Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part ii | states
continents. The most obvious example of this was the Achaemenid kingdom, which
included territories in Asia, Europe and Africa. This was how state-like entities
evolved in the regions where they first emerged in the Near and Middle East.
The process of the genesis and evolution of state entities in Transoxiana was
considerably different, however. Nonetheless, for particular historical reasons, these
territories were also part of the Achaemenid kingdom and the Seleucid kingdom at
certain points.
Transoxiana is a distinctive, historical, geographical and cultural area, whose
civilisation flourished for many thousands of years thanks to two great rivers: the
Amu Darya (ancient Oxus) and the Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes). The states that
emerged here differed from states in other parts of Central Asia in many ways, both
in antiquity and in medieval times, even though they also shared some common
features. Even within the territory of Transoxiana, the northern (Khorezm) and
southern provinces (Bactria) were notably different from one another, especially in
antiquity. They differed considerably in their ethnic composition and cultures, their
languages and writing systems, as well as their polities. This situation stemmed from
the cultural and genetic particularities of each region, and the rivalry between settled
and nomadic peoples, the extent of which varied in different regions.
The periodisation of the development of ancient statehood proposed here is
based on selecting those features of statehood which are most characteristic and
important for each period and which are new in comparison to the preceding period.
It is based on the main findings of national and international research into the
history and archaeology of Central Asia. Given the huge number of publications that
in one way or another address these or other issues and problems of statehood, this
author’s approach has been to reduce these to a minimum so as not to overload the
main text.
Periods in the development of early states
With regard to the evolution of ancient statehood/early states in Transoxiana,
it is possible to single out six main periods spanning the second half of the 2nd
millennium BC to the second half of the 3rd or beginning of the 4th century AD, i.e.
until the time of transition from ancient to medieval states.
The emergence of early forms of statehood in this region took shape on the basis
of the economic and cultural achievements of the settled farming civilisations, which
had been developing in the territory of southern Uzbekistan since the late Bronze
Age. The end of this process more or less coincided with the decline of the Kushan
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