Is Central Asia really the center of Asia?

Central Asia has been divided, redivided, conquered out of existence, and fragmented time and time again. Central Asia has served more as the battleground for outside powers than as a power in its own right. Central Asia had both the advantage and disadvantage of a central location between four historical seats of power. read more

Kazakhs and Kyrgyz have the highest proportion of Asian ancestry while Turkmen have the lowest. Many Turks of Anatolia carry around 10–20%, meaning that they aren't much different from the more Caucasian-looking Turks of Central Asia. And almost no population is really “from” anywhere, apart from a few specific exceptions. read more

Very little information has appeared about the region of Central Asia in books and articles. There are two reasons for this problem. First of all, there is really no country that one can identify in the area until early 1990s. Most specialists in Asian studies tend to focus on a specific country. But for Central Asia, this is not the case. read more