Lop Nur or Lop Nor (from a Mongolian name meaning "Lop Lake", where "Lop" is a toponym of unknown origin) is a former salt lake, now largely dried up, located in the eastern fringe of the

Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydr ...

, between the

Taklamakan The Taklimakan or Taklamakan Desert (; zh, s=塔克拉玛干沙漠, p=Tǎkèlāmǎgān Shāmò, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Такәламаган Шамә; ug, تەكلىماكان قۇملۇقى, Täklimakan qumluqi; also spelled Taklimakan and Te ...

and Kumtag deserts in the southeastern portion of the

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

(Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region). Administratively, the lake is in Lop Nur

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

(), also known as Luozhong () of

Ruoqiang County Ruoqiang County () as the official romanized name, also transliterated from Uyghur as Qakilik County (; ), is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China under the administration of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture. It co ...

, which in its turn is part of the

Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture Bayingolin (; often abbreviated to Bayingol; also as Bayinguoleng) is an autonomous prefecture for Mongol people in the southeast of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Western China. It borders Gansu to the east, Qinghai to the southeast and ...

. The lake system into which the

Tarim River The Tarim River ( zh, p=Tǎlǐmù Hé, c=塔里木河; ug, تارىم دەرياسى, Tarim deryasi), known in Sanskrit as the Śītā, is an endorheic river in Xinjiang, China. It is the principal river of the Tarim Basin, a desert region of C ...

and Shule River empty is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than in the

. Lop Nur is hydrologically

endorheic An endorheic basin (; also spelled endoreic basin or endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes ...

– it is landbound and there is no outlet. The lake measured in 1928, but has dried up due to construction of dams which blocked the flow of water feeding into the lake system, and only small seasonal lakes and

marshes A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...

may form. The dried-up Lop Nur Basin is covered with a salt crust ranging from in thickness. An area to the north west of Lop Nur has been used as a nuclear testing site, and since the discovery of

potash Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.

at the site in the mid-1990s, it is also the location of a large-scale mining operation. There are some restricted areas under military management and cultural relics protection points in the region, which are not open to the public.

History

Map of the Lop Nor region by Folke Bergman 1935

From around 1800 BC until the 9th century the lake supported a thriving Tocharian culture. Archaeologists have discovered the buried remains of settlements, as well as several of the

Tarim mummies The Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BC to the first centuries BC, with a new group of individuals recently dated to between c. 2100 and 1700 BC.School of L ...

, along its ancient shoreline. Former water resources of the Tarim River and Lop Nur nurtured the kingdom of

Loulan Loulan, also called Krorän or Kroraina ( zh, s=, t=, p=Lóulán <

Eastern Han Chinese

''lo-lɑn'' <

since the second century BC, an ancient civilisation along the Silk Road, which skirted the lake-filled basin. Loulan became a client state of the Chinese empire in 55 BC, renamed

Shanshan Shanshan (; ug, پىچان, Pichan, Piqan) was a kingdom located at the north-eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert near the great, but now mostly dry, salt lake known as Lop Nur. The kingdom was originally an independent city-state, known in ...

Faxian Faxian (法顯 ; 337 CE – c. 422 CE), also referred to as Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien and Sehi, was a Chinese Buddhist monk and translator who traveled by foot from China to India to acquire Buddhist texts. Starting his arduous journey about age 60, h ...

went by the Lop Desert on his way to the Indus valley (395–414), followed by later Chinese pilgrims. Marco Polo in his travels passed through the

Lop Desert The Lop Desert, or the Lop Depression, is a desert extending from Korla eastwards along the foot of the Kuruk-tagh (meaning Dry Mountain) to the former terminal Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. It is an almost per ...

. In the 19th century and early 20th century, the explorers Ferdinand von Richthofen, Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sven Hedin and

Aurel Stein Sir Marc Aurel Stein, ( hu, Stein Márk Aurél; 26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at ...

visited and studied the area. It is also likely that Swedish soldier Johan Gustaf Renat had visited the area when he was helping the Zunghars to produce maps over the area in the eighteenth century. The lake was given various names in ancient Chinese texts. In ''

Shiji ''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese his ...

'' it was called Yan Ze (鹽澤, literally Salt Marsh), indicating its saline nature, near which was located the ancient

Loulan Kingdom Loulan, also called Krorän or Kroraina ( zh, s=, t=, p=Lóulán <

Eastern Han Chinese

''lo-lɑn'' <

. In ''

Hanshu The ''Book of Han'' or ''History of the Former Han'' (Qián Hàn Shū,《前汉书》) is a history of China finished in 111AD, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. I ...

'' it was called Puchang Hai (蒲昌海, literally Sea of Abundant Reed) and was given a dimension of 300 to 400 '' li'' (roughly 120–160 km) in length and breadth,Hanshu
Original text: 蒲昌海，一名鹽澤者也，去玉門、陽關三百餘里，廣袤三四百里。其水亭居，冬夏不增減，皆以為潛行地下，南出於積石，為中國河雲. Translation: Puchang Hai, also named Yan Ze, lies over 300 ''li'' from the Yumen and Yangguan Pass, and is 300 to 400 ''li'' in length and breadth. Its waters are stagnant, and do not increase or decrease during the winter or summer. It is generally believed that the water flows hidden underground, emerges south at Jishi, and becomes the Chinese River (meaning

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Ha ...

). indicating it was once a lake of great size. These early texts also mentioned the belief, mistaken as it turns out, that the lake joins the

at Jishi through an underground channel as the source of the river. The lake was referred to as the "Wandering Lake" in the early 20th century due to the Tarim River changing its course, causing its terminal lake to alter its location between the Lop Nur dried basin, the Kara-Koshun dried basin and the Taitema Lake basin. This shift of the terminal lake caused some confusion amongst the early explorers as to the exact location of Lop Nur. Imperial maps from the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...

showed Lop Nur to be located in similar position to the present Lop Nur dried basin, but the Russian geographer Nikolay Przhevalsky instead found the terminal lake at Kara-Koshun in 1867. Sven Hedin visited the area in 1900–1901 and suggested that the Tarim river periodically changed its course to and from between its southbound and northbound direction, resulting in a shift in the position of the terminal lake. The change in the course of the river, which resulted in Lop Nur drying up, was also suggested by Hedin as the reason why ancient settlements such as Loulan had perished. In 1921, due to human intervention, the terminal lake shifted its position back to Lop Nur. The lake measured 2400 km² in area in 1930–1931. In 1934, Sven Hedin went down the new Kuruk Darya ("Dry River") in a canoe. He found the delta to be a maze of channels and the new lake so shallow that it was difficult to navigate even in a canoe. He had previously walked the dry Kuruk Darya in a caravan in 1900. In 1952 the terminal lake then shifted to Taitema Lake when the Tarim River and Konque River were separated through human intervention, and Lop Nur dried out again by 1964. In 1972, the Great West Sea Reservoir (''Daxihaizi'', 大西海子) was built at Tikanlik, water supply to the lake was cut off, and all the lakes for the most part then dried out, with only small seasonal lakes forming in local depressions in Taitema. The loss of water to the lower Tarim River Valley also led to the deterioration and loss of poplar forests and

tamarix The genus ''Tamarix'' (tamarisk, salt cedar, taray) is composed of about 50–60 species of flowering plants in the family Tamaricaceae, native to drier areas of Eurasia and Africa. The generic name originated in Latin and may refer to the Tam ...

shrubs that used to be extensively distributed along the lower Tarim River Valley forming the so-called "Green Corridor". In 2000, in an effort to prevent further deterioration of the ecosystem, water was diverted from Lake Bosten in an attempt to fill the Taitema Lake. The Taitema Lake however had shifted westwards during the past 40 years due in part to the spread of the desert. Another cause of the destabilization of the desert has been the cutting of poplars and willows for firewood; in response, a restoration project to reclaim the poplar forests was initiated. The Kara-Koshun dried basin may be considered part of the greater Lop Nur. On 17 June 1980, Chinese scientist Peng Jiamu disappeared while walking into Lop Nur in search of water. His body was never found, and his disappearance remains a mystery. On 3 June 1996, the Chinese explorer Yu Chunshun died while trying to walk across Lop Nur.

Nuclear weapons test base

China established the Lop Nur Nuclear Test Base on 16 October 1959 with Soviet assistance in selection of the site, with its headquarters at Malan (, ''Mǎlán''), about northwest of Qinggir. The first Chinese nuclear bomb test, codenamed "

Project 596 Project 596, (Miss Qiu ( zh, 邱小姐, Qiū Xiǎojiě) as the callsign, Chic-1 by the US intelligence agencies) was the first nuclear weapons test conducted by the People's Republic of China, detonated on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site ...

", occurred at Lop Nur on 16 October 1964. China detonated its first hydrogen bomb on 17 June 1967. Until 1996, 45

nuclear tests Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...

were conducted. These nuclear tests were conducted by dropping bombs from aircraft and towers, launching missiles, detonating weapons underground and in the atmosphere. In 2009, Jun Takada, a Japanese scientist known for prominently opposing the tests as "the Devil's conduct", published the results of his computer simulation which suggests – based on deaths from Soviet tests – that 190,000 people could have died in China from nuclear-related illnesses. Enver Tohti, an exiled pro-Uyghur independence activist, claimed that cancer rates in the province of Xinjiang were 30 to 35% higher than the national average. On 29 July 1996, China conducted its 45th and final nuclear test at Lop Nor, and issued a formal moratorium on nuclear testing the following day, although further subcritical tests were suspected. In 2012, China announced plans to spend US$1 million to clean up the Malan nuclear base in Lop Nor to create a

red tourism Red tourism () is a subset of domestic and international tourism in current or former 'red' countries such as China and Russia in which people visit locations with historical significance to their "red" past. In China, Chinese people visit loc ...

site. Lop Nur is home to the

wild Bactrian camel The wild Bactrian camel (''Camelus ferus'') is a critically endangered species of camel living in parts of northwestern China and southwestern Mongolia. It is closely related to the Bactrian camel (''Camelus bactrianus''). Both are large, doub ...

, which is a separate species from the

Bactrian camel The Bactrian camel (''Camelus bactrianus''), also known as the Mongolian camel or domestic Bactrian camel, is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of Central Asia. It has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped dro ...

. The camels have continued to breed naturally despite the nuclear testing. China signed the

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is a multilateral treaty to ban nuclear weapons test explosions and any other nuclear explosions, for both civilian and military purposes, in all environments. It was adopted by the United Nati ...

in 1996 but did not ratify it. Subsequently, the camels were classified as an endangered species on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

. Since the cessation of nuclear testing at Lop Nur, human incursions into the area have caused a decline in the camel population. Wild Bactrian camels have been classified as critically endangered since 2002 and approximately half of the 1400 remaining wild Bactrian camels live on the former Lop Nur test base, which has been designated the Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve.

Transportation

A highway from

Hami Hami (Kumul) is a prefecture-level city in Eastern Xinjiang, China. It is well known as the home of sweet Hami melons. In early 2016, the former Hami county-level city was merged with Hami Prefecture to form the Hami prefecture-level city with t ...

to Lop Nur (Xinjiang Provincial Highway 235) was completed in 2006. The Hami–Lop Nur Railway, which runs north to Hami, along the same route, opened to freight operations in November 2012. The railway is used to transport potassium-rich salt mined at the lake to the

Lanzhou–Xinjiang railway The Lanzhou−Xinjiang railway or Lanxin railway (), is the longest railway in Northwestern China. It runs 1904 kilometres (1,183 miles) from Lanzhou, Gansu, through the Hexi Corridor, to Ürümqi, in Xinjiang. It was Xinjiang's only rail link ...

.China starts building railway into "sea of death"
, gov.cn, Thursday, 4 March 2010

Archaeological sites

Given the extreme dryness and resulting thin population, remains of some buildings survived for a significant period of time. When ancient graves, some a few thousand years old, were opened the bodies were often found to be mummified and grave goods well preserved. The earliest sites are associated with an ancient people of

Indo European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

origin.

Loulan

Loulan or Kroran was an ancient kingdom based around an important oasis city already known in the 2nd century BCE on the north-eastern edge of the Lop Desert. It was renamed

after Chinese took control of the kingdom in 1st century BCE. It was abandoned some time in the seventh century. Its location was discovered by Sven Hedin in 1899, who excavated some houses and found a wooden Kharosthi tablet and many Chinese manuscripts from the Jin dynasty (266–420).

also excavated at the site in the beginning of the 20th century, while Chinese archaeologists explored the area in the latter part of the 20th century. A mummy called the "Beauty of Loulan" was found at a cemetery site on the bank of Töwän River.

Xiaohe Cemetery

The

Xiaohe Cemetery The Xiaohe Cemetery (), literally "Little River Cemetery" and also known as Ördek’s Necropolis, is a Bronze Age site located in the west of Lop Nur, in Xinjiang, Western China. It contains about 330 tombs, about 160 of which were looted by gr ...

is located to the west of Lop Nur. This

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

burial site is an oblong sand dune, from which more than thirty well preserved mummies have been excavated. The entire Xiaohe Cemetery contains about 330 tombs, about 160 of which have been violated by grave robbers. A local hunter guided the Swedish explorer and archeologist Folke Bergman to the site in 1934. An excavation project by the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute began in October 2003. A total of 167 tombs have been dug up since the end of 2002 and excavations have revealed hundreds of smaller tombs built in layers, as well as other precious artifacts. In 2006, a valuable archeological finding was uncovered: a boat-shaped coffin wrapped in ox hide, containing the mummified body of a young woman.

Qäwrighul

In 1979, some of the earliest of the

were discovered in burial sites at Qäwrighul (Gumugou), which is located to the west of Lop Nur, on the Könchi (Kongque) river. Forty-two graves, most of which dated from 2100 to 1500 BC, were found. There were two types of tomb at the site, belonging to two different time periods. The first type of burial featured shaft pit graves, some of which had poles at either end to mark east and west. Bodies were found extended, usually facing east, and sometimes were wrapped in wool weavings and wearing felt hats. Artifacts found included basketry, wheat grains, cattle and sheep/goat horns, bird bone necklaces and bracelets, nephrite beads, and fragments of copper (or bronze), although no pottery was discovered. The second type of burial, from a later period, also consisted of shaft pit graves, surrounded by seven concentric circles of poles. Six male graves were found, in which the bodies were extended on their backs, and facing towards the east. Few artifacts were found, except for some traces of copper, or bronze.Kwang-tzuu Chen and Fredrik T. Hiebert (1995). "The Late Prehistory of Xinjiang in Relation to Its Neighbors". ''Journal of World Prehistory'' 9 (2): 243–300.

Miran

Miran is located to the south-west of Lop Nur. Buddhist monasteries were excavated here, and murals and sculptures showed artistic influences from

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

, with some showing influences from as far as

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

References

External links

Map of the Lop Nur nuclear test facility

DF-31 Tested on 10 June 1994

Surveying the Lop Nor

Salt Fields in Former “Wandering” Lake Lop Nur, China - May 13th, 2009 - Earth Snapshot
* Downloadable article: "Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age" Li et al. ''BMC Biology'' 2010, 8:15

{{Authority control Endorheic lakes of Asia Chinese nuclear test sites Sites along the Silk Road Shrunken lakes Lakes of Xinjiang Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture Tarim mummies Former lakes of Asia