A vast cauldron of humanity

Once a upon a time, a great sea of blue water spread across the land of what is today China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

As the Earth's plates moved and squeezed into each other, three great mountain ranges, the Tianshan, the Altay and the Kunlun, soared. With the seawater receding, the onetime seabeds turned into two huge basins.

Meanwhile, the giant mountain ranges also formed an almost full U, blocking the way in the north, south and west. In contrast, the flat Gobi desert stretches far into the east, allowing the earliest settlers in the region and the people and communities living in the east to interconnect with each other.