In the museums of Urumchi, the windswept regional capital of the Uyghur Automous Region in Western China, a collection of ancient mummies lay at the centre of an enormous mystery. Some of the Urumchi's date back as far as 4000 years - contemporaries of those in Egypt, but even more beautifully preserved, especially their clothing.
These prehistoric people are not Oriental but Caucasian - tall, large-nosed and blonde with round eyes that wrere probably blue. Where did they come from and what were they doing in the foothills of the Himalayas? Few gifts were put into their graves, making it difficult to pinpoint any cultural connections from clues offered by their pottery or their tools. But their clothing - made from woollen cloth that rarely survives more than a few centuries - has been preserved as brightly hued as the day it was made.
Elizabeth Wayland Barber describes these remarkable mummies, their vivid clothing and the world to which they so mysteriously belonged, piecing together their history and peculiar Western connections both from what she saw in Urumchi and from the testimony of those who explored the Silk Road centuries earlier. The result is a riveting historical adventure during which an exotic and higherto unknown world is gradually unveiled.
