Central Asia - Science topic

Central Asia - a region rich in natural resources, stands at a pivotal moment in its development. With vast reserves of critical minerals and energy resources, these countries have the potential to harness their natural wealth through strategic partnerships on the global stage. This approach can catalyse economic growth and strengthen their geopolitical leverage, offering a pathway to enhanced regional influence and prosperity.

However, the critical question remains: Can Central Asia truly set its own rules in the international arena, or are its resources a double-edged sword that entrenches deeper geopolitical dependencies?

Despite the abundance of natural assets, the region of the finds itself at the nexus of larger powers' strategic interests, which can limit its autonomy in utilising these resources for self-determined development.

A poignant example of this dynamic is the recent sale of Russian stakes in Kazakhstan's Kazatom uranium deposits to Chinese companies. This transaction underscores the complex interplay of regional power shifts and resource control. It highlights how Central Asian countries, while rich in resources like uranium, must navigate the intricate and sometimes perilous waters of global power politics, where their sovereign decisions can be heavily influenced by larger state actors like Russia and China.

This situation poses a vital discussion point: Is Central Asia moving toward greater autonomy, or is it increasingly becoming a pawn in the strategic games of global dominance?

I would like to open a discussion on my latest paper Ten reasons why Central Asia had to be the original homeland of Indo-Europeans, Gauls and Balkan peoples 04-24, which you can find on RG at :

Central Asia seems to me better suited than the Pontic steppe as the original homeland of the Eurasian original language, aswell as Indo-European language, taking into account linguistics, ancient scripts, genetics, archaeology, history, religion, thespread of agriculture, the PIE vocabulary relative to the horse, the wheel and the chariot, the development of long-distancetrade along the future Silk Road. The richness of mountain and river vocabulary also supports a PIE original homeland locatedin mountains with rivers rather than in the steppes. The Pontic steppe would be only a secondary homeland of IE languages. I welcome comments from researchers.

Hello, dear friends!

I am a new user in ResearchGate and signed in as an account page for the scientific journal "Central Asia's Affairs" issued by the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Kazakhstan in order to enhance it and attract highly-cited authors. Because our main goal for 2025 is to manage the submission process of "Central Asia's Affairs," to the Scopus database. Therefore I would like to know how to add the journal to RG. According to instructions, if a journal is registered in CrossRef, then it should be visible here. However it is not visible even though our journal is registered in CrossRef. Please, need advice on how to make the journal visible here and how to create a page for it.

Dear colleagues!

We would like to ask if someone knows from where we could get spatial data of Kyrgyzstan (focus Issyk Kul Oblast).

The best would be of course open-access and in formats compatible with ArcPro, QGIS, etc.

We are particularly interested in:

> land use (similar to the CORINE Land Cover, if existent...)

> plant growth/health, forestry

> biodiversity

> climate & precipitation, weather in general

> population (permanent, tourism)

> road network

> DEM

> ... whatever is available

Please let us know,

thank you and best regards!

Hello everyone,

I have been facing lack of ground minimum relative humidity data. Can anyone provide any information to get minimum relative humidity data for Asia region? more specifically for Central Asia? Thank you

I would like to know the current data of following region

1. Central Asia

2. Latin America and the Caribbean

3. Central and Eastern Europe

4. North America and Western

5. Sub-saharan Africa

6. East Asia and the Pacific

7. South and West Asia

Several species of the genus Homo have evolved and are now extinct. These include Homo erectus, which inhabited Asia, and Homo neanderthalensis, which inhabited Europe and central Asia. The dominant opinion among scientists about the origin of modern humans argues that Homo sapiens emerged in Africa and migrated out of the continent around 100,000 years ago, replacing the populations of Homo erectus in Asia, Homo neanderthalensis in Europe, among other hominids little known. Are these species of technologically inferior hominids or were they less adapted to the climatic changes that have occurred in the last thousands of years?

I found a very interesting paper published on Academia by Premendra Priyadarshi https://www.academia.edu/34474584/Of_Mice_and_Men_DNA_Archaeological_and_Linguistic_correlation_of_the_two_linked_journeys_of_mice_and_men?email_work_card=view-paper and would be interested by your comments, as it shows that rats, mice and men migrated together between 20.000-10.000 years ago in link with the expansion of agriculture from India by two routes, a Northern one by Central Asia and Russia and a Southern one by Iran and Anatolia to France and tends to confirm my theory expressed in my papers and that Indo-Europeans came from North Western India and Central Asia. Best regards, Xavier Rouard

We recently had a discussion if in the face of climate change it would make sense to plant species from Southern Europe or South Germany in North Germany not being native there. The hypothesis was suggested that the greater the distance of the native range, the greater the probability and the magnitude of effects on ecosystems. This would mean, for example, that a species native to North America or central Asia would probably have a greater effect on German ecosystems than a species from Hungary or North Italy. However, I haven not found a paper which gives evidence on that hypothesis so far. Can anybody help?

Why do you suppose that nomadic people have been able to survive better in South Central Asia and Eastern Europe, where there exist ongoing conflicts than here in North America?  do you think their lives will be like 50 or 100 years from now? Will the nomads still be moving their sheep and cattle down the road?

I am looking for an author whose expert in migration. I am trying to write an article about Afghans emigration in the latest years. By the way, the primary data have been collected by conducting a questionnaire on 400 Afghans emigrants.

There has been greater concentration on the Medieval Middle Eastern and Central Asian Science but so far insufficient exploration of its roots and what it owes or does not owe to Islam. Few, if any, early Islamic scholars were Arab but emerged from Persia, the old cultures of Central Asia, etc. Is this then a Persian Renaissance for example or equally likely a global event?

The explosion of European science in the 17th century can be seen as the result of globalisation, not integral to Europe, so can the earlier Middle Eastern and Central Asian one be viewed in the same fashion?

I have not used Christian or Islamic as, certainly in the West Christianity, was not the driving force for the phenomenon.

What is usually customary in social sciences, especially in international relations, is to events in different parts of the world (Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe, etc.) of theories (realism, idealism, constructivism, post-colonialism, etc.)its application to global issues.

Can not the other way around? In other words, cannot a theory be created from events and facts such as war, conflict and alliance of regional and global nature?

Hello,

In the framework of a broader article on Hellenistic ceramics in Central Asia, I worked on grey-black paste ceramics in order to try to establish connections between Central Asia and the Mediterranean world. One of the objectives was to specify the chronology of their appearance but also to understand if there was a cultural link between this ceramic and the evolution of the colonization of Central Asia during the Seleucid and Greek-Bactrian period. This unpublished work could be an interesting field of work for those who have already had the opportunity to work on the subject in other parts of the Hellenized world. The question is whether this type of pottery corresponds to specific needs, to specific tastes for a particular population.

Thank you for your help.

JBHoual

As we know that, the Alpine-Himalayan belt is the World most important belt that strecthes through Italy, Greece and Turkey, across the Middle East, Iran and central Asia, India to China. It is known as one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the World. The orogenic belts that arose from the destruction of the Neo-Tethys and the resultant continental collisions are called the Alpides and form the present Alpine-Himalayan mountain ranges.

Year 580 Numidian historian Procope, in Byzancio, observed so dense clouds coming from the East and wondered if it's an unpredicted eclipse. It's the implosion of Rabaul volcano, in Papuasia, that left a 40km-caldera (Nasa photo). I think this enormous mass of micro particules provoqued a terrible climate change, that dried up Felix Arabia and the Sahara savan. And it lasted for centuries. A proof of it is the culture of the pastel plant (isiatis tinctorial). It comes from the middle mountains steppes of Central Asia. Chinese used it to fight heat shock, as a medicinal plant. Arabs managed to distillate it and found that blue colorant that resist sun. That's how Omeyades bring the plant in the Sahara desert and show Tuaregs how to do clothes that cure them from the sun. But soon, Sahara was drying up so they had to grow pastel north, by Mediterraneo Sea and soon, they had to cross the sea, to grow it in Grenade but the plant wasn't doing well, so they went up to Occitania to grew pastel. It worked for some centuries until again the plants were dying. The war against Cathars was launched because French suspected they had colorant treasures and reserves but didn't want to sell them. Because blue was a big business, in brown, earthian middle ages. And even for black, you needed to taint it blue before to resist the sun. After three centuries of killing and stealing, French decided to plant it in Northern France (Baie de Somme), and it worked well. But, at least, by 15th c.AC, climate went softer and they could again grow pastel in Occitania. 200 years later, Hollandeses would win over everybody, bringing back Javanese indigo and planting it in Africa.

Kushano-sassanid ceramics is a mystery to those who work in Central Asia. The origin of this production still brings up many questions as it appears to be so different from Kushan pottery. By their shapes, some models can be associated with metallic objects whose origin is essentially Mediterranean. This pottery not only includes the world of the Bactria but also the Margian one. What should we think about that? This corpus constitutes evidence of political and cultural homogeneity?

The Indo-European languages are, in the classical model, supposed to have spread into India, the Middle East and Europe from parts of Central Asia producing many of the modern languages in those areas. It is nevertheless difficult to find evidence. Historians many decades ago guessed that the language reached Europe via Neolithic farming from Anatolia and recent DNA supports that European farmers came from there. But did the language?

In fact, is there actually such a mother-language from which so many others originate or just similarities between neighbours?

We would like to include a case from these regions in our forthcoming book. thanks.

As India's engagements in Central Asia have increased in the recent time and it has reflected in some areas (Energy, Trade Routes and Pipeline) of convergence with China, Russia and Iran's interests the region ... in this case how do you see the above question???

Is it possible to get daily or monthly runoff data for the Central Asian rivers (especially for Uzbekistan)?

Recording vegetation plots in dry steppes, semideserts and deserts of Kazakhstan in July 2014, we came across a plant I cannot identify. My first idea was that is a species of Polycnemum, but the plants have fleshy, obtuse and slightly cucullate prophylls. Therefore it is definitely a different genus. Probably another member of Chenopodiaceae but it may also be a different family. The aboveground part of the specimens is shorter han 2 cm. Unfortunately, I cannot recognize any flower structure, neither can I see any fruits. The plants were probaly damaged by severe drought od that season. Still, it may be a widespread species well known to people working on the vegetaton of central Asia as we collected from about five plots.

Many thanks for your help in advance.

Has anyone looked into the problems about the different approaches used by China and Russia to the untraditional challenges (terrorism, extremism, separatism) in Central Asia? Some are saying that China focuses more on the economic methods, when Russia focuses on political methods.

In addition, China acts according to Marxism, when Russia is using another different theory.

What are the problems brought by these divergences, and will it put serious obstacles for the two countries in promoting deeper cooperation in Central Asia?

Observations show that changes are occurring in the amount, intensity, frequency and type of precipitation. These aspects of precipitation generally exhibit large natural variability, and El Niño and changes in atmospheric circulation patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation have a substantial influence.

Pronounced long-term trends from 1900 to 2005 have been observed in precipitation amount in some places: significantly wetter in eastern North and South America, northern Europe and northern and central Asia, but drier in the Sahel, southern Africa, the Mediterranean and southern Asia. More precipitation now falls as rain rather than snow in northern regions. Widespread increases in heavy precipitation events have been observed, even in places where total amounts have decreased.

These changes are associated with increased water vapour in the atmosphere arising from the warming of the world’s oceans, especially at lower latitudes. There are also increases in some regions in the occurrences of both droughts and floods.

I am finalising the review and identification keys of world Damaeus (sensu lato), but have a difficulty with material from former Soviet Union and China, and basically very limited information from other Central Asian countries. I would appreciate any material from these areas for study. Particularly interested in species described by Bulanova Zachvatkina from Soviet Union, as descriptions are incomplete and type material in bad shape or missing.

Does anyone know of good articles, reports, etc. detailing how Foot and Mouth Disease is impacting the economies of Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan?  

I am interested in Kazakhstan and in particular with its economic development efforts.  Can anyone lead me to articles, reports, etc. that provide good accounts of this?  Thanks!

Could you suggest sources available on the Internet on (estimated) demographic data in various regions of ancient Asia (India, China, Central Asia, Near East) etc?

Does some one know if there is any record of precipitation isotope in westerlies controlled region? For example, Xinjiang or Central Asia. There are plenty of records of monsoon precipitation isotope records, such as cave deposits.

The timescale better restricted since LGM or the Holocene. Thanks for your help.

Best

I am planning to undertake a short study of emerging social work practices with families with disabled children in Tajikistan