WASHINGTON — The first question might be, where is Kazakhstan? The second is, why go see an exhibit about it?
The answer is simple. Kazakhstan is basically unknown to Americans outside of the 2006 movie “Borat,” and has more to offer.
“Nomads and Networks,” which opened Saturday at the Arthur M. Sackler museum in Washington, D.C., provides a snapshot of this vast country and its ancient history
Found to the south of Russia and the west of Mongolia and China, Kazakhstan is slightly less than four times the size of Texas. One third of it is steppe grasslands, where nomadic tribes tamed horses and were formidable mercenaries in antiquity.
The exhibit concentrates on Iron Age Kazakhstan from about 8th to 3rd centuries B.C.E. There aren’t many written sources of that time outside of Greek historian Herodotus, who “refers a little bit of what is going on there,” says archeologist and curator Alexander Nagel. Herodotus wrote in the 5th century
“Nomads and Networks” give us insight into the nomadic culture that dominated the wide steppes. It starts two large stones carved with petroglyphs. One glyph has two ibex, a curly-horned mountain goat, obviously an animal very important in this ancient culture since it re-occurs often in the exhibit. The other has some kind of man.