Travelling east the Anatolian mountains become higher and take up more of the landscape. The plains become smaller. The sense that routes are funnelled along predictable channels becomes stronger. This is the Transcaucasus, a land of high mountains and high plains between the plateaux of Anatolia and Iran, bounded on the north by the Caucasus mountains, beyond which lie the steppes. To the east is the Caspian; to the west the Transcaucasus extends to the Black Sea.
In the Kur valley, which lies between the Caucasus range and the mountains of Armenia, the region includes a substantial area of lowland plain, the eastern portions of which are in effect, rather like the Hungarian plains, an outlier of the steppes beyond the mountains. But most of the Transcaucasus is a world of mountains and small alluvial basins. If the Balkans is a region fragmented and defined by mountains, the Transcaucasus is more so, and thanks to the size and height of these ranges the impact is more extreme. If the Balkans are cold in winter, with passes regularly blocked by heavy snow; the Transcaucasus is more so. For human beings living in this harsh environment the chief mitigating factor is the fertility of the volcanic soil. Where there is a water supply, the Transcaucasus can be verdant
And highly productive. Even high mountain basins, with only short growing seasons between late thaws and early snows, can support significant populations. The result is a highly fragmented pattern of localized power and culture (Hewsen 2001:14-19; Whittow 1996:195-203; Naval Intelligence Division 1942-3: 22-5,179-94).
World History
