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Mummy Dearest -- “Mysterious Mummies of China” On NOVA

Date:
January 7, 1998
Source:
NOVA/WGBH
Summary:
Chinese archaeologists in the remote deserts of Central Asia are exhuming perfectly preserved 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummies that shed startling new light on the contact between East and West in the ancient world. In the first in-depth coverage of these remarkable discoveries, believed to be some of the most important human remains ever found, NOVA follows the ongoing excavations and the unexpected controversy surrounding them, in "Mysterious Mummies of China,” airing Tuesday, January 20, 1998 at 8pm ET on PBS (check local listings).
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Tuesday, January 20, 1998 at 8pm ET on PBS

Chinese archaeologists in the remote deserts of Central Asia are exhuming perfectly preserved 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummies that shed startling new light on the contact between East and West in the ancient world.

In the first in-depth coverage of these remarkable discoveries, believed to be some of the most important human remains ever found, NOVA follows the ongoing excavations and the unexpected controversy surrounding them, in “Mysterious Mummies of China,” airing Tuesday, January 20, 1998 at 8pm ET on PBS (check local listings).

Preserved from decay by extreme summer heat and aridity, bitter winter cold, and salty soil, the fully-clothed corpses look astonishingly lifelike. Most surprising of all, their physical features and clothing do not in the least resemble those of the Chinese of the period. In fact, they are almost certainly Europeans, with features like blonde or red hair, prominent noses, mustaches and beards, tartan-weave garments, and jaunty feathered caps.

The physical evidence flies in the face of long-held Chinese views that their own civilization developed independent of outside influences. Consequently the new discoveries are being downplayed and even suppressed by the present Chinese regime.

Nonetheless, intense speculation focuses on what the “mummy people” were doing so far from their homeland, and what became of them and the isolated civilization they built over the course of many centuries.

NOVA tours the excavations with the scholar who first called the mummies to the world’s attention, Professor Victor Mair, an expert in early Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania. Accompanying him are Chinese archaeologists as well as American specialists in ancient nomads and physical anthropology.

With Dr. Mair, NOVA also investigates evidence of the probable successors of the mummy people, called the Tocharians, who left a written language that is clearly Indo-European in origin. The Tocharians also created enigmatic cave paintings that show distinctly Celtic-looking people venerating a Buddha, a sign of the multicultural aspects of their society, one which signalled the crossroads of East and West.

NOVA viewers also learn how the mummy people and the Tocharians lived along a key portion of what became the Silk Road, a trading link connecting China with the West that developed about 2,100 years ago. As the great imperial powers of East and


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Cite This Page:

NOVA/WGBH. "Mummy Dearest -- “Mysterious Mummies of China” On NOVA." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 January 1998. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/980107084900.htm>.
NOVA/WGBH. (1998, January 7). Mummy Dearest -- “Mysterious Mummies of China” On NOVA. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 27, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/980107084900.htm
NOVA/WGBH. "Mummy Dearest -- “Mysterious Mummies of China” On NOVA." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/980107084900.htm (accessed March 27, 2024).

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