The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To

NYT ^ | 11/18/2008 | EDWARD WONG

[fishhound]

URUMQI, China — An exhibit on the first floor of the museum here gives the government’s unambiguous take on the history of this border region: “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” says one prominent sign. But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story.

One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese.

The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang.

At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire?

[fishhound]

Ping

[Ciexyz]

GGG ping.

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

“Mr. Mair has disputed any suggestion that the mummies were from East Asia. He believes that East Asian migrants did not appear in the Tarim Basin until much later than the Loulan Beauty and her people.

The oldest mummies, he says, were probably Tocharians, herders who traveled eastward across the Central Asian steppes and whose language belonged to the Indo-European family. A second wave of migrants came from what is now Iran.”

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=843

[MyTwoCopperCoins]

Loulan Beauty.

[Jack Hammer]

If they won’t listen to just about everyone on Planet Earth telling them they have no right to be occupying the inaccessible and austere Tibetan Plateau, they’re not going to listen to the Uighurs telling them to get off their oil-rich lowlands.

[Straight Vermonter]

Here is an earlier article, with more detail, about Cherchen Man who is almost undoubtedly a Celt.

[JACKRUSSELL]

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[nevergore]

I’d hit on her!

[SunkenCiv]

Mummies stir political row in China [Caucasian Mummies?]
The Times of India | 20 Nov 2008, 0001 hrs IST | The Times of India
Posted on 11/19/2008 2:13:56 PM PST by MyTwoCopperCoins
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2134891/posts

Record find of oracle bones in Shaanxi
China Daily | November 12, 2008 | Ma Lie
Posted on 11/14/2008 8:53:14 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2132120/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[Monkey Face]

They dug up my mummy??? Boy! Is dad ever gonna be sore.

[SunkenCiv]

Not only did they dig her up, I think they took a bandage over her.

[Monkey Face]

Ohman? Now I’m REALLY gonna get it!

[nralife]

[SunkenCiv]

After this, I’m going to avoid products like “Mom’s Old Fashioned Preserves”.