- URUMQI, China (AFP) - After
years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic
testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China's Tarim Basin 1,000 years
before East Asian people arrived.
-
- The research, which the Chinese government has appeared
to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim
separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of
ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in
recent decades.
-
- "It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized
because it has created a lot of difficulties," Victor Mair, a specialist
in the ancient corpses and co-author of "Mummies of the Tarim Basin",
told AFP.
-
- "It would be better for everyone to approach this
from a purely scientific and historical perspective."
-
- The discoveries in the 1980s of the undisturbed 4,000-year-old
"Beauty of Loulan" and the younger 3,000-year-old body of the
"Charchan Man" are legendary in world archaeological circles
for the fine state of their preservation and for the wealth of knowledge
they bring to modern research.
-
- In historic and scientific circles the discoveries along
the ancient Silk Road were on a par with finding the Egyptian mummies.
-
- But China's concern over its rule in restive Xinjiang
has widely been perceived as impeding faster research into them and greater
publicity of the findings.
-
- The desiccated corpses, which avoided natural decomposition
due to the dry atmosphere and alkaline soils in the Tarim Basin, have not
only given scientists a look into their physical biologies, but their clothes,
tools and burial rituals have given historians a glimpse into life in the
Bronze Age.
-
- Mair, who played a pivotal role in bringing the discoveries
to Western scholars in the 1990s, has worked tirelessly to get Chinese
approval to take samples out of China for definitive genetic testing.
-
- One expedition in recent years succeeded in collecting
52 samples with the aide of Chinese researchers, but later Mair's hosts
had a change of heart and only let five of them out of the country.
-
- "I spent six months in Sweden last year doing nothing
but genetic research," Mair said from his home in the United States
where he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
-
- "My research has shown that in the second millennium
BC, the oldest mummies, like the Loulan Beauty, were the earliest settlers
in the Tarim Basin.
-
- "From the evidence available, we have found that
during the first 1,000 years after the Loulan Beauty, the only settlers
in the Tarim Basin were Caucasoid."
-
- East Asian peoples only began showing up in the eastern
portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Mair said, while the
Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom,
largely based in modern day Mongolia, around the year 842.
-
- "Modern DNA and ancient DNA show that Uighurs, Kazaks,
Krygyzs, the peoples of Central Asia are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian.
The modern and ancient DNA tell the same story," he said.
-
- Mair hopes to publish his new findings in the coming
months.
-
- China has only allowed the genetic studies in the last
few years, with a 2004 study carried out by Jilin University also finding
that the mummies' DNA had Europoid genes, further proving that the earliest
settlers of Western China were not East Asians.
-
- In the preface to the 2002 book, "Ancient Corpses
of Xinjiang," written by Chinese archeologist Wang Huabing, the Chinese
historian and Sanskrit specialist Ji Xianlin soundly denounced the use
of the mummies by Uighur separatists as proof that Xinjiang should not
belong to China.
-
- "What has stirred up the most excitement in academic
circles, both in the East and the West, is the fact that the ancient corpses
of 'white (Caucasoid/Europid) people' have been excavated," Jin wrote.
-
- "However, within China a small group of ethnic separatists
have taken advantage of this opportunity to stir up trouble and are acting
like buffoons, (styling) themselves the descendants of these ancient 'white
people' with the aim of dividing the motherland."
-
- Further on, in an apparent swipe at the government's
lack of eagerness to acknowledge the science and publicize it to the world,
Ji wrote that "a scientist may not distort facts for political reasons,
religious reasons, or any other reason".
-
- Meanwhile, Yingpan Man, a nearly perfectly preserved
2,000-year-old Caucasoid mummy, was only this month allowed to leave China
for the first time, and is being displayed at the Tokyo Edo Museum.
-
- The Yingpan Man, discovered in 1995 in the region that
bears his name, has been seen as the best preserved of all the undisturbed
mummies that have so far been found.
-
- Yingpan Man not only had a gold foil death mask -- a
Greek tradition -- covering his blonde bearded face, but also wore elaborate
golden embroidered red and maroon garments with seemingly Western European
designs.
-
- His nearly 2.00 meter (six-foot, six-inch) long body
is the tallest of all the mummies found so far and the clothes and artifacts
discovered in the surrounding tombs suggest the highest level of Caucasoid
civilization in the ancient Tarim Basin region.
-
- When the Yingpan Man returns from Tokyo to Urumqi where
he has long been kept out of public eye, he is expected to be finally put
on display when the new Xinjiang Museum opens this year.
-
- China has hundreds of the mummies in various degrees
of dessication and decomposition, including the prominent Han Chinese warrior
Zhang Xiong and other Uighur mummies.
-
- However, only a dozen or so are on permanent display
in a makeshift building until the new museum is completed.
-
- Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of Agence France Presse.
-
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&
-
-
- Comment
From Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
- 5-2-5
-
- From Genesis 6:4 comes the statement: "And there
were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the son's
of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them,
the same became mighty men were of old, men of renown."
-
- Certainly, someone 6' 6" tall or perhaps even taller,
qualifies for this?
-
- If you visit Salem, Mass as I have, you'll see how short
people were just 200 years ago. When you enter the House of Seven Gables
through the kitchen during the tour, a anyone 5' 11" tall will feel
their hair brush against the kitchen ceiling. All the beds throughout the
house are also shorter, too. And that was just 200 years ago.
-
- Or, visit one of the tall ships when they come to your
town. Anyone of average height must bend over constantly when down in the
lower decks, because the "ceilings" (the deck above) will force
you to. If you are 5' tall or less, then you have no problem.
-
- Society today considers people less than 5' tall (in
predominantly white nations) as shorter than average. Some have felt that
our modern day diet has lead to increased height, because modern developed
nations tend to eat more than people in past centuries.
-
- So, how tall was the average person in the Biblical era?
Someone 6' 6" would be giant to someone less than 5' tall !
-
- Ted
-
-
- Comment
James Neff
- 5-2-5
-
- Actually, Ted, the beds, spears, spearholders, and many
other artifacts of the ancient Anak (Giants), the second generation of
giants in the earth (post flood), have been discovered by Israeli archeologists
and anthropologists -- beds 13'-15' long, for example, and entry steps
to personal dwellings that are beyond the range of a 6' foot man's stride.
This was even reported with some amazing video footage on CNN. One of the
reporters had to lift himself up the porch steps, he couldn't "step"
up at all, and he was quite a tall man.
-
- Further, we are told in scripture that one of the Philistines
(smaller than the Anak), Goliath, was over nine feet tall. So, the first
spawn, the Nephilim, were likely much larger than both the Anak and the
largest Philistines. In the First Book of Enoch, they are said to be of
such gargantuan size that they eat and drink whole provences into poverty.
Enoch makes no bones about their being giants of unearthly quality. It
is also likely that most of the worlds myths and legends about gods and
demigods come from this time of the giants, from the Greek tales to the
Upanishads (the origins of which are admittedly Mesopotamian, even by the
official Hindu authorities - Similarly Socrates caught hell for muttering
that their gods and Olympus itself was a "borrowed" theology
from much earlier peoples).
-
- The giants were a mutation of 'angelic' (extraterrestrial)
seed and human seed, and brought about a world scene so corrupted and violent
that God determined that mankind had to be wiped from the face of the earth
-- save Noah who found favor with God -- his family of eight persons were
found to be free from this pollution and could repopulate the earth free
of the genetic malady. But, Genesis 6 tells us these beings from outside
of earth comingled with humanity in this way not just then, but also after
the flood, resulting in the Anak, who were seen by the Hebrew scouts: "And
there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and
we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight"
(Numbers 13:33). They were small in number and were quickly destroyed.
But at least one among them survived, "Og, king of Bashan remained
of the remnant of giants; behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is
it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length
thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man."
So, from the Nephilim to Og, we see a slow digression in size, still, topping
out at 9 feet tall. That's taller than the tallest basketball player on
earth ever, Ali Nashnush (1962 Libya) 8'0-1/2". Robert Pershing Wadlow
was 8 feet 11 inches tall, due to a painful and disabling genetic deformity.
His extreme height was truly a disability, whereas the people before him
are people of superior ability, even great strength in addition to height.
Further, Josephus, renouwn Jewish historian who lived around the time of
Christ, notes that the bones of the Giants were continually on display
in Jerusalem and people came from all over the world to see them.
Quite a lot of material on the giants of the Middle East can be found here.
|
