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Famous Mummies From
China Were Caucasian

4-30-5
 
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.
 
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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.

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