Skip to content
Curated category

Nomadic groups in Eurasia

  • Romani peopleThe Romani people have carried the same question for a thousand years: where do they come from? Linguistic scholars, geneticists, and historians have spent…
  • Afanasievo cultureThe Afanasievo culture was discovered beneath a mountain. Gora Afanasieva, a peak in what is now Khakassia, Russia, gave its name to one of the most…
  • ArkaimArkaim is a fortified settlement buried under the steppe of the Southern Urals for more than three thousand years, and on the 20th of June 1987, two high…
  • Kurgan hypothesisThe Kurgan hypothesis asks a question that cuts to the heart of human prehistory: where did the ancestors of half the world's languages come from?
  • Dzungar KhanateThe Dzungar Khanate was the last nomadic empire of Oirat Mongol origin, and at its height it stretched from southern Siberia in the north to Tibet in the…
  • HunsThe Huns arrived at the Volga River by 370 CE and within decades had shaken the foundations of the Roman world. They were a nomadic people from Central Asia…
  • BashkirsThe Bashkirs are a Turkic people indigenous to Russia, concentrated in a republic called Bashkortostan, straddling both sides of the Ural Mountains where…
  • Kushan EmpireThe Kushan Empire sat, for a time, at the absolute center of the ancient world. Historian Alain Daniélou put it plainly: "for a time, the Kushana Empire was…
  • CumansThe Cumans fought a war against the princes of Kievan Rus' that lasted 175 years. That conflict began in 1061, when a Cuman force under the chieftain Sokal…
  • BedouinThe Bedouin have a saying that cuts straight to the heart of how their world works: "I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my…
  • Mongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous empire in history. At its height it stretched from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe, reaching north into…
  • MongolsThe Mongols built the largest contiguous land empire in human history, stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the shores of Indonesia, and from Japan to…
  • KipchaksThe Kipchaks left their name on an entire branch of the world's languages, yet for centuries nobody could agree on what that name actually meant.
  • Turkic peoplesTurkic peoples form one of the most geographically spread human groupings on earth, stretching from the forests of Siberia to the shores of the Mediterranean…
  • Golden HordeThe Golden Horde lived in tents whose color may have given the state its name. According to one account, the appellation Golden came from the golden hue of…
  • Proto-Indo-EuropeansThe Proto-Indo-Europeans are a postulated prehistoric people whose language gave rise to most of the tongues spoken across Europe and large parts of Asia…
  • PechenegsThe Pechenegs were a semi-nomadic Turkic people from Central Asia who, over the course of two centuries, reshaped the political map of medieval Europe more…
  • Pontic–Caspian steppeThe Pontic-Caspian Steppe stretches nearly a million square kilometers across Eastern Europe and into Central Asia. It spans northeastern Bulgaria and…
  • Anatoly KhazanovAnatoly Mikhailovich Khazanov was born on the 13th of December 1937 in Moscow, into a world where official history was a controlled substance.