burning fox' gene has been found in neanderthal DNA. Although there's still no evidence that Neanderthals interbred with modern human predecessors the Cor-Magnons.
it is not a mysteri at all, since it is well known that th saka(scythians) roamed all this lands, from ukrain to china. in iran 5 similar mummies with same futures were discovered in a salt mine close to the great salt desert. it's just that europeans are ignorant of that before europe, wich is historically recently populated, what you call "european" people lived in outer parts of china till ukrain. the only fault is that they were not "european" but indo-european.....so there is nothing mysterius with this, many tombs and graves and mummies have been found allover eastern europe and russia far as sibiria, and even one in eastern china. remember that the european peoples came from north and east into europe, so what is surprising that there is traces of them were they used to live?? mehrdad parsi
Post new comment