Seated female, Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, c. second millennium bc . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Norbert Schimmel Trust, 1989

Lapham’s Quarterly

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2021-06-23 21:30:06

Seated female, Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, c. second millennium bc . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Norbert Schimmel Trust, 1989.

Modern Central Asia has been shaped by a long history of interactions between the peoples of the Eurasian steppe and those of the agrarian societies (China, India, Iran, and Europe) that ring it. For environmental reasons, the steppe—the vast zone of grassland and desert that stretches from Hungary to Korea—cannot support a dense population.

Early human societies discovered that the best strategy for survival on the steppe was pastoral nomadism, in which animals (camels, sheep, cattle, and horses) provide the basis of livelihood. Nomadic groups laid claim to distinct pasturelands and followed fixed migration routes between winter and summer pastures. Over the centuries, steppe nomads interacted with neighboring sedentary societies through raiding, trading, and conquest. The domestication of the horse gave nomads mobility and a military advantage for a millennium and a half. During this period, they built a number of empires on the steppe that could dictate terms to their sedentary neighbors and occasionally conquer them outright.

Nomads were a constant presence on the frontiers of agrarian societies on Eurasia’s edges, which found it almost impossible to control the vast spaces of the steppe. The agrarian empires saw nomads as barbarians and a problem to be solved. The Great Wall of China, built to keep the northern barbarians out (and Chinese peasants in), is an apt indication of this attitude. The wall is equally apt as a metaphor for the relationship between the two worlds, because it never succeeded in separating them. Instead, they remained intertwined in a symbiotic and permeable relationship. The Great Wall sat in a borderland that was a perpetual arena of interaction. Many Chinese states were founded by “barbarians” from the north or northwest, even if their foreign origins were often covered up in historical narratives.

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