Nomad
For other senses of this word, see nomad (disambiguation). |
Kazakh nomads in the steppes of the Russian Empire, ca. 1910 |
|
Pastoral nomads camping near Namtso in 2005 |
Communities of
nomadic people move from place to place, rather than
settling down in one location. Many cultures have been traditionally nomadic, but nomadic behaviour is increasingly rare in
industrialised countries. There are three kinds of nomads,
hunter-gatherers,
pastoral nomads, and
peripatetic nomads. Nomadic hunter-gatherers have by far the longest-lived subsistence method in human history, following seasonally available wild plants and game. Pastoralists raise herds and move with them so as not to deplete pasture beyond recovery in any one area. Peripatetic nomads are more common in industrialised nations travelling from place to place offering a trade wherever they go.
For more than one million years before domestication, nomadic hunter-gatherers moved from campsite to campsite following game and wild fruits and vegetables.
Examples of nomadic hunter-gatherers
* "
Pygmies"
* "
Bushmen" of
southern Africa* Many
Native Americans prior to Western contact
* All
Indigenous Australians prior to Western contact
The term "nomad" most often refers to one whose subsistence is based upon domestication of animals. This nomadic pastoralism is thought to have developed in three stages that accompanied population growth and an increase in the complexity of social organization. Sadr has proposed the following stages:
*
Pastoralism This is a mixed economy with a symbiosis within the family.
*
Agropastoralism This is when symbiosis is between segments or clans within an ethnic group.
*
True Nomadism This is when symbiosis is at the regional level, mostly it starts between specialized nomadic and agricultural populations.
Origin of nomadic pastoralsm
Nomadic pastoralism seems to have developed as a part of the
secondary products revolution proposed by
Kurt Flannery, in which early
pre-pottery neolithic cultures, that had used animals in order to store live meat (on the hoof) began also using animals for their secondary products, for example, milk, wool, hides, manure and traction.
The first nomadic pastoral society developed in the period from 6200 -
6000 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 quickly developed into what
Jaris Yurins has called the circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral techno-complex and is possibly assocoated 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.
Examples of pastoral nomads
*
Ababdeh*
Bakhtiari of Iran
* The
Bedouin*
Innu*
Kuchis (Kochai)
*
Tuaregs
*
Somalis (certain clans)
*
Nenetses
*
Moken*
Mrazig of
Tunisia*
Eurasian Avars*
Hephthalites*
Turks*
Khazars*
Magyars*
Moors*
Mongols*
Wu Hu* Most
Sami communities
*
Roma and
Sinti**
Kalderash**
Gitano (AKA
Cale)
**
Manush (AKA
Sinti)
**
Romnichal*
Irish Travellers* Some
Saami communities
*
RV Lifestyle*
Technomad*
Perpetual traveler*
Eurasian nomad*
Equestrian nomad*
Itinerant*Sadr, Karim.
The Development of Nomadism in Ancient Northeast Africa, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. ISBN 0812230663
*
Cowan, Gregory. "Nomadology in Architecture: Ephemerality, Movement and Collaboration" University of Adelaide 2002 (available: [
1])
*
Grousset, René.
L'Empire des Steppes (1939)
*
Deleuze and
Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus (1980)
