Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. According to Prof. B.S. Dhillon [1], The original home of the Jats was in Central Asia. During the early part of the Christian era, most of the Jats were uprooted by the Mongol people from their homeland in Central Asia (after their ruling for over one thousand years, Chinese Authorities constructed the 1500 miles long the Great Wall of China at the cost of the lives of 400,000 workers. Today this wall is nicknamed as the longest cemetery in the world (all the workers who died were buried inside the wall), and the only man-made object visible from the outer space. In turn Jats invaded India to the South and the Roman Empire in the West. Thus, they established themselves as (Alans) in France, Spain, Portugal and so on, in the fifth century A.D.
The Central Asia region
Though various definitions of its exact composition exist, no one definition is universally accepted. Despite this uncertainty in defining borders, it does have some important overall characteristics. For one, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, Western Asia, South Asia, and East Asia. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.
The nations of Central Asia are a conglomeration of people located in the "centralized" locale of the Asian hemisphere, landlocked on one side with the western-most Asian Turkic regions, demarcation in the Eastern/South-Eastern Indian mountainous regions, and finally the northern Russia. Majority of these nations have spheres of influence included from all of these borders, as they are mostly comprised of countries influenced by Soviet Russia.
To a certain extent, it is largely coextensive with Turkestan. Roughly speaking, Central Asia consists of states like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Mongolia is also part. Major rivers of the region include the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya and the Hari River. Major bodies of water include the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash, both of which are part of the huge west/central Asian endorheic basin that also includes the Caspian Sea. Both of these bodies of water have shrunk significantly in recent decades due to diversion of water from rivers that feed them for irrigation and industrial purposes. Water is an extremely valuable resource in arid Central Asia, and can lead to rather significant international disputes.
History of Central Asia
The history of Central Asia has been determined primarily by the area's climate and geography of Asia. The aridity of the region makes agriculture difficult, and its distance from the sea cut it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region. Nomadic horse peoples of the steppe dominated the area for millennia.
Relations between the steppe nomads and the settled people in and around Central Asia were marked by conflict. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to warfare, and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily potent people in the world, due to the devastating techniques and ability of their horse archers.[2] Periodically, tribal leaders or changing conditions would organize several tribes into a single military force. Many of these tribal coalitions included the Huns' invasion of Europe, Turkic migrations into Transoxiana, the Wu Hu attacks on History of China and most notably the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia.
Prehistory
Recent genetic studies have concluded that humans arrived in the region 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, making the region one of the oldest known sites of human habitation. The archaeological evidence of population in this region is sparse, whereas evidence of human habitation in Africa and Australia prior to that of Central Asia is well-known. Some studies have also identified this region as the likeliest source of the populations who later inhabited Europe, Siberia, and North America.[3] The region is also often considered to be the source of the root of the Indo-European languages.
As early as 4500 BCE, small communities had developed permaneant settlements and began to engage in agricultural practices as well as herding. Around this time, some of these communities began the domestication of the horse. Initially, the horses were bred solely for their meat, as a source of food. However, by 4000 BCE it is believed that they were used for transportation purposes; wheeled wagons began making an appearance during this time. Once the utility of the horse as a means of transportation became clear the horses (actually ponies) began being bred for strength, and by the 3rd millennium BCE they were strong enough to pull chariots. By 2000 BCE, war chariots had spoked wheels, thus being made more manoeuverable, and dominated the battlefields. The growing use of the horse, combined with the failure, roughly around 2000 BCE, of the always precarious irrigation systems that had allowed for extensive agriculture in the region, gave rise and dominance of pastoral nomadism by 1000 BCE, a way of life that would dominate the region for the next several millennia.
Scattered nomadic groups maintained herds of sheep, goats, horses, and camels, and conducted annual migrations to find new pastures (a practice known as transhumance). The people lived in yurts (or gers) - tents made of hides and wood that could be disassembled and transported. Each group had several yurts, each accommodating about five people.
While the semi-arid plains were dominated by the nomads, small city-states and sedentary agrarian societies arose in the more humid areas of Central Asia. The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of the early 2nd millennium BCE was the first sedentary civilization of the region, practicing irrigation farming of wheat and barley and possibly a form of writing. Bactria-Margiana probably interacted with the contemporary Bronze Age nomads of the Andronovo culture, the originators of the spoke-wheeled chariot, who lived to their north in western Siberia, Russia, and parts of Kazakhstan, and survived as a culture until the 1st millennium BCE. These cultures, particularly Bactria-Margiana, have been posited as possible representatives of the hypothetical Aryan culture ancestral to the speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages (see Indo-Iranians), and possibly the Uralic and Altaic cultures as well.
Later the strongest of Sogdian city states of the Fergana Valley rose to prominence. After the 1st century BCE, these cities became home to the traders of the Silk Road and grew wealthy from this trade. The steppe nomads were dependent on these settled people for a wide array of goods that were impossible for transient populations to produce. The nomads traded for these when they could, but because they generally did not produce goods of interest to sedentary people, the popular alternative was to carry out raids.
A wide variety of people came to populate the steppes. Nomadic groups in Central Asia included the Huns and other Turkic peoples, the Tocharians, Persian people, Scythians and other Indo-Europeans, and a number of Mongol groups. Despite these ethnic and linguistic differences, the steppe lifestyle led to the adoption of very similar culture across the region.