Eurasian nomads

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eurasian nomads are a large group of peoples of the steppes of Central Asia, Mongolia and Eastern Europe (Pontic steppe). They domesticated the horse, and their economy and culture emphasizes horse breeding and horse riding. They developed the chariot, cavalry and horse archery, introducing innovations such as the bridle, bit and stirrup, and often appear in history as invaders of Europe, Anatolia and China. Horse people is a generalized and somewhat obsolete term for such invaders.

The Roman army hired Sarmatians as elite cavalrymen. Europe was exposed to several waves of invasions by horse people, from the Cimmerians in the 8th century BC, down to the Migration period, and the Mongols and Seljuks in the High Middle Ages, and the Tatars down into modern times. The earliest example of an invasion by a horse people may have been by the Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves, following the domestication of the horse in the 4th millennium BC (see Kurgan hypothesis). Cimmerian is the first invasion of equestrian steppe nomads that we can grasp from historical sources. The "Huns" of the Migration period were not a single ethnicity, but a conglomerate of Mongolian, Turkic, Iranian and Germanic and Slavic warbands. Hermannus Contractus in the entry for the year 379 in his Chronicon lists Gothos, Hunnos, Alanosque as virtual synonyms.

The concept of "horse people" was of some importance in 19th century scholarship, in connection with the rediscovery of Germanic pagan culture by Romanticism (see Viking revival), which idealized the Goths in particular as a heroic horse-people. J. R. R. Tolkien's Rohirrim may be seen as an idealized Germanic people influenced by these romantic notions. These peoples gave rise to the myth of the Amazons from the practise of some women being horse archers.

They can be divided into several large groups, on linguistic grounds:

• Indo-European
  • Proto-Indo-Europeans (Chalcolithic/Bronze Age)
  • Indo-Iranians (Bronze Age/Iron Age)
• Altaic
  • Mongols
  • Tungusic
  • Turkic
• Uralic
  • Ugric (Magyar)
  • Finnic

Chronological list:

• Iron Age/Classical Antiquity
  • Cimmerians | Issedones / Wusun | Parthians / Parni | Saka / Issedones / Massagetae / Scythians / Sarmatians | Sigynnae | Yuezhi / Hephthalites

• Migration period
  • Alans | Avars | Gepids | Goths | Huns | Rugians | Xiongnu

• Middle Ages
  • Bulgars | Jurchen | Kalmuks | Kipchaks | Magyars | Mongols | Nogais | Petchenegs | Seljuks | Tatars

[edit] Bibliography

• Amitai, Reuven; Biran, Michal (editors). Mongols, Turks, and others: Eurasian nomads and the sedentary world (Brill's Inner Asian Library, 11). Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005 (ISBN 90-04-14096-4).
• Drews, Robert. Early riders: The beginnings of mounted warfare in Asia and Europe. N.Y.: Routledge, 2004 (ISBN 0-415-32624-9).
• Golden, Peter B. Nomads and their neighbours in the Russian Steppe: Turks, Khazars and Qipchaqs (Variorum Collected Studies). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003 (ISBN 0-86078-885-7).
• Hildinger, Erik. Warriors of the steppe: A military history of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1700. New York: Sarpedon Publishers, 1997 (hardcover, ISBN 1-885119-43-7); Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001(paperback, ISBN 0-306-81065-4).
• Littauer, Mary A.; Crouwel, Joost H.; Raulwing, Peter (Editor). Selected writings on chariots and other early vehicles, riding and harness (Culture and history of the ancient Near East, 6). Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002 (ISBN 90-04-11799-7).
• Shippey T.A. Goths and Huns: The rediscovery of Northern culture in the nineteenth century, in The Medieval legacy: A symposium. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 1981 (ISBN 87-7492-393-5), pp. 51–69.