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Where and what has traditionally been the boundary between the Slavic Peoples and the easterly mongoloid nomads they have for neighbors?
What has the relationship been like, if they ever had any, before the Cossack expeditions? Were they trading partners? Was the relationship similar to what the Chinese had with their nomads to the north?
You may find the following of interest. I recall seeing an excellent exhibit in Kansas City Art Museum of Scythian archeological excavations. They predate and occupied the general region you ask about and likely influenced Cossack culture.
That's a politically-loaded and very controversial question within Russia itself, and it can be tough to find "unbiased" sources as a result. Part of the issue is the identity of the people who actually lived under the various "khanates" that took hold in Russia after the initial Mongol conquests. They were often pre-invasion locals whose leadership was now Mongol. The degree of mixing over time is another loaded question full of political debate.
The issue of "who was here first" for areas around the Volga River is highly controversial. The Volga Bulgars (a Turkic people) were in part of the area from around the 700's or so. So were Finnic tribes like the Udmurt. The Tatars have a long history in that region, too. And the Slavic peoples themselves also had a presence. There was a lot of overlap between Slavs and the Finnic tribes, and then sort of a long fading-out of Slavic and Finnic influence as you went east and went past the Volga into what were then Turkic/Islamic areas. If you were to stop and head north, you'd have encountered Finnic tribes again, then Siberian nomads/herders.
Where and what has traditionally been the boundary between the Slavic Peoples and the easterly mongoloid nomads they have for neighbors?
What has the relationship been like, if they ever had any, before the Cossack expeditions? Were they trading partners? Was the relationship similar to what the Chinese had with their nomads to the north?
You know, from what I remember, the relations between Slavs and Asian nomads were the history of constant wars; in fact the nomads were the enemy number one of Kievan Rus; it suffered greatly because of their constant invasions and plundering of Russian lands. (That is if we are talking 10-13th century.) Then of course Russia has been conquered by nomads, and only after Russia gathered enough strength to destroy their power and turned into mighty state, then the relations kinda changed. That's when you can already talk about "trading partners" and what's not.
YIKES! I normally don't spelling because I am not a great speller myself. Spellcheck is my friend but I can't let this one slide. The people you are talking about are Mongols. Mongoloids are something entirely different.
What else I am curious about is, why is there not a race or ethnicity in between China, and Europe that look like a mix between mongoloid and Caucasian like Brian Ching (houston dynamo), Jason Momoa, or Kristin Kreuk?
Yes those are all celebrities and better looking than ordinary people, but I cannot think of anyone else.
It seems like the Kazakhs, Mansi, khanti and Kirghiz are exclusively mongoloid, while their close neighbors the Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks are strictly caucasian.
Also, why did Ancient China and the Greeks, and Romans not have more contact? There does not seem to be such a forbidding boundary at all. The Steppe is basically flat. How long did it take Genghis Khan's messengers to travel from Mongolia, to the Golden Horde.
I don't think the differences are that stark; there are a number of Turkic groups in central Asia that look mixed or "hapa" in terms of facial structure. Tajiks, for example, have a range of appearances, sort of like Afghanistan. Even individual ethnic groups have a lot of variation - the Hazaras range from European and green-eyed to much more East Asian.
Population transfers in the modern era have changed the local ethnic landscape in many areas, though. For example, if you visit Blagoveshchensk in Russia - across the river from Heilongjiang province in northern China - a lot of the locals look like European Russians without East Asian features of any sort. And that's because they mostly arrived during and after the Trans-Siberian railroad was built, from western areas of Russia and the USSR.
Another factor is that what westerners perceive as "Asian" is different from what groups within East Asia consider "Asian." For example, the Han Chinese do not regard Mongols as looking very much like themselves. Mongols, Siberian tribes, and far eastern Turkic groups have distinct features that immediately identify them as "non-Han" in China itself, but outsiders often lump them all together as "Asian."
Classical Chinese dynasties and Roman-era Europeans had indirect contact through the trading routes of the Silk Road, but remember that large chunks of that route passed through territory held by Persian empires, then Parthians and other groups, and trade was done through local intermediaries. Chinese dynasties were mostly concerned with their Middle Kingdom, and were not very expansionist toward what they saw as the vast western wastes and deserts. The Tang Dynasty in the mid-700's expanded into some of the fertile valleys of modern-day Kyrgyzstan, but the lengthy supply/communication routes back to the capital Xi'an made it a low priority. And after the Battle of Talas, that expedition was more or less recalled back toward the center.
If I have it correct, the Slavs were treated as the doormat of Europe by the Asians.
I am not sure what you mean by that.
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