China has a long history of multiculturalism, with a long history of Han Chinese and other ethnic minorities, with the northern nomads having a particularly deep roots. When we talk about nomads, we think of the Xiongnu, Khitan, Turkic, and Uighurs.
These ethnic groups had contacts with the Central Plains Dynasty at different times, alternating between war and peace, and even some nomadic people established their own dynasties in the Central Plains. As for the warlike impression of the northern peoples, after digging deeper, you will find that they actually have many unique folk customs.
The style of a people is shaped by a combination of reasons, just like the northern nomads, some of their folk characteristics may seem unacceptable to us, but they are admired locally, such as men who reach old age and are killed and eaten by relatives.
Historically, human societies have been divided into two main categories: nomadism and farming. Nomads, as we often call northern herders, live by herding; The farming peoples mainly exist in the Central Plains, and their way of life is mainly agriculture.
For a long time, the nomads were in a state of separation, and it was not until the Yuan Dynasty that Genghis Khan's unification war changed the situation. According to the Records of the Five Emperors, the Yellow Emperor originated in the northwest region, when they lived as nomads.
Tracing back to the source, the Xiongnu, Xianbei and other nomadic peoples are actually the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. They usually live as tribes, and there are often annexations, which lead to the formation of new peoples, which is why there are various names.
For thousands of years, they relied on life on horseback, starting from the Qin Dynasty, after the baptism of war in the Qing Dynasty, and the grievances between the Central Plains have never stopped.
The frequent wars of the nomads made the people of the Central Plains deeply feel that they were "warlike". However, the harsh environment in the north made their development lag behind that of the Central Plains, and in order to survive, they had to go south to plunder the food and property of the Central Plains people to meet their own living needs, so war became an inevitable reality.
Nomads rarely want to get rid of the lifestyle of robbery by developing themselves, mainly because the cost of robbery is too low. They come galloping on their horses, and when they grab something, they leave immediately, and you can't catch up at all.
Historically, many dynasties have established friendly relations with nomads, and it was agreed that the Central Plains Dynasty would send a large amount of food and money every year to prevent the nomads from coming to plunder.
For example, in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Bang adopted a friendly foreign policy for his own prosperity and development to avoid conflict with the Xiongnu; At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, in order to prevent the invasion of Dajin, they also sent them gold, silver, treasures and grain.
If they had met the equally powerful Central Plains Dynasty, then the result would have been different. For example, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty decided to exterminate the Xiongnu with all his might because his ancestors had been bullied at the hands of the Xiongnu.
In this case, war is unavoidable, and once it breaks out, the demographic problem becomes very serious. In this context, the nomads have formed a strange and fierce custom, that is, the tradition of "wife and stepmother, widow and sister-in-law".
That is, after the death of the husband, the wife must marry her own son; If the elder brother dies, the younger brother must marry the eldest sister-in-law. This custom is simply **! However, in order to increase the population, everything becomes unimportant.
This fierce custom has always been despised by the people of the Central Plains.
Although the marriage patterns of ancient Chinese nomads were often criticized, this is not unusual compared to the early folk customs. According to historical records, the earliest nomadic people were the Scythians, who lived mainly in the steppes of Central Asia and South Russia, and were the Scythians who were distributed west of the Altai Mountains.
In a narrow sense, they are Iranian-speaking nomads living on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Their way of life was constant migration, living in horse-drawn carriages all year round, and their footprints were all over Europe and Inner Mongolia.
Perhaps it is this nomadic life that has made them gradually form a fierce folk custom.
Herodotus was a historian of ancient Greece, and in his masterpiece Histories, he recorded many customs about the life of nomads. The Scythians are a people with a unique faith, and their beliefs can be broadly boiled down to soul doctrine, with certain similarities with Hinduism and Islam.
When the Scythian king died, they took a special approach to preserving the king's body, that is, applying wax to the body, then dissecting the belly, filling it with herbs, and finally stitching it up for burial.
This may be a unique way for them to preserve their bodies. The Scythians also had a tradition of burial of the living, and after the death of the king, a concubine had to be selected to accompany the burial, and at the same time, some envoys such as wine, food, and grooms were also selected to be buried in the tomb.
After the barbaric and cruel burial methods of the Scythians, their fellow Massachtates also showed astonishing cruelty. A year later, they would select fifty horses and fifty people close to the king to accompany them for burial.
They believed that the speed of a horse could lead the souls of the deceased into eternity quickly, which was part of their religious beliefs. However, this cruel method of burial is outrageous.
Both horses and people need to be disemboweled, entrails removed, filled with chaff, and then immobilized with iron rods pierced through the body. The brutality of the process is unimaginable.
According to the Historiography, the Massachothai tribe had a custom that when men had lived to a certain age, their relatives would kill them and chop up the meat and cook it with their livestock.
This custom is limited to the elderly who are in good health and free of disease, while the elderly who die of illness are buried. Although this custom is incompatible with our values, it is perfectly normal in the eyes of the Massachites.
Some elderly people are even proud of it, believing that it is a sin not to live healthily to the age of being eaten. Perhaps because of the nomadic nature, frequent migration has made the elderly a burden on the family.
However, due to material scarcity, people often do not have enough to eat, so they use this way to let the elderly "make the most of their resources".
The Icedonians, the Massachites, and the Scythians belong to the same nomadic people, and they have a unique funerary custom. When an elderly person dies, their children and grandchildren will chop up the old man's meat and cook it with chickens, ducks and poultry.
Usually they do not eat the heads, but shave the hair off their heads and then paste them with gold leaf as objects of worship for their descendants. This custom was considered extremely cruel at the time, but with the progress of society, this custom has been gradually phased out.
Despite this, among the ancient Turkic peoples, the custom of burial horses still existed, but now it has disappeared.