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American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Early View)
Horse-mounted invaders from the Russo-Kazakh steppe or agricultural colonists from western Central Asia? A craniometric investigation of the Bronze Age settlement of Xinjiang
Brian E. Hemphill, J.P. Mallory
Numerous Bronze Age cemeteries in the oases surrounding the Täklamakan Desert of the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, western China, have yielded both mummified and skeletal human remains. A dearth of local antecedents, coupled with woolen textiles and the apparent Western physical appearance of the population, raised questions as to where these people came from. Two hypotheses have been offered by archaeologists to account for the origins of Bronze Age populations of the Tarim Basin. These are the steppe hypothesis and the Bactrian oasis hypothesis. Eight craniometric variables from 25 Aeneolithic and Bronze Age samples, comprising 1,353 adults from the Tarim Basin, the Russo-Kazakh steppe, southern China, Central Asia, Iran, and the Indus Valley, are compared to test which, if either, of these hypotheses are supported by the pattern of phenetic affinities possessed by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. Craniometric differences between samples are compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity are assessed with two types of cluster analysis (the weighted pair average linkage method and the neighbor-joining method), multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis. Results obtained by this analysis provide little support for either the steppe hypothesis or the Bactrian oasis hypothesis. Rather, the pattern of phenetic affinities manifested by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin suggests the presence of a population of unknown origin within the Tarim Basin during the early Bronze Age. After 1200 B.C., this population experienced significant gene flow from highland populations of the Pamirs and Ferghana Valley. These highland populations may include those who later became known as the Saka and who may have served as middlemen facilitating contacts between East (Tarim Basin, China) and West (Bactria, Uzbekistan) along what later became known as the Great Silk Road.
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It appears that neither Han Chinese nor steppe populations played any detectable role in the initial establishment or subsequent interregional biological interactions of Bronze Age Tarim Basin populations.
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This research confirms that populations from the urban centers of the Oxus civilization of Bactria played a role in the population history of the Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. Yet these Bactrian populations were not the direct, early colonizers envisioned by advocates of the Bactrian oasis hypothesis (Barber, [1999]). None of the analyses document the immediate and profoundly close affinities between colonizers and the colonized expected if the Tarim Basin experienced substantial direct settlement by Bactrian agriculturalists.
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This study confirms the assertion of Han ([1998]) that the occupants of Alwighul and Krorän are not derived from proto-European steppe populations, but share closest affinities with Eastern Mediterranean populations. Further, the results demonstrate that such Eastern Mediterraneans may also be found at the urban centers of the Oxus civilization located in the north Bactrian oasis to the west. Affinities are especially close between Krorän, the latest of the Xinjiang samples, and Sapalli, the earliest of the Bactrian samples, while Alwighul and later samples from Bactria exhibit more distant phenetic affinities. This pattern may reflect a possible major shift in interregional contacts in Central Asia in the early centuries of the second millennium B.C.
Update:
Some data on the people from the earliest cemetary of Qäwrighul (2300-1430 B.C.):
Males had skulls 183mm long and 137.9mm wide (mesocranic, CI=75.4)
They were broad-faced (bizygomatic 136.2, upper facial height 66.5, UFI=48.8)
The had rather short mesorrhine noses (50.9x26.2mm).
Really nice information but I'm not satisfied with such general assumptions without data in detail and pictures.
Even if the result of this study goes somewhat in the same direction as I was thinking about the populations of the Tarim base before.
But more details would be great... :/
Posted by: Chris at September 27, 2003 06:27 AM>> Really nice information but I'm not satisfied with such general assumptions without data in detail and pictures.
That is the abstract of the study.
Posted by: Dienekes at September 27, 2003 01:35 PMI know, it would be just really nice if you would have posted some because I have no access.
Can I see more parts of the study somewhere online for free?
As far as I know, only one of the Tarim mummies is blond, two have reddish-brown hair, and the rest have dark hair. This is too low a percentage of blondism to reflect large-scale population movements from either north-central Europe or the steppe. The Nordic minority might represent a Tocharian-speaking intrusion from the northwest, the bulk of the population being Iranian-speaking Pamirians. It is also possible that a minority of eastern Iranians still belonged to the Nordic type that brought the Indo-European languages to Asia.
Posted by: Ptolemy at September 28, 2003 01:32 PMPosts with personal insults are to be deleted.
J.P. Mallory and his colleague are changing the old view of the Tarim mummies as steppe pastoralist invaders. This has severe reprecussions for the IE Origins debate.
Posted by: Dienekes at September 28, 2003 02:42 PM"Ptolemy":
As far as I know, only one of the Tarim mummies is blond, two have reddish-brown hair, and the rest have dark hair.
The two mummies I was specifically referring to were "Cherchen man" and the well-preserved female also found at Zaghunluq. Mallory and Mair describe the hair of both of these as "light brown" (pp. 191-3). Though, at one point Mallory and Mair describe Cherchen man's hair as "blond" (p. 10), and the woman is wearing "yellowish-brown braids that had clearly been obtained from antoher (and younger) woman". Hair continues to darken as people age (or bear children, in the case of women). Obviously, light-brown hair in the middle-aged is not common among any people besides those of northern European physical type.
(BTW, the heights I mentioned above are incorrect; in re-reading the Mallory and Mair book, I note that the original excavators had apparently inaccurately estimated the heights of the man and woman. The correct heights are 5'9" and 5'3", though they probably would have been a couple inches taller than this in life, and they were still quite tall for their time.)
Some miscellaneous references to hair color from Mallory and Mair. The "Beauty of Krorän" is described as having "blondish-brown" hair (p. 181). The people from the Qizilchoqa graves are described as having "blondish, light-brown or red hair" (p. 16). Mallory and Mair mention a Caucasoid skull with "a blond braid still attached" (p. 141); mention that remains at Qizilchoqa cemetery "are of a Caucasoid type with light hair and large noses" (p. 142); mention that "human remains [at Sampul cemetery] contain sufficient evidence to identify the deceased as blond- or brown-haired and the number of burials originally interred is probably in the thousands" (p. 156). There are many more references but I don't feel like typing them out.
This is too low a percentage of blondism to reflect large-scale population movements from either north-central Europe or the steppe.
First of all, I said central Europe. Not "north-central Europe". Nordics originally came from central Europe, though people of Nordic physical type are found in great numbers today only in northern Europe. And, again, light brown hair in adulthood is typical for Nordics.
The Nordic minority might represent a Tocharian-speaking intrusion from the northwest, the bulk of the population being Iranian-speaking Pamirians.
You are confused. Indo-Afghans started to arrive about 500 BC. Nordics arrived about 2000 BC.
Posted by: anon at September 28, 2003 03:32 PM