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
Uyghur nationalist historians in the People's Republic of China and the United States posit that the Uyghur people is millennia-old, and can be divided into four distinct phases: Pre-Imperial (300 BC – AD 630), Imperial (AD 630–840), Idiqut (AD 840–1200), and Mongol (AD 1209–1600), with perhaps a fifth modern phase running from the death of the Silk Road in AD 1600 until the present. In brief, Uyghur history is the story of a small nomadic tribe from the Altai Mountains competing with rival powers in Central Asia, including other Altaic tribes, Indo-European empires from the south and west, and Sino-Tibetan empires to the east. After the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate in AD 840, ancient Uyghur resettled from Mongolia to the Tarim Basin, assimilating the Indo-European population, which had previously been driven out of the region by the Xiongnu. Ultimately, the Uyghurs became civil servants administering the Mongol Empire.