This once theorized ancestry between Tocharians and these mummies is however now largely considered to be discredited by the absence of a genetic connection with Indo-European-speaking migrants, particularly the Afanasievo or BMAC cultures.

From the 8th century AD, the Uyghurs – speakers of a Turkic language – settled in the region and founded the Kingdom of Qocho that ruled the Tarim Basin.

[7][13] Müller called the languages "Tocharian" (German Tocharisch), linking this toxrï (Tωγry, "Togari")[9] with the ethnonym Tókharoi (Ancient Greek: Τόχαροι) applied by Strabo to one of the "Scythian" tribes "from the country on the other side of the Iaxartes" that overran the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (present day Afghanistan) in the second half of the 2nd century BC.

Many authors take this to imply that Tocharian A had become a purely literary and liturgical language by the time of the manuscripts, but it may be that the surviving documents are unrepresentative.

[33] Common Indo-European vocabulary retained in Tocharian includes words for herding, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, horses, textiles, farming, wheat, gold, silver, and wheeled vehicles.

[34] Prakrit documents from 3rd century Krorän, Andir and Niya on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain around 100 loanwords and 1000 proper names that cannot be traced to an Indic or Iranian source.

[39] The murals found in the Tarim Basin, especially those of the Kizil Caves, mostly depict Jataka stories, avadanas, and legends of the Buddha, and are an artistic representation in the tradition of the Hinayana school of the Sarvastivadas.

[40] When the Chinese Monk Xuanzang visited Kucha in 630 AD, he received the favours of the Tocharian king Suvarnadeva, the son and successor of Suvarnapushpa, whom he described as a believer of Hinayana Buddhism.

[48] The early eastward expansion of the Yamnaya culture circa 3300 BC is enough to account for the isolation of the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization.

[49] Michaël Peyrot argues that several of the most striking typological peculiarities of Tocharian are rooted in a prolonged contact of Proto-Tocharian-speaking Afanasievans with speakers of an early stage of Proto-Samoyedic in South Siberia.

Among others, this might explain the merger of all three-stop series (e.g., *t, *d, *dʰ > *t), which must have led to a huge amount of homonyms, as well as the development of an agglutinative case system.

[26] According to glotto-chronological data, proto-Tokharians must have migrated to the east around the same period, and their Western Indo-European language is closest to proto-Germanic and proto-Italic, corresponding to the broad geographical area encompassing southern France where the style most similar to those of the Chemurchek culture have been identified.

[52] The desert is completely barren, but in the late spring the melting snows of the surrounding mountains feed streams, which have been altered by human activity to create oases with mild microclimates and supporting intensive agriculture.

[54] The necessary irrigation technology was first developed during the 3rd millennium BC in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) to the west of the Pamir mountains, but it is unclear how it reached the Tarim.

[63][64] During the 1st millennium BC, a further wave of immigrants, the Saka speaking Iranian languages, arrived from the west and settled along the southern rim of the Tarim.

[68] These oases served as waystations on the trade routes forming part of the Silk Road passing along the northern and southern edges of the Taklamakan desert.

[71] Situated on the northern and southern edges of the Tarim, these small urban societies were overshadowed by nomadic peoples to the north and Chinese empires to the east.

[81] The Roman Maes Titianus is known to have visited the area in the 2nd century AD,[82] as did numerous great Buddhist missionaries such as the Parthian An Shigao, the Yuezhis Lokaksema and Zhi Qian, or the Indian Chu Sho-fu (竺朔佛).

The prince's palace is grand and imposing, glittering like an abode of the gods.The inhabitants grew red millet, wheat, rice, legumes, hemp, grapes and pomegranates, and reared horses, cattle, sheep and camels.

[1] According to Historian of Art Benjamin Rowland, these portraits show "that the Tocharians were European rather than Mongol in appearance, with light complexions, blue eyes, and blond or reddish hair, and the costumes of the knights and their ladies have haunting suggestions of the chivalric age of the West".

[101] Kucha ambassador are known to have visited the Chinese court of Emperor Yuan of Liang in his capital Jingzhou in 516–520 AD, at or around the same time as the Hepthalite embassies there.

In the late 5th century AD the Hephthalites, based in Tokharistan (Bactria), expanded eastward through the Pamir Mountains, which are comparatively easy to cross, as did the Kushans before them, due to the presence of convenient plateaus between high peaks.

[102] They occupied the western Tarim Basin (Kashgar and Khotan), taking control of the area from the Rourans, who had been collecting heavy tribute from the oasis cities, but were now weakening under the assaults of the Chinese Wei dynasty.

[105][108] The influence of the art of Gandhara in some of the earliest paintings at the Kizil Caves, dated to circa 500 AD, is considered as a consequence of the political unification of the area between Bactria and Kucha under the Hephthalites.

[112] They also include travel passes, small slips of poplar wood giving the size of the permitted caravans for officials at the next station along the road.

He later described the characteristics of Kucha (屈支国) in great detail in his Records of the Western Regions:[116][43][44] 1) "The style of writing is Indian, with some differences" 2) "They clothe themselves with ornamental garments of silk and embroidery.

They cut their hair and wear a flowing covering (over their heads)" 3) "The king is of Kuchean race"[117] 4) "There are about one hundred convents (saṅghārāmas) in this country, with five thousand and more disciples.

Alarmed by the nearby Chinese armies, Agni stopped sending Tribute to China and formed an alliance with the Western Turks.

The Tang captured Agni in 644, defeating a Western Turk relief force, and made the king of Kucha Suvarnadeva (Chinese: 蘇伐疊 Sufadie) resume tribute.

Note: Recent discoveries have rendered obsolete some of René Grousset's classic The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia, published in 1939, which, however, still provides a broad background against which to assess more modern detailed studies.