ABSTRACT
Although many Uighurs claim to be the indigenous people of the region, foreign historians say the Uighurs did not migrate from the Mongolian steppes to what is now Xinjiang until the tenth century. They eventually built tribal societies, mostly around oasis towns along the southern edge of the large desert depression called the Tarim Basin. Archaeological finds, especially recent excavations of amazingly well-preserved mummies, show that the first people to live in the region were probably West Eurasians, some of whom seem to have worshipped cows. The oldest of those mummies date back some 3,800 years . . . The Chinese empire did not exercise political control over the territory in its current shape until the Qing Dynasty, ruled by ethnic Manchus, annexed the region in 1760 and later gave it the name Xinjiang . . . [which] translates as ‘New Frontier’ or ‘New Dominion’ . . . Ethnic Han began arriving in large numbers only after the Communist takeover in 1949.
