Tarim mummies.

October 13, 2022

Tarim mummies.

The Tarim mummies are a series of naturally mummified corpses discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 2100 BC to the first centuries BC.

The first bodies were discovered in the early 20th century. Around

330 graves have been found in the region, and although the people who originally dug them have not been identified, their DNA shows they have Eastern European, Central Asian, and Siberian heritage.

These tombs include adults and children, the majority of the coffins were made of wood, and were shaped like boats, buried upside down.

Clothes and jewelry found in the tomb were also buried alongside the mummies, in small baskets, and the bodies were wrapped in cowhide and wool. This prevented sand from getting inside the corpses. In addition to the wood coffins, four clay-covered rectangular coffins were also found, surrounded by stakes. The well-preserved clothing is very similar to Western European styles.

The Tarim Basin is one of the most remote (far from oceans and seas along whose littorals early humans travelled) and least populated places on Earth. During the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods (before 2000 BCE), there is no evidence of permanent settlement in the Tarim Basin. The area has sufficient sunshine, and the heat can be concentrated in the basin,, so the average temperature in this area is very high.

According to statistics, about a third of the days in each year, the average temperature is above 35 degrees Celsius, and forty days the average temperature is above 40 degrees Celsius. In recent years, there has even been a high temperature record of 49.6 degrees Celsius. The precipitation here is very small, only a few ten millimeters per year.

The tombs are covered with a layer of soft, ventilated sand. In other words, the tomb here is like an oven in a laboratory, which can quickly remove water from the dead bodies buried here. Most bacteria cannot survive for too long in a high temperature and dry environment. Without the participation of bacteria, the corpse will only be weathered, but will not rot.

In the ancient Egyptian era, only the remains of a few people such as pharaohs and sacrifices were eligible to be made into artificial corpses. In contrast here the desert climate treated everyone the same. Therefore, the number of mummies in this area is far more than that of ancient Egyptian mummies. According to archaeologists, there are at most thousands of well-preserved mummies in the area.