#tarim river

[zafirbel]

inspired by that meme with the yellow river

[mostly-history]

From Loulan, the oldest part of the Silk Road continues west, along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert.  Niya, the westernmost town of the ancient Shanshan kingdom, lies 600km west of Loulan.  Like that city, Niya was nce a cosmopolitan market town, where ideas, languages and religions were exchanged along with trade goods.  On an expedition to Niya, Aurel Stein discovered tatters of antique rugs, pottery jars decorated with people, animals and mythological beings, and even some furniture, including an elaborately carved armchair with lion's claw legs, that displayed Greek influences. Niya suffered a similar fate to Loulan.  The end for the oasis city arrived when the spring-fed rivers that supplied water to the region dried up or shifted course.  As the water disappeared, so did the town, which was abandoned and eventually reclaimed by the expanding Taklamakan Desert.

The Atlas of Lost Cities: Legendary Cities Rediscovered

[mostly-history]

Loulan was founded on the north-eastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the 2nd century BCE.  The discovery in 1908 of a female mummy, thought to be 3,800 years old, suggests that the site may have been inhabited for many more years. At its height, Loulan was the eastern gateway to the Taklamakan Desert crossing.  In 139 BCE the Chinese Emperor [Wu of Han] sent an envoy out on the Silk Road to seek an alliance with the people of what is now Uzbekistan.  Sixteen years later the envoy returned with news of the riches of the west, the new faith of Buddhism and a breed of horses that would benefit the emperor's army.  Passing through Loulan, the envoy recorded that the city had 1,570 households and 14,100 residents.  The surrounding land was sandy and salty and the people lived primarily by herding donkeys, horses and camels.  Over the next years ten caravans a year travelled through Loulan from the emperor's court to the cities of Central Asia. In the 4th century the Tarim River, which supplied water to the Loulan region, changed course.  As water became scarce, Loulan was abandoned and by the 6th century it had disappeared into the shifting desert sands.  It lay hidden until two 19th-century adventurers – Sven Hedin, a Swedish explorer and geographer, and Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-British adventurer – mounted separate expeditions to the region.

The Atlas of Lost Cities: Legendary Cities Rediscovered