Noin-Ula burial site
The cultural affinity of the Xiongnu was with the peoples of southern Siberia and Central Asia; with the Chinese they exchanged arrows rather than culture: the Xiongnu shot with hand bows, while Chinese employed crossbows, although the Chinese had developed the crossbow from the traditional hand bows. Lev Gumilev elaborates the roots of the Chinese cultural influence found in the Noin-Ula cemetery. The Chinese culture was spread not only by material objects, but also by population admixture. There were populations of Xiongnu that have live under the Han rule as military allies. The Chinese migrated continuously to the steppes, the first big wave arriving in the 3rd century BC during the Tsin dynasty (Pin. "Qin"), when captured Chinese became subjects of the Chanuys, a process repeated during the following centuries. The numerous Han people who deserted and entered Chanuy service (for example, Vey Lüy, Li Lin) also taught the Xiongnu the subtlety of diplomacy and martial arts. Populations of the Xiongnu people also lived under Han rule, mostly serving as military allies under Han command. The capture of populations of Xiongnu by the Han forces in a series of Han versus Hun wars also contributed to additional ethnic integration of the north-central Asian neighbors.
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu-Hun hypothesis originated with the 18th-century French historian Joseph de Guignes, who noticed that ancient Chinese scholars had referred to members of tribes associated with the Xiongnu by names similar to "Hun", albeit with varying Chinese characters. Étienne de la Vaissière has shown that, in the Sogdian script used in the so-called "Sogdian Ancient Letters", both the Xiongnu and Huns were referred to as γwn ("xwn"), indicating that the two were synonymous. Although the theory that the Xiongnu were precursors of the Huns known later in Europe is now accepted by many scholars, it has yet to become a consensus view. The identification with the Huns may be either incorrect or an oversimplification (as would appear to be the case with a proto-Mongol people, the Rouran, who have sometimes been linked to the Avars of Central Europe).