新疆地处亚洲腹地,位居东西方陆路交通孔道,由于自然、社会等原因,不同种族、民族的人群在这里生存、迁徙,形成了对民族聚居的状态。我们所了解的当代民族构成,直到公元19世纪末才成形。而且,新疆本土的原住民族已经淹没与历史的洪流之中,当代的各民族从严格意义上说都是外来者,而其中进入最早的,还是早在西汉已开始屯垦的汉人。 Xinjiang is located in the hinterland of Asia and is the gateway to land transport between the East and the West. Due to natural and social reasons, people of different races and ethnic groups live and migrate here, forming a state of national settlement. The composition of the contemporary nation to which we know it was not formed until the end of the 19th century. Moreover, indigenous peoples in Xinjiang are already inundated with the torrent of history. All ethnic groups in the modern sense are strictly foreign and the earliest ones among them were Han Chinese who started their settlement in the Western Han Dynasty.