innEr asia Inner Asia extends south from Siberia in the west as far as the chain of mountain ranges that separate the Indian Subcon-tinent from Asia proper and in the east to the fertile
Trang 1tains on its southern edge and run northward into the Arctic
and Pacific oceans From west to east these rivers are the Ob,
the Yenisei, the Lena, and the Amur
The northern fringe of Siberia is tundra, sparsely
inhab-ited by human beings South of this is a wide belt of ancient
coniferous and deciduous forest Agriculture is difficult in
Siberia for several reasons The summers are not particularly
warm, and the winters are the coldest of any large landmass
that is not actually glaciated (such as Antarctica or
Green-land) Because of this, much of the land has permafrost at a
depth of less than a yard; these lands are forested only by the
Siberian larch, which has specially evolved a shallow root
sys-tem to adapt to this condition Average rainfall is less than
20 inches (except in the Kamchatka Peninsula at the extreme
eastern edge of Siberia, which is a temperate rain forest) Thus
Siberia was inhabited in medieval times by tribal peoples who
lived by hunting and gathering in the forest with only very
limited agriculture The tribes were monarchical and loosely
federated under the khan of Sibir, who submitted to the
Mon-gols in the 13th century, but these arrangements probably
made little practical difference in the lives of the widely
scat-tered families and clans
innEr asia
Inner Asia extends south from Siberia in the west as far as the
chain of mountain ranges that separate the Indian
Subcon-tinent from Asia proper and in the east to the fertile plains
of China It includes the modern territories of Mongolia,
western China (including Tibet), the former Soviet central
Asian republics, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and northern
Paki-stan The climate varies from steppe to desert, probably with
ever-increasing desertification throughout the Middle Ages
resulting from natural climate changes and human activity
(deforestation) The driest region is the Gobi Desert in
Mon-golia Farther west are a number of large, shallow freshwater
lakes (Lake Balkash, the Aral Sea, and at the extreme
west-ern limit the Caspian Sea) These lakes are fed by large rivers
flowing from the southern mountains, including the Amu
Darya, the Syr Darya, and the Hari Rud
Tibet is the southernmost part of inner Asia At the
be-ginning of the Middle Ages (629–842), the Tibetan monarchy
dominated inner Asia and even controlled the Chinese
west-ern capital of Xian But Tibetan power was broken through
civil war, and Islamic invaders and Chinese empires divided
the area between themselves In the 13th century conquerors
from the northern extreme of inner Asia, the Mongols,
uni-fied virtually the whole Asian continent under their rule
The only practical way of life in the grasslands and
des-erts of inner Asia is nomadic horse breeding Local tribes lived
by controlling large numbers of horses through a continuous
wandering of many hundred or thousands of miles each year The nomadic way of life was so different from that of settled agricultural civilizations like China and western Europe that, once he had conquered northern China, the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan considered massacring the entire population
of farmers because he could not imagine what use they served
in society Trained by their way of life on the steppe, the pop-ulations of inner Asia produced the finest cavalrymen in the world The steppe tribes usually had little trouble attacking and overcoming more settled populations when they wished The Great Wall of China was built and maintained as a not entirely successful means of containing them Iranian horse-men from inner Asia in the first millennium b.c.e had con-quered the Near East and southern Russia and occasionally raided China But the stirrup was developed in this area dur-ing the early Middle Ages, makdur-ing nomadic life on horseback much easier and cavalrymen still more effective as soldiers Thereafter, migrations of peoples from this area, such as the Huns, Magyars and Turks, led to the collapse of the western Roman Empire, the general collapse of civilization in western Europe known as the Viking Age (850–1500), the collapse of the Byzantine Empire (1453), and the conquest of much of eastern Europe by the Turks
The last great wave of invading tribesmen from inner Asia consisted of the Mongols under Genghis Khan (ca 1162–1127 b.c.e.) Genghis Khan and his immediate succes-sors conquered an empire that endured throughout the later Middle Ages and stretched from China to include all of inner Asia, Iran, the Near East as far as Baghdad, European Russia, and India Except for a call from the central Mongol govern-ment in China to turn resources inward, Mongol forces that were preparing to attack western Europe and had probed as far as the border of the Holy Roman Empire (1241–42) may well have succeeded, changing the entire course of world his-tory The Mongol Empire was essentially a unification of the various states connected by trade along the Silk Road India, protected by its mountainous borders, had long been spared invasion from the inner Asian steppe, but in the 14th cen-tury Tamerlane (1336–1405), a Mongol nobleman, conquered northern India, and his successors in the Mongol Dynasty later overran nearly the entire subcontinent
From late in the first millennium b.c.e a trade network developed in inner Asia that is now usually known as the Silk Road The name derives from its being the main way that silk reached western Europe from China It was a caravan trade between Xian, the western capital of China, and Roman or Byzantine port cities on the Mediterranean Desert tribes-men brought huge caravans of camels and other pack animals across two principal routes: one all the way overland across the whole of inner Asia to Iran and the second to ports in
climate and geography: Asia and the Pacific 22