This French NHK documentary details 2005 exhumations of 4,000 year old mummies that were found in burial mounds in the eastern Asian desert of the Xinjiang Province.  In 1939, ancient mounds were first discovered in the arid eastern Asian desert close to the city of Loulan that contained 330 tombs, where 15 perfectly preserved mummies were recovered in 2005 that date to about 2,000 BC.  The mummies have a Caucasian appearance, and their DNA is a mixture of both western and eastern Asian peoples.  They were buried with care wearing ornate clothing, often laying inside canoes that contain grave goods including bronze items, ornate jewelry, and pouches of seeds of grain that originated from the Steppes to the west.  At the time that region was much more fertile, where the inhabitants irrigated crops with water that was supplied from a river system that has since dried up.