Originally a powerful nation, it was wiped out because of its disagreement with the Han Chinese, and now their appearance is still a mystery
Many scholars or ordinary people interested in history will ask the question: What were the physical characteristics of the Huns? Is it a little more asian, or is it more of a mixed race?
In fact, this problem seems simple, but in fact, it is difficult to determine or accurately describe it, the Huns are a group of people with a long life history and common cultural and economic life active in the north, whose ancestors lived in the junction of the cold temperate forests and grasslands of Siberia in Eurasia, and became a national group of its own.
According to the "Chronicle of the Xiongnu", the Xiongnu, whose ancestor Xia Hou's Miao descendants were also known as Chunwei. Above Tang Yu, there were mountain rong, foxes, and meat porridge, which lived in the northern barbarians and moved with animal husbandry. The Xiongnu in ancient Chinese texts were powerful nomadic peoples who dominated the north of the Central Plains in the late Qin and early Han dynasties. In terms of appearance and clothing, they are standard foreign dress, and the Chinese custom is to wear a hair crown to the right, while the Xiongnu are accustomed to wearing a shawl and spreading the left placket upwards on the right placket.
The attire of the Huns is recorded in many history books, but the appearance of the Huns is ambiguous. In the mid-twentieth century, Mongolian archaeologists found a Tomb of the Huns at a mountain pass in the north of the desert, and under their careful excavations, they found many tombs with great Hun national customs, including the skull of a Hun.
At that time, it was speculated that the skull should be the owner of the tomb, but the technology at that time could not greatly restore the appearance of the Huns, so Mongolian scholars placed the skull in the Central Museum of Mongolia. However, in an accident, the skull was broken, even if science and technology are now developed, according to the bone image can simulate the appearance of people, but it is difficult for a woman to cook without rice, and the broken skull cannot be closed, let alone use an electronic computer to restore the appearance of people hundreds of years ago or even thousands of years ago.
Most of the Huns we see today in TV dramas and film and television dramas are rugged and short, with large and broad faces, and have a thick upper lip beard, and the jaws are trimmed into a handful of small hard whiskers. The earlobe is long, and the ear piercing on it will wear a ring on the ear hole, and the eyes are small round apricot eyes, which are bright and energetic when concentrating on people, and the face is fierce.
He wore a robe made of loose animal fur, split on both sides, and the sleeves were not like the elegant and flowing wide sleeves preferred by the Chinese, but were tied tightly at the wrists, which was probably related to the Xiongnu living in the cold northern region.
For example, Weigel once said that they were generally short in stature, wore fur hats on their heads, wore fur robes up to their calves, were tied tightly with belts around their waists, belts tied tightly around their ankles, and carried quivers all year round, and quivers were generally hung on the belt above their left legs. They also wear a fur cape on their shoulders, wide pants, tight cuffs, and walk in a sloppy manner.
Of course, there are also great generals whose statues have been preserved to this day after the pacification of the Xiongnu, for example, after the death of the general Huo Quai of the Great Sima Hun, Emperor Wu of Han built a statue carved with a stone horse in front of his tombstone in order to commemorate his merits in pacifying the Xiongnu. Under the belly of the stone horse is carved a Hun soldier who has been trampled to the ground by the horse's hoof, only to see the Hun soldiers looking desperate to die. His head leaning back was larger and more square than that of the Central Plains, his hair was exuberant, he had thick hair and a hard and dense beard, his face was hideous, his eyes were small, but his gaze was not scattered, and his lips were thicker, his nose wings were wide, and his nosebone was flattened.
Of course, the appearance of the Huns depicted in this statue is inevitably of a bit discriminatory and insulting, it will be deliberately ugly, and it cannot be fully used to examine the true appearance of the Huns.
The bravery and good warriors of the Huns were mainly described as Hun men, but there is not much literature on Hun women.
There are clear records of the Xiongnu wearing left hair, pointing out that the Huns dressed differently from the Han Chinese. The image of the Xiongnu woman is a shawl with loose hair and the placket is the opposite of the Han Chinese. Han women's hair is usually combed into various buns, beautiful and dignified, and xiongnu women are relatively backward, which also reflects that Xiongnu women have a bold side.
Many people know that Zhang Qian's Xiongnu wife fell in love with Zhang Qian, and seeing that because of her husband's homesickness, she was worried all the time, and she could not bear it, and gave up her life to help Zhang Qian escape. Zhang Qian finally succeeded in returning to the Han Dynasty, but his good Xiongnu wife was brutally flogged and had her arms cut off. This Xiongnu woman saved her husband with her kindness and amorousness, but she paid a terrible price herself, daring to love and dare to hate, which is also the personality characteristic of the Xiongnu woman's bones.
Later, experts stumbled upon a portrait of a Hun in another large tomb, showing the protagonist with large alien eyes, a wide forehead, and a thick beard. However, the pupils of the people in the painting are blue, which makes the researchers begin to dispute the color of the eyes of the Huns again, and the two sides have their own opinions, and no one can convince the other.
From China's history books, such as the famous "Warring States Policy" and "Book of the Later Han Dynasty", they have only mentioned the habits and living habits of the Xiongnu, and there is no clear description of the appearance of the Xiongnu. In the Tang Dynasty, the chancellor Fang Xuanling wrote about the appearance of the Xiongnu in his writings, according to what he wrote, the Xiongnu were very strong, nearly nine feet long, and beautiful.
Priscus, on a mission to the Huns with eastern Roman envoys, met attila, the famous hun god of war, and after his return, he wrote a book in which he described the Huns as typical asians: not very tall, with a wide chest, a large head and small eyes, and a grayish-black complexion. Amianas described the Huns as ugly and strange from birth, impressed by their short arms and torso, as well as their peculiar diets and unique methods of warfare.
The French scholar Dai Suiliang is similar to what many scholars have described above: the Huns had only a handful of long hair tied into braids on the top of their heads, and the rest of the top of their heads were shaved into polished bald heads.
Ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, the appearance characteristics of the Huns have been studied by various scholars, but unfortunately, the evidence used to support it is too little to unify the caliber, and the elders can only continue to explore in order to restore the appearance of the Huns. Through the literary records and oral statements of the above foreign scholars and Chinese local historical archaeologists, we can roughly get a lot of characteristics about the appearance of the Huns:
The hair is exuberant, the figure is strong, the face is large and square, and the dress style is significantly unique.
Today's molecular anthropological analysis of Hun tombs shows that the Southern Huns were largely within the transition zone between the Paleo-North China and Paleo-North Asian races, while the Northern Huns included the Eurasian mestizo South Siberian type and a small number of Caucasian Cypriot remnants. However, because of the broken Hun skull, many differences about the appearance of the Huns, such as how tall the Huns are, whether the pupil color is blue or black, etc., it is impossible to know, this broken skull has left many mysteries, which is really a regrettable regret.