DNA reveals surprise ancestry of mysterious Chinese mummies

The genomes of 13 remarkably preserved 4,000-year-old mummies from China’s Tarim Basin suggest they weren’t migrants who brought technology from the West, as was previously supposed. Instead, the remains probably belong to Indigenous people who might have adopted agricultural methods from neighbouring groups. Researchers traced the ancestry of these early Chinese farmers to Stone Age hunter-gatherers who lived in Asia some 9,000 years ago.