The effective humidity, resulting from the balance between evapotranspiration and precipitation, largely controls the environmental conditions under the highly continental, semi-humid to arid climate of Mongolia. Minor variations of temperature and precipitation have resulted in considerable environmental changes over the Holocene, affecting vegetation composition and density, soil formation, geomorphological activity, desertification processes, lake level and glacier distribution. Thus, various paleoclimatic archives have been investigated in several studies over the last decades. Here, we present an overview of the existing reconstructions of climatic changes over the Late Glacial and Holocene. The aim of this work is to obtain a spatially differentiated synthesis of the currently available paleoenvironmental information, and to point to existing contradictions and knowledge gaps. Our results suggest that during the Late Glacial, dry and cold conditions dominated, whereas the early Holocene was warm, and characterized by increasing humidity. 6000 years ago, the temperature began to decrease. Enhanced aridity occurred in the rain shadow east of the Altai and Khangai Mountains, pointing to increasing influence of the westerlies. In the Valley of Great Lakes, east of the Altai Mountains, the Late Glacial was characterized by high lake levels that steadily decreased over the Holocene. In the Valley of Gobi Lakes, south of the Khangai Mountains, high lake levels persisted from the early Holocene until the beginning of the mid-Holocene. In contrast, the lake level of Telmen Nuur, north of the Khangai Mountains, remained low until the end of the mid-Holocene. Periods of enhanced eolian transport and deposition occurred from the Late Glacial until the early Holocene, and again during the late Holocene. In between, during the mid-Holocene, no soil erosion by eolian and fluvial processes took place over large areas. The present state of research shows that the limited number of investigated archives and the unbalanced ...