The Kelteminar & Botai Cultures (plus a few bonus ones)
It seems that the earliest people to inhabit Kazakhstan was the Kelteminar Culture. Confusingly, in light of the preceding paragraph, the Kelteminar Culture was a sedentary culture of fishermen that settled around the Aral Sea in modern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan
The Kelteminar Culture lasted from roughly 6000 BC – 3000 BC (or before or after, the evidence is scant). What we do know though is they built larger houses, probably to house multi-generational families. They hunted and gathered. But, they were not nomadic. They subsisted primarily on fishing. But unlike the Vinča culture in Serbia, another fishing community they made mother goddess statues rather than fish-man goddesses.
The Kelteminar Culture was primarily a neolithic culture but began to dabble in copper working and thus, became a Chalcolithic culture. As they advanced in metallurgy they became a Bronze Age culture that exported its wares throughout the Caucuses and Eastern and Central Europe (as well as western Asia).
The Kelteminar Culture left its legacy in a number of subsequent Bronze Age cultures. The subsequent Zamin-Babis tribes took the Kelteminar Culture, evolved it and moved eastward into Asia. This is sometimes referred to as the Suyargan Culture, a small part of the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex that stretched into Asia, that came into existence around 2000 BC.
But, the BMAC for short was a pretty technologically advance Bronze Age amalgamation of various cultures in the region, and was a bit of an interlocutor between European civilizations and other eastern civilizations with artifacts traveling through its territory from Europe to the Indus Valley and back the other way.
Ancient Kazakhstan is one of the places in the Eurasian region where horsemanship first laid down its roots. One of the earliest cultures to ride horses in the region was the Botai Culture that lasted from around 3700 BC – 3100 BC. The Botai and the Kelteminar are connected through a cultural interchange of sorts, each influencing the other.
The Botai were primarily agricultural compared to the Kelteminar’s seafood preference. What makes the Botai especially unique is their use of domesticated horses. While they may not have been the first to break the wild horses of the Eurasian steppe, their use of domesticated horses as far back as 3500 BC makes them a prime candidate for ‘first’ status on this issue.
Incredibly, some of the horse riding equipment first developed by the Botai is remarkably similar to the equipment used today, see the pictures of the boots to the left. The Botai domestication of horses marked a huge step in the advancement of human culture. For this reason alone, the Botai, and Kazakhstan in general has had a major impact on the development of Europe.
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