ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the historical linkages that are today contributing to a renascent sense of regional identity. A number of terms have been used to designate parts of the Eurasian heartlands. A word of Persian origin meaning 'land of the Turks', the earliest known occurrence is in a seventh-century Armenian source. The lack of clarity in the terminology relating to the Eurasian heartlands is matched by even greater uncertainty regarding the spatial limits of the region. Terms such as 'the Middle East', the 'Far East', or even 'Europe' and 'Asia', are from time to time redefined, the concept sometimes widened, sometimes narrowed, depending on a whole host of cultural, political and economic considerations. Central Asia, in this wide sense, takes the form of a broad band that stretches latitudinally across the breadth of Europe and Asia. Longitudinally, the band is narrower at its outer margins than in the centre.
