Nomads on the Steppe

[Hibernian]

I've been reading a lot lately about the history of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages and one part of that is the history of the Steppe. That is, the large area of natural grassland which stretches across Eurasia in a band from Ukraine to Mongolia (the Eurasian Steppe), i.e. this area:

I've been reading all about the various Nomadic tribes and Empires that grew up on the Steppe, like the Scythians, Huns, Gokturks, Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, Oghuz, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans/Kipchaks and Mongols, etc, etc, etc. They were all cultures centred around nomadic pastoralism and Horsemanship and indeed they built whole empires and conquered many settled civilizations through their use of Horse Archery. They lived in vast areas of grassland and always tended to have very low population densities, but seem to have been able to effectively fight against much more populous farming civilizations, perhaps because of the inherently strong warrior culture of these societies which meant that pretty much every able-bodied man was supposed to be a warrior and have a horse.

The Mongol conquest of China would be the ultimate example of that, where a group of nomads with a population of perhaps only 1 million managed to conquer a sophisticated a far technologically superior empire of over 100 million people. I've read that there were never more then about 200,000 Mongol warriors (though they had other nomad tribes as vassals), which would fit with about 20% of their population being soldiers (a huge figure for pre-industrial societies, since most settled civilizations never seem to have been able to field more then about 1% to 2% of their populations). But their empires were almost always short lived and tended to collapse after a few centuries when another group of nomads came along and destroyed them and built its own empire.

Clearly there is something special about the Steppes that it produces this unique kind of society, very different from the settled farming civilizations that we know from most of history. And the Steppe culture doesn't seem to have been something invented once, but rather something that evolved independently in different, unrelated groups, like the Iranic (Scythians), Altaic (Huns) and even some Ugric peoples (Magyars) all shared this same culture and it's trappings. But as I've been getting to know these groups and their histories there are a few things that I just don't understand about them, maybe you guys can answer some of these questions...

First of all, Why Nomadism? Why was it apparently better to be nomadic on the steppes rather then settled farmers? I mean ok, I know it is a fairly dry area and doesn't get a lot of rainfall which might make farming difficult, or at least that's the explanation I've heard. But when you think about it that doesn't quite seem to make sense, since the Middle-East where farming began (in places like Syria and Turkey) was also pretty dry and even Steppe-like in parts, yet the people there have always been settled farmers (ok there was nomads in the semi-desert areas there as well, but they were more marginal). "Their agriculture developed around rivers" you may say, ok... but there are plenty of rivers in the Steppe region as well. There's the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, the Ural, the Irtysh, etc. Ukraine is a land of rivers, even Mongolia has plenty of rivers, so why didn't farming civilizations appear in these areas? I mean when you think about it, most human Grain crops are just types of grasses and grass naturally grows on the Steppe, so why couldn't they just plant Wheat (even just around the rivers) and presumably massively increase their populations?

And really it must have been possible to farm on the Steppe, because we do so today in a huge way. For instance, when the Russians eventually beat the nomadic Tatar tribes in Southern Ukraine, they colonised the area with Slavic settlers (17th and 18th centuries) who immediately set about planting crops and Ukraine became the "Breadbasket of Russia" (and the Soviet Union) producing massive grain surpluses. So why didn't the previous nomads just do that in the first place? Why was southern Ukraine a thinly populated area of nomadism for the entire Middle Ages?


Another thing which has been bugging me about the history of nomadic peoples is the fact that on several occasions they left the Steppe areas, yet somehow managed to maintain their nomadic, equestrian based societies. The area where this most often seems to have happened is modern-day Hungary (i.e. the Pannonian Plain), where successively the Sarmatians, Huns, Avars and Magyars invaded the area and then created an empire based there which raided and conquered surrounding regions. That would make sense if Hungary was a giant grassland in the middle of Europe, but the puzzling thing is that it seems it wasn't! From what I can gather Hungary during the Middle Ages was a densely Forested region, just like the surrounding areas of Eastern and Central Europe (before most of the forests were cut down in the 17th to 20th centuries).

To show you what I mean, here's a reconstructed forest map of Europe from 1000 BC to 1850 AD: It comes from this scientific paper: The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe (PDF file)

It clearly shows that Hungary was density forested until the later middle ages when large scale deforestation began and totally different from the Steppe areas of Ukraine (the big white area on the right of the map). So my question is, how could nomadic pastoralist societies, based around horse archery on the open steppes, have established themselves in a temperate forest region? I know that Hungary is largely flat, but still, how did they even practice mounted warfare in a treed environmental like that? Yet somehow they obviously did because several Steppe cultures came to Hungary and created powerful empires that ruled the region for a millennia. The same can be said about the Bulgars, both the Bulgarians and the Volga Bulgars created empires in non-Steppe areas and were pretty powerful and stable for centuries; The First Bulgarian Empire was in Bulgaria and Romania, at that time heavily forested and Volga Bulgaria was inside the tree belt above the Steppes.


These are some things I've been questioning but don't really make sense to me, maybe some of you guys here will have a better understanding. Or at least it's something interesting to discuss.

 

[Jorsalfar]

I have a couple of thoughts, but no full explenation.

Just because some of the land can be farmed today does not mean that it could be in ancient times, at least not easily. Some land, like the land in Ukraine, is heavy and wet and not very easy to farm if you don't have a heavy plough. Other land might demand a lot of work on irrigation systems before they can produce very much. Several scholars have also claimed that farming in old times often were harder (physically) than nomadic pastoralism. If that is the case you would not expect people to settle down and start farming before lack of food/land force them to do so. If you are a nomad with no shortage of food and have tempty raiding targets ,like the Maygars did, then I think settling down and start farming would not be a choice that would seem very tempting.

 

[chepaeff]

IThe same can be said about the Bulgars, both the Bulgarians and the Volga Bulgars created empires in non-Steppe areas and were pretty powerful and stable for centuries; The First Bulgarian Empire was in Bulgaria and Romania, at that time heavily forested and Volga Bulgaria was inside the tree belt above the Steppes.

In both cases nomads quickly dissolved in local populations I guess.

 

[Boblof]

First of all, Why Nomadism? Why was it apparently better to be nomadic on the steppes rather then settled farmers? I mean ok, I know it is a fairly dry area and doesn't get a lot of rainfall which might make farming difficult, or at least that's the explanation I've heard. But when you think about it that doesn't quite seem to make sense, since the Middle-East where farming began (in places like Syria and Turkey) was also pretty dry and even Steppe-like in parts, yet the people there have always been settled farmers (ok there was nomads in the semi-desert areas there as well, but they were more marginal). "Their agriculture developed around rivers" you may say, ok... but there are plenty of rivers in the Steppe region as well. There's the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, the Ural, the Irtysh, etc. Ukraine is a land of rivers, even Mongolia has plenty of rivers, so why didn't farming civilizations appear in these areas? I mean when you think about it, most human Grain crops are just types of grasses and grass naturally grows on the Steppe, so why couldn't they just plant Wheat (even just around the rivers) and presumably massively increase their populations?

first off pastoralism is likely way older than farming so to a point it's not so much a question of why pastoralism, the pastoralist way of life was already there and was a very common way of life even in the deep germanic forests, the arid or semi arid environments in Turkestan, North Africa, Southwest Asia and the African Savannah. If you read the bible the people of Abraham are basically hearders. As for why no farmers along the russian rivers; there actually were farmers there, farmers who paid tribute to the nomads on the steppes and traded with them. But thoose were not huge populations or launched great military campaigns across the world so they are not well known.

And really it must have been possible to farm on the Steppe, because we do so today in a huge way. For instance, when the Russians eventually beat the nomadic Tatar tribes in Southern Ukraine, they colonised the area with Slavic settlers (17th and 18th centuries) who immediately set about planting crops and Ukraine became the "Breadbasket of Russia" (and the Soviet Union) producing massive grain surpluses. So why didn't the previous nomads just do that in the first place? Why was southern Ukraine a thinly populated area of nomadism for the entire Middle Ages?

You can with early modern ploughs and irrigation, and then it's some of the most productive farmlands in the world, without that it's so useless that the worms can't even take care of the dead grass of last season because it's to damn dry (resulting in black soils or Mollisols, a meter thick layer of undigested organic material piled up over millenia).

It clearly shows that Hungary was density forested until the later middle ages when large scale deforestation began and totally different from the Steppe areas of Ukraine (the big white area on the right of the map). So my question is, how could nomadic pastoralist societies, based around horse archery on the open steppes, have established themselves in a temperate forest region? I know that Hungary is largely flat, but still, how did they even practice mounted warfare in a treed environmental like that? Yet somehow they obviously did because several Steppe cultures came to Hungary and created powerful empires that ruled the region for a millennia. The same can be said about the Bulgars, both the Bulgarians and the Volga Bulgars created empires in non-Steppe areas and were pretty powerful and stable for centuries; The First Bulgarian Empire was in Bulgaria and Romania, at that time heavily forested and Volga Bulgaria was inside the tree belt above the Steppes.

They were an elite ruling over a large foriegn population of agriculturalists, they only really needed some fields to keep their horses and some clearing to practice wargames, their food was produced by someone else. Their skill with horses and their keeping horses went from being a question of subsitence to being a preparation for warfare not really different from other european elites who also kept large numbers of horses and practiced mounted warfare, only the fightning style was different.

 

[gagenater]

Clearly there is something special about the Steppes that it produces this unique kind of society, very different from the settled farming civilizations that we know from most of history. And the Steppe culture doesn't seem to have been something invented once, but rather something that evolved independently in different, unrelated groups, like the Iranic (Scythians), Altaic (Huns) and even some Ugric peoples (Magyars) all shared this same culture and it's trappings. But as I've been getting to know these groups and their histories there are a few things that I just don't understand about them, maybe you guys can answer some of these questions...

Actually it's extremely unlikely that all these groups developed pastoral nomadism independently. These groups may have come from different backgrounds, but when they got into the Steppe area they shared it to one degree or another. The Steppe is a big place. It's not as though one day the first of some new group showed up and everyone from the last group was already gone when they got there. Most often the Steppe was host to a number of different ethnic groups simultaniously. Often one or another of them would have a dominant or pre-eminent position over the others, but the other ones didn't disappear. There would be decades if not centuries of interaction between one group and another.

Clearly there is something special about the Steppes that it produces this unique kind of society, very different from the settled farming civilizations that we know from most of history. And the Steppe culture doesn't First of all, Why Nomadism? Why was it apparently better to be nomadic on the steppes rather then settled farmers? I mean ok, I know it is a fairly dry area and doesn't get a lot of rainfall which might make farming difficult, or at least that's the explanation I've heard.

Not only is it fairly dry, but the rain that does fall is inconsistent. If you settle down in any one spot and start farming, you are likely to have some bad years - and by bad I mean close to 100% crop losses due to lack of rain. In a large industrialized society this can be dealt with - after all these things tend to be local, and if you have the ability to move large bulky goods around (say by river or rail) then you can move grain to and from areas that had drought in any one year. The net result is that everyone gets more food. However if you don't have this ability, you had better be able to move to go to where it did rain. You can move animals with you to graze in new areas, but you cannot move crops you planted to a place where it rained more. Even agricultural societies in the Steppe relied a LOT more on livestock than farmers in more reliably wet areas.

But when you think about it that doesn't quite seem to make sense, since the Middle-East where farming began (in places like Syria and Turkey) was also pretty dry and even Steppe-like in parts, yet the people there have always been settled farmers (ok there was nomads in the semi-desert areas there as well, but they were more marginal). "Their agriculture developed around rivers" you may say, ok... but there are plenty of rivers in the Steppe region as well. There's the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, the Ural, the Irtysh, etc. Ukraine is a land of rivers, even Mongolia has plenty of rivers, so why didn't farming civilizations appear in these areas? I mean when you think about it, most human Grain crops are just types of grasses and grass naturally grows on the Steppe, so why couldn't they just plant Wheat (even just around the rivers) and presumably massively increase their populations?

Actually Turkey and Syria are not at all dry - they get lots of regular rain. Not only that but they both have some pretty high mountains very close to prime agricultural land. Snow fallmelting later in the year in these mountains ensures that even fairly small streams have at least some water in them later in the year. By contrast in the Steppe, many smaller streams and rivers come and go depending on how much rain there has been lately. Water is MUCH less dependable in that area. And Wheat does not naturally grow in the Steppe - it naturally comes from Turkey, Syria, and parts of Iran. It had to be adapted to growing conditions in the Steppe by plant breeding.

And really it must have been possible to farm on the Steppe, because we do so today in a huge way. For instance, when the Russians eventually beat the nomadic Tatar tribes in Southern Ukraine, they colonised the area with Slavic settlers (17th and 18th centuries) who immediately set about planting crops and Ukraine became the "Breadbasket of Russia" (and the Soviet Union) producing massive grain surpluses. So why didn't the previous nomads just do that in the first place? Why was southern Ukraine a thinly populated area of nomadism for the entire Middle Ages?

A variety of reasons I have been noting so far. Others brought up by other posters include the difficulty of farming the soils with primitive ploughs. In the time of Ancient Greece, the Northern rim of the Black Sea (i.e. modern day Ukraine) was known as the breadbasket of Athens, and regular trade was conducted to import wheat to Greece from the area. However later on they were driven out and replaced by nomads. This process happened several times in recorded history during the Roman era also. As long as the nomads maintained military supremacy over settled agricultural societies it didn't matter how much food the agricultural groups could grow - they would just get slaughtered, looted and enslaved as soon as they got rich enough and numerous enough to attract the attention of the local nomadic groups. It's not a coincidence that the great Russian expansion into the Steppe coincided with the introduction and mass use of effective firearms. Prior to the development of muskets, and European infantry drill, nomadic societies maintained a serious military edge over sedentary agricultural societies. The only places agricultural socieites weren't overrun were where the land was VERY unsuitable for nomadic pastoralism and/or where the conditions for agriculture were so good that the sheer population density of the agriculturalists ensured they would always be able to have large standing armies lying around nearby to defend them.

Another thing which has been bugging me about the history of nomadic peoples is the fact that on several occasions they left the Steppe areas, yet somehow managed to maintain their nomadic, equestrian based societies. The area where this most often seems to have happened is modern-day Hungary (i.e. the Pannonian Plain), where successively the Sarmatians, Huns, Avars and Magyars invaded the area and then created an empire based there which raided and conquered surrounding regions. That would make sense if Hungary was a giant grassland in the middle of Europe, but the puzzling thing is that it seems it wasn't! From what I can gather Hungary during the Middle Ages was a densely Forested region, just like the surrounding areas of Eastern and Central Europe (before most of the forests were cut down in the 17th to 20th centuries).

There are a few issues here:

I don't think it was as heavily forested as your map shows - even if it was, large parts of the area were 50% forest or less.

The land there is reasonably flat, and rock free. This is FAR more important for mounted warfare than the presence or absence of trees

It wasn't heavily populated by farming societies, so it was easier for the nomads to dominate the area. In fact if you read histories of the late roman and early Byzantine empire, there were quite a number of instances where various barbarians and nomads were given/offered parts of this area simply because it had a low population density.

It clearly shows that Hungary was density forested until the later middle ages when large scale deforestation began and totally different from the Steppe areas of Ukraine (the big white area on the right of the map). So my question is, how could nomadic pastoralist societies, based around horse archery on the open steppes, have established themselves in a temperate forest region? I know that Hungary is largely flat, but still, how did they even practice mounted warfare in a treed environmental like that? Yet somehow they obviously did because several Steppe cultures came to Hungary and created powerful empires that ruled the region for a millennia. The same can be said about the Bulgars, both the Bulgarians and the Volga Bulgars created empires in non-Steppe areas and were pretty powerful and stable for centuries; The First Bulgarian Empire was in Bulgaria and Romania, at that time heavily forested and Volga Bulgaria was inside the tree belt above the Steppes.

Part of your questions answer yourselves to some degree. Because they were very mobile, the entire strength of the tribe/nation of a nomadic group could be brought to bear against the people of an agricultural area. Agricultural societies cannot afford to take say 20% of the population (i.e. 40% of the males, and perhaps 80-90% of those capable of doing hard physical labor) away from their crops and fields on a regular basis and still feed themselves. Nomads could because their lifestyle took less intensive work. Furthermore in their peaceful lives as herders it was pretty much a necessity for every working man to have a horse and know how to ride (usually several horses) So long as they maintained that nomadic lifestyle they could easily field highly mobile armies that could move to or from one place easily, and overwhelm the local agriculturalists rather easily.

Take the case of the conquest of China. The Chinese population and military dwarfed the mongol armies and population. Problem is they couldn't be everywhere at once, and they had to defend everything, since every piece of land lost or looted meant less food for later. The Mongols on the other hand needed to defend nothing - in fact they had to keep moving to get to fresh grazing lands. They were free to attack at whatever point seemed most likely to produce the easiest fight, and/or the maximum gains in terms of food, slaves, wealth and horses. There was no point in going back to the same place twice in a short time period, because they would have grazed out the local grasses, and looted/killed off the local population. There was no way the Chinese could realistically defend everything.

 

[Muskeato]

Take the case of the conquest of China. The Chinese population and military dwarfed the mongol armies and population. Problem is they couldn't be everywhere at once, and they had to defend everything, since every piece of land lost or looted meant less food for later. The Mongols on the other hand needed to defend nothing - in fact they had to keep moving to get to fresh grazing lands. They were free to attack at whatever point seemed most likely to produce the easiest fight, and/or the maximum gains in terms of food, slaves, wealth and horses. There was no point in going back to the same place twice in a short time period, because they would have grazed out the local grasses, and looted/killed off the local population. There was no way the Chinese could realistically defend everything.

More to the point China was divided between several dynasties. It still took the Mongols ~70 years to finish the conflict.

 

[gagenater]

More to the point China was divided between several dynasties. It still took the Mongols ~70 years to finish the conflict.

I only brought up China because it's one of the best known nomadic conquests of a settled agricultural state. There are plenty of others though. In Gibbons 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" which I have been reading there are countless times that nomads sweep in off the steppe and engulf agricultural socieites across Europe from Spain to the Ukraine. Most of them only held the area for a short time, but they certainly 'had their way' with the local agriculturalists in the same way that they did in China - attack where the settled people are weak, or have a lot to loose, and bypass any areas with lots of armies or fortified cities. After ravaging all the 'easy' to get loot and whatnot, then one of three things generally happened:

The organized armies and fortified cities held firm, and the nomads went somewhere else; OR

The nomads got allies among the settled agriculturalists who didn't like the current 'powers that be' and were able to face the organized resistance with more power than they had initially, and could fight and win against large organized armies, and lay siege to fortified areas OR

The disaffected settled agriculturalists started a civil war with the current 'powers that be' after the nomads left.

In any case, after this first round, if the Nomads returned in 5 or 10 or 15 years, they would often be even more succesful, as the first round of raids, assults, political divisions, etc. would 'prepare the ground' for an easier and more rapid conquest later.

 

[Boblof]

Actually Turkey and Syria are not at all dry - they get lots of regular rain.

No it's pretty dry, it only rains in winter (like in the rest of the med). And ofc most of Syria is made up of the Syrian desert. Settlement is concentrated to oases, the coast and the river Jordan.

A variety of reasons I have been noting so far. Others brought up by other posters include the difficulty of farming the soils with primitive ploughs. In the time of Ancient Greece, the Northern rim of the Black Sea (i.e. modern day Ukraine) was known as the breadbasket of Athens, and regular trade was conducted to import wheat to Greece from the area. However later on they were driven out and replaced by nomads.

Was it and were they? I know that the eastern part crimean peninsula was considered fertile but that was not a big area and they wern't exactly driven out were they? The polis of for example Theodosia was founded 600BC, lost it's stature when it was ransacked by the Huns in the 400's but it remained a settlement and was bought out from the Golden Horde and revived as Caffa, at no point did it stop being an agricultural settlement, it just paid tribute or tax to various nomadic tribes that had it at different times and suffered from war at times and experienced flowerings at other times no different from other places.

 

[gagenater]

No it's pretty dry, it only rains in winter (like in the rest of the med). And ofc most of Syria is made up of the Syrian desert. Settlement is concentrated to oases, the coast and the river Jordan.

Well yes - I wasn't trying to imply that ALL of Syria was prime agricultural land. The parts that are heavily settled are though.

Was it and were they? I know that the eastern part crimean peninsula was considered fertile but that was not a big area and they wern't exactly driven out were they? The polis of for example Theodosia was founded 600BC, lost it's stature when it was ransacked by the Huns in the 400's but it remained a settlement and was bought out from the Golden Horde and revived as Caffa, at no point did it stop being an agricultural settlement, it just paid tribute or tax to various nomadic tribes that had it at different times and suffered from war at times and experienced flowerings at other times no different from other places.

No they weren't driven completely out. According to Gibbon though (awesome read even though it's very long) the Greek polis at various times had expanded out of the Crimean penninsula and into the Ukraine proper. During good times the Roman empire (or early on various greek states) acting as it's overlord and protector would negotiate things so that the barbarians/nomads would not attack. When things got bad, they had to retreat back to the penninsula where the narrow connection to the mainland provided them with a natural easy to fortify border. They did tend to stay close to the coast, but this was mostly for easy communication/shipping for grain exports.

 

[Jorsalfar]

No it's pretty dry, it only rains in winter (like in the rest of the med). And ofc most of Syria is made up of the Syrian desert. Settlement is concentrated to oases, the coast and the river Jordan.

The Syrian desert can be fairly fertile though if you can collect and store the rain that falls during winter (according to the research project Palmyrena: City, Hinterland and Caravan Trade between Orient and Occident.). Palmyria's population of about 100 000- 200 000 people seem to have been fed by a large number of villages located around it in the desert. The problem is that these kind of areas only could be farmed if one were willing to make a huge investment of labour before one could get anything back, and that kind of projects usually require a highly centralised society.

For the people interested in the finds around Palmyra there are reports on the projects web page:
http://www.org.uib.no/palmyrena/index.htm

From the site:

Water management and subsistence strategies: Palmyra is often called “the Bride of the Desert”. This is a misnomer, as the region around Palmyra is strictly speaking not a desert, but a dry-steppe, or “badiya” in Arabic. Rain falls every winter, and in wet years precipitation approaches values necessary for dry farming. This allows a range of subsistence strategies from the nomadism prevalent through most of the Islamic period over occasional agriculture as a supplement to pastoralism to permanent agriculture including barley, terebinth and probably olive trees. These can be traced though systems of water management, water harvesting and irrigation, and pollen and plant remains from mudbricks present at several sites gives a possibility to study past economy, climate and vegetation.

 

[Orinsul]

In any case, after this first round, if the Nomads returned in 5 or 10 or 15 years, they would often be even more succesful, as the first round of raids, assults, political divisions, etc. would 'prepare the ground' for an easier and more rapid conquest later.

The one big thing i know about the steppe nomads is that the invasions were the result of population booms cause by the inconsistency of the steppes rather than imperial ambition or aggression.
The Steppes go through cycles of a couple generations of high fertility followed by drought, disaster, famine etc. So in the good years the population grew to levels far beyond what the land could support in the bad years.

So if thats how it worked then maybe in the 5, 10 or 15 years later they wouldnt have the numbers or need to be pushing out.

All the various peoples of europe, north india and anywhere else that comes under the caucasian or altic banners are supposed to have originated in the same steppe nomadic tribes until this cycle pushed them out which is why apparently the proto-celts and the mongols share acouple of the same gods.

 

[Boblof]

Well yes - I wasn't trying to imply that ALL of Syria was prime agricultural land. The parts that are heavily settled are though.

yes but not because of "lots of regular rains", but because of the river Jordan which runs from the mountains. Without it it Syria would be as dry as Egypt away from the Nile

they weren't driven completely out. According to Gibbon though (awesome read even though it's very long) the Greek polis at various times had expanded out of the Crimean penninsula and into the Ukraine proper. During good times the Roman empire (or early on various greek states) acting as it's overlord and protector would negotiate things so that the barbarians/nomads would not attack. When things got bad, they had to retreat back to the penninsula where the narrow connection to the mainland provided them with a natural easy to fortify border. They did tend to stay close to the coast, but this was mostly for easy communication/shipping for grain exports.

While the Bosporan kingdom did expand into the mainland it was my impression that they expanded east into the Meotian marches (where there already were agriculturalists around and hose nomads had serious problems getting around) and the river Kouban rather than tried to irrigate the dry Ukrainian steepe?

The Syrian desert can be fairly fertile though if you can collect and store the rain that falls during winter (according to the research project Palmyrena: City, Hinterland and Caravan Trade between Orient and Occident.). Palmyria's population of about 100 000- 200 000 people seem to have been fed by a large number of villages located around it in the desert. The problem is that these kind of areas only could be farmed if one were willing to make a huge investment of labour before one could get anything back, and that kind of projects usually require a highly centralised society.

Not only that but Palmyra drew upon a rather uniqe set of canyons that concentrated rainwater from far and wide in massive flash floods iirc. They built a set of dams and auqeduct systems that allowed them to store irrigate the surrounding desert with that water. Their fate was sealed however once wetherpatterns changed, theres no flash floods thundering thru thoose canyons today.

 

[Hibernian]

Thanks for the responses guys and the lively discussion. I think I understand this subject a bit better now, maybe I'll try to read some actual books on this history though rather then just Wikipedia articles.

Anyway, just to remove any confusion about rainfall patterns, here's some Precipitation maps from Encarta World Atlas (focused on the Steppe region and with the modern country borders on):

Here's the rainfall in January:
(Link to full sized image)


And in July:
(Link to full sized image)


And here's an average annual rainfall map:
(Link to full sized image)


Oh and here's a Legend, in case you can't work out what the maps mean:



Ok, here's an additional question. Why didn't Nomadic Empires appear in the Sahel region of Africa, like they did on the Eurasian Steppe?

I mean the Sahel is very similar to the Steppes, in that it's basically a big belt of dry grassland in-between desert and temperate regions. But it seems that in the Sahel, civilization developed as agriculture around the great rivers (the Niger mainly) which turned into cities and then empires based in those cities (i.e. the Sahelian kingdoms). I know that there was nomadism there, but it seems like the area wasn't really dominated by nomads like the Steppes were. The Sahelian nomads seems to be always pretty marginal groups that never created empires. As far as I know, there was never any nomadic group that just conquered all the small kingdoms of the region and made them into an empire.

Was there something different in the environmental conditions? Or something different in the culture perhaps?

 

[unmerged(75409)]

But there were some. The Almoravids of medieval Morocco / Andalusia, and a bunch of empires in western Africa.

 

[gagenater]

I know horses don't generally do well in Africa for a variety of climate reasons - In particular it's too hot, and there are a lot of diseases horses are prone to get in Africa. Perhaps it was simply more difficult to sustain that nomadic lifestyle/nomadic military connection.

 

[Jorsalfar]

Anyway, just to remove any confusion about rainfall patterns, here's some Precipitation maps from Encarta World Atlas (focused on the Steppe region and with the modern country borders on):

It is slightly more complicated than that when it comes to the question of how easy the land can be ploughed though. If the land is covered by snow during winter all of the snow from the winter season will be released into the soil in spring and most likely leave it saturated and very heavy, unless the grass roots are too thick in the soil ofcourse in which case all the water will find it's way into the nearest river/lake and you are left with a dry step. You will need to keep two thoughts in your head when you try to find out if an area could be farmed. If it got enough water during the growing season for the crops to grow, and if the soil itself could be ploughed easily.

 

[Boblof]

Ok, here's an additional question. Why didn't Nomadic Empires appear in the Sahel region of Africa, like they did on the Eurasian Steppe?

I mean the Sahel is very similar to the Steppes, in that it's basically a big belt of dry grassland in-between desert and temperate regions. But it seems that in the Sahel, civilization developed as agriculture around the great rivers (the Niger mainly) which turned into cities and then empires based in those cities (i.e. the Sahelian kingdoms). I know that there was nomadism there, but it seems like the area wasn't really dominated by nomads like the Steppes were. The Sahelian nomads seems to be always pretty marginal groups that never created empires. As far as I know, there was never any nomadic group that just conquered all the small kingdoms of the region and made them into an empire.

Was there something different in the environmental conditions? Or something different in the culture perhaps?

The Nomads there did dominate and create their own litte states and sometimes empires (Mali, Songhai, Kanem) that ruled over the agricultural societies that existed in their midst but Africa isn't like Eurasia in many ways, they couldn't expand into moister areas as that ment that their cattle and horses were exposed to Tsetse, they could expand south onto the savannah in the east but then they only encoutered more nomads, or they ran into the African highlands and rift systems which wasn't that apealing perhaps. Basically in the western sahel the nomads fought eachother for the right to tax salt and gold mines, control of the Saharan Trade, for slaves and over the right to tax the farmers along the Niger river because there wasn't much else to do, they couln't go south. In the eastern Sahel they had pretty much the same problem, to their south was just more nomads, to their east and southeast were the Ethiopian higlands and great rift vally respectively.

It is slightly more complicated than that when it comes to the question of how easy the land can be ploughed though. If the land is covered by snow during winter all of the snow from the winter season will be released into the soil in spring and most likely leave it saturated and very heavy, unless the grass roots are too thick in the soil ofcourse in which case all the water will find it's way into the nearest river/lake and you are left with a dry step.

In the steppes most rain fall in the summer during the growing period, thing is that the summers are also pretty hot (meaning you get alot of evaporation) so the water balance isn't that good, thus producing shortgrass praries. It's not due to Horton flow during snowmelt but is simply due to poor water balance.

 

[Jorsalfar]

In the steppes most rain fall in the summer during the growing period, thing is that the summers are also pretty hot (meaning you get alot of evaporation) so the water balance isn't that good, thus producing shortgrass praries. It's not due to Horton flow during snowmelt but is simply due to poor water balance.

That will not be the problem in the spring though. If there is a decent amount of snow there when spring comes there is only two alternatives, either the soil will be wet, either satured or close to which means a heavy plough is needed, or the water don't manage to penetrate which leaves it running off somewhere else. The Chervonyy Step in Ukraine from December to February when the average temperature is below zero (Celsius) the total precipitation is 114 mm in an average year. The only way I can see that soil being dry in spring would be Horton flow.

Edit. Anyway the point I tried to make is that it is not enough to look at one of the factors, one need all of them if one want to find out if group x could farm the land in one given location.

 

[Boblof]

That will not be the problem in the spring though. If there is a decent amount of snow there when spring comes there is only two alternatives, either the soil will be wet, either satured or close to which means a heavy plough is needed, or the water don't manage to penetrate which leaves it running off somewhere else. The Chervonyy Step in Ukraine from December to February when the average temperature is below zero (Celsius) the total precipitation is 114 mm in an average year. The only way I can see that soil being dry in spring would be Horton flow.

Ok I think I understand what your saying now yeah I think the spring melt probably makes the steppe pretty muddy (pehaps related: rasputitsa). One coud imagine that you need a heavy plough to manage that.

 

[Hibernian]

The Nomads there did dominate and create their own litte states and sometimes empires (Mali, Songhai, Kanem) that ruled over the agricultural societies that existed in their midst but Africa isn't like Eurasia in many ways, they couldn't expand into moister areas as that ment that their cattle and horses were exposed to Tsetse, they could expand south onto the savannah in the east but then they only encoutered more nomads, or they ran into the African highlands and rift systems which wasn't that apealing perhaps. Basically in the western sahel the nomads fought eachother for the right to tax salt and gold mines, control of the Saharan Trade, for slaves and over the right to tax the farmers along the Niger river because there wasn't much else to do, they couln't go south. In the eastern Sahel they had pretty much the same problem, to their south was just more nomads, to their east and southeast were the Ethiopian higlands and great rift vally respectively.

Hang on, but I thought all those Sahelian Empires were based around farming and city states originally, no? In my historical Atlas book, it shows the Sahel as a farming region from very early on (at least 3,000 years) with lots of small petty chiefdoms which then formed into larger kingdoms and then into empires, in the normal way. Where do the nomads come into that? I admit that my knowledge of how these states formed is a bit lacking, but from what I can tell their rulers didn't seem to have a nomadic culture since they lived in palaces within cities, in the style of any middle eastern Sultan.


But that get's me thinking, I wonder if the Arab expansion after Muhammad can be seen in the same way as the pattern of nomads coming to conquer settled peoples. I don't know much about Arab society at that time, but I think they were mostly nomads (in the desert and semi-desert parts of the peninsula at least), so maybe they had a the ability to summon a similarly high proportion of their population for warfare (i.e. like 20% to 25%), which would go a long way in explaining why they were able to so swiftly defeat 2 much larger and well established empires (Byzantium and Sassanid Persia). The only expiation I've heard before is that they were just so religiously fanatically that they had a much higher moral then their opponents (which may be somewhat true, but on it's own still doesn't explain how they could be quite so successful).