Nomad

[4] Pastoralists raise herds of domesticated livestock, driving or accompanying them in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover.

[5] Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to infertile regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources.

In the late 12th century, Genghis Khan united them and other nomadic tribes to found the Mongol Empire, which eventually stretched the length of Asia.

[10] Modern forms of nomadic peoples are variously referred to as "shiftless", "gypsies", "rootless cosmopolitans", hunter-gatherers, refugees and urban homeless or street-people, depending on their individual circumstances.

The one springs from the ambition of princes or republics that seek to extend their empire; such were the wars of Alexander the Great, and those of the Romans, and those which two hostile powers carry on against each other.

The other kind of war is when an entire people, constrained by famine or war, leave their country with their families for the purpose of seeking a new home in a new country, not for the purpose of subjecting it to their dominion as in the first case, but with the intention of taking absolute possession of it themselves and driving out or killing its original inhabitants.Primary historical sources for nomadic steppe-style warfare are found in many languages: Chinese, Persian, Polish, Russian, Classical Greek, Armenian, Latin and Arabic.

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:[14] 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.

[17] 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.

[21] 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 has been the resurgence of pastoral nomadism.

[22] Taking the Kyrgyz people as a representative example, nomadism was the centre of their economy before Russian colonization at the turn of the 20th century, when they were settled into agricultural villages.

The population became increasingly urbanized after World War II, but some people still take their herds of horses and cows to high pastures (jailoo) every summer, continuing a pattern of transhumance.

[citation needed] Since the 1990s, as the cash economy shrank, unemployed relatives were reabsorbed into family farms, and the importance of this form of nomadism has increased.

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.

[31] 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.

Though they live near sources of fish and fowl these do not play a significant role in their diet, and they do not eat carnivorous animals, rabbits or the wild asses that are abundant in the environs, classifying the latter as horse due to their cloven hooves.

The Kazakh nomad cuisine is simple and includes meat, salads, marinated vegetables and fried and baked breads.

[37] Ann Marie Kroll Lerner states that the pastoral nomads were viewed as "invading, destructive, and altogether antithetical to civilizing, sedentary societies" during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[38] Allan Hill and Sara Randall observe that western authors have looked for "romance and mystery, as well as the repository of laudable characteristics believed lost in the West, such as independence, stoicism in the face of physical adversity, and a strong sense of loyalty to family and to tribe" in nomadic pastoralist societies.

Hill and Randall observe that nomadic pastoralists are stereotypically seen by the settled populace in Africa and Middle East as "aimless wanderers, immoral, promiscuous and disease-ridden" peoples.

[citation needed] 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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

[41][42] Still some groups such as Sarıkeçililer continues nomadic lifestyle between coastal towns Mediterranean and Taurus Mountains even though most of them were settled by both late Ottoman and Turkish republic.

The products of their trade were varied and fascinating, including: "...resins (damar, Agathis dammara; jelutong bukit, Dyera costulata, gutta-percha, Palaquium spp.

); wild honey and beeswax (important in trade but often unreported); aromatic resin from insence wood (gaharu, Aquilaria microcarpa); camphor (found in the fissures of Dryobalanops aromaticus); several types of rotan of cane (Calamus rotan and other species); poison for blowpipe darts (one source is ipoh or ipu: see Nieuwenhuis 1900a:137); the antlers of deer (the sambar, Cervus unicolor); rhinoceros horn (see Tillema 1939:142); pharmacologically valuable bezoar stones (concretions formed in the intestines and gallbladder of the gibbon, Seminopithecus, and in the wounds of porcupines, Hestrix crassispinus); birds' nests, the edible nests of swifts (Collocalia spp.

); the heads and feathers of two species of hornbills (Buceros rhinoceros, Rhinoplax vigil); and various hides (clouded leopards, bears, and other animals).