The territory now called Kazakhstan has seen human habitation for forty thousand years. Archaeologists recovered tools from the Upper Paleolithic period in caves near the Karatau Mountains in southern Kazakhstan during excavations in the 1950s and 1960s. The Botai culture, dated to 3700-3100 BCE through radiocarbon analysis, established settlements in northern Kazakhstan where inhabitants domesticated horses—possibly the first humans to do so. Excavations at Botai sites between 1980 and 2012 revealed perforated antler pieces identified as bridle cheek-pieces and ceramic vessels containing residues with lipid profiles matching mare's milk, evidence of kumis production dating to the fourth millennium BCE.
The Saka peoples, whom Greek historians called Scythians, controlled the Kazakh steppes from approximately 900 BCE to 200 BCE. Herodotus described the Massagetae, a Saka confederation living east of the Caspian Sea, in his Histories written around 440 BCE. The Issyk kurgan, excavated in 1969-1970 near Almaty, contained a warrior's remains dated to the fifth or fourth century BCE, clothed in armor with four thousand gold ornaments. The conical hat found in this burial bears an inscription of twenty-six characters that linguists have not definitively deciphered. Saka burial mounds, called kurgans, number in the thousands across Kazakhstan, with concentrations in the Semirechye region and the Saryarka steppes. The Berel kurgans in eastern Kazakhstan, excavated since 1998, yielded mummified horses with elaborate saddles and bridles, preserved by permafrost at elevations above 1500 meters.
The Turkic Khaganate emerged in 552 CE when Bumin Qaghan united Turkic tribes and defeated the Rouran Khaganate. This polity controlled territory from Mongolia to the Black Sea at its maximum extent around 576 CE. The khaganate split into eastern and western divisions in 581 CE. The Western Turkic Khaganate maintained authority over the Kazakh steppes until the mid-eighth century. Inscriptions on stone monuments called balbal, found throughout Kazakhstan, use the Orkhon script developed by Turkic peoples in the eighth century. The Karluk confederation succeeded Turkic authority in parts of Kazakhstan during the ninth century, converting to Islam in the mid-tenth century under pressure from the Samanid state based in Bukhara.
The city of Otrar, located near the confluence of the Arys and Syr Darya rivers, served as a major Silk Road trading center from the eighth century onward. Excavations at Otrar beginning in 1969 revealed a settlement covering approximately two hundred hectares at its medieval peak. In 1218, Mongol merchants arrived in Otrar where governor Inalchuq, appointed by Khwarazmshah Muhammad II, accused them of espionage and executed them. Genghis Khan sent envoys demanding compensation; Muhammad II executed the chief envoy. This sequence provoked the Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219. Mongol forces besieged Otrar for five months before capturing it in early 1220. Inalchuq died during the siege's final assault.
The Mongol Empire partitioned in the 1240s following the death of Ögedei Khan in 1241. The western territories became the Golden Horde under Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. The Golden Horde controlled the Kazakh steppes until its fragmentation in the fifteenth century. The Uzbek Khanate emerged from this fragmentation, encompassing much of modern Kazakhstan. Around 1465, sultans Janibek and Kerei, descendants of Genghis Khan through the line of Jochi, broke from the Uzbek khan Abul-Khayr and moved their followers southeast into Moghulistan territory. These migrants became known as Kazakhs, a term appearing in written sources from the 1460s, derived from a Turkic word meaning wanderer or independent person.
The Kazakh Khanate formed as a distinct political entity during the 1460s. Qasym Khan, who ruled from approximately 1511 to 1521, expanded the khanate's territory and established a legal code called Qasym Khannyn Qasqa Zholy, documented in later oral histories. The khanate organized into three zhüz: the Great Zhüz in the southeast, the Middle Zhüz in the north and central regions, and the Little Zhüz in the west. Each zhüz comprised multiple clans with genealogies traced through patrilineal descent. Esim Khan, ruling from approximately 1598 to 1628, codified laws known as Esim Khannyn Eski Zholy. Tauke Khan, who ruled from 1680 to 1718, promulgated the Zhety Zhargy, a legal code of seven chapters addressing issues from property rights to criminal punishment. These laws existed in oral form until Russian ethnographers recorded them in the nineteenth century.
The Dzungar Khanate, a confederation of western Mongol groups called Oirats, established itself in the early seventeenth century in the region between western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan. Dzungar forces conducted raids into Kazakh territory repeatedly during the seventeenth century. Between 1723 and 1727, Dzungar armies invaded Kazakhstan in campaigns that Kazakh oral histories call Aqtaban Shubyrundy, the Years of Great Disaster. Contemporary accounts are limited, but Kazakh genealogical records collected in the nineteenth century indicate significant population losses and territorial displacement during this period. Ablai Khan, who became khan of the Middle Zhüz in 1771, maintained diplomatic relations with both the Russian Empire and the Qing Dynasty, accepting titles from both powers while preserving autonomy.
Russian expansion into Kazakhstan began in the early eighteenth century when khans of the Little Zhüz sought Russian protection against Dzungar attacks. Khan Abulkhair of the Little Zhüz swore allegiance to Russia in 1731. The Middle Zhüz came under Russian authority gradually during the mid-eighteenth century. Russia built a line of fortifications called the Irtysh Line beginning in 1716, extending southward from Omsk. A second line, the Orenburg Line, extended eastward from the city of Orenburg founded in 1743. Russian settlers moved into northern Kazakhstan following the construction of these fortress lines. The Qing Dynasty defeated the Dzungar Khanate in 1757-1758, killing or dispersing most Dzungars and leaving a power vacuum in southeastern Kazakhstan.
The Great Zhüz remained largely independent until the Russian Empire annexed it during the 1820s and 1830s. Russia eliminated the khanate structure in the Middle Zhüz in 1822 and the Little Zhüz in 1824, replacing traditional governance with appointed officials and administrative districts. Kenesary Kasymov, a great-grandson of Ablai Khan, led a rebellion against Russian rule from 1837 to 1847. Kenesary established temporary control over portions of central Kazakhstan and was proclaimed khan by his followers in 1841. Russian and allied Kazakh forces defeated Kenesary's army in 1847; he died in battle against Kyrgyz forces in the Tian Shan Mountains.
Russian colonization intensified after the emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861. The Tsar's government encouraged peasant resettlement to Kazakhstan, designating lands as state property without compensating Kazakh herders. Between 1906 and 1912, under Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin's agrarian reforms, approximately 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian peasants settled in Kazakhstan. Russian settlers received plots averaging fifteen hectares. Kazakhs increasingly lost access to traditional pasture lands, particularly in northern Kazakhstan where Slavic settlements concentrated. By 1914, Russians and Ukrainians constituted approximately twenty percent of Kazakhstan's population, concentrated in agricultural zones.