April 14 , 2023
Introduction:
Read more of the Courthouse News article here: https://www.courthousenews.com/women-o ... tudy-says/(Courthouse News) — Long before the Mongol Empire was the Xiongnu — a society that a team of international researchers calls the first of several nomadic empires of Inner Asia. They buried their servants in satellite burials and interred their aristocratic elites in square tombs containing their wood-plank coffins.
Abstract::
Read more of the Science Advnces article here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3904(Sciences Advances) The Xiongnu established the first nomadic imperial power, controlling the Eastern Eurasian steppe from ca. 200 BCE to 100 CE. Recent archaeogenetic studies identified extreme levels of genetic diversity across the empire, corroborating historical records of the Xiongnu Empire being multiethnic. However, it has remained unknown how this diversity was structured at the local community level or by sociopolitical status. To address this, we investigated aristocratic and local elite cemeteries at the western frontier of the empire. Analyzing genome-wide data from 18 individuals, we show that genetic diversity within these communities was comparable to the empire as a whole, and that high diversity was also observed within extended families. Genetic heterogeneity was highest among the lowest-status individuals, implying diverse origins, while higher-status individuals harbored less genetic diversity, suggesting that elite status and power was concentrated within specific subsets of the broader Xiongnu population.
INTRODUCTION
The Xiongnu Empire was the first of many historically documented steppe empires to arise in Eurasia, and its formation foreshadowed the rise of subsequent nomadic imperial powers, including the Mongol Empire, whose reach a millennium later stretched from the East Sea to the Carpathian Mountains (1). Centered on the territory of present-day Mongolia, the Xiongnu empire controlled the Eastern Eurasian Steppe and surrounding regions in northern China, southern Siberia, and Central Asia for nearly three centuries, starting from ca. 209 BCE until their eventual disintegration in the late first century CE. At its height, the Xiongnu profoundly influenced the political economies of Central, Inner, and East Asia, becoming a major political rival of imperial China and establishing far-flung trade networks that imported Roman glass, Persian textiles, Egyptian faience, Greek silver, and Chinese bronzes, silks, and lacquerware deep into the heart of their empire (2).
The Xiongnu represented a radically new kind of political entity that incorporated heterogeneous nomadic and sedentary groups spanning the Eastern Steppes and as far west as the Altai Mountains, under a single authority. As the Xiongnu expanded their empire from its core in central and eastern Mongolia, they conquered and integrated numerous neighboring groups. They successfully expanded into western Mongolia and southern areas of Lake Baikal, while winning decisive victories in northern China (3).
1. D. Sinor, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
2. U. Brosseder, B. K. Miller, Eds., Xiongnu Archaeology: Multidisciplinary Perspectives of the First Steppe Empire in Inner Asia (Bonn Univ. Press, 2011).
3. N. Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Ancient China & its Enemies, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002).