Uyghurs
Contemporary scholars consider modern Uyghurs to be the descendants of a number of people, including the ancient Uyghurs of Mongolia who arrived at the Tarim Basin after the fall of the Uyghur Khaganate, Iranic Saka tribes, and other Indo-European peoples who inhabited the Tarim Basin before the arrival of the Turkic Uyghurs. DNA analyses indicate that the peoples of central Asia such as the Uyghurs are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian. Uyghur activists identify with the Tarim mummies, remains of an ancient people who inhabited the region, but research into the genetics of ancient Tarim mummies and their links with modern Uyghurs remains problematic, both to Chinese government officials concerned with ethnic separatism, and to Uyghur activists concerned that the research could affect their people's claim of being indigenous to the region.
Uyghurs in Pakistan
Some members of ethnic minorities of China, primarily Muslim Uyghurs and Tajiks from Xinjiang, have historically migrated to and settled in the northern parts of Pakistan. The earliest migrants, numbering in the thousands, came in as traders during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the area that is Pakistan was still under British rule. Most of these Uyghurs used to have warehouses and residences in towns in the North and in parts of upper Punjab and used to travel between Kashgar and Yarkand and these places, regularly. Others came in the 1940s in fear of communist persecution. A few hundred more fled to Pakistan in the aftermath of a failed uprising in Khotan in 1954. Later waves of migration came in 1963 and again in 1974. Some Pakistani descendants who previously lived in Xinjiang, especially at Kashgar, have also moved back to Pakistan with their Uyghur spouses.