The warriors who led China to build the Great Wall – 08/27/2023 – Science

In 33 BC, the rulers of Han China and the Xiongnu nomads of the north sought a peace agreement that would end many years of brutal fighting.

As had already been done on other occasions, the agreement would be sealed with the marriage of a Chinese court princess and a Xiongnu chief.

The Chinese emperor, however, did not want to lose any of his daughters, so he ordered that a volunteer be found in his harem.

The only one willing to venture into a marriage that would destined her to live in an unknown world was Wang Zhaojun, a beautiful and intelligent young woman, who saw in the proposal an opportunity to break free from the emptiness of palace life and play a crucial role.

With the title of princess, a beautiful red dress and a flute, an instrument she played with great mastery, she left on a white horse to undertake her long journey through distant lands.

He spent the rest of his life in the steppes, and his benign influence contributed to a long period of peace between former enemies, the Han and the Xiongnu.

“Her life would be totally different among the Xiongnu. To begin with, as a woman, she would have much more power,” Christina Warinner, from the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, told BBC News Mundo (BBC service in Spanish).

The specialist in biomolecular archeology knows this because she studied in depth what was the first nomadic empire in history.

While Wang Zhaojun’s history is steeped in legend, Warinner said that, in fact, the Xiongnu and Han dynasty “many times tried to make peace agreements, and many times marriages were used to try to cement them.”

“But at the end of the day, they had such different ways of life and such disparate worldviews that it was difficult for them to achieve lasting peace.”

Ironically, it was the Chinese chroniclers who were the main tellers of their enemies’ history in posterity.

It’s just that the Xiongnu never developed a writing system and, being nomads, they left very little trace of their everyday life.

But they also left vast burial complexes from which, thanks to science, they are telling with their own voice who they were.

In fact, a recent survey in which Warinner participated in two of these tombs has enriched the image of these legendary nomads who built their powerful empire on the back of their horses and had the Sun and the Moon as their identity card.

fierce shepherds

“The Xiongnu Empire was formed very dramatically and suddenly,” noted Warinner.

“For thousands of years, populations east and west of the mountains running through central Mongolia did not really interact with each other.”

“Suddenly around 200 BC there was a lot of movement, a lot of chaos, war, and the two groups came together to form this new Xiongnu Empire.”

A contemporary of the ancient Roman and Egyptian empires, this equestrian empire emerged as imperial China’s greatest rival.

The chronicles of Chinese historians tell of brutal battles in which up to 300 thousand fierce Xiongnu horse archers repeatedly attacked northern China.

The Great Wall is monumental proof that they weren’t exaggerating: it was built along the entire northern border as a barrier against the formidable warriors, but though it slowed them down, it didn’t stop them.

His prowess in mounted warfare shaped his image and even inspired video games.

But they were a pastoral nomadic people, as described by the Chinese historian Sima Qian (145-90 BC), who provided one of the first glimpses of that culture, wandering in search of pastures for their herds of horses, cattle and sheep.

“They tended to move seasonally, often returning to similar locations. But they also moved to new places where the grass was greener,” explained Warinner.

“They were expanding their territory, forming alliances with more distant groups, even former enemies.”

Little by little, they dominated the great Eurasian steppe for three centuries.

In this way, they achieved not only security, but also something they valued very much: exotic products.

“They were fascinated by things from abroad, so they strove to build and expand strategic commercial networks that would allow them to bring objects and technologies from far away.”

But shouldn’t they, unlike Rome or Egypt, be nomadic pastoralist groups who didn’t build cities or form centralized bureaucracies?

Of course, they could take with them a certain amount of those exotic goods they valued so much, but under those circumstances, there would be a limit to how much they could hoard.

Well, in this, as in many aspects, princesses play a key role, according to the conclusions of the recent study by the international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Geoanthropology and the universities of Seoul, Michigan and Harvard.

Combining archeology with genetics, fascinating aspects finally emerge, such as that, in a society apparently dominated by masculinity, it was women who sustained the empire.

wise princesses

“We found that they were very different from anything that came before. They were extremely genetically diverse.”

“The empire was made up of many, many ethnic groups that came together and formed a political alliance.”

To understand the internal dynamics of Xiongnu communities, the researchers worked in two cemeteries.

One was from the local elite, where evidence showed they “used strategic marriages to form alliances with their neighbors”.

The other was an aristocratic cemetery, where there were small tombs around large square tombs where “the elites of the elites, the highest ranking people sent there to expand the empire” were entombed.

In the satellite tombs there were “people who were probably servants, and what’s interesting is they were all male, and they were all low status and extremely diverse”.

“Aristocratic tombs were occupied by women.”

Their genetic diversity was much less than that of the lower strata, indicating that power was concentrated in particular lineages.

Its assets show a taste for art and technology from other latitudes: Greek and Chinese, Roman and Persian pieces.

In addition, there are indications of their predominant role in society: symbolic objects conventionally associated with male warriors, such as Chinese lacquer bowls, gilded iron belt clasps, hardware for horses, chariots and suns and moons that identified them.

“They were markers of authority, of respect, of governance; they weren’t just wealthy women, they were women in positions of authority.”

It was politically savvy princesses who wove together the vast empire.

“While armies of Xiongnu warriors expanded the empire, elite women ruled the borders.”

That tradition of leaving government in the hands of women has survived, Warinner said.

“Even a thousand years after the fall of the Xiongnu, in the Mongol Empire, the greatest that ever existed and which was also nomadic, queens were the best rulers.”

It’s just that the Xiongnu didn’t leave a written history, but they left a deep mark.

“They had a huge long-term impact.”

“After their empire collapsed, the memory remained strong.”

“Centuries later, new groups emerged again and again and again claiming to be the rightful descendants of the glorious Xiongnu.”

“And many of the ideas that originated with them carried on into later empires.”

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The text was originally published here.