Teaching Comparative

Mummies and national unity

The disputes about the Chinese nature of Tibet are well known, but the questions about how Chinese the Xinjiang region is are less visible. Archaeologists have found some evidence that the Chinese government is not happy about.

What policies has the government followed in the face of scientific evidence? Why is it such a big deal?

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

"An exhibit on the first floor of the museum [in Urumqi] 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.



"But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story...

"[M]ore than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies [have been] 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?...

"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...

"By [the] 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...

"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 Han 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..."

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Labels: China, history, sovereignty

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:53 AM