http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/world/asia/19mummy.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=loulan&st=cse 

The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To

By  EDWARD WONG

Published: November 18, 2008 URUMQI,

China — An exhibit on the first floor of the museum here gives the government’s unambiguous take on the history of this border region: “Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” says one prominent sign. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Gilles Sabrie In Kashgar, China, veiled women passing a wall with Uighur writing that promoted the nation’s fight against “terrorism and criminal acts.” But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story. One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese. The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang. At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire? Uighur nationalists have gleaned evidence from the mummies, whose corpses span thousands of years, to support historical claims to the region. Foreign scholars say that at the very least, the Tarim mummies — named after the vast Tarim Basin where they were found — show that Xinjiang has always been a melting pot, a place where people from various corners of Eurasia founded societies and where cultures overlapped. Contact between peoples was particularly frequent in the heyday of the Silk Road, when camel caravans transported goods that flowed from as far away as the Mediterranean. “It’s historically been a place where cultures have mixed together,” said Yidilisi Abuduresula, 58, a Uighur archaeologist in Xinjiang working on the mummies. The Tarim mummies seem to indicate that the very first people to settle the area came from the west — down from the steppes of Central Asia and even farther afield — and not from the fertile plains and river valleys of the Chinese interior. The oldest, like the Loulan Beauty, date back 3,800 years. Some Uighurs have latched on to the fact that the oldest mummies are most likely from the west as evidence that Xinjiang has belonged to the Uighurs throughout history. A modern, nationalistic pop song praising the Loulan Beauty has even become popular. “The people found in Loulan were Uighur people, according to the materials,” said a Uighur tour guide in the city of Kashgar who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of running afoul of the Chinese authorities. “The nationalities of Xinjiang are very complicated. There have been many since ancient times.” Scholars generally agree that Uighurs did not migrate to what is now Xinjiang from Central Asia until the 10th century. But, uncomfortably for the Chinese authorities, evidence from the mummies also offers a far more nuanced history of settlement than the official Chinese version. By that official account, Zhang Qian, a general of the Han dynasty, led a military expedition to Xinjiang in the second century B.C. His presence is often cited by the ethnic Han Chinese when making historical claims to the region. The mummies show, though, that humans entered the region thousands of years earlier, and almost certainly from the west. What is indisputable is that the Tarim mummies are among the greatest recent archaeological finds in China, perhaps the world. Four are in glass display cases in the main museum here in Urumqi, the regional capital. Their skin is parched and blackened from the wear and tear of thousands of years, but their bodies are strikingly intact, preserved by the dry climate of the western desert. Some foreign scholars say the Chinese government, eager to assert a narrative of longtime Chinese dominance of Xinjiang, is unwilling to face the fact that the mummies provide evidence of heterogeneity throughout the region’s history of human settlement. As a result, they say, the government has been unwilling to give broad access to foreign scientists to conduct genetic tests on the mummies. “In terms of advanced scientific research on the mummies, it’s just not happening,” said Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania who has been at the forefront of foreign scholarship of the mummies.

Mr. Mair first spotted one of the mummies, a red-haired corpse called the Cherchen Man, in the back room of a museum in Urumqi while leading a tour of Americans there in 1988, the first year the mummies were put on display.

Mummies in western China have revealed ancient migration patterns.

Since then, he says that he has been obsessed with pinpointing the origins of the mummies, intent on proving a theory dear to him: that the movement of peoples throughout history is far more common than previously thought.

Mr. Mair has assembled various groups of scholars to do research on the mummies. In 1993, the Chinese government tried to prevent Mr. Mair from leaving China with 52 tissue samples after having authorized him to go to Xinjiang and to collect them.

But a Chinese researcher managed to slip a half-dozen vials to Mr. Mair. From those samples, an Italian geneticist concluded in 1995 that at least two of the mummies had a European genetic marker.

The Chinese government in recent years has allowed genetic research on the mummies to be conducted only by Chinese scientists.

Jin Li, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai, tested the mummies in conjunction with a 2007 National Geographic documentary. He concluded that some of the oldest mummies had East Asian and even South Asian markers, though the documentary said further testing needed to be done.

Mr. Mair has disputed any suggestion that the mummies were from East Asia. He believes that East Asian migrants did not appear in the Tarim Basin until much later than the Loulan Beauty and her people.

The oldest mummies, he says, were probably Tocharians, herders who traveled eastward across the Central Asian steppes and whose language belonged to the Indo-European family. A second wave of migrants came from what is now Iran.

The theory that the earliest mummies came from the west of what is now modern China is supported by other scholars as well. A textile expert, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, in a book called “The Mummies of Urumchi,” wrote that the kind of cloth discovered in the oldest grave sites can be traced to the Caucasus.

Han Kangxin, a physical anthropologist, has also concluded that the earliest settlers were not Asians. He has studied the skulls of the mummies, and says that genetic tests can be unreliable.

“It’s very clear that these are of Europoid or Caucasoid origins,” Mr. Han, now retired, said in an interview in his apartment in Beijing.

Of the hundreds of mummies discovered, there are some that are East Asian, but they are not as ancient as the Loulan Beauty or the Cherchen Man.

The most prominent Chinese grave sites were discovered at a place called Astana, believed to be a former military outpost. The findings at the site span the Jin to the Tang dynasties, from the third to the 10th centuries.

Further clouding the picture, a mummy from the Lop Nur area, the 2,000-year-old Yingpan Man, was unearthed with artifacts associated with an entirely different part of the globe. He was wearing a hemp death mask with gold foil and a red robe decorated with naked angelic figures and antelopes — all hallmarks of a Hellenistic civilization.

Despite the political issues, excavations of the grave sites are continuing.

Mr. Abuduresula, the Uighur archaeologist, made a trip in late September to the desert site at Xiaohe, where 350 graves have been discovered. The bottom layer of graves dates back nearly 4,000 years. More recent graves point to a matriarchal herding society that worshiped cows, Mr. Abuduresula said.

Somewhere in those sands, he said, archaeologists have discovered a woman as striking as the Loulan Beauty. She is called the Xiaohe Princess, and even her eyelashes are intact.

木乃伊口中的政治争论

博物馆一楼一块突起的标牌显示了中国政府关于新疆归属的明确态度：新疆是中国领土不可分割的一部分。

但是如果走到二楼，一具古老的死尸看起来讲述了一个不同的故事。

一位“楼兰美女”仰面躺着，齐肩的长发婉婉下垂，她的嘴唇微微褶皱，那狭长的肩胛骨和鼻子最意味深长：她并不像那种你想象中的中国人。

这位楼兰美女是200多具被完好保存的木乃伊之一，过去的10多年，它们在西部的大沙漠陆续重见天日。在谁应当控制新疆维吾尔自治区的政治争论中，这些古尸成了主角。

中国政府当前在此面临着间歇性的维吾尔分裂主义运动。维吾尔族大多是土耳其语系的穆斯林，在新疆大约有900万之众。

在争论的中心存在这些问题：谁率先占领了中国西部这个并不适合居住的地方？又从何时开始，这块石油储量丰富的土地归属中央政府？

维吾尔民族分裂主义者正一点点从这些千年古尸上收集证据，以从历史学角度支持其对这一地区的声明。

国外的学者称，至少有一点可以肯定：这些从塔里木出土的木乃伊显示了新疆自古就是片热土——人们从欧亚大陆的各个角落齐聚此地，建立文化交错的社会。

交往在丝绸之路最繁忙的时候达到了鼎盛，当时驼队载着货物远从地中海地区赶来此地进行交易。“从历史上说，这就是个文化交汇之地。”58岁的维吾尔考古学家Yidilisi Abuduresula说，他致力于研究木乃伊。

那些塔里木木乃伊显示了最先占领此地的人来自于西方的可能性——来自于中亚的大草原或者更远的地方——而不是来自于中国内陆的平原或者河谷。类似“楼兰美女”的木乃伊，最早存在于3800年前。

某些维吾尔人抓住最古老的木乃伊看起来更像是西方人这一事实宣称，新疆历来都是属于维吾尔人的。有首现代的民族歌曲歌颂的就是那美丽的“楼兰姑娘”。

“事实摆在眼前，在楼兰发现的人就是维吾尔人。”一位喀什噶尔的维吾尔导游说。因为害怕自己的言论与官方说法发生冲突，他要求匿名。“新疆的民族群体相当复杂，很久以前就有许多民族了。”

中国学者们通常认为，到公元10世纪以后，维吾尔人才从中亚迁徙到现在被成为新疆的地域。但是让中国官方不爽的是，木乃伊提供证据显示，维吾尔人占领此地的时期比官方的版本早得多。

根据官方描述，汉朝将军张骞率领一支军队在公元前2世纪的时候就已经考察了新疆。张骞的存在常常被用来引用，作为汉族对这一地区的主张的佐证。

然而，木乃伊显示，人们进入这一地区的时间还要早几千年，而且多半来自西方。

无可争议的是，塔里木木乃伊的出土是近期中国乃至世界考古界的伟大发现。

在乌鲁木齐博物馆陈列馆展出的有4件。它们的皮肤已经被几千年的炎热所损毁，但是由于西部沙漠干燥的气候的，它们的身体令人惊讶的完好。

一些中国的学者表示，中国政府为了坚持中央政府对于新疆地区的长时间的统治，不会愿意面对这些木乃伊暴露的事实：新疆自始自终有着有别于“中国人”的外域移民。

他们表示，政府不会愿意给与国外科学家对这些木乃伊进行遗传学实验的机会。

“从对木乃伊的远景研究来说，这并不是什么奇怪的事。”宾夕法尼亚大学中国语言文学教授Victor Mair说。他是国外学者中离这些木乃伊最近的人。

Mair第一次接触这些木乃伊是在1988年，当时他带领一对美国观光客来到乌鲁木齐，一件红色头发的木乃伊首次在博物馆的里屋展出。

从那时起，他一直被这些木乃伊的来源困扰着；渐渐的一个逐渐清晰的观点萦绕着他：那些人来自比通常认为更加遥远的地方。

Mair召集了许多学者研究这些木乃伊。1993年，Mair在当局批准后进入新疆进行考古，但是当他带着52件搜集的样品准备离境时被中国政府拦了下来。

不过一位中国学者设法将其中的6个样本给了Mair。一位意大利遗传学者从这些样本中得出结论：至少有两具木乃伊有着欧洲人的遗传标记。

中国政府近些年允许一些仅仅由中国科学家主导的木乃伊遗传学研究。

著名的复旦大学遗传学家Jin Li将木乃伊实验与一份2007年的地理学文献做了联系。他认为某些古老的木乃伊有东亚或者甚至南亚的遗传学标记，尽管这些文献表示还需要进一步的实验。

Mair不同意任何声称这些木乃伊来自于东亚的说法。他相信，东亚移民在“楼兰美女”和她的人民那个时期之后才来到塔里木盆地。

他说，那些古老的木乃伊很可能是从中亚大草原迁徙而来的类似吐火罗语族的游牧人，属于印欧语系，是从伊朗来的移民的另一支。

这种认为最早的木乃伊是来自于现代中国以西的地方的理论也被其他一些学者支持。一位纺织物专家在他的一本名为“乌鲁木齐的木乃伊”的书中说，木乃伊出土处发现的织物显然是来自于高加索地区的。

人类学家Han Kangxin也得出结论表示，最早的移民并不是亚洲人。他研究了木乃伊的颅骨，称遗传学实验并不那么可靠。

“很明显这些人有上古欧罗巴或者高加索人的血统。”现已退休的Han在其在北京的寓所接受采访时说。

就当前出土的几百具木乃伊看来，其中有一些是东亚人，但是并没有“楼兰美女”或者Cherchen人那么古老。

最著名的中国古墓在啊斯坦纳出土，那相信是一处汉朝到晋朝的军事哨所。

令情况更加复杂的是，罗布泊地区发现了一具2000年前的木乃伊，属于Yingpan人。随之出土的古物完全不是这个地方的器物。他带着一个镀金的死亡面罩，穿着红色的长袍，上面绣着赤裸的天使和羚羊——这看起来完全是一位希腊人。

尽管政治上的争论不断，但是该出土的东西的还是在陆续重见天日。

维吾尔考古学家Abuduresula九月下旬去了趟小河墓群——那里差不多发现了350座古墓。最底层的墓葬差不多有4000多年的历史。更多近代的墓葬显示了母系氏族社会样本——崇拜母牛。

他说，就在这片沙漠里，考古学家发现了一位酷似“楼兰美女”的人，她被称为“小河公主”，她的睫毛甚至都完好无损。
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