The modern Mongols, who are an Inner Asian rather than a Siberian people, are the descendants of the famed Empire Builder Chingiz (Genghis) Khan. As such, they have played a more prominent role in world history than any other people of North or Middle Asia.

Little is known about the Mongols before the 12th century. Some scholars believe they originated in the area of present-day Mongolia, where the Mongol tribes were simply one of many pastoral ethnic groups in the centuries prior to the establishment of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. Other scholars believe that the ancestors of the Mongols came from the Transbaikal region, emigrating south to the steppe areas of present-day Mongolia in the centuries which preceded the rise of the Mongols under Chingiz Khan. If this hypothesis is correct, then the original Mongols were reindeer breeders who moved south as the steppe region became drier and more inhospitable, bringing with them new techniques of animal husbandry which proved successful in the increasingly colder and more arid climate of the steppe.

Whatever their origin, it appears that the language of the Mongols is distantly related to the Turkic languages, on the one hand, and the Tungusic (Ewenki) languages on the other. These three major language families, the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchu, are sometimes grouped together into a language superfamily called Altaic. Whether such a language as Altaic did indeed exist several thousand years ago remains only an unsubstantiated hypothesis. Some linguists go a step further and link Japanese and Korean with Altaic.

The Mongol tribes were divided into clans called oboks, in which all the men were supposedly descended from a common male ancestor. The Mongols were originally polygynous and would raid other clans to steal wives. Upon the death of a father his eldest son would take over all of his father's wives except his own mother. If a Mongol warrior admired the leader of another clan, he could repudiate his own origins and join the other clan (becoming a noker, or loyal follower of that leader). In this way, a particularly talented leader could gain a large following, far beyond his own kin.

Temuchin (later called Chingiz Khan, a term that possibly meant "Universal Leader," though no one is really sure) unified the Mongolian tribes and other nomads of the east Eurasian steppes by the early decades of the 13th century (1206 is the year when a Kurultai, or general meeting, of his Mongol subjects conferred on him the title of Chingiz Khan). After 1206 Chingiz began a series of military campaigns which soon resulted in the conquest not only of the entire Central Asian steppe zone, but also of the populous agricultural societies in China, Persia, and Russia. One of the peoples who had a profound impact on Mongol culture in the early days of Chingiz Khan's empire building were the Turkic-speaking Uighurs, who lived (and continue to live) in China's Xinjiang province (the word Xinjiang in modern Chinese means "new frontier"). The Uighurs gave the Mongols their vertical alphabet (see the chart of Asian writing systems). This Uighur alphabet, whose prototype was originally brought by Nestorian Christians from Syria and written vertically in imitation of Chinese, continued to be used by the Mongols into the 20th century.

The original Mongol conquerors were shamanists. They believed in a hierarchy of spirits ruled over by the supreme Tengri, god of heaven. Below him, but more significant to the bulk of the population, was the earth goddess Itugen, controller of fertility (abundance of grass and animals). Finally there were innumerable minor spirits, some the spirits of Mongol ancestors. Spirits were believed to animate all natural phenomena and were consulted or placated through the intercession of the Mongol shamans. Fire was held sacred as a purificatory agent.

Many Mongols maintained certain key shamanistic beliefs and practices even after coming into contact with other religions. They were also pastoral nomads who had contempt for the more settled agricultural way of life. Eventually, some of the khans accepted Islam; others became Bhuddists. Lamaistic Buddhism was brought from Tibet in the 16th century and became so pervasive that by the beginning of the 20th century nearly every family had at least one son who entered a Buddhist monastery. Buddhism was savagely suppressed in Mongolia during the Stalin years, when all of the monasteries were forcibly disbanded or destroyed and most of the monks shot outright.

The Mongol presence in Russia, Persia, and China was never strong. In fact, there were more Turkic (Tatar) subjects of the Mongols in many of these areas, which is why the Mongol conquerors were sometimes referred to as the Tatars (the word Tartar is a European corruption of the Turkic term, coined after the Greek mythological word for hell, Tartary).

Infighting among the Mongol Khans in various parts of their vast empire eventually led to its dissolution. The Mongols remained as a distinct ethnic group only in isolated pockets in eastern Persia and Afganistan, as well as in their home base of Mongolia. Today the population of Mongolia is about two million, but Mongol culture and language are thriving. There are also more than three million ethnic Mongols in the Inner Mongolia region of the People's Republic of China, who speak the Chahar and Horchen dialects. Their future is less certain, since they share their province with nearly 18 million ethnic Chinese. The literary dialect of Mongolia proper is called Khalkha (pronounced HAL-huh) and today is written with a version of Russia's Cyrillic alphabet (although now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been talk about reviving the old vertical script). Unlike all of the other peoples of North Asia, the Mongols (except for their Buryat cousins, who will be discussed next) were never fully incorporated into the Russian Empire either during Tsarist or Soviet times.

The Buryats are the close ethnic and linguistic cousins of the Mongols living in the independent country of Mongolia, but live farther to the north, in the southern portion of central-eastern Siberia. The ethnonym Buryat derives from a Turkic term bure (a calque of the Mongol chon) meaning "wolf" (one of the traditional Buryat-Mongol clans had as its totem the wolf). The ending -t or ut is the Mongol plural ending for nouns. Today most of the 400,000+ Buryats live in the Russian Federation in the Buryat Republic located to the east of Lake Baikal (in the Transbaikal region).

The Buryat people, though a subdivisions of the Mongols, shows a substrate influence of the Tungusic tribes who formerly inhabited the Transbaikal area before the spread of the Mongols.

Before the coming of the Russians the Buryats lived also on the Western side of Lake Baikal. Like Mongol and Tuvan, the Buryat language is thriving, with well over 360,000 speakers. Today, Russians living in the Buryat Republic must learn Buryat.

The modern Buryat language is closely related to the other Mongol dialects from which it began to diverge as late as 1,000 years ago, before the Mongol Empire was formed, while Mongols tribes were spead out from their ancestral lands in the steppeland of eastern Central Asia. The Buryats received their vertical script writing system from the Mongols in the days of Chingiz Khan (13th century. The Buryats, Mongols and Tuvans shared versions of this script for centuries and, before the 20th century, were practically the only literate nations of North Asia.

Before the 1917 Revolution the Buryats were engaged in either pastoral nomadism or sedentary agriculture. The sedentary Buryats also raised some cattle and horses. Hunting also played an important role in the family and clan economy; the animals hunted included the bear and the Baikal seal. Among the trades were blacksmithing, fur-dressing, saddlemaking, tanning, and feltmaking. Blacksmiths (workers of iron) and whitesmiths (workers of tin and other non-ferrous metals) were revered as having special powers.

The traditional Mongol dwelling, the felt tent called yurt (the actual Mongol word is ger) was replaced by the Russian-style wooden hut among the sedentary agricultural Buryats. Houses were usually heated by burning argal, dried cow or horse dung. A bone from an animal ritually slaughtered to celebrate the birth of a child was hung as an amulet on the cradle of an infant.

The nomadic diet included meat and dairy products (most milk was consumed solely in boiled form. Milk was also made into a fermented drink called tarasun or arkha. The arkha was used as a drink of friendship. A hostess would pour it into the cup and give it to the elder or most honored guest. This guest was expected to pour a bit of it in the hearth fire and utter a prayer, drink the rest, then pass the cup back to the hostess or another guest, wherupon the process would be repeated. The last cup was drunk in mouthfuls by all those present, which symbolized khabay (friendship).