ABSTRACT
The modern Turkic peoples descend from an ancient grouping of tribes who, through conquest, interaction, and assimilation, extended its language and elements of its culture across Eurasia. Turkic belongs to the Altaic language family. The nature of this relationship, whether genetic or the result of long-standing interaction, is much debated. Nomadism was one of the determining forces in Turkic history. Evolving out of animal husbandry specializations adapted to ecological niches that were marginal to settled society, Eurasian nomadism required interaction with the sedentary world. The ancestors of the Turkic-speaking peoples were, undoubtedly, part of the Hsiung-nu/Asian Hunnic union that began to trouble the borders of China in the third century bc. The Uyghur kaghans, from their center on the Selenga River in Mongolia, vied with Tibet over Eastern Turkistan and aided by their Soghdian advisers, skillfully exploited China’s domestic weakness caused by the revolt of An Lu-shan.
