The Mongol tribes emerged from an area which had been inhabited by humans as far back as the Stone Age, over 100,000 years ago. The peoples there went through the bronze age and iron age, then forming tribal alliances and beginning to battle with China. By the 3rd century BC, there was evidence of a nomadic culture, comprising Turkic peoples in tribes which battled with each other and neighboring cultures. They were subdued temporarily by the growing strength of the Chinese Tang Dynasty in the 7th century. Over the next few hundred years, the Chinese subtly encouraged warfare among the Mongol tribes, as a way of keeping them distracted from invading China. In the 12th century, the Mongol Genghis Khan was able to unite or conquer the warring tribes, forging them into a fighting force which went on to create the largest contiguous empire in world history.
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Archaeological evidence places early Stone Age human habitation in the southern Gobi between 100,000 and 250,000 years ago. By the first millennium BC, bronze-working peoples lived in Mongolia. With the appearance of iron weapons by the 3rd century BC, the inhabitants of Mongolia had begun to form tribal alliances and to threaten China. The origins of more modern inhabitants are found among the forest hunters and nomadic tribes of Inner Asia. They inhabited a great arc of land extending generally from the Korean Peninsula in the east, across the northern tier of China to present-day Kazakhstan and to the Pamir Mountains and Lake Balkash in the west. During most of recorded history, this has been an area of constant ferment from which emerged numerous migrations and invasions to the southeast (into China), to the southwest (into Transoxiana--modern Uzbekistan, Iran, and India), and to the west (across Scythia toward Europe). By the 8th century BC, the inhabitants of much of this region evidently were nomadic Indo-European speakers, either Scythians or their kin. Also scattered throughout the area were many other tribes that were primarily Mongol in their ethnologic characteristics.
The first significant appearance of nomads came late in the 3rd century BC, when the Chinese repelled an invasion of the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu in Wade-Giles romanization) across the Huang He (Yellow River) from the Gobi. The Xiongnu were a nomadic tribal confederation, most likely of Mongols origins. Their language is thought to be related to Mongolian language by many modern scholars. A Chinese army, which had adopted Xiongnu military technology—wearing trousers and using mounted archers with stirrups—pursued the Xiongnu across the Gobi in a ruthless punitive expedition. Fortification walls built by various Chinese warring states were connected to make a 2,300-kilometer Great Wall along the northern border, as a barrier to further nomadic inroads.
The Xiongnu temporarily abandoned their interest in China and turned their attention westward to the region of the Altai Mountains and Lake Balkash, inhabited by the Yuezhi (Yüeh-chih in Wade-Giles), an Indo-European-speaking nomadic people who had relocated from China's present-day Gansu Province as a result of their earlier defeat by the Xiongnu. Endemic warfare between these two nomadic peoples reached a climax in the latter part of the 3rd century and the early decades of the 2nd century BC; the Xiongnu were triumphant. The Yuezhi then migrated to the southwest where, early in the 2nd century, they began to appear in the Oxus (the modern Amu Darya) Valley, to change the course of history in Bactria, Iran, and eventually India.
Meanwhile, the Xiongnu again raided northern China about 200 BC, finding that the inadequately defended Great Wall was not a serious obstacle. By the middle of the 2nd century BC, they controlled all of northern and western China north of the Huang He. This renewed threat led the Chinese to improve their defenses in the north, while building up and improving the army, particularly the cavalry, and while preparing long-range plans for an invasion of Mongolia.
Between 130 and 121 BC, Chinese armies drove the Xiongnu back across the Great Wall, weakened their hold on Gansu Province as well as on what is now Inner Mongolia, and finally pushed them north of the Gobi into central Mongolia. Following these victories, the Chinese expanded into the areas later known as Manchuria, Mongolia, the Korean Peninsula, and Inner Asia. The Xiongnu, once more turning their attention to the west and the southwest, raided deep into the Oxus Valley between 73 and 44 BC. The descendants of the Yuezhi and their Chinese rulers, however, formed a common front against the Xiongnu and repelled them.
During the next century, as Chinese strength waned, border warfare between the Chinese and the Xiongnu was almost incessant. Gradually the nomads forced their way back into Gansu and the northern part of what is now China's Xinjiang. In about the middle of the 1st century AD, a revitalized Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220) slowly recovered these territories, driving the Xiongnu back into the Altai Mountains and the steppes north of the Gobi. During the late 1st century AD, having reestablished the administrative control over southern China and northern Vietnam that had been lost briefly at beginning of this same century, the Eastern Han made a concerted effort to reassert dominance over Inner Asia.
Although the Xiongnu finally had been driven back into their homeland by the Chinese in AD 48, within ten years the Xianbei (or Hsien-pei in Wade-Giles) had moved (apparently from the north or northwest) into the region vacated by the Xiongnu. The Xianbei were the northern branch of the Donghu (or Tung Hu, the Eastern Hu), a proto-Mongol and/or Tunguz group mentioned in Chinese histories as existing as early as the 4th century BC. The language of the Donghu, unlike that of the Xiongnu, is believed to be proto-Mongolic to modern scholars. The Donghu were among the first peoples conquered by the Xiongnu. Once the Xiongnu state weakened, however, the Donghu rebelled. By the 1st century AD, two major subdivisions of the Donghu had developed: the proto-Mongolic Xianbei in the north and the Wuhuan in the south. The Xianbei, who by the 2nd century AD were attacking Chinese farms south of the Great Wall, established an empire, which, although short-lived, gave rise to numerous tribal states along the Chinese frontier. Among these states was that of the Toba (T'o-pa in Wade-Giles), a subgroup of the Xianbei, in modern China's Shanxi Province. The Wuhuan also were prominent in the 2nd century, but they disappeared thereafter; possibly they were absorbed in the Xianbei western expansion. The Xianbei and the Wuhuan used mounted archers in warfare, and they had only temporary war leaders instead of hereditary chiefs. Agriculture, rather than full-scale nomadism, was the basis of their economy. In the 6th century, the Wuhuan were driven out of Inner Asia into the Russian steppe.
Chinese control of parts of Inner Asia did not last beyond the opening years of the 2nd century AD, and, as the Eastern Han Dynasty ended early in the 3rd century AD, suzerainty was limited primarily to the Gansu corridor. The Xianbei were able to make forays into a China beset with internal unrest and political disintegration. By 317 all of China north of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) had been overrun by nomadic peoples: the Xianbei from the north; some remnants of the Xiongnu from the northwest; and the Chiang people of Gansu and Tibet (present-day China's Xizang Autonomous Region) from the west and the southwest. Chaos prevailed as these groups warred with each other and repulsed the vain efforts of the fragmented Chinese kingdoms south of the Yangtze River to reconquer the region.
By the end of the 4th century, the region between the Yangtze and the Gobi, including much of modern Xinjiang, was dominated by the Toba. Emerging as the partially sinicized state of Dai between AD 338 and 376 in the Shanxi area, the Toba established control over the region as the Northern Wei Dynasty (AD 386-533). Northern Wei armies drove back the Ruruan (referred to as Ruanruan or Juan-Juan by Chinese chroniclers), a newly arising nomadic Mongol people in the steppes north of the Altai Mountains, and reconstructed the Great Wall. During the 4th century also, the Huns left the steppes north of the Aral Sea to invade Europe. By the middle of the 5th century, Northern Wei had penetrated into the Tarim Basin in Inner Asia, as had the Chinese in the 2nd century. As the empire grew, however, Toba tribal customs were supplanted by those of the Chinese, an evolution not accepted by all Toba.
The Ruruan, only temporarily repelled by Northern Wei, had driven the Xiongnu toward the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea and were making raids into China. In the late 5th century, the Ruruan established a powerful nomadic empire spreading generally farther north of Northern Wei. It was probably the Ruruan who first used the title khan.
Northern Wei was disintegrating rapidly because of revolts of semi-tribal Toba military forces that were opposed to being sinicized, when disaster struck the flourishing Ruruan Empire. The Türk, known as Tujue to Chinese chroniclers, revolted against their Ruruan rulers. The uprising began in the Altai Mountains, where many of the Türk were serfs working the iron mines. Thus, from the outset of their revolt, they had the advantage of controlling what had been one of the major bases of Ruruan power. Between 546 and 553, the Türks overthrew the Ruruan and established themselves as the most powerful force in North Asia and Inner Asia. This was the beginning of a pattern of conquest that was to have a significant effect upon Eurasian history for more than 1,000 years. The Türk were the first people to use this later widespread name. They are also the earliest Inner Asian people whose language is known, because they left behind inscriptions in a runic-like Orkhon script, which was deciphered in 1896.
It was not long before the tribes in the region north of the Gobi—the Eastern Türk—were following invasion routes into China used in previous centuries by Xiongnu, Xianbei, Toba, and Ruruan. Like their predecessors who had inhabited the mountains and the steppes, the attention of the Türk quickly was attracted by the wealth of China. At first these new raiders encountered little resistance, but toward the end of the 6th century, as China slowly began to recover from centuries of disunity, border defenses stiffened. The original Türk state split into eastern and western parts, with some of the Eastern Türk acknowledging Chinese overlordship.
For a brief period at the beginning of the 7th century, a new consolidation of the Türk, under the Western Türk ruler Tardu, again threatened China. In 601 Tardu's army besieged Chang'an (modern Xi'an), then the capital of China. Tardu was turned back, however, and, upon his death two years later, the Türk state again fragmented. The Eastern Türk nonetheless continued their depredations, occasionally threatening Chang'an.
From 629 to 648, a reunited China—under the Tang Dynasty (618-906) --destroyed the power of the Eastern Türk north of the Gobi; established suzerainty over the Kitan, a semi-nomadic Mongol people who lived in areas that became the modern Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin; and formed an alliance with the Uyghurs, who inhabited the region between the Altai Mountains and Lake Balkash. Between 641 and 648, the Tang conquered the Western Türk, reestablishing Chinese sovereignty over Xinjiang and exacting tribute from west of the Pamir Mountains. The Türk empire finally ended in 744.
For half a century, the Tang retained control of Central Asia and Mongolia and parts of Inner Asia. Both sides of the Great Wall came under Tang rule. During this period, the Tang expanded Chinese control into the Oxus Valley. At the same time, their allies, the Uyghurs, conquered much of western and northern Mongolia until, by the middle of the 8th century, the Uyghur seminomadic empire extended from Lake Balkash to Lake Baykal.
Despite these crippling losses, the Tang recovered and, with considerable Uyghur assistance, held their frontiers. Tang dependence upon their northern allies was apparently a source of embarrassment to the Chinese, who surreptitiously encouraged the Kirghiz and the Karluks to attack the Uyghurs, driving them south into the Tarim Basin. As a result of the Kirghiz action, the Uyghur empire collapsed in 846. Some of the Uyghurs emigrated to Eastern Turkistan (the Turpan region), where they established a flourishing kingdom that freely submitted to Genghis Khan several centuries later. Ironically, this weakening of the Uyghurs undoubtedly hastened the decline and fall of the Tang Dynasty over the next fifty years.
Free of Uyghur restraint, the Mongolic Kitan expanded in all directions in the latter half of the 9th century and the early years of the 10th century. By 925 the Kitan ruled eastern Mongolia, most of Manchuria, and much of China north of the Huang He. By the middle of the 10th century, Kitan chieftains had established themselves as emperors of northern China; their rule was known as the Liao Dynasty (916–1125).
The period of the 11th and 12th centuries was one of consolidation, preceding the most momentous era in Mongol history, the era of Genghis Khan. During those centuries, the vast region of deserts, mountains, and grazing land was inhabited by people resembling each other in racial, cultural, and linguistic characteristics; ethnologically they were essentially Mongol. The similarities among the Mongols, Türk, Tangut, and Tatars who inhabited this region cause considerable ethnic and historical confusion. Generally, the Mongols and the closely related Tatars inhabited the northern and the eastern areas; the Türk (who already had begun to spread over western Asia and southeastern Europe) were in the west and the southwest; the Tangut, who were more closely related to the Tibetans than were the other nomads and who were not a Turkic people, were in eastern Xinjiang, Gansu, and western Inner Mongolia. The Liao state was homogeneous, and the Kitan had begun to lose their nomadic characteristics. The Kitan built cities and exerted dominion over their agricultural subjects as a means of consolidating their empire. To the west and the northwest of Liao were many other Mongol tribes, linked together in various tenuous alliances and groupings, but with little national cohesiveness. In Gansu and eastern Xinjiang, the Tangut—who had taken advantage of the Tang decline—had formed a state, Western Xia or Xixia (1038–1227), nominally under Chinese suzerainty. Xinjiang was dominated by the Uyghurs, who were loosely allied with the Chinese.
The people of Mongolia at this time were predominantly spirit worshipers, with shamans providing spiritual and religious guidance to the people and tribal leaders. There had been infusion of Buddhism.
A Tungusic people, the Jurchen, ancestors of the Manchu, formed an alliance with the Song and reduced the Kitan Empire to vassal status in a seven-year war (1115–1122). The Jurchen leader proclaimed himself the founder of a new era, the Jin Dynasty (1115–1234). Scarcely pausing in their conquests, the Tungusic Jurchen subdued neighboring Koryo (Korea) in 1226 and invaded the territory of their former allies, the Song, to precipitate a series of wars with China that continued through the remainder of the century. Meanwhile, the defeated Kitan Liao ruler had fled with the small remnant of his army to the Tarim Basin, where he allied himself with the Uyghurs and established the Karakitai state (known also as the Western Liao Dynasty, 1124–1234), which soon controlled both sides of the Pamir Mountains. The Jurchen turned their attention to the Mongols who, in 1139 and in 1147, warded them off.
The Shiwei, though little is known, have been considered the ancestors of the Mongols according to ancient Chinese records. During the 5th century, they occupied the area east of the Greater Khinggan Range, what is the Hulun Buir, Ergune, Nonni, Middle Amur, and the Zeya Watersheds. They may have been divided into five to twenty tribes. They were said to be dressed in fish skins. They collected harvests of wheat and millet, and also kept dogs, pigs, oxen, and horses, but no sheep. Records say they lived purely on hunting. Fur and skins were traded with the neighboring kingdoms. They may have been nomadic, staying in the marshy lowlands in the winter and the mountains during the summer. The burial was by exposure in trees. Their language is described as being similar to Manchu-Tungusic languages and Khitan. The Türk dynasties (550-740) installed tuduns, or governors over the Shiwei and collected tribute. Other Shiwei may have stayed and become the Ewenkis. The Kitans conquered the Shiwei during the late 9th century. One Shiwei tribe, living near the Amur and Ergune rivers, was called the "Menggu" (Mongol). A few scholars believe they, other Shiwei tribes, and many other peoples from the area moved west from the forest to the Mongolian proper steppe.