The surprising origins of the Tarim Basin mummies
Genomic study of the Tarim Basin mummies in western China reveals an indigenous Bronze Age population that was genetically isolated but culturally cosmopolitan

Date:
October 27, 2021
Source:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Summary:
Researchers have determined the genetic origins of Asia's most
enigmatic mummies. Once thought to be Indo-European speaking
migrants from the West, the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies are
revealed to be a local indigenous population with deep Asian roots
and taste for far-flung cuisine.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
As part of the Silk Road and located at the geographical intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has
long served as a major crossroads for trans-Eurasian exchanges of people, cultures, agriculture, and languages. Since the late 1990s, the discovery
of hundreds of naturally mummified human remains dating to circa 2,000
BCE to 200 CE in the region's Tarim Basin has attracted international
attention due to their so- called 'Western' physical appearance, their
felted and woven woolen clothing, and their agropastoral economy that
included cattle, sheep and goat, wheat, barley, millet, and even kefir
cheese. Buried in boat coffins in an otherwise barren desert, the Tarim
Basin mummies have long puzzled scientists and inspired numerous theories
as to their enigmatic origins.


==========================================================================
The Tarim Basin mummies' cattle-focused economy and unusual physical
appearance had led some scholars to speculate that they were the
descendants of migrating Yamnaya herders, a highly mobile Bronze
Age society from the steppes of the Black Sea region of southern
Russia. Others have placed their origins among the Central Asian desert
oasis cultures of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC),
a group with strong genetic ties to early farmers on the Iranian Plateau.

To better understand the origin of the Tarim Basin mummies' founding population, who first settled the region at sites such as Xiaohe
and Gumugou circa 2,000 BCE, a team of international researchers
from Jilin University, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Seoul National University of Korea, and Harvard University generated
and analyzed genome-wide data from thirteen of the earliest known
Tarim Basin mummies, dating to circa 2,100 to 1,700 BCE, together with
five individuals dating to circa 3,000 to 2,800 BCE in the neighboring Dzungarian Basin. This is the first genomic-scale study of prehistoric populations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and it includes
the earliest yet discovered human remains from the region.

The Tarim Basin mummies were not newcomers to the region To their great surprise, the researchers found that the Tarim Basin mummies were not
newcomers to the region at all, but rather appear to be direct descendants
of a once widespread Pleistocene population that had largely disappeared
by the end of the last Ice Age. This population, known as the Ancient
North Eurasians (ANE), survives only fractionally in the genomes of
present-day populations, with Indigenous populations in Siberia and the Americas having the highest known proportions, at about 40 percent. In
contrast to populations today, the Tarim Basin mummies show no evidence
of admixture with any other Holocene groups, forming instead a previously unknown genetic isolate that likely underwent an extreme and prolonged
genetic bottleneck prior to settling the Tarim Basin.

"Archaeogeneticists have long searched for Holocene ANE populations in
order to better understand the genetic history of Inner Eurasia. We
have found one in the most unexpected place," says Choongwon Jeong,
a senior author of the study and a professor of Biological Sciences at
Seoul National University.

In contrast to the Tarim Basin, the earliest inhabitants of the
neighboring Dzungarian Basin descended not only from local populations but
also from Western steppe herders, namely the Afanasievo, a pastoralist
group with strong genetic links to the Early Bronze Age Yamanya. The
genetic characterization of the Early Bronze Age Dzungarians also
helped to clarify the ancestry of other pastoralist groups known as the Chemurchek, who later spread northwards to the Altai mountains and into Mongolia. Chemurchek groups appear to be the descendants of Early Bronze
Age Dzungarians and Central Asian groups the from Inner Asian Mountain
Corridor (IAMC), who derive their ancestry from both local populations
and BMAC agropastoralists.

"These findings add to our understanding of the eastward dispersal of
Yamnaya ancestry and the scenarios under which admixture occurred when
they first met the populations of Inner Asia," says Chao Ning, co-lead
author the study and a professor of School of Archaeology and Museology
at Peking University.

The Tarim Basin groups were genetically but not culturally isolated
These findings of extensive genetic mixing all around the Tarim
Basin throughout the Bronze Age make it all the more remarkable that
the Tarim Basin mummies exhibited no evidence of genetic admixture at
all. Nevertheless, while the Tarim Basin groups were genetically isolated,
they were not culturally isolated. Proteomic analysis of their dental
calculus confirmed that cattle, sheep, and goat dairying was already
practiced by the founding population, and that they were well aware of
the different cultures, cuisines, and technologies all around them.

"Despite being genetically isolated, the Bronze Age peoples of the
Tarim Basin were remarkably culturally cosmopolitan -- they built their
cuisine around wheat and dairy from the West Asia, millet from East Asia,
and medicinal plants like Ephedra from Central Asia," says Christina
Warinner, a senior author of the study, a professor of Anthropology
at Harvard University, and a research group leader at the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

"Reconstructing the origins of the Tarim Basin mummies has had a
transformative effect on our understanding of the region, and we will
continue the study of ancient human genomes in other eras to gain a deeper understanding of the human migration history in the Eurasian steppes,"
adds Yinquiu Cui, a senior author of the study and professor in the
School of Life Sciences at Jilin University.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Max_Planck_Institute_for_Evolutionary_Anthropology. Note: Content may
be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
* Xiaohe_cemetery_images ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Fan Zhang, Chao Ning, Ashley Scott, Qiaomei Fu, Rasmus Bjo/rn,
Wenying
Li, Dong Wei, Wenjun Wang, Linyuan Fan, Idilisi Abuduresule,
Xingjun Hu, Qiurong Ruan, Alipujiang Niyazi, Guanghui Dong,
Peng Cao, Feng Liu, Qingyan Dai, Xiaotian Feng, Ruowei Yang,
Zihua Tang, Pengcheng Ma, Chunxiang Li, Shizhu Gao, Yang Xu,
Sihao Wu, Shaoqing Wen, Hong Zhu, Hui Zhou, Martine Robbeets,
Vikas Kumar, Johannes Krause, Christina Warinner, Choongwon Jeong,
Yinqiu Cui. The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin
mummies. Nature, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04052-7 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211027121943.htm

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