Word: xiongnu
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Around 1500 B.C, Mongolia's climate became colder and drier, prompting a shift from a crop-based to a livestock-centered society. And by about 200 B.C., a warlike people called the Xiongnu had overrun a large part of the region. As part of a peace agreement with China's Han dynasty, the Xiongnu demanded annual tributes of silk, wine, rice, concubines and other luxuries. According to Kessler, the transport of these goods to central Asia marked the earliest full-scale use of the Silk Road, the fabled network of trade routes that ultimately stretched to the Mediterranean...
...Xiongnu empire finally collapsed during the 1st century A.D., primarily because of disputes over succession rights. Some 800 years later, another clan, the Qidan, conquered much of northeast China and amassed a formidable empire stretching from central Asia to the Sea of Japan. During the Liao dynasty they founded, the Qidan built several hundred cities...
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