This is the largest BC empire in all of history

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>how's taxing the desert sands of the Gobi going for you great Xiongnu Emperor???
>first emperor of Xiongnu united the several nomadic tribes living in Mongolia and then invaded and took over Northern China.
>his empire prospered with the freshly acquired pastures

>his son defeated the Han Dynasty of China and forced him to pay yearly tributes to the Xiongnu.

His son also defeated the Donghu people who would later split it into two tribes. The Wuhuan who would be later destroyed by rival tribes and the Xianhei... who would become the Mongols.

>Pop history "OMG ONE WEAPIN CHANGES EVERYTHING" logic.

It was more of a combination of crossbow & halberds and Emperor Wu getting the Han Cavalry up to speed - which was probably the most important development to begin to even fight in the Steppes.

When the Han marched against the Xiongnu they did it with a majority infantry army. This meant that all the advantages are within the Xiongnu armies and their horse archers considering that most of the war was fought in their own turf. Where their method of war was extremely well suited in.

Except the Xiongnu Empire lost and was the only case of a pre-gunpowder infantry-centric army going against Steppeniggers *in their own turf* and actually won.

Actually, no one hardly fought the horsefuckers in their homeland. Attacking the homeland is actually quite the bonus, since it forces them into chokepoints. They can't just run away from you since you will burn down their towns.

Han regularly fielded yearly war against them in the desert. They could however only do about 100 day campaigns due to logistics issues.

>They can't just run away from you since you will burn down their towns.
Except that is what they did since Nomads were...Nomadic.

The Chinese chased the Xiongnu up to present day Lake Baikal even.

Of course, probably also because the Han armies I assume were quite massive and the lack of domesticated camels in large enough numbers to carry supplies/them not being used probably fucked them.

The horsefuckers greatest advantage is striking with little warning with a mobile horde. Half the battle was pinning them down for long enough to take a fight.

Nomads are "Nomadic" but they still return to the same place constantly.

Wait isn't the Achaemenid Empire at it's peak bigger then this?

They didnt have the arab peninsular, so that is big chunk of land missing.
If you look at the map above, even when stretching from Turkey to the border of India, its still smaller. Of course the Achaemenids had a shit ton of cities and some of the leading technological, agricultural and population heavy areas of the world under their control, while the Xoingnu had a bunch of Steppe without any larger settlements.

Yes it was. You're replying to a chinkboo thread, logic need not apply.

magyars' ancestors :-)

The Xiongnu are Chinese?

>largest
Does it even matter? It's a very low population and low wealth area. Is it really any better than ruling over northern China, or the eastern Mediterranean, etc?

They weren't Chinese. Nobody knows who the fuck they are supposed to be.

Basically ancient mongols.

Some people say the Huns.

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RIP Tocharians.

Went to found Kushans and integrated slowly into Indian hemisphere.

Yeah, nobody knows.

>Attempts to identify the Xiongnu with later groups of the western Eurasian Steppe remain controversial. Scythians and Sarmatians were concurrently to the west. The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses, because only a few words, mainly titles and personal names, were preserved in the Chinese sources. The name Xiongnu may be cognate with that of the Huns and/or the Huna, although this is disputed. Other linguistic links – all of them also controversial – proposed by scholars include Iranian, Mongolic, Turkic, Uralic Yeniseian, or multi-ethnic.

>In the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were northern neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC. Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns.

Little bit misleading, most historians allude to Hun-Xiongnu ties due to linguistic, cultural and ethnic ties. There's so solid evidence however there are fragments of information across to piece together.

For example, the name of of Hun-Xiognu in were called Xwn by the Sogdians. Hongnu, Hsiung-nu, Hunnu, Huns of Asia, Qun were all names the Xiongnu-Hun group went by. The description of Atilla by Priscus went something like "Short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head; his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with grey; and he had a flat nose and tanned skin" . This is basically a European describing an asiatic man. Not another white european nor a black man.

There are also event line reasons for why Xiongnu and Huns are same. The Xiongnu pushed west by the Han dynasty hard. The one remaining within Chinese border collapsed. The western branch migrated westward so they wouldn't get fucked by the Hans. The Xiongnu near the end of its life near China was faced with various internal disagreements. Its last stand was at the Altai mountains where the Han forces killed and subdued the remaining Xiongnu that were still left. That was around ~90 AD. The western Huns started their empire around 4th century. This would have given them enough time to rebuild their forces. Coincidentally, or not, the Xiongnu in the east were becoming a threat once more as well. The 3rd/4th century Buddhist monk recalls of Xwn attacks on China once more.

Either the east/west Xiongnu had separated enough to become independent or they were both coming from same Empire.