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MongoliaEarly Development, ca. 220 B.C.-A.D. 1206
Origins of the Mongols
Archaeological evidence places early Stone Age human
habitation in the southern Gobi between 100,000 and 200,000 years
ago. By the first millennium B.C., bronze-working peoples lived
in Mongolia. With the appearance of iron weapons by the third
century B.C., 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 the Kazakh Soviet Socialist
Republic and to the Pamir Mountains and Lake Balkash in the west
(see
fig. 1). 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 Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Iran,
and India), and to the west (across Scythia toward Europe). By
the eighth century B.C., 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.
Data as of June 1989
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