Until the 1940s, Tibet was no more than a “blank space on the map” for the outsiders, and the first on the spot report on Tibetan people was about religious lifestyle and the meeting with monks in the monasteries. To this day, the most Tibetans are devout Buddhists. Some practitioners of Islam & Catholicism can also be seen in Tibet, especially around Lhasa & Yanjing.

Along with the ethnic Tibetans, people of other ethnicity like Menpa, Luopa, Han Chinese, Hui, Sherpa, & Deng also inhabit the region. However, ethnic Tibetans constitute more than 92% of the population in the region.

A controversy over Tibet population is that while People's Republic of China claims that the number of Tibetans has risen from 2.7 million to 5.4 million since 1954 thanks to the non-applicability of China’s one-parent-one-child policy in Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s government in exile accuses China of ethnic cleansing and claims the population to have fallen from 6.3 million to 5.4 million since 1959.

The origin of the Tibetan people remains an anthropological puzzle to this date. While the Tibetans themselves claim to be descendants of a monkey & an ogress, it’s also clear that Tibetans share differ from the Mongols in some ways. Another interesting fact about the Tibetans is their adaptability to high altitudes & cold temperatures.