Changing boundary environment: Geographic impacts on linguistic, religious, and political dominance in Inner Asia

Cercetări Arheologice 33.1, 2026, 403-420
https://doi.org/10.46535/ca.33.1.19



Changing boundary environment: Geographic impacts on linguistic, religious, and political dominance in Inner Asia

Authors: Michal Schwarz

Keywords:

frontiers, environmental impacts, Inner Asia, linguo-religious complexes, political dominance

Abstract:

This paper explores the underlying reasons that have caused the significant differences in the geopolitical and cultural exchanges occurring between two geographic macro-areas of East Asia. The first such area comprises the vast zone in northern and Inner Asia where repeated East-West exchanges along the Eurasian Greenbelt connected the social and physical ecosystems of Central Asia, southern Siberia, Xinjiang, the Mongolian areas, Manchuria, North China, and the Korean Peninsula. The second zone, as its socioeconomic and political counterpart, is found to the south in Inner China and Southeast Asia. The natural environments, the wide range of ethnicities, not to mention their various languages and religions, have all played specific roles in the interactions between these two macro-areas. North-Central China lies at the confluence of power between the steppe populations from the north and the ethnic groups – whether Sinitic or other – interacting from the south. After Section 1), clarifying the methodological approach and introducing the relevant barriers and migrations, the paper focuses on 2) explaining the environmental factors that create unequal stabilities between population units, 3) basic rules of tributary relations, 4) principles and interdependencies in an evolutionary perspective that lead to linguistic, religious, and political dominance, and 5) individual case studies of systemic exchanges. Section 6), the conclusion, comments on the costs of dominance in Asian practice and the participation of religions in this process.

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How to cite: Michal Schwarz, Changing boundary environment: Geographic impacts on linguistic, religious, and political dominance in Inner Asia, Cercetări Arheologice, Vol. 33.1, pag. 403-420, 2026, doi: https://doi.org/10.46535/ca.33.1.19

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