Central Asia is very interesting to me, but these two countries in particular fascinate me the most. Despite being enveloped around each other, the Tajiks speak an Iranic language and have the most Western Eurasian admixture in central asia, whereas the Kyrgyz speak a Turkic language and have the modt Eastern Eurasian admixture in the region. On top of this Tajikistan contains the only majority Ismaili region in the world (gorno badakhshan) and Kyrgyzstan still keeps to its ancient nomadic roots with practices like eagle hunting and horseback archery (they even host an olympics-style competition called the "world nomad games" annually). I also find it funny how these two countries (plus uzbekistan) have such weird winding borders on this one area called the Fergana valley because that's where most of the arable land is
>>85093840All just a bunch of weird donkey fucking muslim countries who think they're Mongolian
>>85093856Stop being such a faggot and enjoy geography ffs
>>85093840What's it like living there? Do they have internet?
>>85093856Tajiks are Persian not Mongoloid.
>>85093909From what I hear it heavily depends on the country. Like Turkmenistan for instance is a North Korea esque dictatorship based on a personality cult around the main guy where they worship him. Whereas Kazakhstan is kinda like a mini-russia mafia state where around a fourth of their population is ethnically slavic. Then you have Afghanistan of course which is a religious theocracy under the Taliban, which is surprisingly rather rare there as most of the muslims in this region are highly secular as a holdover of the enforced secularism of the USSR era. I don't think there's a single true democracy in that entire place.
>>85093938Yea that sounds like what it would be like there. Any achievements worth mentioning from this area? Doesn't Kazakhstan have a space launch facility?
>>85093962Kazakhstan does have that but I think they can't use it themselves and lease it to Russia as an agreement from the old Soviet days. Something about getting shit out of orbit being easier as you get closer to the equator. This area was the main epicenter for the silk road for a while though, and a lot of things like the spread of buddhism, algebra, writing, astronomy, and medicine happened through here. Like did you know the Church of the East made it as far as Xinjiang way back in the 500s? That's Christianity in China before Islam even existed. Central Asia has been a power base for old world empires for a long time, from the Sycthians to the Persians to the Turks to the Mongols to the Chinese to the Russians. It's a very dynamic area.
>>85093840From what I've heard the geographic location of the Fergana valley is the main reason for the borders. When the Soviet authorities came down to conduct ethnic survey they basically gave up. Different communities were living next to each other and nomadic lifestyles that changed place of habitation by the season.>>85094088Nitpick here but I don't think Eastern Orthodoxy ever reached Hungary or Croatia.
>>85093840Blame Stalin.
>>85094088Why is it so irrelevant today? Because of the soviet union?
>>85094115Yeah like a lot of places it was very hard to draw concrete nation-state borders because of how intermixed the people were. Like look at a settled population density map of the area, it's all centered around that valley. Also yeah that map is heavily simplified, it just gives the general gist of how far out the Church of the East made it in its heyday, shame they're basically reduced to just Northern Iraq and Kerala nowadays.>>85094118I'd perish the thought.>>85094172Partially yes (especially certain areas like the Aral sea in Uzbekistan which was entirely drained due to irresponsible irrigation). But in general trade is done through waterways for the most part nowadays, and the silk road was kinda central asia's entire purpose. Now that could change with China's belt and road initiative which runs through central asia and is meant to act as a BRICS alternative to the many US-led maritime tradeways, but I doubt it'll ever become the epicenter of empires again with the Americas being so important.
>>85094230Very cool. Do they have natural resources like for mining? I assume not.
>>85094258Not very knowledgable about minerals, but Uzbekistan did produce the vast majority of Soviet cotton. They also had a shitton of natural gas and coal in places like Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, but for metals specifically I'm unsure. Maybe Manganese?
