Today’s publication is dedicated to an essay “The Mechanics of the Nomadic Invasions” written by a US journalist Bruce Chatwin and published by History Today. The article discusses how Bruce how the dispute between Abel and Cain, the nomadic shepherd and the city-dwelling planter, has continued throughout history. Not always and not all of conclusions made by Chatwin pertain to Turkic nomads, including Kazakhs, but they very accurately voice one ancient architype of sedentary peoples, as the threat to their values, riches and life.
All Horses Run to Rome
In one of the earliest accounts documented by the West, a formidable power from the East was reported to have emerged in the spring of the year 376. Roman intelligence brought word to the command about the approach of an unknown people to the borders of the Roman Empire, specifically to the Danube. It was also reported that this people had obliterated the kingdom of Ermanaric (Hermanarich, or simply the Land of the Germans) in Crimea.
The scouts noted the beast-like appearance of the warriors, as well as their unique battle tactics involving the use of mounted archers. A Roman historian of those years, Ammianus Marcellinus, wrote that the homeland of the Huns was «close to the ocean, seized by ice,» and that «in the land of the Huns, no one tills the ground, their hands have never touched the plow… They are ignorant of home, law, and settled life. They wander from place to place in their wagons.
Ask any Hun where he is from, and he will tell you that he was conceived in one place, grew up in another, and came of age without a father’s hand.»
The historical annals recount that Gothic refugees pleaded with Roman rulers to grant them asylum within the bounds of the empire. Recognizing the authority of the Roman emperor, they were given permission to cross the Danube.
«…by the thousands, like flakes of ash born from the eruption of Etna…»
Two years later, the Goths rose in rebellion at the Battle of Adrianople, where they slew the Emperor of Rome, Valens the Second.
Our ancestors did not destroy Ancient Rome. Yet, they so harrowed the ancient Germanic barbarians that these, in turn, unleashed their fear, rage, and despair upon the Romans. From this, the disintegration of the grand Roman Empire began.
Of Nomadic «Beasts» and Urban «Degenerates»
Returning to the article by Chatwin, it should be noted that the author views the fall of the Roman Empire as a minor episode in the ancient and ongoing struggle between two incompatible yet complementary systems – the nomadic and the sedentary ways of life.
«…The invasion of the Huns was not the first instance of a major nomadic incursion into Europe. The Romans referred to the territories from modern Hungary to Manchuria as the ‘unplowed steppe.’ It was home to the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians, who occasionally found the steppes too confining and encroached upon the lands of settled peoples, subjecting them to violence and plunder.
Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt periodically suffered from the raids of nomads and counted them as a calamity on par with epidemics, droughts, and floods.
The Hungarian historian Andreas Alföldi wrote that ‘…along the rivers Danube and Rhine lies a «moral barrier» between barbarians and civilized people.
The grand Roman fortifications, along with the Great Wall of China, are secondary consequences of this moral division.’
In a more contemporary interpretation – the confrontation continues, there exists a barrier between the revolutionary, mobile element and the sedentary authority…»
Chatwin then elaborates on the aforementioned facts by referencing the origins of the Christian faith and civilization. «The conflict between the nomad and the settler is the same as the rivalry between Abel the shepherd and Cain the tiller of the soil and the founder of the first city.
The true nomads are the sons of Ishmael
The ancient Hebrews clustered around Abel, which would suit the Bedouins better. Jehovah found Abel’s offering of the firstling of his flock more appealing than the fruit of the ground brought by Cain. Cain’s fratricidal crime is viewed as a typical criminal act of the settled person, for which he was punished by being cut off from his family and made to wander.
The true nomads are the sons of Ishmael, the wild man, «…whose hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against him,» the bearer of the spirit of movement and conquest.
The Book of Joshua (the sixth book of the Old Testament) is a hymn of praise to the ideals of the nomadic and martial way of life
The French traveler Morier noted, speaking of the nomads of Persia, that they despise the urban and rural dweller, considering him a degenerate, and praised the resilience and simplicity of the manners of people living in simple tents, while condemning those who indulge in the luxury of a separate dwelling under the protection of urban civilization…»
Noting the ancient warrior-nomad’s contempt for the settled «little man,» Chatwin remarks that the settled inhabitant, whom the author calls a «citizen,» «despises the nomad as a savage destroyer of the achievements of progress.
And since literature itself is an invention of settled people, and everything written about nomads is tainted black. One ancient Egyptian official wrote thus about the nomadic Bedouins of Semito-Hamitic origin: «…Their very name stinks worse than bird droppings…»
A Chinese imperial secretary for the Eastern Hunnic lands described the nomads thus: «In their breast beats the heart of a beast… From the most ancient times no one regards them as part of humanity». The authorities of Rome considered their citizens to be people, all those from outside – animals. The annihilation of the Goths by the Huns in the 340s BCE was elegantly compared by Roman historians to a medical intervention, salubria medicamenta. In all other cases the invasion of nomads was equated to plague, locust swarms, and balls of venomous snakes»
The Huntsman is not a Nomad
The author of the article has endeavored to delve into the mindset of the nomadic peoples. «During the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, onlookers confidently foretold the apocalypse. The Mongol Khan was viewed as the Antichrist, and his cavalry as the legion of Gog and Magog.
The military apparatus of the Mongols engendered a global disquiet akin to that of the atomic bomb.
For this reason, the dynamics of the nomadic raid transcend mere fleeting interest.
The term ‘nomad’ is derived from the Greek ‘nomos’—pasture. A nomad is one who toils upon the pastures, a herdsman and one who breeds domesticated livestock. To label a hunter a nomad is to misconstrue the very essence of the word ‘nomad’.
Hunting is a technique for slaying beasts, while ‘nomadism’ seeks to preserve and augment the numbers of the herd. The psychology of the hunter differs from that of the nomad, just as the psyche of the nomad diverges from that of the botanist-vegetation cultivator.
«Nomadism» is spawned by the vast expanses of terrain that can economically support expansion, be it savannah, steppe, desert, or tundra—wherever conditions permit the movement of a growing herd.
For the nomad, perpetual motion is a cardinal moral tenet.
Without movement, the animals perish. In contrast, the botanist is tethered to his parcel of land. Should he neglect his plot, it will burgeon with weeds in lush abandon…” The nomad’s domain is the path that links their pastures.
Chatwin has drawn one astute and pointed conclusion: «Nomads never aimlessly trod the earth, as some textbooks might claim. The nomad’s migration is a routed voyage of animals through a predictable sequence of pastoral holdings.»
The migrations of nomads are as inflexible as the migrations of all wild animals in nature, for both types of migration are dictated by ecological conditions. Domestication strips an animal of instincts such as the sense of time and space. The herdsman replaces this sense with his own developed skill, tailored to his interests.
The territory of nomads is the trail linking their customary pastures. The dweller of a yurt, tent, or portable shelter imbues this trail with the same emotional and value significance that a settled person ascribes to their home and plot of land.
Nomads demand that the rest of the world respect their property; incorrect migrations can lead to conflicts of interest between tribes. Nomads lay claim to boundless dominion over their trails, but in practice, their life is replete with pleas to grant each other the right of passage through certain territories at certain times of the year.
For the nomad, the land holds no value after he has set off from a place.
Hence, for the nomad, the existence of an official state border is a kind of madness…”
«The House Dweller is a Subhuman»
Chatwin offers some additional intriguing insights. «Today’s nomads are experiencing a crisis, being under the control of sedentary administrators. Their way of life in the modern state is seen as an anachronism.
Nomads resist and deny changes. The ‘tribal problem’ remains an unresolved issue hanging in the air for many modern governments of the world, just as it was for the rulers of ancient cities near the vast East.
The automated discipline of managing a pastoral economy gives rise to the highest standards of loyalty and devotion among kin. In most nomadic cultures, a ‘person’ is ‘one who migrates.’
The word ‘Arab’ means ‘one who lives in a tent,’ as opposed to ‘hadar,’ which means ‘house dweller.’ Again, ‘house dweller’ is considered ‘less than human’.»
Nomads and Religion
«Nomads are not religious in the conventional sense. They have little interest in rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations of faith. Migration itself is a ritualistic performance, a sort of ‘religious’ catharsis, something revolutionary.
The moments when a nomad sets up camp and when he breaks camp acquire a sacred significance of a new beginning. This explains the aggressive and violent reaction of nomads to any obstructions of their movement.
If we assume that religion is a response to fear and anxiety, the nomadic way of life must satisfy the basic ambitions of humanity, which sedentariness does not provide.
Paradoxically, yet unsurprisingly, all the great religions, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism, were preached among sedentary peoples who were once nomadic. The ceremonials of these religions are imbued with pastoral metaphoricalness, their processions and pilgrimages to holy places echo the migrations of the nomads…»
The Recipe for Melancholy, Hun-style
«What earned nomads a bad reputation? It is incorrect to believe that the ‘spirit of movement and conquest’ is a genetically inherited behavioral model that has been highly developed among nomads through natural selection.
In the book ‘The Evolution of Man and Society,’ Prof. Darlington suggests that the instincts of gypsies, as well as Paleolithic hunters, have adapted to a nomadic lifestyle. He also believes that European royal families, like the Mongols, had a genetic adaptation to horses. This gave their ancestors the opportunity to win wars, but in the age of ‘motor warfare,’ led them to the guillotine
However, the genetic approach to history has proven erroneous and has become the subject of constant criticism. It is impossible to explain the belligerence of the Mongols in terms of genetics. The Mongols were hunters who once wandered into the steppes, where they acquired the art of horse riding and animal husbandry. They left behind their ‘cousins’ – the Tungus and Samoyeds, who were and are the most peaceful people on the planet, ‘feeble and timid savages, trembling at the roar of gunshots,’ as English historian Gibbon wrote about them.
Other historians have suggested that the scattering of human skulls where Genghis Khan passed, or the terrifying slave markets in Bukhara, only prove that the primary instinct of man is the desire to attack, dominate, and kill one’s kind.
The instinct that is often suppressed by the institutions of civilized life and released under the more natural conditions of nomadic barbarism is fundamentally incorrect again.
Instead, it might be necessary to acknowledge that human nature is inclined to move across vast territories. Movement through space contributes to the development of a sense of mental and physical well-being, whereas the monotony of staying in one place for a long time or regularly returning to a permanent workplace can lead to fatigue and a feeling of inadequacy.
What ethnologists call «aggression» may in fact simply be an expression of anger in response to being forced to interrupt a journey and remain in a confined space.
Babies often cry simply because they are bored of lying in one place.
A crying child is an extremely rare occurrence in a nomadic aul (village)
The way nomads desperately cling to their way of life reflects the satisfaction that people receive from being in a state of constant movement.
We, representatives of sedentary civilization, vent our frustrations through walking. The medieval church introduced the institution of foot pilgrimage as a way to treat gloomy moods that could lead to breakdowns and murder.
«…The origins of the rebellious, martial, and expansive lifestyle of nomads must be found in the factors of risk and uncertainty, always present in nomadism.
Arnold Toynbee, the famous and authoritative British historian, philosopher, and writer, understood that great nomadic raids had influenced the course of history. In his work «A Study of History,» he attached great importance to the mechanical impact of climatic changes, which he believed explained the periodic movements of nomadic peoples.
Travelers Sven Hedin and Sir Aurel Stein, who visited Central Asia, noted that in the 10th-11th centuries, the cities in the Tarim River basin (the main river in Xinjiang) thrived, but 200 years later, people left because the soil turned to desert as a result of climatic changes. Simultaneously with the onset of drought, the wave of the great Mongol invasion began. The American historian Ellsworth Huntington compiled a sequence of climatic changes that were supposed to explain every surge of nomadic conquering activity…
It’s Not About Climate
«Toynbee’s scheme is too simple. Population growth and changes in the conditions of pastoral farming certainly contributed to the beginning of the great nomadic campaigns. The historian Titus Livius tells of one Celtic king who «…resorted to predatory conquest because he was greatly concerned about the overpopulation of his kingdom…» When pastures are overgrazed, the grass becomes bitter and loses its aroma. Overgrazing dries out the soil, which is then scattered by the wind. This leads to the formation of sandy bowls and drought. However, such climate changes do not coincide with conquests. When the Arabian Peninsula was conquered by the Bedouins, there were no climatic changes. Instability makes the nomad obsessed, thirsting to increase and protect his livestock. The nomad will take meat from a settler and steal animals when the opportunity arises. He often raids, trades with distant countries, and engages in ‘protection’ schemes”.
Owen Lattimore, an American orientalist whose knowledge of nomadic pastoralism has yet to be surpassed, wrote that «a true nomad is a poor nomad» because he is free from the luxury of settled life. However, in a society where livestock is an indicator of wealth, the true nomad is a relatively wealthy herder. His obsession with increasing the number of animals is dictated by the fact that if the number of animals in the herd falls below a certain level, the nomadic way of life becomes unviable. Such nomads turn into seasonal agricultural workers. Due to their obsession with livestock, nomads feel cramped on their ancestral lands. The most active activity in the steppes begins when the climate is conducive to an increase in the number of livestock. Animals need to be protected, more shepherds need to be recruited, disputes arise over pasture ownership rights, and raids occur.
On the Militancy of Nomads
«War, or at the very least, military and practical competitions are endemic to nomads. Every nomadic clan is a military machine, within which boys from the age of 4 are taught to attack and defend. They are trusted to take care of small groups of livestock and are severely punished if the livestock is lost. As a result, nomads are honed to the idea that caring for livestock is one of the purposes of life. Dedication to animals is accompanied by a diminished respect for human life. From childhood, boys shoot small rodents and birds for fun. As teenagers, they shoot at foxes and rabbits. In this way, the foundation of the future strike cavalry force in case of war is prepared. And all this happens against the background of a special attitude to horse riding, about which the Russian traveler Przhevalsky wrote: «For a nomad of Turkestan, it is beneath his dignity to walk on foot, well, except perhaps to the next yurt… We know that the Huns slept, ate, drank, conversed, and even relieved themselves while on horseback…»
The Nomad is Not a Hunter
«The territorial instability of nomads contrasts, and not in the nomads’ favor, with that of hunters and gatherers who are provided with greater security. The nomad assesses the land from the perspective of its suitability for breeding livestock and its fodder potential.
The hunter exploits his territory with gratitude towards it and takes only what can satisfy his basic needs. He is fundamentally opposed to storing food reserves. This he can afford because hunters actively work on ensuring the constancy of their numbers.
Hunters are called happy-go-lucky people by life, and they, of course, are content with lower standards of living. By budgeting their life to the bare minimum, hunters lack the incentives to push their boundaries until they are forced to by someone else. The only motive that forces a hunter to leave his habitat is to find a wife from afar to avoid inbreeding.
For this reason, tribes and clans of hunters isolated from each other are interconnected through trade agreements and kinship ties through marriage. Wars arise only when parity is disrupted. Accordingly, the wars of hunter-gatherers in their essence cannot be compared with the military expansion of nomads…»
Machines for Destruction
«In their own intertribal and interclan armed disputes, nomads adhere to some ancient and archaic parity. The world of nomads teems with vendettas; justice is always personified, swift, and effective. All sides strive to prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control. The instability of nomadic society leads to a lack of cohesion necessary to organize a large conquest. Therefore, nomadic armies were machines for destruction commanded by autocrats. Cohesion, even fusion among nomads, is only manifested when their armies come into contact with a sedentary civilization. Nomadic warfare is tactical mobility Nomads are masters of hit-and-run guerrilla warfare. The nomad does not recognize authorities and looks upon the farmer as a subhuman, feeling no moral obligation to him. Here is how Lattimore described it: «Nomads prefer another form of agriculture, providing military protection to farmers.» The ancient statesman and writer Priscus Panita wrote in his «History»: «With disdain for agriculture, they pounced on the ready food supplies of the Goths, and, like wolves, carried everything away. Gradually the Goths were reduced to the level of slaves at the whim of the Huns.»
Where the Bling Came From
«The barbaric taste for gold infected the nomadic world. The undying shimmer of gold somehow alleviates the monotony of the vast steppe. The Huns were seized with a thirst for gold, and their predecessors — the Scythians and Sarmatians — became famous for their renowned ‘animal style’ of gold decoration, a whole art form that reflects the world of beasts in which there is no place for man. Archaeologists have unearthed precious silks, carpets, and other exquisite items of everyday life from the Pazyryk burials in the Altai Mountains, as well as from the tomb of a Hunnic leader named Noyon Ula in Mongolia.
Byzantine envoys noted that Attila ate from a simple wooden bowl, but his people were dressed in silk and drank from gold-inlaid cups. This fact is a direct consequence of contact with sedentary civilization. A nomadic ruler could count on his people only if he rewarded them well. A stingy commander, on the other hand, lived shortly. When the reserve of gold ornaments was exhausted, the leader was faced with a choice — either give up his own, or start a new war.
Chinese rulers, when sending envoys to the nomads, always reminded them to personally ensure the quality of gifts because they remembered the words of the steppe khan: ‘If the gifts are poor, we will wait for your harvest, mount our horses, and trample all your fields.’ When a city dweller, with a heavy heart, dared to act differently, the nomadic ruler would unleash his innate war machine and direct it toward the comfortably twinkling lights of the cities»…