#Taklamakan Desert
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Will the Tarim Basin mummies ever not be fascinating and kind of weird? No, they will not and I'm here for it.
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In ‘Dyal Thak,’ Photographer Kin Coedel Offers an Intimate Glimpse of Life on the Rapidly Changing Tibetan Plateau
Nestled between the Himalayas and the Taklamakan Desert, the Tibetan Plateau is sometimes referred to as the “third pole.” The vast region harbors the largest source of fresh water outside the arctic and supplies 20 percent of the global population with the vital resource.
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Brain samples are taken from the Copper-Age Mummy Ötzi, who was encased in ice shortly after death. This Natural Mummification preserved the body for some 5,000 years before its discovery in 1991. Photograph By Robert Clark, National Geographic Image Collection
These Mummies Were Made … By Accident?
Freeze-dried, salted, or buried in a bog: Thousands of years before humans intentionally mummified their dead, nature took care of it for them.
— By Elise Cutts | August 7, 2023
A mummy isn’t exactly something one would expect to make by accident.
Left to nature, a human body would usually be reduced to bones within a few years. Mummy-making cultures like the ancient Egyptians were only able to stave off the inevitable thanks to complex funerary practices involving all manner of specialized tools, chemicals, and procedures.
But there are paths to mummified eternity that don’t involve canopic jars, natron salts, or brain-removing hooks. In fact, some of the oldest Egyptian mummies were likely accidents, says Frank Rühli, director of the University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine and head of the Paleopathology and Mummy Studies Group.
Buried in shallow graves, bodies can be naturally preserved for thousands of years by the dry heat of the Sahara’s desert air and sand. Rühli says he believes this could have inspired ancient Egyptians to start mummifying their honored dead.
Hot deserts are just one of many environments in which corpses naturally mummify. Scientists explain how environments ranging from bogs to icy mountaintops can stave off decay and—with a bit of luck—mummify bodies.
Deserts
The Egyptians aren’t the only desert culture known for their mummies. The Chinchorro people of northern Chile started to intentionally mummify their dead about 2,000 years before the Egyptians—and thousands of years before that, the Atacama Desert was doing it for them.
“One of the things that's interesting about the Chinchorro mummies is that some of them were intentionally prepared, while other were naturally mummified,” says physical anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza of the University of Tarapacá in Chile, who spent his career studying the Chinchorro mummies.
A bone-dry corpse, perhaps ironically, will likely leave more than bones.
A Landscape of the Desert! The Atacama desert plateau is one of the driest places in the World. Mummies have been found here that predate ancient Egypt’s by 2,000 years. Photograph By Naftali Hilger, Laif/Redux
Decay is a biological process and without water, biology can’t work. This is why deserts preserve bodies so well and why Egyptian and Chinchorro mummification practices involved steps to dry out the body.
The oldest Chinchorro mummy, Acha Man, was naturally preserved by the desert for more than 9,000 years. Natural mummies have been found in deserts around the world. Among the most well-preserved are the Tarim mummies of Xinjiang, China, who were buried in boat-shaped coffins up to 4,000 years ago in the Taklamakan Desert.
Salt
For a handful unfortunate Iranian miners caught in cave-ins at the Chehrabad salt mine, salt did the job just as well as deserts.
"They were working in the salt mine and then it collapsed,” says Rühli, who studied the mummies. This actually happened multiple times—at least twice, says Rühli—over about 1000 years, entombing young men separated from one another by centuries in the salt they’d come to mine. Though the weight of the salt crushed the miners, flattening their corpses, the salty rock drew the water out of their bodies and mummified their squashed remains.
Salts in the dry soils of the Atacama Desert also helped preserve the Chinchorro mummies, says Arriaza. The soils are rich in nitrate compounds, nitrogen, potassium, sodium, calcium. “Mostly salts,” he says. “That's going to help dehydrate the body.”
Ice
Removing the water from a corpse isn’t the only way to stop decay. Low temperatures slow down most biological processes, and freezing a body completely can keep it from rotting for thousands of years.
Pathologist Andreas Nerlich of the Munich Klinik Bogenhausen studied Ötzi, a 5,300-year-old ice mummy who was found poking out of melting glacier ice in the Ötztal alps near the Austrian-Italian border. “They're preserved as long as the ice is there,” he says of mummies like Ötzi.
While “very rare,” adds Nerlich, ice mummies like Ötzi can be remarkably well-preserved compared to dehydrated mummies. That’s because dehydration shrivels and distorts tissues, but frozen organs mostly keep their shape.
Permafrost, earth that remains frozen year-round, can also mummify. One Siberian mummy, the 2,500 year-old Ice Maiden, was quite literally frozen in a block of ice after her burial chamber flooded and the water quickly froze. Because her burial chamber was constructed from permafrost earth, the ice that formed inside never melted.
Freeze-Drying
Combining cold and dry conditions can mummify bodies even when it’s not consistently chilly enough to keep a body frozen year-round. That’s what happened to a handful of Thule Inuit women and children in Greenland. They were naturally mummified in their graves after their deaths, likely caused by famine or disease, in the 15th and 16th centuries.
It’s a bit like natural freeze-drying, says paleopathologist Niels Lynnerup of the University of Copenhagen, who studied the mummies.
“Even though it's very cold in Greenland, it's not like it's in the high Arctic with permafrost,” he says. The bodies were buried under rocky covers or cairns, so “they still had wind blowing through.” The wind desiccated the bodies and, combined with the bacteria-slowing effect of cold temperatures, mummified them.
Many of the Inca mummies discovered high on Andean mountaintops were preserved by freeze-drying, too. The exceptionally well-preserved Maiden of Llullaillaco, the mummy of a teenage Inca girl left to succumb to cold on an Andean mountaintop as a sacrifice, is a unique case as she was frozen solid.
Even the conditions in cool, dry crypts can sometimes preserve remains in a similar way so long as bodies are either well-ventilated or kept under airtight conditions after being dried out, says Nerlich. Several natural mummies in crypts weren’t entirely accidents. One Upper Austrian mummy known as the Luftg’selchter Pfarrer was intentionally stuffed with water-absorbing materials and treated with salts to delay decay temporarily before he naturally mummified in his crypt.
Bogs
Natural mummification almost always involves somehow getting rid of water, either by removing it entirely or turning it into ice. So may be a bit surprising that wet, swampy bogs can preserve human remains for millennia.
The oldest bog mummy is Cashel Man, who was probably killed in a sacrifice around 2,000 B.C. His body was naturally mummified because of the unusual chemical conditions in bogs.
“There are several factors which cause human remains to be mummified in bogs,” says archaeologist Isabella Mulhall of the National Museum of Ireland. “The lack of oxygen, the cool dark environment… the [acidity] levels of the bog also has a role to play.”
A type of moss often found in bogs also helps mummify bodies, Mulhall adds. Sphagnum moss releases an acidic sugary molecule called sphagnan, which takes up the nutrients that would otherwise nourish microbes that cause decay. This helps mummify corpses—though sphagnan also leaches the calcium out of bones, weakening them.
The acidic fluids in bogs chemically alter the body, not unlike leather tanning or pickling. That’s why most bog bodies, no matter how they looked in life, have dark, leathery skin and bright red hair.
Many bog bodies appear to have met rather violent ends—a fate shared with many other natural mummies. But because luck happened to preserve their bodies, the victims of these ancient tragedies can still tell scientists about themselves and their societies. The same processes that mummify human skin and organs can also sometimes preserve undigested food in the stomach, blood, traces of disease-causing microbes, and even clues about the ecosystems and climates that ancient people lived in.
“In a sense,” says Arriaza, “all these ancient remains are time capsules.”
#Science#Copper-Age Mummy Ötzi#Natural Mummification#Robert Clark#National Geographic Image Collection#Freeze-Dried#Salted#Elise Cutts#University of Zurich’s Institute of Evolutionary Medicine#Paleopathology#Frank Rühli#Egyptians#Chinchorro people of Northern Chile 🇨🇱#Atacama Desert 🐪 🌵#Physical Anthropologist Bernardo Arriaza#University of Tarapacá Chile 🇨🇱#Egyptian & Chinchorro Mummification Practices#Acha Man#Taklamakan Desert#Chehrabad Salt Mine#Nitrogen | Potassium | Sodium | Calcium | Salts#Pathologist Andreas Nerlich | Munich Klinik Bogenhausen#Permafrost#Niels Lynnerup | University of Copenhagen#Thule Inuit Women & Children | Greenland 🇬🇱#Isabella Mulhall | The National Museum of Ireland 🇮🇪#Cashel Man
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7. There actually are people living there but those don't count apparently because there's no major cities
7.1 There are no major cities because theres not enough resources or strategic value to the area to bother building one
All those videos that are like “Why is this big area of this country uninhabited???” always have five reasons it might be.
It’s really cold
It’s really hot
Big mountains are hard to build on
No water and humans generally need that
All four of the above all at once
#if you zoom in on the taklamakan desert in westernbchina there are actually a ton of little villages#same for the sahara and arabian deserts#as well as the atacama and gobi#and the entire united states southwest#same goes for siberia and other similarly rugged and cold environments
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Sculpture with rooster head, was found in a tomb at Gaochang, a Tang city on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, 7th-10th century, Tang Dynasty, China.
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The Witches of Subeshi
(ca. 400-200 BCE) Female remains located in the Taklamakan Desert in China’s Tarim Basin, belonging to the Subeshi culture.
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there was Chinese interest in the Out Of Asia theory, in both the Republic, Chiang Republic and People’s Republic periods before the Out Of Africa theory became commonly accepted. Was the 1954 Yeti expedition done just from the Nepalese-Indian side or were the American agents and “anthropologists” given access on the Sino-Tibetan side of the Himalayan border?
During the early part of this century, it was absolutely believed for a long time that the deserts of Western China were the most likely place of human origins, as seen in this migration map from 1944, made from the best available knowledge of the time:
Remember, the oldest fossil remains at this point were in China, where Homo erectus was discovered (originally known by his initial place of discovery in Chungkotien Cave, nicknamed "Peking Man"). The discovery of Australopithecus and Homo habilis in Olduvai Gorge and South Africa, which place human origins in Africa, were not until the 50s and 60s, so it seemed entirely reasonable that Homo sapiens evolved in Western China.
The idea that China's desert regions were the origin of modern humans and culture is seen a lot in pop culture from 1900-1950, mainly because there were tremendous explorations in the region, especially Aurel Stein's expedition of 1908, who ventured into the Taklamakan Desert to find the Dunhuang Caves and Khara-Khoto, a city destroyed completely by Genghis Khan and vanished in the desert.
If you've ever heard of Roy Chapman Andrews and his famous expeditions in the 1920s, it's worth noting that he ventured into the Gobi Desert looking for human remains....not dinosaurs, and the discovery of dinosaur eggs was an unexpected surprise.
For that reason, there was a short lived Silk Road Mania that seemed to be a smaller scale predecessor to the pop culture dominating Egyptomania of the 1920s. It's bizarre to read adventure and fantasy fiction of the 1910s-1920s that features mentions of Silk Road peoples like the Kyrgyz, Sogdians, Tajik, Uigurians, and Tuvans. The best example I can think of would be the Khlit the Kossack stories of Harold Lamb (who also wrote a biography of Tamerlane), which together with Tarzan and Tros of Samothrace, formed the core inspiration for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian.
The most interesting example of this would be A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage, which featured a lost city in Xinjiang that was the home of the Nordic race, who worshipped their original religion, the kraken-like squid devil god Khalkru. It was widely believed in this era that Nordics emerged from Central Asia originally, and while it's easy to write this off as turn of the century racialist claptrap pseudohistory (along with Hyperborea legends), in this case, it is actually true: a branch of the Indo-European family lived in West China, and 5,000 year old redheaded mummies have been found in the region. As usual, A. Merritt was right on the money with his archeology, more so than other 1920s authors. After all, his "Moon Pool" was set around the just discovered ruins of Nan Madol, the Venice of Micronesia.
Jack Williamson's still chilling Darker Than You Think in 1948 was also set in the Silk Road/Central Asian region, as the place the race of shapeshifters emerged from, Homo magi, who await the coming of their evil messiah, the Night King, who will give them power over the human race.
H. Rider Haggard set "Ayesha: the Return of She" (1905) in Xinjiang, among a lost Greek colony in Central Asia (no doubt based on Alexandria on the Indus, a Greek colony in modern Pakistan that was the furthest bastion of Greek Culture). This was also two years after the Younghusband Thibetan Expedition of 1903, where the British invaded Tibet. At the time, the Qing Dynasty was completely declining and lost control of the frontier regions, and the power vacuum was filled by religious authority by default (this is something you also saw in Xinjiang, where for example, the leader of the city was the Imam of Kashgar).
This is one of the many British invasions they have attempted to cram down the memory hole, but if you ever see a Himalayan art piece that was "obtained in 1903-1904" ....well, you know where it came from.
Incidentally, there's one really funny recent conspiracy theory about paleontology, fossils, and China that I find incredibly interesting: the idea that dinosaurs having feathers is a lie and a sinister plot spread by the Communist Chinese (who else?) to make American youth into sissy fancylads, like Jessie "the Body" Ventura. How? By lying to us and making up that the manly and vigorous Tyrannosaurus, a beast with off the charts heterosexuality and a model for boys everywhere, might have been feathered like a debutante's dress. What next - lipstick on a Great White Shark? The long term goal is to make Americans effeminate C. Nelson Reilly types unable to defend against invasion. This is a theory that is getting steam among the kind of people who used to read Soldier of Fortune magazine, and among abusive stepfathers the world over.
...okay, are you done laughing? Yeah, this is obvious crackpottery and transparent sexual pathology, on the level of the John Birch Society in the 60s saying the Beatles were a Communist mind control plot. Mostly because animals just look how they look, and if it turned out that the ferocious Tyrannosaurus had feathers and looked like a fancylad Jessie Ventura to you, well, that's your problem and mental baggage, really.
I was left scratching my head over this one. But there is (kind of) something to this, and that is that a huge chunk of recent dinosaur discoveries have been in China. I don't think it has anything to do with a Communist plot to turn American boys into fancylads, but more to do with a major push in internal public investment in sciences in that country, and an explosion of Chinese dinosaur discoveries. If you want to see a great undervisited dinosaur museum, go to the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in Sichuan.
Pop quiz: what living scientist has named more dinosaur discoveries? It's not Bakker or Horner. The greatest living paleontologist, Xu Xing, which is why a lot of recently found dinosaurs are named things like Shangtungasaurus.
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taklamakan desert 🤠🏜️
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five star review of the taklamakan desert
#i love this genre of review………… i spent a whole morning last year reading google maps reviews of uninhabited volcanic islands#in the antarctic#10/10 would recommend#beeps
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Camels in the Taklamakan Desert in northwest China
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possible clues about what its strategy would be in the event of conflict.
The images, taken by Google Earth on May 29, feature a model aircraft carrier and more than 20 replicas of jets resembling US stealth fighters.
"Chinese PLA Air Force pilots are learning to practice air strikes on American F-35 and F-22 mock-ups," said a post containing four satellite pictures published on X, formerly Twitter, by the Turkey-based Clash Report.
The military blogging account identified the location as Qakilik in the Taklamakan Desert. The Post has not been able to verify the images and there has been no official confirmation from China.
Several of these replicas appeared to be severely damaged.
The exercises reflect the People's Liberation Army's efforts to build up its long-range ballistic and cruise missile systems to neutralise the threats from US naval forces, according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
"US and allied naval forces in general would be a natural target because of their power projection capabilities, which are perceived by Beijing as a threat," he said.
Koh continued that it would be in line with Beijing's growing emphasis on simulating realistic campaigns and "by and large, Beijing's wartime scenarios appear aimed at counter-intervention against the Americans" especially in the event of conflict in the South China Sea or Taiwan.
If the drill involved the PLA's intercontinental-range systems, it may have been practising strikes on targets such as Guam, Alaska and Hawaii, he added.
The PLA has long held that its exercises are not aimed at any specific party, but mock targets can sometimes give away its thinking - either by accident or design.
In 2015, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast footage of PLA troops taking part in mock battles near a building that closely resembled Taiwan's presidential office.
Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the exercise appeared to fit the PLA's counter-intervention strategy, designed to deny US and allied naval forces in the Western Pacific access to potential war zones further east.
"This implies the PLA's strike capabilities will probably have either an electro-optical or synthetic aperture radar terminal guidance system to image the target and guide the warhead prior to precisely striking at a specific location on a military base," he said.
The exercise would allow the PLA to improve its precision in scenarios such as a ballistic missile "seeking to strike a moving target at sea, such as an aircraft carrier".
He also said that practising in the desert would help the PLA to improve its ability to carry out long-range conventional precision strikes on land targets, such as airfields.
Hong-Kong based military commentator Leung Kwok-leung said the satellite images suggested a simulated strike on Alaska, where most F-22s were based.
"Alaska is also the base of the most important national missile defence system in the United States. Last year, an F-22 was used to shoot down China's so-called spy balloon, which shows that the F-22 also undertakes the task of the missile defence system," Leung said.
Timothy Heath, a senior international defence researcher at the Rand Corporation think tank, also said "the Chinese are not hiding the mock-ups, so they may not care if Westerners observe them".
"It may also be the case that the Chinese want the US military to see this as a reminder that China is serious about military training and preparation and as a warning against the United States," Heath said.
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Tattooing in the Far East and Oceania
Since preserving skin takes mummification, without direct effort, a dry climate, whether hot or cold, is needed to create them, so we don't have a complete history of tattooing in many cultures, or even back as far in history as we have evidence of humans. But, there are locations that have preserved skin or customs for us to learn about ancient practices.
Source courtesy Victor Mair, Culture: Unknown, Location: Tarim Basin, China, Date: 1000-600 B.C.
One of those deserts is in China, the Taklamakan Desert, which shows that tattoos were used around 1200 BCE, but during the Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 BCE), tattoos were used to mark criminals. These mummies were discovered in the Tarim Basin (which contains the Taklamakan Desert) from what are thought to be the ancestors of Uyghur people today, looking more Caucasian than Asian, were decorated with several motifs, such as crescent moons, suns, and other intricate designs, which may show their primary god and indicate they were a shaman. This interpretation is based on the evidence from near-by cultures. They also tattooed their face at times, which indicated pride in and the importance of the tattoos.
By anonymus - Mann und Weib.III. page 458, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15174677
In Japan, men started wearing elaborate tattoos in the late 3rd century CE, though there is also evidence for tattooing going back to the Joumon (or paleolithic) period given that there are figurines with cord patterns on them. In the Yayoi period (300 BCE - 300 CE) tattoo designs on Chinese visitors in Kyushu were documented on, with speculation about them being spiritual or for status. In the 8th century CE "Records of Ancient Matters", tattooed people were considered outsiders, denying a history of tattooing in Japan. The Ainu people, the indigenous group of northern Japan, however, have a tradition of tattooing for decoration or status, or as protection against disease.
Te Ara The movement of peoples around the Pacific and from Asia into the Pacific over the last 6,000 years.
The Polynesian cultures of Oceania have a very long history of tattooing, developing over thousands of years and through the cultures that developed on the various islands they inhabited. The word 'tattoo' comes from the Tahitian islander's term 'tatatau' or 'tattau', as reported by James Cook's expedition in 1769.
By Louis John Steele - bwEy48meVL_AzQ at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21871113 and By Louis John Steele - bwEy48meVL_AzQ at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21871113
One of the most well known Polynesian cultures is the Māori of what is now New Zealand. Their tattoos, called 'tā moko' (the art of tattooing), are marks of high status and survived European attempts to eliminate them. Each moko is designed specifically for the person since it conveys much about who that person in, from their family to their accomplishments. On women, these tattoos are centered around the mouth and chin, while men often have tattoos around their whole faces and bodies. To receive a moku, generally certain milestones or accomplishments need to be reached and the recipient needs to have the right social status.
By Thomas Andrew (1855 - 1939) - National Library of New Zealand, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10113865 and By RunningToddler - Bits & Bytes, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3148860
Another well-known Polynesian culture with a rich tattoo history are the Samoa. In Samoa, men receive a 'pe'a' tatto, which covers their lower back and legs, and women receive a 'malu' which covers the legs from below the buttocks to below the knee. Malu tend to be more delicate and less covering than the pe'a, and are focused around a particular motif (called the malu) which is tattooed in the popliteal fossa (back of the knee), and has suggestions of shelter and protection. Sometimes, women are tattooed on their hands and lower abdomen as well. These tattoos are a sign of cultural pride, status, such that when a man completes his tattoo, he is called a saga'imitti and respected because he underwent the painful ordeal. A man without a tattoo is called telefua or telenao, meaning 'naked', and a man who hasn't completed the tattoo process because of the pain (or not being able to pay) is called pe'a mutu, a mark of shame. The tattooists (called a tufuga ta tatau) are revered as well. Modern Samoan tattoo artists continue to practice their art in the same way as they did prior to European contact, with serrated bone combs tied to tortoise shell fragments, tied to a short wooden handle and then tapped with a mallet. The ink is made from candlenut soot and stored in coconut shell cups. A length of tapa cloth (a barkcloth) is used to wipe blood from the skin and tools.
By Thomas Andrew (1855-1939) - http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Search.aspx?page=8&imagesonly=true&term=Thomas+Andrew, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10113825
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Resources:
The Beauty of Loulan and the Tattooed Mummies of the Tarim Basin
Pacific voyaging and discovery
Tāmoko | Māori tattoos: history, practice, and meanings
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In ‘Dyal Thak,’ Photographer Kin Coedel Offers an Intimate Glimpse of Life on the Rapidly Changing Tibetan Plateau
Nestled between the Himalayas and the Taklamakan Desert, the Tibetan Plateau is sometimes referred to as the “third pole.” The vast region harbors the largest source of fresh water outside the arctic and supplies 20 percent of the global population with the vital resource.
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Earlier you were talking about icecreamgate. You said that’s a story for another time so can you elaborate please? I know was in the video but is there more to it?
Also please share about the flat situation! Sorry I’m so new to this fandom and feel like I missed a bunch!!
Dear Icecreamgate Anon,
Yes. At the Savannah (not Atlanta, and a heartfelt shoutout to wonderful @rosfrank, who gently corrected me and who was there to tell the tale) SCAD promo event, eagle-eyed shippers saw S helping himself from C's ice cream, using the same spoon.
This is legit documented and the picture (very clear) regularly does the rounds via reblogs.
Now I don't know about you, but I can tell you how it happens in here. Madame Mère and the man I love are the only people I share my spoon, thermos bottle or champagne glass with. I would rather die of dehydration in the Taklamakan Desert (see pic below) than do it any other way.
As for the rest of your question, let's make a deal, you and me: you studiously do your newbie mix and match information gathering tour on the blogs you like and you start connecting the dots by yourself. I am sure you are perfectly able. In return, I will answer all your specific questions in a very friendly, non-nonsense and dependable way. But let's make it very clear between us: don't expect me to regurgitate the Chronicles of Sam Roland and Caitríona Mary, because this is not going to happen. A day has only 24 hours and there are already people in line behind you.
That being said, I will say only this: Cleveden Drive, GLA. Coffee pics. Easter 2019. You go see out there: I promise it will be interesting.
Here's a pic of the camel I rode on in the Chinese Taklamakan desert, in 2010, while I was traveling by myself along the Silk Road. You're welcome to drop by anytime, here or in DMs.
PS: it was not fun, riding that camel. Unlike horses or elephants, she was distracted and irritated by fleas. And I had the impression of sitting on top of two jelly mounds. Disturbing.
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psa just in case anyone is unaware of the taklamakan desert poplars 👍
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Scientists sequence DNA from 3,600-year-old cheese found in Bronze Age graves, revealing ancient kefir-making practices
- By Nuadox Crew -
Scientists have sequenced DNA from 3,600-year-old cheese found in graves of the Xiaohe people, a Bronze Age culture in northwest China’s Taklamakan Desert.
The cheese, scattered on the heads and necks of mummified remains, offers insights into ancient cheesemaking and microbial practices. DNA analysis showed that the Xiaohe people made kefir cheese using goat and cattle milk without mixing different animal milks, a technique still used today.
The research reveals the presence of probiotic bacteria similar to modern kefir, showing how microbial strains evolved over time. This discovery challenges the belief that kefir originated solely in the Caucasus Mountains, pointing instead to Tibet as a key origin.
The study opens new possibilities for understanding ancient human culture, technology, and microbial use, with scientists noting that ancient microbial DNA studies were unimaginable a decade ago.
Image: Researchers extracted animal and microbial DNA from the kefir cheese found on the Tarim Basin mummies. Credit: Yimin Yang.
Header image: A mummy from the Xiaohe cemetery with dairy remains scattered around its neck. Credit: Li Wenying, Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute (a grey filter was added).
Read more at CNN/Microsoft Start
Scientific paper: Bronze Age cheese reveals human-Lactobacillus interactions over evolutionary history, Cell (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.008. www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00899-7
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Rights of the dead and the living clash when scientists extract DNA from human remains
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