Early cross-cultural ties arise in China

Chinese archaeologists working at Baifu, a site just north of Beijing, uncovered three Bronze Age graves in 1975 that were radiocarbon dated at about 3,000 years old. After exploring two of the tombs, researchers concluded that the corpses had belonged to an ancient Chinese dynasty.

 On closer inspection, however, these dead folks and their belongings assume a different identity, one consistent with the notion that foreigners exerted critical influences on early Chinese civilization, according to a new study.

 The distinctive Baifu tombs derived from a poorly understood "northern culture" that included Caucasians, asserts Mrea Csorba, an art historian at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Vigorous trading of goods and services apparently took place between northern and Chinese populations, Csorba argues.

"Members of the northern culture were, at the very least, horse traders who went into China and obtained basic necessities such as flour, sugar, and salt," she holds. "They were probably nomadic, but at this point we don't know the specifics of how they lived."

 Csorba's research, published in the September Antiquity, supports contentions that Europeans -- like those whose mummified bodies have been found in 2,400- to 4,000-year-old cemeteries farther west, in China's Xinjiang Province -- introduced the Chinese to horseback riding and perhaps other cultural innovations.

"Csorba's work provides one more bit of hard evidence indicating that there were no strict cultural barriers in ancient Asia," asserts Victor H. Mair of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Mair, a specialist in ancient Asian cultures, directs ongoing excavations and analyses of the Xinjiang mummies.

 The Duquesne researcher compared descriptions of the Baifu tombs, assembled by Chinese archaeologists, to those of nearby tombs that are from the same period and of undisputed Chinese origin. She also studied artifacts from the Baifu graves. The tombs themselves have been covered by a construction project.

 Each rectangular, wooden tomb at Baifu contained a male skeleton resting on its back, its head oriented northward. To the upper right of the corpses lay non-Chinese items, such as distinctively fashioned knives, daggers, axes, axle heads, bronze horse gear, and helmets.

 Cast on the handle of one of the Baifu daggers is a Caucasian face, complete with bushy eyebrows, handlebar mustache, and curly hair, Csorba asserts.

 Chinese pots and other items apparently obtained through trade nestled against the walls, she notes.

 In contrast to the northern style, ancient Chinese burials contained corpses of high-ranking officials flanked by the bodies of attendants. Ledges inside the graves and compartments outside the burial chambers contained Chinese-style objects, such as bronze vessels and weapons.

 Chinese archaeologists are aware of the new findings, but long-standing assumptions that Chinese culture developed in isolation make it difficult for them to reassess the Baifu tombs, Csorba contends.