The earliest Neolithic culture in the steppes and in the oases may reach the 4th millennium or earlier. The small flint industry continued from the earlier Mesolithic times. In the 3rd millennium bce, copper, painted ware, and other elements from the south entered the area. Sheep, cattle, and horses were the chief domesticated animals. Copper knives and stone sledges for mining appeared. Pottery was mostly round-bottomed, decorated with geometric stamped or scratched patterns in rows. Typical burial of the dead was in a contracted position under an earth mound. Excavations in Khwārezm (Khorezm, Khiva) revealed large communal houses of oval form. In the region of the Aral Sea (Khwārezm) this culture was given the name Kelteminar, while in Altai and the region of Bisk, Krasnodar, and Minusinsk it was known as Afanasievo, although related cultural features are found between southern Russia and the upper Yenisey, the area presumed to be Indo-European homeland. The Afanasievo was replaced by the Okunev group of stock breeders, famous for stone stelae incised with mythical figures, elsewhere in southern Siberia.

Continuous cultural development is seen in the 2nd millennium bce. This culture, named Andronovo, is relatively uniform in this wide area, in spite of some local variations. Agriculture now played an important role. People lived in earth huts and reared cattle, sheep, and horses. Bowl- and flowerpot-shaped vessels were flat-bottomed, well smoothed, decorated with geometric patterns, triangles, rhombs, and meanders, pointing to relationship with the painted pottery of the southern regions. Burial in contracted position persisted. The typical elements of a religion of food producers, the fire and sun cult, as well as bread offering, are evidenced. Wooden constructions in rich graves may have designated social differentiation. The Andronovo complex is intimately related to the Timber-Grave (Russian Srubna) group in southern Russia: both represent branches of the Indo-Iranian cultural block.

In the second half of the 2nd millennium bce in the region of Minusinsk, a Sinid group broke in that brought with it a bronze inventory of Ordos (northern China) type. Cemeteries of single graves covering the dead in extended position in stone cists, equipped with round-bottomed pots, appeared. New people mixed with the local Andronovo population. Through this immigration the so-called Karasuk culture originated and spread its influences farther to western Siberia and Russian Turkistan. Trade relations extended to central Russia. Exchange with the centers of the East Asian metallurgy introduced a new character of material culture (daggers and knives terminating in animal sculptures, series of ornaments) and stimulated the flourishing of metal industry in a wide area. The regions west of Minusinsk—Altai, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgystan—show variations of Karasuk culture with strong local elements with which the persistence of the ancient ethnic type corresponds. Chronology of this period is based on comparisons with northern Chinese bronzes.

The Karasuk period persisted down to about 700 bce. From about 700 to about 200 bce, culture developed along similar lines. Vital trade contact is traced from northern China and the Baikal region to the Black Sea and the Urals, influencing the uniformity of the culture. A mounted-warrior element occurred, although the agricultural and cattle-breeding elements persisted. In the high Altai, Tien Shan, and Pamirs appeared graves of nomadic warriors with co-burial of horses. Regarding the local facies, or separate political confederations, cultures of this period are named differently in different regions.

The art of the steppe zone from southern and eastern Russia to China developed into specific animal style. The decorative talent is illustrated in the great ingenuity that the artist displayed in filling up with animal figures a shape determined by practical ends. The elk, ram, bird, and cat animal portrayals of the middle of the 1st millennium bce exhibit a conjunction of the highest verisimilitude with rigorous stylization; later the organic form of the animal was ruled by extreme stylization. The elements of naturalism link this style with the naturalistic animal style of the northern Eurasian forest belt. New motifs in the steppe and forest-steppe belt—portrayal of groups of animals, antithetic and intertwined groups of bodies, curled up animals, beasts, and birds of prey—originated in a borrowing of ideas from the Middle East and China.

Pre-Christian culture, although influenced by the Persian empire, progressed gradually until the new flow from the east started. The territory between the lower Volga and Altai represents a unit with a common destiny. Chinese and Western sources report that the Sarmatian–Sakian time was followed by the supremacy of the Hun people, who dominated the western steppes as far as the Urals and the Volga. Archaeological investigations show that the east–west movement started at a time when the Hun confederation had not yet been consolidated. In eastern Kazakhstan appeared an eastern group of Stone Tombs people not later than the 5th century bce. The main east–west stream ran presumably from Manchuria–upper Lena, along the northern border of the Gobi, into the Lake Balqash territory, and from there on, avoiding powerful cities in Khwārezm, into the steppes north of the Caspian. For centuries up to the consolidation of the Turkish khanate in the 6th century ce, Asian components were mingling with the local European, which have never been wiped out.

The cultural pattern from Altai to Transbaikalia in the last centuries bce and first centuries ce is largely traced to China of the Han period. Social differentiation is evidenced by princely burials, extraordinarily well preserved in five large burial mounds of Pazyryk and Shibe in the high Altai. Complete burial places were frozen, and even perishable substances were preserved, including human bodies and horses with harness and saddles, textiles, felt and leather objects, clothing, fur coats, false beards, besides jewelry, mirrors, hair plaits, etc. All materials were finished with virtuosity. The art combined animal, plant, geometric, and human designs. Polychromy played an important part. Mummification, tattooing, scalping, and the use of amulets are evidenced.

Meanwhile, in the region of the Aral Sea, the apogee of the Khwārezm civilization was reached in the epoch of the empire of the Kushans. During the 1st and 2nd centuries ce the irrigation system attained its greatest development. Numerous cities were built along the banks of the canals.

Asian cultures

The Arctic and subarctic zones exhibit a continuous culture belt in a Neolithic stage from Boreal times through several millennia. Making of pottery and polishing of stones, but neither farming nor domestication of animals, except the dog, were known. People lived in small seminomadic communities, in semi-subterranean houses. The Arctic seashores demonstrate sea-hunter cultures. In the north this form of living lasted into the 21st century. The region of the Amur River in eastern Siberia shows a long-lasting Neolithic, of which the oldest forms resemble certain finds of northern Japan (Proto-Ainu) and China. Cultural continuity is traced from the Neolithic through the stages in which copper smelting and iron were known. In the farthest northeast, archaeological and other data suggest that the Itelmen, Koryak, and Chukchi entered the area from the west less than 2,000 years ago and found the coastal region occupied by a population related to the Inuit.

The Ural region was linked with the northern Russian and western Siberian culture on one hand and with the Aral Sea region on the other. Throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age times, two cultural branches were evident: the middle Ural (or Shigir) and that of the Ob River basin. During the 3rd and 2nd millennia bce the culture of the middle Ural region is famous for its elk and water-bird sculptures portrayed in wood, found in the peat bogs of Gorbunovo and Shigir, and that of the upper Ob region for its cemeteries in the area of Tomsk, abundant art objects, including bear figurines, and rock carvings. Cultural relationships between the northern Baltic and northwestern Siberia, forming a continuum up to the early historic period, furnish this area with the characteristics of the homelands of the Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples.

The best-explored regions are the shores of Lake Baikal, the Angara valley, the upper Lena, and the lower Selenga. The earliest Neolithic culture shows Siberian Upper Paleolithic traits; the flint tradition of small implements persisted alongside a woodworking and quartzite industry, which developed as a result of adaptation to a taiga environment. Chronological phases are based chiefly on the Angara grave materials by means of stratigraphy and comparisons. The following successive cultures are discerned: (1) Isakovo, showing the earliest appearance of pottery, alongside flint and bone tools (arrowheads, knives, points, half-ground adzes). Pointed-based pots in Isakovo probably were copies of similarly shaped baskets. Art monuments are not numerous here. The period may reach back to about 4000 bce. (2) Serovo, characterized by thinner pottery, decorated by dentate stamping, boss, pit, and net impressions and by stone inventory of more regular forms; reinforced bows with bone backing and fish effigies of stone appear. A marked increase of population is indicated by settlements covering hundreds of square meters, including storage pits for fish. In cemeteries, women’s graves were richly equipped, which may indicate woman’s equal rights in Serovo community. Serovo people migrated to the steppe and deserts of Central Asia and Inner Mongolia. The period belongs to the 3rd millennium bce. (3) Kitoi, placed before the middle of the 2nd millennium bce, shows a variety of more developed forms of equipment; the great number of fishhooks found in the graves indicates that subsistence was now based primarily on fishing instead of hunting; sculptures of human faces in stone, stone rings, and nephrite and copper objects appear; close parallels in stone and bone industry, as well as in art style, are found from northern Scandinavia and northern Russia to China. (4) Glazkovo, extending through the middle of the 2nd millennium bce to about 1300 bce, continues a similar mode of life; novelties include the appearance of burial mounds and burials in stone cists, copper knives and arm rings, nephrite rings and disks.

The first bronze inventory in the region of Lake Baikal is related to the bronzes of the Shang period in northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. Life was then of semi-settled character, and cattle breeding was known. Continuity of culture in the Bronze Age stage is traced up to about 300 bce. The period between about 700 and 300 bce in Transbaikalia, called Stone Tombs I, exhibits a transition to nomadism and mounted-warrior conditions. Cultural elements held in common with the Scythian steppe zone appear as far in the northeast as the Lena River. South–north and north–south movements are attested in the last centuries bce. The south–north movement is assumed as Sakha (Yakut) migration from the Baikal to the upper Lena region, the north–south movement from Cisbaikalia to Transbaikalia as migration of the taiga group, related to the Tungus of the present day.