Abstract
The human and ecologic dimensions of Central Asia (CA) are rapidly changing; this fact is due, to some extent, to the stress affecting the physical environment, characterized by endorheic conditions and continentalism, and by other elements, deriving from political-cultural changes and transformations; above all, the position of this region, considering the technological, geo-political and geo-economic situation, makes these countries appear as central or peripheral compared to the wider Eurasiatic spaces. In fact, the significance of this region has been changing continuously. In its history it has often just been a remote and neglected land. In other cases, it has been the target of expansionism, a space and cache of resources to be exploited. Seldom has it been regarded as the cradle of original cultures, which would exert their influence on the wider world.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Ramazanova N., Berdenov Zh., Ramazanov S., Kazangapova N., Romanova S., Toksanbaeva S., Wendt Jan, 2019.
- 3.
Biraschi A.M., 2000.
- 4.
Ibn Khaldun, 1980.
- 5.
Erodoto, 1988.
- 6.
- 7.
A concept and a definition invented by Richthofen in the 1870s describing a set of traffic itineraries, that the merchants crossed possibly each one running for small segments, but connecting long distances for millennia; so similarly for many other variants in all the directions, overlying and combining with it (Barisitz Stephan, 2017:10).
- 8.
Namely, outposts on the long way to China; oral source Maryashev A.N., Kazak Academy; Mariyashev A.N., 1994.
- 9.
Yilmaz Harun, 2013:49; the but reason is evident, just with a glance to the map at a continental scale, since the other directions were blocked by natural obstacles: the North and the East ones by climatic and natural barriers (the Taiga, big rivers such as Amur and Aigun, frozen soil winters as in Eastern Siberia); the South direction was blocked by deserts (Gobi, Taklimakan) and later by Chinese Big Wall, that since the second century B.C. started to pose a significant barrier to nomad movements – that nevertheless were capable of periodically overcoming such wall, conquering and destroying the Chinese states. The better (and often only) chance was to take the westwards direction, invading and riding (literally) along the steppe corridor, in the (relatively) narrow continental strip between mountains, forest Taiga (in the north), “internal seas” and deserts, “opening the door” fighting and attacking occasionally the oppositions they were meeting on the road.
- 10.
- 11.
Yilmaz Harun, 2013:53.
- 12.
Von Humboldt A., 1975.
- 13.
In his nineteenth-century poem “Canto notturno di un pastore errante per l’Asia”, Giacomo Leopardi cites the travel of baron Meyendorff, namely his writing “Voyage d’Orenbourg à Boukhara fait en 1820”, inspired by such style of life, always attracting the interest of writers of the sedentary societies, representing the phenomenon of people without a home, continuously tirelessly wandering; Leopardi G. (1828).
- 14.
Braudel Fernand, 1979.
- 15.
- 16.
Dagiev Dagikhudo, 2014:110–111.
- 17.
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Jelen, I., Bučienė, A., Chiavon, F., Silvestri, T., Forrest, K.L. (2020). Premise: A Land of Extremes. In: The Geography of Central Asia. World Regional Geography Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61266-5_1
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