Loulan was discovered in 1980, but it was 3800 years ago that she died on the trade route known as the Silk Road. The natural dryness and salty soil preserved her and over two hundred other mummies, individuals who had lived in several closely located settlements along the trade route. The mummy has been called the Loulan Beauty because of her amazingly preserved stately facial features that have remained quite beautiful even in death.
Unfortunately, the region where she and the others
were found is politically unstable and the discovery of the mummies in the
Tarim Basin in China was seen as a possible instigating factor for unrest. The
Chinese government has been reluctant to allow full access to the mummies
because of their racial identity. The Tarim mummies are Caucasian and this fact
has given credence to the claims of the local peoples, the Uyghur, who look
more European than Asian that they are the descendants of the original
inhabitants of the area and not later arrivals, as Chinese history claims.
Victor Mair, a professor at the University of
Pennsylvania, was instrumental in getting access to these mummies. He and Paolo Francalacci, a geneticist, were
finally able to obtain some genetic samples in 1993. Their findings revealed that the mummies are
indeed European but they probably migrated from the Siberian region and are
unrelated to the Uyghur. The Chinese government did allow further testing in
2007 and 2009 and the finding supported the Siberian connection as well as
suggesting the mixing of people from Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Europe and
other unknown sources. It is unfortunate
that the Beauty and the others are at the centre of this controversy because it
has distracted somewhat from the fact that there were Europeans in China at
least a thousand years before conventional history has Caucasians in this area
of the world.
Mainstream historians have always had this strange
concept that early people were not world travellers when in fact most evidence
points to just the opposite. We are led to believe that many cultures lived in
isolation and that the world was not truly explored until the last five hundred
years.
The Beauty of Loulan’s people are clearly of
Caucasian descent and their grave goods suggest that they were probably
merchants of textiles and perhaps leather goods. They were buried with many
clothing items including one man who was buried with ten hats, all of different
styles. The settlements along the Silk Road might very well have been meeting
points where merchants from the west traded their goods for goods from the
east. Having multicultural merchants would certainly have helped facilitate
communication between the traders. Pliny the Elder described the traders from
this area as tall with flaxen hair and blue eyes. He also described their
language as ‘uncouth noise’.
Loulan herself lived to be about 40 to 45 and she
probably died from lung disease caused by environmental pollution from open
fires and the gritty sand in the air. She was buried in well-made woven
clothing and some of the other mummies are actually wearing plaid patterned
loomed cloth. Many of the mummies are tattooed, perhaps even most of them, but
the descriptions of the individuals often do not mention the tattoos, or refer
to them as an unimportant curiosity.
However, I believe the tattoos represent an artistic and cultural link
with people all across Eurasia and even Western Europe. The tattoos appear to
have been done in the manner of the Scythians, Thracians and the Pazyryk, where
the design is achieved by the puncture technique not the sewing technique. The
puncture method results in darker and larger fields of colour and is much more
like modern tattooing.
One of the female mummies has crescent moons and
ovals tattooed on her face. The moon
designs are suggestive of Goddess worship in many cultures and the presence of
the tattoos on her face tells me, a tattoo artist, that whatever the designs
meant they were very important to her since she chose to display them where she
could not hide them; they also immediately identified her to others. She also had heavy tattooing on her hands
which may be symbolic or simply decorative as hand tattoos often are. Interestingly, a male mummy from the area,
known as the Chrechen Man has sun tattoos on his temples, the sun often
represents the male God so it is possible that these two individuals functioned
in some sort of religious or shamanistic role.
I believe a more detailed recording of the tattoos, their designs and the method by which they were done could reveal a great deal about the people, their beliefs and their connections both culturally and genetically with other groups all across Asia and Europe. Tattoos should not be ignored as if they are simply a decoration. A tattoo becomes the living flesh. When an ancient person chose to be tattooed, they were choosing to be changed, transformed, and brought closer to their deities. A person, either modern or ancient, intends to carry their tattoo to the next world with them; in other words, it is a big decision not to be made lightly, and a commitment to quite a bit of pain. In ancient societies, the magic, prestige and power associated with a tattoo would have been an integral facet of the culture and an important aspect of their lives.
The Tarim mummies are ‘living ‘ proof that 4,000
years ago people travelled over vast distances, interacted, interbred and
spread their cultural practices. The art of tattooing in both design and
technique is one example of these connections and I believe there is much more
to be learned if we just look closer.
Source : ancient-origins.net