 The initial admixture may have taken place in Southern Siberia, which was settled by the Indo-European Andronovo and Afanasevo culture.Local inhabitants at Sampul cemetery (Shanpula; ) around , from the archaeological site of Hotan in Lop County, where art such as the Sampul tapestry has been found, buried their dead from roughly 217 BCE to 283 CE.The analysis of mtDNA haplogroup distribution showed that the Sampula inhabitants had a large mixture of East Asian, Persian and European characteristics.