09.24.06
Another puzzle piece in history
The stuff that has captivated me today may be old news to some people. I’ve found that no matter how much I like to read, I find that I’m usually still “behind” the times. 
Cripes. So, here in 2006, I just discovered something that had already hit the press in 1994 in Discover Magazine.
We’ve all heard about Eygptian mummies, right? But have you heard of Urumchi mummies? I hadn’t. Apparently, Urumchi mummies are contemporaries of Eygptian mummies. The mystery of these mummies are that they were found in Urumchi in Western China, and these mummies appear to be of Celtic origin.
These mummies were first seen in 1987 by Dr. Victor Mair in the area in Western China, known as Chinese Turkestan. He was leading a group of diehard travelers through the Urumchi Museum where, in a dimly lit room, he found a display of mummies. Upon closer inspection, Dr. Mair was stunned to find that these mummies appeared to be neither Chinese nor Mongoloid in facial type as would be expected from finding them in such a region. Instead, these mummies had distinct caucasian features with high-bridged noses, deep, round eye sockets, fair hair, and on the men, heavy beards. Archaeologists and linguists alike had assumed that the Mongol-type peoples had “always” inhabited this entire area. They also assumed central and northern Asia to be generally the Altaic linguistic group, which today includes Mongol and the various Turkic and Tungusic languages. So finding Caucasian mummies was a surprise.
Findings like these mummies greatly influence the current knowledge of history. I am reminded of the stories we have heard as children that Christopher Columbus was the first to discover America in 1492. Then subsequent evidence was discovered that revealed that there were other Europeans who visited America long before Christopher Columbus did such as Leif Erikson in 1001. For a little more reading on Leif Erikson click here. There is also a claim that Marc Polo had visited America in the 1200’s on a Chinese Junk “after” the Chinese had already visited America. Considering the sculptures of the Olmec heads and other sculptures styles similar to Chinese decor, it does seem very possible that the Chinese had visited America long before Columbus did. Athough, there is some debate whether the Olmec heads actually look African rather than Chinese. Hmmm.
In Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s book, “Arctic in Fact and Fable,” he wrote that there’s an old belief that the farther up north you go, the colder it gets. Stefansson, the last of the old-world explorers, claimed that that wasn’t so. One importance of that discovery would change the view of one of Pytheas’s claims. Pytheas, a Greek explorer around 350 B.C., was the first to connect the moon with the tides and was the first to locate a place on the surface of the earth by observations of the constellations to help him determine latitude on concepts similar to what we used today. He had written a book called, The Ocean, wherein he claimed that he sailed about 600 miles northward from Scotland and found an island called Thule. People did not believe him because they “thought” that the ice in the northern latitudes 600 miles northward of Scotland was all solid ice(from the concept of the farther up north, the colder it got). During Stefansson’s travel explorations through that area, he found that it was “not” solid ice during certain seasons of the year, thus he felt it may very well have been possible Phytheas’ claim was real, and that depending upon when he set sail, Phytheas may have in fact, really reached an island called Thule, which is likely what we know today as Iceland.
So back to our Urumchi mummies! The Eygptian mummies appear shriveled and blackened compared to these Urumchi mummies. The discovery of these mummies have raised many questions, not only of who they were, why they were there, but also what could we find out about their genetics with our current technology, how has their presence in the area affected culture and language, etc. Nearly a century before, scholars had discovered in this same area a variety of documents dating from the first millennium A.D. and written in a now-extinct language known as Tokahrian. It was later found that Tokharian was related to the Indo-European tongues spoken in most of Europe (including English, Latin, and Greek) and in parts of the near East (including Persian and Sanskrit). These Tokharian speakers therefore must have penetrated into Central Asia from the west.
Here’s a picture of one of the mummies.
They believe he’s a 55-year-old male, known as Cherchen Man, from Tomb 2 at Cherchen, ca 1000 B.C., in the southern Tarim Basin. He was 6′6″ (2m) tall, with light brown hair; he wore white deerskin boots and brightly colored woolen pants, shirt, and felt leggings.
(Photo Jeffery Newbury/copyright 1994.)
For more information click here.
One thing that struck me was the height of this particular mummy–6′6″. Hmm. Now they believe that these mummies were about 4,000 years old. I’ve heard people say things like people didn’t live very long or that people of the older days were shorter and that we’re still evolving. Six foot six hardly sounds like a short man. I don’t know what this man died of, so can’t address the age thing with this mummy. But this does remind me of some things I’ve read about giants. Maybe that’ll be something to write about on another post! 
A study on how long people lived in various civilization and eras would be another interesting study! From some of the things I’ve already read on those subjects, it appears that lots of “preconceived” or “common” beliefs have been wrong and could use some updating.
I did check out a book from the library called The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. It looks like she may have a lot of interesting tidbits that I’ll try to share regarding these mummies. Hope I don’t get side tracked too much so that I can get through this book! Until then, toodles!
Marlakins :”>
