HUMANITIES INSTITUTE TURKIC HISTORY – Ancient Period Peter B Golden, PhD PART I – Introduction Central Asia : Geography Introduction The Geographical setting. The region comprises an area from the Volga-Ural zone to the northern borderlands of China. It includes the present day states of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as the Tatarstan and Bashqortostan republics and western and southern Siberia in the Russian Federation, Mongolia as well as the Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) autonomous regions in the People’s Republic of China. Ecology. It is an area of striking ecological contrasts, frigid winters, scorching summers, oases, deserts, steppes, forest-steppe and the taiga of the northlands. Far from any oceans, it receives, overall, little precipitation. Erosion and desiccation are an ongoing problem. Much of the region, which historically, has also comprised parts of the North Caucasus, southern Russia and Ukraine, consists of steppe lands extending from the forests of Manchuria to the Hungarian Plain. Rivers. The river systems are marked by inland drainage. Rivers, such as the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, Talas, Ili, Tarim as well as those of Siberia (Ob’-Irtysh, Yenisei and Lena) have never been important routes of communication. The overflow of some, such as the Amur Darya (Oxus) allows for agriculture as do the oases and elaborate irrigations systems that have been built to retain the runoff from the snow-covered mountaintops. Readings D. Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, 1-40. D. Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, xv-xxiii, 3-20. Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, 13-27 Recommended Owen Lattimore, The Inner Asian Frontiers of China Questions 1. What are the definitions of Central Asia and why do they differ? 2. What role has geography and climate played in shaping the dynamics of Central Asian history? Can we speak of geographical determinism?