Until now, researchers had proposed three migration routes: either they were ["]western Eurasians["] moving south from Siberia, or they were ["]Central Asian["] farmers moving east, or else they had to be a mobile pastoral community moving west along the mountains.

Genetic analysis published in the journal Nature on Thursday reveals the Tarim people were a genetically isolated population of ancient ["]North Eurasians["] with roots dating back to the Holocene.

The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of ["]Inner Asia["], and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious¹. Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to around 3000-2800 BC from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to around 2100-1700 BC from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from North and South Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, and the Early-Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals contain only a local ancestry. ...