Análisis de la liquidez y solvencia en base a indicadores

Mikhail Gorbachev’s more open Soviet policy allowed the establishment of U.S.-Mongolian diplomatic relations in 1987 and the normalization of Sino-Mongolian relations in 1989. As the Soviet bloc disintegrated in 1989–91, Mongolia found itself for the first time truly neutral and unaligned. China and Russia in 2000 still accounted for 37 percent and 23 percent of Mongolia’s foreign trade, respectively, yet other countries—Japan, the United States, the European Union, and South Korea—have become important as what Mongolia calls “third neigh- bors.” While good relations with Russia and China remain a vital priority, Mongolia has attempted to increase its freedom of action by cultivating relations with these “third neighbors,” both bilaterally and multi- laterally. Despite the occasionally acrimonious electoral debates, particularly over relations with China, this con- sensus runs through Mongolia’s elite in all parties.

Foreign aid has replaced Soviet aid in the Mongolian economy. Mongolia joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1990, the World Bank in 1991, and became a charter member of the World Trade Organization in January 1997. International aid, of which Japan is the largest national source and the ADB the largest multilateral source, exceeds US $300 million annually, in 1999 reach- ing US $92 per capita, one of the highest levels in the world. With this aid has come both fresh debt, added to the existing debt burden owed Russia, and a major role of multilateral aid organizations, such as the IMF, in deter- mining Mongolian economic policy. Aiming to solidify its relationship with the United States, Mongolia strongly supported the U.S. position in the first Gulf War of 1991, and sent 180 troops to join the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in 2003.

See alsoARCHAEOLOGY; CHINA AND MONGOLIA; ECON- OMY, MODERN; JAPAN AND THE MODERN MONGOLS; MONGO-

LIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC; MONGOLIA, STATE OF;

REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD; RUSSIA AND MONGOLIA; SOVIET

UNION AND MONGOLIA; THEOCRATIC PERIOD.

Further reading: Alicia J. Campi, “Early U.S.-Mongo-

lian Diplomatic Contacts,” Mongolia Survey, no. 6 (1999): 47–57; J. Tumurchuluun, “Mongolia’s Foreign Policy Revisited: Relations with Russia and the PRC into the 1990s,” in Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked

Cosmopolitan, ed. Stephen Kotkin and Bruce A. Elleman (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 277–289; Serge M. Wolff, “Mongol Delegations in Western Europe, 1925–1929, Parts I and II,” Journal of the Royal Central Asiatic Society 32 (1945): 289–298 and 33 (1946): 75–92. fossil record The present landmass of Eurasia can be divided into a number of terranes, which during the Pale- ozoic era, currently dated from 570 to 240 million years ago (mya), were minicontinents occupying separate tec- tonic plates in the ocean north of Gondwanaland, then on the south pole. These terranes came together (with the rest of the continents) to form the massive single con- tinent Pangea in the Triassic period (240–205 mya). Most of Mongolia appears to have been part of the Amuria plate, formed from smaller units in the Ordovician (500–435 mya), but the Khangai-Khentii areas occupied the margins of the Siberian plate. The Amuria plate moved northward from the southern tropics in the Cam- brian (570?–500 mya) to relatively high northern lati- tudes by the Triassic.

PALEOZOIC

Rocks from the Paleozoic show a typical sequence of marine fossils. Just before the Cambrian stromatolites (colonies of cyanobacteria, or “blue-green algae”) and oncolites (nodules of sand- or clay-covered cyanobacteria or algae) are common. In the Cambrian hard-bodied forms appear, first plankton, mollusks, hyoliths (mol- lusk-like fossils of uncertain classification), and bra- chiopods, and then trilobites and archeocyaths (reef-building spongelike animals). In the middle Ordovi- cian bryozoans, bivalve mollusks, and early coelenterates appear, and in the Silurian (435–410 mya) jawless fish. Devonian deposits (410–360 mya) show distinct zones of coastal, outer, and deep waters with brachiopods, tabu- late corals, and radiolarians (protozoan plankton with siliceous skeletons) dominating the respective zones. In the Carboniferous period (360–290 mya), fusilinids (an extinct type of foraminifera), bryozoans, corals, and sea lilies (crinoids) formed vast reefs. Mongolia’s first known land fossils, those of the giant club moss Lepidodendron, appeared in this period. Late in this period and in the succeeding Permian (290–240 mya), as the Amurian plate moved into higher latitudes, cooling climates were reflected in both land plants and sea animals.

MESOZOIC

By the Triassic the Amurian, North China, Kazakhstan, and Siberian plates had all come together, making Mon- golia an inland landmass. Conifers and horsetails domi- nate the land fossil record, now deposited in rivers and lakes, which shows clear differentiation between the cooler north and warmer south. In the Jurassic (205–138 mya) first the cooler, then the warmer flora dominates. Insect fossils have also been found—cockroaches, beetles,

dragonflies, and orthopterans—as well as fragmentary vertebrate remains. It was in the late Jurassic–early Creta- ceous that tectonic developments created in Mongolia the contrast of the low south-southeast and the mountainous north-northwest. From the late Cretaceous fossil-bearing deposits become restricted to the relatively low-lying Gobi.

The famous dinosaur fossils of Mongolia all date from the Cretaceous period (138–63 mya), when Mongolia experienced a warm climate with large lakes. Early Creta- ceous flora was mostly conifers: cheirolepids (extinct conifers with juniperlike leaves) and early pines, later suc- ceeded by Araucaria (relatives of the monkey-puzzle tree and Norfolk Island pine) and gingkos. In the early Creta- ceous the most common dinosaur form was the herbivore Psittacosaurus, progenitor of the horned DINOSAURS. Other fossils include herbivorous iguanadons, ankylosaurs, sauropods, and various carnivorous theropods. Bird feather impressions, lizards, early mammals, including placentals, and a wide variety of insects round out the faunal remains.

In the later Cretaceous vast lakes provided habitat for distinctive freshwater mollusks. The land fauna was now dominated by flowering plants and modern conifers. Dinosaurs, including Protoceratops, hadrosaurs (so-called duck-billed dinosaurs), ankylosaurs, theropods such as Tarbosaurus, a close relative of Tyrannosaurus, and smaller “ostrich dinosaurs,” established a classic late Mesozoic fauna, also including turtles, crocodiles, fish, lizards, and mammals. The richness and high quality of preservation of Mongolia’s Cretaceous vertebrata make it one of the world’s leading areas for research on dinosaurs, early mammals, and other fauna.

CENOZOIC

Mongolia’s terrain rose in the transition from the Creta- ceous to the Paleogene (63–24 mya), accentuating the Gobi-Khangai split as the Gobi lakes retreated. Forests of Taxodium (related to the bald cypress) and the broadleafed Trochodendroides dominated the lower Paleo- gene flora (Paleocene, 63–55 mya), while the fauna con- tains archaic mammals typical of Asia: insectivores, anagales (an extinct, mostly herbivorous order unique to Asia), various creodonts (archaic meat eaters), condy- larths (archaic ungulates), notoungulates (an extinct ungulate order later restricted to South America), pantodonts, dinocerates (uintatheres), and the probably egg-laying extinct mammalian order Multituberculata.

In the middle Paleogene (Eocene, 55–38 mya) early examples of the modern ungulate orders appear: artio- dactyls, including ancestral ruminants (tragulids) and piglike animals, and perrisodactyls, including early horses, tapirs, and brontotheres. After a warming period in the earlier Eocene, when myrtles, laurels, maples, and oak fossils were deposited in the Gobi, the collision of India with Asia first raised the Himalayas and began a

cooling and drying trend. Late Eocene flora included more grasses and in better-watered areas elms, beeches, aspens, and poplars. Rich fossil beds at Ergel Zoo (Erdene Sum, East Gobi) and Khoyor Zaan (Khöwsgöl Sum, East Gobi) show new rhinoceratoid families: hyracodontids (“running rhinoceroses”), hippopotamus-like amynodon- tids, and horse-sized indricotheres. Burrowing rodents (cylindrodontids) and field mice (cricetids) appear. A two-toed flightless crane, Ergilornis, and giant tortoises shared the habitat. In the late Paleogene (Oligocene, 38–24 mya) Mongolia acquired true savannah conditions, and the fauna became more diverse, with colossal indri- cotheres, rodents, lagomorphs (rabbits and pikas), and piglike and ruminant artiodactyls flourishing. The small ancestral rhinoceros Epiaceratherium (Alloceratops) was a characteristic element.

The Neogene period (24 mya to present) saw the

gradual elevation of the ALTAI RANGEand KHANGAI RANGE,

the formation of the GREAT LAKES BASIN between them,

and the initial formation of the current GOBI DESERT. Three-toed horses successively immigrating from North America, Anchitherium and Hipparion, supplied the most common remains. The Anchitherium fauna of the lower Neogene (early Miocene 24–5 mya) included an African immigrant, the early shovel-tusked elephant Gom- photherium, a small deerlike ruminant (Lagomeryx) immi- grated from Europe, and true deer (Dicroceras, Stephanocemas) native to Asia. The Hipparion fauna of the middle Neogene (late Miocene) included hornless rhinoceroses (Chilotherium), okapilike early giraffids (Palaeotragus and Samotherium), field mice (cricetids), and mice (murids). The Pliocene (5–1.8 mya) fauna con- tinued with Hipparion, gazelles, steppe rhinoceroses, ostriches, flightless storks, Amphipelargus, and pheasants. With the uplift of the northern mountains and the forma- tion of deep valleys, sedimentation and fossils (including a fragmentary ape find) were for the first time since the lower Cretaceous deposited in northern Mongolia.

The distribution of the mostly modern Pleistocene (1.8 mya to 10,000 years ago) fauna was heavily influ- enced by the oscillations between glacial and interglacial periods. Mongolian Pleistocene deposits are quite poor in fossils. Famous Ice Age megafauna—mammoths, wooly rhinoceroses, bisons—persisted until the very end of the epoch and were pictured in cave art at sites such as Khoid Tsenkher.

See also CLIMATE; FAUNA; FLORA; GOBI DESERT; MON- GOLIAN PLATEAU; PREHISTORY.

Further reading: Academy of Sciences, MPR, Infor-

mation Mongolia (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1990), 12–17.

Front Gorlos Mongol Autonomous County (Qian Gorlos, Guorluosi) Front Gorlos Mongol Autonomous County, in northeast China’s Jilin province, had a popula- tion of 544,302 in 1982, of which 30,762 (5.7 percent

were Mongol. The banner occupies 7,219 square kilome- ters (2,787 square miles) near the confluence of the Sun- gari (Songhua) and Nonni (Nen) Rivers in the Manchurian plain and is 120–260 meters (390–850 feet) above sea level. Approximately 32.4 percent of the terri- tory is occupied by pastures. The 366,300 head of live- stock in 1982 included about 148,700 pigs and 121,900 sheep. Corn is about 60 percent of the total grain and bean harvest of more than 250,000 metric tons (275,578 short tons).

In the 12th–13th centuries, the Gorlos (Middle Mon- golian, Ghorulas) was a clan of the MONGOL TRIBE. Sub-

mitting to the QING DYNASTYin 1625, the eastern Gorlos

clan was organized into two BANNERS(appanages), Gorlos

Front and Gorlos Rear banners, in Jirim league, each ruled by descendants of CHINGGIS KHAN’s brother Qasar. Chinese settled Front Gorlos from the 18th century, and the Mongols slowly became farmers. Massive CHINESE

COLONIZATIONfrom 1902 sparked an uprising led by Tog-

takhu Taiji. In 1910 the banner’s collective land system was officially dissolved.

The Japanese excluded Front and Rear Gorlos ban- ners from Manchukuo’s Mongol autonomous provinces of Khinggan established in 1932. After 1945 the Chinese Communists coopted Front Gorlos’s active Mongol nationalist movement, and in September 1955 it was made a Mongol autonomous county. Rear Gorlos banner was converted into Zhaoyuan county in 1956. In 1956 16,700, or 8.1 percent, of Front Gorlos’s inhabitants were ethnic Mongol. Despite their small percentage of the pop- ulation, 24.5 percent of upper- and mid-level cadres were Mongol in 1982.

See alsoINNER MONGOLIANS; KHORCHIN.

Further reading: G. Navaangnamjil, “A Brief Biogra-

phy of the Determined Hero Togtokh,” in Mongolian Heroes of the Twentieth Century, trans. Urgunge Onon (New York: AMS Press, 1976), 43–76.

Fuhsin SeeFUXIN MONGOL AUTONOMOUS COUNTY. funerary customs Traditional funerary customs on the Mongolian plateau have included at different times and in different social groups burial, cremation, and many forms of “sky burial,” or exposure of the body.

The earliest inhabitants of Mongolia left many graves

and grave monuments (see ELK STONES; PREHISTORY;

NOYON UUL; XIANBI; XIONGNU). Despite these numerous

finds, survey ARCHAEOLOGYindicates that the number of

actual graves is far fewer than one would expect given Mongolia’s population, offering indirect evidence for exposure of the dead. Medieval Chinese accounts indicate

that both the SHIWEI in the GREATER KHINGGAN RANGE,

sometimes considered ancestors of the Mongols, and the

Mongolic-speaking KITANS of eastern Inner Mongolia

exposed their dead in trees, but only until the flesh

decomposed, at which point the bones were burned. Even after building a powerful Chinese dynasty, Kitans

used the form of the YURTfor funeral urns or coffins in a

curious piece of nomad nostalgia.