The importance of the Eurasian steppe has long been recognised, with the work edited by Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran quoted above just one of many such works that can now be cited. It was reiterated in 2019 by Michael Bonner, who notes that ‘without an emphasis on the unity of Eurasia, the history of the world will appear to be random and perhaps even unintelligible’.Bonner further emphasised the steppe’s importance to Iran in 2020, a view anticipated by scholars such as Daniel Potts in 2014, Willem Vogelsang in 1992 and others.The importance of the steppe for Chinese history has been recognised for even longer, notably by Owen Lattimore in 1940 in his groundbreaking Inner Asian Frontiers of China, and since by equally seminal works by Thomas Barfield in 1989 and Nicola Di Cosmo in 2002,as well as many others that are referenced here throughout.

However, the impact of the steppe on Europe has received less attention, particularly in those works that focus mainly on western Europe. Such works tend to emphasise more the importance of the Mediterranean and to a lesser extent the Near East in the development of Europe. The huge impact of the Mediterranean and the Near East is not in doubt (on the contrary, I have emphasised their importance elsewhere),but the Eurasian steppe is at least as important for the development and history of Europe – even western Europe – as it has been for China and the other centres of human endeavour on the peripheries of the steppe.