From around 400 B.C. on, Chinese states began to erect defensive walls along portions of their northern border, and in the third century B.C., the Qin dynasty contructed a Great Wall, in large part by joining the older walls. The purpose of all of these barriers was to repel the invasions of the diverse and often powerful groups of tribes of the north Asian steppe. But the Great Wall is perhaps best understood as a demarcation of the frontier between two very different ways of life - the agrarian existence of central China and the pastoral nomadism of the steppelands to the north.
Although we have learned much about the steppe empires from the accounts of the sedentary societies that struggled with them, our knowledge has been greatly supplemented in recent years by the fieldwork of Chinese archaeologists, in particular those from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The truly astounding finds of the last several decades, which are represented in this book, give insight into the critical role that the ancient peoples of the north played in Chinese dynastic history. These priceless and beautiful artifacts also assist us in tracing East/West cultural diffusion along the Silk Road in the era prior to the perfecting of maritime travel.
As a result of collaboration between the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Inner Mongolia Museum of China, relics from the collections of ten Chinese museums are touring North America in 1994 and 1995. Through examination of the gold, bronze, ceramic, wood, and textile objects from cultures that flourished from 2000 B.C. through the fourteenth century A.D., Dr. Adam T. Kessler, curator of the exhibition and author of this book, reveals the complicated and often ferocious interactions of the steppe peoples with their sedentary neighbors to the south and west. The narrative gives perspective to the legends of the great Mongol leaders Genghis Khan and Kubilai Khan. But it also shows that the Mongols were but the last in a long series of empires to emerge from beyond the Great Wall and were truly inheritors of a rich past.