Central Asia

Samanid Mausoleum

From prehistory to the Middle Ages, people and inventions just gushed out of Central Asia. Already about 40,000 years ago, Central Asian people were probably the ones who invented sewing. By 5000 BC, the people of Central Asia were taming cattle, then horses and pigs, and bringing the world apples and carrots. Central Asian people invented cheese, yogurt, and felt. Beginning about 3000 BC, Indo-European people began to leave Central Asia, bringing with them another new invention: the wheeled horse-drawn wagon.

Another wave of Indo-European people left Central Asia about 2000 BC, and took over all of Europe as the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans. By 1500 BC Indo-Europeans also controlled what is now Turkey, as the Hittites, and what is now Afghanistan and Iran and Pakistan, and northern India, and they had invaded Egypt as the Hyksos. By 800 BC, Indo-Europeans were beginning to move into North Africa as Greek colonists. By 500 BC, Indo-Europeans controlled all of West Asia and Egypt as the Persian Empire, and by 100 BC Indo-Europeans controlled all of North Africa as part of the Roman Empire.

About this time, a second wave of people began to move out of Central Asia - the Altaic, Mongol and Turkish people. By 300 AD, the Huns were pushing into Europe to their west and the Rouran were attacking China to their east. By the 800s AD, Turkic people like the Gokturks, the Uighurs, and the Ghaznavids had taken over all of Central Asia. By 1100 AD, the Turkic Seljuks ruled West Asia. In the 1200s, Genghis Khan united all of Asia and Eastern Europe under the Mongol Empire, followed by Tamerlane's empire in the late 1300s, and then by the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Turkic people controlled not only West Asia and Eastern Europe, but also Egypt and North Africa.

Beginning around 500 BC with the Persian Empire, and continuing right through the Turkic and Mongol conquests, Central Asian people got rich from traders who carried silk, porcelain and spices from China and India to West Asia, Europe and Africa, and ivory, gold, glass and furs from Africa and Europe to China and India. The Silk Road continued through the Persian Empire, the Parthian Empire, the Sogdians, the Samanids, the Mongols, and the Ottomans, keeping Central Asia rich.