In previous articles, I suggested that the earliest Tarim mummies were an isolated population of Ancient North Eurasians with around 15% extra East Asian ancestry. The genetics are accurate, but it’s possible that they were actually Bronze Age migrants, rather than an indigenous population that had been isolated in the Tarim Basin for thousands of years.
Looking at their genetic profile, it seems that they belonged to the West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer (WSHG) cluster that inhabited Central South Siberia, Central Asia (Kazakhstan), and the Altai-Mongolia region during the early Holocene. This included populations like the Botai.
The WSHG of the Altai-Mongolia region were significantly ethnically replaced by Indo-European Afanasievo-Yamnaya migrants during the Early Bronze Age, while the WSHG of Siberia and Kazakhstan were ethnically replaced by Sintashta-Andronovo migrants (also from Europe) during the Middle-to-Late Bronze Age.
It’s possible that the earliest Tarim population migrated into the Basin to escape the invading Europeans. The timing definitely adds up: Afanasievo ancestry flooded the Dzungarian Basin, just north of Tarim, shortly before the earliest Tarim mummies were buried, around 2100 BC, and the subsequent population of Dzungaria harbored mixed ancestry from WSHG and Afanasievo.
Furthermore, the WSHG Tarim mummies exhibited stereotypical steppe-like cultural traits since their earliest burial sites were founded. For example, they were reliant on agro-pastoralism and consumed dairy. This indicates that they practiced a steppe-like lifestyle before entering the basin.
The original genetic study on these WSHG mummies — which claimed that they were indigeneous “Asians” (very annoying disinformation) — suggested that their steppe-like cultural traits were acquired secondhand via contact with the Afanasievo-dominated regions to the north.
I find this quite bizarre, since their own research shows that the earliest Tarim mummies practiced dairy pastoralism and there is no evidence of human habitation in the Tarim Basin before the WSHG mummies. It seems like the authors were desperate to paint the mummies as indigeneous, non-European “Asians.”
In my opinion, the mummies being Bronze Age migrants is the most logical explanation. Unfortunately, this isn’t as mystical as discovering an isolated population of Ancient North Eurasians, but it’s still cool that we now know what the Ancient North Eurasians looked like. Well, we know what ANEs with 15% East Asian ancestry look like, which is close enough.
Below is a compilation of Xiaohe mummies from a cemetary that was confirmed to be genetically WSHG. They seemed to have had a thing for pointed felt hats with feathers in them.
Thuletide 
The annoying part about the terminology used in these studies is normies will see the word Asian and think mongoloid.
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yes, that’s why geneticists use more precise terms like West Eurasian and East Eurasian . I can only assume they used “Asian” to be intentionally deceptive
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So how do we classify WSHG people? Asian? European? Neither? I would like to see the rate of blonde hair and blue eyes that these early mummies have.
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Nah not European, but they were Caucasoid. The Europeans arrived later. We don’t know what color their eyes were but they seem to have had brown hair and pale skin. Maybe the mummification process has altered their skin pigmentaiton. HIRISPLEX predicted them to have black skin, which is clearly wrong because HIRISPLEX is completely useless at predicting ancient skin pigmentation; it claims that basically everyone before the Bronze Age was black and that most modern people outside of Europe today are also black.
Genetically, the WSHG were most similar to Mansi, who are pictured below, and Udmurts or Besermyans. But they were still pretty distinct even from these populations. They were not closely related to any modern people.
But we can see by the faces of the mummies that they don’t look anything like Mansi. They had a very strong selection for Caucasoid phenotype and didn’t have the typical “round faced” East Asian look.
When non-mummified, they probably looked similar to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherer reconstructions below. Caucasoids with very prominent cheek bones.
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Pale skin, brown hair, Caucasian skull structure, why not considered white/European?
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because they were genetically distinct from europeans and probably would look quite different to europeans because they had some notable east asian ancestry. europeans are not the only pale caucasoids, there are the people from the caucasus (e.g. chechens and georgians), turks, pamiri tajiks, and so on.
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