secrets of silk road

As a history buff, and person who's always fascinated by how ancient peoples and cultures moved and evolved, I went to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana the other day when I heard they are exhibiting "Secrets of Silk Road," mummies and artifacts from Urumuqi (烏魯木齊) Museum that for the first time are allowed to travel outside Asia. It was a great treat--I spent 3 and a half hours there when my original thought was for a 2-hour street parking at this very access friendly little museum of Orange County. 

Among the more notable exhibits I saw there are:

* The Beauty of Xiaohe: Some of you may have heard of "The Beauty of Loulan" (樓蘭美女) in history classes growing up, this is not it, but very close. Xiaohe (小河)  is 110 miles west of the Loulan ruin, and this "beauty" is a woman mummy that looks in her 30s when she died, with fair skin, round eyes, long eye lashes, high cheek bones, and lush reddish hair surrounding her shoulder; in other words, totally Caucasian looking. It is dated about 3800 years old.

* The Yingpan Man: Found near Lop Nor (羅布泊, the Chinese nuclear test site), dated about 1900 years old, this is a 6 foot tall man who was buried with a gold foil mask (a Greek tradition) that covers his blond bearded face, a robe that features Roman-Greco symbols, a necklace and a Roman glass bowl. According to Dr. Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania who had organized and visited the excavations a few times, the Yingpan man probably was a rich trader from an Iranian-speaking people whose homeland was in what is now Uzbekistan who died relatively young in a place far from home.

* A wool wall-hanging cloth, found at a city near the southwestern edge of the Tarim Basin (塔里木盆地), dated between 2nd century BC and 2nd century AD, depicts a blue-eyed soldier with a headband that symbols the kingship in the Hellenistic world as often seen on Greek coins. Also on the upper half of the cloth is a centaur, a half man and half horse creature that is a mythological being of Greek origin.

* An official paper that describes the cities travelled and permissions granted for traveling/passing-through these cities by military garrison officers in Chinese; a contract outlining the sale of a female slave in ancient Iranian (Persian). Documents like these are dated between 7-9 centuries AD, when the silk road commerce between East and West was at its height.  

* Also, if you ever wonder when and how Christianity was first brought to China in historic record--It was during mid 7th century, through the Silk Road: After the Tang (唐) dynasty conquered Turkestan (突厥), Christianity, known as Jingjiao (景教), or the Luminous Religion, was introduced to China by the "Church of the East," or Nestorian Church. The Nestorian Stele (大秦景教流行中國碑), erected at the Tang capital of Chang'an (長安)  in 781, describes the introduction of Christianity and the subsequent flourishing of Christian communities throughout China. (It was banned later, however, by Emperor Wuzong 唐武宗 in 845, and gradually declined and disappeared from China).

I bought a book "The Mummies of Urumuchi" at the museum gift shop after I finished the exhibits. The book's author is Elizabeth Wayland Barber, an archaeologist, linguist, and world authority on ancient textile who was on Dr. Mair's team to Xinjiang to examine and study the mummies and the artifacts in 1994. (Her narratives, as well as Dr. Mair's, appear in the self-guide audio that describe many of the exhibits as you tour along). It is such a fascinating story telling as well as serious academic work I couldn't help but finish reading it in fast and furious fashion a few days after I bought it. 

According to Dr. Barber, and based on archaeological finds, linguistic analysis, collaboration with Chinese history records, the earliest settlers of Tarim (in Loulan around 2000 BC) are probably Indo-Iranian coming from the southern Russian prairie, with their domesticated horses and spoked wheel technology, looking for water and grassland for farming and herding, hopping oasis after oasis along the northern edge of the Tarim Basin; followed around 1200 BC by a branch of Indo-European who were culturally and linguistically next-of-kin to Celtics, ancestors of Irish and Scottish people of today. The Turkic people (Uyghurs, 維吾爾族人) were relatively late comers to this region, appearing in Tarim in the 10th century AD, as were the Mongoloids and various nomadic peoples from the northern steppe, and the Han Chinese from the East. It is a region in constant ethnic and cultural mix and flux, summarily speaking. Paintings dated 600-1000 AD of Indo-European speaking people in Tarim show Buddhist devotees of all races--Chinese, Indian, Mongol, and Turkic types, as well as fair-haired, blue-eyed, white-cheeked Caucasians...

Kind of like what we have here today in California, isn't it?