The Dingling are an ancient people mentioned in Chinese historiography in the context of the 1st century BCE. They are assumed to have been an early Turkic-speaking people, whose original constituents mainly assimilated into the Xiongnu and Xianbei groups. They originally lived on the bank of the Lena River in the area west of Lake Baikal, gradually moving southward to Mongolia and northern China. They were subsequently part of the Xiongnu Empire, and thus presumably related to the invaders known as Huns in the west. Around the 3rd century they were assimilated into the Tiele, also named Gaoche (高車) or Chile (敕勒), who gradually expanded westward into Central Asia, expelled from Mongolia by the Rouran and establishing a state  Turpan in the 5th century. The Tiele were a collection of  early Turkic  tribes, largely descended from the Chile.