A Celt in China: circa 1000 BC.

A Celt in China: The Mysterious Origins of Cherchen Man
Submitted by MalcolmJ on Tue, 08/18/2009 - 19:31

The Loulan Beauty - she's not much a catch these days, but we're assured she was a looker in her day. Picture by Farrukh Younus.Cherchen Man, who died around 1000 BC, appears to be as Scottish as square sausage – tall, dark-haired, clad in a red tunic and tartan leggings and sporting a beard as ginger as a burning fox. His DNA attests to his Celtic origins. So why on earth, then, was his mummified corpse discovered buried in the barren sands of the Taklamakan Desert, in the far-flung Xinjiang region of western China?

It’s a question that still has experts scratching their heads, especially since Cherchen Man is just one of hundreds of ancient desiccated corpses of European origin found in the Tarim Basin in western China over the last 25 years. His remains, along with others, are now kept in a museum in the Xinjiang provincial capital of Urumqi, which has also houses a reconstruction of how this intrepid traveller might have looked before he died.

It had been well known and accepted that Celtic influence stretched far and wide at the civilization’s peak around 300 BC, from Scotland in the north to Ireland in the west, southern Spain and Italy in the south and parts of Poland, Ukraine and central Turkey in the east. But few experts expected to discover the remains of humans of Celtic descent in central Asia, almost as far east as Tibet. They’ve been described as among the most important archaeological finds of the past quarter century, and point to an ancient connection having evidently existed between east and west as early as the Bronze Age.

More at Source: heritage-key.com...

This blogger has a bit of a narrow view of the Hibernian/Celt race and speaks of Scots and Central Europe, North Eire etc.

Very interesting item nonetheless.

Must read the book!

reply to post by DeltaPan


Aye, in the attempt to give people a point of reference, the message gets watered down a bit. I find stories like this amazing. They really tell a story and emphasizes that we don't really know everything that happened in the ancient past, no matter what historians say.

reply to post by DeltaPan
Nice one. I love these guys, more evidence of extensive trade routes covering Europe, China and across to the Middle-East and Northern Africa. Here's a couple of good pictures to give people an idea of the preservation and tartan weave found on at least one of the bodies..

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/923c094f6471.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7f31d04fae64.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/beef2d0ff411.jpg[/atsimg]

The Beauty of Loulan is recreated here...is it my eyesight or has the artist given her some 5 o clock shadow? No way to treat a lady

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d0f2b6679255.jpg[/atsimg]

I think these are direct ancestors of the turkic tribes.