The Tocharians of the Silk Road

Like some giant jigsaw, the enigma of the origins and final disappearance of the Tocharians seems somehow bound up with the european mummies of the Takla-makan desert of Western China. Some pieces of the puzzle are known – their red hair and blue eyes, their city-states along the silk road, their role in the spread of Buddhism. But the links they have with the desert mummies of Urumchi, dating from 2000 BC are still unclear. In this talk Tom Holloway of U3A Headington laid out the pieces of the puzzle as best he could, and we discussed what we might make of them.