The Astonishing Discovery of ‘Xiaohe Beauty’: A 3,400-Year-Old Mystery Preserved in the Arid Conditions and Saline Soil of Xinjiang, China

mrbill | Mysterious
October 15, 2024

Researchers say extremely well-preserved bronze mummies discovered in the Taklamakan Desert in far western China were not travelers from the west, as previously thought, but part of an indigenous group descended from an ancient Ice Age population.

In the 1990s, about 300 mummies dating from between 2000 BC and AD 200 were discovered in tombs in the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China.

The reddish hair, unusual clothing, and expensive diet of the Tarim Basin mummies explain that they were migrants from some region in southern Russia or other regions west of China.

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What has been discovered and cold winters preserved the remains, showing that the “Beauty of Xiaoxhe”, according to experts, facial features, clothing, hair and personal items. She is the tomb, discovered.

The so-called “Western” features of the Tarim Basin mummies — including red and light skin — complemented by their usual clothing and diet, led many experts to believe they are somewhere in Siberia or another southern region.

Image: An aerial view of the Xiaohu cemetery, where the mammals were found.

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For an accurate Spanish translation of the text provided, here it is:

“To obtain a clear identifier for their origins, an international team of researchers analyzed genomic data from 13 of the oldest known mammals, dating from 2100 to 1700 BC.

They compared DNA samples from individuals who lived 5,000 years ago in the Dzungarian River basin, making them the oldest human remains in the region.

The scientists found that the Tarim River Basin mammals were not new at all, but direct descendants of the Ancient Northwest Eurasians (ANE), a group that dates back at least to the Last Glacial Maximum, around 11,550 years ago.

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Only traces of ANE DNA survive into the Holocene, our recent epoch: Native Americans and Siberian Inuit retain the highest known proportions, about 40 percent.

This Bronze Age community likely experienced “an extreme and protracted genetic battle for settlement in the Tarim River Basin,” according to a statement from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, which co-signed the study.

“Archaeogeneticists have found evidence of ANE populations in order to subjugate human genetics in the region,” lead author Cheongwon Jeong, a biologist at Seoul National University, told CNN.

‘They need to analyze ancient human genomics from other eras to gain a deeper understanding of the history of human mutation in Eurasia,’ he added.

The city’s graphs were published in the journal Nature.

In 2011, China temporarily banned the display of bronze mammals after they had been shipped from North America for months.

Officials gave a reason why the exhibition was stopped but there was speculation it could be linked to the history of the region.”