The Xiaohe Cemetery (Chinese: 小河墓地; pinyin: Xiǎohé mùdì, meaning "little river cemetery") is also called Ördek's Necropolis. It is a Bronze Age site located west of Lop Nur in Xinjiang, Western China. The site has about 330 tombs, and 160 of these were damaged by thieves before archaeologists could study them.

A nearby cemetery called Gumugou, slightly to the north, is also part of the Xiaohe culture.

The Xiaohe Cemetery looks like a long, flat hill covered with sand. More than 30 human remains have been found there. These remains date back about 4,000 years. The bodies were buried in sealed bags made from ox hides and are very well preserved. Because of this, they are often called the "Tarim mummies."

The people buried at Xiaohe have drawn much interest because of their physical appearance, which resembles people from Europe and the Middle East. Genetic studies show that the Xiaohe population had a unique mix of genes, likely coming from a small group of Ancient North Eurasians.

The Xiaohe Cemetery has the largest number of mummies found at a single site in the world so far. Scientists believe the bodies were brought from far away for burial there, as no nearby settlements from that time are known.

Archaeology

A local hunter named Ördek discovered the site around 1910. In 1934, with Ördek’s help, Swedish explorer and archeologist Folke Bergman found the site and named it Xiaohe, which means "little river" after a nearby stream of the Kaidu River. The tomb looked like a small oval hill, and the top of the burial mound had many wooden posts standing upright, with their tops broken by strong winds. Oar-shaped wooden monuments and wooden human figures were found at the site. The coffins were placed over the bodies, which had become mummies. Bergman uncovered 12 burials and collected about 200 items, which were taken to Stockholm. Bergman observed that the clothing, especially the loincloths with fringes, looked similar to clothing found in Bronze Age graves in Denmark, but he did not believe there was a direct connection.

In October 2003, an excavation project led by the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute began at the site. Since the end of 2002, 167 tombs have been uncovered, and excavations showed hundreds of smaller tombs built in layers. In 2006, a coffin wrapped in ox hide shaped like a boat was found. It contained a nearly complete mummy of a young woman, later called the Beauty of Xiaohe (or Beauty of Loulan).

Each tomb has a vertical poplar post near the top of the coffin. A skull or ox horn may hang from the post. The ends of the posts can be torpedo-shaped or oar-shaped, representing the phallus and vulva. Male burials had oar-shaped posts, while female burials had phallic-shaped posts. Bows and arrows were found with the male burials. The posts and coffins may be painted red. Each coffin is made of two large wooden planks placed over the body, shaped like an overturned boat, and covered with cowhides. Some tombs with female remains have an extra rectangular coffin on top, covered with layers of mud. Small human face masks and wooden human figures may be placed with the burials. Twigs and branches from ephedra plants were placed beside the bodies.

Genetic studies

Between 2009 and 2015, scientists studied the DNA of 92 individuals found at the Xiaohe Tomb complex. They looked at two types of DNA: Y-DNA, which shows paternal ancestry, and mtDNA, which shows maternal ancestry.

The genetic results showed that the maternal lineages of the Xiaohe people came from both East Asia and West Eurasia. However, all the paternal lineages were connected to modern populations in West Eurasia.

The mtDNA analysis, which tracks direct maternal ancestry, found that the Xiaohe people had maternal lineages from several groups. These included West Eurasian groups like H, K, U5, U7, U2e, T, and R; East Asian groups like B5, D, and G2a; and groups likely from Central Asia or East Asia, such as C4 and C5. Some lineages were also typically found in South Asia, like M5 and M. In contrast, 11 out of 12 paternal lines were from a West Eurasian group called R1a1, and one was from a rare group called K*. The exact location where these groups mixed is unknown, but it may have been in southern Siberia.

Hui Zhou, one of the study's co-authors, noted in a 2014 comment that the Xiaohe R1a1 lineages were part of a specific European branch, not the more common Central Asian R-Z93 group.

In 2021, Fan Zhang and others studied the DNA of five individuals from the Dzungarian Basin (around 3000–2800 BC) and thirteen individuals from the Tarim Basin (around 2100–1700 BC). These remains are the oldest human remains found in North and South Xinjiang. The research found that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals had mainly Afanasievo ancestry with some local influence, while the Early–Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals had only local ancestry. The Xiaohe individuals from the Tarim Basin also showed evidence of milk proteins in their teeth, suggesting they used dairy farming at the site. These findings do not support earlier ideas that the Tarim mummies were Proto-Tocharian-speaking people from the Afanasievo culture or from the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures. Instead, the study suggests that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures likely developed from a genetically isolated local population that adopted nearby pastoralist and farming practices, allowing them to live and thrive in the shifting river oases of the Taklamakan Desert.