Often referred to as the roof of the world, Tibet spans the world’s largest and, with average heights of over 4,000m, also the world’s highest plateau. The main language of Tibet is Tibetan; which comes in many varying dialects, but many Tibetans speak or understand some Mandarin except the nomadic tribes in the Far East Tibet. Tibetan is closely related to Burmese and Dzongkha (Language of Bhutan) and much more distantly to Chinese.
Historically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic Tibetans and some other ethnic groups. According to tradition the original ancestors of the Tibetan people, as represented by the six red bands in the Tibetan Flag are the Se, Mu, Dong, Tong, Dru and Ra.
