History - Central Asia - page 404

History

Central Asia's epic history is of great continent-spanning empires, of Turkic nomadic
invasions and their interactions with settled Persian farmers and traders. Over the cen-
turies peoples, conquerors, cultures, religions and ideas have traversed the region's
steppes, deserts and mountain passes, creating a unique and sophisticated culture and
swinging the region alternately from the heartland of Asia to the middle of nowhere.

Early Hitory
Cultural continuity in Central Asia begins in the late 3rd millennium BC
with the Indo-Iranians, speakers of an unrecorded Indo-European dia-
lect related distantly to English. The Indo-Iranians are believed to have
passed through Central Asia and Afghanistan on their way from the In-
do-European homeland in southern Russia. From Central Asia, groups
headed southeast for India and southwest for Iran. These peoples herd-
ed cattle, forged iron, invented the wheeled chariot, and buried their
dead nobles in burial mounds (kurgans) . The Tajik people are linguistic
descendants of these ancient migrants. One of these subsequent Indo-
European groups was the Sakas (part of a people known as Scythians),
who have left kurgans, rock carvings and other remains across Central
Asia. The most spectacular Saka-era remnant is Kazakhstan's famous
'Golden Man' find, found within a 5th-century kurgan outside Almaty.
Central Asia's recorded history begins in the 6th century BC, when the
large Achaemenid empire of Persia (modern Iran) created client kingdoms
or satrapies (provinces) in Central Asia: Sogdiana (Sogdia), Khorezm
(later Khiva), Bactria (Afghan Turkestan), Margiana (Merv), Aria (Herat)
and Saka (Scythia). Sogdiana was the land between the Amu-Darya and
Syr-Darya rivers, called Transoxiana (Beyond the Oxus) by the Romans,
where Bukhara and Samarkand would later flourish. Khorezm lay on the
lower reaches of the Amu-Darya, south of the Aral Sea, where one day the
19th-century khans of Khiva would rule it from their walled city. Saka, the
steppe and desert extending north of the Tian Shan and Syr-Darya, was
the home of nomadic warriors until their way of life ended in the early
20th century.

See www.orient
arch.uni-halle.
de/ca/bud/bud.
htm for more on
the archaeology
of southeastern
Central Asia.

Excavations of
Scythian kurgans
in Kazakhstan
have revealed
skeletons of
female warriors
and priestesses,
raising con-
nections with
classical tales of
the Amazons.

40,000 BC
Remains of Nean-
derthal man found at
Aman-Kutan cave near
Samarkand date from
100,000 to 40,000 BC.

3500 BC
The Botai Culture of
northern Kazakhstan
is one of the irst to
domesticate horses, as
horse-based nomadism
becomes the dominant
steppe culture.

3000 BC
The Bronze Age site
of Gonur-Depe in
the Margiana Oasis
(Turkmenistan) is
considered by some
archaeologists to be
one of the great cities
of the ancient world
and an early centre of
Zoroastriansim.