Systems of Weight of Ancient Mongolian and Tibetan Civilizations
Authors:   Taras Shevchenko national University of Kyiv, Zubko Andrii 
Published: November 2022

Ancient Mongolian and Tibetan civilizations have appeared in the mountainous areas, steppes and deserts of a huge region of the Earth, Central Asia. Their advent was preceded by a lengthy process of developing social relationships, material and spiritual culture of various peoples who lived in those lands. In ancient times, the forebears of Mongolian and Tibetan peoples were hunters and gatherers, and later on, they began breeding livestock and as a result, adopted nomadic lifestyle. To the southeast of this region, Chinese civilization has been developing during five thousand years in the valleys of the Yangtze and the Yellow River based on land cultivation, and later artisan and trade economy. The first political entities in the Far East – China, Korea and Japan – have created unified measures of length, weight and volume, without which successful economic development was impossible. Natural conditions of particular regions of the Earth largely define material and spiritual culture of their population. In addition, natural factor significantly influences the processes of social and political development in the countries that have appeared and asserted themselves in those regions over time. Mongolia is mostly a steppe and desert country, but nevertheless, the average elevation of its terrain over sea level is almost 1550 meters. The Mongolian territory includes four mountain ranges: the Altai, Sayan, Khangai and Khentii Mountains. In terms of the size, Mongolia’s Gobi Desert is the second-largest on the Earth, after the Sahara. Tibet also represents a huge plateau, surrounded by mountain ranges with deep valleys. Since Mongolia and Tibet are located far away from oceans and high above sea level, they have a dry and extreme continental climate. In certain areas of Mongolia, temperatures in wintertime can drop to 60 degrees centigrade below freezing, and in summertime, can reach 45 degrees above zero. In turn, climate in Tibet changes depending on elevation: close to subtropical in deep valleys and resembling tundra climate in highlands. Harsh climatic conditions did not favor fast growth of manufacture and trade in the lands of Mongolia and Tibet. This factor seriously impeded the process of creating their own systems of measurement, particularly systems of weight. In Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet, political entities established on the basis of military democracy have appeared later than in the Far East. Afterwards, Mongolia and Tibet have developed into theocracies governed by Buddhist clergy. For millenniums, the influence of material and spiritual culture of China and other Far Eastern civilizations on political entities in Central Asia was very significant. However, having borrowed extensively from the Chinese system of measurement, Mongolia and Tibet have created their own systems of measurement. Mongolia’s and Tibet’s own systems of weight reflected the way manufacture and trade were organized in those lands. This article analyzes the degree of influence Chinese measures have had on formation of Mongolia’s and Tibet’s systems of weight, and determines the degree of their uniqueness. It also determines the scope of Mongolia’s and Tibet’s particular units of weight and the ratio between them in the structure of the systems of measurement.