bicicleur 2
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not only in the steppeGoodness, I guess a lot of people are thinking about this.
See Razib Khan's post on why there is steppe ancestry over such a wide swathe of territory.
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018...quered/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
"During the Mongol conquest of Northern China Genghis Khan reputedly wanted to turn the land that had been the heart of the Middle Kingdom into pasture, first by exterminating the whole population. Part of the motive was to punish the Chinese for resisting his armies, and part of it was to increase his wealth. One of his advisors, Yelu Chucai, a functionary from the Khitai people, dissuaded him from this path through appealing to his selfishness. Chinese peasants taxed on their surplus would enrich Genghis Khan far more than enlarging his herds. Rather than focus on primary production, Genghis Khan could sit atop a more complex economic system and extract rents."
But this makes us ask: when did this dynamic begin? I don’t think it was primordial. It was invented and developed over time through trial and error. I believe that the initial instinct of pastoralists was to turn farmland into pasture for his herds. This was Genghis Khan’s instinct. The rude barbarian that he was he had not grown up in the extortive system which more civilized barbarians, such as the Khitai, had been habituated to.
In these situations where pastoralists expropriated the land, there wouldn’t have been an opportunity for the farmer to raise a family. Barbarian warlords throughout history have aspired to be rich by plundering from the civilized the peoples…but would the earliest generations have understood the complexity of the institutions that they would have to extract rents out of if there wasn’t a precedent?"
Again, based on their own mythology, if nothing else, I'm sure there was a lot of butchery involved but this adds some nuance.
the Amorites were seen as invaders in southern Mesopotamia
when famine and drought strikes, farmers always seem to be in a weaker position because of their immobility compared to the herders continously moving and looking for greener pastures
Razib Khan :
Of course, pre-modern societies did not have totalitarian states and deadly technology. Rapid organized genocide in a way that we would understand was unlikely to have happened. Rather, in a world on the Malthusian margin, a few generations of deprivation may have resulted in the rapid demographic extinction of whole cultures. You don’t need to kill them if they starve because they were driven off their land.
This seems to be the situation when the Amorites moved south, but the last sentence is misleading, as if the purpose of the invading herders is to starve the farmers.
What was the situation when the IE moved south bypassing BMAC?
Nobody knows.
Fact is that BMAC was not destroyed by the IE herders, it merely became redundant.
To me it looks like there was not a famine, but herders saw the wealth of BMAC and the opportunity to combine herding with trade and even knowledge exchange (as with the Mitanni, the Kassites).
As for organised warfare, where and when did it start?
I think it started in many places in the world.
There were the fortresses in Sintashta.
But also written reports of war and extreme cruelties in Summer and Akkadia.
It existed in Maya and Aztec cultures.
And in Longshan culture, China.
And one more thing : warlords don't always have to be pastoralists.
The Germanic tribes originated from peacefull farmers in the Nordic Bronze Age.
They became warlike and started moving south when climate became cooler making agriculture impossible up north 6th century BC.