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The skeleton of a young woman was one of the discoveries at Kungang tomb in Alar in the south of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The tomb is renowned for its giant mummies. Provided to China Daily
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Archaeologists are examining claims that the area has long been home to a number of different races, report Cui Jia in Alar and Gao Bo in Turpan, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
As he carefully raised the lid of a long, boat-shaped wooden coffin discovered at an ancient burial site in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Liao Zhaoyu joked to his colleagues that they had discovered one of the fabled giants of Chinese legend.
When the lid was finally opened and Liao caught his first glimpse of the body inside, he was astonished to see a golden-haired figure that was even taller than Yao Ming, the famous 2.26-meter-tall basketball player.
Even though the discovery happened more than five years ago, Liao, director of the institute of the Culture of the Western Region at Tarim University in Alar, couldn't hide his excitement when he recalled the moment he came face to face with the tallest man of a "tribe of giants".
The local people dubbed the sand dunes that contained a number of oversized coffins "the valley of the giants", so Liao called the tomb "Kungang", the ancient name of Alar.
European features
"The skeleton of the tallest mummy discovered so far is about 2.3 meters, and the coffin is about 2.8 meters long, but medical experts say the man may have been even taller when he was alive. In addition to features similar to those of ancient Europeans, such as blond hair and high cheekbones, many of the mummies or skeletons have large frames, more than 2 meters tall," said the 40-year-old, who was one of the first experts to explore the site in 2003 at the request of local farmers.
However, Liao and his team were not the first people to find the burial site. The vast tomb was originally discovered in the early 1980s by farmers attempting to flatten the sand dunes so they could plant crops. Unfortunately, instead of reporting their discovery, the farmers used many of the coffin planks as firewood and left the site badly damaged.
Many years passed before the farmers finally told their tale, and it wasn't until 2013 that the importance of the site began to be understood when researchers from Queen's University in Belfast in the United Kingdom analyzed bones, hair and seeds and concluded that the tomb could date back 4,600 years, Liao said.
"Human bones and pieces of coffin made from the wood of the Populus Euphratica (also known as the Euphrates or desert poplar) were visible everywhere in the sand dunes when I visited the site for the first time. It was obvious that the tomb had been raided, but we still managed to find five intact mummies," he added.
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