A genetically isolated population, but culturally very cosmopolitan: so was the indigenous civilization that in the Bronze Age lived in western China, in the Tarim river basin, along the Silk Road: the hundreds of Western discoveries in this area in the 90s and whose DNA has now been analyzed. The result is published in the journal Nature by the Chinese Jilin University and the German Max Planck Institute of Anthropology. Found in the autonomous region of the Uighurs, the mummies have been a mystery so far. Thus it emerged that the Tarim mummies did not belong to newcomers to the region, but to direct descendants of a widespread population in the Pleistocene, then largely disappeared at the end of the last ice age. However, the Tarim mummies do not show any trace of genetic mixing: despite this their genetic isolation, they were culturally cosmopolitan.

Source: Huffington Post November 01, 2021 04:16 UTC