MONGOLIA, FLAG OF

vertically striped red-blue-red national flag with a group of yellow symbols on its hoist stripe. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 1 to 2. Historically, blue has been associated with the Mongolian people as a symbol of the open skies under which they traveled throughout Central Asia. Mongolia also has frequently utilized yellow in its flags, as a symbol of the Dge-lugs-pa (Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism), which was popularized there in the 16th century. In 1911, when the modern Mongolian state was first established, its yellow flag bore in the centre in blue a traditional emblem known as the soyonbo. This consists of figures (flame, sun, moon, yin-yang, triangles, and bars) representing philosophical principles inherent in Mongolian culture and religion. Below the soyonbo was a lotus blossom, symbol of purity. In 1921 a communist government came to power and introduced the Red Banner, but the 1911 flag was restored in 1924. During World War II, Mongolia adopted a flag (194045) resembling those of member states in the Soviet Union, which it seemed Mongolia was likely to join. In 1945, however, the soyonbo of the 192440 flag was shifted toward the hoist and represented in yellow for greater visibility; the lotus was removed and, above the soyonbo, the usual communist star was added. The red background was replaced by equal bars of red-blue-red, symbolizing communism and Mongol nationalism. This flag continued in use after the overthrow of the communist regime until February 12, 1992. The only change made in the flag at that time was the removal of the yellow five-pointed star, which no longer reflected political realities. Whitney Smith History The Mongols constitute one of the principal ethnographic divisions of Asian, or Oriental, peoples. Their traditional homeland is centred in Mongolia, a vast plateau in Central Asia now divided politically into an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (Inner Mongolia) and Mongolia (Outer Mongolia), which lies at the eastern end of what was a great corridor of migration between Northeast China (Manchuria) and Hungary throughout history. It is unfortunate, because confusing, that 19th-century physical anthropologists introduced the terms Mongol and Mongolian as descriptive of racial type. The Mongols exhibit a wide range of physical characteristics and should be considered not as a race but as a group of peoples bound together by a common language and a common nomadic tradition. The geographic origin of the Mongols themselves is the northeast corner of present-day Mongolia. To the east, the ancient tribal history is mostly that of the Tungus peoples (including the ancestors of the Manchu) and to the west, that of the Hsiung-nu, or eastern Huns, and their Turkic-speaking successors, whom the Mongols eventually displaced and in part absorbed. As a result of later wars and migrations Mongols are now found in Mongolia; southern Russia; in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (which includes a large portion of Northeast China), the Hui Autonomous Region of Ningsia, the Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang (Chinese Turkistan), and the northern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China; and in Afghanistan. Ethnography and early tribal history All Mongols recognize their kinship to each other in varying degrees through legend, written history, and especially language. Dialects vary from east to west more than from north to south, but few are unintelligible to other Mongols. Historical change in the language is indicated by the fact that reading The Secret History of the Mongols (mid-13th century), the oldest major document written in Mongol, is for the Mongols of today like reading the work of Chaucer for the modern English. Pan-Mongolism, the desire to reunite politically all the Mongols, was always more a romantic than a practical idea, and is now a dead issue. The Mongols have always been nomads, though there has also always been some cultivation. However, nomadism is the seasonal movement of livestock and camps from one pasture to another, not unfettered wandering. Nomads have a clear concept of the possession of territory, though they sometimes interpret this in socially conflicting ways. Legend and folklore show that among the premodern Mongols the common people considered livestock to be private property and land to be the collective property of the tribe, while the families of ruling chiefs tried to claim the land as well as individual subjects as their property. Traditional society was based on blood relationship traced through the common male ancestor who gave his name to the clan, though evidence exists of a more ancient system of matrilineal descent. Marriage was forbidden between members of the same clan, giving rise to complicated marriage alliances (and also feuds) among the clans. As clans grew and merged into tribes (often inventing a fictitious common ancestor), the most successful families tended to arrogate to themselves claims to real ancestry and, at the same time, to control of the tribal territory, while lesser families could claim ancestry only in a vaguer, tribal sense. In this process weak clans fell to a subordinate but not servile status: they owned their own cattle and had their own headmen but paid tribute to the ruling clan and moved, camped, pastured, and fought under its orders. Political and military organization was matched to the family-clan-tribe pattern. Every man who could ride and bear arms was both a herdsman and a soldier according to the need of the moment. Raiding other tribes to capture cattle, women, and prisoners was a recognized method of property accumulation. When, however, a tribe rose to notable power, as in the time of Genghis (Chinggis) Khan in the 13th century, a decimal form of military organization was adopted, with units of 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000. Commanders of large units were assigned territories from which they drew the tribute to the supreme khan and mustered their quotas of troops. Mongol history fluctuates between such periods of feudal concentration and those of tribal dispersion. The first mention in the Chinese chronicles of tribes that can be identified with Mongolia goes back in a shadowy way to the 2nd millennium BC. The first inhabitants of whom there is certainty, however, are the Hsiung-nu, in about the 5th or 4th century BC. It was once thought that they were Turks, or at least Turkic speaking, but the opinion has grown that they spoke a paleo-Asiatic language, represented today by the Ket dialects of the Yenisey River valley in Siberia. The Hsiung-nu created a great tribal empire in Mongolia while China was being unified as an imperial state under the Ch'in (221206 BC) and Han (206 BCAD 220) dynasties. After several centuries of war with the Chinese, complicated by civil wars among themselves, the Hsiung-nu confederation broke up. Some of the southern tribes surrendered to the Chinese and were settled within China, where they were eventually absorbed. Some of the northern tribes migrated westward, where descendantstogether with the members of other tribesappeared in Europe in the 5th century AD as the Huns of Attila. By then, of course, these people were considerably more mixed ethnically. In Mongolia the Hsiung-nu were succeeded both by Turkic-speaking peoples and by others identified by some scholars as Mongols, or Mongol speakers. There is a lack of convincing archaeological or historical evidence that these groups came to Mongolia from some distant region to fill a void left by the Hsiung-nu departure. Probably they were there all the time as the subjects of the Hsiung-nu, until the breakup of that confederation gave them the opportunity to assert themselves. Among the peoples who have been considered possibly Mongol, the most important tribal names are Sienpi (Hsien-pi), who may however have been Tungus (modern Evenk) rather than Mongol, recorded in Han dynasty annals, and the Juan-juan (Jou-jan, or Geougen) of the 4th to 6th centuries. The latter have been identified by some scholars with the Avars, who migrated into Europe along the plains of the Danube and were nearly annihilated in Hungary by Charlemagne in the late 8th century. According to a legend recorded by the Chinese, the Turks of Mongolia, whose name is recognizable under its Chinese transcription T'u-cheh, were a subject tribe ruled by the Juan-juan. The Turks overthrew their masters and soon were in control of all Mongolia, centring their power in the Orhon valley in the northern part of the country. The Orhon (Orkhon) Turks were contemporaries of the T'ang dynasty (618907) in China, and their fortunes rose and fell in counterpoint to periods of T'ang strength and weakness. Comparison of archaeological and historical data, moreover, shows that power in Mongolia was at this time not based simply on levies of nomad horsemen. The khans and great men had fixed headquarters, surrounded by cultivated land that enabled them to breed large, stable-fed horses capable of carrying a man in armour. This situation emphasized a class distinction between the aristocrat on his charger and the herdsman-warrior-archer on his smaller horse. Agriculture also became an element in the economy, and the Uighurs, who came to power after the fall of the Orhon Turks, enter history as an oasis-centred people. In the welter of tribes the name Mongol first appears in a tribal list recorded under the T'ang dynasty. It then vanishes, to reappear only in the 11th century, when the Khitan (Khitai, from which comes the word Cathay) ruled in Northeast and North China and controlled most of Mongolia. The Khitan, who established the Chinese dynasty of Liao (9071125), were themselves a Mongol people, but their homeland was in Northeast China rather than in what is now Mongolia. Like other Chinese dynasties, the Liao exercised its power in Mongolia by playing off the tribes against one another. Liao sources record the existence of a rather shadowy tribal power known in Mongol tradition as Khamag Mongol Uls (Nation of all the Mongols), which did not, however, include all of the population who spoke the Mongol language. When the Khitan fell, their power in China was taken over and extended by the Juchen (Jrched), a Tungus people based farther north in northeastern China. They took the Chinese name of Chin (Golden). In their tribal policy they switched their favour from All the Mongols to the Tatars (known in the West as Tartars, from a medieval pun on tartarus, Latin for hell). Although Mongols, the Tatars were not part of the tribal league of All the Mongols, centred in the Onon and Kerulen valleys in the eastern half of North Mongolia; the Tatars lived to the east and south of them. On the whole, though chastened occasionally by punitive expeditions, All the Mongols had been transfrontier allies or auxiliaries of the Khitan-Liao. A contingent of 50,000 Mongols (large for that time) fought on the Khitan side in the last battles of the Khitan empire. Presumably, this was one reason why the Juchen-Chin transferred their favour to the Tatars, nearer to their frontier. Such alternations, between using the more distant and using the nearer transfrontier and frontier tribes, were frequent in the policies of dynasties in China, and this one had the desired effect of creating a feud between Mongols and Tatars. Before the era of Genghis Khan, a defeated Khitan army had migrated westward at the fall of their Liao dynasty. It was led by a prince of the Khitan imperial line but must have included heterogeneous tribal elements. Moving westward through Mongolia, it reached what is now Kazakstan and created a new and briefly powerful empire, the Karakitai. It ruled primarily over Turkic-speaking peoples, made up of nomads and city dwellers in the oases, and the Khitan nucleus had the opportunity to apply its knowledge of how to deal with nomads and its ability in the administration of a bureaucracy. The economy Resources In the early 1990s Mongolia experienced great economic difficulties as it moved from a command economy to a system with elements of a market economy. About one-third to one-half of the budget had previously come from the now-defunct Soviet Union. Mongolia's international debt was extremely high. The low national income per capita sank even lower as the population grew rapidly. Mongolia possesses mineral resources. Geologic surveys have confirmed the existence of large deposits of coal and iron, tin, copper, gold, and silver ore and a number of lesser known minerals. Mongolia's biological resources consist largely of the great herds of livestock in the country. Overall livestock figures rose throughout most of the 20th century, providing a rich agricultural resource base that even enabled some exports of meat to be made. In addition, the northern rivers of Mongolia offer great potential for hydroelectric development, whereas the wildlife of the country offers potential for commercial exploitation. Agriculture Livestock raisingbased on millions of head of sheep, goats, cattle, and horses and including a large number of camelsaccounts for about 70 percent of the value of agricultural production. Livestock are widely distributed throughout the entire country. The number of horses and cattle reach their greatest concentrations in the wetter north-central regions, whereas goats and camels are proportionately more numerous in the drier west and south. Most of the livestock belong to agricultural cooperatives. Although the earliest cooperatives were formed in the 1930s, the main government campaign to organize the livestock herders (arats) into giant cooperatives took place in the years 195559. Pastoral Mongols traditionally have shunned crop tillage. Furthermore, most of the country has a semiarid climate more suited to livestock production by grazing on the extensive natural grasslands than to cultivation. Less than 1 percent of the area of the country is used to grow crops. Crop production is largely limited to the moister northern parts of the country, particularly in the broad lower valleys of the Orhon and Selenge rivers but also along the Onon, Uldz, and Kerulen rivers in the northeast. Part of the cropland receives supplemental irrigation. Because of the long, cold winters only a single annual crop is possible. About four-fifths of the cropland is in grainsprimarily in spring wheat but with some in barley or oatsand nearly all the rest is in fodder crops (hay). Yields are relatively low and vary greatly from year to year. Potatoes and other vegetables occupy only a tiny fraction of the crop area. About four-fifths of the cropland is in state farms, with the rest in cooperatives. The large state farms each average about 700 square miles in size and typically include some livestock production as well as crops. The land Relief Mongolia can be divided into three major topographic zones: the fingerlike mountain ridges that thrust into the northern and western areas, the basin areas that lie between and around them, and the enormous upland plateau belt that sweeps across the southern and eastern sectors. The entire country is prone to seismic movements, with some earthquakes reaching extreme limits of severity; their effects, however, are diminished by the low population density. The people Ethnic and religious background Anthropologically, the Mongols are quite homogeneous, belonging to the classic physical type to which they lent their name. Within Mongolia, Khalkha-speaking Mongols constitute almost four-fifths of the population. Other Mongolian groupsincluding Drbed, Buryat, Bayad, and Darigangaaccount for about one-eighth of the population. By tradition the Mongols have been Buddhists. Much of the rest of the population consists of Turkic-speaking peoples, mainly Kazaks, who traditionally have been Muslims; located mainly in the western part of the country, they have been granted an autonomous area. A small but significant number of Russians live mainly in the cities. The Chinese, who were formerly important in cities, trade, and finance, have largely left the country. At the time of the founding of the modern state, the social composition was strongly influenced by the then-prevailing religious traditions of the lamas (monks), who followed tenets derived from Tibetan Buddhism, with a strong admixture of more primitive elements. Control lay in the hands of the head of the Mongolian Tibetan Buddhist Church (who was proclaimed the khan of all Mongolia) together with various local khans, hundreds of princes and noblemen, and the higher clergy. The new regime sought to replace feudal and religious structures with socialist and secular forms. During the 1930s the government closed monasteries, confiscated their livestock and landholdings, induced large numbers of monks to renounce religious life, and eliminated others. The number of Buddhist monks dropped from 100,000 in 1924 to 110 in 1990. Many aspects of the national cultural traditions are preserved in museums. Demography After a period of stagnation, the population of Mongolia increased rapidly in the second half of the 20th century, as birth rates climbed and death rates dropped. Improved health, sanitation, and medical facilities played a major role in reducing mortality, especially infant mortality. Also important was the government policy of encouraging families to have more children. Mongolia's rate of natural increase reached a peak in 1960 and declined slowly thereafter. Thus, by the late 20th century Mongolia's main demographic trend was toward a youthful, fast-growing population. B. Gungaadash Chauncy D. Harris