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The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West
"A fascinating and readable account...a valuable compendium of recent research on a little-known region." --"Archaeology," "Essential reading for archaeologists and scholars." --"Choice"
The best-preserved mummies in the world are found not in Egypt or Peru but in the museums of Xinjiang, the westernmost province of modern China. For thousands of years the occupants of the barren wastes and oases that would later become the Silk Road buried their dead in the desiccating sands of the Taklimakan, the second greatest desert on earth. This arid environment, preserving body and clothing, allows an unparalleled glimpse into the lives and appearance of a prehistoric people: these are the faces of ancient Indo-Europeans who settled in the Tarim Basin on the western rim of China some four millennia ago, 2000 years before West and East recognized each other's existence.
The book examines the clues left by physical remains; economy, technology, and textiles; and traces of local languages. It is the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of recent times. 190 illustrations, 13 in color.
The best-preserved mummies in the world are found not in Egypt or Peru but in the museums of Xinjiang, the westernmost province of modern China. For thousands of years the occupants of the barren wastes and oases that would later become the Silk Road buried their dead in the desiccating sands of the Taklimakan, the second greatest desert on earth. This arid environment, preserving body and clothing, allows an unparalleled glimpse into the lives and appearance of a prehistoric people: these are the faces of ancient Indo-Europeans who settled in the Tarim Basin on the western rim of China some four millennia ago, 2000 years before West and East recognized each other's existence.
The book examines the clues left by physical remains; economy, technology, and textiles; and traces of local languages. It is the definitive account of one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of recent times. 190 illustrations, 13 in color.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2000
9 people are currently reading
352 people want to read
About the author
J.P. Mallory
20 books41 followersJames Patrick Mallory is an Irish-American archaeologist and Indo-Europeanist. Mallory is a professor at the Queen's University, Belfast.
Born in 1945, Mallory received his A.B. in History from Occidental College in California in 1967, then served three years in the US Army as a military police sergeant. He received his Ph.D. in Indo-European studies from UCLA in 1975. He has held several posts at Queen's beginning in 1977, becoming Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in 1998.
Professor Mallory's research has focused on Early Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, the problem of the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the archaeology of early Ireland. He favors an integrative approach to these issues, comparing literary, linguistic and archaeological evidence to solve historical puzzles.
One consequence of this preference for an integrated approach is that Professor Mallory has been strongly critical of the widely publicised theory of Indo-European origins held by Colin Renfrew which locates the urheimat or homeland of this language family in early Neolithic Anatolia and associates its spread with the spread of agriculture. A key element of his criticism has been a vigorous defence of lingustic palaeontology as a valid tool for solving the Indo-European homeland problem, arguing that Renfrew is sceptical about it precisely because it offers some of the strongest evidence against the latter's own model. Professor Mallory recently published a new book with D.Q. Adams, entitled The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World and published by Oxford University Press, where doubtless the debate with Renfrew will resume in earnest.
He is the editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, published by the Institute for the Study of Man of which Roger Pearson is the founding editor.
Born in 1945, Mallory received his A.B. in History from Occidental College in California in 1967, then served three years in the US Army as a military police sergeant. He received his Ph.D. in Indo-European studies from UCLA in 1975. He has held several posts at Queen's beginning in 1977, becoming Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in 1998.
Professor Mallory's research has focused on Early Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, the problem of the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the archaeology of early Ireland. He favors an integrative approach to these issues, comparing literary, linguistic and archaeological evidence to solve historical puzzles.
One consequence of this preference for an integrated approach is that Professor Mallory has been strongly critical of the widely publicised theory of Indo-European origins held by Colin Renfrew which locates the urheimat or homeland of this language family in early Neolithic Anatolia and associates its spread with the spread of agriculture. A key element of his criticism has been a vigorous defence of lingustic palaeontology as a valid tool for solving the Indo-European homeland problem, arguing that Renfrew is sceptical about it precisely because it offers some of the strongest evidence against the latter's own model. Professor Mallory recently published a new book with D.Q. Adams, entitled The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World and published by Oxford University Press, where doubtless the debate with Renfrew will resume in earnest.
He is the editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, published by the Institute for the Study of Man of which Roger Pearson is the founding editor.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 2, 2013
I bought this book because I've always been vaguely interested in the Tarim mummies but have learnt nothing about them. Also because it was written by Victor Mair who is an excellent scholar. I've really enjoyed books by him in the past, and got to hear him talk at the Dunhuang conference I went to a couple years ago. The book is actually so much more than a book on the mummies. It's actually a history of East Central Asia. It looks at the different people and cultures that lived in the area, what ancient European and Chinese sources had to say about them, what archaeological expeditions from the early 20th century on have found, as well as an incredibly detailed history of the linguistics of the region, as well as indo-european languages in general (The other author being an expert in prehistoric archeology). While it claims to be a popular history it does go into a great deal of depth about archeology, linguistics and history. I feel like I know so much more about the region than when I started and that it will make a great reference book in the future. The chapters on the mummies themselves are interesting, they give details of the burials, the clothes, the grave goods and the different areas and time frames. The only criticism of the book I have is that they do this divided by theme, so you get all the stuff on the textiles together, rather than each individual burial. As there are so many different sites and burials it can be a bit confusing to remember who came from where and when so I found myself flipping back quite a bit. I think it would have been better to have gone into detail about each burial all together. But still otherwise it was great, and the burial with the screaming baby was very easy to remember! The book has lots and lots of great illustrations, black and white as well as lovely colour plates of the mummies. As well as illustrations of the mummies tattoos, maps and diagrams of the graves. It was a very interesting book. Definitely one I'd recommend.
April 15, 2011
As odd as this topic might seem, it is fascinating. For many years, explorers and archaeologists have uncovered ancient burials in Central Asia of people who look very Caucasoid, along with cultural artifacts which appear similar to Europeans', especially the Celts.
These mummies were preserved not by treatment, but naturally by the very dry climate and, in some cases, very salty environment.
Although this is a very controversial topic, since the Chinese government resists any implication that certain cultural milestones might be the result of outside influence, it seems clear that our ancestors were much more mobile than previously thought. Significant cultural exchange between East and West took place in Central Asia, and both groups benefitted.
Highly recommended!
These mummies were preserved not by treatment, but naturally by the very dry climate and, in some cases, very salty environment.
Although this is a very controversial topic, since the Chinese government resists any implication that certain cultural milestones might be the result of outside influence, it seems clear that our ancestors were much more mobile than previously thought. Significant cultural exchange between East and West took place in Central Asia, and both groups benefitted.
Highly recommended!
October 10, 2019
The mummies of the Tarim Basin are, of course, those associated with the manuscripts written in the so-called Tocharian languages (among many others), which famously caused a minor crisis in Indo-European studies last century by virtue of being centum languages found to the east of the satem languages. If you run in different circles, you may also know them for providing us with large amounts of beautifully preserved fabrics, including very old twills and tartans, which are always exciting and just as out of place as the languages.
To Mallory and Mair, however, those are afterthoughts, and by far the most noteworthy thing about them is that they're ``Caucasoid'' rather than ``Mongoloid'' (terms they were happy to commit to print in the year of our Lord 2000), and therefore European, somehow, in China.
In many ways The Tarim Mummies is exactly the book I expected it to be, but the authors' racism is a constant distracting undercurrent: the inhabitants of the basin are examined through the writings of contemporary cultures who knew about them (Greeks, Chinese), but when the Chinese note that they were known for their sense of rhythm, it's called ``a reversal of ethnic stereotyping'' and M&M actually type the words ``Kucha was the Harlem of the Tang dynasty''; the major language families of the surrounding regions are discussed, but their speakers are all bizarrely racialised and language is equated with culture and ethnicity in a way that would have been embarrassing in a book written a century earlier; when the mummies themselves are examined only the ``Caucasoid'' ones are discussed,† comparing them to the modern ``Homo Alpinus'' [sic!] populations of the Hindu Kush and Pamirs (oh, but they're just quoting—completely uncritically); the chapter on the tartans is openly hostile to the very idea of Chinese archaeologists examining the textiles themselves, stopping just short of calling them petty children who should get out of the way of the Western grownups; &c.
The low point comes in chapter 7, Skulls, Genes and Knights with Long Swords, where the authors vaguely acknowledge the ``troubled history'' of craniometry before suggesting that the ``general avoidance of anything that might smack of ‘racism’'' has gone too far and just going ahead and gleefully printing a bunch of bullshit tables and graphs anyway, including one comparing the ``cephalic index'' of the Tocharians with those of ``Teutons'' and speakers of various centum and satem languages—that one ostensibly to criticise it, but waggling their eyebrows suggestively all the while. In a twist surprising no-one, they also managed to find a population geneticist eager to make all the same mistakes in a more fashionable medium, but fortunately he was prevented from carrying off most of his DNA samples by the Chinese government, so the chapter isn't as long as it might have been.
I actually do blame Mair for all of this, because after that—for fifty or so pages, before a conclusion that tries to credit ``Europoids'' with transmitting the technology that kickstarted Chinese civilisation—the Tocharian languages become more prominent in the discussion, and Mallory's hand becomes much more apparent. The discussion remains shallow and limited to vocabulary, though, and it doesn't come close to salvaging the book as a whole.
The author's bigoted preoccupations destroying 90% of what would otherwise have been an interesting book is a longstanding tradition in history in general and Indo-European studies in particular, obviously, but this is still a really surprising book to have been written in 2000. Some of it (like the Harlem comment) can surely be blamed on an immensely misguided attempt to make the book more palatable to the general public (from what I've seen of him at Language Log, Mair is absolutely that kind of person), but that doesn't excuse it or explain all the rest.
Even if Mair (if it is just Mair) hadn't been the person he is, though, I still don't think The Tarim Mummies would have been a great book—the discussed history of the Tarim Basin spans three millennia and covers a large geographical area that's been subject to repeated and uneven massive demographic upheavals; it just doesn't make much sense to try to handle it in a single book at the level the authors try to.
It's disappointing—Mallory wrote the only book I gave five stars this year ( In Search of the Indo-Europeans , which, in retrospect, suffered from a lot of the same shallowness and sloppiness as The Tarim Mummies), and I had really been looking forward to this one.
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† The most disturbing aspect of that chapter actually isn't anything M&M say, but the fact that so many archaeologists seem to want to fuck the mummies, giving them names like ``Beauty of Krorän'', ``Lady of the Inscrutable Smile'', and ``Ravishing Redhead''. It's enough to make you want to be cremated.
To Mallory and Mair, however, those are afterthoughts, and by far the most noteworthy thing about them is that they're ``Caucasoid'' rather than ``Mongoloid'' (terms they were happy to commit to print in the year of our Lord 2000), and therefore European, somehow, in China.
In many ways The Tarim Mummies is exactly the book I expected it to be, but the authors' racism is a constant distracting undercurrent: the inhabitants of the basin are examined through the writings of contemporary cultures who knew about them (Greeks, Chinese), but when the Chinese note that they were known for their sense of rhythm, it's called ``a reversal of ethnic stereotyping'' and M&M actually type the words ``Kucha was the Harlem of the Tang dynasty''; the major language families of the surrounding regions are discussed, but their speakers are all bizarrely racialised and language is equated with culture and ethnicity in a way that would have been embarrassing in a book written a century earlier; when the mummies themselves are examined only the ``Caucasoid'' ones are discussed,† comparing them to the modern ``Homo Alpinus'' [sic!] populations of the Hindu Kush and Pamirs (oh, but they're just quoting—completely uncritically); the chapter on the tartans is openly hostile to the very idea of Chinese archaeologists examining the textiles themselves, stopping just short of calling them petty children who should get out of the way of the Western grownups; &c.
The low point comes in chapter 7, Skulls, Genes and Knights with Long Swords, where the authors vaguely acknowledge the ``troubled history'' of craniometry before suggesting that the ``general avoidance of anything that might smack of ‘racism’'' has gone too far and just going ahead and gleefully printing a bunch of bullshit tables and graphs anyway, including one comparing the ``cephalic index'' of the Tocharians with those of ``Teutons'' and speakers of various centum and satem languages—that one ostensibly to criticise it, but waggling their eyebrows suggestively all the while. In a twist surprising no-one, they also managed to find a population geneticist eager to make all the same mistakes in a more fashionable medium, but fortunately he was prevented from carrying off most of his DNA samples by the Chinese government, so the chapter isn't as long as it might have been.
I actually do blame Mair for all of this, because after that—for fifty or so pages, before a conclusion that tries to credit ``Europoids'' with transmitting the technology that kickstarted Chinese civilisation—the Tocharian languages become more prominent in the discussion, and Mallory's hand becomes much more apparent. The discussion remains shallow and limited to vocabulary, though, and it doesn't come close to salvaging the book as a whole.
The author's bigoted preoccupations destroying 90% of what would otherwise have been an interesting book is a longstanding tradition in history in general and Indo-European studies in particular, obviously, but this is still a really surprising book to have been written in 2000. Some of it (like the Harlem comment) can surely be blamed on an immensely misguided attempt to make the book more palatable to the general public (from what I've seen of him at Language Log, Mair is absolutely that kind of person), but that doesn't excuse it or explain all the rest.
Even if Mair (if it is just Mair) hadn't been the person he is, though, I still don't think The Tarim Mummies would have been a great book—the discussed history of the Tarim Basin spans three millennia and covers a large geographical area that's been subject to repeated and uneven massive demographic upheavals; it just doesn't make much sense to try to handle it in a single book at the level the authors try to.
It's disappointing—Mallory wrote the only book I gave five stars this year ( In Search of the Indo-Europeans , which, in retrospect, suffered from a lot of the same shallowness and sloppiness as The Tarim Mummies), and I had really been looking forward to this one.
--------
† The most disturbing aspect of that chapter actually isn't anything M&M say, but the fact that so many archaeologists seem to want to fuck the mummies, giving them names like ``Beauty of Krorän'', ``Lady of the Inscrutable Smile'', and ``Ravishing Redhead''. It's enough to make you want to be cremated.
August 25, 2016
I have been interested in this subject since I read Elizabeth Wayland Barber's "The Mummies of Urumchi". This is an excellent, well written analysis of the archeological and linguistic evidence regarding the caucasian mummies found in the Tarim basin, dating back to pre-Christian history. Due to the arid nature of the basin, the mummies are more perfectly preserved than Egyptian mummies, partially because the preservation was natural and accidental, rather than purposeful. Many look like they are sleeping and their clothing and hair are mostly intact, complete with colour. The text flows astonishingly well for an academic subject and the many illustrations are helpful and illuminating. One of the biggest issues brought to light by this book is the lack of funding, or apparent willingness on the part of the Chinese government to preserve more of the dig finds properly, before they are robbed further or disturbed by modern advancement and traffic. A fascinating read.
September 18, 2018
I’m optimistically creating a “mummies” shelf so I can find more books about mummies to put on it.
First: this book is almost twenty years old. It doesn’t deal as sensitively with aspects of racial and cultural identity as I would like. That being said, it’s a fairly dispassionate book and pulls in a lot of sources from a variety of cultures (Chinese, Greek, Turkic, Iranian.) Their ultimate conclusions about the impact the prehistoric maybe-Tocharians had on their Chinese neighbors are fairly modest — they may have passed on chariot technology and they probably passed on wheat and sheep cultivation.
I’d say the most exciting and unexpected part of this book, for me, was learning about the variety and reach of Iranian languages and the corresponding ethnic groups’ contacts across central and east Asia in the first millennia BC and AD. I’d heard of the Scythians but didn’t really know what they were up to outside the Greeks’ sphere.
First: this book is almost twenty years old. It doesn’t deal as sensitively with aspects of racial and cultural identity as I would like. That being said, it’s a fairly dispassionate book and pulls in a lot of sources from a variety of cultures (Chinese, Greek, Turkic, Iranian.) Their ultimate conclusions about the impact the prehistoric maybe-Tocharians had on their Chinese neighbors are fairly modest — they may have passed on chariot technology and they probably passed on wheat and sheep cultivation.
I’d say the most exciting and unexpected part of this book, for me, was learning about the variety and reach of Iranian languages and the corresponding ethnic groups’ contacts across central and east Asia in the first millennia BC and AD. I’d heard of the Scythians but didn’t really know what they were up to outside the Greeks’ sphere.
May 13, 2007
A good primer for over 2500 years of Tarim Basin history...
December 21, 2014
The Tarim Mummies is an excellent book for anyone travelling to China's western regions in so many regards--its short introductions and sidebars to a variety of topics (language, archaeology, history, explorers, migrations, art history, textiles, animal husbandry) are excellent and make this book far more readable than many available 'introductions' to the region. Yes, the focus is on the Tarim mummies (of which there are/were thousands), but in addressing the question of who they were, one first has to understand the geology, history (human and non-), languages, cultures of the region, etc. And so regardless of your actual interest in mummies, if you're looking for a good introduction to Xinjiang, the ancient Silk Road, and related topics, grab this book. In fact, I've recommended it to many friends as a "very out-of-the-ordinary travel guide" to western China. It's well-written (OK, some parts, particularly the linguistics chapter I admit to finding a bit dry--more on this below), but the authors little insertions of dry humour humanize the topic and text and when you finish the last page, you will be delightfully well-informed of this fascinating part of China and its many histories.
If you're interested in the ancient languages of Central Asia/Western China, the former Russian steppes and beyond, this is also an excellent introduction, and although I'm personally less interested in this area, each time I read this book I do hover in these sections a little longer. It's a well organized and basic introduction to both the languages of the region and some of the daunting linguistic questions specialists are still struggling over. I hope search engines turn up this book for those searching for information on the topic; hopefully the subtitle "Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West" highlights the breadth of information covered in the text.
And of course, if you're interested in mummies--go no further.
If you're interested in the ancient languages of Central Asia/Western China, the former Russian steppes and beyond, this is also an excellent introduction, and although I'm personally less interested in this area, each time I read this book I do hover in these sections a little longer. It's a well organized and basic introduction to both the languages of the region and some of the daunting linguistic questions specialists are still struggling over. I hope search engines turn up this book for those searching for information on the topic; hopefully the subtitle "Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West" highlights the breadth of information covered in the text.
And of course, if you're interested in mummies--go no further.
October 21, 2013
I started this book at the end of April and finished it in mid-October. Don't let that fool you, though: the only real problem with this book is that it's too large and heavy to take on the train, and so (for someone like me, anyway) the only time to read it is at bedtime, when I can only get through four pages max before conking out, which is the only reason why it took almost six months of fairly regular reading to finish it. In terms of the content and the writing style, this book is a gem.
This book explores the Tarim mummies, the extraordinarily well preserved mummies found in central Asia, many of whom are of a Caucasian physical type, and tries to figure out who these people were and what they were doing in Asia. It's a really well-written, well-organized, and in-depth look at the history, prehistory, cultures, textiles, archaeology, anthropology, burial practices, and languages of the region. The writers come at the topic from every possible angle to try to gather more information that could help to understand the mummies' identities.
For the most part, the book is understandable at the layman's level. Mallory and Mair explain each topic clearly. My only comprehension problem was related to the length of time it took me to read the book; by the time I got up the late chapter on languages, I was four months away from my reading of the chapter on the groups of people who occupied these areas in the historical record, so I had a little trouble keeping the Andronovo and Afanasevo straight and remembering the characteristics of the Kucheans vs. the Saka and whether some of them might have been the same people. But if you read this book like a normal person in a reasonable amount of time, you should be okay there, although a few big maps in an appendix would have been a welcome addition. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.
This book explores the Tarim mummies, the extraordinarily well preserved mummies found in central Asia, many of whom are of a Caucasian physical type, and tries to figure out who these people were and what they were doing in Asia. It's a really well-written, well-organized, and in-depth look at the history, prehistory, cultures, textiles, archaeology, anthropology, burial practices, and languages of the region. The writers come at the topic from every possible angle to try to gather more information that could help to understand the mummies' identities.
For the most part, the book is understandable at the layman's level. Mallory and Mair explain each topic clearly. My only comprehension problem was related to the length of time it took me to read the book; by the time I got up the late chapter on languages, I was four months away from my reading of the chapter on the groups of people who occupied these areas in the historical record, so I had a little trouble keeping the Andronovo and Afanasevo straight and remembering the characteristics of the Kucheans vs. the Saka and whether some of them might have been the same people. But if you read this book like a normal person in a reasonable amount of time, you should be okay there, although a few big maps in an appendix would have been a welcome addition. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.
December 12, 2017
The book, “The Tarim Mummies Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West”, “by J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair” was about the Tarim mummies. Before the authors talk about the mummies, they show a bit of the background of Victor H. Mair and the mummies. They talk about the steps he had to go through to see the mummies and the people he had to talk to. He went to many graves to recover some of the other mummies and he began to study them. There were both male and female mummies and even children. He talked about the people’s clothing and described what they were wearing. Mair met other researchers along the way who helped him to be able to find the mummies and get to them. Along with that, they talked about how they collected information about the mummies at the archeological site and got certain kinds of samples. The author talks about some of the different mummies that had been coming up as well as the Tarim mummies. One of these mentioned was the Ice Man. One mummy meant a lot to Mair to the point that he gave him a special name. This name he chose was Ur David. They talked about the Greek myths that included the cyclopes and the griffin and Chinese myths. This included things like people with dog heads and cannibals. He talked about Herodotus and told the story of his myth. He also talked about mythical people the Chinese believed in as well. They included pictures of these people. There was one without a head and one with a dog head.
The book shows excellent quality pictures of the mummies and artifacts. Some of them are in black and white and others are in color. As I read the book, I saw he had a passion and love for these mummies and enjoyed his work. Later on in the book, the author talked about the different cultures of ancient peoples. The one picture of Ur David showed good detail and was not fuzzy. I was extremely impressed with this. However though, I did not enjoy the transition from the introduction to the actual book. The writing changed between the introduction and the actual book. In the introduction, they were more laid back and more comfortable to read. The introduction was also more fascinating as far as information wise that the beginning of the book. I enjoyed reading about the mythology within the different cultures. I like some of the Greek mythology and learning more about the culture and people within the book was interesting. I like Griffins and other mythical creatures. As I read about the different Greek creatures, it reminded me of a work I read in high school. It was nice to relate things within the book with things that I already know and learned.
When I read the introduction of the book, I really enjoyed reading all the information and seeing the pictures of the mummies. This book helped me learn a little more about mummies than I already did. Ever since I was younger, I was fascinated with mummies and when I saw this book, it looked interesting and I wanted to read it. I mainly enjoy learning about Egyptian mummies but this book on the Tarim mummies was interesting as well. Reading about how much passion for the mummies Mair had, it was honestly awesome. It was nice that there was someone else who appreciated the love for mummies like I do. Sadly, there are some people who think that mummies are creepy and scary. I think that they are quite interesting and fun to learn about.
Within the book, female warriors and other kinds of people were talked about. Females fought in wars as well. In Chapter six, he began to talk about the mummies themselves. I found it interesting when he talked about the female warriors. It made me think of a movie once that I saw when I was younger with an Amazonian, which he talked about in the book. It was also fun to learn about because it was familiar with the things I learned within my college class.
I enjoyed learning new things from the book and things that I didn’t know before. In my World History class, we learned some similar things and it was nice to be able to relate those things with some in the book. We learned about the same cultures that were mentioned in the book. Within the first chapter, I found myself wandering away from the text to other things I needed to do that day instead of concentrating what was in the book. In ways I also found the first chapter of the book a little boring. When I got to chapter one, it became harder to understand and did not talk about the mummies. If they did, they were extremely vague. They would be mentioned only in sections and few words it would be if something related to it. It almost seemed like they just put it there to keep some people interested.
The author talked more about the cultures and not the mummies within the first chapter. I didn’t expect it, but it wasn’t bad either. I wish I could have heard a little more about the mummies though. I was a little disappointed that the first chapter did not talk about the mummies more. I chose the book to learn about the mummies and not other cultures. I enjoyed learning about the cultures and the mummies in this book. Overall, I honestly would not choose this book if you are wanting, and expecting a whole book about just mummies. If you are someone who wants a book about the cultures as well as other cultures that added up to the mummies, then I would pick this book. The Introduction was great and interesting but the book itself became boring fast. This wasn’t my favorite book, but it was ok to read. Although I didn’t finish the book, it was interesting to learn about the contents within.
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The book shows excellent quality pictures of the mummies and artifacts. Some of them are in black and white and others are in color. As I read the book, I saw he had a passion and love for these mummies and enjoyed his work. Later on in the book, the author talked about the different cultures of ancient peoples. The one picture of Ur David showed good detail and was not fuzzy. I was extremely impressed with this. However though, I did not enjoy the transition from the introduction to the actual book. The writing changed between the introduction and the actual book. In the introduction, they were more laid back and more comfortable to read. The introduction was also more fascinating as far as information wise that the beginning of the book. I enjoyed reading about the mythology within the different cultures. I like some of the Greek mythology and learning more about the culture and people within the book was interesting. I like Griffins and other mythical creatures. As I read about the different Greek creatures, it reminded me of a work I read in high school. It was nice to relate things within the book with things that I already know and learned.
When I read the introduction of the book, I really enjoyed reading all the information and seeing the pictures of the mummies. This book helped me learn a little more about mummies than I already did. Ever since I was younger, I was fascinated with mummies and when I saw this book, it looked interesting and I wanted to read it. I mainly enjoy learning about Egyptian mummies but this book on the Tarim mummies was interesting as well. Reading about how much passion for the mummies Mair had, it was honestly awesome. It was nice that there was someone else who appreciated the love for mummies like I do. Sadly, there are some people who think that mummies are creepy and scary. I think that they are quite interesting and fun to learn about.
Within the book, female warriors and other kinds of people were talked about. Females fought in wars as well. In Chapter six, he began to talk about the mummies themselves. I found it interesting when he talked about the female warriors. It made me think of a movie once that I saw when I was younger with an Amazonian, which he talked about in the book. It was also fun to learn about because it was familiar with the things I learned within my college class.
I enjoyed learning new things from the book and things that I didn’t know before. In my World History class, we learned some similar things and it was nice to be able to relate those things with some in the book. We learned about the same cultures that were mentioned in the book. Within the first chapter, I found myself wandering away from the text to other things I needed to do that day instead of concentrating what was in the book. In ways I also found the first chapter of the book a little boring. When I got to chapter one, it became harder to understand and did not talk about the mummies. If they did, they were extremely vague. They would be mentioned only in sections and few words it would be if something related to it. It almost seemed like they just put it there to keep some people interested.
The author talked more about the cultures and not the mummies within the first chapter. I didn’t expect it, but it wasn’t bad either. I wish I could have heard a little more about the mummies though. I was a little disappointed that the first chapter did not talk about the mummies more. I chose the book to learn about the mummies and not other cultures. I enjoyed learning about the cultures and the mummies in this book. Overall, I honestly would not choose this book if you are wanting, and expecting a whole book about just mummies. If you are someone who wants a book about the cultures as well as other cultures that added up to the mummies, then I would pick this book. The Introduction was great and interesting but the book itself became boring fast. This wasn’t my favorite book, but it was ok to read. Although I didn’t finish the book, it was interesting to learn about the contents within.
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June 17, 2010
Informative book, but the language is a little too convoluted for it to be easily absorbed. Still, fascinating area.
June 10, 2015
I wish there was more material (book itself says there are heaps of undocumented textiles etc.) in the appendices, but I still liked it a lot.
July 5, 2015
beautiful!
August 24, 2021
Beautifully illustrated and well-researched, this is in many ways an excellent introduction to the archaeology of the Tarim Basin (aka eastern Central Asia, present-day East Turkestan or Xinjiang). Chapters 1-3 are particularly worth reading for those interested in ancient Central Asia and so-called Silk Road cultures. The book however is trying to do too much, and in a rather disjointed manner as different chapters are devoted to specific disciplines (archaeology, textile studies, linguistics, genetics, and even craniology) in order to solve, step-by-step, "the mystery" of the origin and identity of the Tarim mummies.
Now the origin of the mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin is not a mystery at all: they are from the Tarim Basin. As they were not mummified on purpose by a specific culture (like for instance the Egyptian mummies were), but were preserved as a result of natural circumstances, the Tarim mummies represent several peoples and cultures in different regions of eastern Central Asia over a period of 2,500 years. But the authors are not really interested in these cultures. In their repeated description of the region as "in between" East and West, they seem to deny the Tarim a culture, or cultures, of its own. What they are primarily interested in, is the presumed ancestry of the mummies, and their professed aim is to prove that these ancestors were Europeans. Not only are they unaware of the fact that ‘Europe’ is a cultural construct that has no relevance whatsoever for premodern Eurasian history (in fact, when speaking of "Europe" they often mean Inner Asia's western steppe zone north of the Caspian and Black Sea), their efforts are rooted in some alarming notions of racial difference and ethnic purity. They distinguish sharply between the representatives of a "Caucasoid" (or "Europoid") and "Mongoloid" race among the mummies, even if the alleged representatives of these groups were found in the same cemetery. Needless to say that any human population on earth has ancestors from the outside, and that mobility and cultural exchange defines all cultures; and even Mair and Mallory have to admit that migrants entered the Tarim Basin from several directions, including the east. But that still tells us nothing about the identity of the mummies. Mair and Mallory, however, associate DNA with identity.
DNA research may have been the flavor of the month in ancient migration studies over the past decades (and in itself is a respectable field), but what is disturbing, is that Mallory and Mair constantly link ‘race’ to culture and even language. As this book was published in 2000, its racialism is both terribly outdated (to say the least) and a foreshadowing of the return of racial thinking in our own time.
Another problem, is that the authors repeatedly equate ancient and modern China, and thereby seem to endorse the claims of the current Chinese regime that Xinjiang has been part of China since time immemorial. The book’s title summarizes what is wrong with it. It both locates the Tarim Basin falsely in "Ancient China" and tendentiously identifies its earliest inhabitants as "peoples from the west".
Now the origin of the mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin is not a mystery at all: they are from the Tarim Basin. As they were not mummified on purpose by a specific culture (like for instance the Egyptian mummies were), but were preserved as a result of natural circumstances, the Tarim mummies represent several peoples and cultures in different regions of eastern Central Asia over a period of 2,500 years. But the authors are not really interested in these cultures. In their repeated description of the region as "in between" East and West, they seem to deny the Tarim a culture, or cultures, of its own. What they are primarily interested in, is the presumed ancestry of the mummies, and their professed aim is to prove that these ancestors were Europeans. Not only are they unaware of the fact that ‘Europe’ is a cultural construct that has no relevance whatsoever for premodern Eurasian history (in fact, when speaking of "Europe" they often mean Inner Asia's western steppe zone north of the Caspian and Black Sea), their efforts are rooted in some alarming notions of racial difference and ethnic purity. They distinguish sharply between the representatives of a "Caucasoid" (or "Europoid") and "Mongoloid" race among the mummies, even if the alleged representatives of these groups were found in the same cemetery. Needless to say that any human population on earth has ancestors from the outside, and that mobility and cultural exchange defines all cultures; and even Mair and Mallory have to admit that migrants entered the Tarim Basin from several directions, including the east. But that still tells us nothing about the identity of the mummies. Mair and Mallory, however, associate DNA with identity.
DNA research may have been the flavor of the month in ancient migration studies over the past decades (and in itself is a respectable field), but what is disturbing, is that Mallory and Mair constantly link ‘race’ to culture and even language. As this book was published in 2000, its racialism is both terribly outdated (to say the least) and a foreshadowing of the return of racial thinking in our own time.
Another problem, is that the authors repeatedly equate ancient and modern China, and thereby seem to endorse the claims of the current Chinese regime that Xinjiang has been part of China since time immemorial. The book’s title summarizes what is wrong with it. It both locates the Tarim Basin falsely in "Ancient China" and tendentiously identifies its earliest inhabitants as "peoples from the west".
January 31, 2014
Chatty popular presentation of historic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that might explain who the Tarim Mummies were. Although the introduction indicated that one of the author's interests was DNA analysis of the mummies, at the time this book was written they only had 1 DNA result. The argument can be a bit hard to follow, as there isn't(wasn't) enough data to do more than build a hypothetical model -- and, of course, the many many ethnic groups and languages are for the most part unknown to someone whose schooling focused on western Europe and the US. (It doesn't help that the Chinese, Indo-Iranian, and Greek names for people & places differ...) I found it particularly difficult to keep the forest in view while wading through the trees of the linguistic analysis.
August 23, 2011
"A book not worth rereading is not worth reading in the first place." - Anatoly Liberman
Despite only getting three stars from me, this is one of my prized books. I go back to it about once a year & still learn more from it. I appreciate it more with each re-read. It would have been rated higher if the chapters weren't so uneven in quality. Some are so dense it was difficult to follow, but the book aims at being comprehensive, covering archaeology, forensics, art history, historical linguistics, ethnology, Old Chinese literary sources, climate change, etc.
Despite only getting three stars from me, this is one of my prized books. I go back to it about once a year & still learn more from it. I appreciate it more with each re-read. It would have been rated higher if the chapters weren't so uneven in quality. Some are so dense it was difficult to follow, but the book aims at being comprehensive, covering archaeology, forensics, art history, historical linguistics, ethnology, Old Chinese literary sources, climate change, etc.
June 19, 2013
I bought this book when researching an article for Slate about the Kanjiashimenzi Petroglyphs in western China. It's a fascinating story about how Europoid people, probably on horseback, migrated from eastern Europe to what is now western China around 3500 BCE and left behind a trove of mummiesto to tell their story. It's good that the Chinese government has finally lifted ideological restrictions on their study. For a seemingly dry subject like archaeology, the book is witty and compelling.
July 24, 2014
This lovely, illustrated book provides an extensive investigation of the Tarim mummies - who they were, their neighbours, the mummies, their languages, their life and culture etc. The book is scholarly, but well written and not boring at all. The book has a nice balance of enough detail but not too much irrelevant waffling. I especially liked the authors dry sense of humour.
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December 30, 2008This is a fascinating account of the non-Chinese mummies found in the far west of China. This book allows a glimpse into the lives and appearance of the prehistoric peoples who settled the Tarim Basin some four millennia ago.
January 8, 2008
A very good history of the Tarim mummies. While there were times this book did get bogged down with facts, it did provide good information.
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