Every now and then a news story comes to light about the so-called Celtic mummies of China. The story has been making rounds for most of this century, from scientific conferences to ABCNews.

Without detracting from the wonder that is the Cherchen mummies, let’s set the record straight concerning the Celticness of these men and women.

The Caucasian bronze age mummies of Cherchen

There are plenty of mummies from China and many of those come from Xinjiang in western China, which is where the mummies we are talking about today were found. What is so extraordinary about these particular mummies, however, is that they are perfectly preserved from the hair on their heads to the shoes on their feet. And they are Caucasian.

The mummies in question are one man, three women and an infant. The adults were all buried at roughly the same time in a tomb which was then sealed off. On top of that chamber, an infant was later buried alongside a sheep udder nursing bottle. From the lack of signs of violence in any of the corpses, one might assume that they died in an epidemic and that the child was cared for by relatives or the community until it too perished at the age of around three months.

The sheep udder baby bottle and the perfectly preserved woollen clothes would imply that these people, with the high nose ridges, fair hair and round eye sockets of native Europeans, were not of Asian origin. Sheep do not belong in this land. Further proof lay in the grains found in the grave. These people had wheat –also not native to China. They should not, the argument goes, be there as early as just over 3,000 years ago. DNA testing has now confirmed it: these and hundreds of mummies from the Xinjiang region are of European origin.

The Celtic lie

There are some aspects of these mummies that get repeated in most of the stories as Celtic attributes.
The tartan-like weave of cloth is similar to that of the contemporary Austrians. The time period in question, however, is circa 1300 BCE which predates the development of a Celtic culture, although it may certainly be that those Austrians developed into what we know as the Celts. It is Proto-Celtic at best. These Xinjiang Europeans had all died by the time anyone was referred to as a Celt.

There were presumed icons found with the bodies which resembled in some ways the Sheela na Gig figure seen primarily in Ireland. This is no sign of Celticness, however. The Sheela na Gigs we know from Ireland are 2400 years younger and are certainly not a purely Celtic phenomenon, occurring as they do all across Europe.
The burial itself was surrounded with standing stones, which media likened to British dolmens. Not only do these exist in Asia too, but they belong to the Stone Age and predate Celtic culture by thousands of years.

There have even been indications that one of the women was a druid, a Celtic priest and judge, for she wore a long conical hat. Sadly, no. She is simply wearing a normal Bronze Age western piece of headgear.

Unfortunately, the DNA of the Cherchen man is often touted as Celtic. If the former examples I’ve presented may seem like potential misunderstandings, this is a blatant lie. The DNA findings were that the mummies shared DNA with, amongst others, modern Swedes, Finns, and Italians, neither of which are particularly Celtic.

Caucasians in Bronze Age China?

This doesn’t in any way negate the amazing discovery of Bronze Age contacts between Europeans and the Chinese. But, the Europeans in question were more like Ötzi the Iceman than Queen Boudicca. If you read an archaeologist’s account of the Cherchen mummies this is what you will generally find; the mass media’s story is quite different.

The idea that the ancient Chinese had contacts with Europe isn’t new. There are references in early Chinese books about tall, redheaded men with green eyes, thought by some scholars to be Romans on account of similarities between some Roman and Chinese legends. Unfortunately it’s a taboo topic. The Chinese don’t want ancient European influence to discredit their civilisation’s independent greatness and Europeans want a past in which we don’t constantly invade and rule foreign lands.

About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101.