Mongolia — Eagle Hunters

 

the hunter lets
his mighty eagle fly
beware small yeanling

Hunting with eagles isn't unusual at all. Neither in Europe nor in Central Asia. During the Middle Ages „Der von Kürenberg“ wrote: “I zôch a valken mêre then a jâr. /   dô ich in zamete,   als ich in wolte hân," [1] I had already seen it in Kyrgyzstan almost ten years ago when we were visiting an eagle hunter there. I even visited him twice and wrote about it [2]. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan hunting with eagles is more common, but how does that relate to Mongolia?

A falconer with his falcon on horseback at the Naadam Festival (Наадам)

Mongolia is a multi-ethnic country. You have to think of it like this: Westphalians, Rhinelanders, Bavarians, Berliners are in Germany as Welsh, Londoners, Scots, Irish in Great Britain. The most widespread ethnic group in Mongolia is called Khalkha (Халх) - with about 82%, but there is another strong ethnic group and that are the Kazakhs. Although they only make up 4.3% of the population, they are the second largest ethnic group. The Kazakh language belongs to the Turkic language family like Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Uyghur, Turkmen and also modern Turkish. But it is a completely different language compared to Mongolian, which belongs to the Mongolian language family, which also includes Buryatian or Kalmyk. The two language groups cannot communicate with each other and we have also experienced this, namely by being in the area of the eagle hunters, i.e. in the province (Aimag) Bayan-Olgii, where most of Mongolia's Kazakhs live. We met Kazakhs there who didn't speak Mongolian at all and with whom communication was only possible by hand signals.

One could have animal welfare arguments against eagle hunting, but eagle hunting has evolved in a very unpopulated area and has become a tradition there to the extent that UNESCO recognized it:  "In 2011, UNESCO added Kazakh eagle hunting to the List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as an example of living human heritage." [3]

We stopped in the Ölgii area at an eagle hunter who was traveling with his motorbike and his eagle, waiting for tourists in the wasteland.

About 50 km outside of Ulaanbaatar you can find The Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue [4]. And there in the hustle and bustle next to the Airag bar, archery, camel riding and so on, there was also a Kazakh with his eagle.

 

 

Do you have to visit eagle hunters? Difficult to answer. Not as a tourist attraction, but I'm in favor of preserving it as a UNESCO  Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.


Links and annotations:
[1] Translation: "I raised a hawk for more than a year. / When I had tamed him the way I wanted him to be” - in: Wulf Segebrecht (ed.): The German Poem. From the Middle Ages to the present. S. Fischer, Hamburg 2005. P. 7. ISBN: 3-10-074440-3. "Der von Kürenberg or Der Kürenberger (fl. mid-12th century) was a Middle High German poet and one of the earliest minnesingers." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_von_K%C3%BCrenberg
[2] The Eagle Hunter https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-eagle-hunter.html
[3] http://www.jessbrooks.co.uk/blog/hunting-with-eagles-mongolia
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_statue_of_Genghis_Khan This is the tallest equestrian statue in the world so far (extra topic).

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