Subject: cavalry warrior
Culture: Xiongnu
Setting: Xiongnu empire, Central Asia 2ndc BC - AD 1stc
Evolution:
Caveat
"Most of what is known about the Xiongnu people comes from their enemies.
"'If you do an online image search, most of what you find are brutal battle scenes,' said Christina Warinner, associate professor of anthropology and an expert in biomolecular archaeology. 'It’s all very masculine, very violent.'
"In research published earlier this month in Science Advances, Warinner worked with a team of archaeologists and geneticists to paint a fuller picture of the world’s first nomadic empire. What they found was a multiethnic society, reflecting nearly all the diversity that existed in Eurasia 2,000 years ago. The researchers also confirmed contemporaneous reports regarding the high status and political power of Xiongnu women.
[....] "The Xiongnu, contemporaries of the peoples of ancient Egypt and Rome, dominated the Mongolian steppe from about 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. These horseback nomads proved innovative in warfare, but historians know little about the inner workings of their culture because the Xiongnu never developed a formal writing system. 'Most of what we know comes from the Han Dynasty of Imperial China,' Warinner said. 'They were major rivals of the Xiongnu, and they wrote about their wars and skirmishes along the border.'
"In fact, the Great Wall was built as a barrier to mounted Xiongnu warriors.
"Also detailed in historic documents are the Xiongnu’s powerful women. 'That was another reason Imperial China didn’t like them,' Warinner quipped."
* Barfield 1989 32
"After Shih-huang-ti, the first Ch'in emperor, crushed the old warring states of China to create a unified empire, he turned his attention and his armies to the north. Using corvée labor the Ch'in government linked the frontier walls built by older states to establish what became known as the 'Great Wall' to separate China from the steppe. This building project, though massive in scope, was not prompted by any immediate threat of nomadic invasion, as the nomads stayed clear of the powerful Ch'in armies during this period. Instead it represented the culmination of an older tradition in which each state had surrounded itself by walls, both along the northern frontier with the nomads and inside of China to delineate boundaries with other states. The Ch'in conquest had rendered the internal walls superfluous and they were abandoned to decay. The walls along the northern frontier, however, were strengthened and linked together to mark the frontier of the empire. In this sense they were as much political as military constructions. In the eyes of all subsequent Chinese rulers the Great Wall marked the edge of Chinese civilization and the beginning of barbarian territory. Its purpose was as much to keep the frontier population of China separate from any potential allies on the steppe as it was to keep nomads out of China. Only after the completion of the Wall and the fall of the Ch'in dynasty did it become associated with the threat of nomadic invasion. In retrospect the aggressive Ch'in frontier policy of which wall construction was a part was reinterpreted as a purely defensive action."
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
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"A few ancient Chinese chronicles include descriptions of the Xiongnu political system. These accounts portray the Xiongnu as predatory raiders who belonged to a “simple” confederation of herding groups run by a few nomadic alpha males. Even so, warfare with mounted Xiongnu warriors equipped with bows, arrows and metal weapons had inspired Imperial Chinese leaders to construct their Great Wall."
* Barfield 1989 p33
"The expansion of Ch'in power onto the edge of the steppe had immediate consequences for the Hsiung-nu who bore the brunt of the new Chinese attacks. Shih-huang-ti expelled them from their homeland in the Ordos in order to construct a more defensible frontier. The Hsiung-nu retreated to the north where they remained in exile for ten years until the sudden fall of the Ch'in dynasty led to a civil war and the abandonment of its frontier defenses. Taking advantage of the turmoil in China, the Hsiung-nu reoccupied the Ordos.
"At the fall of the Ch'in dynasty the Hsiung-nu were the weakest of the nomadic confederations on the steppe. They had lost territory to China, had sent a hostage to the Yüeh-chih -- a sure sign of subservience on the steppe -- and were treated with contempt by their eastern neighbors, the Tung-hu. The sudden rise of the Hsiung-nu empire under the leadership of Mao-tun, who created an empire that proved to be the dominant force on the steppe for many centuries, therefore demands some explanation.
"Mao-tun was the son of T'ou-man -- the Shan-yü, or supratribal leader, of the Hsiung-nu -- who had led the Hsiung-nu into exile and later brought them back to the Ordos. Although Mao-tun was officially heir-apparent, when T'ou-man had a son by a second wife he schemed to remove Mao-tun from the line of succession. He sent Mao-tun as a hostage to the Yüeh-chih and then attacked them, expecting that Mao-tun would be killed in retaliation. But Mao-tun stole a fast horse, escaped the Yüeh-chih, and returned home to the Hsiung-nu as a hero. Mao-tun's bravery was greatly admired and his father was obliged to appoint him commander of 10,000 horsemen, a high Hsiung-nu rank."
Archery
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Saber
"From the start, Xiongnu imperial power depended on a ready supply of iron weapons and other gear that enabled horse-mounted warfare. Researchers who view the Xiongnu Empire as a faint version of Imperial China argue that the nomads’ power depended on importing crops and borrowing iron-making techniques, or simply trading for iron products, from the Chinese.
"But new findings suggest that Central Mongolian metallurgists launched a regional boom in iron production around the time the Xiongnu Empire originated, says archaeologist Ursula Brosseder of the University of Bonn in Germany.
"At a riverbank site, Brosseder and colleagues have excavated five iron smelting installations that contain by-products of iron making and burned wood. Radiocarbon dates of that material extend to as early as around 2,200 years ago, when the Xiongnu Empire arose.
"That makes these finds, each of which consists of two pits connected by a tunnel, the oldest Xiongnu iron smelting kilns by at least 100 years, the researchers reported in March in Asian Archaeology.
"Earlier research had established that people living just north of Xiongnu territory in southern Siberia started producing iron as early as around 2,800 years ago. Based on comparisons of finds in the two regions, Xiongnu metallurgists not only learned about iron making from their neighbors but also invented tunnel furnaces, the investigators say. Eastern Asian groups outside the Xiongnu sphere began making and using tunnel furnaces over the next couple of centuries.
"Discoveries by Brosseder’s group 'show that metallurgy reached the Xiongnu in Mongolia from southern Siberia, not China,' says archaeologist Nikolay Kradin, director of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology at the Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok. Craftspeople at several iron-making centers, some slightly younger than Brosseder’s discoveries and others yet to be found, must have managed that technological transition, hypothesizes Kradin, who did not participate in the new research.
"Brosseder suspects the Mongolian site she’s studied hosted a major iron-making operation. Four iron-making furnaces excavated near the other five have not yet been dated. And ground-based remote sensing equipment has revealed signs of at least 15, and possibly 26, more iron smelting kilns still covered by sediment.
"'We can expect more findings of Xiongnu iron smelting centers considering the demand for iron horse gear, arrowheads, carts and other material by the empire’s large army,' Brosseder says."
Armor
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