The interesting practice of mummification has been performed by many ancient cultures in the past. In Egypt, the royal family, including priests, physicians and learned men, were all mummified — each identifiable by his/her belongings or the burial garments and ornaments.

In fact, cultures even buried things they believed the dead might need in the afterlife. Then in some cultures crude forms of mummification were used just to preserve the bodies. Strange and interesting embalming fluids and techniques were used to preserve the corpses. The purpose known only to those who glorified their dead in such a way. The mummies found so far are mostly near the settlements where the people of the same origin or religion lived. But what we have here are a whole lot of mummies that have been found which did not remotely belong to the culture or race of the region where history tells us they lived — the mummified bodies found in the foothills of the Tian Shan Mountains in China, have mystified researchers and historians alike! They are supposed to be 4,000 years old, with European features and buried in the same way that the West buried their dead at that time. But what were Caucasians, (white people), doing in China 4000 years ago?

The first mummy of the many discovered later was discovered by Wang Binghua in 1978, while he was looking for some ancient ruins.

Later on, more than a hundred of these strange mummies were discovered from four places around the same region. The place lies at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, which has a hot climate with rocky soil that must have been why the mummies are in such good condition and so well preserved. In fact some of them are even better preserved than the mummies of ancient Egypt. Another strange fact is their garments. There are pointy hats resembling the black hats associated with witches’ hats and one had a red tunic on with gold embroidery and even had a foil gold mask on. Reconstruction shows decidedly western features including blonde hair and blue eyes and heights up to more than six feet.

Researcher Dr Victor Mair brought the mummies to the attention of the rest of the world and also has been carrying out a lot of research on them. One mummy had a surgical mark on its neck, which had been stitched back, which means that they were also people possessing medical knowledge.

All the evidence that has been unearthed about the mummies tells us a story — that almost four thousand years ago, the Tarim Basin area in China had a community of white people from the West living there. These people lived there for almost 1,500 years and then mysteriously disappeared. Yes, disappeared and the only evidence that they left behind were these strange mummies. Scientists and historians are now challenged not only to change their previous claim that Europeans came to Asia much later but also to find out where the settlers of the Tarim Basin actually came from. Evidence suggests that they were not of any Asian origin.

An archaeologist, Dolkun Kamberi from Uygur has also been able to dig up more of the bodies. He himself says that as a child he remembers hearing folktales of white people in the ancient past who had settled in China. His own features are non-Asian and he thinks that the Tarim Basin ancient European people might be his ancestors.

According to Victor Mair, who even organised a conference to the research and origin of these mummies, he thinks it is premature to draw any conclusions to the mystery of these mummies. When he first saw the original bodies in 1987, he states that he will never forget his shock. He stood there for a couple of hours wondering whether it was some kind of a hoax as the bodies looked so alive and were completely intact looking like they were not of the region at all.

Among the sifting sands of the region, skeletons and corpses are continuously being found apart from these European-looking mummies. A piece of skull found by Kamberi seems to be half a million years old, which means one cannot be sure who were originally the natives of the area or how many times it had been inhabited by what kind of people. As to the Tarim Basin mummies, they still remain wrapped in shrouds of mystery. Where did they come from, how did they get here? And why did they disappear from a place they seemed to have settled in?

There are suggestions that they may have come from the ancient Silk Route connecting the west to the east. Or did they sail in luxurious well-equipped ships? As to their religion, they seemed to worship the sun according to the researchers and they wove cloth in the same way that the Celtic (Irish and Central European) people did, which is really amazing.

Dr Mair wrote in an article for Archaeology magazine stating, “The new finds are also forcing a re-examination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards and red-blond hair.”

Interestingly, he has found three felt caps, which are identical. But how and where he found them is quite intriguing. One was found on the frozen body of a man who lived 4,000 years ago. The body was found during the 1990s in the Alps near the border of Austria and Italy. The other one is from a village in Southern China and the third one is from the mummies in Tarim Basin! So, how old is man? In fact how old is civilised man? We may never know.