The 13-century book Secret History of the Mongols opens with the line, "Genghis Khan was born with his destiny ordained by Heaven above. He was descended from Borte Chino, whose name means 'grayish white dog,' and Qo'ai-maral, the dog's spouse, whose name means 'beautiful doe'..."

The Mongolian people believe they are descendants of the dog and deer. So does 76-year-old Mang Muren, a Mongolian researcher from the Institute for Origins of Asian Nations at Inner Mongolia Normal University.

But he believes more than that. To him, not only the Mongolian, but also the Han and most of the other ethnic groups in China are descendants of the dog and deer.

In his opinion, the mutual ancestors of most of today's Chinese ethnic groups are a "Dog-Deer" clan (Quan-Lu Shi), who lived about 15,000 years ago in the Zdalai Nuur area of Inner Mongolia and Qiqihar area of Heilongjiang Province.

When Mang Muren refers to the "Dog-Deer" clan, he is talking about the Zdalai Nuur Man. From 1933 to 1982, 16 skulls and pottery fragments and microlith were unearthed in Zdalai Nuur. Archaeologists acknowledged the Zdalai Nuur Man to be a developing Mongoloid, and their group to be a clan from the Mesolithic Period or Middle Stone Age.

According to Mang Muren, the Zdalai Nuur Man were divided into two consanguineous groups: the "dog raisers" who lived in the hilly land and prairie of the middle reaches of the Heilongjiang River and upper reaches of the Songhuajiang River, represented by the Yanjiagang site of Harbin and Angangxi site of Qiqihar. The "deer raisers," meanwhile, lived in the mountain and forest areas, represented by the Mogushan site of Manzhouli and Gaxiandong site of Hulunbuir.

He said that the "dog raisers" were the first to domesticate dogs, while the "deer raisers" were the first to domesticate deer. Later the two groups gradually abolished inner marriages, and became an integrated clan through intermarriage and adopted "Dog-Deer" as their name.

Mang Muren released his "Dog-Deer Doctrine" in 2004, but he began to accumulate material for it long before then.

Linguistic origin

Back in 1972, Mang Muren was compiling the "Mongolian Dictionary" when he was often bewildered by the origin of many Mongolian words.

He found over 2,000 Mongolian words to be of very similar pronunciations and meanings to their Chinese counterparts. Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, while Mongolian to the Altaic language family. Why are there so many similar words among them?

During 10 years of research, he found another 2,000 similar words or so, and he began to believe that there might be some relationship between the two languages.

Mang Muren's interest in the two languages led him to also probe the relationship between the two ethnic groups. He found that two ancient ethnic groups, called Quanrong and Qin, used to live in the Tianshui area of today's Gansu Province in Northwest China.

Bailang people and Bailu people, ancestors of the Mongolian, were members of Quanrong, while Qin people were among the ancestors of Han people.

A bold hypothesis began to take shape: Mongolian and Han are of the same origin. Combining archaeological findings, he further suggested that most ethnic groups in China were descendants of a same group of people, namely the "Dog-Deer" clan.

Mang Muren pointed out that dogs and deer were firstly named "kan" and "kaq" according to their cries, and these terms are preserved in most languages of the Sino-Tibetan and Altaic language family.

For example, "quan," the Chinese character for dogs, comes from "kan," and in Mongolian language, the cries of dogs are described as "gang," which also originated in "kan."

To back his doctrine, Mang Muren also turned to religions. In ancient China, people in the north, west and central areas believed in shamanism. In Mongolian, shamanism is called "bo morgul," which means "religion of the deer."

The Han people call shamanism "wu," which comes from "kaq," though they do seem different now after many variations in a long history.

Further evidence of the "Dog-Deer" doctrine is totem. Mang Muren believed that when small groups began to be united as clans about 6,000 years ago, totems were formed on the basis of the animals that each group worshiped. As a result, the dragon came into being, mainly combining the characteristics of the dog and deer, and later adding parts of the tiger, snake, fish and bear.

"Now we often say that the Chinese are descendants of the dragon, but actually we are descendants of the dog and deer," he said.

Source of names

Comparative linguistics is the main tool for Mang Muren to support his doctrine. After analyzing the origins of many Chinese ethnic groups, he found that most of their names are variations of the dog and deer.

Some ancient groups used the dog or deer directly to name themselves. For example, Quanrong, a tribe which used to live in the Jinghe River and Weihe River area of today's Shaanxi Province during the Yin (1300-1046 BC, later period of the Shang Dynasty which began in 1600 BC) and Zhou dynasties (1046-256 BC), has "quan" (dog) in its name.

The name of Kiyan, one of the ancestor tribes of Mongolian people, is also the Mongolian word for "dog."

However, in the names of most tribes or ethnic groups in China, there is no direct sign of the dog or deer.

Mang Muren explained that the ancestors of Chinese ethnic groups began to adapt the names of the dog or deer more than 10,000 years ago. In China, the Han people were the first to use a written language, but it happened only about 4,000 years ago. In the long tradition of oral transmission, the primitive velar pronunciation of "kan" (dog) and "kaq" (deer) were added to nasals, laterals and retroflex, and were greatly changed.

Through the long history, the pronunciations of the names of Chinese ethnic groups are far from that of "dog" or "deer," but Mang Muren believes that traces of "dog" or "deer" can still be found.

He found proof from ancient dwellers of the birthplace of the "Dog-Deer" clan, the basins of Heilongjiang River and Ergun River, and the Xing'anling area of northeastern China.

Xianbei (Sienpi), who established three dynasties during the period of Southern and Northern Dynasties (AD 420-589), was an ancient ethnic group from this area.

Mang Muren believes that "xian" comes from "kiam," which is a variation of "kan" (dog), and "bei" comes from "pier," which originated from "kaq" (deer).

He also insists that the name Han, the majority of Chinese people, is just a variation of "kan."

Almost all Chinese history books start with the legendary Yellow Emperor, who lived around 5,000 years ago in the Yellow River basin area. However, very little is about the time before the Yellow Emperor, except that there were many clans living at the Yellow River basin area before the Yellow Emperor came into power.

Through his linguistic study and reference to archaeology, ethnology, history, physical anthropology, semiology, folklore and primitive religion, Mang Muren outlined a supposed history of the Mongoloid in ancient times:

After the "dog raisers" and "deer raisers" formed the "Dog-Deer" clan about 15,000 years ago, they kept splitting and moving. About 8,000 years ago, they had spread all over Siberia, the Mongolia Highland and most areas in China.

At the Yellow River basin and Yangtze River basin areas, the descendants of the "Dog-Deer" clan transformed to patrilineal clans from matriarchic clans during the legendary period of the Five August Emperors (about 30th century -21st century BC).

After the Xia (2100-1600 BC), Shang (1600-1046 BC) and Zhou dynasties, they entered the feudal society, and became united by the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).

Outside the Great Wall, in the Mongolian Highland and northeast Asia, the descendants of the "Dog-Deer" clan established a series of khanates such as the Xiongnu (Huns), Xianbei (Sienpi) and Tujue (Turk). In the 13th century, Genghis Khan and his followers, a branch of "Dog-Deer" clan in the north, united descendants of the clan on both sides of the Great Wall.

Researchers' views

"Mang Muren presented a bold hypothesis in his 'Dog-Deer' doctrine," said scholar Zhu Xueyuan, author of "Origins of Ethnic Groups in Northern China." "He has developed his own method to prove the origin of people through comparative linguistics."

Though Zhu believes that ethnic groups in northern China were from central China, he agrees with Mang Muren that Chinese people are of the same origin.

However, some other scholars disagree with Mang Muren's theory.

Sun Hongkai, vice-director of the Research Centre of Chinese Minority Languages, said words of similar pronunciations and meanings in different languages may have been caused by borrowing or coincidence, and that Mang Muren has to provide more linguistic evidence to prove his assertion that Chinese and Mongolian languages are of the same origin.

In his research centre, Sun is in charge of a project on establishing data bases for Chinese minority languages.

He said when the data bases were completed, scholars would be able to further research minority languages and discover the relationship between different languages in China.

On January 29 and 30, an academic conference on "Dog-Deer" doctrine was held at the Centre for Mongolian Studies of Peking University. About 30 scholars discussed Mang Muren's theory and contributed their opinions.

Mang Muren said that he would organize a group of scholars to research the "Dog-Deer" doctrine from different angles, and publish a series of books on the subject.

"I have presented my idea," he said, "the completion of the theory will depend on experts from various related fields."

(China Daily February 21, 2005)