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A Concise Chronological Summary of CAT History

Central Asia has been thought to be the source area, after Africa, for population expansion into Europe and East Asia. It had putatively served as natural corridors between landmasses and has particular importance in the history of human migration routes (Figure 3A) (1). Several human migration waves, spanning from the prehistoric era to early modern times, have commenced, terminated, or passed through Central Asian areas, leaving a significant mark on the genetics, biometrical phenotypes, linguistics, and culture (Figure 3A). It has been speculated that Central Asia harboured a Paleolithic “maturation phase” of modern humans before giving rise to migration waves that resulted in the colonization of the Eurasian and American continents (2,3).

Although the CAT region has been inhabited since the lower Paleolithic Era, the first human groups to emerge in the historic record of Central Asia that are identifiable by name rather than by their artifacts are the Scythians. They are Indo-European people who lived around the 7th century B.C. and are described as having European morphological traits, both by ancient Chinese texts and the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. (Figure 3B). In the 2d century B.C., the Chinese established a trade route from the Mediterranean Sea to eastern Asia (the Silk Road), which connected the East and the West of the continent via Central Asia for 16 centuries. Later on, and until the fourth century CE (370–452), a powerful state formed by the Huns prospered in South Siberia and Central Asia, causing its inhabitants to move westward (Figure 3C). During the 3d and 4th centuries A.D., Turkic people and hordes of South Siberian origin replaced the Indo-European peoples in Central Asia and created a great empire from East Asia to the Black Sea (Figure 3D, F). The conquest of the southern regions of Central Asia by the Arabs was followed by the invasion of Mongolian tribes in the 13th century (Figure 3E). Later, starting from the mid-16th century, the Chinese and Russian empires annexed some parts of the vast territories of Central Asia and Transcaucasus and established their rule (Figure 3G). CAT witnessed multiple invasions throughout centuries leading to a complex demographic history and increased societal complexity (2, 4).

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A concise summary of the significant events and milestones in the history of CAT

The current geographical boundaries of CAT are based on the definition of Soviet scholars which does not reflect the actual modern geographic distribution of the ethnic CAT populations (Figure 3H) (2). This is because the natural lands of many indigenous CAT populations became parts of the Russian Federation, the Peoples' Republic of China, Mongolia, and Afghanistan. For instance, ~13mln Uighur people, who belong to the Turkic ethnic group, currently reside in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Similarly, 15 out of 22 autonomous republics of the Russian Federation are homelands of Turkic and Caucasian people. Therefore, when referring to CAT populations, one needs to acknowledge that their geographical distribution extends well beyond the present political boundaries of countries in the CAT region.

Turkic people are the main inhabitants of CAT. Having originated in South Siberia and been documented in history as East-Asian looking, they have dispersed across Eurasia including northeast Siberia, South Siberia, Central Asia, Caucasus, East Asia, East Europe, and the Middle East (mainly present-day Turkiye) (5, 6). They speak the Turkic branch of the Altaic language macrofamily (Supplementary Figure 1.1). The contemporary ethnic groups who are classified as Turkic include the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Azerbaijanis, who currently mainly reside in CAT countries, Turks (Turkish) who moved to Anatolia from Central Asia in the 11th century, and many other ethnic groups (Altai, Balkar, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay, Karakalpaks, Khakass, Kipchak, Kumyk, Nogay, Shor, Tatars, Tofalar, Tyvans, Uighurs, Chuvash people) who currently reside outside CAT (7).

References:

1. Martínez-Cruz B, Vitalis R, Ségurel L, et al. In the heartland of Eurasia: the multilocus genetic landscape of Central Asian populations. Eur J Hum Genet. 2011;19(2):216-223. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2010.153
2. Comas D, Calafell F, Mateu E, et al. Trading genes along the silk road: mtDNA sequences and the origin of central Asian populations. Am J Hum Genet. 1998;63(6):1824-1838. doi:10.1086/302133
3. Ellen C. Røyrvik, Nadira Yuldasheva, Susan Tonks, et al. Genetic patterning in Central Eurasia: population history and pigmentation. bioRxiv 255117; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/255117

4. Quintana-Murci L, Chaix R, Wells RS, et al. Where west meets east: the complex mtDNA landscape of the southwest and Central Asian corridor. Am J Hum Genet. 2004;74(5):827-845. doi:10.1086/383236
5. Golden, 2006
6. Yunusbayev B, Metspalu M, Metspalu E, et al. The genetic legacy of the expansion of Turkic-speaking nomads across Eurasia. PLoS Genet. 2015;11(4):e1005068. Published 2015 Apr 21. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1005068
7. Johanson, L., & Csató, É.Á. (Eds.). (2021). The Turkic Languages (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003243809

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