The Turkic Steppe

The grassland from Manchuria to the Danube, and the confederations that governed it by being able to leave. A khaganate on the Orkhon could put more cavalry in the field than any settled state and could not hold a city; the ones that lasted longest were the ones that learned to tax a trade route instead.

The line below is a time axis. Position on it is date, so concurrency is visible: concurrent polities sit side by side rather than in sequence.

3 sourced edges run between this region and another, to Hephthalite Confederation, Liao Empire and Mongol Empire. Those are not drawn on this line — a thread that crossed regions would assert a sequence nobody cited — but they are on each polity’s own page.