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Why Nobody Lives In 99% Of Mongolia
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Mar 31, 2025
Going to therapy is a sign of strength, not weakness. BetterHelp makes therapy simple, with 10% off your first month to help you get started: https://betterhelp.com/generalknowledge (In paid partnership with BetterHelp) Become a member on Patreon & get your name in the credits + exclusive content! https://www.patreon.com/generalknowledge In this video I explore why Mongolia, despite being the world's largest landlocked nation at 1.5 million square kilometers, has a population of only 3.5 million people, resulting in the lowest population density globally at about 2 people per square kilometer. Understanding key factors such as the country's harsh terrain, dominated by mountains and the Gobi Desert, and its extreme climate with long, cold winters and short summers, making agriculture and permanent settlements very difficult. I also discuss Mongolia's rich nomadic culture, with approximately 30 to 40% of its population still leading traditional nomadic lifestyles, moving their yurts multiple times a year in search of better pastures for their livestock. Additionally, I examine historical influences, including periods of Chinese and Russian control, which have impacted population distribution, leading to a significant number of ethnic Mongols residing outside Mongolia's current borders - namely in China's Inner Mongolia region (which actually has more Mongols than Mongolia proper). TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 How Mongolia Is Empty 02:12 BetterHelp Partnership 03:36 The main causes behind desertification 04:06 The Terrain - Mountains & Deserts 05:26 Climate - Cold, Icy and Harsh 06:56 The Nomadic Lifestyle 08:11 Chinese Conquest & Soviet Influence 11:35 Patreon Credits 12:14 Mongolian Throat Singing Stay up to date on more content from me: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@general.knowledge.yt Twitter: https://twitter.com/GKonYoutube
View Video Transcript
0:00
Mongolia is empty
0:13
And what's strangest about that is that it's a huge country. It's the largest landlocked nation in the world at 1.5 million square kilometers
0:24
I mean, if you drag it over Europe, it's basically all of Central Europe. It's the 18th biggest country in the world, yet in terms of population, it's the 131st
0:34
Only 3.5 million people live there today. And when you put these two factors together, you end up with a country that has a very
0:42
very low population density of only about 2 people per square kilometer
0:47
It's the country with the lowest population density in the world, and as a reference
0:51
the US average is 38 people per square kilometer. In Europe, it's closer to 34
0:57
Not only are those two people per square kilometer already a super low value
1:01
but it goes even lower when you split the country into its regions
1:05
The capital of Ulaanbaatar has the highest rate at around 311 people per square kilometer
1:12
hosting 1.6 million people, essentially half of the country's population in less than 1% of the land
1:19
But most provinces are below one. Only a couple of regions and main urban centers are above two
1:24
and if we put all the main cities together, that accounts for around 70% of the population
1:30
with less than 5% of the land. So in this video, I want to try and figure out why that is the case
1:37
Why do so few people live in Mongolia when it's one of the largest countries in the world
1:42
And most of all, why is 99% of the territory essentially empty
1:47
If you want a quick answer and don't want to watch the rest of the video, It's the weather, terrain, the fact they've been nomads for most of history and are today to some
1:55
extent, and the fact that China and Russia kept getting in the way. But if you want more detail
2:00
please keep watching the video. Now, for the small amount of people that live outside of
2:15
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month at betterhelp.com slash general knowledge. And now, let's get back to the video
3:36
So, Mongolia is huge, but despite that, it is empty. And today, I want to try and understand and explain to you the three factors that I think are behind that
3:46
First, the country's harsh terrain and climate, typical of the Mongolian steppes
3:51
Two, the fact that historically they are an ematic society, and even today that remains a reality for many people there
3:57
and 3. How their people got colonized, occupied and conquered by their two giant neighbors of Russia and China
4:06
Let's start with number 1. Terrain and then climate. Most of Mongolia is covered by mountains and rolling plateaus
4:13
They have 4 major mountain ranges inside it which is a lot for a single country
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The highest are the Altai Mountains which stretch across the west and southwest regions of the country
4:25
Northern and western Mongolia are also seismically active zones with frequent earthquakes and extinct
4:32
volcanoes. This topography map illustrates it well. The west is mostly mountains while the east is
4:37
mostly occupied by a plain, although the southern third of it is part of the Gobi Desert, which
4:43
fun fact, is named after the Mongol word for desert. So when we use the term Gobi Desert
4:48
we're essentially calling it desert desert, with the north and west being taken up by mountains
4:53
and the South by Desert. It's like when you're searching for an apartment and it says it has 75
4:58
square meters but then you go and visit it and most of it is a storage room and some useless patio
5:03
and then you end up with actually like 30 square meters of space you can actually use. The technical
5:09
size is big but the active size, if that's a term, isn't that big. This immediately tells us why so
5:15
much of it is empty. Mountains and deserts aren't suitable places for people to live in. You can't
5:20
access most natural resources, you can't farm, and you can't build houses or infrastructure
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And the climate that is associated with those terrain features doesn't help either
5:31
There are three Kopen Geiger climate types that are prevalent in Mongolia. Arid desert in the south
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arid steppe in the center, and dry winter in the north, all of them being super cold
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Winters are very cold and summers are very short. The average temperatures are below freezing level
5:47
from November to March. Winter nights go as low as 40 degrees negative Celsius. For you to get an
5:53
idea, the average temperature in Antarctica is minus 57, which is pretty close. Most of the
5:58
country is also covered by permafrost, permanent ice, which makes farming impossible and construction
6:04
and road building very difficult. They average 257 cloudless days a year. With that little rain
6:11
and with so much cold farming isn just hard it is almost impossible Official statistics list less than 1 of the country land as suitable farmland 10 are forest and the remaining 89 pasture or desert But
6:26
livestock maintenance is also a challenge. They have seasonal snow or sandstorms
6:32
depending on the region. They even have a term for it, ZUD, which is a periodic disaster in which
6:38
large numbers of livestock die because they are unable to feed themselves due to the harsh climate
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If you have to come up with a term for something, it's because it happens pretty often
6:48
If you can't grow food, have livestock, or build houses and infrastructure in most of your country
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it makes sense that you won't live in those places. So now that we've understood the impact of weather and terrain
6:59
which I do think are the two main factors at play here, let's take a look at the other ones
7:04
The nomadic aspect needs to be taken into account. Not only were Mongols historically a nomad people over time
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but even today at least 30 and up to 40% of the country are nomad
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This means that they live in traditional dwellings called yurts, which are often deconstructed and moved to a new location
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Some Mongols do this two to four times a year. The reason why is connected to the environment too
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They move around to escape poor weather, but moving around all the time makes it so that you can't set up effective farming systems
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even in the 1% of land where that would work. And so you can't feed a growing population
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People might also be less likely to marry and have children with someone they meet in a temporary location
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because they know they will be leaving soon and the partner might not be willing to relocate with them
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It's interesting to think how the nomadic features of the Mongols once led them to travel and conquer the largest empire the world has ever seen
7:59
I mean, some say that 0.5% of the world's population can trace its heritage to Genghis Khan
8:05
but today, that feature of being constrained to modern borders makes their population growth very difficult
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And I think speaking of borders and conquest is the perfect moment to transition to the third factor that influences their low population
8:18
having two giants as neighbors, Russia and China. While the modern borders of Mongolia are still large, although much smaller than the peak of their empire
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they're not a true representation of the land in which Mongol people live
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Most estimates point to the majority of ethnic Mongols living outside of Mongolia
8:36
And these aren't immigrants, they live in adjacent lands that were conquered by, sometimes Russia, but most of all, China
8:44
About two-thirds of Mongolia's border with China is called the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
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It's a part of China and hosts about 4 million people of Mongol ethnicity
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I mean, think about this, the largest group of Mongol people doesn't live inside Mongolia
9:00
An additional 2 million people lived throughout the rest of China, making it so that Chinese
9:04
Mongolians are almost twice as many as Mongolians that live in Mongolia proper, the reason why
9:10
it can be traced mostly to the conquest of both inner and outer Mongolia during the Qin dynasty
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period of imperial China. Mongol Khans in the 17th century were very weakened by local disunity
9:22
among tribes and so the Chinese swooped in and conquered the territory ruling it for over 200 years until 1912 Qing rule implemented certain practices that didn contribute to Mongol population growth
9:33
at the time. Some accused them of implementing Buddhism to control the population, charging extra
9:38
taxes of livestock to those who wouldn't convert, and even rewarding those who became
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monks and pursued no offspring or family. I'm not sure if this is true, but the reality is that in the 1920s, about one third of the
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male population of Mongolia were monks. Mongolia became independent in 1912, they were the stage
9:57
of conflicts within Russia's internal conflict after white army general Baron Ungern defeated
10:02
Chinese forces that had briefly occupied outer Mongolia again and then the Soviets helped them
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regain independence but under close Soviet influence becoming the Mongolian People's Republic
10:13
The USSR conducted many purges, eliminating political leaders but also Buddhist monks
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giving Stalin an excuse to potentially wipe out about a third of the country's men
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The Soviets also blocked migration from other Mongol people within Russia back to Mongolia, namely the Buriat, one of the largest ethnic groups in Siberia
10:33
which are closely connected to the Mongols. In fact there's a quote by Comintern leader
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Bohomir Smetl that said, The people of Mongolia are not important, the land is important
10:44
Later on Chinese Mongols were also somewhat persecuted during the Great Cultural Revolution of Communist China, massacres took place in Inner Mongolia
10:52
ethnic minorities were suppressed within China with bilingual education being removed, for instance
10:58
In Inner Mongolia, around 1 million people were persecuted with the aim of preventing
11:02
their political independence and potential reunification with Mongolia. This earlier map of 1917 shows us that potential reunified country with, by the way, a population of around
11:12
2.5 million people, showing us how little it has grown over the past 100 years. After the fall of
11:18
the USSR, the country has transitioned into a democracy peacefully and its relations with China
11:24
have also become normalized, but the history of conquest, influence, and repression by both Russia
11:29
and China still takes its toll on the country today, especially in its population count. So
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that is why most of Mongolia is empty and why it has such a low population overall
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What do you think about this? Let me know in the comments along with any other suggestions of less populated areas of the world that I could do a video on
11:47
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11:51
If you want to join our community of about 50 paid supporters there you will be very welcome and you get to enjoy a few benefits in addition to directly supporting the channel, which I really appreciate
12:02
If you're not interested that's totally fine, thank you for watching this video and I will see you next time for more general knowledge
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