I think of Viking when I see that.

But then – I’m unashamedly biased :o)

From NC :

 

The identity of the “ancient” Chinese Mongols.

 References to the Mongol inhabitants of the Ancient China are unlikely to surprise anyone – the modern Mongols still live there, and the modern Mongolia borders with China. These Mongols belong to the Mongoloid race, as the name duly suggests. However, the “ancient Mongol” inhabitants of the ancient China were Europeans or Indo-Europeans, no less.

We learn of the following: “According to the evidence of their contemporaries, the Mongols, unlike the Tartars, were tall, blue-eyed and fair-haired, and wore beards” ([212], page 162).

Incredible. What became of them? The modern ethnic groups referred to as Mongols are completely different. L. N. Gumilev obviously wondered about this as well. He came up with a rather arbitrary theory aimed at providing the bewildered reader with an explanation of how the tall, bearded and blue-eyed “ancient” Mongols could have undergone a complete change of their racial type. We shall refrain from delving deep into his speculative constructions for a simple reason – we deem it unnecessary to explain it to the readers why the “Mongols”, or the Russians as mentioned in the “ancient Chinese” history were tall, fair-haired, bearded and, occasionally, even blue-eyed.

All of this leads one to the thought that the “Chinese history” before the XV century A. D. must reflect European events – to some extent, at the very least. Later on, the European chronicles ended up in China and became included into local history as its initial part. We already know of many such examples – this is how English history was created, for instance, qv in CHRON4. Chronicles of Byzantium and the Horde, relating the history of Europe and the Mediterranean region, were taken to the British Isles by the descendants of the crusaders who fled Byzantium after its fall in 1453, and then erroneously served as the foundation of the history of the British Isles.