Princess of Xiaohe

Common card · No. 244496

The Princess of Xiaohe (Chinese: 小河公主; died c. 1800 BCE), also known as the Little River Princess, is a naturally mummified woman of the Bronze Age and one of the Tarim mummies. She was excavated in 2003 from Tomb M11 at Xiaohe Cemetery in the Lop Nur region of present-day Xinjiang, northwestern China, where she had remained undisturbed for about 3,800 years. She is unusually well preserved. Her skin, long hair and eyelashes survive, along with her clothing and numerous organic materials placed in her grave. A 2021 genome-wide study found that the Early Bronze Age people buried at Xiaohe belonged to a genetically isolated population with substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. The researchers found no evidence that they descended from recent western Eurasian pastoralist migrants.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Michael Kan, CC BY 2.0