The Eastern-Asiatic Indo-Europeans and Their Fate

Tocharian

Uyghur

The possible presence of speakers of Indo-European languages in the Tarim Basin by about 2000 BC could, if confirmed, be interpreted as evidence that cultural exchanges occurred among Indo-European and Chinese populations at a very early date.

It has been suggested that such activities as chariot warfare and bronze-making may have been transmitted to the east by these Indo-European nomads.

Mallory and Mair also note that: “Prior to c. 2000 BC, finds of metal artifacts in China are excedeedingly few, simple and, puzzlingly, already made of alloyed copper (and hence questionable).”

While stressing that the argument as to whether bronze technology travelled from China to the West or that “the earliest bronze technology in China was stimulated by contacts with western steppe cultures”, is far from settled in scholarly circles, they do suggest that the evidence to date favours the latter scenario.

The culture and technology in the northwest region of Tarim basin was less advanced than that in the Yellow River-Erlitou (2070BCE~1600BCE) or Majiayao culture (3100BCE~2600BCE), which is earliest bronze using culture in China, shows on the region of northwest didn’t use copper or any metal until the technology of bronze making was introduced by Shang Dynasty in China about 1600BC to this region.

The earliest bronze artifacts have been found in the Majiayao culture site (between 3100 and 2700 BC), and from then on, the society gradually grew into the Bronze Age.

Bronze metallurgy in China originated in what is referred to as the Erlitou (Wade–Giles: Erh-li-t’ou) period, which some historians argue places it within the range of dates controlled by the Shang dynasty.

Others believe the Erlitou sites belong to the preceding Xia (Wade–Giles: Hsia) dynasty. The U.S. National Gallery of Art defines the Chinese Bronze Age as the “period between about 2000 BC and 771 BC,” a period that begins with Erlitou culture and ends abruptly with the disintegration of Western Zhou rule.

Though this provides a concise frame of reference, it overlooks the continued importance of bronze in Chinese metallurgy and culture. Since this is significantly later than the discovery of bronze in Mesopotamia, bronze technology could have been imported rather than discovered independently in China. However, there is reason to believe that bronzework developed inside China separately from outside influence.

The supplying of Tarim Basin jade to China from ancient times is well established, according to Liu (2001): “It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BCE the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China.”

The Tocharians or Tokharians were inhabitants of medieval oasis city-states on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China). Their Tocharian languages (a branch of the Indo-European family) are known from manuscripts from the 6th to 8th centuries AD, after which they were supplanted by the Turkic languages of the Uyghur tribes.

Some scholars have linked the Tocharians with the Afanasevo culture of eastern Siberia (c. 3500 – 2500 BC), the Tarim mummies (c. 1800 BC) and the Yuezhi of Chinese records, most of whom migrated from southern Gansu to Bactria in the 2nd century BC and then later to northwest India where they founded the Kushan Empire.

The Afanasevo (or Afanasievo) culture is the earliest Eneolithic archaeological culture found until now in south Siberia, occupying the Minusinsk Basin. Conventional archaeological understanding tended to date at around 2000–2500 BC. However radiocarbon gave dates as early as 3705 BC on wooden tools and 2874 BC on human remains. The earliest of these dates have now been rejected, giving a date of around 3300 BC for the start of the culture.

The culture is mainly known from its inhumations, with the deceased buried in conic or rectangular enclosures, often in a supine position, reminiscent of burials of the Yamna culture (“Pit [Grave] Culture”, from Russian/Ukrainian яма, “pit”), dating to the 36th–23rd centuries BC, believed to be Indo-European. Settlements have also been discovered.

J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair argue that the Tocharian languages were introduced to the Tarim and Turpan basins from the Afanasevo culture to their immediate north. The Afanasevo culture (c. 3500 – 2500 BC) displays cultural and genetic connections with the Indo-European-associated cultures of the Central Asian steppe yet predates the specifically Indo-Iranian-associated Andronovo culture (c. 2000 – 900 BC) enough to isolate the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization.

The Tarim Basin mummies (1800 BC) have been found in the same general geographical area as the Tocharian texts and frescoes from the Tarim Basin (3rd to 9th centuries AD), and are both connected to an Indo-European origin and point to Caucasoid types with light eyes and hair color. However it is unknown whether the mummies and frescoes are connected.

The Afanasevo people became the first food-producers in the area by breeding cattle, horses, and sheep. Metal objects and the presence of wheeled vehicles are documented. These resemblances to the Yamna culture make the Afanasevo culture is a strong candidate to represent the earliest cultural form of a people later called the Tocharians.

The culture became known from excavations in the Minusinsk area of the Krasnoyarsk Krai, southern Siberia, but the culture was also widespread in western Mongolia, northern Xinjiang, and eastern and central Kazakhstan, with connections or extensions in Tajikistan and the Aral area.

The Afanasevo culture was succeeded by the Andronovo culture as it spread eastwards, and later the Karasuk culture. The Karasuk culture describes a group of Bronze Age societies who ranged from the Aral Sea or the Volga River to the upper Yenisei catchment, ca. 1500–800 BC, preceded by the Afanasevo culture. The remains are minimal and entirely of the mortuary variety. At least 2000 burials are known.

A recent article (Hemphill and Mallory, 2004) reaches the following conclusions: “This study confirms the assertion of Han [1998] that the occupants of Alwighul and Krorän are not derived from proto-European steppe populations, but share closest affinities with Eastern Mediterranean populations. Further, the results demonstrate that such Eastern Mediterraneans may also be found at the urban centers of the Oxus civilization located in the north Bactrian oasis to the west.

Affinities are especially close between Krorän, the latest of the Xinjiang samples, and Sapalli, the earliest of the Bactrian samples, while Alwighul and later samples from Bactria exhibit more distant phenetic affinities. This pattern may reflect a possible major shift in interregional contacts in Central Asia in the early centuries of the second millennium BCE.”

In 2009, the remains of 30 individuals found at the Xiaohe ‘Little River’ Tomb complex, a bronze-age burial site located near Lop Nur, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of western China, were analyzed for Y-DNA and mtDNA markers. They suggest that an admixed population of both western and eastern origin lived in the Tarim basin since the early Bronze Age.

The mummies, the earliest of which date from around 4000 years ago, appear Caucasoid. Genetic analysis however revealed an admixture of population from the East and West, with the paternal lineage exclusively west Eurasian, and the maternal lineage a mixture of east and west Eurasian.

The entire Xiaohe Tomb complex contains about 330 tombs, about 160 of which have been looted by grave robbers. The Xiaohe remains contains largest number of mummies ever found at any single site in the world to date. No human settlement has been found near the tomb complex, the bodies were therefore likely to have been transported from elsewhere for burial at this site

The Xiaohe people maternal lineages were predominantly East Asian haplogroup C with smaller numbers of H and K, while the paternal lines were all West Eurasian R1a1a. The geographic location of this admixing is unknown, although south Siberia is likely.

From the 1st-millennium sources, ancient Chinese sources describe the existence of “white people with long hair” (The Bai people of the Shanhai Jing) on their northwestern borders. They had trade relations with them, and seemed to have purchased jade from them. There is possibility that these “Bai people” correspond to the Tarim mummies.

In the same geographical area, reference to the Yuezhi was made in name in 645 BC by the Chinese economist Guan Zhong, raising the possibility that the europoid mummies may have been identical and ancestors to the Yuezhi. Guan Zhong described the Yuezhi, or Niuzhi, as a people from the Tarim Basin who supplied jade to the Chinese.

“It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China.” (Liu (2001), pp. 267-268).

A large part of the Yuezhi, vanquished by the Xiong Nu, were to migrate to southern Asia in the 2nd century BC, and later found the Kushan Empire in northern India.

The Karasuk period persisted down to c. 700 BC. From c. 700 to c. 200 BC, culture developed along similar lines. Vital trade contact is traced from northern China and the Baikal region to the Black Sea and the Urals, influencing the uniformity of the culture.

In 2008, the remains of another male were discovered near Turpan. Thought by researchers to be a member of the Gushi (or Jushi) culture. Through genetic analysis and carbon dating, the burial has been dated to roughly 700 BC.

The man was buried with a number of practical and ceremonial objects, including archery equipment and a harp, and 789 grams of cannabis. This is the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China. This shaman was caucasoid, and was well over six feet tall. He may belong to, or was related to the Yuezhi people or Tocharians known to have lived in the region.

Gushi was an ancient culture around the Turpan basin, in what is today the Xinjiang region of China. The area around Ayding Lake in the Turpan region was said to be the territory of the Gushi people.

According to historical accounts, these people “lived in tents, followed the grasses and waters, and had considerable knowledge of agriculture. They owned cattle, horses, camels sheep and goats. There were proficient with bows and arrows”.

The Gushi and the kingdom of Kroran were linked in the account of Zhang Qian, presuamably because they were under the control of the Xiongnu, an ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation. In the years around 60 BC, Gushi fell to the Chinese after the Battle of Jushi and was subsequently known as Jushi. Jushi then further differentiated into two kingdoms, the Nearer Jushi (Turfan) and the Further Jushi (Jimasa).

The Tiele, also named Chile, Gaoche, or Tele, were a confederation of nine Turkic peoples living to the north of China and in Central Asia, emerging after the disintegration of the Xiongnu confederacy. Chinese sources associate them with the earlier Dingling people.

The name “Chile” and “Gaoche” first appear in Chinese records during the campaigns of Former Yan and Dai in 357 and 363 respectively. However, the protagonists were also addressed as “Dingling” in the records of the Southern Dynasties. The name gao (high) che (cart) was a nickname given by the Chinese.

The Dingling were an ancient Siberian people. They originally lived on the bank of the Lena River in the area west of Lake Baikal, gradually moving southward to Mongolia and northern China. They were subsequently part of the Xiongnu Empire.

Around the 3rd century they were assimilated into the Tiele, also named Gaoche or Chile, who gradually expanded westward into Central Asia. It is assumed that Dinglings were distant relatives of the Huns.

The Yenisei Kirghiz, also known as the Khyagas or Khakas, were an ancient Turkic people that dwelled along the upper Yenisei River in the southern portion of the Minusinsk Depression from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. The heart of their homeland was the forested Tannu-Ola mountain range (known in ancient times as the Lao or Kogmen mountains), in modern day Tuva, just north of Mongolia.

The Sayan mountains, and much of Mongolia’s Great Lakes Depression were also included in their territory at different times. The Kirghiz Khaganate existed from 550 to 1293 CE; in 840 it took over the leadership of the Turkic Khaganate from the Uigurs, expanding the state from the Yenisei territories into the Central Asia and Tarim basin. The Yenisei Kirghiz mass migration to the Jeti-su resulted in the formation of the modern Kirghizstan, land of the modern day Kirghiz.

The Yenisei Kirghiz may perhaps be correlated to the Tashtyk culture. They were known as Jiegu or Xiajiasi in Chinese historical texts, but first appeared as Gekun or Jiankun in Han period records. By the fall of the Gokturk empire in the eighth century CE, the Yenisei Kirghiz had established their own thriving state based on the Gokturk model. They had adopted the Orkhon script of the Gokturks and established trading ties with China and the Abbasid Caliphate in Central Asia and Middle East.

Culturally and linguistically, the Yenisei Kirghiz were Turkic. But ethnically they may be a mixture of different people. The Kirghiz were described in Tang Dynasty texts as having primarily Caucasian features with some having East Asian features. During the reign period of Kaiyuan of [emperor] Xuanzong, Ge Jiayun, composed A Record of the Western Regions, in which he said “the people of the Jiankun state all have red hair and green eyes. The ones with dark eyes were descendants of Li Ling.

The Kirghiz Khagans of the Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate claimed descent from general Li Ling, grandson of the famous Han Dynasty general Li Guang. Li Ling was captured by the Xiongnu and defected in the first century BC. And since the Tang royal Li family also claimed descent from Li Guang, the Kirghiz Khagan was therefore recognized as a member of the Tang Imperial family. Emperor Zhongzong of Tang had said to them that “Your nation and Ours are of the same ancestral clan (Zong). You are not like other foreigners.”

In 758, the Uyghurs killed the Kirghiz Khan, and the Kirghiz came under the rule of the Uyghur Khaganate. However, the Yenisei Kirghiz spent much of their time in a state of rebellion. In 840 they succeeded in sacking the Uyghur capital, Ordu-Baliq in Mongolia’s Orkhon valley, and driving the Uyghurs out of Mongolia entirely. But rather than replace the Uyghurs as the lords of Mongolia, the Yenisei Kirghiz continued to live in their traditional homeland and exist as they had for centuries.

In current usage, Uyghur refers to settled Turkic urban dwellers and farmers of the Tarim Basin and Ili who follow traditional Central Asian sedentary practices, as distinguished from nomadic Turkic populations in Central Asia. However, the Chinese government has also designated as “Uyghur” certain peoples with significantly divergent histories and ancestries from the main group. These include the Loplik people and the Dolan people, who are thought to be closer to the Oirat Mongols and the Kyrgyz.

The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses, because only a few words, mainly titles and personal names, were preserved in the Chinese sources. Proposals by scholars include Mongolic, Turkic, Yeniseian, Tocharian, Iranian, and Uralic. They also possibly practiced Tengriism. The name Xiongnu may be cognate to the name Huns, but the evidence for this is controversial.

Chinese sources from the 3rd century BC report them as having created an empire under Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 209 BC. This empire stretched beyond the borders of modern-day Mongolia. After defeating the previously dominant Yuezhi in the 2nd century BC, Xiongnu became a dominant power on the steppes of central and eastern Asia.

They were active in regions of what is now southern Siberia, Mongolia, western Manchuria, and the Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang. Relations between early Chinese dynasties and the Xiongnu were complex, with repeated periods of military conflict and intrigue alternating with exchanges of tribute, trade, and marriage treaties.

First Modu Chanyu marched on the Donghu, the Xiongnu’s eastern neighbours, and brought them under his rule in 208 BC. After his Donghu campaign (the Donghu split into Xianbei and Wuhuan); he defeated the Dingling and other peoples living in Northern Mongolia and finally he brought the Yuezhi under his rule in 203 BC. After these conquests all Xiongnu lords submitted to him. After his Chinese campaign, Modu forced the Yuezhi and the Wusun to become vassals of the Xiongnu.

The Dingling were first subjugated by the Xiongnu, but these gradually weakened. In 71 BCE, after numerous conflicts between the Chinese and the Xiongnu, the Dingling, with help from neighboring tribes, took the opportunity to revolt. From 60 to 63 BCE, during a split within the Xiongnu ruling clan of Luanti, the Dingling attacked the Xiongnu, together with the Wusun, supported by the Chinese, from the west and the Wuhuan from the southeast.

In 51 BCE, they were, together with the Hujie and Gekun, defeated by the Xiongnu under Zhizhi Chanyu, on his way to Kangju. Over the next century there may have been more uprisings, but the only recorded one was in the year 85, when together with the Xianbei they made their final attack on the Xiongnu. After that, the Dingling were assimilated into the remaining northern Xiongnu and the Tuoba under the confederacy of Xianbei chief Tanshihuai. After his death in 181, the Xianbei moved south and the Dingling took their place on the steppe.

A study based on mitochondrial DNA analysis of human remains interred in the Egyin Gol Valley of Mongolia concluded that the Turkic peoples originated from the same area as the Xiongnu and therefore are possibly related.

A majority (89%) of the Xiongnu mtDNA sequences can be classified as belonging to Asian haplogroups, and nearly 11% belong to European haplogroups. This finding indicates that the contacts between European and Asian populations were anterior to the Xiongnu culture, and it confirms results reported for two samples from an early 3rd century BC. Scytho–Siberian population (Clisson et al. 2002).

Dolan refers to a people or region of what is now Xinjiang Province, China. People who call themselves Dolan can be found in the Yarkand River valley, the Tarim River valley and the Lop Nur region of present-day Xinjiang. Though modern Dolan people now speak the vernacular dialect (usually Uyghur), the term refer to an earlier culture and civilization in the region.

The history of this people is little known. Some scholars and travelers believed the Dolan of the Yarkand River valley to be a Kyrgyz or Kazakh group that settled in the area during the Qing Dynasty. This belief was based on their noticeably different physiognomy and language, and their semi-nomadic lifestyles.

Rouran was the name of a confederation of nomadic tribes on the northern borders of Inner China from the late 4th century until the middle 6th century. It has sometimes been hypothesized that the Rouran are identical to the Eurasian Avars who later appeared in Europe.

The term Rouran is a Mandarin Chinese transcription of the pronunciation of the name the confederacy used to refer to itself. Ruanruan and Ruru remained in modern usage despite once being derogatory. They derived from orders given by the Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei, who waged war against the Rouran and intended to intimidate the confederacy.

The power of the Rouran was broken by an alliance of Göktürks, the Chinese Northern Qi and Northern Zhou dynasties and tribes in Central Asia in 552.

The Rouran were a confederation led by Mongolic Xianbei people who remained in the Mongolian steppes after most Xianbei migrated south to Northern China and set up various kingdoms. They were first noted as having defeated the Tiele and establishing an empire extending all the way to the Hulun, in eastern Inner Mongolia. To the west of the Rouran was a horde known in the west as the Hephthalites who originally, until the beginning of the 5th century, were a vassal horde of the Rouran.

The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites), also known as the White Huns, were a nomadic confederation in Central Asia during the late antiquity period. The Hephthalite Empire, at the height of its power (in the first half of the 6th century), was located in the territories of present-day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India and China.

The stronghold of the Hephthalite power was Tokharistan on the northern slopes of the Hindukush, present-day northeastern Afghanistan. By 479, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdiana and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 they had captured areas of present-day northwestern China (Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin). By the end of the 5th century, the Hephthalites overthrew the Indian Gupta Empire to their southeast and conquered northern and central India. But later they were defeated and driven out of India by the Indian kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta in the 6th century.

The Kidarite (Chinese: Ki-To-Lo) were a dynasty of the “Ki” clan, probably originating from the Uar people. They were part of the complex of Iranian-speaking tribes known collectively as Xionites or “Hunas”. During the 4th-5th century they established the Kidarite kingdom.

In Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are called Yanda or Ye-ti-i-li-do, while older Chinese sources of c. 125 AD call them Hoa or Hoa-tun and describe them as a tribe living beyond the Great Wall in Dzungaria. Elsewhere they were called the “White Huns”, known to the Greeks as Ephthalite, Abdel or Avdel, to the Indians as Sveta Huna (“white Huns”), Chionite or Turushka, to the Armenians as Haital, and to the Persians and Arabs as Haytal or Hayatila, while their Bactrian name is (Ebodalo).

According to most specialist scholars, the spoken language of the Hephthalites was an East Iranian language but different from the Bactrian language that was utilized as the “official language” and minted on coins. They may be the eponymous ancestors of the modern Pashtun tribal union of the Abdali, the largest tribal union in Afghanistan.

Although the Hephtalite Empire was known in China as Yanda, Chinese chroniclers recognized this designated the leaders of the empire. The same sources document that the main tribe called themselves Uar. The modern Chinese variation Yanda has been given various Latinised renderings such as “Yeda”, although the corresponding Korean pronunciation Yeoptal is more compatible with the Greek Hephthalite.

There are several theories regarding the origins of the White Huns, with the “Turkic» and “Indo-European Iranic” theories being the most prominent.

For many years, scholars suggested that they were of Turkic stock, and it seems likely that at least some groups amongst the Hephthalites were Turkic-speakers. In 1959, Kazuo Enoki proposed that the Hephthalites were probably Indo-European (East) Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Bactria, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity.

Richard Frye is cautiously accepting of Enoki’s hypothesis, while at the same time stressing that the Hephthalites “were probably a mixed horde”. More recently Xavier Tremblay’s detailed examination of surviving Hephthalite personal names has indicated that Enoki’s hypothesis that they were East Iranian may well be correct, but the matter remains unresolved in academic circles.

According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Hephthalites possibly originated in what is today eastern Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They apparently had no direct connection with the European Huns, but may have been causally related with their movement. It is noteworthy that the tribes in question deliberately called themselves Huns in order to frighten their enemies.

Some White Huns may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Chionites. Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae (Middle Persian: Xiyon; Avestan: Xiiaona; Sogdian: Xwn; Pahlavi: Huna), or Hunni, Yun or Xūn, were an Iranian-speaking people who were prominent in Transoxania and Bactria.

The Xionites (Chionitae) are first mentioned with Kushans (Cuseni) by Ammianus Marcellinus who spent the winter of 356-57 CE in their Balkh territory. They arrived with the wave of immigration from Central Asia into Iran in late antiquity. They were influenced by the Kushan and Bactrian cultures, while patronizing the Eastern Iranian languages, and became a threat on the northeastern frontier of the Sassanid Empire.

The Huns were a group of nomadic people who first appeared in Europe from east of the Volga River, region of the earlier Scythians, with a migration intertwined with the Alans. They were first mentioned as Hunnoi by Tacitus. Initially being near the Caspian Sea in 91 AD, the Huns migrated to the southeastern area of the Caucasus by about 150 AD and into Europe by 370 AD, where they established a vast Hunnic Empire. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection.

However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Priscus mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have been the subject of debate for centuries. Numerous other languages were spoken within the Hun pax including Gothic (East Germanic), which was widely used as a lingua franca in the Hunnic territories. Their main military technique was mounted archery.

The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the western Roman Empire. They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453; their empire broke up the next year. Their descendants, or successors with similar names, are recorded by neighbouring populations to the south, east, and west as having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia approximately from the 4th century to the 6th century. Variants of the Hun name are recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.

The cause of the Hunnic move into Europe may have been expansion of the Rouran, who had created a massive empire across the Asian continent in the mid-4th century, including the Tatar lands as well, which they took over from the Xianbei. It is supposed that this westward spread of Rouran power pushed the Huns into Europe over the years.

The subject of the Hunnic language is met with much controversy. So far, there is no general consensus on the exact origin or classification of Hunnic. A group of authors suppose that it may have been a member of, or related to, the Turkic language family.

Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: On Tocharian origins

Tarim mummies – Wikipedia

Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) – Eupedia