The following is attributed to Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile
These ancient mummies, often noted for unique physical traits categorized as “Caucasoid,” have been genetically identified as a distinct Ancient North Eurasian population native to East Turkistan. Discovered in the deserts of Chinese-occupied East Turkistan, within areas historically associated with the ancient Kingdom of Kroraina (“Loulan”), they provide irrefutable evidence of the native origins of the Uyghur people. Archaeological, anthropological, and genetic research establishes that these ancient inhabitants of East Turkistan are the foundational ancestors of today’s Uyghur people, proving an unbroken native presence in the territory since the end of the Ice Age [1, 2].
The earliest ancestors of today’s Uyghurs include the isolated Little River (“Xiaohe”) culture, whose genetic lineage has been present in the Tarim Basin for more than 9,000 years [3, 4]. Genetic and historical records further indicate that admixture between these isolated Tarim Basin populations and the Indo-European (Tocharian), Hun (“Xiongnu”), and early proto-Turkic lineages that comprise today’s Uyghurs began more than 2,500 years ago in East Turkistan [6].
The documentation of Uyghurs’ deep native roots was first formally articulated in the modern context by the Uyghur historian Muhammad Emin Bughra in his seminal 1940 work, Sherqiy Türkistan Tarixi (History of East Turkistan). Writing eight decades before modern genetic science confirmed the 9,000-year timeline, Bughra’s work provided a comprehensive analysis of East Turkistan’s history from ancient times up until 1940, serving as the first modern general history of the territory written by a native Uyghur scholar [6].
Taken together, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and historical records refute Chinese imperialist and revisionist claims that falsely portray the Uyghurs as “late arrivals” or “foreigners” in East Turkistan. Such revisionist Chinese-state-backed propaganda claims persist among Chinese imperialists, whether communist, nationalist, or so-called “pro-democracy,” and are consistently used to legitimize the Chinese colonization, ongoing occupation of East Turkistan, and the genocide of its native people.
By contrast, the totality of the empirical record establishes that Uyghurs have an ancient, deep native foundation in East Turkistan that negates imperialist revisionist Chinese claims, including those referencing the Han Dynasty, whose activities in East Turkistan consisted only of intermittent military invasions and temporary, loose protectorates over sovereign foreign city-states and kingdoms, constituting actions that never represented administrative rule or sovereign ownership of the territory [7].
— Dr. Mamtimin Ala,
President of the East Turkistan Republic’s Government-in-Exile
References:
[1] Mallory, J. P., & Mair, V. H. (2000). The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. Thames & Hudson.
[2] Li, C., et al. (2010). “Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age.” BMC Biology, 8, 15.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1741-7007-8-15.
[3] Zhang, F., et al. (2021). “The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies.” Nature, 599(7884), 256-261 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04052-7.
[4] Wade, Lizzie. (2021). “Western China’s mysterious mummies were local descendants of Ice Age ancestors.” Science. https://www.science.org/…/western-china-s-mysterious….
[5 ] Xu, S., et al. (2008). “Analysis of genomic admixture in Uyghur and its implication in mapping strategy.” American Journal of Human Genetics, 82(4), 883-894. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2427216/.\
[6] Bughra, Muhammad Emin. (1940). Sherqiy Türkistan Tarixi [History of East Turkistan]. 1st ed., Srinagar. (Republished 1987, Ankara).
[7] Di Cosmo, Nicola. (2002). Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History. Cambridge University Press. In the section “The Han Campaigns” (pp. 236–252), Di Cosmo clarifies that Han “protectorates” were strategic military tools for “conducting relations with foreign peoples” (p. 246) and did not constitute sovereign ownership or administrative rule over the independent city-states and kingdoms of the Western Regions.