Website review: Ancient nomads
PiTrinam discovered this in Ancient History
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ancient-history
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PiTrinam discovered 15 months ago- From the page: "Ancient nomads, female warriors and priestesses Jeannine Davis-Kimball Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads Berkeley, California Pastoral nomadism, characterized by the trailing of domesticated animals to better seasonal pastures, was made possible only when horseback riding was a fait accompli. Augmented by the exploitation of pasture lands, and the increased demand for horses created by southern urban centers including the Achaemenid Empire, nomadism greatly increased cultural contacts between far-flung regions. The region in which Eurasian nomads herded their livestock is defined by kurgans (burial mounds), because tribes returned over many years to the same summer pastures where they buried their dead. This region, the great Eurasian steppe, begins in Moldova in the west and continues east across the Ukraine and southern Russia (north of the Black Sea), south and east of the Aral Sea, and through Kazakstan to include southern Siberia, western Mongolia, and western China. Major nomadic cemeteries are located in interfluvials of the Dnieper and Dniester rivers, as well as the deltas of the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and Don. Kurgans along the great Volga, Samara, and Ural rivers mark nomadic routes that penetrated deeper into the more arid steppe lands. Further east, in the fertile Semirechiye (Seven Rivers) region of Kazakhstan, extra nutritious grasses in the high pastures of the Tien Shan and Altai mountains contributed greatly to the success of nomadism, as the well-being and wealth of nomads is directly dependent upon the health of their herds. Identified from archaeological remains, but also referred to in ancient and contemporary texts, these tribes are known as the Saka, Sauromatians, and Sarmatians, and date to the second half of the first millennium BC. Sedentary populations along the edges of the Talimakan Desert in Xinjiang, China interfaced with the Saka and provided further impetus to nomadism. All nomadic tribes are perceived to have been ruthless raiders, faceless hordes following the commands of Genghis Khan - style leaders, terrorizing citizens of fortified cities, burning, pillaging and raping as they rode ever westward. Ancient historians, interested only in the most horrific exploits of the marauding nomads, gathered their materials from the point of view of the conquered. Archaeologists of the late 19th and 20th centuries amplified the long- standing convictions that the Early Iron Age tribes were warring, strong patriarchal societies. Over the decades archaeologists continued to interpret kurgan burials from this point of view, and individual women, or for that matter men, were not topics of study.
