HORSE Something special happened 6,000 years ago when the horse became domesticated.

The world was transformed. The equine’s speed and power gave man a new approach to the world. Now tribes were united into empires, distance travel became viable, and cultu res and
languages raced around the known world. nce domesticated, the horse was poised for greatness because of its anatomy, physiology, and sociability. As a herd animal with a pecking order in the wild, it learned subordinance allowing man to become its bo ss and teacher. Its digestive
system allowed it to eat and run whereas its predecessors – the reindeer and cow – must lie down, rest, and regurgitate and remasticate its food before working again

RUSSIA Economically, Russia initially embarked upon a similarly ambitious program of “shock therapy” and an embrace of Western -style capitalism after the end of the Cold War. Yet, as with its political transition, by the end of the 1990s it was apparen t that Russia’s attempt at
economic liberalization had proven to be destructive, leading some analysts to retreat from their earlier enthusiasm for radical economic transformation (Zweynert 200 7 ) . Russian reforms started from the mistaken assumption that liberalization and privatization would create a
critical mass of actors who would support these reforms and that these actors would begin to demand the development of necessary market institut ions such as property rights protections and enhanced rule of law (Hellman 2002 ) . But without strong institutions, privatiz ation and
liberalization led to predation by former managers and local officials, and the resultant economic insecurity negatively affected investment and depressed capital formation .

The Great Game" was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire over Afghanistan and neighboring territories in Central and Southern Asia. Russia was fearful of British commercial and
military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain was fearful of Russia adding "the jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war between the two empires. The Great Game began
on 12 January 1830 when Lord Ellenborough, the President of the Board of Control for India, tasked Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, to establish a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara. Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate of Afghanistan and make it
a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states between both empires.

As Argentina's president mulls switching the capital city from Buenos Aires to Santiago del Estero, here is a look at countries which have switched their capitals. Upon its establishment as Brazil's capital, Brasilia experienced very rapid growth. Brazil's capital change was
considered a success, and many countries have been inspired by Brazil's capital relocation achievement. In 1991 the capital of Nigeria, Africa's most populated country, was moved from Lagos because of overcrowding. Abuja, a planned city in central Nigeria, was deemed to be a
more neutral for Nigeria's many ethnic and religious groups. Almaty, in southern Kazakhstan, was the Kazakh capital when the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Government leaders moved the capital to the northern city of Astana in December 1997.
Almaty had little room to expand, could experience an earthquake, and was very close to other newly-independent countries which could experience political turbulence.

5. Soviet-type economic planning (STP) is the specific model of centralized economic planning employed by Marxist–Leninist socialist states modeled on the economy of the Soviet Union. Although there was significant variation among these economies, Soviet-type planning and
Soviet-type economies refers to the major structural characteristics common to these economies. Soviet-type planning is a form of economic planning involving centralized investment decisions, administrative allocation of economic inputs, material balances to reach equilibrium
between available inputs and targeted outputs, and to some extent the use of linear optimization to optimize the plans. From a neoclassical perspective, the advantages of STP are quite limited. One advantage of STP is the theoretical possibility to avoid inflation. Complete price
stability is achievable, not only because the state plans all prices and quantities, but also because the state has complete control over the money supply via the wages it pays as the sole employer.

6. A HUMAN PERSPECTIVE Large areas of Russia and the Republics are extremely cold during much of the year. For example, the Siberian town of Oymyakon has reportedly had temperatures as low as –95°F. At such temperatures, the cold can crack steel and cause tires to
explode. When you exhale, your breath freezes into crystals that fall to the ground and make a noise that Siberians call “the whispering of the stars.” Some of the region’s native peoples believe that, in the coldest weather, words themselves freeze, and that, when warmer weather
arrives and thaws the crystals, the words come to life and begin to speak. “Suddenly the air fills with out-of-date gossip, unheard jokes, and cries of forgotten pain.” Humid continental and subarctic climates dominate much of Russia and the Republics.
7. A series of events from 1989 to 1991 led to the final collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), paving the way for the establishment of new, independent republics in the Baltics and Central Asia and the creation of the Russian Federation. Formally established
in 1922, at its height the USSR was composed of fifteen republics, the largest of which was Russia. In 1987, seventy years after the 1917 revolution that established a communist state in Russia, the Soviet Union was in decline. Finally, in the summer of 1991, Gorabchev reached an
agreement with a number of the republics in which they would become sovereign, but remain loosely federated. Before the final agreement was signed, however, a group of Soviet loyalists attempted a coup to preserve the splintering Soviet Union.

9. The massive expanse of Russia exhibits a variety of physical environments, such as tundras, steppes, mountains, and birch forests. Type D (continental) climates dominate most of the country and characterize large landmasses such as Eurasia and North America. Land in the
center of a large continent, far from the moderating effects of oceans, tends to heat up rapidly in the summer and cool down rapidly in the winter. These areas are known for hot summers and cold, harsh winters. Northern Russia borders the Arctic Ocean, and frigid air masses from
the Arctic swoop south across Russia each winter.

10. Russification (Russian: Русификация, Rusifikatsiya) or Russianization is a form of cultural assimilation process during which non-Russian communities, voluntarily or not, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian one. In a historical sense, the term refers to
both official and unofficial policies of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union with respect to their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia, aimed at Russian domination. The major areas of Russification are politics and culture. In politics, an element of Russification
is assigning Russian nationals to leading administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to domination of the Russian language in official business and strong influence of the Russian language on national idioms. The shifts in
demographics in favour of the ethnic Russian population are sometimes considered as a form of Russification as well.

11. Xinjiang conflict is a conflict in China's far-west province of Xinjiang centred around the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority ethnic group who make up the largest group in the region.

Factors such as the massive state-sponsored migration of Han Chinese from the 1950s to the 1970s, government policies promoting Chinese cultural unity and punishing certain expressions of Uyghur identity, and heavy-handed responses to separatist terrorism have contributed to
tension between Uyghurs, and state police and Han Chinese. This has taken the form of both frequent terrorist attacks and wider public unrest (such as the July 2009 Ürümqi riots). In recent years, government policy has been marked by mass surveillance, increased arrests, and a
system of “re-education camps,” estimated to hold hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups

12. The principal objective of U.S. policy in Afghanistan since the 9-11 attacks has been –and appropriately continues to be — to ensure that the country does not become a haven for virulent salafi (radical anti-Western jihadi) terrorist groups like al Qaeda. The premise underlying
this policy subsequent to the toppling of the Taliban regime in 2001 is that if any part of the liberated territory once again comes under the control of salafi groups or a Taliban sympathetic to such groups, their capacity to increase the lethality and frequency of their terrorist attacks
— including against U.S. assets—will increase since they will be able to use the safe-havens to plan and train for their operations and more easily escape retaliation by the United States and the international community.

13. The Fergana Valley is located in Central Asia's southeast corner and is enclosed by the Tian Shan Mountains to the north and the Gissar-Alai range to the south. The valley's approximately 22,000 square kilometers (almost 8,500 square miles) of flat plains distinguishes it from
surrounding regions in Central Asia, where the terrain is made up of mountains, deserts and treeless steppes. It is also distinguished by its agricultural fertility, due to the Syr Darya River and its numerous tributaries — water resources that are the subject of controversy in the region.
The Fergana Valley is a major source of food for Central Asia. Its principal crops include wheat, cotton, rice, vegetables and fruit.

14. Lamaism is a regional form of northern Buddhism, founded on the combination of the features of Mahayana and Vajrayana. The formation of Lamaism began starting in the seventh century—the time of the penetration of Buddhism into Tibet. There is no clear-cut agreement
among the scholars of various countries as to what ought to be understood by Lamaism: Tibetan, Mongolian, as well as Buryat, Tuvan, and Kalmyk Buddhism in its entirety with all of its schools, which arose in the eighth century and has been preserved for the most part until our
day, or just the Gelugpa school (this being the "law of virtue," yellow-hatted Lamaism), founded by the Tibetan Tsongkhava [Tsonghapa] at the turn of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries.

15. Nomadic pastoralism is a form of pastoralism when livestock are herded in order to find fresh pastures on which to graze. Strictly speaking, true nomads follow an irregular pattern of movement, in contrast with transhumance where seasonal pastures are fixed. However this
distinction is often not observed and the term nomad used for both—in historical cases the regularity of movements is often unknown in any case. The herded livestock include cattle, yaks, llamas, sheep, goats, reindeer, horses, donkeys or camels, or mixtures of species. Nomadic
pastoralism is commonly practised in regions with little arable land, typically in the developing world, especially in the steppe lands north of the agricultural zone of Eurasia

.16. There is a wide variety of languages spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families spoken on the continent include Altaic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Indo-
European, Afroasiatic, Siberian, Sino-Tibetan and Tai-Kadai. They usually have a long tradition of writing, but not always. The major families in terms of numbers are Indo-European and Indo-Aryan Languages and Dravidian languages in South Asia and Sino-Tibetan in East Asia.
Several other families are regionally dominant.

17. Fieldwork in Afghanistan is not like most geology fieldwork. “When I landed, the first thing I had to do was to put on a bulletproof vest,” says Tom Mack. He was part of a U.S. Geological Survey team that evaluated water resources in the Kabul Basin, in the north-central part of
eastern Afghanistan, a couple of years ago. “It was strange to wear the vest, but eventually you get used to it.” There was a lot to get used to, he says. No matter where Mack went, he had to get special permission to be there. His team also always had to travel with a special security
team in a reinforced vehicle mainly limited to the city of Kabul. Working in collaboration with the Afghanistan Geological Survey and Ministry of Energy and Water, USGS began to study the Kabul Basin in 2004. Kabul, the capital of the country, sits at an elevation of 1,791 meters
at the confluences of the Kabul River,

18. Theocracy is a form of government in which a religious institution is the source from which all authority derives. The Oxford English Dictionary has this definition:1. a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god. 1.1. the commonwealth of Israel
from the time of Moses until the election of Saul as King.

Unified religious rule in Tibet began in 1642, when the Fifth Dalai Lama allied with the military power of the Mongol Gushri Khan to consolidate the political power and center control around his office as head of the Gelug school.[32] This form of government is known as the dual
system of government. Prior to 1642, particular monasteries and monks had held considerable power throughout Tibet, but had not achieved anything approaching complete control, though power continued to be held in a diffuse, feudal system after the ascension of the Fifth Dalai
Lama. Power in Tibet was held by a number of traditional elites, including members of the nobility, the heads of the major Buddhist sects (including their various tulkus), and various large and influential monastic communities.
19. Former Soviet republics in Central Asia are turning more and more into mono-ethnic countries, as a large number of ethnic Russians leave for greener pastures. During the Soviet days, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were all multi-ethnic.
This was in the large part due to the Russian speakers living there. The term Russians actually refers to representatives of other Slavic peoples as well – in the first place Ukrainians and Belarusians. Today the situation has changed dramatically – Russians in the region constitute a
small percentage of the population. The peak of the exodus of the Russian-speaking population in the region took place in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent deterioration of the socio-economic situation, when almost everywhere ethnic friction
started. In the early post-Soviet years, out of the almost 10 million Russian-speaking residents in Central Asian countries, less than 3 million remained. However, the migration processes has not ended yet.

20. Desertification is a type of land degradation in which a relatively dry area of land becomes a desert, typically losing its bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife. It is caused by a variety of factors, such as through climate change (particularly the current global warming)
and through the overexploitation of soil through human activity. When deserts appear automatically over the natural course of a planet's life cycle, then it can be called a natural phenomenon; however, when deserts emerge due to the rampant and unchecked depletion of nutrients in
soil that are essential for it to remain arable, then a virtual "soil death" can be spoken of, which traces its cause back to human overexploitation. Desertification is a significant global ecological and environmental problem with far reaching consequences on socio-economic and
political conditions.

21. The 2004 United Nations Development Programme ranked Afghanistan number 173 of 177 countries, using a human development index, with Afghanistan near or at the bottom of virtually every development indicator including nutrition, infant mortality, life expectancy, and
literacy. Several factors encourage opium production, the greatest being economic: the high rate of return on investment from opium poppy cultivation has driven an agricultural shift in Afghanistan from growing traditional crops to growing opium poppy. Opium cultivation on this
scale is not traditional, and in the area controlled by the Helmand Valley Authority in the 1950s the crop was largely suppressed. "Despite the fact that only 12 percent of its land is arable, agriculture is a way of life for 70 percent of Afghans and is the country's primary source of
income.

22. Sixteen years after they were ousted in the US-led invasion, the Taliban have fought their way back to control swathes of Afghanistan. The country remains mired in conflict, and recent months have seen a series of bloody attacks. In the south, key towns are now Taliban
territory. The BBC's Auliya Atrafi was invited by the militants to spend four days behind the front line in Helmand province witnessing life under their control. In the town of Sangin, two dozen men sat cross-legged inside a huge mud compound. Under the full moon, their black
turbans cast deep shadows over their sunburned features. These were the Taliban's special forces; the Red Unit. They sat quietly as they listened to their commander Mullah Taqi telling war stories, gently cradling their M4 machine guns. The M4s, with their night-vision scopes, were
one of the main reasons they had captured nearly 85% of Helmand province from less-well-armed Afghan forces.

23. Since the collapse of Russia’s relationship with the West over Ukraine, the Sino-Russian strategic partnership has become more of a reality. Russia and China share a common desire to challenge principles of the Western-dominated international system. But their relationship is
complex, with lingering mistrust on both sides. The balance of competition and cooperation is most evident in Central Asia, the Russian Far East, and the Arctic. Engagement in these theaters has tested Russia’s and China’s abilities to manage their differences and translate the
rhetoric of partnership into tangible gains. China holds the upper hand in the relationship, and this power asymmetry will continue to grow at the expense of Russia. But Russia and China have more to gain from cooperation than outright competition. Barring an unlikely course
correction in Russia’s relationship with the West, the partnership will strengthen.

23. Glasnost In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was engulfed by a multitude of problems. The economy, especially the agricultural sector, began to fall apart. The country lacked technological advancements and used inefficient factories, all while consumers were buying low-quality
products and suffered from a shortage of social freedoms. To reform the distraught Soviet Union, the democratization of the Communist Party was promoted through Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev‘s policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost.” Perestroika refers to the
reconstruction of the political and economic system established by the Communist Party. Politically, contested elections were introduced to reflect the democratic practices of Western society and allow citizens to have a slight say in government. Economically, Perestroika called for
de-monopolization and some semi-private businesses to function, ending the price controls established by the government for the past seven decades.

24. gulag system Much has happened in the two decades since the end of the Cold War. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia went through a period of dramatic domestic political change and uncertainty in the foreign policy arena. A country thatwas
once a superpower in a bipolar world began to doubt its place in the international system – and not without reason: the collapse of the USSR left Russia in a state of economic, political, and social turmoil, marked by declining economic output and increasing infl ation, foreign debt,
and budget defi cits. Other problems included lack of law and order, loss of central control over the periphery, confl icts in Chechnya, rampant corruption, chronic political instability, and a severe fi nancial crisis.

25. Islam in Central Asia has existed since the beginning of Islamic history. Islam is the most widely practiced religion in Central Asia. The Hanafi school of thought of Sunnism is the most popular, with Shiism of Imami and Ismaili denominations predominating in the Pamir plateau
and the western Tian Shan mountains (almost exclusively Ismailis), while boasting to a large minority population in the Zarafshan river valley, from Samarkand to Bukhara (almost exclusively Imamis).[2] Islam came to Central Asia in the early part of the 8th century as part of the
Muslim conquest of the region. Many well-known Islamic scientists and philosophers came from Central Asia, and several major Muslim empires, including the Timurid Empire and the Mughal Empire, originated in Central Asia. In the 20th century, severe restrictions on religious
practice were enacted by the Soviet Union in Soviet Central Asia and the People's Republic of China in Xinjiang. Concerns about Islamic radicalism and religious freedom in the region persist to this day.