The Tarim Mummies

The Tarim mummies were found in the Tarim Basin, in what is now Xinjiang, China. They date from around 1800 BCE to the first centuries BCE, with a more recent group placed between roughly 2100 and 1700 BCE. The earliest of these people were agropastoralists living around 2000 BCE in an area that was then a freshwater environment but has since turned into desert. The mummies are exceptionally well preserved because the dry desert air desiccated the bodies. Many still have intact hair, which can be blond, red, or deep brown. Their clothing includes red twill tunics and tartan leggings, and some of the textiles show similarities to Bronze Age fabrics from Europe.

Genetic studies from 2021 found that the earliest mummies (dated 2135 to 1623 BCE) had high levels of Ancient North Eurasian ancestry—about 72%—along with a smaller portion from Ancient Northeast Asians (around 28%). They showed no detectable Western Steppe-related ancestry. This group was genetically isolated and, according to researchers, “adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert.” Earlier theories suggested these mummies were Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists linked to the Afanasievo or BMAC cultures, but the evidence points to them arising from a local, isolated population. A 2025 study of a Late Bronze Age site in the far western Tarim Basin, dated 1600 to 1400 BCE, found that its inhabitants mostly descended from the Sintashta and Andronovo populations, with additional ancestry from BMAC (10%) and the early Tarim population (12%). Nearly all individuals at that site carried Y-DNA haplogroup R-M17.

Later Tarim mummies from the Iron Age (first millennium BCE), such as those of the Subeshi culture, closely resemble the Saka (Scythian) Pazyryk culture of the Altai Mountains, especially in weaponry, horse gear, and garments. They are considered possible Iron Age predecessors of the Tocharians.

European explorers like Sven Hedin, Albert von Le Coq, and Sir Aurel Stein first reported these desiccated bodies in the early 20th century while searching for antiquities in Central Asia. Since then, many more mummies have been found and analyzed, with many now displayed in Xinjiang’s museums. Most were discovered on the eastern end of the Tarim Basin (around Lopnur, Subeshi near Turpan, Loulan, and Kumul) or along its southern edge (Khotan, Niya, and Cherchen or Qiemo).

According to a 2000 analysis, the earliest mummies—found at Qäwrighul (Gumugou) and dated to 2135–1939 BCE—were classified as a “Proto-Europoid” type, with closest ties to Bronze Age populations of southern Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Lower Volga. However, a revised craniometric analysis in 2003 found that these early mummies did not show close phenetic affinities to European-related Steppe pastoralists (like the Andronovo and Afanasievo cultures) or to inhabitants of the BMAC culture. Instead, they formed their own distinct cluster. Later Tarim mummies showed varying affinities with Andronovo-like, BMAC-like, or Han-like populations, suggesting multiple waves of migration into the basin.

Notable mummies include the tall, red-haired “Chärchän man” (also called the “Ur-David,” from around 1000 BCE); his son (also 1000 BCE), a one-year-old baby with brown hair under a red and blue felt cap and two stones placed over its eyes; the “Hami Mummy” (c. 1400–800 BCE), a “red-headed beauty” from Qizilchoqa; and the “Witches of Subeshi” (4th or 3rd century BCE), who wore two-foot-long black felt conical hats with flat brims. At Subeshi, a man was also found with traces of a surgical incision on his abdomen, sewn up with horsehair sutures.

The mummies’ textiles have been compared to early European types, particularly fragmentary textiles from salt mines in Austria dating to the second millennium BCE. Anthropologist Irene Good noted that the woven diagonal twill pattern required a sophisticated loom and called the fabric “the easternmost known example of this kind of weaving technique.” The cemetery at Yanbulaq contained 29 mummies dating from 1100 to 500 BCE.

In 2007, the Chinese government allowed a National Geographic Society team led by Spencer Wells to examine the mummies’ DNA. Wells extracted undegraded DNA from internal tissues, and preliminary results suggested the Tarim Basin was continuously inhabited from 2000 BCE to 300 BCE, with people originating from Europe, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and other regions yet to be determined.