AI brings the Tarim mummies back to life
« previous post | next post »
I've seen all of these folks up close in suspended death, so it is a breathtaking experience to watch their reanimation.
This is especially so when they look like people you know. The male in the video, whom I refer to as "Ur-David", is the doppelgänger of my second oldest brother (èrgē 二哥) (Hughes 2011, p. 42a).
Selected readings
- Hughes, Samuel. "When West Went East", Pennsylvania Gazette (January-February, 2011), 42a-47b.
- "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
- Mair, Victor H. “The Rediscovery and Complete Excavation of Ördek’s Necropolis.” The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 34.3-4 (Fall / Winter, 2006), 273-318.
- _____. "Ancient Mummies of the Tarim Basin: Discovering Early Inhabitants of Eastern Central Asia," Expedition Magazine (58.2 (2016).
- _____. "The Tarim Basin Mummies. Lecture: 1:08:52. November 3, 2010.
The exhibition Secrets of the Silk Road explores the history of the vast desert landscape of the Tarim Basin, located in Western China, and the mystery of the peoples who lived there. Located at the crossroads between East and West, oasis towns within the Tarim Basin were key way stations for anyone traveling on the legendary Silk Road. Extraordinarily well-preserved human remains found at these sites reveal ancient people of unknown descent. Caucasian in appearance, these mummies challenge long-held beliefs about the history of the area, and early human migration. The material excavated suggests the area was active for thousands of years, with diverse languages, lifestyles, religions, and cultures present. This exhibit provides a chance to investigate this captivating material to begin to uncover some of the secrets of the Silk Road. Dr Victor H. Mair, Curatorial Consultant for "Secrets of the Silk Road," and co-author, The Tarim Mummies, discusses the ongoing discovery of these extraordinary mummies, what we have learned-and what remains to be uncovered.
The exhibition "Secrets of the Silk Road" opened February 5, 2011 at the Penn Museum,
- _____. “Stylish Hats and Sumptuous Garments from Bronze Age and Iron Age Eastern Central Asia,” Orientations, 41.4 (May, 2010), 69-72.
- _____, ed. Secrets of the Silk Road. Santa Ana, California: Bowers Museum, 2010.
- _____ and Jane Hickman, ed. Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on East-West Exchange in Antiquity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (published by the University of Pennsylvania Press), 2014.
- Williams, Amelia. "Ancient Felt Hats of the Eurasian Steppe". In Victor H. Mair, ed., "The 'Silk Roads' in Time and Space: Migrations, Motifs, and Materials". Sino-Platonic Papers, 228 (July 2012), 66-93.
- "Tocharica et archaeologica" (12/20/24).
[Thanks to Zach Hershey]
Gene Hill said,
February 14, 2026 @ 11:46 am
Beautiful!
Scott P. said,
February 14, 2026 @ 12:01 pm
Truly disheartening. This is an imaginary concoction, not anyone 'being brought to life'. If you want a recreation, at least pay an actor.
John from Cincinnati said,
February 14, 2026 @ 12:26 pm
At first I could not figure out what the post is about, because my Google Chrome browser displayed only text for the post. However, the Edge browser did display an embedded movie from Facebook, as the very first content in the post, before "Read the rest of this entry". The view-source html is an iframe. No idea why my Chrome does not handle it.
David Marjanović said,
February 14, 2026 @ 1:30 pm
Big white void in Firefox here; right-clicking in it does nothing.
Anyway, what was in the training material…?
Philip Taylor said,
February 14, 2026 @ 2:08 pm
I don't normally follow any links to videos (even from this erudite forum) but as others reported that the link was inaccessible to their preferred browser(s) I thought I would try mine — Firefox 147.0.3 (64-bit) running under Windows 11. The video link played without a hitch.
Victor Mair said,
February 14, 2026 @ 2:09 pm
pointed felt hats with feathers and other decorations; Ur-David; masterful recreation; careful attention to textiles; authentic hair styles and belongings; truly heart-stopping; particularly when expanded to the whole screen
Stephen Goranson said,
February 14, 2026 @ 2:39 pm
Without more data on how these were "reanimated" I doubt these videos can be taken as serious evidence.
Victor Mair said,
February 14, 2026 @ 3:19 pm
I spent 20 years working in close association with these mummies. One thing that really stikes me is how they got Ur-David's beard just right. Also the braids of the women are impressively realistic..
cameron said,
February 14, 2026 @ 3:23 pm
perhaps you have to be logged in to Facebook to see the video. it's just a blank space for me
Victor Mair said,
February 14, 2026 @ 5:56 pm
From Elizabeth Wayland Barber, the world's foremost authority on ancient textiles:
=====
Those animations were DELIGHTFUL!! Thanks so much for passing them around. Not just the Xinjiang mummies — I don't know if you knew that I worked on the clothing of the Zanjan (in northwest Iran) "saltmen" — probably you were involved, I can't remember. E.J.W. Barber, "Of Salt Men and Cloth: The Remarkable Textile History Preserved in Eurasian Salt-beds", Sino-Platonic Paperss, 345 (May, 2024, 1-26.
And of course I've done a lot of research on the Egyptian ladies' clothes.
=====
Elizabeth Wayland Barber earned a bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr College in Archaeology and Greek in 1962. Her chief mentor was Mabel Lang from whom she learned Linear B and who advised her honors thesis on Linear A. In addition to Lang, Wayland wrote her thesis under Emmett Bennett Her thesis used computer indices of the Hagia Triada Linear A texts in an attempt to decipher its signs and symbols. The computer indices were made via punched cards, a method which was preceded by the work of Alice Kober on Linear B.
E.J. W. Barber earned her PhD from Yale University in linguistics in 1968. Her doctoral study at Yale University was supervised by Sydney Lamb, under whom she wrote her dissertation, "The Computer Aided Analysis of Undeciphered Ancient Texts."
Her books include Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean (1992), Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years; Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (1995), The Mummies of Ürümchi (1999)
In addition, she has written numerous important articles. One of the most significant for the present topic is this:
"Indigo and cabbage, part 2"
MattF said,
February 14, 2026 @ 7:43 pm
Works with Safari, but you have to ignore a warning about Facebook getting access to your cookies and data. If you disallow that, the video stops.
katarina said,
February 14, 2026 @ 8:01 pm
Wonderful animation ! Thank you !
Victor Mair said,
February 14, 2026 @ 8:14 pm
From Lucas Christopoulos: I knew a girl from Nya in Beijing, and she was looking exactly like the second woman of the video.
VHM: I met two girls from Niya in Niya who looked like the second girl in the video. I always say they looked like girls from Kansas. They spoke native Uyghur language.
Victor Mair said,
February 14, 2026 @ 8:38 pm
VHM:
=====
The Niya ruins (simplified Chinese: 尼雅遗址; traditional Chinese: 尼雅遺址; pinyin: Níyǎ Yízhǐ), is an archaeological site located about 115 km (71 mi) north of modern Niya Town on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin in modern-day Xinjiang, China. The ancient site was known in its native language as Caḍ́ota[citation needed], and in Chinese during the Han dynasty as Jingjue (Chinese: 精絕; pinyin: Jīngjué, Old Chinese tseng-dzot, similar to Caḍ́ota[citation needed]). Numerous ancient archaeological artifacts have been uncovered at the site.
Niya was once a major commercial center on an oasis on the southern branch of the Silk Road in the southern Taklamakan Desert. During ancient times camel caravans would cut through, carrying goods from China to Central Asia.
History
In Hanshu, an independent oasis state called Jingjue, generally thought to be Niya, is mentioned:
The seat of the king's government is the town of Jingjue, and it is distant by 8,820 li [probably 3,667 km/2,279 miles] from Ch'ang-an. There are 480 households, 3,350 individuals with 500 persons able to bear arm. [There are the following officials] the commandant of Jingjue, the leaders of the left and the right and an interpreter-in-chief.
— Hanshu, chapter 96a, translation from Hulsewé 1979.[4]
Niya became part of Loulan Kingdom by the third century. Towards the end of the fourth century it was under Chinese suzerainty. Later it was conquered by Tibet.
Excavations
Niya site where Aurel Stein found wooden tablets
In 1900, Aurel Stein set out on an expedition to western China and the Taklamakan Desert. In Niya he excavated several groups of dwellings, and found 100 wooden tablets written in 105 CE. These tablets bore clay seals, official orders and letters written in Kharoshthi, an early Indic script, dating them to the Kushan Empire, or to Gandharan migrants influenced by Kushan and Indian bureaucratic traditions. Stein also found a series of clay seals with impressions of Athena Alkidemos, together with others representing Eros, Heracles, or a different version of Athena. Other finds include coins and documents dating from the Han dynasty, Roman coins, an ancient mouse trap, a walking stick, part of a guitar, a bow in working order, a carved stool, an elaborately designed rug and other textile fragments, as well as many other household objects such as wooden furniture with elaborate carving, pottery, Chinese basketry and lacquer ware. Aurel Stein visited Niya four times between 1901 and 1931.
Wooden tablet inscribed with Kharosthi characters
Official approval for joint Sino-Japanese archaeological excavations at the site was given in 1994. Researchers have now found remains of human habitation including approximately 100 dwellings, burial areas, sheds for animals, orchards, gardens, and agricultural fields. They have also found in the dwellings well-preserved tools such as iron axes and sickles, wooden clubs, pottery urns and jars of preserved crops. The human remains found there have led to speculation on the origins of these peoples.
In 2007, when the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology's research group on Niya was editing the third volume of the Report on the Sino-Japanese Joint Expedition in Niya,2 they carefully examined a "parchment text" found in Nya. After the string was untied, it was found that the paper had been used to wrap up a powder of vegetable origin, perhaps spices or medicine. When the powder was removed, a text written in black ink in a clear script was visible. Noting that the writing appeared to be the same as that of the Sogdian "Ancient Letters" found near Dunhuang, which were written in the early fourth century,3 and other Sogdian fragments of similar date found at Loulan, the local archaeologists were able to determine that this new fragment was also written in early Sogdian script.
Some archeological findings from the ruins of Niya are housed in the Tokyo National Museum. Others are part of the Stein collection in the British Museum, the British Library, and the National Museum in New Delhi.
Ancient texts included the mention and names of various regional rulers.
(Wikipedia)
=====
I have seen many wonderfully preserved mummies from Niya and nearby towns dating to around two thousand years ago that look like they might well be the ancestors of the Niya girls Lucas and I mentioned above.
Dorothy Wong said,
February 14, 2026 @ 9:25 pm
EERIE
Philip Taylor said,
February 15, 2026 @ 9:00 am
" Truly disheartening. This is an imaginary concoction, not anyone 'being brought to life'. If you want a recreation, at least pay an actor. " — I really could not disagree more, Scott. A clever and intelligent use of AI to achieve something impressive. Of course it is not "anyone being brought [back] to life", it is an artist's impression of what someone brought back to life might look like if such a thing were possible.
AG said,
February 15, 2026 @ 8:48 pm
I haven't watched the video being discussed.
I DO know that it's a bit irresponsible to attribute anything accurate in a historical reconstruction to "AI".
Anything they happen to get right is due to busy humans putting a LOT of work into it.
Please check out this recent study.
Ask an AI to generate neandertals and what it spits out is always seriously flawed and frequently, dare i say it, offensive to them/us/other species.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-archaeological-practice/article/artificial-intelligence-and-the-interpretation-of-the-past/8FE3F2CB6BBFAD49F75FFC3031158A5A
T said,
February 15, 2026 @ 9:02 pm
CCP revanchist propagandists will not be happy…
Chris Button said,
February 15, 2026 @ 9:20 pm
By coincidence, I was just pondering on a suggestion in "The Tarim Mummies" (2000:331) that 鍋 might have an Indo-European connection. Meanwhile, Bodman (1980:137) suggests an Austronesian and Austroasiatic connection. Until now, I have been treating it as a native word.