The early inhabitants
Beginning in the 1920s, archaeological excavations in various parts of Mongolia have unearthed many interesting and important sites, a large number of which are prehistoric. Of particular interest are the settlements with graves and semi-subterranean dwellings near the town of Choibalsan, Dornod Aimag in eastern Mongolia, and findings in the area around Bayanzag in Southern Mongolia discovered in the 1920s during the American Third Central Asiatic Expedition led by Roy Chapman Andrews.
Excavations of these settlements and graves have shown that the people were buried in a sitting position in narrow pits, along with bone knives and pearl beads. Traces of man pertaining to the Middle and later Palaeolithic periods have also been found in many parts of Mongolia, particularly in the Moiltyn valley on the river Orkhon near Kharkhorin, the ancient capital, as well as in the valleys of the Selenge, Tuul and Kherlen rivers and deep in the Gobi and on the steppes of the Mongol Altai.
A wonderful monument of primitive culture - the cave paintings of Khoit Tsenkher in Khovd Aimag, 1,200 km west of Ulaanbaatar - bear witness to the high level of intellectual development of the primitive people in the Mongolia of that period. A great number of bronze implements, various decorations and household utensils also discovered in these places are on display at the Natural History Museum, showing that the country was once a cradle of Asian civilization. Around the same time that iron weapons began to appear in the third century B.C., the inhabitants of Mongolia had begun to form tribal alliances and to threaten China. As has now been proved scientifically with archaeological evidence, the area that is now Mongolia was populated as early as 500,000 years ago.
