Powerful and diverse world
Hung No - a nomadic empire that ruled the Asian steppe for 3 centuries, from 200 BC - traded goods on the Silk Road, built elaborate tombs for the dead and conquered remote lands on horseback.
The Hung No empire witnessed a conflict with its major rival China, leading to China building the Great Wall - a project that still exists today.
However, there are no written records of this empire and its people, except for records written by Chinese historical scholars who consider Hung No a bar runner-up.
However, now, ancient DNA evidence, combined with the results of recent archaeological excavations, is revealing the secrets of one of the most powerful political forces of the times.
A team of international scientists have completed a genetic investigation into two cemeteries along the western border of the Hung No empire in Mongolia today: one for the aristocratic elite in Takhiltyn Khotgor and one for the local elite in Shombuuzyn Belchir.
Scientists have arranged the genetic sequence of 17 individuals buried in two cemeteries and found extremely high degrees of genetic diversity, suggesting the possibility of this multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual empire, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances.
Genetic diversity is found in individual communities. This shows that the Hung No empire is not just a patchwork of groups of solidarity for a common goal.
We currently have a good idea for how Hung No expands their empire by combining different groups and taking advantage of marriage and family relationships to build the empire, said senior author Choongwon Jeong, Associate Professor of Biology at Seoul National University, Korea.
Among the individual tombs studied, the tombs with the highest status belong to women, showing that women play a particularly powerful role in Hung No society.
The elaborate coffins with the symbol of the sun and moon made of gold are a symbol of the power of the Hung No people. An excavated tomb contains the remains of 6 horses and 1 chariot.
Bryan Miller, a professor of Central Asian arts and archaeology at the University of Michigan, USA, said: These women are venerable with many offerings from all those attending their funerals, demonstrating their continuous importance to the community throughout their lives.
The study also revealed information about the lives of Hung No children. Juvenile boys, like adult men, are buried with the ring names while boys under 11 years old are not.
Children are treated differently at funerals depending on their age and gender, giving clues about the age at which gender and status are determined in Hung No society, said Associate Professor Christina Warinner, Max Planck Institute for tienistic Ethnology.
Strong heritage
Ursula Brosseder, a prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Bonn, who was not involved in the study, said the study provided more in-depth information about the social and social structures of the Hung No people.
Professor Brosseder added that Hung No is often misunderstood because most of the information about this empire as well as other ethnic groups originating from the Asian-European steppe comes from documents from ancient China and Greece, where most of the nomadic cattle farmers were considered poor.
Researcher Miller commented that Hung No left a strong legacy that inspired later nomads originating from the Asian-European steppe such as the Mongolian and Chinese cities.
Hung No is the name of a dynasty, not a nation; but that dynasty has greatly affected the ethnic groups in their kings and left a strong legacy in A A A Au, he said.
Many groups later took the name Hung No ( Xiongnu or Hunnu) when establishing their own empire for centuries after Hung No devastated Inner Asia.
And the Mongolian took over this strong legacy when it established its own empire centuries later, he added.
