ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the key political, economic, cultural, and other transformations in Eurasia after the fall of the classical empires. It begins with a discussion of the nomads of Central Asia. The chapter discusses the influences on, nature of, and effects of nomadic migrations into Europe: These would change the political and cultural face of the continent over a period of many centuries. Nomads had attacked surrounding agrarian areas in the first century bce, and significant incursions occurred in the fifth, tenth-thirteenth, and fifteenth-seventeenth centuries ce. Since nomads had no written records until the ninth century ce, and since nomadic tribes could readily coalesce around a new leader, historians are often unsure of the relationships among the nomadic tribes that appear from time to time in the histories of the surrounding societies, or of precisely where certain tribes came from.
