As a topic that must not be avoided in the history of our country, the Xiongnu have always been the number one enemy of our Central Plains Dynasty, countless famous generals have established meritorious deeds by fighting against the Xiongnu, and hundreds of people have been displaced by the Xiongnu.
The famous Great Wall of the Qin, Han and Ming Dynasties was built to defend against the Xiongnu, a formidable enemy in the north.
In addition to the Xiongnu leaving a heavy stroke in the history books, the frequency of the literati ink writers' poems is also very high, General Yue Fei's "Zhuangzhi hunger for meat, laughing and thirsting for The blood of the Xiongnu", the poetry immortal Li Bai's "The Dog Is Still Barking, the Xiongnu Laughing for a Thousand Autumns", and the poem Buddha Wang Wei's "All The Protectors of the Army, the Xiongnu Surround the Jiuquan", these verses all represent the literati, in order to resist the arrogance and romantic thoughts of foreign enemies, but also tell the strong sense of existence of the Xiongnu in history. So which nation is this troublesome "Hun" today?
The origin of the Hun nation
According to the earliest historical book that records the Xiongnu as a nation, the "History of the Xiongnu", the origin of the Xiongnu nation is actually the earlier "Miao descendants of the Xianxia and Hou clans", that is, the remnants of the overthrown Xia Dynasty, who were driven to the cold and bitter land, and gradually transformed into nomadic people who rely on animal husbandry for survival.
And these people gradually grew in the subsequent time, in the process of migrating westward, successively discovered other nomadic peoples such as Yueshi and Loulan, and after several battles and mergers, gradually integrated into the earliest Xiongnu peoples.
In the 3rd century BC, the State of Zhao, which was revered as the "Seven Heroes of the Warring States" during this period, was often invaded and plundered by the Court of the Xiongnu King from the south, which also left them with no time to take care of the conquest of the Central Plains, and had to spend a large number of troops to fight against the Xiongnu on the border. It was not until after the unification of the Qin Dynasty that the Qin general Meng Tian sent an army to defeat the Xiongnu in 215 BC and occupy the Hetao area, so that the Xiongnu had to shrink up and wait for the opportunity to counterattack.
The transformation of the Huns
Later, with the collapse of the Qin Dynasty II, the Xiongnu had room to grow and develop, and in the continuous harassment and plunder of the south, they eventually became the behemoth of East Asia during the Western Han Dynasty: the Xiongnu Empire, even the reunified Han Dynasty, was difficult to resist.
However, this also laid the oath of blood for the Han Dynasty to go up to the emperor down to the people of Li, and then the bloodiness of the Xiongnu was sown, and later with the emergence of Huo's disease, the Han Dynasty devoted all its strength to achieving the great achievement of "sealing the wolf Juxu", and also completely disintegrated the national fortunes of the Xiongnu Empire.
In the face of the encirclement and suppression of the Han Dynasty, the Xiongnu had to choose to avoid its sharp edge, and the Southern Xiongnu in the south, which was close to the border area of the Han Dynasty, chose to be annexed, and later integrated into the great system of China's nationalities, and since then the Xiongnu who dominate Asia have fallen into a split.
After the Northern Xiongnu successively faced huo fuyi and Dou Xian, the Mongolian steppe north of the Hetao Plain had no place for them, so they once again began to move westward for three hundred years, and since then they have gone far away to become permanently active in Central Asia, and later generations have slowly transformed into nations and countries, and because of the collapse of the Xiongnu Empire, most ethnic groups have split from it, including but not limited to the Southern Xiongnu, who slowly degenerated into the Mongols, Turks, Khitans, and so on.
The Huns did not disappear
Therefore, after the end of the Han Dynasty, the Xiongnu faced by other Central Plains dynasties were more of the Southern Xiongnu and other ethnic minorities who had been naturalized by the Han Dynasty.
For example, the Southern Song Dynasty Yue Fei fought against the Jurchens of the Jin Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty against the Turks, etc., after most of the Xiongnu settled in the south, many Xiongnu royal families changed their surnames to Liu, so there are many Liu surnames in the north of China, perhaps among which there are once Xiongnu royal bloodlines. Of course, there are many Xiongnu who simply take the tribe as a surname, such as Huyan, Dugu and so on.
After these people were integrated into the Han cultural circle, they became the minority nationalities in everyone's mouth today, so the Xiongnu, who once ran amok in many dynasties, are now many ethnic minorities in our country, living with us, fighting foreign enemies together, building the motherland together, and becoming an inseparable part of the Chinese nation.
Archaeologists have found through DNA comparison that many compatriots in China's Inner Mongolia region have Xiongnu blood, and even many Han Chinese have Xiongnu blood, it can be said that the Xiongnu have disappeared from history, and their bloodline and existence have finally continued from another form to the present.
In general, after the defeat of the Han Dynasty, some of the Huns were likely to reach eastern Europe to the west and were finally defeated by the Avar tribe; the other part was conquered by the Xianbei and assimilated; and the other part of the ethnic group close to the Central Plains was defeated by the Hu and Han people during the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms period, and finally completely Sinicized together with the Hu people.
In other words, a considerable number of Huns identified with Han Chinese culture and eventually became Han Chinese. As for whether Hungary is a descendant of the Huns, it is difficult to say, but at least genetically, they are more close to the Indigenous australian race, which also proves from the side that it is unlikely that their ancestors were Huns.