Concept
Tocharian languages
Related concepts (23)
Turpan
Turpan (also known as Turfan; ; تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 693,988 (2020). The original name of the city is unknown. The form Turfan (while it is older than Turpan), was not used until the middle of the 2nd millennium CE and its use became widespread only in the post-Mongol period. Historically, many settlements in the Tarim Basin have been given a number of different names.
Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age.
Tarim mummies
The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BC to the first centuries BC, with a new group of individuals recently dated to between c. 2100 and 1700 BC. The Tarim population to which the earliest mummies belonged was agropastoral, and they lived circa 2000 BC in what was formerly a freshwater environment, which has now become desertified.
Hephthalites
The Hephthalites (ηβοδαλο), sometimes called the White Huns (also known as the White Hunas, in Iranian as the Spet Xyon and in Sanskrit as the Sveta-huna), were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE. They formed an empire, the Imperial Hephthalites, and were militarily important from 450 CE, when they defeated the Kidarites, to 560 CE, when combined forces from the First Turkic Khaganate and the Sasanian Empire defeated them.
Yamnaya culture
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture, also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901-1903.
Gaochang
Gaochang (; Old Uyghur: Qocho), also called Khocho, Karakhoja, Qara-hoja, Kara-Khoja or Karahoja (قاراغوجا in Uyghur), was a ruined, ancient oasis city on the northern rim of the inhospitable Taklamakan Desert in present-day Xinjiang, China. The site is also known in published reports as Chotscho, Khocho, Qocho or Qočo. During the Yuan dynasty and Ming dynasty, Gaochang was referred to as "Halahezhuo" () (Qara-khoja) and Huozhou. The ruins are located 30 km southeast of modern Turpan, at a place called Idykut-schari or Idikutschari by local residents.
Centum and satem languages
Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An example of the different developments is provided by the words for "hundred" found in the early attested Indo-European languages (which is where the two branches get their names).
Jiaohe ruins
Jiaohe or Yarkhoto is a ruined city in the Yarnaz Valley, 10 km west of the city of Turpan in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. It was the capital of the Tocharian kingdom of Jushi. It is a natural fortress located atop a steep cliff on a leaf-shaped plateau between two deep river valleys, and was an important stop along the Silk Road. The Hou Hanshu, in discussing Jiaohe, alludes to a conventional reading of the name, as meaning "river junction": The king of Nearer Jushi lives in the town of Jiaohe.
Loulan Kingdom
Loulan, also called Krorän or Kroraina ( < Eastern Han Chinese lo-lɑn < Old Chinese rô-rân; Kroran, USY: Кроран), was an ancient kingdom based around an important oasis city along the Silk Road already known in the 2nd century BCE on the northeastern edge of the Lop Desert. The term Loulan is the Chinese transcription of the native name Krorän and is used to refer to the city near Lop Nur as well as the kingdom.
Tocharian script
The Tocharian script, also known as Central Asian slanting Gupta script or North Turkestan Brāhmī, is an abugida which uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. Part of the Brahmic scripts, it is a version of the Indian Brahmi script. It is used to write the Central Asian Indo-European Tocharian languages, mostly from the 8th century (with a few earlier ones, probably as early as 300 CE) that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets and Chinese paper, preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin.