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Europeans in Western China, 1200 B.C.

beijing_coder writes: "Caucasian-looking mummies have been discovered in the deserts in Western China since late 1800s. Now DNA tests showed they "belonged to the same genetic lineage as most modern-day Swedes, Finns, Tuscans...". I'd like to add that although the mummies were found in what's Western China today, in recorded history (after the mummies' time) that region were inhabited mostly by nomadic people, not Chinese."

38 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. How unusual is this? by Wolfstar · · Score: 4
    To the best of my knowledge, there have always been caucasians in the Orient, as evidenced by Japan's own "Native Japanese" population, a tribe of caucasians that were living in Japan when the first modern Japanese landed on the Islands.

    Also, if these have been turning up since the 1800s, is there a major archaeological relevance to that area? What was there at the time, anyone know?

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    1. Re:How unusual is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      As long as I know, Ainu and Ryukyu tribes (native Okinawa people) are genetically related, and there is no part of Ryukyu tribes resembles the Caucasians (it was published in a Japanese journal several years ago). The best I can refer you now available in English is here, although it really doesn't tell you too much...
      At least, Ainu is not Caucasians. Check here and here. There are a few more on this topic available written in Japanese, but most of you probably can't read them (I am part Ainu Japanese. I do not look quite like a "normal" Japanese).
      I have seen this type of misconception often, because some documentations on Ainu describes the features like Cacasians. This is mainly because of the full beard, and Ainu people looks different from other tribes around the immediate area (Japanese as well as Amur river tribes). These are mainly reported by the earliest Europeans seeing Amur river region Ainu.

  2. Swedes and Finns? by Glowing+Fish · · Score: 4

    AFAIK, the Finns and Swedes are not at all related. They just happen to have turned out neighbors. Linguistically, at least, the Finn's language is not at all related to any other European language. The exact orgins of the Finn's was, at least as I can remember, unknown.

    On the subject of the Finnish...our favorite Finn is actually of the Swedish ethnicity, and just happened to be living in Finland.

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    1. Re:Swedes and Finns? by Squeeze+Truck · · Score: 2

      I think there are a total of 16 Finno-Ugric languages recognized. The Finns are hardly an enigma. Try this link for a bit more on the Finns.

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      "Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao

    2. Re:Swedes and Finns? by Glowing+Fish · · Score: 2

      Ooops, should have chosen my words more carefully. Not related to any Indo-European language would be techincally correct.

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      Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
    3. Re:Swedes and Finns? by macpeep · · Score: 5

      The rest of the post is quite accurate, but regarding Linus Torvalds, I have to comment. I'm a swedish speaking finn, just like Linus Torvalds and we have absolutely nothing to do with Sweden except that we speak swedish as our mother tounge. That's all. Think about french speaking Canadians. They aren't really French but just as Canadian as english speaking Canadians.

      Maybe Linus (or mine) great great great grandfather was a Swede, but then you could also argue that [insert favorite American here] isn't really American but really [irish|german|french|whatever].

      BTW, if you've read Rebel Code by Glyn Moody, it talks about "the duck pond". Well, that is a very real concept among swedish speaking finns in Finland. It really almost is as if every swedish speaking finn knows every other swedish speaking finn, at least indirectly. A friend of mine studied with Linus Torvalds. An army buddy of mine claimed to be a close friend of Linus Torvalds (this was in 1994 before he was even all that famous) etc. Personally I've never met or even seen him even tho I live quite close to where he lived before he went to work in the USA.

    4. Re:Swedes and Finns? by macpeep · · Score: 2

      Linus Torvalds actually *DID* serve in the army in Finland, just like any other finnish male. 11 months and I think his rank is (alikersantti), which is "corporal" (squad leader) in english.

    5. Re:Swedes and Finns? by jeffsenter · · Score: 2

      Don't you study other languages in american schools?

      The answer to that is basically NO. I'm an American who has also lived in Hamburg, Germany and London, England. Compared to much of Europe there is very little foreign language instruction in the USA during the first 13 years of schooling. An average American might get 3 years of low quality Spanish instruction in high school. The American system of education is also organized in a vastly different manner than the systems of most European countries so it is hard to make comparisons beyond this.

    6. Re:Swedes and Finns? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2
      > AFAIK, the Finns and Swedes are not at all related. They just happen to have turned out neighbors. Linguistically, at least, the Finn's language is not at all related to any other European language.

      First off, be careful not to equate genetic ancestry with linguistic "ancestry" (if I may so use the word).

      For instance, consider the variety of genetic ancestries that make up the populations of native English speakers in the modern world: you can find native speakers of English with biological ancestors from any corner of any continent in the world, saving Antartica.

      That's not to say that there's no correlation at all; people do tend to marry others who speak at least one language in common.

      But to break your statement down into two parts:
      • genetic reletedness: a somewhat pedantic point, but it is believed that all modern humans are related. If the Finns and Swedes are "unrelated", then that merely means that their relationship "goes way back". (But notice also another post in this thread thas claims that they are in fact fairly closely related genetically.)
      • linguistic relatedness: Finnish is not an Indo-European language, but again there may be a deeper relatonship that "goes way back". A lot of historical linguists (but by no means all) believe that there was a more ancient family of languages that included the ancestors of both the Finnish and the IE languages. Since the Proto-Indo-European language is believed to have been "a language" rather than "a family" around 6000 years ago, the common ancestor of that language and Finnish woulh have to be somewhat earlier, perhaps as much as 10,000-15,000 years BP. There are several competing hypotheses, but the most popular one right now posits a family called Nostratic, which you should be able to find described via your favorite search engine. You may also want to search for Proto-Afro-Asiatic.
      At any rate -- forgive the pedantry -- it is not really safe to say that two populations "are not at all related", whether refering to their biological or linguistic ancestry either one. (We do often say that two languages "are not related", but that should be taken as a bad shorthand form for "are not demonstrably related.)

      I also notice that the third party in the odd grouping {Swedes, Finns, Tuscans} represent the denizens of what was once Etruria, the home of the Etruscans, speakers of another non-IE language in Europe. It may be that the researchers thought that the old Etruscan blood still runs in Tuscany, in which case the odd {Swedes, Finns, Tuscans} becomes "peoples of western Eurasia before the historical sweeps of conquest". I don't think I would make such an assumption about Etruscan blood in Tuscany, but maybe they know something I don't.

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  3. This is news? by Squeeze+Truck · · Score: 4

    Yes, there are (Indo-) Europeans in Western China right now. They're called Uighurs and they've been there forever so far as I know.

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    "Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao

    1. Re:This is news? by geckoFeet · · Score: 2

      Uighur isn't Indo-European; it's Turkic. There *were* Indo-European speakers in Western China. Their language was Tokharian (actually two varieties, unimaginately named Tokharian A and Tokharian B). Sometimes it's spelled "Tocharian" for extra excitement. It's known from sixth-century manuscripts discovered in Chinese Turkestan.

  4. How's this for a link. by Squeeze+Truck · · Score: 3

    The 12th century European mummies have their own Linux community.

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    "Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao

  5. Can You Say Taklamakhan? by Ranger · · Score: 5

    I guess the DNA study is a recent development. P revious researchers think they may have been related to the Celts. The Weegas (God knows how many English spelling variations ther are) probably have some ancestry from these peoples. Some of them have blue eyes, which can be seen in other shows about Western China. They do share some cultural characteristics with the mummies. Over time the caucasoid gene pool was replaced by the mongoloid gene pool.

    Check out PBS 1998 Nova's Mysterious Mummies of China and for 1999 the Discovery Channel's Riddle of the Desert Mummies

    Why oh why is it that all the cool stuff about the history of mankind... er ah humanity is in countries that aren't friendly to America? China, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc.

    If you think the international politics are bad. Just check out our very own domestic Graves Act. It allowed aboriginal Americans to claim the 9,000 year old bones of the Kennewick Man as their direct ancestor. Nova also covered this issue with Mystery of the First Americans. His genes show that he's most closely related to the Ainu.

    The peopling of the Earth is a contentious issue and probably will be until all our genes are thoroughly mixed and we become a uniform gray with no outward sexual differentiation.

    --
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    1. Re:Can You Say Taklamakhan? by ikekrull · · Score: 2
      Have you just chosen to forget that America was populated thousands of years before settlers from european countries showed up and exterminated them?

      Why don't you look at the (extremely) long history of your own indigenous cultures before complaining that 'Those darn red indians are just too boring, how come we don't have cool chinese mummies?' Theyre so cool they have TV shows.

      What the hell is wrong with you people.. if there isn't a TV show about it, it doesnt exist?

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  6. Kenewick Man in Pacific Northwest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2
    There is evidence of Europeans having lived in the Pacific Northwest as long as 9000 years ago. The remains of Kenewick Man seem to confirm this, although further research into Kenwick Man has been stymied by those who are afraid that the current politically correct orthodoxy might not be able to survive the scientific scrutiny of invetigation into that part of our archaeological past.

    I believe that Europeans have created a global settlements many times before and each time there has been a fall. Ancient remains of Europeans have been found on every continent long before "modern" Europeans were supposed to have been there. Kenewick man in America, the Anu in Japan, remains in ancient China and Seti's mummy seems to be red head. Ultimately what does it mean? It could mean periodic cometary impacts, catastrophic changes in climate, super volcano's, shifts in the earths magnetic field, liberal socialist philosophy, who knows. :-)

    It may ultimately mean that stone will last longer than civilization.

  7. A more general view by Iron+Webmaster · · Score: 3
    Get in the wayback machine, Sherman.

    Homo Sap began leaving Africa while the last Ice Age was in progress and North Africa through Arabia was verdant grasslands.

    The first to leave spread east through India on to China.

    The glaciers retreated and later leavers of Africa could find new land to the north and follow the glacial retreat into Europe and Siberia. Genetic studies show something like 13 men and 6 women fostered all of Europe. Maybe they didn't like speaking Arabic ;)

    15,000 years after that, Egyptians built the first pyramid.

    We know so little about this subject to date that speculative revisions can be made almost yearly such is the rate of discovery.

    1. Re:A more general view by thogard · · Score: 2

      In the newer tombs at Saccara in Egypt, they seemd to have a dislike for the black africans as well as the indians since it was common to show these two races being kinifed by the person in the tomb. The odd thing is they knew about 4 races other than their own but I haven't tracked down which ones. It appears that 5000 years ago they Egypteans had boats that could survive in the ocean. The boat found at Giza is longer than the mayflower. The interesting part is that there is almost no evidence for these boats anywhere in the millions of documents that have survived and without the one that was preserved, we would assume the Egypteans didn't build strong boats. I think that the current count is 3 boats that have survived from that time, two are part of a barial and the other was stuck in the mud in the nile. Archeology has a long way to go to even find out the basics of how these people used to live.

  8. As a finn... by edgrale · · Score: 2

    does this mean that I have the right to go and yell 'All your base are belong to us' to the Chinese now?

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  9. THE ACCIDENTAL CRUSADER -- wtf? by ConsumedByTV · · Score: 2

    The link takes me to a story about a ban on pesticides in canada and the history of lawns in the US.
    What gives?
    Can anyone give me the correct link to this story? And no this isnt redundant no one pointed it out as of yet.


    I do however think that this story has more to do with geeks then anyone pertaning to mummys...

    Does anyone know the other chemical used in conjection with 2,4d for agent orange?
    In my area they use these pesticides and after that article I think I am going to talk to the mayor of my city about getting them banned.
    Anyone else think its a good idea to ban this crap?


    The Lottery:

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  10. French Canadians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    "Think about french speaking Canadians. They aren't really French but just as Canadian as english speaking Canadians."
    Say that is a French Canadian, and they're likely to punch you.

  11. Europeans colonised America in 28,000 BC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Recently, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit cheerily agreed to let five American Indian tribes have the remains of the Kennewick Man, so they can bury these remains in a proper Indian ritual. The problem is that the Kennewick Man was probably a white guy and not an Indian. His skull isn't an Indian skull at all, but is the kind of skull that white people have. Why's that a problem? Because he was hanging around in America 9,000 years ago; long before any evil white people were supposed to have been here. The remains were found near the Columbia River in Washington state, and apparently there weren't even any Indians around there until about 3,000 years ago. The Kennewick Man is one of those inconvenient things that pop up every so often that cuts the legs out from various PC dogmatic truths. Suddenly, the Indians who have been claiming a moral high ground because "they were here first," have a rival. And, the rival may have been a white guy! "Oh, no, please don't let him have been a white guy," seems to have been the cry from the white haters in our nation. "Hurry and bury him, so the Indians can retain their moral high ground." So, although scientists want to do more testing on the remains to prove the Kennewick Man's genetic origin, the white haters won't allow it. An interesting thing about the Kennewick Man is that the reconstruction of his head, done from his skull, bears a striking resemblance to the actor Patrick Stewart who plays Capt. Piccard of the Starship Enterprise. In fact, the resemblance is so close that one is hard pressed to tell one from the other. Perhaps we need to look at Stewart's family tree to see if any of his ancestors disappeared from Europe while on a boat trip about 9,000 years ago, and maybe the remains should be given to Stewart to bury in Europe in a proper pre-Christian European ritual... http://www.newnation.org/NNN-kennewick-man.html

    1. Re:Europeans colonised America in 28,000 BC by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 2
      So let's assume for the time being that Kennewick man is a Caucasian. All that that proves is that at some point, some Caucasian tribe crossed the Bering Sea, probably while it was frozen over. Does this really surprise anyone? Does it really prove anything about which set of genes (black, white, asian, "other") is better? I would suggest the answer to both questions is no. Nor does it give those of European decent any claim to being "native" Americans, since, in all likelihood, none of the modern European tribes are decended from the Kennewick Man or his fellow tribesmen.

      BTW, it might help, next time, if you didn't simply resort to plagiarizing a white supremacist website.

      ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  12. Caucasians originated in S. Russia. by Futurepower(tm) · · Score: 2


    Caucasians are from the Caucasus Mountains in Russia. That region is the origin of white people. In northern Iran there are people who are whiter than anyone you commonly see in Europe or the U.S.

    Since they come from southern Asia, it is not surprising that Caucasians can be found in many places in Asia.

    Map of the Caucasus

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  13. Re:Link to story by oli_freyr · · Score: 5

    Check out: this link

    It took some searching. Apparently, their search engine sucks.

    Óli
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    WinDOS, you can't live with it, and you can live without it.

  14. Re:the story has been moved to: by HuskyDog · · Score: 3
    Lets try that as a real link shall we?

    Working link to mummy article

  15. this news is so old ... by peter303 · · Score: 2

    That PBS already has done a couple of documentaries
    on this.

  16. "races" shift over time by peter303 · · Score: 2

    It is hard enough to "classify" modern people
    based on bone structure, genetic markers,
    physical features (if you have flesh).
    Bones from ten thousand years ago are even harder.
    K-man doesn't realy fit into any modern categories
    acoording many researchers (see PBS special).

  17. Top then things we should tell China re this by msouth · · Score: 2

    10 We'll want that land back now.
    9 no, we don't
    8 yes, we do
    7 etc
    6 [you
    5 fill
    4 in
    3 these]
    2
    1 All your ancestors are belong to us.

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    Liberty uber alles.
  18. PBS Nova had this covered by Alien54 · · Score: 2
    the PBS show NOVA had something on the mummies in China (original air date January 18,1998). See the Transcript online here

    All kinds of neat things, photos, etc, and you can probably order the video too.

    The original story linked above looks like the human interest story of the archeologist and the political interests in China made it relevant as a story, as far as the newspaper editors were concerned.

    I can see the Chinese government trying to deal with politically inconvenient truths.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

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  19. Caucasians in North Western China by hillct · · Score: 3

    There were a number of lerge migrant populations in western china at the time. Over the next 2000 years, they migrated west across the countries of Russia, and eventually sacked Rome. At that time they were collectively called the Hunns. According to most accounts, they had a vary materialistic culture, but also a vary open one, accepting of anyone willing to travel with them. This was the primary reason their population grew so large and their armies were vast enough when approaching Rome.


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  20. Language in U.S. Schools by hawk · · Score: 2
    Yes, but not in the same way, nor to the same degree--or for the same reasons.


    Many (most?) U.S. High schools require two years of a foreign language. (High school is roughly 14-18 here, grades 9-12. I think our grades are off by one from most European counts.).


    Frequently junior high schools (grades 7-8, but that varies; there are 6-8 and 7-9, and they're sometimes called "middle schools") have spanish and maybe french or german. Two years there tends to replace one year of high school.



    Our colleges frequently have a language requirement as well, with college years equating (roughly) two high school years. Four years of high school language will meet most college requirements. Often individual departments (e.g., math) will have a written language test if foreign language research is still relevant (so at my undergraduate, if I had finished the math major instead of taking a pair of minors (philosophy), I would have had to shown that I could translate a page from a german or russian (or french?) math text or article into english (with use of a dictionary). In physics or economics, everything importantis either written in English in the first place, or immediately trnaslated, so there is no similari requirement).



    Our requirements are closer in purpose to your third language in sixth grade than the english in third. You're not learnning english to learn about british or american culture or literature, but because it's the universal language. We already happen to speak it; if another language had that role, I assume that we'd be trained in it early on.


    Then to get things really wierd, there's an english group pushing to have british rather than american english taught as a foreign language, which completely misses the point--american english isn't the norm because it's spoken in the U.S., but because it's the dialect spoken by everyone else.


    hawk

  21. But John, what about....the baby? by leereyno · · Score: 2

    Oh John!
    Oh Marcia!
    Oh John!!
    Oh Marcia!!

    Oh shit....

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  22. He was probably Tocharian. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    There's nothing new in any of this, Indo-Europeans known as Tocharians have long been known to have contact with the Chinese. Some Chinese words such as the Chinese word for dog, were originally Tocharien sourced.

    Its well known that Indo-Europeans originated from the Southern Russian Steppe/Central Asian regions. Tadjik, Pamir, Dari & Pashto are all Indo-European languages of Central Asia.

    Other past Indo-European languages of that region include Sacian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Kwaresmian & of course Scythian. The Scythians ranged right across the steppe, from the Black Sea (where they traded & fought with the Greeks) all the way to Mongolia (where they traded & fought against the ancient Chinese).

    Check this page

    http://www.wlc.com/oxus/eyawtkat.htm

  23. Ancient Aryans by Slicker · · Score: 3

    Read more about it in the June '94 issue of Discover magazine. There are many pages of content covering these discoveries. It was shortly after the development of the 'bit' that goes into horses mouths, enabling them to pull carts over thousands of miles. This technology spurred the Aryan invasions all over the world, including Turkey where they became known as the Hitites--the first known to have invented steel. And northern India, where they eventually intermarried. The northerners are still known as "Aryans" in the south, as the upper classes are sometimes referred to as "Aryans" in the noth, if I am not mistaken. Over two hundred such mummies were fund in a few sites by '94 (I think from '91 or '92?). Since there were accidental, it indicates that perhaps 100,000 may have actually there. The Aryan Empire was very similar to the Viking Empire. In fact, I think the Vikings were their direct ancestors. --Matthew

  24. Not to be PC, but... by homunq · · Score: 2

    Race is a fiction. Knowing that someone is "caucasian looking" or whatever tells you very little about history. If you want to really get a historical understanding of large-scale movements and dominations and where breakthrough technologies came from and how they spread, you should look to linguistics (For instance, it's especially clear in Africa, where linguistic communities still overlap geographically sometimes more than they do technologically). But whoops, sorry, that's just a bunch of "soft" inferences, not a "hard" science like genetics.

  25. Korean language is related to Finnish by SurfsUp · · Score: 2

    Korean is commonly classed as an 'altaic' language, related to turkish and finnish, as well as other languages in northern asia.
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  26. Some interesting facts by Ektanoor · · Score: 2

    Lots of Eurasian nations have common traces with what we consider "typical" European characteristics. And barely they are based in a later mix. In fact I found references of old ancient mongol tribes having blonde hair and blue eyes. Besides, Chingiz Khan was red-bearded.

    On what concerns Aryans. As far as I could get from several sources, including the Rig-Veda, we europeans are their enemies. There is a very high probability that the large majority of us are descendants of those that were cursed several times in old texts.

    I studied a little bit of mongol and some funny things about us and the Siberians.And this gave me the idea that we europeans didn go to China. We came from China. In hordes. And these hordes do not include indo-europeans per se. It includes a whole group of eurasians: indo-europeans, turkics and finno-hugurians. The history of Europe is an history of a people, for which the mongols are still linguistically very close, which broke away some 9000 years ago. Since then, they have been roaming the west for several times. The origin of this nation is somewhere between Manchuria/Mongolia, and ending in the Altai-Sayan moutainous ridges.

  27. 5500 BC Something Big Happened by Baldrson · · Score: 2

    The Flood was recorded in the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh as well as other myths. Now colleagues of Dr. Mair's are discovering evidence of an ancient civilization in western China that had its own unique writing.