Around the same time that Jesus Christ is said to have walked the Earth, and Mark Anthony was courting Cleopatra , Tarim Basin Mummies were laid to rest, and there they lay , for 20 Centuries  give or take a few hundred years.  In 1978 their existence became known, with the discoveries of the first tombs.

 In 1995 Proof of the mummies' origins came when DNA tests determined that they were genetically related to present-day Europeans. How had they died? Why did they settle in a desert so intensely inhospitable?   No one knows and probably never will for sure, speculation has lead to a myriad of hypothesis' .

They are unusually tall given the time period from which they hail, when people were generally much shorter than today. One mummy for instance, found in a tomb with three females and an infant was 6' 6'' tall. A woman discovered with him was 6' 2" tall.

The clothing found among them indicates an advanced knowledge/method of weaving tapestry and the patterns utilized are similar to those found amongst the Celts of the British Isles, in particular that of Scotland with it's traditional plaids. They were also Marijuanna users, at least that's what a 2008 discovery of pot in one of their tombs would suggest. {Huge Stash of Marijuana Found in Ancient Tomb }

One female wore a unusually tall cone shaped hat similar to those we depict on Halloween witches, or wizards of the Dark ages. Modern depictions of Wizards and Witches have been successfully shown to have derived their attire from ancient Persian Magi, who wore the conical hats found on the Urumchi mummy.  Connections to the ancient Hittites is also hinted at, as well as the Scandinavian Laps {Lapland} where the women still wear similar traditional headgear.

Linguistic Anomalies Linking Europeans and the Far East

 The Korean language is classified as a member of the Altaic language family along with Mongolian, and Japanese  but also includes the Finnish, and Hungarian languages of Northern and Central Europe.  Now that is quite bizarre in of itself , that groups of languages separated by so vast a distance of Eurasia actually have a common root language. Which of course is the hypothesis of Language families - that members of the same linguistic grouping sprang from a common ancestor language eons ago in the dark mist of uncharted history.

 Latin for instance is the demonstrable parent of the "Latin" languages or Romance languages of Italian, Romanian, French, Spanish ,Portuguese and some others as well as having made a demonstrable contribution to the Germanic languages {German, English ..} these languages all share a common Geographic proximity. But --- Korea and Finland ?!  Hungary and Japan ?!

 If one branch of Scientific study -Linguistics- states that black is white, why then should another branch -Archeology/anthropology- be so startled when it also uncovers evidence that black is white ?   Apparently in deep antiquity Human groups migrated extensively across the Siberian wastelands between Europe and Asia. The Caucasian Mummies of Northern China , as well as the Altaic language family is living {or mummified as the case may be} proof of this.

External Links

The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy

The Tarim Mummies by J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair

Baifu -Caucasian Mummies China

Early Cross-Cultural Ties Arise in China

China unearths ancient Caucasian tombs