Scientists trace half the DNA in Xinjiang’s oldest tombs to Yellow River farmers

Nestled between the Tianshan Mountains and the Gobi Desert, the Hami oasis in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is a land of little rain, battered by wind and sand year-round.

It is also home to the region’s oldest known burial site, the Tianshanbeilu cemetery, located around 500km (310 miles) east of Urumqi, the regional capital. More than 700 Bronze Age tombs have been unearthed here, long assumed to belong to Eurasian nomads who migrated eastward from the steppes.

But a study published on Friday in the journal Science upends that view, revealing a previously unknown, genetically mixed population that lived in the eastern Tianshan region 3,600 years ago, during China’s Shang dynasty (1600-1050BC).