Nomad

Pastoral nomads camping near Namtso in 2005. Approximately 40% of the ethnic Tibetan population is nomadic or semi-nomadic.[1]
Nomad camp above Tsurphu Monastery, Tibet. 1993. Smoke is from juniper being burnt as an offering at a ceremony.

Nomadic people (Greek: νομάδες, nomádes, "those who let pasture herds") are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world.[2] Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in industrialized countries. Nomadic cultures are discussed in three categories according to economic specialization: hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, and "peripatetic nomads".

Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method.

Pastoralists raise herds, driving them or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover.

Peripatetic nomads, who offer the skills of a craft or trade to those they travel among, are most common in industrialized nations.

Contents

Nomadic hunter-gatherers

Main article: Hunter-gatherer

Many groups of 'nomadic' hunter-gatherers (also known as foragers) moved from campsite to campsite, following game and wild fruits and vegetables. Known examples include:

Pastoral nomads

An 1848 Lithograph showing Ghilzai nomads in Afghanistan.
A yurt in front of the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains. Approximately 30% of the Mongolia's 3 million people are nomadic or semi-nomadic.
A Sami (Lapp) family in Norway around 1900. Reindeer have been herded for centuries by several Arctic and Subarctic people including the Sami and the Nenets.[3]
See also nomadic pastoralism

Pastoral nomads are nomads moving between pastures. Nomadic pastoralism is thought to have developed in three stages that accompanied population growth and an increase in the complexity of social organization. Karim Sadr has proposed the following stages:

The pastoralists are sedentary to a certain area, as they move between the permanent spring, summer, autumn and winter (or dry and wet season) pastures for their livestock. The nomads moved depending on the availability of resources.[4]

Origin of nomadic pastoralism

Nomadic pastoralism seems to have developed as a part of the secondary products revolution proposed by Andrew Sherratt, in which early pre-pottery Neolithic cultures that had used animals as live meat ("on the hoof") also began using animals for their secondary products, for example, milk and its associated dairy products, wool and other animal hair, hides and consequently leather, manure for fuel and fertilizer, and traction.

The first nomadic pastoral society developed in the period from 8500-6500 BC in the area of the southern Levant. There, during a period of increasing aridity, PPNB cultures in the Sinai were replaced by a nomadic, pastoral pottery-using culture, which seems to have been a cultural fusion between a newly arrived Mesolithic people from Egypt (the Harifian culture), adopting their nomadic hunting lifestyle to the raising of stock. This lifestyle quickly developed into what Jaris Yurins has called the circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral techno-complex and is possibly associated with the appearance of Semitic languages in the region of the Ancient Near East. The rapid spread of such nomadic pastoralism was typical of such later developments as of the Yamnaya culture of the horse and cattle nomads of the Eurasian steppe, or of the Turko-Mongol spread of the later Middle Ages.[5]

Increased nomadism in the former Soviet Union

One of the results of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent political independence and economic collapse of its Central Asian republics is the resurgence of pastoral nomadism.[6] Taking the Kyrgyz people as a representative example nomadism was the center of their economy prior to Russian colonization at the turn of the C19/C20, when they were settled into agricultural villages. The population became increasingly urbanized after World War II, but some people continued to take their herds of horses and cows to the high pasture (jailoo) every summer, i.e. a pattern of transhumance. Since the 1990s, as the cash economy shrunk, unemployed relatives were absorbed back on the family farm, and the importance of this form of nomadism has increased. The symbols of nomadism, specifically the crown of the grey felt tent known as the yurt, appears on the national flag, emphasizing the centrality of their nomadic history and past in the creation of the modern nation of Kyrgyzstan.

Sedentarization

By 1920, nomadic pastoral tribes represented over a quarter of Iran's population.[7] Tribal pastures were nationalized during the 1960s. The National Commission of UNESCO registered the population of Iran at 21 million in 1963, of whom two million (9.5%) were nomads.[8] Although the nomadic population of Iran has dramatically decreased in the 20th century, Iran still has one of the largest nomadic populations in the world, an estimated 1.5 million in a country of about 70 million.[9]

Kazakh nomads in the steppes of the Russian Empire, by pioneer color photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, ca. 1910

In Kazakhstan where the major agricultural activity was nomadic herding,[10] forced collectivization under Stalin’s rule met with massive resistance and major losses and confiscation of livestock.[11] Livestock in Kazakhstan fell from 7 million cattle to 1.6 million and from 22 million sheep to 1.7 million. The resulting famine of 1931-1934 caused some 1.5 million deaths: this represents more than 40% of the total Kazakh population at that time.[12]

In the 1950s as well as the 1960s, large numbers of Bedouin throughout the Middle East started to leave the traditional, nomadic life to settle in the cities of the Middle East, especially as home ranges have shrunk and population levels have grown. Government policies in Egypt and Israel, oil production in Libya and the Persian Gulf, as well as a desire for improved standards of living, effectively led most Bedouin to become settled citizens of various nations, rather than stateless nomadic herders. A century ago nomadic Bedouin still made up some 10% of the total Arab population. Today they account for some 1% of the total.[13]

At independence in 1960, Mauritania was essentially a nomadic society. The great Sahel droughts of the early 1970s caused massive problems in a country where 85% of its inhabitants were nomadic herders. Today only 15% remain nomads.[14]

As many as 2 million nomadic Kuchis wandered over Afghanistan in the years before the Soviet invasion, and most experts agreed that by 2000 the number had fallen dramatically, perhaps by half. The severe drought had destroyed 80% of the livestock in some areas.[15]

Niger experienced a serious food crisis in 2005 following erratic rainfall and desert locust invasions. Nomads such as the Tuareg and Fulani, who make up about 20% of Niger's 12.9 million population, had been so badly hit by the Niger food crisis that their already fragile way of life is at risk.[16] Nomads in Mali were also affected.[17]

List

A Scythian horseman from the general area of the Ili river, Pazyryk, c.300 BCE.
A young Bedouin lighting a camp fire in Wadi Rum, Jordan

Peripatetic minorities

"Peripatetic minorities" are mobile populations moving among settled populations offering a craft or trade.

In Europe

Up to 20th century Jews may be also called a "peripatetic minority" in Europe.[18]

In Asia

In Turkey:

In Pakistan:

In Iran:

In Afghanistan:

In Africa

Each of these ethnonyms does not probably correspond to one community; many are locally or regionally used (sometimes as occupational names), others are used only by group members, and still others are used pejoratively only by outsiders.

For example, in Afghanistan, "Jat" is a pejorative term used generically by nonperipatetics to designate peripatetics belonging to at least six different communities. In Iran and Turkey, the terms "Ghorbati" and "Çingene" appear to be used in a similar fashion. Some of these ethnonyms are also encountered in other neighboring areas of the Middle East, the Balkans, or South Asia.

Each existing community is primarily endogamous, and subsists traditionally on a variety of commercial and/or service activities. Formerly, all or a majority of their members were itinerant, and this largely holds true today. Migration generally takes place within the political boundaries of every state.

Each of the peripatetic communities is multilingual; it speaks one or more of the languages spoken by the local sedentary populations, and, additionally, within each group, a separate dialect or language is spoken. The latter are either of Indic or Iranian origin, and many are structured somewhat like an argot or secret language, with vocabularies drawn from various languages. There are indications that in northern Iran at least one community speaks Romani language, and some groups in Turkey also speak Romani.

In Afghanistan, the Nausar worked as tinkers and animal dealers. Ghorbat men mainly made sieves, drums, and bird cages, and the women peddled these as well as other items of household and personal use; they also worked as moneylenders to rural women. Peddling and the sale of various goods was also practiced by men and women of various groups, such as the Jalali, the Pikraj, the Shadibaz, the Sheikh Mohammadi, and the Vangawala. The latter and the Pikraj also worked as animal dealers. Some men among the Shadibaz and the Vangawala entertained as monkey or bear handlers and snake charmers; men and women among the Baluch were musicians and dancers, and Baluch women also practiced prostitution. Jogi men and women had diverse subsistence activities, such as dealing in horses, harvesting, fortune-telling, bloodletting, and begging.

In Iran the Asheq of Azerbaijan, the Challi of Baluchistan, the Luti of Kurdistan, Kermānshāh, Īlām, and Lorestān, the Mehtar in the Mamasani district, the Sazandeh of Band-i Amir and Marv-dasht, and the Toshmal among the Bakhtyari pastoral groups worked as professional musicians. The men among the Kowli worked as tinkers, smiths, musicians, and monkey and bear handlers; they also made baskets, sieves, and brooms and dealt in donkeys. Their women made a living from peddling, begging, and fortune-telling. The Ghorbat among the Basseri were smiths and tinkers, traded in pack animals, and made sieves, reed mats, and small wooden implements. In the Fārs region, the Qarbalband, the Kuli, and Luli were reported to work as smiths and to make baskets and sieves; they also dealt in pack animals, and their women peddled various goods among pastoral nomads. In the same region, the Changi and Luti were musicians and balladeers, and their children learned these professions from the age of 7 or 8 years.

The nomadic groups in Turkey make and sell cradles, deal in animals, and play music. The men of the sedentary groups work in towns as scavengers and hangmen; elsewhere they are fishermen, smiths, basket makers, and singers; their women dance at feasts and tell fortunes. Abdal men played music and made sieves, brooms, and wooden spoons for a living. The Tahtacı traditionally worked as lumberers; with increased sedentarization, however, they have taken to agriculture and horticulture.

Little is known for certain about the past of these communities; the history of each is almost entirely contained in their oral traditions. Although some groups—such as the Vangawala—are of Indian origin, some—like the Sheikh Mohammadi—are most probably of local origin; still others probably migrated from adjoining areas. The Ghorbat and the Shadibaz claim to have originally come from Iran and Multan, respectively, and Tahtacı traditional accounts mention either Baghdad or Khorāsān as their original home. The Baluch say they were attached as a service community to the Jamshedi, after they fled Baluchistan because of feuds.

[20]

[21]

Nomadism unique to industrialized nations

See also

References

  1. ↑ In pictures: Tibetan nomads BBC News
  2. ↑ NOMADS - The FACTS
  3. ↑ BBC NEWS | In Pictures | Nenets, reindeer herders in the Siberian arctic
  4. ↑ Nomads of the Middle East, David Zeidan, OM-IRC, 1995
  5. ↑ Patterns of Subsistence: Pastoralism
  6. ↑ Pastoral Livestock Development in Central Asia, FAO Rural Development Division
  7. ↑ Persian & Iranian Nomads at Best
  8. ↑ Censuses of Pastoral Nomads and Some General Remarks about the Census of Nomadic Tribes of Iran in 1998
  9. ↑ Iran's nomads going extinct, Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2008
  10. ↑ Kazakhstan Overview
  11. ↑ The Silent Steppe. The Story of a Kazakh nomad under Stalin.
  12. ↑ The Development of Kazakhstan during the Soviet period
  13. ↑ The Middle East People Groups and Their Distribution, DAVID ZEIDAN, OM-IRC, 1995
  14. ↑ Mauritania - POLITICAL POWER IN THE MID-1980s, U.S. Library of Congress
  15. ↑ Severe Drought Driving Nomads From Desert, Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2000
  16. ↑ Niger way of life 'under threat', BBC News, August 16, 2005
  17. ↑ Mali's nomads face famine BBC News, August 9, 2005
  18. ↑ Yuri SlezkineThe Jewish Century, Chapter One: MERCURY'S SANDALS: THE JEWS AND OTHER NOMADS
  19. ↑ faesi
  20. ↑ Peripatetics of Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey
  21. ↑ Customary strangers: new perspectives on peripatetic peoples in the Middle East, Africa and Asia Edited by Joseph C. Berland and Aparna Rao

Further reading

External links