Old Turkic

Old Turkic, also known as East Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions from the Second Turkic Khaganate and later the Uyghur Khaganate, which makes it the earliest attested Common Turkic language. Judged by the datability of the written sources, the period of Old Turkic runs from slightly before 720 AD to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, and the article gives its era as the 5th to 13th centuries. It belongs to the Turkic family and its South Siberian branch, and its inscriptions were written in the Old Turkic script, known from the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia.