Uzbekistan is located in the heart of Central Asia. According to archaeologists, it is one of the oldest regions of human settlement. Over the past 50 years, several Stone Age sites have been discovered, the most well-known being Teshiktash and Amankutan.

The fertile soils, abundant water resources, and warm climate encouraged the development of agriculture. The vast, non-irrigated deserts and steppes bordering the agricultural regions served as pasturelands for animal husbandry. Over time, the inhabitants of these areas developed diverse relations with their neighbors. Three main factors geographical, economic, and social shaped the emergence of such ancient states as Sogdiana, Bactria, Khorezm, and others in the territory of Transoxiana (the lands between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers).

Following the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, Islam supplanted Buddhism as the dominant religion, and by the 10th century the region had become an important center of the Muslim world.

In the late 14th century, the tribal leader Amir Temur (Tamerlane) became one of the most prominent advocates of a centralized state. In the second half of the 14th century, after exploiting the fragmentation of the territories that had belonged to the successors of Genghis Khan in Central Asia, he consolidated these realms and established a powerful state with its capital in Samarkand.

In medieval Movarounnahr, many prominent statesmen, scholars, thinkers, and poets lived and worked. Among them was Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Together with Hippocrates, he is regarded as one of the fathers of modern medicine. Al-Khwarizmi after whom algebra and the term “algorithm” are named also lived during this era. Many other distinguished figures could be added to the list, including the scholar, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, historian, chronologist, and linguist Abu Rayhan Biruni; the statesman, poet, linguist, and painter Alisher Navoi; and the philosophers Bahauddin Naqshband, Al-Bukhari, and At-Tirmidhi, among many others.

After the Russian invasion in the 19th century, the country became a colony of the Russian Empire and later part of the Soviet Union. The Second World War had profound effects on the republic, as women and children entered the workforce to replace the men who had gone to fight in the war. The war accelerated industrialization within the republic, which also experienced a large influx of refugees from the European part of the Soviet Union.

On August 31, 1991, the 6th Extraordinary Session of the Supreme Council declared the political independence of the country, which was officially named the Republic of Uzbekistan. September 1 was declared Independence Day.

The Great Silk Road is a unique phenomenon in the history of human development, reflecting humanity’s striving for unity, the exchange of cultural wealth, and the expansion into new lands and markets for goods. In the East, there is a saying: “A sitting man is like a mat, but a walking man is like a river.” Travel and the desire to explore the world have always been driving forces behind the region’s progress.

Caravans traveled to the Fergana Valley and the oasis of Tashkent, then on to Samarkand, the capital of Sogdiana, Bukhara, Khorezm, and further to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Some caravans from Samarkand proceeded to Bactria and through the Qashqadarya Valley to Termez, and, after crossing the Amu Darya, continued southward to Bactria and India.

For hundreds of years, scholars and explorers traveled along the caravan routes. We know much about the history of the region from the travel accounts and scholarly works of the Chinese monk Xuanzang, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, the Arab traveler and trader Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the Bavarian soldier Schiltberger, the Hungarian explorer Ármin Vámbéry, the Swedish geographer Sven Hedin, the Russian scientist Alexei Fedchenko, the French journalist Ella Maillart, the American geologist Raphael Pumpelly, and the French traveler Joseph Martin.