Map of the Ordos Plateau
"The Ordos Plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin or simply the Ordos, is a highland sedimentary basin in northwest China with an elevation of 1,000–1,600 m (3,300–5,200 ft), and consisting mostly of land enclosed by the Ordos Loop, a large northerly rectangular bend of the Yellow River. It is China's second largest sedimentary basin (after the Tarim Basin) with a total area of 370,000 km2 (140,000 sq mi), and includes territories from five provinces, namely Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and a thin fringe of Shanxi (western border counties of Xinzhou, Lüliang and Linfen), but is demographically dominated by the former three, hence is also called the Shaan-Gan-Ning Basin. The basin is bounded in the east by the Lüliang Mountains, north by the Yin Mountains, west by the Helan Mountains, and south by the Huanglong Mountains, Meridian Ridge and Liupan Mountains.
The south and east of the plateau belong historically and culturally to China. The north and west, the grassland and desert, belongs historically and culturally to nomads. The Ordos Plateau contained the best pasture lands on the Asian steppe.
The Ordos are mainly known from their skeletal remains and artifacts. The Ordos culture of about 500 BC to AD 100 is known for its "Ordos bronzes", blade weapons, finials for tent-poles, horse gear, and small plaques and fittings for clothes and horse harness, using animal style decoration with relationships both with the Scythian art of regions much further west, and also Chinese art. Its relationship with the Xiongnu is controversial; for some scholars they are the same, and for others different. Many buried metal artefacts have emerged on the surface of the land as a result of the progressive desertification of the region. According to Iaroslav Lebedynsky, they are thought to be the easternmost people of Scythian affinity to have settled here, just to the east of the better-known Yuezhi. Because the people represented in archaeological finds tend to display Europoid features, also earlier noted by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, Lededynsky suggests the Ordos to be of Scythian affinity. The weapons, found in tombs throughout the steppes of the Ordos, are very close to those of the Scythians, known on the Asian Steppe as Sakas.
The Han Dynasty started to fight the Xiongnu in the 2nd century BC under emperor Han Wudi, and colonized the area of the Ordos under Shuofang commandery in 127 BC. Prior to the campaign, there were already commanderies established earlier by Qin and Zhao until they were overrun by the Xiongnu in 209 BC."
-taken from wikipedia
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| Map of the Ordos Plateau. |
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