Ordos

The desert region in the northward loop of the Yellow River (Huang Ho) in northern China, the location of the Palaeolithic Ordos culture. From 8th century BC, the region was inhabited by seminomadic tribes, among them the Hsiung-Nu, threatening the Chou Dynasty and the Han Dynasty. Broad bronze daggers, curved knives, pole finials, harness ornaments, and animal-style bronze belt plaques are characteristic of the 1st millennium BC ('the Ordos bronzes'). The pictorial or narrative compositions common among these plaques, many including human figures, are typical also of Sarmatian metalwork. The distinctive metal culture of the Ordos reaches back as far as the latter part of the 2nd millennium BC, a date fixed by the discovery at Anyang of knives with animal-head pommels closely related to Ordos types. Owing to its position on the northern frontier of China, the Ordos was probably the main channel by which Chinese influences were transmitted to the steppes; it was also the route by which foreign elements reached China, especially during Eastern Chou and Han dynasties. An Upper Palaeolithic site (Sjara Osso Gol) yielded a microlithic industry. In the 1970s and '80s, Chinese scientists unearthed more than 20 human fossils from 30,000-60,000 years old at Hsiao-ch'iao-pan in the Sjara-Osso River valley. The terms Ordos man and Ordosian culture are applied to their findings. The area is now referred to as the Northern Zone.

A steppe region of western Inner Mongolia bounded on the south by the Great Wall and on the north by the northern bend of the Yellow River. The name is commonly applied to bronze daggers, plaques, and other Animal Style metalwork thought to come from the Sino-Mongolian border region: these so-called Ordos bronzes, mostly unproven-anced, are well represented in Western collections. The distinctive metal culture of the Ordos reaches back as far as the latter part of the 2nd millennium bc, a date fixed by the discovery at Anyang of knives with animalhead pommels closely related to Ordos types. From that time until the Han dynasty the Ordos steppe was the home of semi-nomadic Indo-European peoples whose culture can be regarded as an eastern province of a vast Eurasian continuum of Scytho-Siberian cultures. Owing to its position on the northern frontier of China the Ordos was probably the main channel by which Chinese influences were transmitted to the steppes; it was also the route by which foreign elements reached China, especially during Eastern Zhou and Han (see Dian). The metal plaques that account for a large proportion of unproven-anced Ordos bronzes have parallels excavated from sites in Mongolia dated to the last three centuries bc and tentatively associated with the Xiongnu. The pictorial or narrative compositions common among these plaques, many including human figures, are typical also of Sarmatian metalwork.