This very long comment by Agonist reader Janus comes from a post I wrote a week ago called, Arabia and Persia: the Long View.

If you're looking for a thumbnail history of Central Asia (from a deterministic viewpoint) you'll want to give this a read; it is well worth your time. Although I have a few quibbles with some specifics (Hindustanis are Indo-European in origin also; a tad too much focus on the Turks as the sole central actors in Central Asian history as well) overall I can hardly disagree with the direction of the underlying analysis.

It's an excellent summary of Central Asia's history (and Islam's irruption and evolution therein) from the beginning of the Common Era, CE (or AD for those how are old school, like me) to the present. The suggestions for further reading are worth noting as well, as my volume of Grousset's 'Empire of the Steppes' sits right in front of me with its pages dog-eared, highlighted and worn. Obsessive notes may run down the margins, but you will not find freakish doodles as one would in an illuminated medieval manuscript.

God, I love books, everything about them. Especially because they don't talk back. They don't cast derisive aspersions, expressly designed to prevent thought, back at me like humans do. Instead I am allowed to think, ponder or sometimes just think, "wow, that's really cool."