Synonymous with images of bejewelled mosques & caravans struggling through golden deserts. Thick with the mythology of the Silk Route, evocatively captured in the writings of Polo, Flecker and Seth, the regions of Central Asia have long whetted the appetite of adventurers. But what does the - somewhat archaic - region represent in terms of geography, history, and culture.

A region of deserts & mountains; of great civilisations & infamous nomads; of Buddhist and Islamic cultures (as well as being influential in the formation of Christianity); of trade and wars. It fast becomes simpler to define the region in terms of what lies outside than to seek any common threads from within.

Geographically, Central Asia is bounded by the Middle East, Russia, China and India. So succinct a definition overlooks the fluidity of these superficially homogeneous nations and regions. Of the nations formerly within the Soviet Sphere, few would place Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan or the Kyrgyz Republic outside Central Asia, but much of Kazakhstan (ethnically and socially as well as geographically) lies more at ease with Russia. To the east, Tibet, Xinjiang (East Turkistan), Mongolia and parts of southern Siberia have closer links to Central Asia than they do with China or Russia, into which they have been moulded. The Baluchistan, NWFP and Kashmir areas of Pakistan have similarly strong roots outside their modern nation. Looking to the west, Khorastan province in Iran is strongly Central Asian; it could be argued all modern Iran is more Central Asian than Middle Eastern - indeed it is only through its use in Central Asia that modern Persian survived, having been wiped out in Iran.

The fluidity of the region's boundaries was, at least historically due to the fluidity of the peoples inside. The steppes to the north, a huge grassland stretching from China to Europe, provided something of an 'equine superhighway' across the continent. Entire races disappeared from Chinese annals - hounded out by an aggressively expanding Han population - only to reappear at the fringes of settled Europe several generations later. Thus the Turks came to Anatolia (leaving relics of their rich Buddhist heritage in Central Asia), the Kushans to India (taking strong Hellenic influence acquired from the wake of Alexander of Macedonia), and the 'Hun' to Rome (contributing to the eventual fall of Roman Europe).

The most infamous of Central Asia's nomadic warriors were the Mongols of Genges Khan. Only ever foiled in their aggression when invading Japan (by typhoons, not by mere men) and Poland (by the death of the great Khan himself - a single death that probably saved Western Europe). They conquered lands as distant as China and Europe in an orgy of violence never since repeated. It was the then great cities of Central Asia that received particular attention from the Mongols. At Merv around 1.3 million people were slaughtered. Of Herat's well documented population of 1.5 million, only seventeen people survived. The Mongols had a specific grudge against Nishapor, a place obliterated from the map in 1221 where having methodically slaughtered the population, all animals were killed, crops ploughed up, trees burnt, and the city razed to the ground. In absolutist finale, the river was diverted to ensure the city never recovered. It never did.

In the wake of the Great Khan, Central Asia entered a period of (perhaps dazed) security irreverently titled the Pax-Mongolica. The Mongol Empire was divided among heirs, and eventually fell to further conquerors. In Turkistan, a Turk - Timur the Great - conquered and destroyed much, but left a unique architectural legacy by collecting artisans as spoils of war. They were set to create monuments for him, the wide fusion of influences being called the Timurid style. Samarkand (in Tajik Uzbekistan) and Herat (Afghanistan) were two early Timurid capitals, built before the Timurids followed their conquests south, founding the Mogul dynasty in India.

Central Asia's next foray into the international (or more accurately European) consciousness wasn't until the nineteenth century. British India had expanded far beyond its early oceanic outposts to become one of the largest single political entities on the face of the earth. Similarly the one time city-state of Moscovsky (Moscow) had metamorphosed into Imperial Russia - expanding as far east as Alaska, and south into China, Persia and Central Asia. The imminent clash between remote outposts of the world's two great ascendant empires predictably lead to war in the Crimea.

In Asia, ignorance of both the intermediate regions and the other empire's intentions, the distant nature of the frontiers (particularly from island Britain) and the inaccessibility of passes to armies lead to more 'gentlemanly' rivalry between the empires. Unsure of what lay beyond their remote borders, undercover parties - or even single 'pundits' - were sent out into the unknown, travelling as local traders, to explore and map the huge blank areas on the maps of London and St. Petersburg. It was a dangerous game. Many of the local Emirs and Shahs, ignorant of the world beyond their fiefdom and unaware that they were mere pawns in the game being played out, set in motion events that would eventually lead to their downfall. For a pundit, being unmasked as a foreign agent lead to a painful death.

Because of the costs, dangers and uncertainty of direct intervention, local rulers were courted and flattered by the foreign powers, manipulated where possible, and overthrown only when necessary or convenient. In turn many rulers manipulated and extracted large subsidies for loyalty to their powerful yet vulnerable neighbours. The atmosphere of mutual mistrust and uncertainty lead Britain and Russia back to the verge of war twice in the late nineteenth century. After many scares and much press jingoism, the situation defused, largely as a result of Russia suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of the Japanese navy in 1905. Britain and Russia concluded agreements in 1895 and 1907, establishing Persia and Afghanistan as inviolate buffer states between them. The borders drawn up then, including the Wakhan Corridor, the slither of inhospitable land extending east from the body of Afghanistan to China, have largely endured to the current day.

Today, Central Asia lies divided in the image of its peripheral states. The core states of the Former Soviet Union retain fundamentally porous borders, open both legally and illegally. Afghanistan bears the scars of a more recent decade of superpower struggle, fighting still today, though between another set of ideologies. Chinese borders are - at least theoretically - tightly closed to all, and remote Beijing tolerates no dissent from its distant possessions. Most of northern Pakistan reflects the instability and lawlessness of the Afghan war. Kashmir is bisected by the Indo-Pakistani line of control, a disputed boundary through the stunning valleys and mountains, scarred by regular exchanges of fire, and occasional border incursions in a stand-off neither side appears willing to end.

Of Central Asia's effects on the world deeper beyond its borders, perhaps the most enduring image is that of the silk route. An image - encouraged by travel agencies the world over - of camel trains carrying merchants and their silks from the mulberry groves of China to the markets of Rome. Ironically, there is very little evidence to suggest the silk route ever existed. Archaeological evidence of organised trade through Central Asia is slight, particularly when compared with that associated with comparable sea-routes between the Red Sea and China. (For more information see Warwick Ball's 'Following the Mythical Road'; [UK] Geographical Magazine, March 1998).

However, the Central Asian history and archaeological heritage is far more esoteric! The aridity of the climate and minimal human interference has preserved corpses, building, paintings and texts in Chinese Turkistan, precipitating a rush of archaeological expeditions at the start of the twentieth century. Evidence of Buddhist kingdoms predating contemporary Islamic culture by almost a thousand years was found, and Hellenic sculptures and paintings were brought back to stunned audiences across Europe. Roots of Buddhist iconography in China, Tibet, Japan and South East Asia were traced back toward Central Asian sources, particularly the Swat valley of modern Pakistan, where Buddhism mixed with a wide and eclectic mixture of other influences. Theories of white supremacy, and of justification for the British rule in India were a more odious effect of these discoveries, and the legitimacy of removing hitherto ignored artefacts for distant museums is still controversial. Dunhuang (Gansu; PRC) alone ceded the 868AD 'Diamond Sutra', today still the pride of the British Library as the worlds oldest datable printed book; and a series of great cavepaintings, destroyed in Second World War bombing of Berlin. That which remained often faired little better. The painted caves in Dunhuang from which these came were used to intern White Russian exiles who left the walls scarred and smoke-stained. Zealous Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution in China caused further - immeasurable - damage.

Further west, evidence of a pivotal role in the evolution of world religions abounds. Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroasterism lived in Balch, modern Afghanistan. Zoroasterism is often called the first modern religion, as the first religion to worship a single, abstract, deity. It's legacy lives on, and can be seen in the hierarchical priest system of Iran, and the Brahmins of India. In a subtler legacy, the layout of Buddhist Stupas and temples closely resembles that of Zoroastrian fire temples, and the three wise men of the Christian nativity were likely to have been Zoroastrian priests.

Islam is of course now the defining religion of the region. Sweeping rapidly out from Mecca after 622, within a century Arab invaders had overrun the entire Persian and much of the Roman empires, and routed Tang Chinese forces on the Talas river in modern Kazakhstan. Tolerant of local religions, Islam was not imposed, but the broad-minded Sufi movement appears to have been extremely successful at winning converts. By the ninth Century, Central Asians dominated the Court of the Caliphs in Baghdad.

Despite the upheaval visited upon the region by the Mongols and the atheist Soviets, Islam has survived at least nominally. Sufi brotherhoods are credited with keeping underground Islam alive in the USSR, and halting progress is being made by many toward rediscovering their religious routes.

Central Asia, so remote and isolated, yet pivotal in so much beyond.

This article owes much - not least its subtitle - to Warwick Ball.