Central Asian Literature
People speaking Mongolian
Around 3000 BC, most people in Central Asia spoke one of three different kinds of languages. Some people spoke Indo-European languages like Sogdian or Tocharian. Other people spoke East Iranian languages like Pashto. And some people, especially in the eastern part of Central Asia, spoke Altaic languages like Turkish or Mongolian (nobody is sure whether Turkish is really related to Mongolian or not).
Around 2000 BC, the Indo-Europeans spread out to live in Iran and Afghanistan, and so more people spoke Indo-European languages like Sogdian and not so many people in Central Asia spoke East Iranian languages. By 1000 BC, most people in western Central Asia spoke an Indo-European language and most people in eastern Central Asia spoke a Turkish/Mongolian language.
Beginning about 300 AD, Turkic and Mongolian speakers like the Rouran began to conquer land from the Indo-Europeans. By the time of the Mongol Empire in the 1200s AD, most people in Central Asia spoke a Turkic or Mongolian language, though on the western side of the Ural Mountains people still spoke Indo-European languages like Russian, Ukranian, or Armenian.
People may have started to write some of the Indo-European languages like Scythian down by around 650 BC, long after their neighbors to the south in China and West Asia, but earlier than the Germans in Europe to their west. If they did write, it was only short lines here and there - there aren't any written Scythian stories or poems. By the 1100s AD, people were writing Russian epic poems like the Tale of Igor's Campaign. They also wrote biographies of Russian saints. About 1475 AD, a Russian traveler wrote an account of his visit to India.
Nobody wrote down anything in Turkish until about 700 AD. After that, around 700 AD, Turkish poets began to sing long poems like the Alpamysh, the Book of Dede Korkut and the Manas epic. (Compare these to Beowulf, composed in Europe about the same time). By around 1400 AD, somebody wrote down the Book of Dede Korkut.
Why did people want to punch Socrates?
Where did Egyptians bury your liver?
How old are the Rocky Mountains?
What does a half-timbered house look like?
How do you spin wool?
(a project)
Nobody wrote down anything in Mongolian until 1227 AD, the year that Genghis Khan died (and then it was just a short thing). Instead, Mongolian poets sang long poems called üligers, usually about a hero who fights a monster called a manggus. The manggus has many heads, and the hero always wins. For example, poets sang the Epic of King Gesar in the 1400s AD, though nobody wrote it down until the 1700s. About 1240 AD, somebody wrote a poem about Genghis Khan's life called "The Secret History of the Mongols".
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.
