Curtius
Rufus and Arrian give similar accounts of Bactria.
Rufus and Arrian give similar accounts of Bactria.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
The property only
changed hands, otherwise the conditions were the same as they had been
under Roman government. Of the villa, the manor house on the
Roman estate, a Vandal with his family now took possession, and the
coloni had to pay the necessary dues to the landed proprietor or his
representative and render the usual compulsory service. The profits of
the single estates were in any case on an average not insignificant, for
they made the development of a luxurious mode of life possible even
after an increase in the number of the population. The management of
the estate was, as formerly, directed only in a minority of cases by the
new masters themselves, for they lacked the necessary knowledge, and
service in the Court and in the army compelled them to be absent
frequently from their property. More often the management was
entrusted to stewards or farmers (conductores) who were survivals from
the earlier state of things. Nevertheless the position of the dependents
of the manor, wherever they were directly under the Vandal rule, must
have been materially improved in comparison with what it had been
forinerly, for we know from various authorities that the country people
were in no way content with the reintroduction of the old system of
oppression by the Byzantines after the fall of the Vandal kingdom.
The Vandals like the other German races were divided into three
classes slaves, freemen and nobles. The nobleman as he now appears
is a noble by service who derives his privileged position from serving the
king, not as earlier from birth. The freemen comprised the bulk of
the people, nevertheless they had, in comparison with earlier times, lost
considerably in political importance while the rights of the popular
assembly had devolved in the strengthened monarchy. The slaves were
entirely without rights, they were reckoned not as persons but as
alienable chattels. The position of the coloni who were taken over
from the Roman settlement was wholly foreign to the Vandals ; they
remained tied to the soil but were personally free peasants who kept
their former constitutional status.
At the head of the State was the King, whose power had gradually
become unlimited and differed but little from that of the Byzantine
Roman Emperor. His full official title was Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum.
His mark of distinction and that of his kindred was, as with the
Merwings, long hair falling to the shoulders. While the earlier rulers
dressed in the customary Vandal costume, Gelimer wore the purple
mantle, like the Emperor.
The succession to the throne was legally settled by Gaiseric's so-called
testament. Gaiseric, who himself had obtained the throne through the
choice of the people, ignoring probably the sons of his predecessor
Gunderic, who were still minors, considered himself after he had fully
grasped monarchical power as the new founder of the Vandal kingship,
as the originator of a dynasty. The sovereignty was looked upon as an
CH. XI.
## p. 318 (#348) ############################################
318
The King
inheritance for his family over which no right of disposal belonged to
the people. As however the existence of several heirs threatened the by
no means solidly established kingdom with the risk of subdivision into
several portions, Gaiseric established the principle of individual succession;
moreover he provided that the crown should pass to the eldest of his
male issue at the time being. By this last provision the government of
a minor, unable to bear arms, was made, humanly speaking, impossible.
The Vandal kingdom was the first and for a long time the only State in
which the idea of a permanent rule of succession came to be realised -
and rightly is Gaiseric's family statute reckoned in history among the
most remarkable facts relating to public law. It remained valid until
the end of the kingdom. Gaiseric himself was succeeded by his eldest
son Huneric who was succeeded in turns by two of his nephews
Gunthamund and Thrasamund, and only after the death of the latter
came Huneric's son Hilderic. Gelimer obtained the throne, on the
other hand, in a direct and irregular way, and his endeavours to represent
a
himself to Justinian as a legitimate ruler did not succeed.
The scope of the royal power comprised the national army, the
convening of the assembly, justice, legislation and executive, the appoint-
ments to the praefecture, the supreme control of finance, of police and of
the Church. Of any co-operation in the government by the people-
by the Vandals (not of course by the Romans) such as obtained in
olden times, there is no sign whatever.
The development of absolute government seems to have been com-
pleted in the year 442; according to the brief but significant statements
of our authorities several nobles, who had twice risen against the king
because he had overstepped the limits of his authority, were put to
death with a good many of the people. The origin of the royal power
is traceable to God; the dominant centre of the State is the king and
his court.
In war the king is in chief command over the troops and issues the
summons to the weapon-bearing freemen. The arrangement of the
army was, like that of the nation, by thousands and hundreds. Larger
divisions of troops were placed under commanders appointed especially
by the monarch and generally selected from the royal family. The
Vandals had been even in their settlements in Hungary a nation of
horsemen, and they remained so in Africa. They were chiefly armed
with long spears and swords, and were little suited to long campaigns.
Their principal strength lay in their feet. The ships they commanded
were usually small, lightly built, fast sailing cruisers which did not hold
more than about 40 persons. In the great mobility of the army as well
as of the navy lay the secret of the surprising successes which the
Vandals achieved.
But immediately after Gaiseric's death, a general
military decline began. Enervated by the hot climate and the luxury
into which they had been allured by the produce of a rich country,
## p. 319 (#349) ############################################
The Law
319
they lost their warlike capacity more and more, and thus sank before
the attack of the Byzantines in a manner almost unique in history.
The king is the director of the whole external polity. He sends
forth and receives envoys, concludes alliances, decides war and peace.
On single and peculiarly important questions he may take counsel
beforehand with the chiefs of his following, but the royal will alone is
absolute.
The Vandals were judged according to their national principles of
jurisprudence in the separate hundred districts by the leaders of the
thousands. Sentences for political offences were reserved for the king
as executor of justice in the national assembly. Legal procedure for the
Romans remained the same as before. Judgment was passed on trivial
matters by the town magistrates, on greater by provincial governors
according to Roman law but in the name of the king. Quarrels between
Vandals and Romans were of course settled only in the Vandal court of
justice according to the law of the victor. That the king often inter-
fered arbitrarily in the regular legal proceedings of the Romans is not
surprising, considering the state of affairs, but a similar arbitrary inter-
ference among the Vandals is a circumstance of political importance :
treason, treachery against the person of the king and his house, apostasy
from the Arian Church come into prominence, so that the life and
freedom of individuals were almost at the mercy of the monarch's
will.
The laws which the Vandal kings enacted were, as far as we know,
for the most part directed against the Romans and the Catholics. In
addition to the numerous edicts concerning religion the regulations
issued against the immorality so widespread in Africa are especially
worthy of remark, but like all regulations of the kind only possessed a
temporary efficiency. On the other hand, the law of royal succession
which we have already alluded to possessed universal validity.
The officials in the service of the Court and State as also those in
the Church are all subject to the royal power; they are nominated by
the monarch or at least confirmed by him, and can be deprived of their
functions by peremptory royal decree. The members belonging to the
household of the king represent different elements, spiritual and lay,
German and Roman, free and unfree together. The highest official in
the Vandal Court was the praepositus regni, whose importance lay entirely
in the sphere of the government of the kingdom; his position corresponded
to that of a prime minister. As holders of this office appear, so far as
is known, only persons of Teutonic nationality. An important post was
also that of head of the Chancery of the Cabinet, who had to draw up
the king's written edicts and was besides frequently entrusted with
different missions of especial political importance. The existence of a
special Arian court clergy is to be inferred from the fact that at the
princely courts house chaplains are mentioned. Besides these there
H. XI.
## p. 320 (#350) ############################################
320
The Officials
lived permanently at the Vandal Court a supernumerary class of men
who without holding any definite office enjoyed the favour of the king
and were employed by him in different ways. A number of them seem
to have borne the title comes as among the Franks, Ostrogoths and
others; from among them were taken, for example, the envoys sent to
foreign nations. Together with the provincial officials, who might be
temporarily present at the Court, and the Arian bishops, the persons of
principal position in the king's circle frequently co-operated in the
decision of important questions of state affairs. As a general designation
for these persons when they belonged to the laity the expression domestici
appears. Admittance into the royal household required an oath of
fealty.
From among the king's circle were drawn the greater part of the
higher officials in the provincial government, especially over the Vandals.
The most important officers of the Vandals were the heads of the
thousands (the chiliarchs, millenarii), on whom devolved the management
of the districts, i. e. the settlements of a thousand heads of families, in
judicial, military, administrative and fiscal respects. Outside the Vandal
allotments the organisation of the Roman system in Africa still remained,
with the exception of the military, and the duties of the separate offices
were discharged by the Romans themselves. The only exceptions were
the islands in the Mediterranean; Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic
Isles were united into one province and placed under a governor of
German nationality who resided in Sardinia and exercised both military
and civil functions.
The ruler has by virtue of his position absolute right over the
revenue of the State; state property and royal private property are
identical. A principal source of revenue is provided by the produce of
royal domains, which in Roman Africa occupy a particularly important
place. To this was added the taxes paid by the provincials, from which
the Vandals themselves were entirely exempt. The burdens, however,
cannot as a rule have been so oppressive as they were under the Roman
rule, for later on, under the government of the Byzantines, the former
more lenient conditions were regretted. Besides the taxes were to be taken
into account the proceeds from the tolls, the right of coinage, fines, dues
from mines and manufactures, and other unusual receipts.
The Arian as well as the Catholic Church is subject to the royal
power; the appointment of bishops is dependent on the consent of the
sovereign, the synods are convoked by the king and can only meet with
his permission. The Asdingian Vandals in their seats in Hungary had
clearly been already converted to Arianism, while the Silingians, Alans,
and Sueves in the first phase of their Spanish career were still adherents
of paganism. After the occupation of Africa the Catholic clergy were
entirely expelled from the country districts in the province of Zeugitana
as well as from Carthage, and the vacant places were given over to the
## p. 321 (#351) ############################################
Religion
321
Arian clergy with the whole of the church property. In the other
parts of the kingdom few or no Arian priests were to be found; only
under Huneric who presented the whole of the Catholic churches to the
Arians (a measure which certainly was never wholly carried out) were
they installed in greater numbers. The bishop residing in Carthage
bore the title of Patriarch and exercised as metropolitan a supreme
power over the whole of the Arian clergy. Since the Arian church-
service was held in the vernacular as among the other Germans, the
clergy were mostly of German nationality.
The position of the Catholic Church was, as has been already remarked,
very varied under the different rulers and very largely dependent on the
state of foreign politics. In Africa, after the tumult of the conquest
had passed over and the endowment of the Arian Established Church
was put into effect, Gaiseric only proceeded against those adherents of
orthodoxy from whom danger to the State was to be feared. The clergy
beyond the Vandal allotment were closely supervised, but they were not
molested if they did not oppose the royal will but confined themselves
to the execution of their pastoral duties. The real persecutions began
first under Huneric and were continued, after an interval of peace, by
Gunthamund and Thrasamund, though in a milder form. Hilderic
gave the Catholic Church its complete freedom again ; his successor
Gelimer, an ardent Arian, was too much occupied with political com-
plications to be able to be active in that sphere. Ecclesiastical conditions
suffered therefore only temporary not permanent disturbance and
sustained no material hurt; rather, the persecutions contributed largely
to temper the inner strength of the African Church.
When the Vandals occupied Africa they were undoubtedly still in
the same primitive stage of civilisation in which they had lived in
their homes in Hungary. Their political position as conquerors, the
settlement in an enclosed district, the sharp religious opposition must
certainly have hindered a rapid acceptance of the Roman influence.
But under Gelimer they quite adopted the luxurious mode of life of
the Romans, i. e. of the rich nobility; they lived in magnificent palaces,
wore fine clothes, visited theatres, gave themselves up to the pleasures
of an excellent table and did homage with great passion to Aphrodite.
Roman literary culture had just made its appearance in the royal
Court and among the nobility. Gaiseric was himself certainly, at least
at first, not skilled in Latin, but one of his grandsons was famous
for having distinguished himself in the acquisition of manifold know-
ledge. The same is said of Thrasamund, and we may assume it of
Hilderic.
Latin was the language of diplomatic intercourse and legislation, as
it was in the other German kingdoms; the Vandal language was quite
supplanted, and only remained in use in popular intercourse and in
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. XI.
21
## p. 322 (#352) ############################################
322
Literature and Architecture
the church-service. So in the last years of the Vandal dominion
Roman literature in Africa produced a tiny harvest. The poet Dracontius
is to be remembered in this connexion, and the poets preserved in the
anthology of the Codex Salmasianus, and Bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe.
The art of architecture found in Thrasamund an eager patron; mention
is made of splendid buildings which were raised under this king. There
is certainly no authentic trace extant of any artistic capacity among the
Vandals themselves.
## p. 323 (#353) ############################################
996
323
323
43
CHAPTER XII.
(A)
THE ASIATIC BACKGROUND.
a
The Asiatic background has its basis in the immense zone of steppes
and deserts which stretches from the Caspian Sea to the Khin-gan
Mountains, and is divided into two regions by the Pamir and the Thian
Shan ranges. The western region, like the whole lowland district of
West Asia, even to the extreme north, is a deserted sea-bed; the eastern
(Tarim basin and Gobi) seems formerly to have been covered with great
fresh-water lakes. The water-basins began to evaporate and to shrink to
inland seas, while the intervening country became a desert. The largest
remains of former enormous water-basins are the salt Caspian Sea and
the sweet-water Aral Sea. In both regions all the moisture that falls
evaporates, so that no rivers reach the open sea; most of them ooze away
in the sand, and only the greatest, such as the Syr, Amu, Ili, Chu,
Tarim, flow into large inland seas. The fact that the evaporation is
greater than the fall of moisture, and that the latter takes place chiefly
in the cold season, has important consequences, which account for the
desert nature of the land. All the salt which is released by the
weathering and decomposition of the soil remains in the ground, and
only in the higher regions with greater falls of moisture, and by the
banks of rivers is the soil-sufficiently lixiviated to be fit for cultivation.
Everywhere else is steppe and desert absolutely uncultivable. The surface
of the land can be divided into six categories : sand-deserts, gravel-
deserts, salt-steppes, loam-steppes, loess-land, and rocky_mountains.
Of these the sand-deserts form by far the greatest part. They
consist of fine drift-sand, which the driving storm wind forms into sickle-
shaped shifting dunes (barkhans). The loose drift-sand is waterless, and
for the most part without vegetation ; the barkhans, however, here and
there display a few poor saxaul and other shrubs; human life is impossible.
The gravel-deserts, also very extensive, which form the transition between
the sand-deserts and the steppes, have a sparse vegetation and serve the
nomads as grazing-grounds in their wanderings to and from winter
CH. XII.
21-2
## p. 324 (#354) ############################################
324
Nature of the Soil. Vegetation. Climate
quarters and summer pastures. The adjoining salt-steppes, consisting
of loam and sand, are so impregnated with salt that the latter
settles down on the surface like rime. In spring they bear a scanty
vegetation, which, on account of its saline nature, affords excellent pasture
for numerous flocks of sheep. During the rain of autumn and spring
the loam-steppes, consisting of loess-soil mixed with much sand, are
covered with luxuriant verdure and myriads of wild flowers, especially
tulips, and, on the drier ground, with camel-thorn (Alhagi camelorum),
without which the camel could not exist for any length of time. These
steppes form the real pastures of the nomads. In the loess-land
agriculture and gardening are only possible where the soil has been
sufficiently softened by rainfall and artificial canals, and is constantly
irrigated. It forms the sub-soil of all cultivable oases. 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.
changed hands, otherwise the conditions were the same as they had been
under Roman government. Of the villa, the manor house on the
Roman estate, a Vandal with his family now took possession, and the
coloni had to pay the necessary dues to the landed proprietor or his
representative and render the usual compulsory service. The profits of
the single estates were in any case on an average not insignificant, for
they made the development of a luxurious mode of life possible even
after an increase in the number of the population. The management of
the estate was, as formerly, directed only in a minority of cases by the
new masters themselves, for they lacked the necessary knowledge, and
service in the Court and in the army compelled them to be absent
frequently from their property. More often the management was
entrusted to stewards or farmers (conductores) who were survivals from
the earlier state of things. Nevertheless the position of the dependents
of the manor, wherever they were directly under the Vandal rule, must
have been materially improved in comparison with what it had been
forinerly, for we know from various authorities that the country people
were in no way content with the reintroduction of the old system of
oppression by the Byzantines after the fall of the Vandal kingdom.
The Vandals like the other German races were divided into three
classes slaves, freemen and nobles. The nobleman as he now appears
is a noble by service who derives his privileged position from serving the
king, not as earlier from birth. The freemen comprised the bulk of
the people, nevertheless they had, in comparison with earlier times, lost
considerably in political importance while the rights of the popular
assembly had devolved in the strengthened monarchy. The slaves were
entirely without rights, they were reckoned not as persons but as
alienable chattels. The position of the coloni who were taken over
from the Roman settlement was wholly foreign to the Vandals ; they
remained tied to the soil but were personally free peasants who kept
their former constitutional status.
At the head of the State was the King, whose power had gradually
become unlimited and differed but little from that of the Byzantine
Roman Emperor. His full official title was Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum.
His mark of distinction and that of his kindred was, as with the
Merwings, long hair falling to the shoulders. While the earlier rulers
dressed in the customary Vandal costume, Gelimer wore the purple
mantle, like the Emperor.
The succession to the throne was legally settled by Gaiseric's so-called
testament. Gaiseric, who himself had obtained the throne through the
choice of the people, ignoring probably the sons of his predecessor
Gunderic, who were still minors, considered himself after he had fully
grasped monarchical power as the new founder of the Vandal kingship,
as the originator of a dynasty. The sovereignty was looked upon as an
CH. XI.
## p. 318 (#348) ############################################
318
The King
inheritance for his family over which no right of disposal belonged to
the people. As however the existence of several heirs threatened the by
no means solidly established kingdom with the risk of subdivision into
several portions, Gaiseric established the principle of individual succession;
moreover he provided that the crown should pass to the eldest of his
male issue at the time being. By this last provision the government of
a minor, unable to bear arms, was made, humanly speaking, impossible.
The Vandal kingdom was the first and for a long time the only State in
which the idea of a permanent rule of succession came to be realised -
and rightly is Gaiseric's family statute reckoned in history among the
most remarkable facts relating to public law. It remained valid until
the end of the kingdom. Gaiseric himself was succeeded by his eldest
son Huneric who was succeeded in turns by two of his nephews
Gunthamund and Thrasamund, and only after the death of the latter
came Huneric's son Hilderic. Gelimer obtained the throne, on the
other hand, in a direct and irregular way, and his endeavours to represent
a
himself to Justinian as a legitimate ruler did not succeed.
The scope of the royal power comprised the national army, the
convening of the assembly, justice, legislation and executive, the appoint-
ments to the praefecture, the supreme control of finance, of police and of
the Church. Of any co-operation in the government by the people-
by the Vandals (not of course by the Romans) such as obtained in
olden times, there is no sign whatever.
The development of absolute government seems to have been com-
pleted in the year 442; according to the brief but significant statements
of our authorities several nobles, who had twice risen against the king
because he had overstepped the limits of his authority, were put to
death with a good many of the people. The origin of the royal power
is traceable to God; the dominant centre of the State is the king and
his court.
In war the king is in chief command over the troops and issues the
summons to the weapon-bearing freemen. The arrangement of the
army was, like that of the nation, by thousands and hundreds. Larger
divisions of troops were placed under commanders appointed especially
by the monarch and generally selected from the royal family. The
Vandals had been even in their settlements in Hungary a nation of
horsemen, and they remained so in Africa. They were chiefly armed
with long spears and swords, and were little suited to long campaigns.
Their principal strength lay in their feet. The ships they commanded
were usually small, lightly built, fast sailing cruisers which did not hold
more than about 40 persons. In the great mobility of the army as well
as of the navy lay the secret of the surprising successes which the
Vandals achieved.
But immediately after Gaiseric's death, a general
military decline began. Enervated by the hot climate and the luxury
into which they had been allured by the produce of a rich country,
## p. 319 (#349) ############################################
The Law
319
they lost their warlike capacity more and more, and thus sank before
the attack of the Byzantines in a manner almost unique in history.
The king is the director of the whole external polity. He sends
forth and receives envoys, concludes alliances, decides war and peace.
On single and peculiarly important questions he may take counsel
beforehand with the chiefs of his following, but the royal will alone is
absolute.
The Vandals were judged according to their national principles of
jurisprudence in the separate hundred districts by the leaders of the
thousands. Sentences for political offences were reserved for the king
as executor of justice in the national assembly. Legal procedure for the
Romans remained the same as before. Judgment was passed on trivial
matters by the town magistrates, on greater by provincial governors
according to Roman law but in the name of the king. Quarrels between
Vandals and Romans were of course settled only in the Vandal court of
justice according to the law of the victor. That the king often inter-
fered arbitrarily in the regular legal proceedings of the Romans is not
surprising, considering the state of affairs, but a similar arbitrary inter-
ference among the Vandals is a circumstance of political importance :
treason, treachery against the person of the king and his house, apostasy
from the Arian Church come into prominence, so that the life and
freedom of individuals were almost at the mercy of the monarch's
will.
The laws which the Vandal kings enacted were, as far as we know,
for the most part directed against the Romans and the Catholics. In
addition to the numerous edicts concerning religion the regulations
issued against the immorality so widespread in Africa are especially
worthy of remark, but like all regulations of the kind only possessed a
temporary efficiency. On the other hand, the law of royal succession
which we have already alluded to possessed universal validity.
The officials in the service of the Court and State as also those in
the Church are all subject to the royal power; they are nominated by
the monarch or at least confirmed by him, and can be deprived of their
functions by peremptory royal decree. The members belonging to the
household of the king represent different elements, spiritual and lay,
German and Roman, free and unfree together. The highest official in
the Vandal Court was the praepositus regni, whose importance lay entirely
in the sphere of the government of the kingdom; his position corresponded
to that of a prime minister. As holders of this office appear, so far as
is known, only persons of Teutonic nationality. An important post was
also that of head of the Chancery of the Cabinet, who had to draw up
the king's written edicts and was besides frequently entrusted with
different missions of especial political importance. The existence of a
special Arian court clergy is to be inferred from the fact that at the
princely courts house chaplains are mentioned. Besides these there
H. XI.
## p. 320 (#350) ############################################
320
The Officials
lived permanently at the Vandal Court a supernumerary class of men
who without holding any definite office enjoyed the favour of the king
and were employed by him in different ways. A number of them seem
to have borne the title comes as among the Franks, Ostrogoths and
others; from among them were taken, for example, the envoys sent to
foreign nations. Together with the provincial officials, who might be
temporarily present at the Court, and the Arian bishops, the persons of
principal position in the king's circle frequently co-operated in the
decision of important questions of state affairs. As a general designation
for these persons when they belonged to the laity the expression domestici
appears. Admittance into the royal household required an oath of
fealty.
From among the king's circle were drawn the greater part of the
higher officials in the provincial government, especially over the Vandals.
The most important officers of the Vandals were the heads of the
thousands (the chiliarchs, millenarii), on whom devolved the management
of the districts, i. e. the settlements of a thousand heads of families, in
judicial, military, administrative and fiscal respects. Outside the Vandal
allotments the organisation of the Roman system in Africa still remained,
with the exception of the military, and the duties of the separate offices
were discharged by the Romans themselves. The only exceptions were
the islands in the Mediterranean; Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic
Isles were united into one province and placed under a governor of
German nationality who resided in Sardinia and exercised both military
and civil functions.
The ruler has by virtue of his position absolute right over the
revenue of the State; state property and royal private property are
identical. A principal source of revenue is provided by the produce of
royal domains, which in Roman Africa occupy a particularly important
place. To this was added the taxes paid by the provincials, from which
the Vandals themselves were entirely exempt. The burdens, however,
cannot as a rule have been so oppressive as they were under the Roman
rule, for later on, under the government of the Byzantines, the former
more lenient conditions were regretted. Besides the taxes were to be taken
into account the proceeds from the tolls, the right of coinage, fines, dues
from mines and manufactures, and other unusual receipts.
The Arian as well as the Catholic Church is subject to the royal
power; the appointment of bishops is dependent on the consent of the
sovereign, the synods are convoked by the king and can only meet with
his permission. The Asdingian Vandals in their seats in Hungary had
clearly been already converted to Arianism, while the Silingians, Alans,
and Sueves in the first phase of their Spanish career were still adherents
of paganism. After the occupation of Africa the Catholic clergy were
entirely expelled from the country districts in the province of Zeugitana
as well as from Carthage, and the vacant places were given over to the
## p. 321 (#351) ############################################
Religion
321
Arian clergy with the whole of the church property. In the other
parts of the kingdom few or no Arian priests were to be found; only
under Huneric who presented the whole of the Catholic churches to the
Arians (a measure which certainly was never wholly carried out) were
they installed in greater numbers. The bishop residing in Carthage
bore the title of Patriarch and exercised as metropolitan a supreme
power over the whole of the Arian clergy. Since the Arian church-
service was held in the vernacular as among the other Germans, the
clergy were mostly of German nationality.
The position of the Catholic Church was, as has been already remarked,
very varied under the different rulers and very largely dependent on the
state of foreign politics. In Africa, after the tumult of the conquest
had passed over and the endowment of the Arian Established Church
was put into effect, Gaiseric only proceeded against those adherents of
orthodoxy from whom danger to the State was to be feared. The clergy
beyond the Vandal allotment were closely supervised, but they were not
molested if they did not oppose the royal will but confined themselves
to the execution of their pastoral duties. The real persecutions began
first under Huneric and were continued, after an interval of peace, by
Gunthamund and Thrasamund, though in a milder form. Hilderic
gave the Catholic Church its complete freedom again ; his successor
Gelimer, an ardent Arian, was too much occupied with political com-
plications to be able to be active in that sphere. Ecclesiastical conditions
suffered therefore only temporary not permanent disturbance and
sustained no material hurt; rather, the persecutions contributed largely
to temper the inner strength of the African Church.
When the Vandals occupied Africa they were undoubtedly still in
the same primitive stage of civilisation in which they had lived in
their homes in Hungary. Their political position as conquerors, the
settlement in an enclosed district, the sharp religious opposition must
certainly have hindered a rapid acceptance of the Roman influence.
But under Gelimer they quite adopted the luxurious mode of life of
the Romans, i. e. of the rich nobility; they lived in magnificent palaces,
wore fine clothes, visited theatres, gave themselves up to the pleasures
of an excellent table and did homage with great passion to Aphrodite.
Roman literary culture had just made its appearance in the royal
Court and among the nobility. Gaiseric was himself certainly, at least
at first, not skilled in Latin, but one of his grandsons was famous
for having distinguished himself in the acquisition of manifold know-
ledge. The same is said of Thrasamund, and we may assume it of
Hilderic.
Latin was the language of diplomatic intercourse and legislation, as
it was in the other German kingdoms; the Vandal language was quite
supplanted, and only remained in use in popular intercourse and in
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. XI.
21
## p. 322 (#352) ############################################
322
Literature and Architecture
the church-service. So in the last years of the Vandal dominion
Roman literature in Africa produced a tiny harvest. The poet Dracontius
is to be remembered in this connexion, and the poets preserved in the
anthology of the Codex Salmasianus, and Bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe.
The art of architecture found in Thrasamund an eager patron; mention
is made of splendid buildings which were raised under this king. There
is certainly no authentic trace extant of any artistic capacity among the
Vandals themselves.
## p. 323 (#353) ############################################
996
323
323
43
CHAPTER XII.
(A)
THE ASIATIC BACKGROUND.
a
The Asiatic background has its basis in the immense zone of steppes
and deserts which stretches from the Caspian Sea to the Khin-gan
Mountains, and is divided into two regions by the Pamir and the Thian
Shan ranges. The western region, like the whole lowland district of
West Asia, even to the extreme north, is a deserted sea-bed; the eastern
(Tarim basin and Gobi) seems formerly to have been covered with great
fresh-water lakes. The water-basins began to evaporate and to shrink to
inland seas, while the intervening country became a desert. The largest
remains of former enormous water-basins are the salt Caspian Sea and
the sweet-water Aral Sea. In both regions all the moisture that falls
evaporates, so that no rivers reach the open sea; most of them ooze away
in the sand, and only the greatest, such as the Syr, Amu, Ili, Chu,
Tarim, flow into large inland seas. The fact that the evaporation is
greater than the fall of moisture, and that the latter takes place chiefly
in the cold season, has important consequences, which account for the
desert nature of the land. All the salt which is released by the
weathering and decomposition of the soil remains in the ground, and
only in the higher regions with greater falls of moisture, and by the
banks of rivers is the soil-sufficiently lixiviated to be fit for cultivation.
Everywhere else is steppe and desert absolutely uncultivable. The surface
of the land can be divided into six categories : sand-deserts, gravel-
deserts, salt-steppes, loam-steppes, loess-land, and rocky_mountains.
Of these the sand-deserts form by far the greatest part. They
consist of fine drift-sand, which the driving storm wind forms into sickle-
shaped shifting dunes (barkhans). The loose drift-sand is waterless, and
for the most part without vegetation ; the barkhans, however, here and
there display a few poor saxaul and other shrubs; human life is impossible.
The gravel-deserts, also very extensive, which form the transition between
the sand-deserts and the steppes, have a sparse vegetation and serve the
nomads as grazing-grounds in their wanderings to and from winter
CH. XII.
21-2
## p. 324 (#354) ############################################
324
Nature of the Soil. Vegetation. Climate
quarters and summer pastures. The adjoining salt-steppes, consisting
of loam and sand, are so impregnated with salt that the latter
settles down on the surface like rime. In spring they bear a scanty
vegetation, which, on account of its saline nature, affords excellent pasture
for numerous flocks of sheep. During the rain of autumn and spring
the loam-steppes, consisting of loess-soil mixed with much sand, are
covered with luxuriant verdure and myriads of wild flowers, especially
tulips, and, on the drier ground, with camel-thorn (Alhagi camelorum),
without which the camel could not exist for any length of time. These
steppes form the real pastures of the nomads. In the loess-land
agriculture and gardening are only possible where the soil has been
sufficiently softened by rainfall and artificial canals, and is constantly
irrigated. It forms the sub-soil of all cultivable oases. 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.
