Eurasian steppe in the context of "Aorsi"

The Kazakh Steppe (Kazakh: Қазақ даласы, romanized: Qazaq dalasy [qɑˈzɑq dɑɫɑˈsə]), also known as the Great Steppe or Great Dala (Kazakh: Ұлы дала, romanized: Ūly dala [ʊˈɫɤ dɑˈɫɑ]), is a vast region of open grassland in Central Asia, covering areas in northern Kazakhstan and adjacent areas of Russia. It lies east of the Pontic–Caspian steppe and west of the Emin Valley steppe, with which it forms the central and western part of the Eurasian steppe. The Kazakh Steppe is an ecoregion of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome in the Palearctic realm. Before the mid-19th century, it was called the Kirghiz steppe, 'Kirghiz' being an old Russian word for the Kazakhs.

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, Sarmatia was a geographic region that encompassed the western Eurasian steppe. It was inhabited by the Sarmatians, an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people.

The Romans gave the name Sarmatia to the region which the ancient Greeks had formerly called Scythia because it had been inhabited by the Scythians. Beginning in the late 4th century BC the Sarmatians, a nomadic Iranian people related to the Eastern Iranic Scythians, moved from the east into the Pontic steppe, where they replaced the Scythians as the dominant power. Due to the Sarmatian incursion, "Sarmatia Europea" replaced "Scythia" as the name for the region.

Turya or Turanian (Avestan 𐬙𐬏𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀, tūriia) is the ethnonym of a group mentioned in the Avesta, i.e., the collection of sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. In those texts, the Turyas closely interact with the Aryas, i.e. the early Iranians. Their identity is unknown but they are assumed to have been Iranic horse nomads from the Eurasian steppe.

Like the ethnonym Iranian, which is derived from Iran, the modern term Turanian is a back formation from the toponym Turan. Both Turan and Iran are in turn back formations from the Old Iranian ethnonyms Turya and Arya, respectively. Turya, or variants thereof, does not appear in any historically attested sources. However, the Turanians appear in later Iranian legends, in particular in the Shahnameh as the enemies of the Iranians. During medieval times, Turkic tribes began to settle in Turan and the name was increasingly applied to them. The modern pan-nationalist movement Turanism also ultimately derives its name from the term.

Hit-and-run tactics are a tactical doctrine of using short surprise attacks, withdrawing before the enemy can respond in force, and constantly maneuvering to avoid full engagement with the enemy. The purpose is not to decisively defeat the enemy or capture territory but to weaken enemy forces over time through raids, harassment, and skirmishing and limiting risk to friendly forces. Such tactics can also expose enemy defensive weaknesses and achieve a psychological effect on the enemy's morale.

Hit-and-run is a favored tactic where the enemy overmatches the attacking force and any sustained combat is to be avoided, such as guerrilla warfare, militant resistance movements, and terrorism. However, regular army forces often employ hit-and-run tactics in the short term, usually in preparation for a later full-scale engagement with the enemy when and where conditions are more favorable. Examples of the latter include commando or other special forces attacks, reconnaissance-in-force, or sorties from a fortress, castle, or other strongpoint. Hit-and-run tactics were also used by the lightly armed horse archers, typical of the Eurasian steppe peoples, who excelled at them. That holds especially true for such troops that were not part of a large army (such as scouting parties), but it was common to see them employed in such a way even as part of a major force.

The Di or Beidi (Northern Di) were various ethnic groups who lived north of the Chinese (Huaxia) realms during the Zhou dynasty. Although initially described as nomadic, they seem to have practiced a mixed pastoral, agricultural, and hunting economy and were distinguished from the nomads of the Eurasian steppe who lived to their north. Chinese historical accounts describe the Di inhabiting the upper Ordos Loop and gradually migrating eastward to northern Shanxi and northern Hebei, where they eventually created their own states like Zhongshan and Dai. Other groups of Di seem to have lived interspersed between the Chinese states before their eventual conquest or sinicization.

The saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica, /ˈsaɪɡə/) or saiga is a species of antelope which during antiquity inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe, spanning the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in the northwest and Caucasus in the southwest into Mongolia in the northeast and Dzungaria in the southeast. During the Pleistocene, it ranged across the mammoth steppe from the British Isles to Beringia. Today, the dominant subspecies (S. t. tatarica) only occurs in Kalmykia and Astrakhan Oblast of Russia and in the Ural Mountains, Ustyurt Plateau and Betpak-Dala regions of Kazakhstan. A portion of the Ustyurt population migrates south to Uzbekistan and occasionally to Turkmenistan in winter. It is regionally extinct in Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, China and southwestern Mongolia. The Mongolian subspecies (S. t. mongolica) occurs only in western Mongolia.