How did the Asiatics gain upper hand over Caucasians on the steppe

Factual Questions
1

The history of the great steppe stretching from mongolian plateau all the way to western poland is basically a history of mongolians (the Asian people) pushing westwards, while the Causasians, in particular the Indo-Europeans, were pushed westerwards or even exterminated.

The question is, how did this happen? Why did it turn out this way?

The indo-europeans had an upper hand at first. They mastered horse riding and even horse archery first, chariorts, bronze weapons etc. and expanded in all directions, the east-most expanded to East Turkestan (modern day north-west China). The indo europeans were toally dominate in Central Asia and the great steppe bascially belonged to the indo europeans except many some small parts of mongolia.

However, gradually around age of the late Roman empire, the power shifted. The Huns came from the steppe and basically caused so much destruction they shifted the Germanic people westwards.

However Asiatic people by that time was still minority in terms of population count, as the Huns, Magyars, Avars, Bulgars, all Asian people settled down then assimilated into local indo-european (so-called white) people.

Then, the mongolians came, they were the paradigm shift. They totally destructed Central Asia and made it de-indo-europeaned and made the population very asian (just look like modern day typical kyzerstan people compared to people from Afghinisatan, one is asian, another is still caucasian).

It wasn’t until the Russian conquest that the steppe was back into indo-european control again.

So bascially, how did the Asiatic people gain upper hand in terms of domination over the Eurasian Steppe? Horse riding and archery was invented by Schytians and Samartian who were indo-europeans, yet these indo-euopeans bascially lost the battle over the steppe until the gun-powder age.

Why? What are the reasons?

2

I think it has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with geography. Central Eurasia is a vast pastureland which points at the fertile river valleys (and hence rich civilization) of Eastern Europe. To attempt to invade Russia from the Hungarian Plain would be like pouring water into the wrong end of a funnel, while invasions in the opposite direction have occurred many times.

3

BTW, the Indo-European people originated in Central Eurasia and the first several known East-to-West invasions were Indo_European: Gimbutas’ Kurgan Waves I, II (proto-Italics and proto-Greeks)and III, then the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Slavs.

And of course the people of Eastern Europe have spoken Slavic and have had Slavic genes since long before the “gun-powder age.”

4

The thing is, it is said that the southern steppe are actually quite fertile, and I think it’s pretty sure thing that the Black Sea coasts were fertile as there were Greek colonies there. The problem was the normadic Asiatics trides who pillaged and looted all the time, so the development of what is now modern day southern russia did not take off until the Imperial russians conquered and subdued the local Asiastic hordes.

5

If you don’t have armor, offense works better than defense. Farmers carrying farm implements don’t fare well versus horsemen with short bows. People who tried to settle down and build farms got overpowered by “normadic Asiatics trides who pillaged and looted all the time”. And that dynamic held until the Russians came along with superior weapons and did the same to the Asiatics. There’s a reason why we have “bought the farm” as a saying…

6

The problem is what happene to the indio-european nomads? The Schytians and Sarmatians were good horse riders and they invented horse archery. Why didn’t they expand eastward instead of being taken over by the Asiatic tribes who learnt the art of calvalry from them?

7

Actually, those groups were much older, and lasted only until the 4th Century CE, when they were pushed out by Germanic tribes like the Goths.

The long history of the region is one group living for centuries there, then getting displaced by somebody new. Where the new people come from its a varied as the strategies and tactics that won them the battles over control. It’s a millenia-long land war I would never get involved in.

8

The Ordos people reached all the way to Inner Mongolia and are thought to be Scythian. Tocharians and the Tagar civilization were also Indo-European. Overall the Indo-European expansion was very impressive; I’m not sure why it isn’t impressive enough for you. :smiley: However these eastward expansions were the exception. The Gobi desert acts as a repellent, so expansions tend to be away from the Gobi, i.e. westward from Central Asia.

And, although fertile steppe-to-steppe conquests could proceed in either direction; conquests between the terrain of semi-nomadic horse riders and the sedentary civilizations of plusher vegetation were always one-directional: India never attacked Central Eurasia; the Fertile Crescent region never attacked the steppes to its north; China never attacked Siberia; Central Europe didn’t attack Russia. This is what I tried to hint at with my opaque “wrong end of a funnel” comment.

9

I think a key point that I forgot to mention is motivation. Rich regions like Central Europe or Eastern China make tempting targets. But the people in such a rich civilization have little motive to try to conquer less fertile, sparsely populated terrain.