#cherchen man

One of the most famous mummies of the Taklamakan Desert is that of “Cherchen Man”. This European’s body was placed in a poplar-wood box, lowered into narrow shaft grave and left for eternity. His body dates back to 1000 BC and DNA analysis has shown that he was a Celt.

Cherchen Man or Chärchän Man is a mummy discovered near the town of Qiemo (Cherchen) in the Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, western China. Cherchen Man "died around 1000 BC". The mummy is described as: a 3,000 year old male, "6-foot-6-inch giant with Caucasian features", with hair that is "reddish brown flecked with grey, framing high cheekbones", an "aquiline" "long nose, full lips and a ginger beard", whose face is tattooed with "yellow and purple patterns", it wears "a red twill tunic and tartan leggings"; it is also described as looking "like a Bronze Age European", "a Celt". The Tarim Basin mummies are not limited to men. A female mummy was also found and is called Cherchen Woman.

This is Cherchen Man. He stood about six feet tall, had light hair and fair skin, and he lived about 3,000 years ago in what is today the Xinjiang region of western China. He sports facial tattoos. And the world's oldest surviving pair of pants.

He's among a group of mummies found in the Tarim Basin dating from between about 1900 B.C. and 200 A.D. I've wanted to write about them for a while.

I recently watched China's Secret Mummies, a National Geographic video available on the Penn Museum's website. It's about 45 minutes long; unfortunately, more than half of those 45 minutes are eaten up by bullshit reenactment footage and suspense-making editing. But it's still a good overview of the mummies, and it reveals what researchers from National Geographic's Genographic Project were able to learn from their DNA.

What they found was surprising. After the mummies were discovered, their Caucasian facial features and woolen (sometimes plaid) textiles led many to speculate that they came from Europe, or--more fancifully--were Celts.

Sidenote: As a former Celticist (air quotes), I find this conclusion funny. I refuse to think of "Celt" as anything more than a linguistic designation, or something denoting a discrete genetic or cultural group. (Interesting and surprising read: The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story by Stephen Oppenheimer.)

Anyway, like I said, the DNA results were surprising. Cherchen Man and his mummy-buddies showed east Asian genetic markers, leading the researchers to revise their understanding of the Tarim people. Likely, they were a mixed group--different cultures from east and west coexisting (and sleeping together) at a crossroads--rather than a western transplant culture hanging on in an unlikely eastern outpost, as had been previously thought. 

Hope to post about some of the other Tarim mummies in the near future.