September 2006 Editorial

Desert and old oasis of Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang (Uyghur Autonomous Region) shuts in Taklamakan, a vast cold desert, between the mountain ranges of Tian Shan in the North and the chains of Kunlun in the South (about 1000 km E-W and 500 N-S). These days it runs alongside agricultural oasis situated on rivers gushing out of these mountains, among which some were bigger and stronger in the past than now. More to the North, the Xinjiang encompasses one part of Altay, colossal mountainous massifs which were for a longtime the domain of pastor nomads.

Some archeological discoveries, sometimes spectacular, have enabled over the years the knowledge of a universe that subsumes the appellation of ‘silk route’ to reach the erudite world and the general public. This world has its distinctive characteristics since the 1st century, which is to some extent widely known and of which one can give a broad outline. In this way we recreate long distance business of the Chinese silk of the Han Empire towards the West, the Kushan Empire (India, Afghanistan), Parthian Empire (Central Asia, Iran and Mesopotamia) and that of the Romans. We can recreate easier still the developments of these exchanges, much later, between the Tang China and the Kingdoms of the Sogdians, Hephthalite Huns, Sassanians till the Byzantium Empire. We also understand well that Buddhism penetrated into China from India through these immense barren deserts, while Zoroastrism, Manichaeism and Nostrian Christianity made their way from their Middle-Eastern sources. It is still an acknowledged fact that languages so varied as Khotan saka (Iranian group), the Uyghur, one of the Turkic languages and the mysterious Tocharian (Indo-European language close to ancient Italic languages) were spoken and written in the Xinjiang. No one is after all unaware that these civilizations are accessible to us by prestigious vestiges of large Buddhist sanctuaries, ornated with statues or bright wall paintings, and in which the expeditions have sometimes collected some precious manuscripts some time around the 1900s: everyone has visited or will go to admire the collections of the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet or the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, or those belonging to the big museums of the world.

At Karadong, the Franco-Chinese Archeological Mission of Keriya (CNRS-Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Institut du Patrimoine et de l’Archéologie du Xinjiang – IPAX, Institute of Heritage et Archeology of the Xinjiang) has updated some vestiges of an oasis of the Han-Jin epoch during its expeditions. The beams of a small fort and of houses, such as the shipwrecks run aground onto a sandbank, had already been located in part by Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein, the explorers of the turn of the year 1900. But it is thanks to the play of the shifting sands and the price of long walks in the sand dunes, that two Buddhist sanctuaries could be recently studied closely. These temples were ornated with mural paintings dating back to 3rd century, which are very indianized and rank among the most ancient ones known. Fragmented among the rubbles of the ruined walls, they had to be removed, transported then restored with care. Some of them today are exhibited in the Musée d’Urumqi.

Buddhism with its monasteries is very present, of course, but who knows also, for example, that some rare fragments of the writings of Evagre le Pontique were found on these routes, translated into Sogdian language? Evagre was a Greek monk from Asia Minor of the 4th century, who became hermit in the desert of Egypt. His importance was enormous for the origin of Latin monachism, as well as for the oriental monastic tradition. However, his treaties were partly wiped out by the Greek tradition (like the heretic theses of Origen), while they were conserved (by parts) not only in Coptic, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian and they circulated also therefore in Sogdian, meant for Central Asian communities. Silk route consequently… of course, but also homespun route of the anachorites.
This labyrinth of relations, entangled at different levels of cultures that were in dialogue, is today apprehendable for us, thanks to the archeological finds made in arid sand conditions and in the cold regions of the high mountain. These milieux conserve the metallic and mineral materials, like everywhere, but they also keep the organic, and therefore the textiles. Their study, like the entire bio-archelogy, plunged into the evolutionary dynamic of the environmental context, opens new perspectives. These are the very old roots of these long distant relations of the oasis of the Xinjiang with the world that just about begins to be known today.

Let us see them by going back on time, first of all through Hellenized Orient, then through the Achaemenid Persia, contemporaries of the Zhou and the Warring States. Finally let us try to approach the year one thousand (before) and start the second and even the third millenium, when the rivers spread out in the endoreic deltas, far into the Taklamakan, making the oasis thrive, where reigns today, denting the infinity, the monotonous sheep-like (I should be saying ‘chamel-like’) mounds of sand dunes.
Quid de Graecis ? After Alexander, some strong Greek kingdoms dominated in Bactria (North Afghanistan and South Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan) then in the Indus basin. To our knowledge, their influence does not ever stretch to the east of Pamir. However, coming from this Hellinized Orient that they marked so deeply with their impression, and where art takes on a new importance, like an aura of images reaches the depths of Interior Asia. Wasn’t a statuette in bronze of a Greek hoplite with a helmet with a crest of the 4th century discovered in the valley of Ili? But for us, two transcriptions of Hellinized paintings on cloth manufactured in Central Asia will serve as examples. The first was found by Soviet mission in Mongolia in times past, on the site of Noin Ula, in a tomb of nomads (Xiongnu or Huns), preserved by the cold. It represents noble knights and a frieze of Erotes (Loves) in a foliage. The second was discovered by IPAX in the Xinjiang, in S of Taklamakan, at Shanpula, in a sepulture of agriculturists-pastors, kept intact by aridity. It carried the effigy of a sovereign with diadem, armed with a spear, and a centaur. The view of three quarters of the ‘portraits’ like the well-balanced contours of flesh indicating the hellinistic pictural origin. And the tombs in which these discoveries were made had preserved some remains of mummified bodies.

The Achmenides, that dominated Asia in the midlle of the 1st millenium (6-4th century) not more than the Greeks have never reigned beyond Pamir. However, their influence is spread well there. The frozen tombs of Altay, in Siberia (Pazyryk), in Kazakhstan (Berel’), in Mongolia, and some of the Tian Shan in Xinjiang (Alagou) have marvelously preserved the echos of the Persian art with the Scythian nomads, even decades after the end of the last Darius. The court plastic formulas developed in Persepolis or in Susa, adapted to gold plated objects or applied on cloth, carpets, felts or wooden coins, confronted the erudite graphisms of Chinese silks coming from the heart of the Middle Empire.

At Berel’, in the Altay of Kazakhstan, the joint mission of the Institut d’Archéologie Margulan and the Académie des Sciences et de la Mission Archéologique Française en Asie Centrale – MAFAC (CNRS-Ministry of Foreign Affairs) has located a big frozen Kurgan who was searched between 1998 and 2000, after two seasons of planned explorations. It had been plundered in the past, but the vestiges were discovered in the ice, especially the bodies of thirteen horses completely saddled and harnessed. The analyses in progress give an innovative insight into the fur coats, fabrics and the ornements of bridles in sculpted, gilded or tin-plated wood. The Achaemenid art, like the art of the steppes, is present brilliantly, but the characterizations of the animal and human remains are now pushed to the extent of having their DNA and their parasites analyzed: horses like skeletons were part of specific studies verging between excavation and autopsy.

All this is among the Scythian nomads. But what has become of the sedentary agriculturists from the oasis of the Xinjiang, who were they and how did they live? They were culturally ‘cousins of the Scythiana’. The simple example of their costume and particularly of their feminine coiffure will show it immediately and easily.

Djoumboulak-Koum is a site discovered in 1994, situated right in the middle of Taklamakan, eaten away by wind erosion and obliterated by the displacements of Barkhans. This discovery, made after a well thought-out and systematic exploration, carried out on camel with the help of spatial images and GPS, has nothing to do with luck. In olden times, in the middle of the 1st millenium B.C., it has been set up in one of the old deltas of Keriya. It has been proven to our great surprise that this site of 8 hectares was equipped with a rampart and fitted into a beautiful network of irrigation that derived its armlet water from the ancient Keriya. Once again, Botanists, Zoologists, Architects, Anthropologists of the mission were lucky with the quality of the remains, found preserved by the drought. In the vicinity of the site, a few small cimeteries preserved the remains of people with bodies mummified naturally. They have been the focus of studies, at the intersection of archeology and legal medecine, at the Institut du Patrimoine et de l’Archéologie du Xinjiang and in a hospital in Urumqi. The men were dressed in pants (sometimes decorated with embroidered braids), tunics and pelisses and wearing bonnets, the costume likened to that of the nomadic cavaliers. As for the ladies, who were dressed in skirts (decorated with bands of tapestry for some), they wore complex headgears disproportionately high, like those of nomadic women of the Altay.

And going to the Old Iron and Bronze Age. On the Keriya, there are some indications that a population had been settled down right from the Bronze Age in the 2nd millenium at least. However, the most important recent discovery comes from the funeral site of Xiaohe (Lop Nur) which was searched during the last three years by IPAX. Even there, the zone is today totally barren and removed from all rivers. This cimetery, used during the centuries of the 2nd millenium, shows us aspects of a very rich and very enigmatic culture, without any known parallel. However, if the organic had not been preserved there, we would have almost never known anything, for nothing of it would have reached us, apart from bones that would have indicated ‘very poor’ tombs and some ‘animal sacrifices’. Indeed, these agriculturists and breeders hardly used stone or metal, while wood, textile, fur, skin, feather, wickerwork, wood thread weaving and the colours, tinted or painted, communicates to us a sparkling, very striking image of it. We have to spend years analyzing these exceptional finds.

The archeology of the organic, intimately linked to environment, is also the archeology of the others, the forgotton ones, of those who had been organized into empires to construct stone monuments like how we know in Mediterranean Europe, in Egypt or in Peru. However these ancient cultures, very integrated into their natural environment, have dominated Eurasia for milleniums and they are perhaps the ancestors of some of them who have for example populated the Americas or repopulated India or Iran. Were some climatic or environmental modifications the cause for these ‘big’ migrations or invasions which left from Central Asia? It is possible, but the mechanisms that form the basis of the part of ‘environmental determinism’ in the evolution of the human societies are still very far from being well known. The fact remains that nowadays, progress of industrial societies like global warming endangers these rare fragile and unstable milieux, always dependant on deglaciation and desertification, let alone the direct or indirect anthropogenic impact.