Mongolia

Mongolian wild asses, for article on khulan wild ass

Hundreds of Asiatic wild asses return to eastern Mongolia after 65 years

By / / Good News For Humankind

Asiatic wild asses, known as khulan, are roaming eastern Mongolia again after more than 60 years away, with hundreds now recorded crossing the Trans-Mongolian Railway into habitat they had vanished from. The turnaround began with a simple experiment: conservationists and government partners opened fence-free stretches of railway and watched to see what would happen. Animals crossed, trains kept running safely, and in May 2025 a monitored passage corridor was made official near the China-Mongolia border. Mongolia’s Gobi is home to roughly 91,000 khulan, the vast majority of the species worldwide, so reconnecting their range really matters. It’s a hopeful reminder that even the hard lines we’ve drawn across wild places can be redrawn.

African girl sleeping on mother's shoulder, for article on global child mortality

‘Historic milestone’ as global child mortality hits record low of 4.9 million in 2022

By / / Good News For Humankind

Child deaths worldwide have fallen to 4.9 million in 2022 — the lowest number ever recorded, and roughly half the toll of the year 2000. Behind that drop is decades of unglamorous, working-everyday care: vaccines, bed nets, oral rehydration, skilled midwives, and community health workers showing up in their own neighborhoods. Rwanda offers a remarkable glimpse of what’s possible, having cut its under-five mortality rate by more than 80% since the aftermath of the 1994 genocide through community-based insurance and a serious investment in primary care. The number is still far too high, and newborns and children in conflict zones remain especially vulnerable. But the trend is one of humanity’s quiet, steady triumphs — proof that coordinated care, sustained over decades, saves millions of lives.

image for article on Xiongnu Empire

Modu Chanyu unites nomadic peoples into the Xiongnu Empire

By / / Archive of Human Genius

Around 209 B.C.E., a young leader named Modu Chanyu seized power on the Mongolian steppe and welded scattered nomadic tribes into the Xiongnu confederation. He built a structured military hierarchy capable of sustained campaigns, displacing rivals as far as Central Asia. The Xiongnu showed that mobile, pastoral peoples could build empires every bit as organized as their settled neighbors.

Map of Slab Grave Culture and other cultures, for article on Slab Grave culture

Slab Grave culture flourishes across Bronze Age Mongolia

By / / Archive of Human Genius

Slab Grave culture took root across eastern Mongolia around 1300 B.C.E., when communities buried their dead inside rectangular enclosures of vertical stone slabs, some weighing half a ton. One cemetery near Aga Buryat holds more than 3,000 of these fenced graves. A thousand years on, their genetic and artistic threads still run through the later Xiongnu and Göktürk worlds.