The Juyan Lake Basin lies along the route of the Northern Silk Road, which is about twenty-six hundred kilometers in length, connecting the ancient Chinese capital of Xian to the west over the Pamir Mountains to emerge in Kashgar before linking to ancient Parthia.

According to C. Michael Hogan, this route greatly expanded in its usage after the Han Dynasty pushed back the northern tribes in the latter part of the first millennium BCE.

Khara-Koto, a city in what is today western Inner Mongolia, near the Juyan Lake, had been founded in 1032 and had become a thriving center of Tangut trade in the eleventh century.

There are remains today of thirty-foot-high ramparts and two-foot-thick outer walls—as much as forty-five yards to a side.

The walled fortress is taken by Genghis Khan in 1225, but—contrary to a widely circulated misunderstanding—the city will continue to flourish under Mongol overlordship.