Central Asian History
Nomads were travelling around Central Asia probably by 50,000 BC or so. Around 3000 BC, these nomads figured out how to tame horses and ride them. Riding horses made them much more powerful, and richer - they could take care of more cattle, and they could conquer other people by shooting arrows and throwing spears from their horses.
By 1200 BC, some of these people left Central Asia and moved south into Iran in West Asia, where they became known as the Persians and the Medes.
By about 500 BC, we hear from the Greek historian Herodotus about the Scythians, who used their horses to keep sheep and cows in the area north of the Black Sea (modern Ukraine and Russia).
Beginning around 300 AD, the Scythians (SITH-ee-uns) were taken over by other groups. One was the Sarmatians, who were closely related to the Scythians, but others came from further away. Of these, the Ostrogoths came probably from Poland, but the Slavs, Avars, and Huns seem to have come from further east. The Huns, or Hsiung-Nu, came all the way across Asia from China, where they had been pushed out by the Han Dynasty.
Then beginning in the 700's AD, the Vikings began to use the Dnieper and the Volga as trade routes to the south, and gradually cooperated with the Slavs to form the country of Russia.
In the 1200's, Genghis Khan was able to unite the Mongols (from modern Mongolia) and they united all of Central Asia and beyond, from China to India to Russia and Hungary. The Mongol empire promoted trade, and created peace throughout Asia. But the Mongol empire collapsed in the early 1300's because of the plague, and Central Asia collapsed into a lot of small kingdoms.
Central Asia was united again for a short time under
Tamerlane in the later 1300's. Tamerlane was a Mongol from what is now
Uzbekistan, whose family had taken up Turkish
ways of life. His capital was Samarkand. He controlled Turkey, Russia,
and all the way to India.
But he died in 1405 on his way to conquer China.
Tamerlane's empire collapsed after he died.
To find out more about Central Asian history, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Tales
Told in Tents: Stories from Central Asia
by Sally Pomme Clayton (2000). For kids.
Empire Of The Mongolians, by Michael Burgan (2005). Young adult.
