“Climate is extreme, rainfall is scanty and the people used to be nomadic herders.” The above…

Answer: (b) Central Asian Steppe

The answer is (b) Central Asian Steppe. It is a semi-arid grassland deep in the continental interior, with hot summers and very cold winters, so its climate is extreme and its rainfall scanty. Its traditional people, such as the Mongols, were nomads who herded livestock across the grasslands.

• ✗ (a) The African Savannah is a tropical grassland that stays warm throughout the year and gets a distinct rainy season. Its climate is not extreme in the continental sense, and its rainfall is seasonal rather than scanty.
• ✓ (b) Steppe is the climatic term for a semi-arid dry climate, so rainfall is scanty. Lying in the interior of Asia, far from the sea, it has very hot summers and very cold winters. The Mongols of Central Asia were nomads, and the core region of pastoral nomadism extends eastwards into Mongolia and Central China.
• ✗ (c) The North American Prairie is a temperate grassland now known for extensive commercial grain farming and ranching. Its people were not nomadic herders.
• ✗ (d) The Siberian Tundra's climate is defined by long, bitterly cold polar conditions and frozen subsoil, not a hot-summer, cold-winter extreme. Reindeer herding there is a continuing way of life, not something people 'used to' do.

Remember · Steppe means semi-arid temperate grassland: extreme continental temperatures, scanty rain, and a history of pastoral nomads such as the Mongols of Central Asia.

📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 11 Fundamentals of Physical Geography, Ch 11 (practise this chapter) · Class 11 Themes in World History, Ch 2 (practise this chapter) · Class 12 Fundamentals of Human Geography, Ch 4 (practise this chapter)

Question: UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) 2013, General Studies paper. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 25 Oct 2026 (how we verify). · Report an error