380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
thorough destruction at the hands of mobile horsemen from the steppes. 
Parts of European Russia are still inhabited by several groups of the 
descendants of these Mongoloid Asiatic invaders. Their numbers run 
into millions. We might call them, and the Hungarians and the 
Finns, Asia’s return for the settlements of Indo-Europeans in south- 
western Asia. The Turks continued this reciprocity with ferocity. 
THE TURKS 
The Hwang Valley seems to have been the center of peoples who 
are called Mongoloid. Central and north central Asia was the center 
YW WI Ui:Y 
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ey 
« 
| | ‘ACQUIRED BY 
RUSSIA 
Figure 16.—Shaded* area shows Russian conquests in Asia since 1580. Gun- 
powder and wheels quelled the horseman of the steppes. 
for peoples called Turanian. The names Turki, Turcoman, or Turk 
have been variously applied to a dozen or more ethnic groups living 
west of the Great Wall and close kin to Mongol and Hun. The mo- 
bility of these horsemen of so-called Turkish stock was so great that 
in a short period they were to be found at Lake Baikal and also in 
Morocco, 7,000 miles distant. When the Russians took Merv less than 
100 years ago, the Turcomans of the nearby steppes were known by 
their neighbors as “the man-stealing Turks.” 
The Turkish group that conquered Constantinople has repeated 
the southwest Asia historical cycle with variations. They came from 
