There’s a “Golden Man” standing in Muzium Negara, Kuala Lumpur, and with him are treasures from a land far away. If he could speak, he might tell stories of the rise and fall of empires, and of what life was like in the Eurasian Steppe where he once lived.

The Golden Man – Altyn Adam in Kazakh – is the pride of Kazakhstan. He was discovered by Kazakh archaeologist Kemal Akishev in 1969 during an excavation in the south of the country, at a site called the Issyk burial mound some 60km from the former capital Almaty.