Early Mongol Society, Environment, and Subsistence

Key Insight

The Mongols originated in a remote area near the border of modern Mongolia and Siberia, a homeland permanently closed to outsiders after Genghis Khan's death. This region is primarily a high plateau, influenced by Arctic winds that create a dry southern Gobi Desert and more moderately watered northern mountains. The ancient Khentii Mountain Range, reaching about 10000 feet, features eroded peaks, marshes, and seasonal cobalt blue lakes, which feed small rivers flowing onto the steppe. The climate is notoriously fierce and abrupt, with the possibility of experiencing all four seasons in a single day, presenting constant challenges for humans and their animals.

In the twelfth century, dozens of nomadic tribes and clans, including the Mongols, populated the steppe in shifting combinations. The Mongols were related to the Tatars, Khitan, Manchus, and Turkic tribes, sharing a common cultural and linguistic heritage; they were sometimes referred to as 'Blue Turks' or 'Black Tatars.' They spoke Altaic languages, distantly similar to Korean and Japanese, and asserted direct descent from the Huns, who founded the first steppe empire in the 3rd century. Unlike some coalesced tribal confederacies, the Mongols were divided into smaller, kinship-based bands, each with a chief, or khan.

Mongol life comprised a seamless web of hunting, herding, trading, and fighting. While geographically distant from the main Silk Route, their society engaged in complex commercial, religious, and military relations with surrounding civilizations. They traded forest products—meat, leather, fur, antlers, bones, and medicines—for manufactured goods like metal and textiles, which slowly filtered north, highlighting their marginal position where 'the man with a pair of iron stirrups ranked as the highest lord.' When hunting was poor, especially in winter, raiding other herders for animals, women (as wives), and boys (as slaves) became a cyclical system of 'warfare,' where prestige derived from acquired goods, not battlefield honor, and casualties were generally low as victims often fled.