Artifacts Show Sophistication of Ancient Nomads

[ellisonz]

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: March 12, 2012

Ancient Greeks had a word for the people who lived on the wild, arid Eurasian steppes stretching from the Black Sea to the border of China. They were nomads, which meant “roaming about for pasture.” They were wanderers and, not infrequently, fierce mounted warriors. Essentially, they were “the other” to the agricultural and increasingly urban civilizations that emerged in the first millennium B.C.

As the nomads left no writing, no one knows what they called themselves. To their literate neighbors, they were the ubiquitous and mysterious Scythians or the Saka, perhaps one and the same people. In any case, these nomads were looked down on — the other often is — as an intermediate or an arrested stage in cultural evolution. They had taken a step beyond hunter-gatherers but were well short of settling down to planting and reaping, or the more socially and economically complex life in town.

But archaeologists in recent years have moved beyond this mind-set by breaking through some of the vast silences of the Central Asian past.

These excavations dispel notions that nomadic societies were less developed than many sedentary ones. Grave goods from as early as the eighth century B.C. show that these people were prospering through a mobile pastoral strategy, maintaining networks of cultural exchange (not always peacefully) with powerful foreign neighbors like the Persians and later the Chinese.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/science/from-their-graves-ancient-nomads-speak.html?_r=1&hp

[RZM]

1. While 'settling down' is often considered a hallmark of civilization (whatever that means)

The terrain in Central Asia has always lent itself to the nomadic lifestyle.

Nomadism is better in vast grasslands. Since humans can't eat grass, these societies are dependent on animals. The animals convert the grass into meat, fur, milk, and transportation. There's also the issue of security. It's hard to construct defensible positions on the steppe, so it helps to be highly mobile. Plus animals have to move around throughout the year, since different grazing lands are needed during different times of the year.

Interesting stuff.

[ellisonz]

2. You make a very good point about mobility...

I think that to a great extent allowed such civilizations (yes, they are) to survive even when faced by rivals. Fight or flight are both real options as there is no city to be sacked. Interesting to considering recent indications that those who crossed the Bering Sea land bridge likely came out of this region. Makes sense.