In addition, Mongolized Soyots live in Buryatia. Their population is 3600 people. Soyots are one of the indigenous minority peoples of Russia. They are descendants of Turkified Samoyeds. At the same time, a number of orientalists (Zhukovskaia,[4] Nanzatov,[5] Baldaev[6] and others) consider modern Soyots as a sub-ethnos within the Buryat people: "... here the ethnic composition of the population was formed, which remains relatively stable to this day - Bulagats, Khongodors, Soyots, who (some earlier, others later) became subethnic groups of the Buryats."[4]
Mongolian shamanism, more broadly called the Mongolian folk religion, or occasionally Tengerism[according to whom?], as refers to the animistic and shamanic indigenous religion that has been practiced in Mongolia and its surrounding areas (including Buryatia and Inner Mongolia), as well as among Daur and other peoples, at least since the age of recorded history. In the earliest known stages, it was intricately tied to all other aspects of social life and to the tribal organization of Mongolian society. Along the way, it has become influenced by and mingled with Buddhism.[15] Tengrism was transformed into a monotheistic religion only at the imperial level within aristocratic circles.[16]
The Culture of Mongolia has been heavily influenced by the Mongolnomadic way of life and shows similarities to other East Asian and Central Asian cultures. The various Mongolic ethnic groups share a highly similar culture and traditions, but have specific differences in clothing styles and cuisine. Although Mongolian traditional clothing (deel) has changed little since the days of the empire, there have been some changes in styles which distinguish modern Mongolian dress from historic costume. Each tribe or clan has its own deel design distinguished by cut, color, and trimming. Mongolian cuisine is primarily based on meat and dairy, with some regional variations. The most important public festivals are the Naadam. A Naadam involves horse racing, wrestling, and archery competitions. For families, the most important festival is Tsagaan Sar (Lunar New Year), which is roughly equivalent to the Chinese New Year and usually falls into January or February. Mongolia has a very old musical tradition. Key traditional elements are throat-singing, the Morin Khuur (horse head fiddle) and other string instruments, and several types of songs. Mongolian melodies are typically characterized by pentatonic harmonies and long end notes.
Origin
The ethnogenesis of Mongolic peoples is largely linked with the expansion of Ancient Northeast Asians. They subsequently came into contact with other groups, notably Sinitic peoples to their South and Western Steppe Herders to their far West. The Mongolians pastoralist lifestyle, may in part be derived from the Western Steppe Herders, but without much geneflow between these two groups, suggesting cultural transmission.[17][18]
Genetics
Mongols and other Mongolic-speaking groups, show high genetic affinity to each other, followed by genetic proximity to Central and East/Southeast Asian peoples. The analysis of 175 Mongolic samples, representing 6 ethnic groups, incorporating results of the 1000 Genomes Project panel, revealed genetic homogeneity between different Mongolic groups, and that Northeast, East, and Southeast Asian populations are closer to each other than to other Eurasian populations.[2]
Maternal lineages
Mongolic peoples maternal lineages are primarily shared with East Asians (54%) and Southeast Asians (28%), while around 14% are shared with Europeans and other West Eurasian populations. The remaining 4% are distributed throughout Eurasia and not associated with a specific group.[19]
A study based on mtDNA noted that ancient populations in Mongolia had a mixed West and East Eurasian origin, while modern Mongolians are characterized by substantially less West Eurasian maternal ancestry. It is suggested that many West Eurasian mtDNA haplogroups in modern Mongolians are believed to have arrived around 2,500-5,000 years ago, or the Mongolian Bronze Age. A smaller number arrived in the early Iron Age.[20] Research by Rogers, et al. provides evidence that some West Eurasian maternal lineages had made it to Mongolia east of the Altai mountains prior to the Bronze Age.[21][22] During the medieval period, a continuous increase in East Asian mitochondrial lineages was detected, which these authors attribute to Genghis Khan's Pax Mongolica.[23]
Paternal lineages
An analysis of the paternal genetic diversity of Mongolians (n=95 from Ulaangom, n=100 from Dalandzadgad, n=97 from Ulaanbaatar, n=84 from Undurkhaan, n=117 from Choibalsan) performed by Toshimichi Yamamoto et alii at the Department of Legal Medicine and Bioethics, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University, Japan revealed a mean frequency of 59.0% Haplogroup C-M217 (49.5% Ulaanbaatar, 57.1% Undurkhaan, 59.0% Choibalsan, 61.0% Dalandzadgad, 68.4% Ulaangom), 13.9% Haplogroup O-M175 (4.2% Ulaangom, 11.0% Dalandzadgad, 13.1% Undurkhaan, 15.4% Choibalsan, 25.8% Ulaanbaatar), 11.3% Haplogroup N-M231 (8.2% Ulaanbaatar, 8.4% Ulaangom, 10.3% Choibalsan, 14.0% Dalandzadgad, 15.5% Undurkhaan), 6.2% Haplogroup R (3.1% Ulaanbaatar, 3.4% Choibalsan, 3.6% Undurkhaan, 7.0% Dalandzadgad, 13.7% Ulaangom), 3.5% Haplogroup D-M174 (1.1% Ulaangom, 3.4% Choibalsan, 4.0% Dalandzadgad, 4.1% Ulaanbaatar, 4.8% Undurkhaan), and 2.8% Haplogroup Q1b (2.0% Dalandzadgad, 2.4% Undurkhaan, 3.1% Ulaanbaatar, 3.2% Ulaangom, 3.4% Choibalsan).[24] The authors noted that "at least 4 major male ancestors with Y-hg-C3 have affected the gene pool of Mongolian males at the different periods," producing star-like clusters of Y-STR haplotypes.[24] Most numerous on average are the members of C3*: 11.6% Ulaangom, 14.4% Ulaanbaatar, 28.6% Undurkhaan, 29.9% Choibalsan, 48.0% Dalandzadgad. Second most numerous on average are the members of Haplogroup C3c: 2.0% Dalandzadgad, 16.7% Undurkhaan, 17.1% Choibalsan, 23.7% Ulaanbaatar, 53.7% Ulaangom. Third most numerous on average are the members of Haplogroup C3d i.e. C-M407: 3.2% Ulaangom, 8.0% Dalandzadgad, 8.5% Choibalsan, 10.7% Undurkhaan, 11.3% Ulaanbaatar.
A study based on ancient DNA and Y-DNA found that ancient populations in the region of modern-day Mongolia had a mixed West and East Eurasian origin during the Xiongnu period. Male-mediated Western Steppe Herders ancestry increased by the establishment of Türkic and Uyghur rule in Mongolia, which was accompanied by an increase in the West Eurasian haplogroups R and J.[25] There was a male-mediated rise in East Asian ancestry in the late medieval Mongolian period, paralleling the increase of haplogroup C2b.[26]
Autosomal DNA
Genetic studies on Mongolic populations found them to be "well-fitted by a three-way admixture" of Ancient Northeast Asian-like (ANA) ancestry, with variable amounts of Yellow River Farmer-like, and Western Steppe Herders ancestries. Mongols of Inner Mongolia were found to display genetic continuity with "Late Medieval Mongol" samples, and can be modeled as 46% Ancient Northeast Asian, 44% Yellow River Farmer, and 10% West Eurasian (Andronovo-like).[28]Mongol Empire period samples carried between 55–64% Ancient Northeast Asian ancestry, 21–27% Yellow River Farmer-like sources, and 15–18% Western Steppe Herder (Sarmatian or Alan-like) sources.[29]
One autosomal study on Oirat-speakingKalmyks living in Kalmykia, Eastern Europe, found them to be derived from a Western Mongolian source population. Despite their long-distance migration, Kalmyks still display a predominant East Asian genetic profile. Kalmyks derive around 80% East Asian ancestry and 20% Western Eurasian ancestry.[30]
Two autosomal genetic studies on Inner Mongolians found that they are best modeled as a mixture of Ancient Northeast Asian-like (ANA) and 10% to 25% East Asian Yellow River Farmer ancestry sources (increasing among Khorchins to around 62%), with only minor Western Eurasian genetic contributions (5.6–11.6%).[3][18][b]
Mongolic peoples display genetic continuity to the Devil’s Gate Cave specimen (7,000 BCE) and the Amur13K specimen (13,000 BCE). The Neolithic Northeast Asian ancestry, is shared with other "putative Altaic-speaking peoples" specifically Turkic, and Tungusic-speaking peoples, together with shared "IBD fragments" in haplotype variation, supporting a Northeast Asian origin of these three groups. Turkic and Western Mongolic populations display the relatively highest amounts of West Eurasian admixture, inline with historical contacts between Ancient Northeast Asians and West Eurasian populations of the Eurasian Steppes, and evidence from linguistic borrowings. In comparison, Eastern, Central and Southern Mongolic peoples as well as Tungusic peoples had considerable less West Eurasian ancestry but higher Yellow River farmers ancestry. Sinitic peoples largely lacked any West Eurasian-derived ancestry and displayed primarily affinity with historical Yellow River farmers.[33][34]
Notes
^ abSome Mongolic ethnic groups are variously described as subgroups of Mongols or as separate ethnic groups; for example, the Buryats and the Kalmyks are recognized as distinct ethnolinguistic groups in Russia (see 2010 Census and other).
^"The gene flow from Western Eurasian was preliminarily detected in Mongol population of TreeMix-based phylogenetic tree; the ancestral source was finally identified in qpAdm, ranging from 5.6 to 11.6% in those Mongolian subgroups; ALDER and GLOBETROTTER supported that the west-east admixture event was recently estimated in the period ranging from Tang Dynasty to Yuan Dynasty. ... We further performed haplotype-based GLOBETROTTER to obtain a high-resolution characterization of the admixture landscaped of three Mongolian subgroups. All targets showed robust signals of west-east admixture (Supplementary Table S11)."[31]
^ abNatalia Zhukovskaia (2005)."Бурятские шаманки на международной конференции (тункинский опыт, июль 2004 г.) // Женщина и возрождение шаманизма.". Москва: Российская академия наук. Институт этнологии и антропологии имени Н. Н. Миклухо-Маклая. Page 129. In Russian: "... здесь сформировался тот этнический состав населения, который относительно стабильно сохраняется до сегодняшнего дня - булагаты, хонгодоры, сойоты, которые (одни раньше, другие позже) вошли как субэтносы в состав бурят."
^Nanzatov, B. Z. (2003). "Племенной состав бурят в XIX веке." [Buryat tribe composition in the 19th century]. Народы и культуры Сибири. Взаимодействие как фактор формирования и модернизации (in Russian). Irkutsk. pp. 15–27.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Балдаев С. П. (1970). Родословные легенды и предания бурят. Ч. 1 (in Russian). Улан-Удэ. p. 166.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Cardinali; et al. 2022"Finally, a very few haplogroups originated in more recent times (<3 kya) and could be linked to historical events." [...] "A post-glacial expansion in eastern Asia was already proved for another mtDNA post-glacial marker, haplogroup U5b (Achilli et al., 2005). A later expansion can be probably connected to the climatic amelioration of the early Holocene that was accompanied by the development of farming and pastoralism and more sedentary communities. A mixed ancestry between Yamnaya and European farmers was recently identified by analyzing ancient Bronze Age Mongolians (Jeong et al., 2020; Wang C. C. et al., 2021). [...] The lack of Mongolia-specific sub-branches might also suggest that the WEu lineages arrived in the Eastern Steppe in more recent times. Certainly, the ages of some WEu lineages between 5 and 3 kya could be linked to Bronze Age migrations across the Eurasian steppes that probably involved also the Afanasievo first (ca. 3300–2500 BCE) and later the Sintashta culture (ca. 2100–1800 BCE). Finally, by searching the available database of ancient mitogenomes for WEu lineages identified in our modern Mongolians, we identified 13 different sub-lineages among remains excavated in Mongolia and dated after the Bronze Age. They might testify for small population movements from the west less than 3,000 ya that can be probably related to commercial routes. Actually, the migration path from western Eurasia to Mongolia marked by some of these mitochondrial sub-lineages (H5a1, J1b2, T2g, U2e1b, U4b1a1a1, and U4b1a4) occurred about 2,500 ya, thus temporally and geographically overlapping with the Silk Route, while other sub-haplogroups, such as J1b1b1 and U2e1a1, seem to have arrived in Mongolia later."
^Rogers, Leland Liu; Kaestle, Frederika Ann (April 2022). "Analysis of mitochondrial DNA haplogroup frequencies in the population of the slab burial mortuary culture of Mongolia (ca. 1100–300 BCE )". American Journal of Biological Anthropology. 177 (4): 644–657. doi:10.1002/ajpa.24478. S2CID246508594. The K hg may represent an ancient addition from early western foragers that had intermixed with early agriculturalists (Spengler, 2015), similar with the probable origins of the C hg found in the ancient Ukraine (Nikitin et al., 2012). The J1c8a haplotype might be from a regional polymorphism that is linked to migrating populations after the expansion of agriculturalism from the Middle East, perhaps associated with the development of caprine pastoralism that reached southeast Kazakhstan by at least 2800 BCE (Hermes et al 2020)."
^Cardinali; et al. 2022"Finally, rather than finding long-distance traces of the Mongol Empire expansion to the west, we identified continuous and recent (female-mediated) connections with neighboring Eastern Asian populations. The geographically restricted sharing of haplotypes from typical EAs mtDNA lineages might represent an outcome of Genghis Khan’s so-called Pax Mongolica still detectable in present-day Mongolians."
^Jeong et al. 2020: See Figure S2. "We also observed that this East Asian-related ancestry was brought into the Late Medieval populations more by male than female ancestors. ... Overall, Mongol period individuals characterized by a remarkable decrease in Western Eurasian ancestry compared to the preceding 1,600 years. They are best modeled as a mixture of ANA-like and East Asian-like ancestry sources, with only minor Western genetic ancestry. In addition, nearly a third of historic Mongol males (12/38) have Y haplogroup C2b, which is also widespread among modern Mongolians (Figure S3; Table S6); C2b is the presumed patrilineage of Genghis Khan (Zerjal et al., 2003)."
^He, Guang-Lin; Wang, Meng-Ge; Zou, Xing; Yeh, Hui-Yuan; Liu, Chang-Hui; Liu, Chao; Chen, Gang; Wang, Chuan-Chao (2022-01-09). "Extensive ethnolinguistic diversity at the crossroads of North China and South Siberia reflects multiple sources of genetic diversity". Journal of Systematics and Evolution. 61 (1): 230–250. doi:10.1111/jse.12827. ISSN1674-4918. Here, we found that western Mongolians shared a similar ancestry history with late Medieval Mongols, which was descended 0.440 ancestry from YRB farmers, 0.4592 from ARB Hunter-Gatherers, and 0.1008 from western Eurasian Andronovo (Fig. 7G∼H). We also confirmed that early Medieval Turkic derived 68% ancestry from Neolithic Amur people. Ancient Turkic people also contributed 30% of genetic materials to western Mongolians whose remaining ancestry derived from eastern Mongolian-related ancient sources (Fig. 7I).
^Jeong, Choongwon; Wang, Ke; Wilkin, Shevan; Taylor, William Timothy Treal; Miller, Bryan K.; Bemmann, Jan H.; Stahl, Raphaela; Chiovelli, Chelsea; Knolle, Florian; Ulziibayar, Sodnom; Khatanbaatar, Dorjpurev; Erdenebaatar, Diimaajav; Erdenebat, Ulambayar; Ochir, Ayudai; Ankhsanaa, Ganbold (2020-11-12). "A Dynamic 6,000-Year Genetic History of Eurasia's Eastern Steppe". Cell. 183 (4): 890–904.e29. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.10.015. ISSN0092-8674. PMC7664836. PMID33157037. Mongol-era individuals as a group can be modeled with only 15%–18% Western Steppe ancestry (Alan or Sarmatian) but require 55%–64% Ulaanzuukh_SlabGrave and 21%–27% of Han-related ancestry (Table S5I). _ Since the fall of the Mongol empire in 1368 CE, the genetic profile of the Mongolian populations has not substantially changed.
^Sikora, Martin; Pitulko, Vladimir V.; Sousa, Vitor C.; Allentoft, Morten E.; Vinner, Lasse; Rasmussen, Simon; Margaryan, Ashot; de Barros Damgaard, Peter; de la Fuente, Constanza; Renaud, Gabriel; Yang, Melinda A.; Fu, Qiaomei; Dupanloup, Isabelle; Giampoudakis, Konstantinos; Nogués-Bravo, David (2019). "The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene". Nature. 570 (7760): 182–188. Bibcode:2019Natur.570..182S. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1279-z. hdl:1887/3198847. ISSN1476-4687. PMID31168093. S2CID174809069. Most modern Siberian speakers of Neosiberian languages genetically fall on an East- West cline between Europeans and Early East Asians. Taking Even speakers as representatives, the Neosiberian turnover from the south, which largely replaced Ancient Paleosiberian ancestry, can be associated with the northward spread of Tungusic and probably also Turkic and Mongolic. However, the expansions of Tungusic as well as Turkic and Mongolic are too recent to be associable with the earliest waves of Neosiberian ancestry, dated later than ~11 kya, but discernible in the Baikal region from at least 6 kya onwards. Therefore, this phase of the Neosiberian population turnover must initially have transmitted other languages or language families into Siberia, including possibly Uralic and Yukaghir.
Sources
General
Nimaev, Daba (2011). Монгольские народы: Этническая история и современные этнокультурные процессы [The Mongolic Peoples: Ethnic History and Contemporary Ethnocultural Processes] (in Russian). Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN978-3843324403.
Heissig, Walther (1980) [1970]. The religions of Mongolia. Translated by G. Samuel. London; Henley: Routledge; Kegan Paul. ISBN0-7103-0685-7.
Humphrey, Caroline; Onon, Urgunge (1996). Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Pettazzoni, Raffaele (1956) [1955]. "Turco-Mongols and Related Peoples". The All-Knowing God. Researches into Early Religion and Culture. Translated by H. J. Rose. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Shimamura, Ippei (2004). "Yellow Shamans (Mongolia)". In Walter, Mariko Namba; Neumann Fridman; Eva Jane (eds.). Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, Ca: ABC-Clio. pp. 649–51. ISBN9781576076453.