Ordos culture

The Ordos culture was a culture occupying a region centered on the Ordos Loop (modern Inner Mongolia, China) during the Bronze and early Iron Age from the 6th to 2nd centuries BCE. The Ordos culture is known for significant finds of Scythian art and is thought to represent the easternmost extension of Indo-European Eurasian nomads,  such as the Saka. Under the Qin and Han dynasties, from the 6th to 2nd centuries BCE, the area came under at least nominal control of contemporaneous Chinese states.

Background
Equestrian nomads from the north-west occupied the area previously settled by the Zhukaigou culture from the 6th to the 2nd century BCE before being driven away by the Xiongnu. The Ordos Plateau was covered by grass, bushes, and trees and was sufficiently watered by numerous rivers and streams to produce rich grazing lands. At the time, it contained the best pasture lands on the Asian Steppe. However, it has now mostly turned to the Ordos Desert through a combination of overgrazing and climatic change.

Characteristics
The Ordos are mainly known from their skeletal remains and artifacts. The Ordos culture of about 500 BCE to 100 CE is known for its "Ordos bronzes", blade weapons, finials for tent-poles, horse gear, and small plaques and fittings for clothes and horse harness, using animal style decoration with relationships both with the Scythian art of regions much further west, and also Chinese art. Its relationship with the Xiongnu is controversial; for some scholars they are the same and for others different. Many buried metal artefacts have emerged on the surface of the land as a result of the progressive desertification of the region.

The Ordos are thought to be the easternmost of the Iranian peoples of the Eurasian Steppe, just to the east of the better-known Yuezhi, also an Indo-European people. Because the people represented in archaeological finds tend to display Europoid features, also earlier noted by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, Iaroslav Lebedynsky suggests the Ordos culture had "a Scythian affinity". Other scholars have associated it with the Yuezhi. The weapons found in tombs throughout the steppes of the Ordos are very close to those of the Scythians and Saka.

Contact with neighbouring peoples
While the ethnolinguistic origins and character of the Ordos culture are unknown, the population appears to have been significantly influenced by Indo-European cultures. However, the art of the Ordos culture appears to have influenced that of the Donghu people (), a Mongolic-speaking nomadic tribe located to the east, suggesting that the two had close ties. (The Donghu may also have been connected to a people known as the Northern Di in Chinese annals.

The Ordos population was also in contact – and reportedly often at war – with the pre-Han and Han peoples. The Ordos culture covered, geographically, regions later occupied by the Han, including areas just north of the later Great Wall of China and straddling the northernmost hook of the Yellow River.

To the west of the Ordos culture was another Indo-European people, the Yuezhi, although nothing is known of relations between the two. (The Yuezhi were later vanquished by the Xiongnu and Wusun, who reportedly drove them westward, out of China; a subgroup of the Yuezhi is widely believed to have migrated to South Central Asia, where it constituted the ruling elite of the Kushan Empire.)

Appearance of the Xiongnu

In Chinese accounts, the Xiongnu first appear at Ordos in the Yi Zhou Shu and Classic of Mountains and Seas during the Warring States period before it was occupied by the states of Qin and Zhao. It is generally thought to be their homeland; however, when exactly they came to occupy the region is unclear and archaeological finds suggest it might have been much earlier than traditionally thought.

As the Xiongnu expanded southward into Yuezhi territory around 160 BCE under Modun, the Yuezhi in turn defeated the Sakas and pushed them away at Issyk Kul. It is thought the Xiongnu also occupied the Ordos area during the same period, when they came in direct contact with the Chinese. From there, the Xiongnu conducted numerous devastating raids into Chinese territory (167, 158, 142, 129 BCE).

The Han–Xiongnu War began with Emperor Wu of Han, and the Han colonized the area of the Ordos as the commandery of Shuofang in 127 BCE. Prior to this campaign, there were already  earlier commanderies established by Qin and Zhao before they were overrun by the Xiongnu in 209 BCE.

Artifacts
Ordos bronzes from the British Museum (Asian Gallery):

References

Citations

Sources

 

Ma, Liqing (2005). The Original Xiongnu, An Archaeological Exploration of the Xiongnu's History and Culture. Hohhot: Inner Mongolia University Press. .

External links
The Relief Plaques of Eastern Eurasia and China - The Ordos Bronzes - video by Sir John Boardman, 3m 47 sec

Category:Ordos
Category:Archaeological cultures of Central Asia
Category:Iron Age cultures of Asia
Category:Archaeological cultures of China
Category:Archaeology of Inner Mongolia
Category:Xiongnu
Category:Saka
Category:Scythian cultures
Category:Yuezhi