More surprises were in store. In the last two decades, Chinese archeologists digging in the same region, the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang Province, have uncovered more than 100 naturally mummified corpses of people who lived there 4,000 to 2,400 years ago.

At Cherchen, the only town of any size in the entire southeastern quadrant of the Tarim Basin (itself an oval 400 by 800 miles in diameter, mostly desert), they learned that locals had discovered an extensive antique cemetery on a plateau above the nearby hamlet of Zaghunluq.

The Tarim basin currently has an annual production capacity of over 2 million tonnes of condensate and 10 bcm of natural gas.

Tarim basin

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