In 1939 a remarkable discovery was done by the Swedish archaeologist Bergman Folke. A set of tombs were found in the Xinjiang Province known as the Xiaohe Tombs. However, for the 60 years to follow the tombs were forgotten until 2000 when a researcher, head of the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute found the tombs again. It wasn’t until 2005 that the excavations were complete.
The size of the area is unprecedented. So far there have been 330 tombs found in multiple different layers. The Xiaohe tombs include adults and children as well as 15 intact mummies. About half of the tombs were looted by grave robbers. It is the first time anywhere on Earth that so many mummies have been found.
The coffins were made of wood and shaped like boats, buried upside down, which is similar to the Egyptian concept of the boat to take the Pharaohs to the land of the ‘Gods’.
Left; Burial XHM66 from Xiaohe cemetery, with boat-shaped coffin and mummified remains dressed in wool garments. Right; The site of the Xiaohe mummies’ cemetery; the vertical posts indicate the tomb locations. (Left; CC BY-SA 4.0, Right; Lop Nor/CC BY 3.0)
The clothes and jewelry were also buried with the dead in small baskets. The corpses were wrapped in wool garments and cowhide was used to wrap the coffins in such a perfect way that not a single grain of sand was inside. The straw used for the baskets still looked fresh even though they are thousands of years old.
Apart from the standard wooden coffins, four clay covered wooden coffins were also found. These coffins were rectangular in shape and covered with a thick layer of clay. These coffins were surrounded by six to eight wooden stakes.
Double-layered coffin at the Xiaohe cemetery. (Chunxiang Li, Chao Ning, Erika Hagelberg, Hongjie Li, Yongbin Zhao, Wenying Li, Idelisi Abuduresule, Hong Zhu and Hui Zhou/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Six coffins were found that contained wooden bodies instead of real corpses. The wooden bodies all had the same shape, belonged to male representations and had a red ‘X’ on them. As well as the mummies, multiple other relics were found including wooden masks and other carvings.
The Beauty of Xiaohe
One of the mummies, known as the Beauty of Xiaohe, has become famous because of its excellent preservation and its beauty. It is a white person with round eyes, perfect eye lashes, and long hair, and has features that are more similar to a European person than a Chinese person.
The Beauty of Xiaohe. Items shown in the “Secrets of the Silk Road” exhibit touring America. (Michael Kan/CC BY 2.0)
Dating of the area has shown that it goes back to approximately 2,000 BC and the mummies appear to be of Caucasian origin. However DNA analysis of the bodies has shown that there is a mixture of populations from East and West. The males were found to have chromosomes usually found in Northern and Eastern Europe and DNA found in Siberia.
The debate over the earliest inhabitants and languages of Xinjiang, situated in Inner Asia, has persisted, with significant implications for understanding the region’s history. As explained in our Ancient Origins article, genomic data from archaeological finds in the Dzungarian Basin and Tarim Basin reveal distinct ancestries and cultural practices. Contrary to previous theories, the evidence suggests that the Tarim Basin cultures evolved locally, blending pastoralist and agriculturalist traditions to adapt to the challenges of the Taklamakan Desert’s riverine oases.
Xiaohe Cemetery. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
What was the culture of the Xiaohe people, where did they come from, and why did they disappear? All those questions remain unanswered. We have many examples of civilizations disappearing with little explanation, and Xiaohe is also one of them.