DNA Results for the Taklamakan/Urumqi Mummies

[Hando]

Also, when scientists/scholars talk about the Ural-Altaic area, what exactly do they mean? The land mass between the Ural mountains and the Altaic mountains is vast and thus not specific enough. I ask this question because it has been said that Koreans originate from the Ural-Altaic region...

[Hando]

Has anyone been to Tarim Basin?

Hi, I am planning a trip to the Tarim Basin. I want to see the sites where these mummies were dug up. Like Loulan etc. However, I think I might have read somewhere that this is nigh impossible, due to sensitive high security nuclear plant areas. Is this true? Does anyone have any advice or recommendations?
I plan to visit Tadjikistan first. I want to cross over into Xinjiang from the Pamirs in Tadjikistan. It would be lovely to do so on camel back, but I would gladly settle for taking a jeep across the border, if that is feasible....

[rainbow]

Thanks and I agree with you. Altho, now I wonder if someone will counter argue that the Moran of the Masai are somehow related to the Celtic/Irish sir name Moran!

I won't argue about it but I thought of the Celtic Moran too.
And why does a Scottish drummer wear a leoaprd skin? lol
Was there some sort of African-Scottish cultural exchange? How, and when?

[Hando]

1) The tartan weave is almost universal:

http://www.kilts.biz/kilt_stories/who_says_a_tartan_is_just_for_scots.html

---
Any place where the people have the ability to weave cloth is likely to have some kind of tartan.
The latest unexpected place I have discovered tartans being used is Africa. The warriors of the Masai people, called Moran, are frequently outfitted with bright red tartan.
...
Tartan truly is an ancient art form, which can be found the world over.
---

Thanks and I agree with you. Altho, now I wonder if someone will counter argue that the Moran of the Masai are somehow related to the Celtic/Irish sir name Moran!

[Stevo]

Grave #69 in the Egyin Gol Mongolian necropolis contained an individual who could have been R1b, although he might have been an N, as well (R1b scored 32 in Athey's Predictor; N scored 31). The body in Grave #70 scored only 25 for R1a, although no other y-haplos had scores that were close.

Still, I agree with you that the Tocharians were not Celts. They were Indo-Europeans like the Celts and spoke a centum language with certain Celtic affinities, just as Italic has Celtic affinities but was not itself Celtic.

I also do not believe the Celts were genetically homogeneous. Most of them may have been R1b, but that is far from certain.

[lgmayka]

That was my point; that the celts belonged to a culture that was widely distributed over europe and asia. Call the culture indo-european if you like. The celts certainly did not call themselves "celts" until recently.

The distinction is important to me because genetically, everyone associates Celts specifically with R1b. And yet, the famous Mongolian necropolis from more than 2000 years ago had an R1a individual. From such evidence one might reasonably infer that Indo-Europeans reached as far east as Mongolia, but not that the Celts specifically did.

Of course, one could easily imagine a productive Bronze Age R1b culture producing interesting goods in Europe, teamed with a highly mobile and entrepreneurial R1a culture that transported and traded those goods far into Asia.

[Stevo]

Since pointy hats were mentioned associated with both Celts and Tocharians, I thought you all might be interested in some of the grave finds from the burial mound of the 6th-century B.C. Celtic chieftain at Hochdorf, near Stuttgart in Baden-Wuerttemberg, in Southwestern Germany.

Note the pointy hat.

Here is an illustration of the inner burial chamber.

Here is the home page of the web site dedicated to the Hochdorf chieftain's grave mound.

[Johnserrat]

That was my point; that the celts belonged to a culture that was widely distributed over europe and asia. Call the culture indo-european if you like. The celts certainly did not call themselves "celts" until recently.

John

[lgmayka]

Elizabeth Wayland Barber, a world-renowned expert on prehistoric textiles, has written a book on this subject that is worth reading. I include a link to an article in which her book is mentioned:

http://home.eircom.net/content/irela...view=Eircomnet

But did you read her considered opinion?
---
In her book The Mummies of Urumchi, the renowned textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber examines the tartan-style cloth and reckons it can be traced back to Anatolia and the Caucasus.

Her theory is this group divided, starting in the Caucasus - one group went west and another east.
---

Her geography here perfectly fits the most common opinion concerning:

a) The spread of horse domestication technology (horseback, horse-drawn wagons, chariots)

b) The spread of Indo-European languages.

Her opinion, in other words, is that the tartan cloth is simply Indo-European, not Celtic in particular.

[Johnserrat]

[QUOTE=lgmayka]1) The tartan weave is almost universal:

http://www.kilts.biz/kilt_stories/who_says_a_tartan_is_just_for_scots.html

---
Any place where the people have the ability to weave cloth is likely to have some kind of tartan. Once the skills are acquired to produce solid color cloth, the next logical step to make it more decorative is to add stripes. If you weave stripes into the warp and weft of the cloth, you have a tartan.
...
In the illustration (shown here) of courtesan ****suka of Tamaya, painted by Jippensha Ikku between 1802-1822, tartan cloth can clearly be seen.

The Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, in the Himalayas, is famous for its tradition of fine hand woven textiles, many of which are of a tartan pattern.
...
The latest unexpected place I have discovered tartans being used is Africa. The warriors of the Masai people, called Moran, are frequently outfitted with bright red tartan.
...
Tartan truly is an ancient art form, which can be found the world over.
QUOTE]


I have to disagree with you on this one. The japanese reference is after 1800, when there had already been significant contact with europeans during the Edo period. The spanish reference on the link makes sense because there were many celtic people living in spain. The spanish have their own kilts and even bagpipes. When did the bhutanese and masai start wearing tartan textiles?

Elizabeth Wayland Barber, a world-renowned expert on prehistoric textiles, has written a book on this subject that is worth reading. I include a link to an article in which her book is mentioned:

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/8758112?view=Eircomnet

John

[lgmayka]

My Italian sources tell the first to split off from the family was Germanic.
This would lead to an Italo-Celtic family; proof of that would be lexical similarities, the same singular genitive ending in i and the same construction in case of deponent and future verbs.

The statistical paper I referenced gives 4100 BC as the split-off of Celtic, and 3500 BC as the split between Italic and Germanic. The rather small difference might even be within the statistical margin of error.

My main point was that Tocharian had split off much earlier, and by the time of the mummies had been separated from Celtic for many thousands of years.

[F.E.C.]

My Italian sources tell the first to split off from the family was Germanic.
This would lead to an Italo-Celtic family; proof of that would be lexical similarities, the same singular genitive ending in i and the same construction in case of deponent and future verbs.

[lgmayka]

Italo-Germanic? According to this source, the Proto-Germanic lived in northern Europe and the Celts lived south of them and separated the Germanic from Italy:

Your cited source is talking about a much later period of residency. My source

http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/Psych/research/Evolution/Gray&Atkinson2003.pdf

claims that the Celtic language (and hence the historical Celts) originally broke off from a common Celto-Italo-Germanic base around 4100 BC. In other words, the Celts would have first set out westward at that time.

[Eki]

1) The tartan weave is almost universal:


2) We know very well what the Celts spoke: Celtic languages! The best statistical analysis I've seen says that Tocharian broke off from the rest of Indo-European about 5900 BC, and went east. Celtic, in contrast, broke off from Italo-Germanic around 4100 BC, and went west. By the time of the mummies, Tocharian and Celtic had been separated for many thousands of years.

Italo-Germanic? According to this source, the Proto-Germanic lived in northern Europe and the Celts lived south of them and separated the Germanic from Italy:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/nordic-faq/part2_NORDEN/section-4.html

For the following years, 2,000 B.C. - 200 B.C., the map of cultures in
Northern Europe looks almost static:
* In the North there are proto-Sámis hunting and moving all the way
from the Ural mountains to the Norwegian coast.
* From Gulf of Finland to River Volga there are proto-Finns,
* and south of them Indo-European Balts and Slavs.
* Denmark, Pomerania and the south-western Scandinavian peninsula
were inhabited by proto-Germanic people.
* In the South the domain of the Celts was south of River Elbe,
stretching to the Pyrenées, to the Mediterranean and over the Alps
and the Carpats.

[lgmayka]

Textiles experts have confirmed that the method of weaving was virtually identical in terms of the tartans. Thus, the similarities go beyond the mere superficial to a strong likelihood that at minimum the Tocharians had contact with the Celts, and at maximum were of the same culture. We appear to have better information about what the Tocharians were speaking then we do the celts of the same era. To me there is a strong likelihood that the culture to which the celts belonged was widely pervasive across europe and asia.

1) The tartan weave is almost universal:

http://www.kilts.biz/kilt_stories/who_says_a_tartan_is_just_for_scots.html

---
Any place where the people have the ability to weave cloth is likely to have some kind of tartan. Once the skills are acquired to produce solid color cloth, the next logical step to make it more decorative is to add stripes. If you weave stripes into the warp and weft of the cloth, you have a tartan.
...
In the illustration (shown here) of courtesan ****suka of Tamaya, painted by Jippensha Ikku between 1802-1822, tartan cloth can clearly be seen.

The Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, in the Himalayas, is famous for its tradition of fine hand woven textiles, many of which are of a tartan pattern.
...
The latest unexpected place I have discovered tartans being used is Africa. The warriors of the Masai people, called Moran, are frequently outfitted with bright red tartan.
...
Tartan truly is an ancient art form, which can be found the world over.
---

2) We know very well what the Celts spoke: Celtic languages! The best statistical analysis I've seen says that Tocharian broke off from the rest of Indo-European about 5900 BC, and went east. Celtic, in contrast, broke off from Italo-Germanic around 4100 BC, and went west. By the time of the mummies, Tocharian and Celtic had been separated for many thousands of years.

3) Instead of a single culture across Europe and Asia, which would have been quite unmaintainable with the technology of that time, it is at least more reasonable to imagine trade routes across the steppe, from the Celts of Central Europe all the way to the Tocharians of Central Asia.