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.
History of the Uyghur people
Some Uyghur nationalist claimed that they were descended from the Tocharians. Discovered well-preserved Tarim mummies of a people European in appearance indicates the migration of an Indo-European people into the Tarim area at the beginning of the Bronze age around 2,000 BCE. These people probably spoke Tocharian, and were suggested by some to be the Yuezhi mentioned in ancient Chinese text and who later founded the Kushan Empire. The Uyghur claim is based partly on a word, which they argued to be Uyghur, found in written scripts associated with these mummies, although other linguists suggested that it was a Sogdian word later absorbed into Uyghur. Later migrations brought peoples from the west and northwest to the Xinjiang area, probably speakers of various Iranian languages such as the Saka tribes. Other ancient people in the region mentioned in ancient Chinese texts include the Xiongnu who fought for supremacy in the region against the Chinese for several hundred years. Some Uyghur nationalists claimed descent from the Xiongnu (as well as being related to the White Huns), however this view is contested by modern Chinese scholars. This Xiongnu claim originated from various Chinese historical texts; for example, according to Chinese history "Weishu", the founder of the Uyghurs was descended from a Xiongnu ruler.