On the Presence of Non-Chinese at Anyang
by Kim Hayes
It has now become clear that finds of chariot remains, metal knives and axes of northern provenance, and bronze mirrors of western provenance in the tombs of Anyang indicate that the Shang had at least indirect contact with people who were familiar with these things. Who were these people? Where did they live? When did they arrive?
Following the discovery of the Tarim Mummies, we now know that the population of the earliest attested cultures of what is present-day Xinjiang were of northwestern or western derivation. According to the craniometric studies of Ran Kangxin, these people can be divided into three distinct types.
The first group to arrive are held to have come from the north because the cranial measurements of the surviving skulls of this type are affinial with the skulls of the Afanasevo culture in particular, which was located in the Sayan-Altai/North Mongolia area, and with the skull types of steppe people living much further to the west. This group is called "Proto-European" by Mair and Mallory, and it can be dated to have arrived in Xinjiang about 1800 B.C.E. or somewhat earlier.
It has been suggested that this group may have been a relatively small group of Afanasevo/Tocharian refugees fleeing to the south, away from Indo-Iranian expansion arriving from regions west and southwest of the Sayan-Altai.
If we accept the refugee classification of these people, it helps us explain the geographical position in the southeast Tarim of the Qawrighul and Yanbulaq Proto-Europeans. It was as far away from everywhere as you could get-it was a safe place. This is important and may help us to understand much else that happened to these people prior to their arrival in Xinjiang, as well as what happened to them after this time.
For the period c. 2000-c. 1000 B.C.E.-which saw the emergence, development, expansion, and culmination of early Chinese civilization in the Erlitou, Erligang and related cultures, Anyang cultural continuum-there is no extant evidence of contact between the people of the eastern Tarim and the people of the emerging Chinese polity.
It is only from around c. 1000 B.C.E. that we have evidence for the arrival in Xinjiang of the two remaining types of caucasoid, the Pamir Ferghana and Indo-Afghan types. It is thought that the Pamir Ferghana type entered northwestern Xinjiang from contiguous regions to the west of the Tian Shan c. 1000 B.C.E. The Indo-Afghans are thought to have entered southwestern Xinjiang from Bactria somewhat later.
A clear illustration of "the three types of human cranial variation according to Han Kang xin," is provided on p. 238 of The Tarim Mummies and on p. 566 of The Bronze Age.
Given that there is no evidence to indicate interaction between the caucasoids of Xinjiang and their Han neighbors to the east, it is very unlikely that remains of any non-Chinese found at Anyang would have come from Xinjiang. This proposition is strengthened by the fact that the Pamir Ferghana and Indo-Afghan types are held to have entered Western Xinjiang around the time of the demise of the Shang, or after.
Heretofore, many scholars have suspected that there might have been a foreign contribution involved in the formative processes of the emerging Chinese polity, but beyond inferences and possibilities, no scholar has felt confident enough, or has been able to say, that there is material proof that this is possible.