> [!info] Metadata > - Real Title:: The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World > - Author:: David W. Anthony > - Via:: Princeton University Press > - Publication Date:: 2007 (updated 2010) > - ISBN:: 069114818X / 9780691148182 > - Link:: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7sjpn > - LCC:: P572.A54 2007 ## Highlights ## ch04 Wool, Wheels, and Proto-Indo-European ### ch04p59-60 Wool > Woven woolen textiles are made from long wool fibers of a type that did not grow on wild sheep. Sheep with long wooly coats are genetic mutants bred for just that trait. > > Sheep were domesticated in the period from about 8000 to 7500 BCE in eastern Anatolia and western Iran as a captive source of meat, which is all they were used for during the first four thousand years of sheepherding. They were covered not with wool but with long, coarse hair called kemp. Wool grew on these sheep as an insulating undercoat of very short curly fibers that were "structurally unspinnable." The wild short wool molted at the end of winter. > > Wool thread, by contrast, requires unnaturally long wool fibers, which didn't really start appearing until 4000-3500 BCE. Wool spinners pulled clumps of fibers from a mass of long-fiber wool and twisted them into a thread by hand feeding the strand into a twirling weighted stick (or hand spindle). Such spindle whorls are virtually indistinguishable from the ones used for flax to make linen, which was definitely the oldest kind of thread/fabric made by humans. - Added to [[textiles]]. - Added to [[many useful animals were domesticated for their meat first]]. - Added to [[when different textiles emerged]]. ### ch04p65 Wheels > Wheeled vehicles need wheels and axles; the wheel, axle, and vehicle together mark a complicated combination of load-bearing moving parts. The earliest wagons were planed and chiseled entirely from wood, and the moving parts had to fit precisely. In a wagon with a fixed axle and revolving wheels (the earliest type) the axle arms had to fit snug but not too snug, in the whole, else it would wobble (loose) or drag (tight). > > Carts were lighter and easier to pull, and on rough ground were less likely to get stuck. Large load probably still needed wagons, but carts would have been useful for smaller loads. Wheels started appearing around 3400-3000 BCE. - Added to [[wagons and wheels were difficult inventions]] ### ch04p72 the invention of wheeled wagons opened up new territories > Before wheeled vehicles were invented, really heavy things could only really be moved over water or by large groups. Although the earliest wagons were slow and clumsy, probably requiring teams of specially trained oxen, they permitted single families to carry manure out to the fields and bring firewood, supplies, crops and people back home, which reduced the need for cooperative labor and allowed for single family farms. On the Eurasian steppes, wagons made new things portable, so herding families could make use of the interior steppes that had previously been too difficult to access. ### ch04p72 wheel technology was useful and spread fast > The clearest proof of the wheel's impact was the speed with which wagon technology spread; so rapidly that we don't really know where it was invented. Most specialists say Mesopotamia but that's basically an assumption based on the fact that Mesopotamia was more "sophisticated" than the tribal societies. ## ch08 First Farmers and Herders ### ch08p153 Wives > Intermarriage is an often-repeated but not very convincing explanation for incremental changes in material culture. Warren DeBoer has shown that wives who marry into a foreign tribe among tribal societies often feel so exposed and insecure that they become hyper-correct imitators of their new cultural mores rather than a source of innovation. - added to [[immigrants embrace new culture more strongly than natives]] - added to [[marriage]] - use to write [[The Diplomacy of Marriage]] ### ch08p155 Willpower > Domesticated animals can only be raised by people who are committed morally and ethically to watching their families go hungry rather than letting them eat the breeding stock. Seed grain and breeding stock must be saved, not eaten, or there will be no crop and no calves the next year. Foragers generally value immediate sharing and generosity over miserly saving for the future, so the shift to keep breeding stock was a moral as well as an economic one. This reminds me of how Jenks was described in L. E. Modessit's *Spellsong Cycle* -- consider this for the [[Article & Blog Idea]] thing about relating novels to real life concepts. Might be useful for the [[Recurring Motifs in Modesitt's Works]] article as well. ### ch08p159 Part Time Cultivation in the Dniester valley > The foragers on the frontier itself rapidly accepted some cultivated plants and animals but rejected others, particularly sheep. Hunting and fishing continued to supply most of the diet. They did not display obvious signs of a shift to new rituals or social structures. Cattle keeping and wheat cultivation seemed to have been pursued part-time, as an insurance policy against bad years and perhaps as a way of keeping up with the neighbors, not as a replacement of foraging economy and morality. - added to [[social impacts of early cattle domestication in ancient Russia]] ## ch09 Cows, Copper, and Chiefs ### ch09p160 Funerals <blockquote class=paraphrase>As animal keeping in the steppes spread, so did the rise of chiefs with lots of ostentatious ornaments. Their funerals were accompanied by the sacrifice of sheep, goats, cattle, and horses, with most of the meat and bones distributed to the celebrants so only a few symbolic lower leg pieces and an occasional skull, perhaps attached to a hide, remained in the grave. No such ostentatious leaders had existed in the old hunting and gathering bands of the Neolithic period. What makes their sudden rise even more intriguing is that their half their meat still came from fish. In the Volga region, the bones of horses, the preferred wild prey of the earliest hunters, still outnumbered sheep and cattle in the kitchen trash. The domesticated cattle and sheep that played such a large ritual role were eaten only infrequently, particularly in the east.</blockquote> - [?] Were cows currency? Status symbols? Food to be eaten at fancy parties in ritual contexts / an insurance plan? - added to [[social impacts of early cattle domestication in ancient Russia]] ### ch09p162 The Early Copper Age in Old Europe > In the Balkans and in the fertile plains of the lower Danube valley, villages were rebuilt on the same spot generation after generation, creating stratified tells that grew to heights of 30-50 feet, lifting the village above its surrounding fields. Fragments of colored plaster suggest that house walls were painted with the same swirling, cuvilinear designs that appeared on decorated pottery. relevant to: [[ceramics]] & how tells are built. ### ch09p163 the invention of ceramics led to metallurgy > Pottery kilns led to metallurgy. Metallurgy was a new and different kind of craft. It was obvious to anyone that pots were made of clay, but even after being told that a shiny copper ring was made from a green-stained rock, it was difficult to see how. The magical aspect of copperworking set metalworkers apart, and the demand for copper objects increased trade. Prospecting, mining, and long-distance trade for ore and finished products introduced a new era of inter-regional politics and interdependence that quickly reached deep into the steppes as far as the Volga. Definitely use this for the Temple of [[The Engineer]]. - added to: [[ceramics]] ### ch09p163 The Early Cucuteni-Tripolye Village at Bernashevka > Early farming village: On a terrace overlooking the Dniester River foodplain six houses were built in a circle around one large structure. The central building had horizontal wooden beams, with vertical wall posts morticed into them, with wattle-and-daub walls and a thatch roof, with a floor of smooth fired clay on a subfloor of timber beams. This building had the only domed clay oven in the settlement: a central bakery for the village, which was made up of about 50 people. ### ch09p186 The Khvaylnsk Culture on the Volga > Fish probably represented 70% of the meat diet. Onagers, saiga antelope were the quarry of hunters. In garbage dumps east of the Don, cattle and sheep were more important in ritual sacrifices than in the diet, as if they were initially regarded as a kind of ritual currency used for occasional (seasonal?) sanctified meals and funeral feasts. They certainly were associated with new rituals at funerals, and probably with other new religious beliefs and myths as well. - [i] Included in %% %% - [?] Is it so bizarre that they might have been kept primarily for milk instead of meat? Would that show up in the archaeological record? The author doesn't seem to address this. ### ch09p191 Cows, Social Power, and the Emergence of Tribes > * Foundation for new kind of social power: participation in long-distance trade, gift exchange, and new cults requiring public sacrifice and feasting. > * Stockbreeding is a fundamentally volatile economy; herders who lose animals always borrow from those who still have them. The social obligations involved in that sort of loan are the basis for a fluid system of status distinctions; loaners got power over borrowers, and sponsoring a feast gave you power over your guests (they "owed" you, in a sense) > * Status competitions between local leaders led to a widespread set of shared status symbols; as leaders acquire followers, politics ensues, which becomes the basis for tribes. - [i] Added to ## ch10 Domestication of the Horse ### ch10p197 Where Were Horses First Domesticated > * Domesticated horses can be traced back to lots of females and one male, which is the opposite of how cows were domesticated, because with cows you care about the one genetic freak who can overproduce milk with ease, whereas with horses you care about the one surprisingly docile male — males are predisposed to seek dominance whereas females at the bottom of the herd's social pecking order are pretty docile. > From the horse's perspective, humans were the only way he could get a girl. From the human perspective, he was the only sire they wanted. - [i] Added to This is useful for [[Monche Nomads]] and how they telepathically got a relationship with the relatively stubborn [[2020.11.30 Onager|onagers]]. I'm thinking that [[thaumaturge|thaumaturges]] ride stallions as a prestige thing. > Climate change forced horses to abandon warmer regions in Europe and Asia (where other equids like onagers and asses replaced them in their ecological niche) and became extinct in North America, and we don't know why. ### ch10p200 Why Were Horses Domesticated > Horses were large, powerful, aggressive animals, more inclined to flee or fight than carry a human. Riding probably developed only after horses were already familiar as domesticated animals that could be controlled. They were domesticated in the Pontic-Caspian steppes (not by the Aryans!) after 4800 BCE, long after pigs, sheep, goats and cattle — probably because, unlike cows or sheep, they break ice and move snow in search of food so they don't need to be hand-fed fodder all winter. Interesting comparison to horse [[domestication|domesticated]] to [[2020.11.09 Pigs|pigs]] in terms of motivation. > A shift to colder climatic conditions or even a particularly cold series of winters could have made cattle herders think seriously about domesticating horses (i.e. the one that happened between 4200 and 3800 BCE) since horses and cattle both follow the lead of a dominate female, and the herds are sort of structured the same way. - [i] Added to ### ch10p202 How to Determine Domestication Status > In theory... > 1. Domesticated populations, because they are protected, should contain a wider variety of sizes and statues that survive to adulthood > 2. The average size of the domesticated population as a whole should decline because penning, control of movement, and restricted diet should reduce average stature. > ...but this works best with sheep and cattle, which get corralled — but horses often get hobbled instead, so this doesn't work as well. Useful for creating a more robust understanding of [[domestication]]. Relevant for [[Creature Creation From the Taming Of]] series. Note that [[Early Pastoral Economies and Herding Transitions in Eastern Eurasia|taylorEarlyPastoralEconomies2020]] probably disagrees with this statement. ### ch10p220 > The beginning of horseback riding helps explain cultural and economic changes that appeared with the Botai-Tersek cultures. Before 3700 BCE, these foragers lived in small groups in temporary lakeside camps. They hunted horses, bison, antelope, etc. Then they started to settle in larger settlements because they could specialize in horse-hunting, using herd-driving methods (which we can tell because the bones of the dead horses have a 1:1 sex ratio which indicates they drove horses over a large range, and used horses to haul the meat back to the big settlement). This is interesting from the perspective of how settlements consolidate and form. ### ch10p222 The economic and military effects of horseback riding > An unmounted person with a dog can herd 200 sheep. A mounted person, by contrast, can herd about 500. So horses led to bigger herds, which required larger pastures, which could have led to territorial conflicts. > > Horses were valuable and easily stolen, and riding made it easier to steal cattle, too. Riding allowed for quick retreats. ###### Question - [?] I don't understand why they couldn't be chased by mounted opponents the same way that they could have been if both were unmounted. > Around 4000 BCE, raiders probably rode horses *to* the fighting ground, dismounted, and fought (re-mounting to leave). This wuold have transitioned to mounted warfare around 1500-1000 BCE, when true "armies" were formed (as opposed to raiding bands) thanks to the development of iron arrowheads, which were able to be standardized and thus aimed more effectively by the short, recurved, compound bow around 1000 BCE made the parthian shot possible. ## ch11 The End of Old Europe and the Rise of the Steppe ### ch11p225 > Metallurgy, ceramics, and even flint working became so refined that they must have required master craft specialists who were patronized and supported by chiefs, but in spite of this power was decentralized, probably because "restricted resources" (gold, copper, shells) weren't critical, and "critical resources" (land, timber, labor, spouses) weren't restricted, so nobody could come to dominate. This is really insightful from an [[economics]] perspective. Relevant to the [[ceramics]] moc ### ch11p234 Significance of Maces > A mace, unlike an axe, cannot be used for anything except cracking heads. It was a new weapon type and symbol of power. ### ch11p236 Steppe Riders at the Frontiers of Old Europe > The frontier between agricultural Europe and the steppes has been seen as a border between two ways of life, farming and herding, that were implacably opposed. Plundering nomads like the Huns and Mongols are old archetypes of savagery. But this is a misleading stereotype, and one derived from a specialized form of militarized pastoral nomadism that did not exist before about 800 BCE. Bronze Age riders in the steppes used bows that were too long for effective mounted archery. Their arrows were of varied weights and sizes. And Bronze Age war bands were not organized like armies. The Hunnic invasion analogy is anachronistic, yet that does not mean that mounted raiding never occurred in that era. I've definitely had problems with people looking at the [[Monche Nomads]] in [[Civil Mage|Civil Mage]] and being like "but the arrows would be way better than that" because I haven't sold the cold hard realities of [[Bronze Age]] warfare hard enough and people have this anachronistic idea of what fighting steppe nomads looks like. This is another great example for [[Is Realism in Fiction a Good Goal]]. ### ch11p237 > Eneolithic warfare was tribal warfare, so there were no armies, just the young men of this clan fighting the young men of that clan, principally to gain glory. It was mostly a seasonal activity conducted by groups organized more like modern neighborhood gangs than modern armies. Note: they would have been able to disrupt harvests and frighten a sedentary population, but they were not nomads. Relevant for [[Contextualizing Ancient Wars for Modern Eyes]] ### ch11p239 > Proto-Indo-European initiation rituals included a requirement that boys initiated into manhoood *had* to go out and raid their enemies. This, along with rising bride-prices as part of the competition between unmarried men, the ease of cattle and horse herd raiding when one is mounted, made cross-border raiding almost inevitable, and since they were mounted, they didn't have to raid their immediate neighbors — they could go steal from strangers... which would have led to deaths, and then to revenge raids, creating a cycle of warfare — which probably contributed to the collapse of the tell towns of the Danube valley. It's worth noting that since the [[Monche Nomads]] mostly herd *spiders* instead of cattle, this sort of raiding probably isn't as big a part of their culture. I still need to think through the implications, though. Also, from a [[Contextualizing Ancient Wars for Modern Eyes]] perspective, this sounds a lot like gang initiation rites to go stab someone, like what happened to Kevin when we were kids. ### ch11p249 Dereivka > Increased mobility (implied by smaller cemeteries), more long-distance trade, increased prestige and power for prominent individuals, status weapons appearing in graves, and heightened warfare against settled agricultural communtiies are all things we would expect to occur after horseback riding started. Useful for that [[Creature Creation From the Taming Of]] article seed. ### ch11p259 Warfare, Climate Change, and Language Shift in the Lower Danube Valley circa 4000 BCE > Even if climatic cooling and crop failures must have been significant causes of widespread tell abandonments in the lower Danube valley, the Balkans, on the Aegean coast, and even in Greece, they were not the only cause. Raids by Slavic tribes caused the abandonment of all the Greek-Byzantine cities in the same region over the course of less than a hundred years in the sixth century CE. Crop failures exacerbated by warfare would have encouraged a shift to a more mobile economy. As that shift happened, the pastoral tribes of the steppes were transformed from scruffy immigrants or despised raiders to chiefs and patrons who were rich in the animal resources that the new economy required, and who knew how to manage larger herds in new ways, most important among these that herders were mounted on horseback. This relates to the [[Greek]] peoples of [[classical antiquity]] and can therefore be used for an [[Article & Blog Idea]] for [[Classical Wisdom]]. > The Suvorovo chiefs displayed many of the behaviors that fostered language shift among the Acholi in East Africa: they imported a new funeral cult with an associated new mortuary ideology; they sponsored funeral feasts, always events to build alliances and recruit allies; they displayed icons of power (stone maces); they seem to have glorified war (they were buried with status weapons); and it was probably their economic example that prompted the shift to pastoral economies in the Danube valley. Proto-Indo-European religion and social structure were both based on oath-bound promises that obligated patrons (or the gods) to provide protection and gifts of cattle and horses to their clients (or worshippers). Interesting connection to Africa. Something to #pkm/synthesize later. ## ch12 Seeds of Change on the Steppe Borders ### ch12p263 > In the North Caucasus Mountains, spectacularly ostentatious chiefs suddenly appeared among what had been very ordinary small-scale farmers. They displayed gold-covered clothing, gold and silver staffs, and great quantities of bronze weapons obtained from what must have seemed beyond the rim of the earth—in fact, from the newly formed cities of Middle Uruk Mesopotamia, through Anatolian Middlemen. The first contact between southern urban civilizations and the people of the steppe margins occurred in about 3700-3500 BCE.It caused a social and political transformation. The [[Monche Nomads]] will necessarily be different due to the geography of [[Maehlorn]], but it's still an interesting discussion of the relationships between [[Scythian|Scythians]] and [[Mesopotamia]] that I wasn't aware of. ### ch12p277 Crisis and Change on the Tripolye Frontier - Towns bigger than Cities > Tripolyte settlements on the South Bug River, near the steppe border, mushroomed to enormous sizes (more than 400 hectares), twice the size of the biggest cities in Mesopotamia, the biggest human settlements in the world. But instead of evolving into cities, they were abandoned. I love it when something defies easy labelling like this. Twice the size/population of Ur, but not a city. I want to cross reference in a note about [[labels for different kinds of human settlements]]. > All the Tripolye settlements located between the Dnieper and South Bug rivers, including Chapaevka, were oval, with houses arranged around an open central plaza. Some villages occupied less than 1 ha, many were towns of 8-15 ha, some were more than 100 ha, and a group of three sites (Dobrovodi, Maidanets'ke, Tak'yanki) located within 20km of one another reached sizes of 250-450 ha between about 3700 and 3400 BCE. None of these sites contained an obvious administrative center, palace, storehouse, or temple. They had no surrounding fortifications wall or moat, although the outer ring houses were joined in a way that presented an unbroken two-story-high wall pierced only by easily defended radian streets. The population was around 6600 people; at .6ha of wheat per person per year, that population would require around 4000 ha of cultivated fields each year, which means cultivating fields more than 3km out. I love this unusual description of a large not-city for worldbuilding purposes! ### ch12p281 > Instead of developing into cities, the towns were abandoned. Population concentration is a standard response to increased warfare among tribal agriculturalists, and the subsequent abandonment of these places suggest that warfare and raiding was at the root of the crisis. This is an interesting reason for why people bunch up, but it doesn't explain why the towns would have been abandoned when there was more raiding? I feel like I'm misunderstanding something here. ### ch12p282 The First cities and Their Connection to the Steppes > During the Late Uruk period, wheeled vehicles pulled by oxen appeared as a new technology for land transport. Steppe contact with the civilizations of Mesopotamia was less direct than with their immediate neighbors, but may have been the way wagons got to the steppes (via Maikop intermediaries). Relevant from the perspective of the history of the [[2020.12.07 Waterwheels|wheel]]. > Between 3700 and 3500 BCE the first cities in the world appeared among the irrigated lowlands of Mesopotamia. Old temple centers like Uruk and Ur had always been able to attract thousands of laborers from the farms of southern Iraq for building projects, but we are not certain why they began to live around the temples permanently. Super important information about [[Mesopotamia]] in general, but more specifically: in the [[Nahrian Basin]] this means that the [[Nahrian Temples]] would have predated the development of the actual cities. > Trade into and out of the cities increased tremendously in the form of tribute, gift exchange, treaty making, and the glorification of the city temple and its early authorities. Precious stones, metals (esp. copper, gold, and silver), timber, and raw wool were among the imports. Woven textiles and manufactured metal objects were probably among the exports. New accounting methods were developed to keep track of imports, exports, and tax payments—cylinder seals for marking sealed packages and the sealed doors of storerooms, clay tokens indicating package contents, and, ultimately, writing. Interesting insight into the origins and reasons behind recordkeeping. > The Uruk expansion to the northwest, toward the gold, silver, and copper sources in the Caucasus Mountains, is documented in two important local strongholds on the upper Euphrates: Hacinebi (fortified center with a large-scale copper production industry) and Arslantepe (even farther up the Eurphrates in the mountains) also had large-scale copper production although they had their own native seals, architecture, and administration. Horses appeared in very small numbers at Arslantepe and Hacinebi, but probably weren't traded south into Mesopotamia. The uruk expansion ended abruptly about 3100 BCE for reasons that remain obscure; Arslantepe and Hacinebi were burned and destroyed, and in the mountains of early Anatolia, local Early Trans-Caucasian cultures built their humble homes over the ruins of the grand temple buildings. This is *super* relevant for the conflicts between [[Keldehss]] and [[Uskune]] and [[Marna]]. ### ch12p295 The Road to the Southern Civilizations > The power of the Maykop chiefs probably grew partly from the aura of the extraordinary that clung to the exotic objects they accumulated, which were palpable symbols of their personal connection with powers previously unknown. Perhaps the extraordinary nature of these objects was one of the reasons they were buried with their owners instead of inherited. Limited use and circulation were common characteristics of objects regarded as "primitive valuables." But the supply of new valuables dried up when the Late Uruk long-distance exchange system collapsed about 3100 BCE. Mesopotamian cities began to struggle with internal problems that we can perceive only dimly, their foreign agents retreated, and in the mountains the people of the ETC attacked and burned Arslantepe and Hacinebi on the upper Euphrates. This caused the end of Maykop culture. Incredibly relevant for a potential fall of [[Lysaria]] in the far future. ### ch12p298 The Road to the Northern Cultures > The Maikop probably wanted horses, hemp, and wool. The traders of the [[Arais Delta]] are more like the Maikop than the Voldshee or Monche, really. So I'm glad this isn't a 1:1 similarity to Mesopotamia. Still means there's a lot to balance. ## ch13 Wagon Dwellers of the Steppe ### ch13p300 The Speakers of Proto-Indo-European > As the steppes dried and expanded, people tried to keep their animal herds fed by moving them more often. They discovered that with a wagon you could keep moving indefinitely. Wagons and hoseback riding made possible a new, more mobile form of pastoralism. With a wagon full of tents and supplies, herders could take their herds out ofthe river valleys and live for weeks or months out in the open steppes between the major rivers; land that had previously been unowned and inaccessible became pasture that belonged to someone. This led to disputes over borders, pastures, and seasonabl movements, necessitating new rules and social norms to define local migratory behaviors. Thus was a new cultural identity born: [[Yamnaya]]. This is hilariously similar to the people who "live out of their wagon" in Wurm; possible now that you get sleep bonus from a tent and can put so much crap into a cart with the Bag of Holding spell. ### ch13p303 Guest-Host Relationships > The social meaning of "guest" and "host" was more demanding than modern customs would suggest; the guest-host relationship was bound by oaths and sacrifices so serious that Homer's warriors, Glaukos and Diomedes, stopped fighting and sent gifts to each other when they learned that their *grandfathers* had shared a guest-host relationship. This mutual obligation to provide "hospitality" functioned as a bridge between social units (tribes, clans) that had ordinarily restricted these obligations to their kin or co-residents. Guest-host relationships would have been useful in a mobile herding economy, as a way of separating people who were moving through your territory with your assent from those who were unwelcome, unregulated, and therefore unprotected. The guest-host institution might have been among the critical identity-defining innovations that spread with the [[Yamnaya]] horizon. This would be great for the [[Backwards Mapping Fiction]] article series; reminds me a lot of the guest/host relationships the fae prize in the Dresden Files, and it's interesting to see where that might have been born. It's not just "back in ye olden days" a la Medieval chivalry, it's got a very specific origin point I hadn't known about and others probably don't either. ### ch13p312 What did Steppe Wagons Look Like > Wagons had fixed axle and revolving wheels made of 2-3 planks doweled together and cut in a circular shape about 50-80cm in diameter. The wagon bed was about 1m wide and 2-2.5m long, and the gauge or track width between the wheels was 1.5-1.65m. There would probably have been a box seat for the driver supported on a cage of vertical struts doweled into a rectangular frame. Behind the driver was the interior of the wagon, the floor of which was traced with X-crossed planks. The passengers and cargo were protected under a "tilt," a wagon cover made of reed mats painted with red, white, and black stripes and curved designs, possibly even sewn to a backing of felt. Useful description for the wagons the [[Monche Nomads]] might use. ### ch13p317 Increasing Herd Size > The subsequent spread of the Yamnaya horizon across the Pontic-Capian steppes probably did not happen primarily through warfare, but rather because those who shared agreements and institutions that made high mobility possible became potential allies, and those who did not share these institutions were separated as Others. Larger herds brought increased prestige and economic power, which translated as animals to loan or sacrifices at public feast. Larger herds translated to richer bride-prices for daughters of big herd owners, which would have intensified social competition between them. A similar competitive dynamic was partly responsible for the Nuer expansion in east Africa. - I wonder if this might relate to [[hacienda]] systems in Spain and the American West. ### ch13p321 Were the Yamnaya People Nomads > Steppe nomads have fascinated and horrified agricultural civilizations since the [[Scythian|Scythians]] looted their way through [[Mesopotamia|Assyria]] in 627 BCE. Their particular kind of mobile pastoral economy, nomadic pastoralism, is often interpreted by historians as a parasitic adaptation that depended on agriculturally based states. The dependency model of Eurasian nomadic pastoralism (i.e. needing huge quantities of loot to function) only explains the political and military organization of Iron Age and Medieval nomads; but Yamnaya pastoralism appeared before there were any states for them to raid. They mined their own ores, made their own metal tools and weapons in their own styles, and even raised a little barley or millet by leaving a few people to tend small valley-bottom fields during summer migrations. Mobile pastoral nomadism of a new militaristic type appeared int he Iron Age with the [[Scythian|Scythians]]. But the Scythians did not invent the first pastoral economy based on mobility. ### ch13p325 How Often Do Nomads Move In Northern grassland environment with very cold winters. > The Blackfoot Indians of North America had to move a few miles several times each winter just to provide fresh forage for their horses, and they didn't have to worry about cattle or sheep. Mongolian herders move their tents and animal herds about once a month throughout the winter. ### ch13p326 The Importance of Cow Milk > Lactose tolerance, which made a dairy-based diet possible, probably emerged in the steppes west of the Ural Mountains around 3000 BCE during the shift to a mobile herding economy. This may explain the importance of the cow in Proto-Indo-European myth and ritual, even among people who depended largely on sheep. Cattle were sacred because cows gave more milk than any other herd animal in the Eurasian steppe—twice as much as mares and five times more than goats. Even among sheep herders, an impoverished family of nomads that had lost all its sheep would try to keep at least one cow because that meant they could eat. The cow was the ultimate milk producer, even when herders count their wealth in sheep. ### ch13p329 Gender and the Meaning of the Kurgan Burial > The appearance of adult females in one out of five kurgan graves, including central graves, suggests that gender was not the only factor in determining leadership and other social positions. About 20% of [[Scythian]]-Samaratin "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that pobably inspired the [[Greek]] tales of [[The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor|the Amazons]]. It is at least interesting that the frequency of adult females in central graves under Yamnaya kurgans in the same region, but two thousand years earlier, was about the same. Useful cross-reference support for the information in [[The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor]]. Might also be worth an article talking about women in the American military vs. classical Greek world for [[Classical Wisdom]] but IDK, they had Adrienne Mayor on their podcast and I don't want to sound dumb. ## ch14 The Western Indo-European Languages > Pontic-Caspian steppe societies were more familiar with horse breeding and riding than anyone outside the steppes. They had more horses than anyone else, and their horses were larger than the horses from the surrounding areas. Steppe horse-breeders might als have had the most manageable male bloodline. If they had the largest, strongest, *and* most manageable horses, and they had more than anyone else, steppe societies could have grown rich by trading horses. ## ch15 Chariot Warriors ### ch15p390 The Origins of Sintashta Culture > Eurasian steppe pastoralists favor marshy regions as winter refuge because of the winter forage and protection offered by stands of reeds (which grow up to 3m tall). Mobile populations tend to settle near critical resources when threatened with increased competition and declining productivity. Because winter marshlands for cattle were a critical resource for cattle, the Sintashta settlements were built on the first terrace overlooking the floodplain of a marshy meandering stream; they were heavily fortified with walls and towers, but built in marshy, low places rather than the more easily defended nearby hills. Intensified fighting encouraged tactical innovations, the most important the invention of the light war chariot. Might be useful for the [[Tales From the Wet Lands]] article seed. ### ch15p393 > Warfare exacerbated by climatic downturn led to social and political change. Nicola DiCosmo argues that complex political structures arose among steppe nomads in the Iron Age largely because intensified warfare led to the establishment of permanent bodyguards around rival chiefs, which grew in size until they became armies, which engendered state-like institutions designed to organize, feed, reward and control them. This often leads to increased trade, because to succeed in war, chiefs need wealth to fund alliance-building ceremonies before conflicts and to reward allies with after. ### ch15p400 Why Chariots Are Effective > From a standing position in a chariot (the first "cart" designed specifically for speed), a driver-warrior could use his entire body to throw, whereas a man on horseback without stirrups (invented after 300 CE) could use only his arm and shoulder. A javelin-hurling charioteer could strike a man on horseback before the rider could strike him. Unlike a charioteer, a man on horseback could not carry a large sheath full of javelins and so would be at a double disadvantage if his first cast missed. A rider armed with a bow would fare only slightly better because archers of the steppe Bronze age seemed to have used long bows that could only be fired from the side, which left the archer vulnerable. Plus, if a single driver-warrior needed to switch to bow and arrow they could direct their horse by putting the reins around their waist, as shown on artwork depicting pharaohs in [[Egypt]] (a practice also performed by [[Roman]] and Etruscan charioteers). So that's why it doesn't make sense to say that the steppe peoples didn't use chariots in battle just because their chariots couldn't fit three people like the ones in [[Mesopotamia|the Near East]] (which typically had a driver, an archer, and maybe even a shield-bearer) That's why it's such a big deal that the [[Hittites]] brought chariots to [[Egypt]]! I always wondered why chariots were considered such a major innovation. I appreciate how strongly the author defends the idea that it's totally plausible for the steppe peoples to have invented it instead of needing to "create poor copies" of the Near East version. Love how he pushes back against the whole "all good things come from *civilization*" thing. ### ch15p404 Steppe Chariots vs Near East Carts > The horse-drawn chariot was faster and more maneuverable than the old solid-wheeled battel-cart or battle-wagon that had been pulled into inter-urban battles by ass-[[2020.11.30 Onager|onager]] hybrids in the armies of the Early Dynastic, [[Mesopotamia|Akkadian]], and Ur III kings between 2900 and 2000 BCE. These heavy, clumsy vehicles, mistakenly described as chariots in many books and catalogues, were similar to steppe chariots in one way: they were consistently depicted carrying javelin-hurling warriors, not archers. When horse-drawn chariots appeared in the Near East they quickly came to dominate inter-urban battles as swift platforms for archers. ### ch15p405 Chariots As Proof of Wealth > As the car hit uneven ground at high speed, the driver's legs had to absorb each bounce, and the driver's weight had to shift to the bouncing side. To drive through a turn, the inside horse had to be pulled in while the outside horse was given rein. Doing this well and hurling a javelin at the same time required a lot of practice. Chariots were supreme advertisements of wealth; difficult to make and requiring great athletic skill *and* a team of specially trained horses to drive, they were available only to those who could delegate much of their daily labor to hired herders. Basically this allowed for a social class similar to knights in [[feudalism]] where the military class is the only one with the leisure time to really learn the special skills and have the money to buy the special tools needed for war, unlike the more eglaitarian phalanxes seen in [[Greek]] city-states like Athens. This really plays into my whole thing about how dominant military technology has a lot to do with social order and government type, and should probably be turned into [[Article & Blog Idea]] for worldbuilding so people make sure their fake world is sensibly governed. ## ch16 The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes ### ch16p412 Bronze Age Empires and the Horse Trade > About 2350 BCE Sargon of Akkad conquered and united the feuding kingdoms of Mesopotamia and northern Syria into a single super-state, the first time the world's oldest cities were ruled by one king. The Akkadian state lasted about 170 years. Is this a better reference than Hammurabi for [[Lysaria]]? ### ch16p418 The Importance of Tin > Tin was the most important trade commodity in the Bronze Age Near East. In the palace records of Mari it was said to be worth ten times its weight in silver. A copper-tin alloy was easier for the metal smith to cast, and it made a harder, lighter-colored metal than either pure copper or arsenical bronze, the older alternatives. So maybe [[Keldehss]] controlled the arsenical bronze creation and [[Uskune]] was a tin mine? This would make Uskune analgoous to Sarazim: > Zeravshan River valley, where the oldest tin mines in the ancient world have been found near the site of Sarazm. Sarazm also was the portal through which horses, chariots, and steppe cultures first arrived at the edges of central Asia. Sarazm was founded before 3500 BCE as a northern colony of the Namazga culture. It was probably founded as a collection point for turquoise. ### ch16p425 Horses in Central Asia > There were no wild horses in Central Asia. The native equids were [[2020.11.30 Onager|onagers]] Wild horses had not previously strayed south fo what is today central Kazakhstan. Horses began to appear in central Asia about 2100-2000 BCE but were never used as food. They were probably a trade commodity until chariots were introduced, thus increasing the demand for horses to tens of thousands annually. Important for keeping track of exactly where horses are from and differentiating between different parts of the "Central Eurasian Plains." ### ch16p435 The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes > With the appearance of Srubnaya and Andronovo between about 1900 and 1800 BCE, for the first time in history a chain of broadly similar cultures extended from the edges of China to the frontiers of Europe. Innovations and raw materials began to move across the continent. The steppe world was not just a conduit, it also became an innovating center, particularly in bronze metallurgy and chariot warfare. The chariot-driving Shang kings of China and the Mycenaean princes of Greece, contemporaries at opposite ends of the ancient world at about 1500 BCE, shared a common technological debt to the herders of the Eurasian steppes. Nice for visualizing the trade relationship. Also probably relevant for the very early beginnings of the silk road? ## ch17 Conclusion ### ch17p459 The Horse and the Wheel > Innovations in transportation technology are among the most powerful causes of change in human social and political life. The introduction of the private automobile created suburbs, malls, and superhighways; transformed heavy industry; generated a vast market for oil; polluted the atmosphere; scattered families across the map; provided a rolling, heated space in which young people could escape and have sex; and fashioned a powerful new way to express personal status and identity. The beginning of horseback riding, the invention of the heavy wagon and cart, and the development of the spoke-wheeled chariot had cumulative effects that unfolded more slowly but eventually were equally profound. One of those effects was to transform Eurasia from a series of unconnected cultures into a single interacting system. A couple of thoughts on this: 1. Science fiction as a genre, particularly science fiction that addresses space-age technology, has a lot of room to do more with how technological changes to transportation changes society. An example that does a really nice job with this is The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. This is a good [[Article & Blog Idea]]. 2. I love real-world examples along the lines of [[Contextualizing Ancient Wars for Modern Eyes]] -- this insight hows how the invention of chariots might mirror the invention of tanks, for example. And in fact: > Most historians think of war when they begin to list the changes caused by horseback riding and the earliest wheeled vehicles. But horses were first domesticated by people who thought of them as food. They were a cheap source of winter meat; they could feed themselves through the steppe winter, when cattle and sheep needed to be supplied with water and fodder. ### ch17p462 > Long-lasting, robust frontiers where traditions of opposition persisted seem to have been rare in the prehistoric world of tribal politics. We have grown accustomed to them now only because the modern nation-state has made it the standard kind of border everywhere around the world, encouraging patriotism, jingoism, and the suspicion of other nations across sharply defined boundaries. In the tribal past, the long-term survival of sharp, bundled oppositions was unusual. The Pontic-Caspian steppes, however, witnessed an unusual number of persistent tribal frontiers because sharp environmental ecotones ran across it and it had a complex history of long-distance migrations, two important factors in the creation and maintenance of such frontiers. I have an [[Article & Blog Idea]] about borders and the nature of them.