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The first significant recorded appearance of nomads came late in the third century B.C. Then various proto-Mongolian tribes such as the Xiongnu, Dunhu, Hun yi and Di lived on the present territory of Mongolia. These nomadic people, in the steppes north of the Gobi, were so warlike that they caused the Chinese to build a 2,300 km Great Wall along their northern border as a barrier to further incursions.

In 209 B.C. the Huns, who were descendants of these ancient nomadic tribes, set up the first State in Central Asia. The Hun State was equal in power to the Chinese states of Tsin and Khan. The territory of the Huns was vast and extended to the Great Wall in the South, lake Baikal to the North, the Khingan mountains to the East and the Erchis river to the West.

During the Hun period, developments in the ethnic culture of Mongolian tribes, their arts, music, astronomy and astrology were greatly promoted and a twelve-month lunar calendar introduced. The state maintained wide diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with neighbouring countries.

However, the mighty empire of the nomads did not last long. After a fierce internal struggle, in 53-55 B.C. it was broken into the Southern and Northern Huns. In A.D. 93 the Northern Huns ceased to exist as an independent state. Some of them drifted away from their native territory to the Caspian steppes and others moved on further west to the Danube-Carpathian valleys, where they settled down and formed a sizeable nomadic state under the leadership of Attila, one of the most successful invaders of the Roman Empire.

The Huns were replaced by the Nirun, Jujan khanate (402-555B.C.) and then by the Kidan Empire (901-1125B.C) both of which played an essential role in uniting the Mongolian tribes, strengthening their political and state systems, and preserving the features of the nomadic civilizations of Central Asia.