Rich Kirghiz
sometimes
have hundreds of camels, thousands
of horses, tens of thousands of sheep.
of horses, tens of thousands of sheep.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
Without irri-
gation the soil becomes in summer as hard as concrete, and its vegetation
dies completely. The oases comprise only two per cent. of the total area
of Turkestan. As a rule the rocky mountains are quite bare; they consist
of black gleaming stone cracked by frost and heat, and are waterless.
Roughly speaking these differences of vegetation follow one another
from south to north, viz. the salt-, the sand- and the grass-steppes. A little
below 50° N. latitude the landscape of West Asia changes in consequence
of a greater fall of moisture. The undrained lakes become less frequent,
the rivers reach the sea (Ishim, Tobol, etc. ), and trees appear. Here begins,
as a transition to the compact forest-land, the tree-steppe on the very
fertile “black earth. ” On the Yenisei are park-like districts with splendid
grass plains, and luxuriant trees. Northward come endless pine-forests,
and beyond them, towards the Arctic Sea, is the moss-steppe or
tundra.
The climate is typically continental, with icy cold winters, hot
summers, cold nights, and hot days with enormous fluctuations of
temperature. The warmth increases quickly from winter to spring and
decreases just as quickly from summer to autumn. In West Turkestan,
the summer is almost cloudless and rainless, and at this time the steppes
become deserts. On account of the dryness little snow falls; as a rule it
remains loose and is whirled aloft by the north-east storm wind (buran).
These storm burans are just as terrible as the summer storms of salt-dust
in Trans-Caspia at a temperature of 104° to 113° Fahr. Considering
that in summer the temperature sometimes reaches 118° in the shade,
exceeding body-heat by 20°, and that in winter it sinks below - 31,
and further that the heat, especially in the sand-deserts, reaches a
degree at which the white of egg coagulates, the climate, even if
not deadly, should be very injurious to man; Hindustan, which is
far less hot, enervates the European on account of the greater
moisture, and has changed the Aryan, once so energetic, to the weak
and cowardly Hindu. Nevertheless the contrary is the case.
The
climate of Turkestan is wholesome, and its people are long-lived and
>
>
## p. 325 (#355) ############################################
Use of the Soil.
Mounted Nomadism
325
healthy, and that especially in the hot summer, on account of the un-
paralleled dryness of the air. Once acclimatised, one bears the heat very
well, and likewise the extreme cold of winter. The climate of Central
Asia furthers a rapid bodily and mental development and premature
ageing, as well as corpulence, especially among the Altaians. Obesity
is even regarded as a distinction, and it became so native to the mounted
nomads that it accompanied them to Europe; it is characteristic of all
the nomads who have invaded Europe; and Hippocrates mentions it
expressly as a characteristic of the Scythians. The climate of Turkestan
also influences the character, leading to an apathy which creates indiffer-
ence to the heaviest blows of fate, and even accompanies the condemned
to the scaffold.
The entire West Asiatic region from the salt-steppes to the compact
forest-land forms one economic whole. The well-watered northern part,
which remains green throughout the summer, feeds countless herds in
the warm season, but affords no pasturage in winter owing to the
deep snow. On the other hand, the southern part, which is poor in
water-the grass-, sand-, and salt-steppes—is uninhabitable in summer.
Thus the northern part provides summer pastures, the southern-the
Aral-Caspian basin-winter pastures to one and the same nomad
people.
The nomad then is the son and product of the peculiar and variable
constitution which nevertheless is an indivisible economic whole-of the
Asiatic background. Any agriculture, worthy of the name, is impossible
in the steppes and deserts--the few oases excepted—on account of the
—
dryness of the summer, when animals also find no food. Life on the
steppes and deserts is only possible in connexion either with the
Siberian grass-region or with the mountains. This life is necessarily
extremely hard and restless for man and beast and it creates a condition
of nomadism, which must at the same time be a mounted nomadism,
seeing that a wagon would be an impossibility in the long trackless
wanderings over mountain and valley, river and swamp, and that goods
and chattels, together with the disjoinable dwellings, can only be carried
on the backs of beasts of burden.
Setting aside the Glacial Period and the small Brückner cycle of
35 years or so, the climatic changes of Central Asia, according to
Huntington', fall into cycles of several hundred years' duration within
which the aridity rises and sinks considerably. “All Central Asia
has undergone a series of climatic pulsations during historic times.
There seems to be strong evidence that at the time of Christ or
earlier the climate was much moister and more propitious than it now
is. Then during the first few centuries of the Christian era there
appears to have been an epoch of increasing aridity. It culminated
| Huntington, Pulse, p. 359.
CH. XII.
## p. 326 (#356) ############################################
326
Ruins in the Wastes
about A. D. 500, at which time the climate appears to have been drier
than at present. Next came an epoch of more propitious climate which
reached its acme about A. D. 900. There is a little evidence of a second
epoch of aridity which was especially marked in the twelfth century.
Finally, in the later Middle Ages, a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea and
the condition of certain ruins render it probable that climatic conditions
once again became somewhat favorable, only to give place ere long to
the present aridity? "
But Central Asia has not been, since the beginning of historic
records, in a state of desiccation. The process of “geological” desic-
cation was already ended in prehistoric times, and even the oldest
historic accounts testify to the same climatic conditions as those of
to-day. The earliest Babylonian kings maintained irrigation works, and
Hammurabi (23rd cent. B. c. ) had canals made through the land, one
of which bore his name. Thus, as at present, without artificial irriga-
tion agriculture was not possible there 4200 years ago. Palestine's
climate too has not changed in the least since Biblical times : its present
waste condition is the result of Turkish mismanagement, and Biot has
proved from the cultivated plants grown in the earliest times that the
temperature of China has remained the same for 3300 years. Curtius
Rufus and Arrian give similar accounts of Bactria.
>
Amid the enormous wastes there are countless sand-buried ruins of
populous cities, monasteries and villages and choked-up canals standing
on ground won from the waste by systematic canalisation; where the
system of irrigation was destroyed, the earlier natural state, the desert,
returned. The causes of such destruction are manifold? . 1. Earth-
quake. 2. Violent rain-spouts after which the river does not find its
former bed, and the canals receive no more water from it. 3. On the
highest edge of the steppe, at the foot of the glacier, lie enormous flat
heaps of débris, and here the canalisation begins. If one side of this heap
rises higher than the other, the direction of the current is shifted, and
the oases nurtured by the now forsaken stream become derelict. But the
habitable ground simply migrates with the river. If, for example, a
river altered its course four times in historic times, three series of ruins
remain behind ; but it is erroneous simply to add these ruins together,
and to conclude from them that the whole once formed a flourishing
land which has become waste, when in reality the three series of settle-
ments did not flourish side by side but consecutively. This fallacy
vitiates all accounts which assume a progressive or periodic desiccation
as the chief cause of the abandonment of oases.
4. Continuous drought
in consequence of which the rivers become so waterless that they cannot
1 The view of Huntington (in Explorations in Turkestan, 1904, ed. by Pumpelly,
Washington, 1908, p. 231 note).
2 Cholnoky in Geogr. Zeitschr: xv. pp. 249 ff.
>
## p. 327 (#357) ############################################
Irrigation and the Causes of its Destruction
327
Oases,
feed the canals of the lower river-basin, and thus the oases affected must
become parched, and are not always re-settled in more favourable years.
5. Neglect of the extreme care demanded in the administration of the
canal system. If irrigation is extended in the district next the mountain
from which the water comes, just so much water is taken from the lower
But in this case too nothing is lost which cannot be replaced in
another direction : vice versâ if an oasis on the upper course of the
river disappears through losing its canal system, the lower river course thus
becomes well watered and makes possible the formation of a new oasis.
6. The most terrible mischief is the work of enemies. In order to make
the whole oasis liable to tribute they need only seize the main canal; and
the nomads often blindly plundered and destroyed everything. A single
raid was enough to transform hundreds of oases into ashes and desert.
The nomads moreover not only ruined countless cities and villages of
Central Asia, but they also denuded the steppe itself, and promoted
drift-sand by senseless uprooting of trees and bushes for the sake of
firewood. But for them, according to Berg, there would be little drift-
sand in Central Asia, for, in his opinion, all sand-formations must in
time become firm. All the sand-deserts which he observed on the Aral
Sea and in Semiryechensk were originally firm, and even now most of
them are still kept firm by the vegetation.
With the varied dangers of irrigation systems it is impossible to
decide in the case of each group of ruins what causes have produced
them; it is therefore doubtful whether we can place in the foreground
the secular changes of climate. It is not even true that the cultivation
of the oases throve better in the damper and cooler periods than in the
arid and hot ones. Thus the oases of Turfan in Chinese Turkestan,
which is so extremely arid and so unendurably hot in summer, are
exceptionally fertile. We may therefore conclude that the cultivation
of the oases was considerably more extended in the damper and
cooler periods, but considerably less productive than in the arid and
hot ones of to-day. Changes in the volume of water of single rivers
and lakes are clearly apparent within short periods, and these lead
to frequent local migrations of the peasant population and to new
constructions as well as to the abandonment of irrigation canals. Thus
there is here a continual local fluctuation in the settlements, but history
knows nothing of regular migrations of agriculturists.
Still less is an unfavourable climatic change the cause of the nomad
invasions of Europe. The nomad does not remain at all during the
summer in the parched steppe and desert; and in the periods of increasing
aridity and summer heat South Siberia was warmer and the mountain
glaciers retreated, and hence the pastures in both these directions were
extended. The only consequence of this was that the distance between
summer and winter pastures increased and the nomad had to wander
a
CH. XII.
## p. 328 (#358) ############################################
328
Causes of the Nomad Invasions of Europe
further and quicker. The computation is correct in itself, that the
number of animals that can be reared to the square mile depends on
and varies with the annual rainfall"; but the nomad is not hampered
by square miles ; the poorer or richer the growth of grass the shorter
or longer time he remains, and he is accustomed from year to year to
Aluctuations in the abundance of his flocks. Moreover a shifting of the
winter pastures is not impossible, for their autumn and spring vegetation
is not destroyed by a progressive aridity, and if the water current
changes its bed, the nomad simply follows it. Further, the effect of
a secular progressive aridity is spread over so many generations that it is
not catastrophic for any one of them. The nomad invasions of China
and Europe must therefore have had other causes ; and we know some-
thing about the invasions of several nomad hordes-of the Avars, Turks
(Osmans) and Cumans, for example.
Since the second half of the fifth century A. D. —that is, the time to
which Huntington assigns the greatest aridity-there had existed in the
Oxus basin the powerful empire of the Ephthalite horde, on the ruins of
which the empire of the West Turks was founded in the middle of
the sixth century. Had Central Asia been at that time so arid and
therefore poor in pasture, the then victorious horde would have driven
out the other hordes in order to secure for themselves more pasture land.
Yet exactly the opposite took place; the Turks enslaved the other
hordes, and when the Avars fled to Europe, the Turkish Khagan claimed
them back at the Byzantine Court. In like manner the Turks (Osmans)
fled from the sword of the Mongols in 1225 from Khorasan to Armenia,
and in 1235 the Cumans fled to Hungary. The violence of the Mongols
is strikingly described by Gibbon : "from the Caspian to the Indus they
ruined a tract of many hundred miles which was adorned with the habi-
tations and labours of mankind, and five centuries have not been sufficient
to repair the ravages of four years. " Therefore the main cause of the
nomad invasions of Europe is not increasing aridity but political changes.
There remains the question : How did the nomads originate ? On
the theory of a progressive desiccation it is assumed that the Aryan
peasantry of Turkestan were compelled to take to a nomad life through
the degeneration of their fields to steppes and wastes. But the peasant
bound to the soil is incapable of a mode of life so unsettled, and requiring
of him much new experience. Robbed of his corn-fields and reduced to
beggary, could he be at the same time so rich as to procure himself the
herds of cattle necessary to his existence, and so gifted with divination
as suddenly to wander with them in search of pasture over immeasurable
distances ? A decrease of cultivable soil would bring about only a
continual decrease in the number of inhabitants. The peasant as such
disappeared, emigrated, or perished, and his home became a desert,
:
4
с
bi
T
COI
a
As
vai!
thes
and
facto
cultu
breedi
1 Huntington, Pulse, p. 382.
Th
dolicho
element
1
CH, X
## p. 329 (#359) ############################################
How did the Nomads originate?
329
and was occupied by another people who knew from experience how to
make use of it in its changed state, i. e. as winter grazing-ground. This
new people must have been already nomadic, and have made their way
from the pastures of the North and therefore they must have belonged
to the Altaian race? .
The delta oases have been the home of man from early prehistoric time,
throughout Turkestan and northern Persia. The two oldest culture-
strata of Anau' prove that the settlers of the first Culture cultivated
wheat and barley, had rectangular houses of air-dried bricks, but only
wild animals at first, out of which were locally domesticated the long-
horned ox, the pig and horse, and successively two breeds of sheep. The
second Culture had the domestic ox, both long- and short-horned, the
pig, and the horse. The domestic goat, camel, and dog appear, and a new
hornless breed of sheep. The cultivation of cereals was discovered in
Asia long before B. C. 8000. The domestication of cattle, pigs, and sheep,
and probably of the horse, was accomplished at Anau between B. c. 8000
and 6800. Consequently, the agricultural stage preceded the nomadic
shepherd stage in Asia. "It follows, therefore, that before domestication
of animals was accomplished, mankind in Central Asia was divided
sharply into two classes_settled agriculturists on the one hand, and
hunters who wandered within a limited range on the other hand. When
the nomadic hunters became shepherds, they necessarily wandered
between ever-widening limits as the seasons and pasturage required for
increasing herds. The establishment of the first domestic breeds of
pigs, long-horned cattle, large sheep and horses, was followed by a
deteriorating climate which may have—as Pumpelly, though questionably,
assumes—changed these to smaller breeds. Dr Duerst identifies the
second breed of sheep with the turbary sheep (Torfschaf), and the pig
with the turbary pig (Torfschwein), which appear as already domesti-
cated in the neolithic stations of Europe. They must therefore have
been descendants of those domesticated on the oases of the Anau district.
They make their appearance in European neolithic stations apparently
contemporaneously with an immigration of a people of a round-headed
Asiatic type which seems to have infiltrated gradually among the pre-
vailing long-headed Europeans. The presumption is, therefore, that
these animals were brought from Asia by this round-headed people,
and that we have in this immigration perhaps the earliest post-glacial
factor in the problem of Asiatic influence in European racial as well as
cultural origins, for they brought with them both the art of cattle-
breeding and some knowledge of agriculture.
The skulls of the first and second cultures in Anau are all
dolichocephalic or mesocephalic, without a trace of the round-headed
element. We are therefore justified in assuming that the domestication
1 Peisker, Beziehungen, p. 21.
? Pumpelly, in Explorations, 1904, pp. 38 ff. , 67 ff.
>
CH. XII
## p. 330 (#360) ############################################
330
Domestication of Animals
and the forming of the several breeds of domestic animals were effected
by a long-headed people. And since the people of the two successive
cultures were settled oasis-agriculturists and breeders, we may assume
as probable that agriculture and settled life in towns on the oases
originated among people of a dolichocephalic type. Since Dr Duerst
identifies the second breed of sheep established during the first culture of
Anau, with the turbary sheep in Europe, contemporaneously with skulls
of the round-headed Galcha type, it should follow that the domestic
animals of the European neolithic stations were brought thither, together
with wheat and barley, by round-headed immigrants (of an Asiatic type).
Since the original agriculturists and breeders were long-headed, it seems
probable that the immigrants were broad-headed nomads who, having
cquired from the oasis people domestic animals and rudimentary
agriculture of the kind still practised by the shepherd nomads of Central
Asia, infiltrated among the neolithic settlements of Eastern and Central
Europe, and adopted the stone-implement culture of the hunting and
fishing peoples among whom they came. In this connexion it is not
without significance that throughout the whole historical period, the
combination of settled town life and agriculture has been the fundamental
characteristic of the Aryan-speaking Galchas, and of the Iranians inhabit-
ing Western Central Asia and the Persian plateau, while the peoples of
pure Asiatic mongoloid type have been essentially shepherd nomads, who,
as already shewn, could have become shepherds only after the settled
agriculturists of the oases had established domesticated breeds of
cattle.
The origin of the taming of wild into domestic animals is one of the
most difficult problems of economic history. What was its aim ? The
use that we make of domestic animals ? Certainly not, for adaptability
thereto could only gradually be imparted to the animals and could not
be foreseen ; it could not be anticipated that the cow and the goat
would ever give more milk than their young needed, and that beyond
the time of lactation ; nor could it be anticipated that sheep not woolly
by nature would develop a fleece. Even for us it would be too
uneconomical to breed such a powerful animal and such a large con-
sumer of fodder as the ox merely for a supply of meat; and besides
beef is not readily eaten in Central Asia. Moreover the wild ox is entirely
unsuitable for draught, for it is one of the shyest as well as strongest and
most dangerous of animals. And it should be specially emphasized that
a long step lies between taming individual animals and domesticating
them, for as a rule wild animals, however well tamed, do not breed in
captivity. Consequently the domestication was not produced simply by
taming or for economic ends. It is the great service of Eduard Hahn
Hahn, Haustiere, pp. 26 ff. , Alter, pp. 91 ff. , Entstehung, pp. 57 ff. , 93; Jevons,
Hist. of Religion, pp. 113–118. On the contrary, Hildebrand, Recht u. Sitte, p. 23.
>
## p. 331 (#361) ############################################
Rearing of Animals.
The Horse
331
to have laid down the theory that the domestication-involuntary
and unforeseen-was the result of forcing for religious purposes certain
favourite animals of certain divinities into reservations where they
remained reproductive, and at the same time gradually lost their original
wildness through peaceful contact with man. The beasts of sacrifice
were taken from these enclosures. Thus originated the castrated ox
which quietly let itself be yoked before the sacred car; and by systematic
milking for sacrificial purposes the milk-secretion of the cow and the goat
was gradually increased. Lastly, when man perceived what he had
gained from the animals, he turned to his own use the peculiarities
thus produced by enclosure and gradual domestication.
In general, cattle-rearing is unknown to the severest kind of
nomadism? . The ox soon dies of thirst, and it has not sufficient
endurance or speed for the enormous wanderings; its flesh has little
value in the steppe. The animals actually employed for rearing and
food are consequently the sheep (to a less extent the goat as leader of
the sheep flocks), the horse, and here and there the ass ; also, in a
smaller number, the two-humped camel (in Turan the one-humped
dromedary as well) as a beast of burden. Where the district admits
of it, and long wanderings are not necessary (e. g. in Mongolia, in the
Pamir, in the Amu-delta, in South Russia, etc. ), the Altaian has engaged
in cattle-breeding from the remotest times.
A wealthy Mongolian possesses as many as 20,000 horses and still
more sheep.
Rich Kirghiz sometimes have hundreds of camels, thousands
of horses, tens of thousands of sheep. The minimum for a Kirghiz
family of five is 5 oxen, 28 sheep, and 15 horses. Some have fewer
sheep, but the number of horses cannot sink below 15, for a stud
of mares, with their foals, is indispensable for the production of
kumiz.
The Turkoman is poorest in horses. However, the Turkoman horse
is the noblest in the whole of Central Asia, and surpasses all other breeds
in speed, endurance, intelligence, faithfulness, and a marvellous sense
of locality; it serves for riding and milk-giving only, and is not
a beast of burden, as are the camel, the dromedary, or the ox. The
Turkoman horse is tall, with long narrow body, long thin legs and
neck, and a small head; it is nothing but skin, bones, muscles, and
sinews, and even with the best attention it does not fatten. The mane
is represented by short bristly hairs. On their predatory expeditions
the Turkomans often cover 650 miles in the waterless desert in five days,
and that with their heavy booty of goods and men. Their horses attain
their greatest speed when they have galloped from 7 to 14 miles, and
races over such a distance as that from London to Bristol are not too
much for them. Of course they owe their powers to the training of
Under nomad and nomadism, mounted-nomad (Ger. Reiternomade), etc. ,
henceforth to be understood.
is
CH. XII.
## p. 332 (#362) ############################################
332
The Horse. Ethnography
thousands of years in the endless steppes and deserts, and to the
continual plundering raids, which demanded the utmost endurance
and privation of which horse and rider were capable. The least
attractive to look at in Turkestan is the Kirghiz horse, which is
small, powerful, and strong-maned. During snow-storm or frost it
often does without food for a long time. It is never sheltered under a
roof, and bears - 40° Fahr. in the open air, and the extremest summer
heat, during which it can do without water for from three to four days.
It can easily cover 80 miles a day, and never tastes barley or oats in its
life.
The Altaian rides with a very short stirrup, and thus trotting would
be too exhausting both for man and horse, so as a rule he goes at a walk
or a gallop. Instead of the trot there is another more comfortable move-
ment in which the horse's centre of gravity moves steadily forward in a
horizontal line, and shaking and jolting is avoided. The horse advances
the two left feet one after the other, and then the two right feet (keeping
the time of four threshers); in this way it can cover ten miles per hour.
The most prized horses are the “amblers,” which always move the two
feet on one side simultaneously, and are sometimes so swift that other
horses can scarcely keep up with them at a gallop. Spurs are unknown
to the Altaian, and in the steppe horseshoes are not needed. The
nomad spends the greater part of his life in the saddle; when he is not
lying inactive in the tent he is invariably on horseback.
At the
markets everybody is mounted. In the saddle all bargains are struck,
meetings are held, kumiz is drunk and even sleep is taken. The seller
too has his wares—felt, furs, carpets, sheep, goats, calves- before,
behind, and beneath him on his horse. The riding-horse must answer
promptly to the bridle, and must not betray his master by neighing
during a raid. Therefore the young stallion—for mares are not ridden-
is taken from the herd with a lasso, and castrated.
The nomads of the Asiatic background all belong to the Altaian
branch of the Ural-Altaian race. The Altaian primitive type displays
the following characteristics: body compact, strong-boned, small to
medium-sized ; trunk long; hands and feet often exceptionally small;
feet thin and short, and, in consequence of the peculiar method of
riding (with short stirrup), bent outwards, whence the gait is very
waddling; calves very little developed ; head large and brachycephalic;
face broad; cheek-bones prominent; mouth large and broad; jaw
mesognathic; teeth strong and snow-white; chin broad; nose broad
and fat; forehead low and little arched ; ears large; eyes considerably
wide apart, deep-sunken, and dark-brown to piercing black; eye-opening
narrow, and slit obliquely, with an almost perpendicular fold of skin
over the inner corner (Mongol-fold), and with elevated outer corner ;
skin wheat-colour, light-buff (Mongols) to bronze-colour (Turks); hair
coarse, stiff as a horse's mane, coal-black; beard scanty and bristly, often
## p. 333 (#363) ############################################
Language. Social Organisation
333
entirely wanting, generally only a moustache; bodily strength consider-
able; sensitiveness to climatic influences and wounds slight; sight and
hearing incredibly keen; memory extraordinary.
The Ural-Altaian languages branch off as follows:
Ural-Altaic
Uralish
Altaic
7
7
Finno-Ugrian
Turkish
Samo-
yedish
Mongolish
Manchu-
Tungusish
7
Finnish
Permish Ugrian
Bashkirish
Kirghizish
Yakutish
Turkish in the
narrower sense)
Osmanish (or
Vigurish
Tartarish
Kalmuckish
Buryatish
narrower sense)
Mongolish (in the
and Esthonian
Lappish
Finnish
Tcheremissish
Mordvinish
Zyryanish
Votyakish
Magyarish
Vogulish
Ostyakish
Six to ten blood-related tents (Mongol. yúrta)-on the average,
families of five to six heads—form a camp (Turk. aul, Mongol. khoton,
khotun, Roumanian catun) which wanders together; even the best
grazing-ground would not admit of a greater number together.
The leader of the camp is the eldest member of that family which
possesses most animals. Several camps make a clan (Turk. tire,
Mongol. aïmak). Hence there are the general interests of the clan
and also the individual interests of the camps, which latter frequently
conflict. For the settlement of disputes an authority is necessary, a
personality who through wealth, mental capacity, uprightness, bravery,
and wide relationships is able to protect the clan. As an election of
a chief is unknown to nomads, and they could not agree if it were
known, the chieftainship is usually gained by a violent usurpation, and
is seldom recognised generally. Thus the judgment of the chieftain
is mostly a decision to which the parties submit themselves more or less
voluntarily.
Several clans form a tribe (uruk), several tribes a folk (Turk. il,
Mongol. uluss). Conflicts within the tribes and the folks are settled
by a union of the separate clan chieftains in an arbitration procedure in
which each chieftain defends the claims of his clan, but very often the
collective decision is obeyed by none of the parties. In times of unrest
great hordes have formed themselves out of the folks, and at the head of
CH, XII.
## p. 334 (#364) ############################################
334
Social Organisation
these stood a Khagan or a Khan. The hordes, like the folks and tribes,
form a separate whole only in so far as they are opposed to other
hordes, folks, and tribes. The horde protects its parts from the remain-
ing hordes, just as does the folk and the tribe. Thus all three are
in a real sense insurance societies for the protection of common
interests.
The organisation based on genealogy is much dislocated by political
occurrences, for in the steppe the peoples, like the drift-sand, are in
constant motion. One people displaces or breaks through another,
and so we find the same tribal name among peoples widely separated
from one another. Moreover from the names of great war-heroes
arose tribal names for those often quite motley conglomerations of
peoples who were united for a considerable time under the conqueror's
lead and then remained together, for example the Seljuks, Uzbegs,
Chagatais, Osmans and many others. This easy new formation,
exchange, and loss of the tribal name has operated from the earliest
times, and the numerous swarms of nomads who forced their
way
into
Europe under the most various names are really only different offshoots
of the same few nations.
The organisation of the nomads rests on a double principle. The
greater unions caused by political circumstances, having no direct
connexion with the life and needs of the people in the desert, often
cease soon after the death of their creator; on the other hand the
camps, the clans, and in part the tribes also, retain an organic life, and
take deep root in the life of the people. Not merely the con-
sciousness of their blood-relationship but the knowledge of the degree
of relationship is thoroughly alive, and every Kirghiz boy knows his
jeti-atalar, that is, the names of his seven forefathers. What is outside
this is regarded as the remoter relationship. Hence a homogeneous
political organisation of large masses is unfrequent and transitory, and
to-day among the Turks it is only the Kara-Kirghiz people of East
Turkestan—who are rich in herds—that live under a central govern-
ment—that of an hereditary Aga-Manap, beneath whom the Manaps,
also hereditary, of the separate tribes, with a council of the “ gray-
beards” (aksakals) of the separate clans, rule and govern the people
rather despotically. What among the Turks is the exception, was
from the earliest times known to history the rule among the Mongols,
who were despotically governed by their princes. The Khan wielded
unlimited authority over all. No one dared to settle in any place to
which he had not been assigned. The Khan directed the princes, they
the “thousand-men,” the “ thousand-men” the “hundred-men," and
they the “ ten-men. " Whatever was ordered them was promptly carried
out; even certain death was faced without a murmur. But towards
foreigners they were just as barbarous as the Turks. The origin of
despotism among the Altaians is to be traced to a subjugation by
## p. 335 (#365) ############################################
Wanderings. The Tent
335
2
another nomad horde, which among the Turkish Kazak-Kirghiz and
the Mongol Kalmucks of the Volga developed into a nobility (“white
bones,” the female sex “white flesh ”) in contrast with the common
people (“ black bones,” “ black flesh ”).
The transitoriness of the wider unions on the one hand, and the
indestructibility of the clans and camps on the other, explain why exten-
sive separations, especially among the Turko-Tartars, were of constant
occurrence. The desert rears to independence and freedom from restraint
small patriarchally-directed family alliances with “ gray-beards” (ak-
sakals) from families of aristocratic strain at their head. These families
boast of their direct descent from some Sultan, Beg or famous Batyr
(“hero," recte robber, cattle-thief). But the “gray-beards” mostly
exercise the mere shadow of dominion. The Turkomans say: “We are
a people without a head, and we won't have one either; among us each
is Padishah"; as an appendage to this, “Sahara is full of Sheikhs. "
The wanderings of the nomads are incorrectly designated when they
are called “roaming” wanderings, for not even the hunter “roams. " He
has his definite hunting-grounds, and always returns to his accustomed
places. Still more regular are the wanderings of the nomads, however
far they extend. The longest are those of the Kirghiz who winter by
the Aral Sea and have their summer pastures ten degrees of latitude
further north in the steppes of Troitsk and Omsk. The distance,
allowing for the zig-zag course, comes to more than 1000 miles, so that
each
year
the nomad must cover 2000 miles with all his herds and other
goods.
During the winter the nomad in the desert is, so to speak, a prisoner
in his tent, practical, neat, and comfortable as this is. It is a rotunda
15 feet high, and often over 30 feet broad. Its framework consists of
a wooden lattice in six to ten separable divisions, which can be widened
out, or pushed together for packing. Above this comes the roof-frame
of light rafters which come together in a ring above. This is the
opening for air, light and smoke, and is only covered at night and
during severe cold. Inside a matting of steppe-grass runs round the
framework, and outside is a felt covering bound round with ropes of
camel's hair. Tent-pegs and ropes protect the tent from being over-
turned by the violent north-east orkan, during which the hearth-fire
must be put out. As the felt absorbs and emits very little heat, the
tent is warm in winter, and cool in summer. Inside the tent the sacks
of victuals hang on the points of the wall-lattice; on the rafters above
are the weapons, harness, saddles, and, among the heathen tribes, the
idols. Behind the hearth, the seat of honour for guests and old men is
spread with the best felt and carpets; in front of the hearth is the place
for drinking-vessels and sometimes for fuel, the latter consisting of
camel- and cattle-dung, since firewood is found only in a few places
in the steppes and deserts. The nomad-life admits of only the most
CH, XII.
## p. 336 (#366) ############################################
336
The Tent and its Contents. Property in Land
necessary and least breakable utensils : for preparing food for all in the
tent there is a large cast-iron caldron, acquired in Chinese or Russian
traffic, with tripod and tongs; a trunk-like kumiz-vat of four smoked
horse-hides thickened with fat; kumiz-bottles, and water-bottles of
leather ; wooden chests, tubs and cans hollowed out of pieces of wood,
or gourds; wooden dishes, drinking-bowls, and spoons ; among the
slave-hunting Turkomans short and long chains, manacles, fetters, and
iron collars also hung in the tent to the right of the entrance.
The accommodation provided by the tent, and the economising of
space is astonishing; from long past times everything has had its
assigned place; there is room for forty men by day, and twenty by
night, notwithstanding the many objects hanging and lying about.
The master of the household, with the men, occupies the place of
honour; left and right of the hearth are the sleeping-places (felt, which
is rolled up in the daytime); left of the entrance the wife and the
women and children, to the right the male slaves, do their work. For
anyone to leave his wonted place unnecessarily, or without the order of
the master, would be an unheard-of proceeding. In three-quarters of an
hour a large tent can be put up and furnished, and it can be taken to
pieces and packed just as quickly; even with movables and stores
it is so light that two camels suffice to carry it. The Nogai-Tartars
carry their basket-like felt tents, which are only 8 to 10 feet in diameter,
on two-wheeled carts drawn at a trot by small-sized oxen. In the
thirteenth century, under Chinghiz and his followers, the Mongols
also made use of such cart-tents, drawn by one camel, as store-holders,
but only in the Volga-district and not in their own country in Mon-
golia. They also put their great tents-as much as thirty feet in
diameter-on carts drawn by twenty-four oxen twelve in a line? The
nature of the ground admitted of this procedure and consequently the
tent had not to be taken to pieces at each stopping-place (as must
be done in the steppes and deserts), but only where a considerable
halt was made. In South Russia such wagon-tents date from the
.
oldest times, and were already in use among the Scythians.
Among a continually wandering pastoral people the interests of
neighbours often collide, as we know from the Bible-story of Abraham
and Lot. Thus a definite partition of the land comes about. A folk,
or a section of a folk--a tribe-regards a certain stretch of land as its
special property, and tolerates no trespass from any neighbour whatso-
ever. The tribe, again, consists of clans and the latter of camps, which,
in their turn, regard parts of the whole tribal district as their own.
This produces a very confused medley of districts, over which the
individual camps wander. In spring and autumn the nomad can
find abundant fodder almost everywhere, in consequence of the greater
moisture and luxuriant grass crop. The winter and summer abodes
1 Rubruquis in Recueil, iv. p. 220; Marco Polo, 1. p. 255.
1
## p. 337 (#367) ############################################
Winter and Summer Pastures
337
a
demand definite conditions for the prosperity of the herds. The
winter settlement must not have too severe a climate, the summer
grazing-ground must be as exempt as possible from the terrific plague
of insects. Since many more conditions must be satisfied for the
winter than for the summer pastures, it is the winter quarters which
determine the density of the nomad population. Thus the wealth of a
people accords with the abundance of their winter quarters, and all
internal encounters and campaigns of former centuries are to be regarded
as a constant struggle for the best winter settlements.
In winter, whenever possible, the same places as have been used for
long times past are occupied ; in the deep-lying valley of a once-existing
river, not over-exposed to the wind, with good water, and grazing-places
where the snow settles as little as possible, and the last year's dung
makes the ground warmer and, at the same time, provides fuel. Here
at the end of October the tent, made warmer by another covering, is
pitched, protecting the nomad from the raging winter buran and the
numbing cold. The herds, however, remain in the open air without a
sheltering roof, and must scrape for themselves the withered shrubs,
stalks, and roots from the snow. They get terribly thin ; indeed sheep,
camels, and oxen perish when the snow falls deep, and the horses in
scraping for fodder trample down the plants and make them uneatable,
or when ice forms and shuts out sustenance entirely. But in early spring
the situation improves, especially for the sheep, which, from mere skele-
tons, revive and get fat on the salt-steppes where a cursory inspection
reveals no vegetation on the glittering crust of salt. The salt-pastures
are incomparably more nourishing than the richest Alpine meadows, and
without salt there would be no sheep-rearing nomads in Central Asia.
To freshen the spring-pasturage the steppe is burnt off as soon as the
snow has melted, as the dry last year's steppe-grass gets matted under
the snow, and would retard the sprouting of the new grass ; the ground
manured by the ashes then gets luxuriantly green after a few days.
In the middle or at the end of April, during the lambing of the
sheep, and the foaling of the mares, preparations for striking the winter
tent are made. At this time the animals yield most milk, and a stock
of hard cheese (kurut) is made. At the beginning of May the steppe
begins to dry up, and the intolerable insects appear. Now the goods
which are superfluous for the summer are secretly buried, the tent is
struck, and loaded with all necessary goods and chattels on the decorated
camels. It is the day of greatest rejoicing for the nomad, who leaves
his inhospitable winter quarters in festal attire.
The winter quarters are regarded as the fixed property of the in-
dividual tent owners, but the summer pastures are the common property
of the clan. Here each member of the clan, rich or poor, has in theory
the right to settle where he likes. But the wealthy and illustrious
always know how to secure the best places. To effect this each camp keeps
a
C. MED, H. VOL. I. CH, XII.
22
## p. 338 (#368) ############################################
338
Loss of Cattle
-
a
the time of departure to the summer pastures and the direction to be
taken as secret as possible; at the same time it makes an arrangement
with the nearest-related camps, in conformity with which they suddenly
depart in order to reach their goal as quickly as possible. If the place
chosen is already occupied, the next which is still free is taken. At the
beginning of spring, when the grass is still scanty, the camps can remain
only a very short time-often one day or even only half a day—in one
place; later on in their more distant wandering—from well to well—they
can stay for weeks in the same place. At midsummer movement is more
rapid, and in autumn, with an increasing abundance of water, it is again
slower. In the sand-desert the nomad finds the wells covered by drift-
sand, and he must dig down to them afresh, if necessary daily. The
regulation of these wanderings is undertaken by the aksakals, not always
according to justice.
The cattle can easily be taken off by a hostile neighbour, for the
steppe is free and open. Therefore the nomads of the steppes, unlike
the nomads of the mountains, do not split themselves into single families.
They constantly need a small war-band to recover the stolen booty from
the enemy. On the other hand, the instinct of self-preservation often
drives a whole people to violate their neighbours' rights of property.
When there is dearth of fodder the cattle are ruined, and the enterprise
and energy of the owner cannot avert calamity. The impoverished
nomad infallibly goes to the wall as a solitary individual, and only
seldom is he, as a former wanderer (tshorva), capable of becoming a
despised settler (tshomru). For he feels it to be the greatest misfortune
and humiliation when he must take to the plough, somewhere by a
watercourse on the edge of the desert; and so long as the loss of all his
herds has not hopelessly crushed him, he does not resign himself to that
terrible fate which Mahomet has proscribed with the words: “wherever
this implement has penetrated, it has always brought with it servitude
and shame. ”
In spring, when severe frost suddenly sets in after the first thaw, and
the thin layer of snow is covered in a single night with a crust of ice
an inch thick, the cattle cannot scrape food out of the snow, and the owner
cannot possibly supply a substitute. When the frost continues hundreds
of thousands of beasts perish, and whole districts previously rich in herds
become suddenly poor. So as soon as ice appears the people affected
leave their winter quarters, and penetrate far into their neighbours'
territory until they find food for their herds. If they are successful a
part at least of their cattle is saved, and when the weather changes they
return home. But if all their cattle perish entirely, they must starve
if they are unwilling to rob their wealthy neighbour of a part of his
herds. Bloody feuds occur too in autumn on the return from the
summer pastures, when the horses have become fat and powerful and the
longer nights favour and cover long rides. The nomad now carries out
## p. 339 (#369) ############################################
Custom.
Kumiz
339
the raids of robbery and revenge resolved upon and skilfully planned in the
summer, and then he goes to his winter quarters.
But how can these barbarous robbers live together without exter-
minating each other? They are bridled by an old and tyrannical king,
invisible to themselves, the deb (custom, wont). This prohibits robbery
and murder, immorality and injustice towards associates in times of
peace; but the strange neighbour is outlawed ; to rob, enslave or kill
him is an heroic deed. The nomads' ideas of justice are remarkably
similar to those of our ancestors. Every offence is regarded as an injury
to the interests of a fellow-man, and is expiated by indemnification of the
loser. Among the Kazak-Kirghiz anyone who has killed a man of the
plebs (a “ black bone "), whether wilfully or accidentally makes no differ-
ence, must compensate the relations with a kun (i. e. 1000 sheep or
100 horses or 50 camels). The slaughter of a “white bone” costs a
sevenfold kun. Murder of their own wives, children, and slaves goes
unpunished, since they themselves are the losers. If a Kirghiz steals an
animal, he must restore it together with two of the same value. If a
wrong-doer is unable to pay the fine, his nearest relations, and failing
them the whole camp, must provide it.
The principal food consists of milk-products-not of the fresh milk
itself, which is only taken by children and the sick. A special
Turko-Tartar food is yogurt, prepared with leaven from curdled milk.
The Mongols also eat butter-the more rancid the more palatable-
dripping with dirt, and carried without wrapping in their hairy greasy
coat-pockets. From mare's milk, which yields no cream, kumiz (Kirghiz),
tshegan (Mongolish) is fermented', an extremely nutritious drink which is
good for consumption, and from which by itself life can be sustained. How-
ever, it keeps only a few hours, after which it becomes too sour and efferves-
cent, and so the whole supply must be drunk at once. In summer, with an
abundance of mares, there is such a superfluity of kumiz that hospitality
is unlimited, and half Altai is always drunk. The Turkomans and Kara-
Kalpaks, who possess few horses and no studs, drink kumiz seldom. The
much-drunk airan from fermented unskimmed camel, cow, and sheep-milk
quenches thirst for hours, just as does the kefir of the Tartars from cow's
milk. The airan, after being condensed by boiling, and dried hard as
stone into little balls in the sun, is made into kurt, kurut, which can be
kept for months and is the only means of making bitter salt-water
drinkable. According to Marco Polo it formed the provision of the
Mongol armies, and if the horseman could not quench his thirst in any
other way, he opened one of his horse's veins and drank the blood. From
kumiz and also from millet a strong spirit (Kirghiz boza) is distilled,
i Zemarchos (A. D. 568) mentions the drink kosmos at the Turkish Khan's
Court, Rubruquis (A. D. 1253) cosmos (variant comos) among the Mongols, and
the prince's drink cara-cosmos, Marco Polo, kemiz; all corruptions of the word
kumiz.
CH. XII.
22-2
## p. 340 (#370) ############################################
340
Food
which produces dead-drunkenness followed by a pleasant Nirvana-
sensation.
gation the soil becomes in summer as hard as concrete, and its vegetation
dies completely. The oases comprise only two per cent. of the total area
of Turkestan. As a rule the rocky mountains are quite bare; they consist
of black gleaming stone cracked by frost and heat, and are waterless.
Roughly speaking these differences of vegetation follow one another
from south to north, viz. the salt-, the sand- and the grass-steppes. A little
below 50° N. latitude the landscape of West Asia changes in consequence
of a greater fall of moisture. The undrained lakes become less frequent,
the rivers reach the sea (Ishim, Tobol, etc. ), and trees appear. Here begins,
as a transition to the compact forest-land, the tree-steppe on the very
fertile “black earth. ” On the Yenisei are park-like districts with splendid
grass plains, and luxuriant trees. Northward come endless pine-forests,
and beyond them, towards the Arctic Sea, is the moss-steppe or
tundra.
The climate is typically continental, with icy cold winters, hot
summers, cold nights, and hot days with enormous fluctuations of
temperature. The warmth increases quickly from winter to spring and
decreases just as quickly from summer to autumn. In West Turkestan,
the summer is almost cloudless and rainless, and at this time the steppes
become deserts. On account of the dryness little snow falls; as a rule it
remains loose and is whirled aloft by the north-east storm wind (buran).
These storm burans are just as terrible as the summer storms of salt-dust
in Trans-Caspia at a temperature of 104° to 113° Fahr. Considering
that in summer the temperature sometimes reaches 118° in the shade,
exceeding body-heat by 20°, and that in winter it sinks below - 31,
and further that the heat, especially in the sand-deserts, reaches a
degree at which the white of egg coagulates, the climate, even if
not deadly, should be very injurious to man; Hindustan, which is
far less hot, enervates the European on account of the greater
moisture, and has changed the Aryan, once so energetic, to the weak
and cowardly Hindu. Nevertheless the contrary is the case.
The
climate of Turkestan is wholesome, and its people are long-lived and
>
>
## p. 325 (#355) ############################################
Use of the Soil.
Mounted Nomadism
325
healthy, and that especially in the hot summer, on account of the un-
paralleled dryness of the air. Once acclimatised, one bears the heat very
well, and likewise the extreme cold of winter. The climate of Central
Asia furthers a rapid bodily and mental development and premature
ageing, as well as corpulence, especially among the Altaians. Obesity
is even regarded as a distinction, and it became so native to the mounted
nomads that it accompanied them to Europe; it is characteristic of all
the nomads who have invaded Europe; and Hippocrates mentions it
expressly as a characteristic of the Scythians. The climate of Turkestan
also influences the character, leading to an apathy which creates indiffer-
ence to the heaviest blows of fate, and even accompanies the condemned
to the scaffold.
The entire West Asiatic region from the salt-steppes to the compact
forest-land forms one economic whole. The well-watered northern part,
which remains green throughout the summer, feeds countless herds in
the warm season, but affords no pasturage in winter owing to the
deep snow. On the other hand, the southern part, which is poor in
water-the grass-, sand-, and salt-steppes—is uninhabitable in summer.
Thus the northern part provides summer pastures, the southern-the
Aral-Caspian basin-winter pastures to one and the same nomad
people.
The nomad then is the son and product of the peculiar and variable
constitution which nevertheless is an indivisible economic whole-of the
Asiatic background. Any agriculture, worthy of the name, is impossible
in the steppes and deserts--the few oases excepted—on account of the
—
dryness of the summer, when animals also find no food. Life on the
steppes and deserts is only possible in connexion either with the
Siberian grass-region or with the mountains. This life is necessarily
extremely hard and restless for man and beast and it creates a condition
of nomadism, which must at the same time be a mounted nomadism,
seeing that a wagon would be an impossibility in the long trackless
wanderings over mountain and valley, river and swamp, and that goods
and chattels, together with the disjoinable dwellings, can only be carried
on the backs of beasts of burden.
Setting aside the Glacial Period and the small Brückner cycle of
35 years or so, the climatic changes of Central Asia, according to
Huntington', fall into cycles of several hundred years' duration within
which the aridity rises and sinks considerably. “All Central Asia
has undergone a series of climatic pulsations during historic times.
There seems to be strong evidence that at the time of Christ or
earlier the climate was much moister and more propitious than it now
is. Then during the first few centuries of the Christian era there
appears to have been an epoch of increasing aridity. It culminated
| Huntington, Pulse, p. 359.
CH. XII.
## p. 326 (#356) ############################################
326
Ruins in the Wastes
about A. D. 500, at which time the climate appears to have been drier
than at present. Next came an epoch of more propitious climate which
reached its acme about A. D. 900. There is a little evidence of a second
epoch of aridity which was especially marked in the twelfth century.
Finally, in the later Middle Ages, a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea and
the condition of certain ruins render it probable that climatic conditions
once again became somewhat favorable, only to give place ere long to
the present aridity? "
But Central Asia has not been, since the beginning of historic
records, in a state of desiccation. The process of “geological” desic-
cation was already ended in prehistoric times, and even the oldest
historic accounts testify to the same climatic conditions as those of
to-day. The earliest Babylonian kings maintained irrigation works, and
Hammurabi (23rd cent. B. c. ) had canals made through the land, one
of which bore his name. Thus, as at present, without artificial irriga-
tion agriculture was not possible there 4200 years ago. Palestine's
climate too has not changed in the least since Biblical times : its present
waste condition is the result of Turkish mismanagement, and Biot has
proved from the cultivated plants grown in the earliest times that the
temperature of China has remained the same for 3300 years. Curtius
Rufus and Arrian give similar accounts of Bactria.
>
Amid the enormous wastes there are countless sand-buried ruins of
populous cities, monasteries and villages and choked-up canals standing
on ground won from the waste by systematic canalisation; where the
system of irrigation was destroyed, the earlier natural state, the desert,
returned. The causes of such destruction are manifold? . 1. Earth-
quake. 2. Violent rain-spouts after which the river does not find its
former bed, and the canals receive no more water from it. 3. On the
highest edge of the steppe, at the foot of the glacier, lie enormous flat
heaps of débris, and here the canalisation begins. If one side of this heap
rises higher than the other, the direction of the current is shifted, and
the oases nurtured by the now forsaken stream become derelict. But the
habitable ground simply migrates with the river. If, for example, a
river altered its course four times in historic times, three series of ruins
remain behind ; but it is erroneous simply to add these ruins together,
and to conclude from them that the whole once formed a flourishing
land which has become waste, when in reality the three series of settle-
ments did not flourish side by side but consecutively. This fallacy
vitiates all accounts which assume a progressive or periodic desiccation
as the chief cause of the abandonment of oases.
4. Continuous drought
in consequence of which the rivers become so waterless that they cannot
1 The view of Huntington (in Explorations in Turkestan, 1904, ed. by Pumpelly,
Washington, 1908, p. 231 note).
2 Cholnoky in Geogr. Zeitschr: xv. pp. 249 ff.
>
## p. 327 (#357) ############################################
Irrigation and the Causes of its Destruction
327
Oases,
feed the canals of the lower river-basin, and thus the oases affected must
become parched, and are not always re-settled in more favourable years.
5. Neglect of the extreme care demanded in the administration of the
canal system. If irrigation is extended in the district next the mountain
from which the water comes, just so much water is taken from the lower
But in this case too nothing is lost which cannot be replaced in
another direction : vice versâ if an oasis on the upper course of the
river disappears through losing its canal system, the lower river course thus
becomes well watered and makes possible the formation of a new oasis.
6. The most terrible mischief is the work of enemies. In order to make
the whole oasis liable to tribute they need only seize the main canal; and
the nomads often blindly plundered and destroyed everything. A single
raid was enough to transform hundreds of oases into ashes and desert.
The nomads moreover not only ruined countless cities and villages of
Central Asia, but they also denuded the steppe itself, and promoted
drift-sand by senseless uprooting of trees and bushes for the sake of
firewood. But for them, according to Berg, there would be little drift-
sand in Central Asia, for, in his opinion, all sand-formations must in
time become firm. All the sand-deserts which he observed on the Aral
Sea and in Semiryechensk were originally firm, and even now most of
them are still kept firm by the vegetation.
With the varied dangers of irrigation systems it is impossible to
decide in the case of each group of ruins what causes have produced
them; it is therefore doubtful whether we can place in the foreground
the secular changes of climate. It is not even true that the cultivation
of the oases throve better in the damper and cooler periods than in the
arid and hot ones. Thus the oases of Turfan in Chinese Turkestan,
which is so extremely arid and so unendurably hot in summer, are
exceptionally fertile. We may therefore conclude that the cultivation
of the oases was considerably more extended in the damper and
cooler periods, but considerably less productive than in the arid and
hot ones of to-day. Changes in the volume of water of single rivers
and lakes are clearly apparent within short periods, and these lead
to frequent local migrations of the peasant population and to new
constructions as well as to the abandonment of irrigation canals. Thus
there is here a continual local fluctuation in the settlements, but history
knows nothing of regular migrations of agriculturists.
Still less is an unfavourable climatic change the cause of the nomad
invasions of Europe. The nomad does not remain at all during the
summer in the parched steppe and desert; and in the periods of increasing
aridity and summer heat South Siberia was warmer and the mountain
glaciers retreated, and hence the pastures in both these directions were
extended. The only consequence of this was that the distance between
summer and winter pastures increased and the nomad had to wander
a
CH. XII.
## p. 328 (#358) ############################################
328
Causes of the Nomad Invasions of Europe
further and quicker. The computation is correct in itself, that the
number of animals that can be reared to the square mile depends on
and varies with the annual rainfall"; but the nomad is not hampered
by square miles ; the poorer or richer the growth of grass the shorter
or longer time he remains, and he is accustomed from year to year to
Aluctuations in the abundance of his flocks. Moreover a shifting of the
winter pastures is not impossible, for their autumn and spring vegetation
is not destroyed by a progressive aridity, and if the water current
changes its bed, the nomad simply follows it. Further, the effect of
a secular progressive aridity is spread over so many generations that it is
not catastrophic for any one of them. The nomad invasions of China
and Europe must therefore have had other causes ; and we know some-
thing about the invasions of several nomad hordes-of the Avars, Turks
(Osmans) and Cumans, for example.
Since the second half of the fifth century A. D. —that is, the time to
which Huntington assigns the greatest aridity-there had existed in the
Oxus basin the powerful empire of the Ephthalite horde, on the ruins of
which the empire of the West Turks was founded in the middle of
the sixth century. Had Central Asia been at that time so arid and
therefore poor in pasture, the then victorious horde would have driven
out the other hordes in order to secure for themselves more pasture land.
Yet exactly the opposite took place; the Turks enslaved the other
hordes, and when the Avars fled to Europe, the Turkish Khagan claimed
them back at the Byzantine Court. In like manner the Turks (Osmans)
fled from the sword of the Mongols in 1225 from Khorasan to Armenia,
and in 1235 the Cumans fled to Hungary. The violence of the Mongols
is strikingly described by Gibbon : "from the Caspian to the Indus they
ruined a tract of many hundred miles which was adorned with the habi-
tations and labours of mankind, and five centuries have not been sufficient
to repair the ravages of four years. " Therefore the main cause of the
nomad invasions of Europe is not increasing aridity but political changes.
There remains the question : How did the nomads originate ? On
the theory of a progressive desiccation it is assumed that the Aryan
peasantry of Turkestan were compelled to take to a nomad life through
the degeneration of their fields to steppes and wastes. But the peasant
bound to the soil is incapable of a mode of life so unsettled, and requiring
of him much new experience. Robbed of his corn-fields and reduced to
beggary, could he be at the same time so rich as to procure himself the
herds of cattle necessary to his existence, and so gifted with divination
as suddenly to wander with them in search of pasture over immeasurable
distances ? A decrease of cultivable soil would bring about only a
continual decrease in the number of inhabitants. The peasant as such
disappeared, emigrated, or perished, and his home became a desert,
:
4
с
bi
T
COI
a
As
vai!
thes
and
facto
cultu
breedi
1 Huntington, Pulse, p. 382.
Th
dolicho
element
1
CH, X
## p. 329 (#359) ############################################
How did the Nomads originate?
329
and was occupied by another people who knew from experience how to
make use of it in its changed state, i. e. as winter grazing-ground. This
new people must have been already nomadic, and have made their way
from the pastures of the North and therefore they must have belonged
to the Altaian race? .
The delta oases have been the home of man from early prehistoric time,
throughout Turkestan and northern Persia. The two oldest culture-
strata of Anau' prove that the settlers of the first Culture cultivated
wheat and barley, had rectangular houses of air-dried bricks, but only
wild animals at first, out of which were locally domesticated the long-
horned ox, the pig and horse, and successively two breeds of sheep. The
second Culture had the domestic ox, both long- and short-horned, the
pig, and the horse. The domestic goat, camel, and dog appear, and a new
hornless breed of sheep. The cultivation of cereals was discovered in
Asia long before B. C. 8000. The domestication of cattle, pigs, and sheep,
and probably of the horse, was accomplished at Anau between B. c. 8000
and 6800. Consequently, the agricultural stage preceded the nomadic
shepherd stage in Asia. "It follows, therefore, that before domestication
of animals was accomplished, mankind in Central Asia was divided
sharply into two classes_settled agriculturists on the one hand, and
hunters who wandered within a limited range on the other hand. When
the nomadic hunters became shepherds, they necessarily wandered
between ever-widening limits as the seasons and pasturage required for
increasing herds. The establishment of the first domestic breeds of
pigs, long-horned cattle, large sheep and horses, was followed by a
deteriorating climate which may have—as Pumpelly, though questionably,
assumes—changed these to smaller breeds. Dr Duerst identifies the
second breed of sheep with the turbary sheep (Torfschaf), and the pig
with the turbary pig (Torfschwein), which appear as already domesti-
cated in the neolithic stations of Europe. They must therefore have
been descendants of those domesticated on the oases of the Anau district.
They make their appearance in European neolithic stations apparently
contemporaneously with an immigration of a people of a round-headed
Asiatic type which seems to have infiltrated gradually among the pre-
vailing long-headed Europeans. The presumption is, therefore, that
these animals were brought from Asia by this round-headed people,
and that we have in this immigration perhaps the earliest post-glacial
factor in the problem of Asiatic influence in European racial as well as
cultural origins, for they brought with them both the art of cattle-
breeding and some knowledge of agriculture.
The skulls of the first and second cultures in Anau are all
dolichocephalic or mesocephalic, without a trace of the round-headed
element. We are therefore justified in assuming that the domestication
1 Peisker, Beziehungen, p. 21.
? Pumpelly, in Explorations, 1904, pp. 38 ff. , 67 ff.
>
CH. XII
## p. 330 (#360) ############################################
330
Domestication of Animals
and the forming of the several breeds of domestic animals were effected
by a long-headed people. And since the people of the two successive
cultures were settled oasis-agriculturists and breeders, we may assume
as probable that agriculture and settled life in towns on the oases
originated among people of a dolichocephalic type. Since Dr Duerst
identifies the second breed of sheep established during the first culture of
Anau, with the turbary sheep in Europe, contemporaneously with skulls
of the round-headed Galcha type, it should follow that the domestic
animals of the European neolithic stations were brought thither, together
with wheat and barley, by round-headed immigrants (of an Asiatic type).
Since the original agriculturists and breeders were long-headed, it seems
probable that the immigrants were broad-headed nomads who, having
cquired from the oasis people domestic animals and rudimentary
agriculture of the kind still practised by the shepherd nomads of Central
Asia, infiltrated among the neolithic settlements of Eastern and Central
Europe, and adopted the stone-implement culture of the hunting and
fishing peoples among whom they came. In this connexion it is not
without significance that throughout the whole historical period, the
combination of settled town life and agriculture has been the fundamental
characteristic of the Aryan-speaking Galchas, and of the Iranians inhabit-
ing Western Central Asia and the Persian plateau, while the peoples of
pure Asiatic mongoloid type have been essentially shepherd nomads, who,
as already shewn, could have become shepherds only after the settled
agriculturists of the oases had established domesticated breeds of
cattle.
The origin of the taming of wild into domestic animals is one of the
most difficult problems of economic history. What was its aim ? The
use that we make of domestic animals ? Certainly not, for adaptability
thereto could only gradually be imparted to the animals and could not
be foreseen ; it could not be anticipated that the cow and the goat
would ever give more milk than their young needed, and that beyond
the time of lactation ; nor could it be anticipated that sheep not woolly
by nature would develop a fleece. Even for us it would be too
uneconomical to breed such a powerful animal and such a large con-
sumer of fodder as the ox merely for a supply of meat; and besides
beef is not readily eaten in Central Asia. Moreover the wild ox is entirely
unsuitable for draught, for it is one of the shyest as well as strongest and
most dangerous of animals. And it should be specially emphasized that
a long step lies between taming individual animals and domesticating
them, for as a rule wild animals, however well tamed, do not breed in
captivity. Consequently the domestication was not produced simply by
taming or for economic ends. It is the great service of Eduard Hahn
Hahn, Haustiere, pp. 26 ff. , Alter, pp. 91 ff. , Entstehung, pp. 57 ff. , 93; Jevons,
Hist. of Religion, pp. 113–118. On the contrary, Hildebrand, Recht u. Sitte, p. 23.
>
## p. 331 (#361) ############################################
Rearing of Animals.
The Horse
331
to have laid down the theory that the domestication-involuntary
and unforeseen-was the result of forcing for religious purposes certain
favourite animals of certain divinities into reservations where they
remained reproductive, and at the same time gradually lost their original
wildness through peaceful contact with man. The beasts of sacrifice
were taken from these enclosures. Thus originated the castrated ox
which quietly let itself be yoked before the sacred car; and by systematic
milking for sacrificial purposes the milk-secretion of the cow and the goat
was gradually increased. Lastly, when man perceived what he had
gained from the animals, he turned to his own use the peculiarities
thus produced by enclosure and gradual domestication.
In general, cattle-rearing is unknown to the severest kind of
nomadism? . The ox soon dies of thirst, and it has not sufficient
endurance or speed for the enormous wanderings; its flesh has little
value in the steppe. The animals actually employed for rearing and
food are consequently the sheep (to a less extent the goat as leader of
the sheep flocks), the horse, and here and there the ass ; also, in a
smaller number, the two-humped camel (in Turan the one-humped
dromedary as well) as a beast of burden. Where the district admits
of it, and long wanderings are not necessary (e. g. in Mongolia, in the
Pamir, in the Amu-delta, in South Russia, etc. ), the Altaian has engaged
in cattle-breeding from the remotest times.
A wealthy Mongolian possesses as many as 20,000 horses and still
more sheep.
Rich Kirghiz sometimes have hundreds of camels, thousands
of horses, tens of thousands of sheep. The minimum for a Kirghiz
family of five is 5 oxen, 28 sheep, and 15 horses. Some have fewer
sheep, but the number of horses cannot sink below 15, for a stud
of mares, with their foals, is indispensable for the production of
kumiz.
The Turkoman is poorest in horses. However, the Turkoman horse
is the noblest in the whole of Central Asia, and surpasses all other breeds
in speed, endurance, intelligence, faithfulness, and a marvellous sense
of locality; it serves for riding and milk-giving only, and is not
a beast of burden, as are the camel, the dromedary, or the ox. The
Turkoman horse is tall, with long narrow body, long thin legs and
neck, and a small head; it is nothing but skin, bones, muscles, and
sinews, and even with the best attention it does not fatten. The mane
is represented by short bristly hairs. On their predatory expeditions
the Turkomans often cover 650 miles in the waterless desert in five days,
and that with their heavy booty of goods and men. Their horses attain
their greatest speed when they have galloped from 7 to 14 miles, and
races over such a distance as that from London to Bristol are not too
much for them. Of course they owe their powers to the training of
Under nomad and nomadism, mounted-nomad (Ger. Reiternomade), etc. ,
henceforth to be understood.
is
CH. XII.
## p. 332 (#362) ############################################
332
The Horse. Ethnography
thousands of years in the endless steppes and deserts, and to the
continual plundering raids, which demanded the utmost endurance
and privation of which horse and rider were capable. The least
attractive to look at in Turkestan is the Kirghiz horse, which is
small, powerful, and strong-maned. During snow-storm or frost it
often does without food for a long time. It is never sheltered under a
roof, and bears - 40° Fahr. in the open air, and the extremest summer
heat, during which it can do without water for from three to four days.
It can easily cover 80 miles a day, and never tastes barley or oats in its
life.
The Altaian rides with a very short stirrup, and thus trotting would
be too exhausting both for man and horse, so as a rule he goes at a walk
or a gallop. Instead of the trot there is another more comfortable move-
ment in which the horse's centre of gravity moves steadily forward in a
horizontal line, and shaking and jolting is avoided. The horse advances
the two left feet one after the other, and then the two right feet (keeping
the time of four threshers); in this way it can cover ten miles per hour.
The most prized horses are the “amblers,” which always move the two
feet on one side simultaneously, and are sometimes so swift that other
horses can scarcely keep up with them at a gallop. Spurs are unknown
to the Altaian, and in the steppe horseshoes are not needed. The
nomad spends the greater part of his life in the saddle; when he is not
lying inactive in the tent he is invariably on horseback.
At the
markets everybody is mounted. In the saddle all bargains are struck,
meetings are held, kumiz is drunk and even sleep is taken. The seller
too has his wares—felt, furs, carpets, sheep, goats, calves- before,
behind, and beneath him on his horse. The riding-horse must answer
promptly to the bridle, and must not betray his master by neighing
during a raid. Therefore the young stallion—for mares are not ridden-
is taken from the herd with a lasso, and castrated.
The nomads of the Asiatic background all belong to the Altaian
branch of the Ural-Altaian race. The Altaian primitive type displays
the following characteristics: body compact, strong-boned, small to
medium-sized ; trunk long; hands and feet often exceptionally small;
feet thin and short, and, in consequence of the peculiar method of
riding (with short stirrup), bent outwards, whence the gait is very
waddling; calves very little developed ; head large and brachycephalic;
face broad; cheek-bones prominent; mouth large and broad; jaw
mesognathic; teeth strong and snow-white; chin broad; nose broad
and fat; forehead low and little arched ; ears large; eyes considerably
wide apart, deep-sunken, and dark-brown to piercing black; eye-opening
narrow, and slit obliquely, with an almost perpendicular fold of skin
over the inner corner (Mongol-fold), and with elevated outer corner ;
skin wheat-colour, light-buff (Mongols) to bronze-colour (Turks); hair
coarse, stiff as a horse's mane, coal-black; beard scanty and bristly, often
## p. 333 (#363) ############################################
Language. Social Organisation
333
entirely wanting, generally only a moustache; bodily strength consider-
able; sensitiveness to climatic influences and wounds slight; sight and
hearing incredibly keen; memory extraordinary.
The Ural-Altaian languages branch off as follows:
Ural-Altaic
Uralish
Altaic
7
7
Finno-Ugrian
Turkish
Samo-
yedish
Mongolish
Manchu-
Tungusish
7
Finnish
Permish Ugrian
Bashkirish
Kirghizish
Yakutish
Turkish in the
narrower sense)
Osmanish (or
Vigurish
Tartarish
Kalmuckish
Buryatish
narrower sense)
Mongolish (in the
and Esthonian
Lappish
Finnish
Tcheremissish
Mordvinish
Zyryanish
Votyakish
Magyarish
Vogulish
Ostyakish
Six to ten blood-related tents (Mongol. yúrta)-on the average,
families of five to six heads—form a camp (Turk. aul, Mongol. khoton,
khotun, Roumanian catun) which wanders together; even the best
grazing-ground would not admit of a greater number together.
The leader of the camp is the eldest member of that family which
possesses most animals. Several camps make a clan (Turk. tire,
Mongol. aïmak). Hence there are the general interests of the clan
and also the individual interests of the camps, which latter frequently
conflict. For the settlement of disputes an authority is necessary, a
personality who through wealth, mental capacity, uprightness, bravery,
and wide relationships is able to protect the clan. As an election of
a chief is unknown to nomads, and they could not agree if it were
known, the chieftainship is usually gained by a violent usurpation, and
is seldom recognised generally. Thus the judgment of the chieftain
is mostly a decision to which the parties submit themselves more or less
voluntarily.
Several clans form a tribe (uruk), several tribes a folk (Turk. il,
Mongol. uluss). Conflicts within the tribes and the folks are settled
by a union of the separate clan chieftains in an arbitration procedure in
which each chieftain defends the claims of his clan, but very often the
collective decision is obeyed by none of the parties. In times of unrest
great hordes have formed themselves out of the folks, and at the head of
CH, XII.
## p. 334 (#364) ############################################
334
Social Organisation
these stood a Khagan or a Khan. The hordes, like the folks and tribes,
form a separate whole only in so far as they are opposed to other
hordes, folks, and tribes. The horde protects its parts from the remain-
ing hordes, just as does the folk and the tribe. Thus all three are
in a real sense insurance societies for the protection of common
interests.
The organisation based on genealogy is much dislocated by political
occurrences, for in the steppe the peoples, like the drift-sand, are in
constant motion. One people displaces or breaks through another,
and so we find the same tribal name among peoples widely separated
from one another. Moreover from the names of great war-heroes
arose tribal names for those often quite motley conglomerations of
peoples who were united for a considerable time under the conqueror's
lead and then remained together, for example the Seljuks, Uzbegs,
Chagatais, Osmans and many others. This easy new formation,
exchange, and loss of the tribal name has operated from the earliest
times, and the numerous swarms of nomads who forced their
way
into
Europe under the most various names are really only different offshoots
of the same few nations.
The organisation of the nomads rests on a double principle. The
greater unions caused by political circumstances, having no direct
connexion with the life and needs of the people in the desert, often
cease soon after the death of their creator; on the other hand the
camps, the clans, and in part the tribes also, retain an organic life, and
take deep root in the life of the people. Not merely the con-
sciousness of their blood-relationship but the knowledge of the degree
of relationship is thoroughly alive, and every Kirghiz boy knows his
jeti-atalar, that is, the names of his seven forefathers. What is outside
this is regarded as the remoter relationship. Hence a homogeneous
political organisation of large masses is unfrequent and transitory, and
to-day among the Turks it is only the Kara-Kirghiz people of East
Turkestan—who are rich in herds—that live under a central govern-
ment—that of an hereditary Aga-Manap, beneath whom the Manaps,
also hereditary, of the separate tribes, with a council of the “ gray-
beards” (aksakals) of the separate clans, rule and govern the people
rather despotically. What among the Turks is the exception, was
from the earliest times known to history the rule among the Mongols,
who were despotically governed by their princes. The Khan wielded
unlimited authority over all. No one dared to settle in any place to
which he had not been assigned. The Khan directed the princes, they
the “thousand-men,” the “ thousand-men” the “hundred-men," and
they the “ ten-men. " Whatever was ordered them was promptly carried
out; even certain death was faced without a murmur. But towards
foreigners they were just as barbarous as the Turks. The origin of
despotism among the Altaians is to be traced to a subjugation by
## p. 335 (#365) ############################################
Wanderings. The Tent
335
2
another nomad horde, which among the Turkish Kazak-Kirghiz and
the Mongol Kalmucks of the Volga developed into a nobility (“white
bones,” the female sex “white flesh ”) in contrast with the common
people (“ black bones,” “ black flesh ”).
The transitoriness of the wider unions on the one hand, and the
indestructibility of the clans and camps on the other, explain why exten-
sive separations, especially among the Turko-Tartars, were of constant
occurrence. The desert rears to independence and freedom from restraint
small patriarchally-directed family alliances with “ gray-beards” (ak-
sakals) from families of aristocratic strain at their head. These families
boast of their direct descent from some Sultan, Beg or famous Batyr
(“hero," recte robber, cattle-thief). But the “gray-beards” mostly
exercise the mere shadow of dominion. The Turkomans say: “We are
a people without a head, and we won't have one either; among us each
is Padishah"; as an appendage to this, “Sahara is full of Sheikhs. "
The wanderings of the nomads are incorrectly designated when they
are called “roaming” wanderings, for not even the hunter “roams. " He
has his definite hunting-grounds, and always returns to his accustomed
places. Still more regular are the wanderings of the nomads, however
far they extend. The longest are those of the Kirghiz who winter by
the Aral Sea and have their summer pastures ten degrees of latitude
further north in the steppes of Troitsk and Omsk. The distance,
allowing for the zig-zag course, comes to more than 1000 miles, so that
each
year
the nomad must cover 2000 miles with all his herds and other
goods.
During the winter the nomad in the desert is, so to speak, a prisoner
in his tent, practical, neat, and comfortable as this is. It is a rotunda
15 feet high, and often over 30 feet broad. Its framework consists of
a wooden lattice in six to ten separable divisions, which can be widened
out, or pushed together for packing. Above this comes the roof-frame
of light rafters which come together in a ring above. This is the
opening for air, light and smoke, and is only covered at night and
during severe cold. Inside a matting of steppe-grass runs round the
framework, and outside is a felt covering bound round with ropes of
camel's hair. Tent-pegs and ropes protect the tent from being over-
turned by the violent north-east orkan, during which the hearth-fire
must be put out. As the felt absorbs and emits very little heat, the
tent is warm in winter, and cool in summer. Inside the tent the sacks
of victuals hang on the points of the wall-lattice; on the rafters above
are the weapons, harness, saddles, and, among the heathen tribes, the
idols. Behind the hearth, the seat of honour for guests and old men is
spread with the best felt and carpets; in front of the hearth is the place
for drinking-vessels and sometimes for fuel, the latter consisting of
camel- and cattle-dung, since firewood is found only in a few places
in the steppes and deserts. The nomad-life admits of only the most
CH, XII.
## p. 336 (#366) ############################################
336
The Tent and its Contents. Property in Land
necessary and least breakable utensils : for preparing food for all in the
tent there is a large cast-iron caldron, acquired in Chinese or Russian
traffic, with tripod and tongs; a trunk-like kumiz-vat of four smoked
horse-hides thickened with fat; kumiz-bottles, and water-bottles of
leather ; wooden chests, tubs and cans hollowed out of pieces of wood,
or gourds; wooden dishes, drinking-bowls, and spoons ; among the
slave-hunting Turkomans short and long chains, manacles, fetters, and
iron collars also hung in the tent to the right of the entrance.
The accommodation provided by the tent, and the economising of
space is astonishing; from long past times everything has had its
assigned place; there is room for forty men by day, and twenty by
night, notwithstanding the many objects hanging and lying about.
The master of the household, with the men, occupies the place of
honour; left and right of the hearth are the sleeping-places (felt, which
is rolled up in the daytime); left of the entrance the wife and the
women and children, to the right the male slaves, do their work. For
anyone to leave his wonted place unnecessarily, or without the order of
the master, would be an unheard-of proceeding. In three-quarters of an
hour a large tent can be put up and furnished, and it can be taken to
pieces and packed just as quickly; even with movables and stores
it is so light that two camels suffice to carry it. The Nogai-Tartars
carry their basket-like felt tents, which are only 8 to 10 feet in diameter,
on two-wheeled carts drawn at a trot by small-sized oxen. In the
thirteenth century, under Chinghiz and his followers, the Mongols
also made use of such cart-tents, drawn by one camel, as store-holders,
but only in the Volga-district and not in their own country in Mon-
golia. They also put their great tents-as much as thirty feet in
diameter-on carts drawn by twenty-four oxen twelve in a line? The
nature of the ground admitted of this procedure and consequently the
tent had not to be taken to pieces at each stopping-place (as must
be done in the steppes and deserts), but only where a considerable
halt was made. In South Russia such wagon-tents date from the
.
oldest times, and were already in use among the Scythians.
Among a continually wandering pastoral people the interests of
neighbours often collide, as we know from the Bible-story of Abraham
and Lot. Thus a definite partition of the land comes about. A folk,
or a section of a folk--a tribe-regards a certain stretch of land as its
special property, and tolerates no trespass from any neighbour whatso-
ever. The tribe, again, consists of clans and the latter of camps, which,
in their turn, regard parts of the whole tribal district as their own.
This produces a very confused medley of districts, over which the
individual camps wander. In spring and autumn the nomad can
find abundant fodder almost everywhere, in consequence of the greater
moisture and luxuriant grass crop. The winter and summer abodes
1 Rubruquis in Recueil, iv. p. 220; Marco Polo, 1. p. 255.
1
## p. 337 (#367) ############################################
Winter and Summer Pastures
337
a
demand definite conditions for the prosperity of the herds. The
winter settlement must not have too severe a climate, the summer
grazing-ground must be as exempt as possible from the terrific plague
of insects. Since many more conditions must be satisfied for the
winter than for the summer pastures, it is the winter quarters which
determine the density of the nomad population. Thus the wealth of a
people accords with the abundance of their winter quarters, and all
internal encounters and campaigns of former centuries are to be regarded
as a constant struggle for the best winter settlements.
In winter, whenever possible, the same places as have been used for
long times past are occupied ; in the deep-lying valley of a once-existing
river, not over-exposed to the wind, with good water, and grazing-places
where the snow settles as little as possible, and the last year's dung
makes the ground warmer and, at the same time, provides fuel. Here
at the end of October the tent, made warmer by another covering, is
pitched, protecting the nomad from the raging winter buran and the
numbing cold. The herds, however, remain in the open air without a
sheltering roof, and must scrape for themselves the withered shrubs,
stalks, and roots from the snow. They get terribly thin ; indeed sheep,
camels, and oxen perish when the snow falls deep, and the horses in
scraping for fodder trample down the plants and make them uneatable,
or when ice forms and shuts out sustenance entirely. But in early spring
the situation improves, especially for the sheep, which, from mere skele-
tons, revive and get fat on the salt-steppes where a cursory inspection
reveals no vegetation on the glittering crust of salt. The salt-pastures
are incomparably more nourishing than the richest Alpine meadows, and
without salt there would be no sheep-rearing nomads in Central Asia.
To freshen the spring-pasturage the steppe is burnt off as soon as the
snow has melted, as the dry last year's steppe-grass gets matted under
the snow, and would retard the sprouting of the new grass ; the ground
manured by the ashes then gets luxuriantly green after a few days.
In the middle or at the end of April, during the lambing of the
sheep, and the foaling of the mares, preparations for striking the winter
tent are made. At this time the animals yield most milk, and a stock
of hard cheese (kurut) is made. At the beginning of May the steppe
begins to dry up, and the intolerable insects appear. Now the goods
which are superfluous for the summer are secretly buried, the tent is
struck, and loaded with all necessary goods and chattels on the decorated
camels. It is the day of greatest rejoicing for the nomad, who leaves
his inhospitable winter quarters in festal attire.
The winter quarters are regarded as the fixed property of the in-
dividual tent owners, but the summer pastures are the common property
of the clan. Here each member of the clan, rich or poor, has in theory
the right to settle where he likes. But the wealthy and illustrious
always know how to secure the best places. To effect this each camp keeps
a
C. MED, H. VOL. I. CH, XII.
22
## p. 338 (#368) ############################################
338
Loss of Cattle
-
a
the time of departure to the summer pastures and the direction to be
taken as secret as possible; at the same time it makes an arrangement
with the nearest-related camps, in conformity with which they suddenly
depart in order to reach their goal as quickly as possible. If the place
chosen is already occupied, the next which is still free is taken. At the
beginning of spring, when the grass is still scanty, the camps can remain
only a very short time-often one day or even only half a day—in one
place; later on in their more distant wandering—from well to well—they
can stay for weeks in the same place. At midsummer movement is more
rapid, and in autumn, with an increasing abundance of water, it is again
slower. In the sand-desert the nomad finds the wells covered by drift-
sand, and he must dig down to them afresh, if necessary daily. The
regulation of these wanderings is undertaken by the aksakals, not always
according to justice.
The cattle can easily be taken off by a hostile neighbour, for the
steppe is free and open. Therefore the nomads of the steppes, unlike
the nomads of the mountains, do not split themselves into single families.
They constantly need a small war-band to recover the stolen booty from
the enemy. On the other hand, the instinct of self-preservation often
drives a whole people to violate their neighbours' rights of property.
When there is dearth of fodder the cattle are ruined, and the enterprise
and energy of the owner cannot avert calamity. The impoverished
nomad infallibly goes to the wall as a solitary individual, and only
seldom is he, as a former wanderer (tshorva), capable of becoming a
despised settler (tshomru). For he feels it to be the greatest misfortune
and humiliation when he must take to the plough, somewhere by a
watercourse on the edge of the desert; and so long as the loss of all his
herds has not hopelessly crushed him, he does not resign himself to that
terrible fate which Mahomet has proscribed with the words: “wherever
this implement has penetrated, it has always brought with it servitude
and shame. ”
In spring, when severe frost suddenly sets in after the first thaw, and
the thin layer of snow is covered in a single night with a crust of ice
an inch thick, the cattle cannot scrape food out of the snow, and the owner
cannot possibly supply a substitute. When the frost continues hundreds
of thousands of beasts perish, and whole districts previously rich in herds
become suddenly poor. So as soon as ice appears the people affected
leave their winter quarters, and penetrate far into their neighbours'
territory until they find food for their herds. If they are successful a
part at least of their cattle is saved, and when the weather changes they
return home. But if all their cattle perish entirely, they must starve
if they are unwilling to rob their wealthy neighbour of a part of his
herds. Bloody feuds occur too in autumn on the return from the
summer pastures, when the horses have become fat and powerful and the
longer nights favour and cover long rides. The nomad now carries out
## p. 339 (#369) ############################################
Custom.
Kumiz
339
the raids of robbery and revenge resolved upon and skilfully planned in the
summer, and then he goes to his winter quarters.
But how can these barbarous robbers live together without exter-
minating each other? They are bridled by an old and tyrannical king,
invisible to themselves, the deb (custom, wont). This prohibits robbery
and murder, immorality and injustice towards associates in times of
peace; but the strange neighbour is outlawed ; to rob, enslave or kill
him is an heroic deed. The nomads' ideas of justice are remarkably
similar to those of our ancestors. Every offence is regarded as an injury
to the interests of a fellow-man, and is expiated by indemnification of the
loser. Among the Kazak-Kirghiz anyone who has killed a man of the
plebs (a “ black bone "), whether wilfully or accidentally makes no differ-
ence, must compensate the relations with a kun (i. e. 1000 sheep or
100 horses or 50 camels). The slaughter of a “white bone” costs a
sevenfold kun. Murder of their own wives, children, and slaves goes
unpunished, since they themselves are the losers. If a Kirghiz steals an
animal, he must restore it together with two of the same value. If a
wrong-doer is unable to pay the fine, his nearest relations, and failing
them the whole camp, must provide it.
The principal food consists of milk-products-not of the fresh milk
itself, which is only taken by children and the sick. A special
Turko-Tartar food is yogurt, prepared with leaven from curdled milk.
The Mongols also eat butter-the more rancid the more palatable-
dripping with dirt, and carried without wrapping in their hairy greasy
coat-pockets. From mare's milk, which yields no cream, kumiz (Kirghiz),
tshegan (Mongolish) is fermented', an extremely nutritious drink which is
good for consumption, and from which by itself life can be sustained. How-
ever, it keeps only a few hours, after which it becomes too sour and efferves-
cent, and so the whole supply must be drunk at once. In summer, with an
abundance of mares, there is such a superfluity of kumiz that hospitality
is unlimited, and half Altai is always drunk. The Turkomans and Kara-
Kalpaks, who possess few horses and no studs, drink kumiz seldom. The
much-drunk airan from fermented unskimmed camel, cow, and sheep-milk
quenches thirst for hours, just as does the kefir of the Tartars from cow's
milk. The airan, after being condensed by boiling, and dried hard as
stone into little balls in the sun, is made into kurt, kurut, which can be
kept for months and is the only means of making bitter salt-water
drinkable. According to Marco Polo it formed the provision of the
Mongol armies, and if the horseman could not quench his thirst in any
other way, he opened one of his horse's veins and drank the blood. From
kumiz and also from millet a strong spirit (Kirghiz boza) is distilled,
i Zemarchos (A. D. 568) mentions the drink kosmos at the Turkish Khan's
Court, Rubruquis (A. D. 1253) cosmos (variant comos) among the Mongols, and
the prince's drink cara-cosmos, Marco Polo, kemiz; all corruptions of the word
kumiz.
CH. XII.
22-2
## p. 340 (#370) ############################################
340
Food
which produces dead-drunkenness followed by a pleasant Nirvana-
sensation.
