The past 18 meters deep

N. V. Polosmak

We — an expedition of the Novosibirsk Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences — have come to the Noin Ula mountains, a picturesque place in Northern Mongolia, to excavate a Khunnu burial mound. Khunnu is a people who created the world’s first nomadic empire. They were mentioned in the Chinese chronicles but the Khunnu archaeological artefacts were not many.

Ancient burial places in the north of Mongolia were accidentally discovered as early as in 1912 by A. Ya. Ballod, a technician of a gold-mining company. Making a prospecting dig in a large pit overgrown with shrubs and old pines, he discovered ancient tools, golden goods, vessels, remains of silk materials, and many other things. This was how the Noin Ula burial mounds, which later became world-famous, were discovered. The Russian revolution, however, delayed their investigation by several decades...

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