The Geographic Pivot is an area on the continent of Eurasia which is either landlocked, or whose rivers and littoral fed into inland seas or the ice-locked Arctic Ocean. The Volga, Oxus and Jaxartes drain into lakes, and the Ob, Yenisei and Lena drain into the Arctic. The Tarim and Helmund rivers also fail to drain into the ocean. Most of the region Mackinder defines is steppe land, mottled with patches of desert or mountains. Because of the rapid mobility that the steppe lands allow, Mackinder points to the historical tendency of nomadic horseback or camel-riding invaders coming from the east into the west.
