Artifacts Show Sophistication of Ancient Nomads

NYT ^ | 3/12/2012 | John Noble Wilford

[mojito]

Ancient Greeks had a word for the people who lived on the wild, arid Eurasian steppes stretching from the Black Sea to the border of China. They were nomads, which meant “roaming about for pasture.” They were wanderers and, not infrequently, fierce mounted warriors. Essentially, they were “the other” to the agricultural and increasingly urban civilizations that emerged in the first millennium B.C.

As the nomads left no writing, no one knows what they called themselves. To their literate neighbors, they were the ubiquitous and mysterious Scythians or the Saka, perhaps one and the same people. In any case, these nomads were looked down on — the other often is — as an intermediate or an arrested stage in cultural evolution. They had taken a step beyond hunter-gatherers but were well short of settling down to planting and reaping, or the more socially and economically complex life in town.

But archaeologists in recent years have moved beyond this mind-set by breaking through some of the vast silences of the Central Asian past.

These excavations dispel notions that nomadic societies were less developed than many sedentary ones. Grave goods from as early as the eighth century B.C. show that these people were prospering through a mobile pastoral strategy, maintaining networks of cultural exchange (not always peacefully) with powerful foreign neighbors like the Persians and later the Chinese.

[mojito]

Worth a look.

[mojito]

Ping.

[muawiyah]

Cruising on back a few thousand years we arrive at the time when the ancient Sumerians invented cities and writing, stepping beyond the world of villages and temporary encampments.

They were nomadic herding people.

They were later displaced by even more fierce warrior elites who were dependent on herdsmen AND agriculturalists!

[Happy Rain]

Ancient nomadic men romanced, kidnapped or purchased wives from all the many regions they either visited, snuck into or invaded.

According to natural selection,such a broad and diverse gene pool makes for healthier and smarter offspring even if the young are not raised around city-state scholars.

Brilliant if unschooled people were thus common among the nomadic tribes—sometimes—like Genghis Khan—they applied their gifts unfortunately.

[pallis]

I read one time that the word Scotch comes from the word Scyth. Don’t know if that is true, but if it is, it explains a few things.

[muawiyah]

Genghis Khan arrived at a time of fortuitous opportunity. The Dark Ages were drawing to a close in the West and he reopened the Silk Road(s).

What's not to like?

[muawiyah]

Scota ~ name of the great goddess of the Sea Going Celts who arrived in Britain from Spain way back in the 8th century BC. It was later transferred to Alba (as Scotland) during the re-peopling period of the 7th and 8th centuries AD.

Ireland was earlier called Scota. It was renamed Ireland after Ire, one of the three brothers who invaded in the 8th century BC.

BTW, that's according to Galician histories in Northern Spain. The English have a different take on the matter but who are they? They lived in a great big old sinking bog-land in Europe at the time!

[Happy Rain]

He paved the Silk Road with Muslim corpses...

you're right, what's not to like?

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks mojito and muawiyah. Beth-Shan Beyond the Mountains of Darkness Gozan Introduction Mycenae and Scythia Summing Up To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

Whoops.

• Beth-Shan
• Beyond the Mountains of Darkness
• Gozan
• Introduction
• The Dark Age of Greece
• Mycenae and Scythia
• Summing Up

[moose07]

A book you just might be interested in: ISBN 978-1-84529-482-3
Stephen Oppenheimer- The origins of the English.

BTW, that's according to Galician histories in Northern Spain. The English have a different take on the matter but who are they? They lived in a great big old sinking bog-land in Europe at the time!

The people you refer to make up less than 5% of the gene pool.
A very interesting read, if it’s your thing.

[muawiyah]

First off, all the Northern Europeans are very closely related, so technically the folks in the swamps in Europe are not terribly different from the Celtic peoples ~ just not enough red hair to satisfy me if you want to know, but that's me.

So, there are the proto-English ~ living in the Swamps in 700 BC ~ beating each other over the head, swinging bronze swords, drowning victims ~ all the good stuff.

1200 years later they were a bit more advanced ~ then King Ad gave away the farm ~ OUR FARM ~ not his own farm, but ours.

Within about 100 years they too were Christianized and were much less nasty. In fact, they took over leadership of THE CHURCH and managed to spread their own language(s) into a dominant position that wasn't challenged until 1066!

Once the cultural conquest was made all the bitter clingers who demanded their own rites in their own versions of latin were readily turned into what became Englishmen. The real Britons lived on in Ireland, Alba, Brittany, Manx, etc.

True enough the genes are only little removed from each other, but there are always two different versions of the history! Ours and theirs. Ours is better ~ and much more entertaining really.

[Kenny Bunk]

Unfortunately, Mu, the term "Celt" has been abused by the St. Patrick's Day People, the Medieval Fair People, and the Bagpipe People.

Rotsaruck straightening them out next weekend.

[moose07]

True enough the genes are only little removed from each other, but there are always two different versions of the history! Ours and theirs. Ours is better ~ and much more entertaining really.
I’m of Paddy decent myself, so not disagreeing with you.
In fact the book backs up the stories perfectly, which makes a change.
Thanks for your reply ,good to set the record strait. :)

[muawiyah]

One mystery to uncover is where all those "Alexander" families came from in Finland, Sweden and Norway. Now I know Scotland and Norway were pretty much operated as a single country for a couple of hundred years in the Middle Ages, but why the Alexanders all over the place, and not the Jones families. Does this merely parallel the dispersion of the Hughes families?

Sure makes genealogy tough.