The climate of Central Asia became dry after the large tectonic collision between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. This impact threw up the massive chain of mountains known as the Himalayas. The Himalayas, Greater Khingan and Lesser Khingan mountains act like a high wall, blocking the warm and wet climate from penetrating into Central Asia. Many of the mountains of Mongolia were formed during the Late Neogene and Early Quaternary periods. The Mongolian climate was more humid hundreds of thousands of years ago. Mongolia is known to be the source of priceless paleontological discoveries. The first scientifically confirmed dinosaur eggs were found in Mongolia during the 1923 expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, led by Roy Chapman Andrews.
During the middle to late Eocene Epoch, Mongolia was the home of many Paleogene mammals with Sarkastodon and Andrewsarchus being the most prominent of them.
Homo erectus possibly inhabited Mongolia as much as 800,000 years ago but fossils of Homo erectus have not yet been found in Mongolia. Stone tools have been found in the southern, Gobi, region, perhaps dating back as much as 800,000 years.[2] Important prehistoric sites are the Paleolithic cave drawings of the Khoid Tsenkheriin Agui (Northern Cave of Blue) in Khovd province,[3] and the Tsagaan Agui (White Cave) in Bayankhongor Province.[4] A neolithic farming settlement has been found in Dornod Province. Contemporary findings from western Mongolia include only temporary encampments of hunters and fishers. The population during the Copper Age has been described as paleomongolid in the east of what is now Mongolia, and as europid in the west.[3]
The Slab Grave culture of the late Bronze and early Iron Age, related to the proto-Mongols, spread over northern, central and eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Northwest China (Xinjiang, Qilian Mountains etc.), Manchuria, Lesser Khingan, Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast and Zabaykalsky Krai. [5] This culture is the main archaeological find of the Bronze Age Mongolia.
Deer stones (also known as reindeer stones) and the omnipresent kheregsüürs (small kurgans) probably are from this era; other theories date the deer stones as 7th or 8th centuries BC. Deer stones are ancient megaliths carved with symbols that can be found all over central and eastern Eurasia but are concentrated largely in Siberia and Mongolia. Most deer stones occur in association with ancient graves; it is believed that stones are the guardians of the dead. There are around 700 deer stones known in Mongolia of a total of 900 deer stones that have been found in Central Asia and South Siberia. Their true purpose and creators are still unknown. Some researchers claim that deer stones are rooted in shamanism and are thought to have been set up during the Bronze Age around 1000 BC, and may mark the graves of important people. Later inhabitants of the area likely reused them to mark their own burial mounds, and perhaps for other purposes. In Mongolia, the Lake Baikal area, and the Sayan and Altai Mountains, there are 550, 20, 20, and 60 known deer stones respectively. Moreover, there are another 20 deer stones in Kazakhstan and the Middle East (Samashyev 1992) and 10 further west, specifically in the Ukraine and parts of the Russian Federation, including the provinces of Orenburg and the Caucasus, and near the Elbe River (Mongolian History 2003). According to H.L. hlyenova, the artistic deer image originated from the Sak tribe and its branches (Chlyenova 1962). Volkov believes that some of the methods of crafting deer stone art are closely related to Scythians (Volkov 1967), whereas Mongolian archaeologist D. Tseveendorj regards deer stone art as having originated in Mongolia during the Bronze Age and spread thereafter to Tuva and the Baikal area (Tseveendorj 1979).
A vast Iron Age burial complex from the 5th-3rd century, later also used by the Xiongnu, has been unearthed near Ulaangom.[3]
Before the 20th century, some scholars assumed that the Scythians descended from the Mongolic people.[6] The Scythian community inhabited western Mongolia in the 5-6th century. In 2006 the mummy of a Scythian warrior, which is believed to be about 2,500 years old was a 30-to-40-year-old man with blond hair, and was found in the Altai Mountains, Mongolia.[7]
In historical times Eurasian nomads were concentrated on the steppe lands of Central Asia.[8] Furthermore, it is assumed that the Turkic peoples have always inhabited the western, the Mongols the central, and the Tungusic peoples the eastern portions of the region.[8]
By the eighth century BCE, the inhabitants of the western part of Mongolia evidently were nomadic Indo-European migrants, either Scythians [9] or Yuezhi. In central and eastern parts of Mongolia were many other tribes that were primarily Mongol in their ethnologic characteristics.[9]
With the appearance of iron weapons by the 3rd century BCE, the inhabitants of Mongolia had begun to form Clan alliances and lived a hunter and herder lifestyle. 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).
Ancient period[edit source]
The area of modern Mongolia has been inhabited by groups of nomads since ancient times. The ancient population had a nomadic and hunter lifestyle and lived a fairly closed life.[citation needed] While most of Central Asia had a fairly similar nomadic lifestyle where moving in and around national boundaries and mixing with different settlements was common, the situation in the Mongolian steppes was unique because migration was limited by natural barriers such as the Altai Mountains in the west, the Gobi Desert in the south and the freezing wastelands of Siberia in the north, all unsuitable for nomadic-based living. These greatly limited migration, although they also kept out invaders. The clans in Mongolia only allied with other Mongolian clans, with which they shared the same language, religion and way of life. This would later be a huge advantage in uniting the people in Mongolia against the threat of the expanding Chinese empires. There were repeated conflicts with the Chinese dynasties of Shang and especially Zhou, which had begun conquering and enslaving the Mongolic people in an expansive drift. By the time of the Warring States Period in China, the northern Dynasties of Zhao, Yan, and Qin had begun to encroach and conquer into Southern Mongolia. By the time the Qin dynasty had united all of China's kingdoms into one empire, the Sahun Kingdom (Xiongnu) had been formed in the Mongolian plains, transforming all of the independent clans into one single state and reassured the safety and independence from an expanding Qin
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