CENTRAL ASIAN PEOPLE

inhabitants of the area of Central Asia. Central Asia consists of the inland part of Asia, farthest removed from the oceans, in the midst of the greatest landmass on Earth. Because of its location, prevailing winds, and drainage, it is a zone of great aridity extending from the Caspian Sea in the west to northwestern China and Mongolia in the east and from southern Siberia in the north to northern Iran and Afghanistan in the south. Throughout the region, rainfall never exceeds 12 inches (300 millimetres) in an average year, far too little to grow grain; parts of Central Asia receive less than 4 inches of rain per year. Near mountain ranges, rainfall is higher than average, and there is a more rapid change from one climatic and ecological zone to the next. The prevailing winds blow from west to east, losing much of their moisture before reaching the inland parts of Asia. Consequently, agriculture requires irrigation. There are four major natural, or ecological, zones of Central Asia: steppe, steppe-desert, desert, and mountain. Only in the 20th century have human beings disturbed the ecological processes in the area. These ecological zones extend in broad bands from east to west across Eurasia. The northernmost zone is the steppe, a belt of grassland covering Mongolia and northern Kazakstan and extending into southern Siberia and eastern Europe. The terrain is flat, almost featureless, with few rivers and mountains. The grass cover is denser toward and within the European portions, where there is somewhat more rainfall; in eastern Kazakstan the grass cover thins out, becoming the dry steppe. Mongolia is a high-altitude steppe averaging about 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) above sea level; Kazakstan is a low-altitude steppe lying at sea level. Steppe-desert (semidesert) is grassland drier than the steppe, lying at low altitude and not extending into Europe or Siberia. There the grass cover is thinner than in the steppe, with patches bare of plant cover increasing in size and number toward the south. It is likewise flat terrain with few watercourses and no mountains. In the desert, grasses give way to dryland vegetation. There lie the innermost parts of Asia, south of the steppe and steppe-desert, farthest from the moisture-bearing winds and the seas, with most intensive water evaporation. The Central Asian deserts are vast, spreading from the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan to the Kyzylkum of Uzbekistan and southern Kazakstan, to the Takla Makan Desert of western China, to the immense Gobi of China and Mongolia. The mountain zone lies in southeastern Central Asia, the Pamirs rising almost five miles above sea level as part of the highest mountain system in the world. Cereal grasses, including forms of wheat, are native to the region, being found wild even at present. They were domesticated by the early farmers and have been continuously grown since. Other crops, such as rice and cotton, are historically recent imports. The grasses of the steppe and steppe-desert provide good livestock fodder. Animals native to the steppe include the wild horse and wild cattle, the camel, and the wild goat. The wild yak is native to the mountains of Tibet and Mongolia, and other mountain fauna include wild sheep and goats. All these animals, when domesticated, play roles in the herding economy and are raised for food, trade, and transport. This is a region of largely interior drainage. The few rivers are shallow, narrow, and shifting, and many are dry in summer. They flow into the Caspian and Aral seas and Lake Balqash and lesser lakes of the region or into the sands of the desert. These rivers are of limited usefulness for transport and navigation, but they irrigate bands of fields along their courses. Transportation is chiefly overland, hence the importance of the domesticated animals. The historical significance of Central Asia to the world was that it served in the manner of a great inland sea, connecting China, India, Iran, and Europe by means of camel, ass, and horse caravans that moved goods and peoples, permitted military invasions, and spread technology, religions, ideas, and science through and across its breadth. Additional reading Lawrence Krader, Peoples of Central Asia, 3rd ed. (1971), is a general survey. Studies of the former Central Asian U.S.S.R. in particular include Geoffrey Wheeler, The Peoples of Soviet Central Asia (1966); William O. McCagg and Brian D. Silver (eds.), Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers (1979); Edward Allworth (ed.), The Nationality Question in Soviet Central Asia (1973), and Central Asia: 120 Years of Russian Rule, new ed. (1989); Shirin Akiner, Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. (1986); Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire (1986); and Michael Rywkin, Moscow's Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia, rev. ed. (1990). Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs (1987); and Edward A. Allworth, The Modern Uzbeks: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present: A Cultural History (1990), are also useful. Peoples and cultures of other Central Asian countries are described in Sechin Jagchid and Paul Hyer, Mongolia's Culture and Society (1979); Walther Heissig, The Religions of Mongolia (1980; originally published in German, 1970); M. Nazif Mohib Shahrani, The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan: Adaptation to Closed Frontiers (1979); and Melvyn C. Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall, Nomads of Western Tibet: The Survival of a Way of Life (1990). Lawrence Krader The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica