What do Kyrgyz burial sites tell us? At the turn of the early Middle Ages, the Kyrgyz found themselves in the Yenisei River valley in Southern Siberia. They migrated or were relocated to this area by the Juzhans during the Juzhan-Gaoguy wars in the mid-1st millennium AD for political reasons. The ancient Turks were moved by the Juzhans from Turfan "to the southern side of the Altai Mountains," and one of the representatives of the Turkic ruling clan, named Tsigu, i.e.,
Gyan-gun and Dinlins In the sources of the 1st-2nd centuries AD, the gyan-gun are not mentioned, but there is information about their northern neighbors, the dinlins, who were among the tribes that attacked the northern Huns at the end of the 1st century AD (Bichurin, 1998, p. 129). As a result, in 91 AD, the shanyu of the northern Hun horde "fled, unknown where," and the steppes of Central Asia were occupied by the Xianbei (Bichurin, 1998, pp. 131, 153, 154, 157). The ancient
Kyrgyz-Gyangu The earliest mention of the Kyrgyz under the Chinese name “gyan-gun”, “heguni”, or “jianggun”, dates back to 201 BC. The ancient tribes of heguni are listed among other nomads conquered in Central Asia by the Xiongnu chanyu Modu (Bichurin, 1998, p. 51). In other Chinese sources from the late 1st millennium BC to the first half of the 1st millennium AD, they were referred to by various names: “gegu”, “zegu”, “juyou”, and others (Kyuner, 1961, p. 55). The ancient Kyrgyz are
The word “Kyrgyz” is first mentioned alongside the name of the king of the Huns, Maodun-khan (Modé). According to a Chinese chronicle, in 201 BC, Maodun-khan sent a large army westward and captured the lands of the Gyanjun. Scholars have established that the Gyanjun were what the Chinese called the ancient Kyrgyz. The territory controlled by the Kyrgyz became known; it was located in the valley of the Manas River in Eastern Turkestan.
Davan. In the Fergana Valley, a powerful state emerged in the 1st millennium BC. In Chinese sources, it was called Davan. Here is how scholars of that time described Fergana:
In the 2nd century BC, the Tian Shan Sakas were defeated by another powerful nomadic alliance — the Yuezhi (Tocharian), who were driven out of Eastern Turkestan by the warlike Huns. Subsequently, the Yuezhi subjugated part of the Tian Shan Sakas. Initially, the Usuns roamed near the Huns and Yuezhi at the western part of the Great Wall of China. Around 160 BC, part of the Usuns, having defeated the Sakas and Yuezhi, settled in Tian Shan and Semirechye. Occupying Semirechye, Dzhungaria, and
Central Asia and Tian Shan in the 6th—5th centuries BC In the first millennium BC, a new ethnic community—the Saka—emerged from a conglomerate of Bronze Age tribes. The transition from primitive society to class society was accompanied here by the development of a new mode of economy—nomadic animal husbandry and the formation of large tribal unions. In the 8th—1st centuries BC, nomadic tribes inhabited the vast expanses of Eurasia from Tuva to Ukraine (including its territory), referred to in
The traces of primitive human activity in the territory of the Kyrgyz Republic date back to the Paleolithic era. There are not many monuments from this time. A stone tool was discovered by Oklandikov in 1953 in the Central Tien Shan, on the left bank of the On-Archa River. Its date of manufacture is approximately 300,000 years ago.
