The Gokturks: A Gokturk coin, about 576-600 AD (Kyrgyzstan museum) (compare to Sassanian and Byzantine coins of the same time) Bumin Qaghan beats the Rouran About 550 AD, Bumin Qaghan [...]
Scythian comb,about 400 BC (Metropolitan Museum, New York) Most early Central Asian people were Indo-European, or Yamnaya. The biggest group may have been the Scythians. Until about 500 BC, the Scythians lived [...]
Dried sour yogurt balls in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (thanks to Jeff and Becca Zanatta) Central Asian meat and dairy The nomads who lived in Central Asia, like the Scythians, the Mongols and [...]
The Svyatoslav Family (Kiev, ca. 1000 AD) At the western end of Central Asia , Russian people, who were mostly farmers and not herdsmen in the Middle Ages, dressed more like their Byzantine [...]
After the collapse of the Mongol Empire in the end of the Middle Ages, scientists and doctors had to find homes in the courts of the smaller kingdoms that succeeded the Mongols. [...]
Catherine the Great Women had always been more equal to men in Central Asia than in China, West Asia, India or Europe, and women continued to do better in Central [...]
Leo Tolstoy (ca. 1900) The Mongol Empire spread reading and writing all across Central Asia. From the time of the Mongol Empire on, people in Central Asia were able to [...]
Uzbek ruler in his yurt (1509, probably at Samarkand, in Uzbekistan) The Uzbek empire After the collapse of the Mongol Timur's empire in the 1400s AD, many smaller states replaced the [...]
Important to Uighur history: Yakub Beg Uighurs become independent After the collapse of the Mongol Empire about 1600 AD, the Uighurs regained their independence. Earlier Uighurs Who were the Mongols? [...]
British soldiers in the Crimean War After Catherine the Great When Catherine the Great died in 1796 AD, her son Paul became the czar of Russia. Who was Catherine? All [...]
