Mair, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you went to see the mummy in the museum, a Uighur would come up to you and whisper proudly, ‘She’s our ancestor,’” said Victor H. Since Uighurs themselves often resemble Europeans rather than Chinese, many were quick to adopt the Beauty of Loulan as one of their own. And it added another bone of contention to the raging ethnic conflict in Xinjiang, where Uighurs, a Turkic speaking people, consider themselves to be the indigenous population and the Han Chinese foreign invaders from the east.
The discovery turned on its head assumptions that Caucasians didn’t frequent these parts until at least a thousand years later, when trading between Europe and Asia began along the Silk Road.
