Scientific Appendices

Abstract

Neither archeology nor history have revealed when the Kazakh people came together as a distinct tribe or nation. Limited DNA analyses show that the Kazakhs share the DNA of many people who came to Asia as long as 40,000 years ago. This includes DNA common among American Indians. Their language has its roots largely in the Turkic language group shared by many people of Central Asia, including Mongols. In the 1400s the Kazakhs emerged as a distinct group led by princes of the Mongol “White Horde.” By the mid 1500s three hordes (or zhuses) came under the rule of a single Khan. Outsiders began to write of Kazakhs in the 1600s as Russians began to explore and claim the vast expanse of desert, steppe, and forest north of the Himalayas and geographically part of Siberia. As the Russians built small settlements and projected military power, Kazakhs staged rebellions but later relied on Russian help in the mid 1800s to protect their lands from Uighurs, Uzbeks, Kirghiz and other Central Asians. By the time the communist Bolsheviks came to power the lands of the Kazakhs encompassed an area about four times the size of Texas, stretching from the Caspian Sea in the west to China and Mongolia in the east and lying below that part of Russia known as Siberia.