From the project team of "Comprehensive Research on the Origin of Mongols and the Imperial Tombs of the Yuan Dynasty", it was learned that the relevant records of many ancient documents such as the Book of Wei and the Book of Sui have provided new clues and evidence for exploring the origin of the Mongols, so that researchers have come closer to the truth. The issue of "Mongolian origin" is a hot issue in the international academic community, and has long held its own opinions, there are controversies such as "Xiongnu theory", "Ding Zero Theory", "Turkic Theory" and "Xianbei Theory", as the longest supported topic in the major entrusted projects of the National Social Science Fund, "Comprehensive Research on Mongolian Humanities and the Imperial Tombs of the Yuan Dynasty" Since its official implementation in September 2012, it has brought together outstanding Experts and scholars from China and abroad to build a long-term cooperation mechanism through multidisciplinary comprehensive research such as archaeology, history, ethnology, anthropology and new scientific and technological means. At the same time, it has continuously carried out fruitful field archaeology, laboratory archaeology, organized dozens of special seminars and forums, and successively published a series of monographs, and its academic influence has been closely watched by academic circles at home and abroad.
In 2014, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Hulunbuir joint archaeological team conducted systematic drilling and formal archaeological excavations on the Gangga Cemetery of Chenbal Huqi in Inner Mongolia, and achieved fruitful results, and the Gangga Cemetery has now discovered 86 ancient tombs, which is the largest ancient tomb group known in the Hulunbuir Grassland so far. Through archaeological excavations, the tombs have typical nomadic cultural characteristics. The Ganga Cemetery dates from the 8th to the 10th century AD, with a single wooden coffin as the main burial tool. According to the experts of the project team, the single wooden coffin is based on the size of the human form, more than a piece of pine wood, the middle of the hollow made, the two ends of the retained trunk become a solid coffin, the deceased and the burial goods are placed in it, wrapped in bark or animal skins. Excavated coffins vary in size and thickness. The largest one is 223 cm long and 45 to 56 cm wide. According to historical records such as the History of the Yuan, the Mongol royalty used a single wooden coffin as a burial tool. Wang Wei, chief expert of the project, chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society, member of the Faculty of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of the Institute of Archaeology, said that the single wooden coffin system found in the Gangga cemetery has found an important source for this custom.
In addition, in the tombs of the three women of Ganga, red agate beads and other ornaments have been found on the neck of the tomb owners. Liu Guoxiang, an expert in the project team and deputy director of the Frontier Archaeology Research Center of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that this is in line with the fact that the Wei people in the literature record room "love red beads, decorate women, wear them around their necks, take more expensive, women are not allowed to do this, and even do not marry" and "rich people hang their necks with five-colored beads". At the same time, the discovery of groups of bows, arrows, quivers, harnesses and other riding and shooting tools is consistent with the literature records that the Murong Wei people "use horn bows, and their arrows are particularly long" and "weapons have horned bows and arrows, especially good at shooting". From this project team, it was determined that the Ganga cemetery was a cemetery of the Murong Wei people.
What is the relationship between the Murwei and the Mongols? The sub-project "Research on the Historical Documents of Mongolian Origins" of "Comprehensive Research on Mongolian Sources and Imperial Tombs of the Yuan Dynasty" gives the answer. Zhang Jiuhe, the person in charge of the project and dean of the School of History and Tourism Culture of Inner Mongolia University, introduced that the Mongols are a national community formed by absorbing other tribes such as the Turkic language tribe with the Murwei-Daqi tribe as the core. Regarding the historical documents of mongolian origin, the Murwei historical materials are the most important component, and the research group compared, proofread and annotated the 23 kinds of Murwei monographs recorded in 12 documents and 389 scattered historical materials recorded in 48 documents, forming a compilation of Murwei historical materials.
It is understood that Murong Wei's "Book of Wei and Lost Wei Biography" from the Northern Dynasty has been recorded in the annals of history, and almost all subsequent documents have recorded it. Among them, the relevant records of the Book of Wei, the Book of Sui, the General Classic, and the Old Book of Tang are the most important, and the historical value is the highest. For example, the "WeiShu Lost Wei Biography" outlines the geographical orientation, natural environment, economic life, social conditions, language, customs and habits of The Lost Wei and its relationship with the Eastern Wei regime, etc. Lost Wei, that is, "Room Wei", for the "Old Book of Tang · Murong Wei Biography" appears in the "Meng wu Room Wei", which is the earliest form of Chinese character translation of "Mongolia" in Chinese literature, marking the "Mongolia" appeared in the annals of history.
The project team conducted morphological identification and anthropological observations on 18 human bone specimens in the Ganga cemetery. After a comprehensive analysis of the information from the bones, it was learned that the age of death of the ancient residents of the cemetery was distributed in three stages: youth (15-23 years old), prime age (24-35 years old), and middle age (36-55 years old), especially in prime, and experts also observed relatively complete skull samples. They found that these specimens are quite similar to the craniofacial features of nomadic peoples such as khitan and Xianbei, which originated in the northeast of the mainland in history, and have a certain inheritance relationship with the inhabitants of the Central Asia minor type of the modern Mongol race North Asian race. It is understood that the Central Asia Minor type is mainly distributed in the present-day Mongolia and the Inner Mongolia region of the mainland, which belongs to the Mongolian plateau region in a broad sense and is the main ethnic type of the Mongolian ethnic group today.
According to the preliminary research of the excavators, referring to the archaeological and cultural characteristics of pottery, iron, bronze, agate ornaments, silver buckles, birch bark quivers and other relics excavated with the characteristics of the ancient northern nomads, and then synthesizing the burial tools of the single wooden coffin and the burial style of the curved limbs, it can be preliminarily determined that the ancient residents of the Gangga cemetery should have a relatively close relationship with the nomadic peoples living in the northeast region of the mainland during the Tang-Five Dynasties period; and the research of historical materials supplements the archaeological research results. The search for Mongolian origins has taken another step forward.