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.
Uyghur language
The Uyghur or Uighur language ( , "Уйғур тили", "Uyghur tili", "Uyƣur tili" or , "Уйғурчә", "Uyghurche", "Uyƣurqə"), formerly known as Eastern Turki, is a Turkic language with 10 to 15 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, radio, and television, and is used as a common language by other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.