In 33 BC, the rulers of Han China and the Xiongnu nomads of the north sought a peace agreement that would end many years of brutal fighting.
As had been done on other occasions, the deal would be sealed with the wedding of a Chinese court princess and a Xiongnu chief.
The Chinese emperor, however, did not want to lose any of his daughters, so he ordered a volunteer to be found in his harem.
The only one willing to venture into a marriage that would destine her to live in an unknown world was wang zhaojuna stunningly beautiful and intelligent girl, who saw in the proposal an opportunity to break free from the emptiness of palace life and play a crucial role.
With the title of princess, a beautiful red dress and a pipe, an instrument that she played with great mastery, she left on a white horse to undertake her long journey to distant lands.
He spent the rest of his life on the steppe, and his benign influence contributed to a long period of peace between former enemies, the Han and the Xiongnu.
“Her life would be totally different among the Xiongnu. To begin with, as a woman, she would have much more room for power,” Christina Warinner, from the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, told BBC Mundo in the US.
The expert in biomolecular archeology knows this because she has studied in depth what was the first nomadic empire in history.
Although Wang Zhaojun’s story is steeped in legend, Warinner said that indeed the Xiongnu and the Han dynasty “tried many times to form peace agreements, and often marriages were used to try to cement them.”
“But ultimately they had such different ways of life and such fundamentally disparate worldviews that it was difficult for them to achieve lasting peace.”
Ironically, it was the Chinese chroniclers who were the main tellers of the history of their enemies in posterity.
And it is that the Xiongnu never developed a writing system and, being nomads, they left very little evidence of their daily life.
But yes, vast mortuary complexes from which, thanks to science, they are telling with their own voice who they were.
In fact, a recent investigation into two of those tombs in which Warinner participated enriched the image of those legendary nomads who built their powerful empire on the back of their horses and had the Sun and the Moon as their identity card.
seasoned shepherds
“The Xiongnu Empire was formed very dramatically and suddenly,” Warinner noted.
“For thousands of years, the populations east and west of the mountains running through central Mongolia had not really interacted with each other.
“Suddenly, around the year 200 BC. there was a lot of movement, a lot of chaos, war, and the two groups came together to form that new Xiongnu Empire.”
A contemporary of the ancient Roman and Egyptian empires, that equestrian empire emerged as imperial China’s greatest rival.
The chronicles of Chinese historians tell of brutal battles in which up to 300,000 ferocious Xiongnu horse archers repeatedly raided northern China.
The Great Wall is monumental proof that they were not exaggerating: it was built along the entire northern border as a barrier against the formidable warriors but, although it slowed them down, it did not stop them.
His prowess in mounted warfare has dominated his image and even inspired video games.
But they were a nomadic pastoral people, as described by the Chinese historian Sima Qian (145-90 BC), who provided one of the first glimpses of that culture, wandering in search of grazing land for their herds of horses, cattle and sheep. .
“They tended to move seasonally, often returning to similar locations. But they also went to new places, where the grass was greener,” Warinner explained.
“They were expanding their territory, forming alliances with groups that were further away, even former enemies.”
Little by little, they came to dominate the great Eurasian steppe for three centuries.
In this way they achieved not only security but also something that they highly valued: exotic products.
“They were fascinated by things from beyond, so they strove to build and expand strategic trade networks that would allow them to bring objects and technologies from far away.”
But weren’t they supposed, unlike Rome or Egypt, to be nomadic groups of pastoralists who didn’t build cities or form centralized bureaucracies?
Sure, they could take with them a certain amount of those exotic goods that they prized so much, but in those circumstances, there would be a limit to how much they could accumulate.
Well, in this, as in many aspects, princesses play a key role, according to the findings of the recent study by the international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Geoanthropology and from the universities of Seoul, Michigan and Harvard.
Combining archeology with genetics, fascinating aspects are finally coming to light, such as that, in a society so seemingly dominated by masculinity, it was women who propped up the empire.
wise princesses
“One of the things we set out to do was reconstruct the genomes” of the human remains found in the two mortuary complexes examined,” Warinner explained.
“We found that they were very different from anything that came before. They were enormously diverse genetically.
“The empire was made up of many, many ethnic groups that came together and formed a political alliance.”
To understand the internal dynamics of Xiongnu communities, the researchers worked in two cemeteries.
One was from the local elite, where evidence showed that they “used strategic marriages to form alliances with their neighbors.”
The other was an aristocratic cemetery, where there were small tombs around large, square ones where “the elites of the elites, the highest-ranking people sent there to expand the Empire” were buried.
In the satellite tombs were “people who were probably servants, and what’s interesting is that they were all male, and they were all low-status and extremely diverse.”
“Aristocratic tombs were occupied by women.”
Their genetic diversity was much less than that of the lower strata, indicating that power was concentrated in particular lineages.
In their grave goods there is evidence of this taste for art and technology from other latitudes: Greek and Chinese, Roman and Persian pieces.
In addition, there are clues to their predominant role in society: symbolic objects conventionally associated with male warriors, such as Chinese lacquer goblets, gilded iron belt clasps, ironwork for horses, carriages, and those identifying suns and moons.
“They were markers of authority, of respect, of governance; they weren’t just rich women, they were women in positions of authority.”
It was politically savvy princesses who wove the vast empire.
“While armies of Xiongnu warriors expanded the empire, elite women ruled the borders.”
That tradition of leaving the government in female hands lived on, Warinner said.
“Even 1,000 years after the fall of the Xiongnu, in the Mongol Empire, the largest that ever existed and which was also nomadic, queens were the best rulers.”
And it is that the Xiongnu did not leave a written history but they did leave a deep mark.
“They had a huge long-term impact.
“After his empire collapsed, the memory stayed strong.
“Centuries later, new groups arose again and again and again claiming to be the legitimate descendants of the glorious Xiongnu.
“And many of the ideas that originated with them continued in later empires.”
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cjj178q0x54o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-20 09:00:10
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