Dingling

The Dingling (Chinese: 丁零) were an ancient people mentioned in Chinese historiography in the context of the 1st century BCE. They are assumed to have been an early Proto-Turkic-speaking people, whose original constituents mainly assimilated into the Xiongnu and Xianbei groups. They originally lived on the bank of the Lena River in the area west of Lake Baikal, gradually moving southward to Mongolia and northern China. They were subsequently part of the Xiongnu Empire, and thus presumably related to the invaders known as Huns in the west. Around the 3rd century they were assimilated into the Tiele, also named Gaoche (高車) or Chile (敕勒), who gradually expanded westward into Central Asia, expelled from Mongolia by the Rouran and establishing a state Turpan in the 5th century. The Tiele were a collection of early Turkic tribes, largely descended from the Chile.

The Dingling were a warlike group of hunters, fishers, and gatherers of the southern Siberian mountain taiga region from Lake Baikal to northern Mongolia. Chinese records do not mention the physical appearance of the Dingling, suggesting general homogeneity with people of the Asiatic region, and their name appears rarely.

They might have been correlated with the Guifang, a northern tribe that appears in the oracle bone inscriptions from Yinxu.

According to the History of the Gaoche of Wei Shou (6th century), the origin of the Dingling can be traced to the Chidi or Red Di (赤狄), who lived in northern China during the Spring and Autumn period. The Mozi mentions a total of eight Di groups related to the Chidi, of whom only the Chidi and two others were known.

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