Saturday, August 3, 2013

What is the Loulan Beauty?

If you have not already discovered, the URL or address of this blog is called Loulan Silk Road.

The Loulan beauty refers to a female Mummy found in Western China in 1980. Her reconstructed face looks like this.






And the original Mummy image can be seen here - at the bottom of the page.


The mummies of the Tarim Basin (and Lop Nur desert) in the Xinjiang province of western China, are thought to be of Caucasian origin and have been dated to over 2000 years ago. Which means that there were Europeans in contact with the Chinese, during or before the time of Christ.



The episode about the Loulan Kingdom can be seen here.

The Chinese filmed a 10 year expedition of the Talamaklan desert in western China in the 1970s and early 1980s. We know it is that early because the above episode (the Loulan Kingdom) makes reference to the Expedition of Aurel Stein in 1934, claiming it was "almost half a century earlier."
1934 plus 50 years is 1984 - so this film was made before 1984.

More details can be read on Wikipedia.

So with the Loulan Beauty being discovered in 1980, along with the Marco Polo TV Miniseries airing in 1982 - it was inevitable that  I would fall in love with everything to do with the Silk Road. 

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