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a long time ago, like 3000 BC, the proto indo europeans erupted from an area near modern day georgia and conquered large swathes of the eurasian landmass. among their ancestors are todays europeans, slavs, persians, and indians the tocharians were a wee offshoot of that conquest https://t.co/YKDSQgL3qC
today we have open and shut confirmation of all of this from a series of advances in the respective fields of genetics, guessing how old different old things are, and grinding up old corpses https://t.co/7AwhZpiGhm
The David Reich book so far is (i) great science, and (ii) hilariously sad sociology of science Kind of remarkable he was able to publish this honestly, even with all of the strained caveating and encomiums to bien pensant views re: diversity https://t.co/Totdu8YRv3
a hundred years before the first humane genome, linguists had already reassembled the language--and so the history--of the ancestors https://t.co/MDlf2cJmwY
as social sciences go linguistics deserves way more recognition than it gets those guys have been consistently ahead of everyone on reassembling prehistory purely on the strength of linguistic relations W after W although identifying the Caucasus was probably peak glory
so it was that we came to know the tocharians from their speech early 20C antiquarians translated their language from antique documents in Xinjiang, and were roiled by the discovery that it lacked innovations present in Sanskrit and Persian; yet it existed further east than both https://t.co/ghJY6W0nRe
the resolution is that the Indo-European migration took place across centuries, and the wave that led to the tocharians was more contemporary with the Hittite migration than the Medean nearly a millennium later in any case
their history has become clear to us from their relics, their genomes, the marks they left on the landscape they arrived in the sere tarin basin four thousand years ago, and abided there for nearly three millennia they would have seen the wares of the whole world pass by https://t.co/A03QwMW1RQ
apparently their settling was primarily a matter of conquest. although in a sense it affirms previously obscure observations from chinas history, the matter has unsurprisingly become locally politicized https://t.co/wQcLLoMD7m
their grave goods, and relics, are surprisingly well-preserved, a consequence of their burial practices and the xeric climate of the tarim. pictured here is one of their famous mummies; text describes the previously pictured Princess https://t.co/NcVG2ecpw9
in 2008, ny times discussed a controversy surrounding the mummies. it is ominous in retrospect i wonder whether the times would print this piece today https://t.co/87rdQprCqz https://t.co/1Lht6bNMOX
further images from old news stories. such are the remains we have. their funerals were boat themed--curious for a desert people imo. perhaps they remembered green shores and dreamed of returning in the next world https://t.co/gRE8xbD3rY
the most significant archaeological find related to the tocharians was the kizil caves in 1902. the site was opened by a japanese aristocrat; apparently in those times japan was active in the archaeology as in so many things https://t.co/ZYJ5xDF2iQ
they left an earthquake, and germans were quick to take over. their expedition was quick to pillage the site, but they did so thoughtfully much of the art survives. styles often mimic those of their cultural influences--persia and india before ~700, china after as the tang waxed https://t.co/XjotO9E70o
the tocharians survived as their neighbors grew. xiongnu and kush and hephathalite and tibetan and turk and tang traded the land but tocharian culture persisted. it was at last overwhelmed by its submersion in the old uyghur khaganate in 803, and the tocharian language faded away https://t.co/GVqokd5Qda
there you are. three thousand years of a people, surviving conquests by empires youd never heard of, holding over millennia in some of the worlds harshest land nearly all we know know of their three thousand years falls out of a small graveyard and a few caves memento mori https://t.co/Z5OFG69G16
tocharians (probably) in the news! ht @_holyweather https://t.co/a4aRZlQgfq