The Bronze Age again saw new immigration waves of tribes, culminating in territorial fights and wars. The settlements became larger, and for the sake of defence, these were arranged in a circular way. These original settlers were clearly influenced by those immigrating and also assimilated, also in the Baikal region. They were designated as Neo-Siberians (having in general Mongolian features), facing a Paleo-Siberian population. The Dolgans were one of the "youngest" people of the north that had immigrated, and they were further one of the most numerous ones among the indigenous population settling on the Taimyr Peninsula.

• Dolgans - The Dolgan language belongs to the northern group of the Turk languages and is closely related to the Yakut language. The Dolgans are still living in the Autonomous Okrug Taymyr at the Northern Polar Sea. The Dolgans were traditionally mainly reindeer breeders, hunters and fishermen.

People, whose language and culture had their origins in the basin of Lake Baikal, in the Angara Valley and the Tunken Valley as well as in the eastern Sayan Mountains, were originally Manchu-Tungusic speaking peoples. The epics of the Tungusic and Yakut people tell of fights, which took place initially in Vitim (Lensky District) and in Patoma. Tungusic peoples had to move back from the rivers into higher mountainous areas, as the immigrating Yakuts, whose invasion took place in two wave-like movements, occupied the fertile basins. It is assumed that the original home of the Yakuts was situated at the Upper Yenisei; their migration, however, had taken place before the invasion of the Mongols, as only Northern-Buryat folklore texts included tales about Genghis Khan. The first immigration of the Buryats into the region they are settling nowadays actually took place in the year 1190 A.D. It is assumed that there is a relation between the wars among the different hordes immediately in the advance of the seizure of power by Genghis Khan.

• (1) Kitan or Khitan: a Proto-Mongolian people from Manchuria that existed as early as the 6th century.
  
  
• (2) Quryqan (Rouran – Ruan – Juan Juan)
  Discoveries made around Lake Baikal may probably be associated with the ancestors of the Yakuts, the Rouran, who were settling at the same time as the Xiongnu in the area of the Altai Mountains. The invasion of the Xiongnu may be dated to the Iron Age. Nothing is known about where this people had settled before. These conclusions are logical, as the Buryats did not produce earthenware, whereas the Rouran left behind proof of their pottery, which is very similar to the style practised by the Yakuts. This cultural element is a link between the Yakuts and other Turk peoples from the Altai area in the 6th to 8th century, who also had a rather simple pottery style, in great contrast to their refined and sophisticated metal works. The Rouran politically belonged to a group of Turkic peoples in the Altai with the common name "Tu-lu" or "Tölis", as they were called in the Orchon scripts. For the very first time, they were mentioned in Chinese chronicles on the occasion of their wars with the Turkic people (t'u-chüeh), another Turkic community in this area, which took place in the year 552 or 553 A.D. The Rouran and other peoples in the Altai are very similarly structured regarding their culture and their rituals; in many ways, they are rather similar to today's Yakuts, who once emigrated from the region of the Upper Yenisei. They wore furs and woollen clothes. According to their totemistic concepts, the horse was considered an important element. They prepared kumys from mare's milk. Such as today's Altai peoples, they placed the heads of sacrificed sheep and horses onto poles and worshipped heaven and earth. Their society was based on a class system. They were further masters in forging, horse and cattle breeding, and they lived on farming.

- See more information: Population in the Altai – A Turkic-speaking, ethnically mixed people from the 6th century on - Excerpt from "Acta Slavica” by Andrei Zname – under construction

• Samoyed people, i.e. the Nenets – They live in the north-west of Siberia in the Autonomous Okrug Taymyr at the Polar Sea, next to the Dolgans.
  
• Ket people (Keto) – their self-designation is ket ("man") or deng ("people"; historical designation: Yenisei Ostyaks) - they speak a Paleo-Siberian language.
  
• Dingling: They originally lived at the upper part of the river Lena, in the west of Lake Baikal. In the 3rd century BC they started to expand towards the west. They represented a part of the empire of the Xiongnu.
  
• Hsiung-nu – Xiongnu - 3rd century B.C. to 4th century A.D.
  
• Huno-Sarmation Period (Tashtyk): 1st century B.C. to 2nd century A.D.
  
  

• (1) The Ordos Plateau is limited in the west, in the north and in the east by the large curve of the Yellow River. In the north of the Yellow River, the mountain ranges Kara-naryn-ula, Sheitenula and In Shan foothills of the Hinggan - the Gobi plateau. In the south and in the east, the Great Wall limits the plateau from the fertile Shannxislöess region. The Ordos Plateau is a steppe-like and desert-like landscape in the Autonomous Okrug Inner Mongolia, which earlier was called also He-tau and later on He-nan ("land south of the river") - see map.
  
  
• (2) Yuezhi – Kushana (sometimes also called Tocharistan) was a realm in Central Asia and northern India, which had its largest expansion between 100 and 250 A.D. from today's territory of the national state Tajikistan as far as the Caspian Sea and the territory of today's Afghanistan downwards into the Indus valley and the Ganges-Yamuna territory. The realm was founded by the Indo-Scythians or the Yuezhi, respectively, from today's Xinjiang.

Upon the collapse of the Hun confederation of the Hsiung-nu, the influence of the Mongols was mainly determined by the Turkic tribes, the Rouran, whereas their settlement area in the valleys of the rivers Selenge, Kherlen and Onon (see maps) and in the western Baikal region remained untouched. Mongolian tribes are also called "gurvan goliin Mongolchuud" (Mongols of the Three Rivers). Buryats also used to settle in Mongolia in Dornod, Khentiy, Selenge, Töv, Bulgan and Hövsgöl Aimag (see map Mongolia). Minorities settled in Inner Mongolia in the Hulun region to the bordering Dornod Aimag, and they are called "Shinheeni Buryats". These are actually a group called Dagur, which fled following the Russian invasion.

Upon the collapse of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in China, the great realm under Kubilai Khan, the empire separated into numerous smaller khanates. Whereas in China this marked an individual historical development, some Mongolian empire structures remained in a strongly reduced form until the 17th century A.D. During this time, the region was known as Buryatia and thus constituted a part of these realms.
Civil wars under the Noyon princes of the Mongols led to the collapse and fall of the remaining empire. The invasion of the Oirat princes under Galdan Boshigt (Galdan Khan), under an Oriat-Dzungar confederation, led to the supremacy of the Calcha being disrupted. The Oirats are very similar to the Buryat dialect and their culture. They settled in western Mongolia, whereas the Chalcha ruled the central part of today's Mongolia and the Gobi region. A long war between the Oirats and Chalcha split the Mongolian unity at a time when a new threat from the east was on the rise.
In eastern Mongolia, the Manchu (earlier they were called Jurchen people) gained power, and in alliance with China, they established the Qing Dynasty. The conquest of central and western Mongolia, which were weakened by civil wars, could not stop this invasion. Some Oirats fled westwards into the Altai area that was held by Russia and into the Volga region, where they are nowadays called Kalmyk people. The princes of northern Mongolia, however, asked Russia for protection. The Buryats had not been conquered by feudal Mongolian leaders, which is why they were able to keep some of their autonomy.

The Russian supremacy saved the Buryats from a conquest by the Manchu people, but their relations with the Russian Empire remained problematic. In far-away Siberia, far away from the imperial centres of power, the executive power of the Russian authorities had been taken over by the Cossacks, who - in some cases - behaved like robbers. They attacked settlements and terrorized the population. The Dagurs (Daur) left their villages at the river Onon and re-settled to the Manchu territory, where they are still living at the present. Land was disowned and handed over to Russian settlers for farming. Many settlers were exiled people from western Russia, some were criminals, and others were religious or political dissidents, who then all contributed in introducing new cultures and a new education system. Large areas in the west of the Baikal were in this way confiscated, and the Mongolian population was forced to re-settle. The Buryats did not accept this situation without any resistance - two rebellions in 1695 and in 1696 were the logical consequences. Another form of resistance developed with shamanism and the worship of Gazriin ezen, in which way the "protector spirit of the land and the mountains" was asked for help to support the resistance against expropriation.

• Yuan Dynasty - Upon the collapse of the Tang Dynasty (906 A.D.), China remained separated into several individual states for nearly four centuries. Foreign dynasties ruled the north, and the power of the Chinese Song Emperors was restricted to the south of the realm. Already in the 12th century, from 1127 on, the nomadic riders of the Mongols gained power in the steppe and desert areas in the north of China. The climax of the Mongolian power was, however, reached only in the 13th century under Genghis Khan, as well as his sons and grand-children. Simultaneously, Kublai Khan is considered the founder of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
  
• The Qing Dynasty was the second dynasty in China, after the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, which had not been founded by Han-Chinese. It was based on the rise of the Jurchen people, which ruled northern China as Jin Dynasty (1125– 1234) and as Later Jin Dynasty. In 1635 the Jurchen people changed their name into Manchu. From 1636 on, the dynasty itself was known under the name "Qing".
  
• Manchu – 17th to 20th centuries A.D. - their ancestors were the Jurchen people - 12th century A.D.
  
• Dzungars – Olots – 17th to 18th centuries A.D.
  
• Oirats (Oirots - 12th to 18th centuries A.D.) - later on Kalmyks, Urianchai
  
  

The Oirats (also called Dzungars, whose name has its origin in the territory of Dzungaria in today's China) were a western Mongolian tribe at the time of Genghis Khan, which controlled vast parts of Central Asia as a tribal confederation from the 15th to the 18th centuries. This confederation finally collapsed, and in great part the power was taken over by the Qing Dynasty, in a small part by the Russian people. Sub-groups of the Oirats were the Dzungars, the Dürbet people, the Torguts and the Khoshuud. The people who moved westwards are nowadays called Kalmyks. Sometimes Oirats is substituted for "Oirots".

The Buryats have always been a part of the Mongolian world - in language and in traditional culture. They are also related with their southern neighbours, the Mongols. Such as other Mongols, they also converted to Buddhism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They, however, remained true to their traditional religion with the shamanistic practices, in particular in the west. They further conserved their Khori dialect, which later on became their scripture. It was the idea to create and establish a Buryat identity, which cut its roots with the Mongolian origin.

- Further information on Shamanism: Schmanisums (Tengerismus) in Mongolia

The Buryats were not always part of Russia. In the years 1625-1627 the Russian Tsar organized an expedition to explore the Bratskaya land. The first expedition on boat did not recognize the wild waters of the river Angara. There were reports on the infinite wealth of farmers settling there, on numerous horses, cows and camels and the rich harvests of barley and buckwheat. With the Russian immigrants, however, there came along armed conflicts. The Russians built the first fortress, Bratsk. In the year 1658 they founded the city of Nertschinsk at the mouth of the river Nertscha (tributary of the Shilka in Transbaikalia), and trade started to bloom. After the immigration of Russian farmers, hunters, fishermen and craftsmen, the conflicts between the Buryats and those immigrating were on the rise. There also came Old Believers fleeing persecution. Buryats who were not satisfied under this Tsarist supremacy fled to Mongolia. Those coming back, told: "The Mongolian Khan has offenders beheaded, the Russian Tsar simply has them whipped."

• The Legend of Tabak, a prince of marriageable age, who was not interested in looking for a wife.
  
• Angara, daughter of Baikal; Baikal, the owner-spirit of the Big Lake (ezen) had 337 daughters, of whom all Angara was the most beautiful one. She had many admirers, but did not like any of these. One day, the young Yenisei was guest in her ger and she fell in love with him.
  
• The tale on alcohol: There once was a Buddhist lama wandering the steppe, who brings blessing to the nomadic families. It was shortly before sunset, when he came to a lonely ger and some cattle. A young woman appeared to greet him and she said that he could stay the night only under one condition. He had to choose to do one of three things: he could drink alcohol, he could make love to her, or he could sacrifice a goat. The lama decided that drinking alcohol would be the most harmless one.
  
• The origin of the evergreen trees: All trees lose their leaves in autumn. Since Erleg Khan brought sickness and illness to the world, people become ill and die when they are old. But the raven felt sympathy for the people and wished to restore the original immortality of the people.

Gers made of wood are to be found in all areas, in regions, where the people have become settlers. Families stay for the summer and the winter near these fertile grassing lands.
Such gers are in the majority octagonal, but they can also be round; but recently, these have become more and more extinct in favour of Russian block huts.

The door opening of the ger is always oriented towards the south. The eastern side is the place for the women, and the western side is the place for the men and guests. This orientation is also true for the seating area and for the arrangement of the household goods, which seems to be a reflection of the Mongolian cosmology determined by Shamanism. In the centre of the ger there is the gulamta (fire-place), with the tulga, the ring having three legs, which represent the frame for holding pots or grates. At the wall there is placed a goat leather bag for the airag (mare's milk), which is also called kümis; therein there is kept an alcoholic drink made of mare's milk. It is the women's task to prepare milk-tee. Opposite to the door, there is situated the hoimor (a kind of altar cupboard), on which holy objects are kept. This family shrine is always arranged on the northern side or slightly to the north-west. The northern side is the most honoured place within a ger.

• Lifestyles, artwork and ornaments
• Bronze Age – until 1200 BC
• Iron Age – 1200 until 1000 BC
• Kurgans and cultic sites of the steppe cultures (burials and mounds)