Following the Great Mongolian Road: Biocultural Diversity and Intangible Heritage in the Mongolian Gobi Desert
Simon Phillips is an ethnobotanist with the Centre for Biocultural Diversity, University of Kent and Chris McCarthy is a Silk Road Scholar and Conservationist
At a dry river bed in the Mongolian Gobi desert near the Chinese border, camels slowly drink water from holes dug by nomadic herders to the water table a little below the surface. They move in the way they have done for centuries – slow, steady and dependable. Just above the river bank in the sandstone cliffs there is a cave where 18th century inscriptions made by camel caravaneers in Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian characters adorn the walls with observations, poems and geographical references such as:
“All the lords of the past are heroes”
“At the arrival to the north of Bayan bulag came”
“The profit margin was triple”
“Mind travels through the farther away mountains”
Near to the cave, where camels carrying goods and ideas along the silk roads once passed, a newer form of caravan is now starkly visible – the non-stop processional juggernaut of cargo trucks from mega coal mine Tavan Tolgoi and the largest copper and gold mine in Mongolia, Oyu Tolgoi. The trucks run around the clock to the border depot – a chaotic place which darkens the horizon. A vast percentage of the Mongolian Gobi has been licensed for mining and the growth of mines is set to continue with a steady revenue for the state.
The Gobi is a uniquely diverse landscape with varied ecosystems, harboring a wealth of rare and endangered endemic medicinal plants and umbrella species such as the snow leopard, Gobi bear and wild camel which covers a vast range uninhabited by humans. While it is one of the least populated places on Earth, the inextricably linked biocultural relationships between the nomadic people and diversity of plant and animal species are fragile and ancient. It is these relationships which are under threat due to the expansion of mining infrastructure, socio-economic change and climatic changes. Fragile inter-species relationships that have evolved through natural selection over many years are being compromised as mines drive the construction of roads, the depletion and contamination of ground water and generate airborne dust harming delicate plant foliage.
This summer we traced the understudied ‘Great Mongolian Road’, mentioned in Owen Lattimore’s Caravan Routes of Inner Asia. Our purpose is to highlight the Mongolian cultural and natural heritage, which is lacking in the silk roads narrative. The historic route crossed from China to the Dorno Gobi, South East Mongolia. It once served as an important artery between Peking and Kashgar. These place names are detailed in Japanese Gaihozu (外邦図) spy maps from 1903, which have recently been made available to scholars by the Japanese government. By following the Gaihozu, and upon meeting nomads, we triangulated anecdotal knowledge with map data to validate locations of wells, monastic sites, settlements and geographical terrain delineating the way. We then used drone imagery to capture the trail, offering a fresh perspective to the historical geography of this land.
We dovetailed our study with ethnobotanical surveys among nomadic families as we passed along the road. We are interested to know the extent of ethnobotanical knowledge across generations, whether this kind of traditional ecological knowledge is being preserved or lost and to better understand the pressures facing nomadic people. We hope our research will contribute toward the protection of the often over-looked rich biocultural diversity of the Mongolian Gobi, elevating its value beyond commodity.
Local knowledge of a well-trodden road
The road is defined by essential wells and springs, a dot-to-dot across extreme dry and unique desert habitats. Knowledge of these was vital for caravaneers, just as it is to herders today. During our study we travelled over 2000 miles from Dorno Gobi to Gobi Altai. We utilized a criss-crossing weave of barely visible tracks which our nomadic companion Khasaa was able to navigate through his intimate knowledge of the desert. With this ability to identify features in the landscape, he would see markers which were indistinguishable to us. For example, one typical exploratory day, we stopped high on a hillside at an Ovoo (stone cairn) that is marked on the Gaihozu maps as a significant waypoint where the road forks. Casting his eyes downslope he was able to see the ancient trail where hard rock shone, worn down by camel hooves.
Khasaa lost his herd to a dzud (harsh winter) following a gan (summer drought). When Khasaa’s herd died in the dzud, his parents migrated north to more forgiving terrain and he became a monk at Amarbuyant monastery, a bastion of Tibetan buddhist tradition on the edge of the Black Gobi. The land under this ancient monastery has been licensed for mining, it is so rich in coal that you can see the blackness in the ground. This is where the 13th Dalai Lama took refuge when he fled from Major-General Younghusband’s temporary invasion of Lhasa in 1904. Amarbuyant would have been an important stopping point on the camel caravan road, along with other monastic complexes.
This summer, many nomads had already migrated north of the dry desert to the desert steppe as the Gobi is again experiencing a gan. The area is sparsely populated by humans. Nomads shift their family gers (yurts) up to thirty times a year in search of grazing. They have a close connection to the condition of the ecosystem, as their survival depends on it. Illustrating the innovation and tenacity of the Mongolians to survive in harsh conditions, we met a nomad at a well tinkering with a ‘cloudbuster’. Though considered pseudoscience by many, this hardy Gobi herdsman had invested in the equipment in a bid to draw water from the sky to the well.
Life inside the Ger
The landscape shifts and varies as we move through it on our journey. A land that was open and free. At times in desert-steppe transition zones a hue of lime green blanketed the earth, a glimpse of the fragile biosphere. Beyond the Black gobi the land became harsher, hard weathered grey rock shining silver in the baking afternoon sun. Pyramidal peaks and mountains like black hats rose from the ground. A line of camels walked by, their shadows cutting shapes in the sand. We stopped at the camp of a camel herding family, near to a well and a glade of charred dzar (Saxaul trees) which are used for firewood, construction of livestock corrals and medicine.
Inside the ger, life continued much as it has done for millennia. The nomads were making camel buuz (meat dumplings). The felt around the lower edge of the ger was rolled up so as to allow a breeze through. Inside the ger the atmosphere was calm and quiet. Everything within the cylindrical space of the felt wall and gently pitched roof was in its right place, dictated by necessity and tradition. There is no space for excess. The light of late morning was falling through the semi-circular partitioning in the central wheel in the ceiling where the chimney from the stove exits the structure and smoke billows lightly into the blue sky, which is sacred in Mongolian cosmology. Warm camel milk is coming to a boil in a large bowl on the fire. The mother ladles the milk, before bottling it in a thermos. We are seated on the left side of the ger and given a steaming bowl to drink with snacks of hardened cheese and sweets. Hand woven leather ware hangs from the worn hard wood lattice structure of the strong walls of the ger that tell stories of a hundred or more migrations. There is a sense of calm in all the gers we have visited, a quiet feeling where words are not spoken wastefully. We sit while the ritual exchange of greetings is made between the nomads and Khasaa, before we begin to talk of the road and plants. During the conversation we are shown the medicinal and food plants which they keep in the ger. Wild thymes are burnt for spiritual purposes, plants such as red and white goyo for medicine. We are investigating known ethnobotanical knowledge with Dr. Khandmaa Nergui of the Botanic Garden and Research Institute, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, who is working to document, conserve and protect the rare plants in the Gobi.
The End of the Road
Towards the western section of the Great Mongolian Road, we stayed with a family of herders managing the breeding centre for the critically endangered wild camel Camelus ferus. It was founded by Mongolian zoologist and wild camel expert Dr. Adiya Yadamsuren with The Wild Camel Protection Foundation, a UK charity set up in 1997 by Kathryn Rae and renowned desert explorer John Hare. The founders realised the uniqueness of this special animal, as wayfarer of the vast sands with the ability to traverse an extensive range with sparse and often saline water sources, across one of the most sparsely populated, and unforgiving territories on earth. Efforts to protect this iconic umbrella species also serve to protect other threatened plants and animals across the desert belt. The significance of the camel within the silk roads narrative does not go unnoticed, the wild camel being iconic.
Documenting multiple wells and significant sites from the Gaihozu maps, we traced the road to where it leaves Mongolia, close to the border town of Altai. Here it crosses into China in the direction of Kashgar. This work has confirmed the legitimacy of the Gaihozu maps as evidence of the Great Mongolian Road and its deserved place within the silk roads narrative.
Like the silk roads themselves, we have explored several themes which weave together – useful plants, people, the camel and road. The richness of nomadic traditional life, representing biocultural diversity is something to respect and take lessons from. While the juggernaut of industrial growth may be unstoppable, we do our best to highlight value which is easily forgotten when one is not directly working enmeshed within it.
Chris has put forward a case for UNESCO protection of the Mongolian Gobi and along with Adiya and other specialists within the realms of biodiversity, biocultural diversity and conservation continues to work towards this aim.
*title image – Gobi Rhubarb, Rheum officinale, a favourite of the Gobi bear and a useful medicinal plant for humans.
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
