The Tarim Basin, surrounded by mountains, may be one of the last places in Asia to have become inhabited.

Its aridity required the development of technology for water transport and storage before people could live here.

The lake system into which the Tarim River and Shule River empty is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than ten thousand square kilometers (thirty-nine hundred square miles) in the Tarim Basin.

Lop Nur, a group of small, now seasonal salt-lake sand marshes between the Taklamakan and Kuruktag deserts in the southeastern portion of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China, is hydrologically endorheic—it is landbound and there is no outlet.

The lake from around 1800 BCE supports a thriving Tocharian culture that will last until the ninth century.