8. Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere, Gumilev
Part Four, XIV. The inverted task. ETHNOS IS A NATURAL PHENOMENON.
[The conclusion from this section analysis: monotonous landscape area stabilizes the ethnic groups dwelling in it, while heterogeneous landscape stimulates changes leading to the appearance of new ethnic entities. Dozens and dozens of examples developed herein.]
ETHNOS IN GEOGRAPHY, WHICH DESCRIBES THE CONSTANT INTERACTION OF THE ETHNOS WITH NATURE SURROUNDING HUMANS, AND EXPRESSES DISMAY THAT ALL OF THE ABOVE IS NOT ENOUGH TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Thus, all the scientific disciplines considered so far, which are relevant to the problem in question, cannot only provide a sensible answer, but cannot even suggest a way forward in the search for the truth. Does this mean that we should "wash our hands of it"? No, it is not that simple! We can, after all, find a new way.
We can find a new way of research, suitable for solving these questions. And the beginning has already been made: in the problem of correlation of man as a carrier of civilization with the natural environment we introduced the concept of "ethnos" as a stable collective of individuals, opposing itself to all other similar collectives, having an internal structure, in each case unique, and a dynamic stereotype of behavior. It is through ethnic collectives that mankind's connection with the natural environment is realized, since the ethnos itself is a phenomenon of nature.
As such, ethnos, it would seem, should emerge, develop and disappear due to changes in the geographical environment that houses it. This environment is very mobile. Prolonged droughts or, on the contrary, increased humidification are noted in different regions, and the intensity of climatic changes that determine changes in landscapes and their relations with each other are different in different areas of the Earth. The desire to establish a direct link between historical events and climate variations is doomed to failure, as shown by E. Leroy Ladurie, who focused on France and surrounding countries[1]. But the connection, mediated and complex, can be established, avoiding the hypercriticism of the French historian, applying the methodology already proposed by us.
In the mild climate of Europe the landscape differences are somewhat hidden, and in the conditions of continental climate and wide areas they appear sharply. Here we can use as an indicator the character of the political system of the nomadic population groups in different geographical ranges. We have already done it once to clarify the dynamics of climatic processes of landscape formation[2]. Now we turn our attention to historical-geographical zoning, i.e. the classification of the political systems of the inhabitants of Eurasia as forms of existence of the ethnic groups that existed there.
Let us note that the political systems of the peoples were closely connected with the economic system of the countries inhabited by these peoples. But here the first difficulty arises: since the ninth century B.C. and until the eighteenth century A.D. there was one mode of production in the Eurasian steppe - nomadic cattle breeding. If we apply the general regularity without corrections, we must assume that all nomadic societies were arranged uniformly and alien to any progress so that they can be characterized summarily and the details attributed to the tribal differences. Such an opinion was really considered in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an axiom, but the accumulation of factual material allows it to be rejected[3]. Despite the stable correlation between the pasture area, the number of cattle and the population, there was not a shadow of uniformity of the socio-political system in the Eurasian steppe, and for 3 thousand years of its existence the nomadic culture underwent a creative evolution, not less bright and colorful than the Mediterranean or the Far East. But local conditions have given the history of nomads a somewhat different coloring, and our task is to catch not so much the elements of similarity between nomadic and agricultural social systems, as the differences, and to point out their possible causes.
First of all we shall note that geography (except, perhaps, economic) and, consequently, ethnology included in it is a natural science, and history is a humanitarian science. So, studying ethnogenesis (emergence and disappearance of ethnoses), as a natural process taking place in the biosphere (one of the shells of the planet Earth), the researcher applies the methods of geography, and compiling the ethnic history of the region, he uses the traditional methods of historical science, adding to them the data of geography, not school geography of course, but modern, scientific geography, which raises questions about local features of anthropogenic biocenoses, micro-mutations that change only human behavioral traits, and successes associated with migration processes.
If we consider ethnos as a "social category," however, it would mean that geographic factors for the development of ethnoses "cannot matter." [4]. The absurdity of the thesis is obvious to the author himself, who writes below that "they could strongly slow down or, on the contrary, speed up the development of certain ethnic communities"[5]. If we accept this last, correct judgment, then, according to the precondition, ethnicity is not a social community.
Recall that in a letter to J. Bloch dated September 21-22, 1890, F. Engels wrote: "...according to the materialistic understanding of history, the determining moment in the historical process is ultimately the production of actual life. Neither I nor Marx ever asserted anything else. If someone distorts this position in the sense that the economic moment is the only determining moment, he turns this statement into a meaningless abstract, meaningless phrase. In agreement with this thesis, we believe that any directly observable process of ethnogenesis has a natural aspect along with the social one.
MAN IN THE BIOCOENOSIS
All vertebrate species are characterized by the instinct of personal and species self-preservation, manifested in reproduction and care for offspring, the desire to spread over the largest possible area and the ability to adapt to the environment (adaptation). However, the latter is not unlimited. More often than not, an animal inhabits a certain area of the earth's surface, to which its ancestors adapted. The bear will not go into the desert, the otter will not climb the high mountain, the hare will not jump into the river for fish.
But zonality and climatic differences of different belts impose even greater restrictions. Tropical species cannot exist in polar latitudes, and vice versa. Even when seasonal migrations occur, they are directed along certain routes related to the nature of natural conditions.
Man is an exception in this respect. Belonging to a single species, he has spread over the entire land of the planet. This shows an extremely high capacity for adaptation. But here the first difficulty arises: if the primitive man adapted to the conditions of, say, the forest zone of the temperate zone, then why did he pull into deserts and tropical jungles, where there was no habitual food and favorable conditions, because every animal is part of its geobiocenosis (lit. - life economy), i.e. "a natural complex of forms, historically, ecologically and physiologically connected into a single whole by the commonality of the living conditions" [7]? Figuratively speaking, the biocenosis is the home of the animal; so why leave home?
A biogeocenosis is a complex system; it consists of plants and animals linked together by a "food chain" and other activities, where some species feed on others, and the upper, concluding link, a large predator or man, when he dies, gives his ashes to the plants that nourished him. By the high degree of adaptation in a given biocenosis, a species accumulates a number of traits that it cannot get rid of, according to the law of irreversibility of evolution. All this also applies to man, who nevertheless passed these difficulties and spread all over the Earth. And it cannot be said that humans, compared to other species, have more plasticity due to a low degree of adaptation. He has a high degree of adaptability.
No, in every large biocenosis man holds a firm position, and by settling in a new region, he changes not the anatomy or physiology of his body, but the stereotype of his behavior. But after all, this means that he creates a new ethnos! Right, but what does he need it for? Or, more precisely, what drives him to do it? If one could simply answer this question, our task would be accomplished. But we are forced to limit our answers to non-negative answers, the point of which is to limit the problem.
Biological, or more precisely, zoological reasons fall away, for if they functioned, other animals would do the same.
Conscious decisions to change one's nature are nonsense. Social reasons, if they were reasons, would necessarily involve a change in the mode of production, i.e., a change in social formations, which is not the case. Moreover, compulsory adaptation to a familiar, habitable "host" landscape is noted by K. Marx in his article "Forced emigration. In particular, it says the following about nomads: "In order to continue to be barbarians, the latter had to remain few in number. Those were tribes engaged in cattle breeding, hunting and warfare, and their mode of production required a vast space for each individual member of the tribe, as is still the case today (in the middle of the 19th century - L.G.) with the Indian tribes of North America. The growth of these tribes' numbers meant that they reduced each other's territory necessary for production. Engels develops Marx's thought by pointing out the direct connection between food and the level of development of different tribes. In his opinion, "the abundant meat and milk diet of the Aryans and Semites and its particularly favorable influence on the development of children may be attributed to the more successful development of both these races. Indeed, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, forced to feed almost exclusively on vegetable food, have a smaller brain than the Indians, who stand on the lowest stage of barbarism and eat more meat and fish."[9]
GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE CHANGE OF FORMATIONS
So, direct and indirect influence of the landscape on ethnos is beyond doubt, but on the global self-development - social form of matter movement, it has no decisive influence. The landscape influences ethnic processes forcibly[10]. All the peoples who settled in Italy - Etruscans, Latins, Gauls, Greeks, Syrians, Lombards, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, French - gradually, over two or three generations, lost their former appearance and merged into a mass of Italians, a distinctive, though mosaic ethnos with specific features of character and behavior and a structure that evolved in historical time. And so everywhere, with more or less clarity, directly proportional to the study of the subject.
Consequently, we must study ethnoses not as a function of social progress but as an independent phenomenon.
The formation of humanity is related not only to natural influences" as in other animals, but also to a particular spontaneous development of technology and social institutions[11]. In practice, we observe the interference of both lines of development. Consequently, socio-economic development through formations is not identical with ethnogenesis, a discrete process taking place in a geographical environment. С. V. Kalesnik clearly showed the difference between geographical and technogenic environment, in which people live simultaneously. Geographical environment arose without human intervention and preserved natural elements with the ability to self-development. Technogenic environment is created by human labor and will. Its elements have no analogues in the pristine nature and are not capable of self-development. They can only be destroyed. Techno - and the sociosphere do not relate to the geographical environment at all, although they constantly interact with it[12]. This principle was the basis of our study.
MAN'S WAR WITH NATURE
The noted adaptive capacities of man are not simply increased in comparison to his ancestors, but are associated with a peculiarity that distinguishes man from other mammals. Man not only adapts to the landscape, but also adapts the landscape to his needs and requirements. So it is not adaptive but creative capabilities that have paved the way for him through different landscapes. This in itself is known, but it has often been overlooked that the creative impulses of humanity, as well as of the individual, are episodic and do not always lead to the desired result, and hence the influence of man on the landscape has not always been beneficial. The Sumerians built canals and drained the Tigris-Euphrates interfluves in the 3rd millennium BC, and the Chinese started building dams around the Huang He 4,000 years ago. The East Iranians learned to use groundwater for irrigation at the turn of the new era. The Polynesians brought sweet potatoes (cumara) to the islands from the Americas. Europeans also got potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco from there, as well as syphilis-causing pale spirochete. In the steppes of Eurasia the mammoth was exterminated by Paleolithic hunters of large herbivores[13]. The Eskimos killed the Steller's sea cow in the Bering Sea; the Maoris killed the moa bird in New Zealand; the Arabs and the Persians killed lions in western Asia by constant hunts; the American colonists killed bison and the wandering pigeon in only half a century (1830-1880) [14] and the Australian colonists killed several species of marsupials. In the 19th and 20th centuries the extermination of animals has already become a disaster, about which zoologists and zoogeographers have written so much that we do not need to dwell further on this subject. Let us note, however, that man's predatory treatment of nature can take place in all formations and therefore, can hardly be regarded as a result of peculiarities of social progress. In all formations man deforms nature. Obviously, this is peculiar to him. Although he does it differently each time, the differences concern the details and not the direction of the processes.
Nature knows how to stand up for itself. Not only certain plants that destroy masonry with their stalks and hack up asphalt roads with cute directness, but also certain species of animals use the anthroposphere to thrive. For example, the extermination of bison and their replacement in the prairie biocenosis by sheep and horses (mustangs) led to a decrease in the number of great gray wolves, which fed on diseased bison, deer and rodents.
Therefore, the number of deer, of which epidemics became rampant, was reduced and the number of rodents, which shared the food left by the bison with the sheep, was increased, which, in turn, created favorable conditions for the breeding of coyotes, which fed both on rodents and defenseless sheep. Prairie nature has recovered, but with the loss of biocenosis structure.
The spread of the potato monoculture gave rise to the breeding of the Colorado potato beetle, which marched victoriously from the Cordilleras to the Atlantic, crossed it, and vigorously conquered Europe. English merchant ships brought rats and, worse, mosquitoes to the islands of Polynesia, which limited the human habitat itself to the sandy shores where the sea wind always blows. And the experiments of relocating rabbits to Australia or goats to Madeira are so tragic that they are well known. But neither do the facts of nature's regeneration coincide with the watershed dates of human social history. So is there a causal or functional dependence between these two chains of regularities? Apparently, there is not, because man's "forays" into the landscape cannot be called "progress" either in the philistine sense (striving for the best) or in the scientific sense (development from the lowest forms to the highest). And if so, then the very dynamic stereotypes of behavior that characterize different ethnic groups are to be blamed for private distortions of nature. Apparently, we have come close to our plot, though we have been walking only by feel.
SOCIETY, POLITY, AND ETHNOS
That everyone is a member of one social group or another is indisputable. But as there was not and probably will not be a single person who would not be at a certain stage of social development, would not be a member of a tribe, horde, state, community, friendship, and similar associations, so there is no person who would not belong to an ethnic group. The relationship between social, political, and ethnic collectives can be likened to the relationship between measures of length, weight, and temperature. In other words, these phenomena are parallel but incommensurable.
The field of competence of historical geography is limited. It is futile to try to find geographical causes in the actions of generals, reformers, and diplomats. But ethnic collectives fully meet the requirements of the problem posed. The interaction of people with nature is clearly traced not only in the early stages of development, but up to the twentieth century.
The correlation of the three marked lines of development is easiest to show on the example of, say, England and France, whose past is known so completely that it does not require special excursions into source studies and the wilds of bibliography. In the social aspect, both countries have experienced a number of formations: the tribal system - the Celts before the Roman conquest; slavery - as part of the Roman Empire, although Britain was three centuries behind Gaul; feudalism and, finally, capitalism, this time a hundred years behind France. In political terms, it seems to the people of the twentieth century that these two nations, separated by the Channel, are classic ethno-territorial wholenesses, that this has always been the case and could not be otherwise.
The area of interest includes three landscape zones: the subtropical in southern France, the woodland of northern France and southern England, and the subboreal heathlands of Scotland and Northumberland. Each landscape forces the people who enter it to adapt to its peculiarities, and in this way a certain community emerges.
For example, the Celts in the lower Rhone grew grapes; the Roman colonists of the 1st-4th centuries, the warlike Burgundians of the 5th century, the Arabs of the 7th century, the Catalans of the 11th century did the same, and the community of life, determined by common labor, leveled languages and manners. In the twelfth century, a single people was formed from the now separated Catalans, Provençalis and Ligurians. It took the destructive Albigoy War to break this unity, but until the 19th century, the Southern French spoke Provençal and, with few exceptions, did not know French.
The Norwegian Vikings, the children of fishermen, having made their way to Normandy, transformed themselves into farmers-French in two generations, retaining only their anthropological type. The same Norwegians in the Tweed Valley became Sheep-Scots Lowlanders, but they did not penetrate into the mountains of northern Scotland, where the Celtic Scots Highlanders retained their clan system. Not for political, but for ethnic boundaries, landscape, including topography, proved decisive.
As for the northern half of France, its heartland, here the landscape, through convergent development, transformed a huge number of aliens from the east and from the southwest. Belgians, Aquitanians and Celts in antiquity; Latins and Germans in the early modern era; Franks, Burgundians, Alans, Britons in the early Middle Ages: English, Italian, Spanish and Dutch immigrants of the Reformation, etc. - all settled into a homogeneous mass of French peasants, brilliantly described not so much by ethnographers as by Balzac, Zola and other realist writers.
But then the question arises: why did not the ethnoses of the two territories, which have similar landscapes, the same social structure and are separated only by the sea strait, which in ancient times was easily crossed by the dinghies, united into one complex, which would have been beneficial to both?
The medieval kings were well aware of this and made three attempts at unification. In 1066 the French king's vassal Duke Guillaume of Normandy conquered the Anglo-Saxon part of Britain, which after the termination of the Norman dynasty passed to another French feudal lord - Henry Plantagenet. So in 1154 Normandy was again united with England, followed by Poitou, Aquitaine, and Auvergne: the kingdom of Henry Plantagenet emerged. The combination is ethnographically bizarre, but it lasted until 1205, when the French King Philip II Augustus seized Normandy, Poitou, Touraine and Anjou from the English king and then, in 1216, tried again to conquer England, but failed.
England was left with only Bordeaux and Bayonne, where the Plantagenets were supported by the Gascon barons, but in 1339 the Hundred Years' War for the unification of the two countries began, this time the initiative came from England. After a long war, in 1415, Henry V Lancaster was crowned French, but Joan of Arc proved stronger than England, and no further attempts were made to unite the two countries.
It is fruitless to seek an explanation for the changes outlined in physical geography, but it is possible to involve economic geography, which, by the way, all historians have been doing for a long time. Political formations-particularly states-needed not a uniform but a diverse economy, where different economic provinces would complement each other, for stability and development. The Plantagenets held strong when they had sheep's wool from northern England, bread from Kent and Normandy, wine from the Auvergne, and cloth from Turkey. Economic ties led to lively communication and enriched the ruler, but no ethnic fusion emerged. Why not? To answer this, let's look at the third aspect, ethnicity.
NATIONS HAVE A HOMELAND!
The power of Rome fell. The tribes that populated France at the time of their appearance in the territory between the Rhine and the Bay of Biscay were so different in language, morals, traditions, that Augustin Thierry proposed a tribal concept of the composition of modern France, and he was right. "Is the history of France from the fifth to the seventeenth century really the history of the same people, having the same origin, the same manners, the same language, and the same civil and political interests? Not at all! When the name "French" is applied retrospectively, I'm not even talking about the Zairean tribes, but even to the period of the first dynasty, we get a real anachronism," he writes and explains his thought with examples:
"Would it be national history for a Brettonian to have a biography of the descendants of Chlodwig or Charlemagne, when his ancestors... negotiated with the Franks as an independent people? From the sixth to the tenth century and even later, the heroes of Northern France were the scourge of the South."[15] It was not until the fourteenth century that the French annexed the Dauphiné, Burgundy, and Provence, former domains of the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans, to the kingdom of France. But Bordeaux, Bayonne, and a strip of the coast of the Bay of Biscay remained independent, having as suzerain the English king of the Plantagenet dynasty. This was not English supremacy over Gascony, but the way in which the Gasconians defended themselves against French encroachments.
The Hundred Years' War between France and England, which broke out in 1339, despite the striking disparity of forces (between 1327 and 1418 France had 18 million[16] and England 3 million,[17] with Scotland in the rear), was successful for England only because it was actively supported by Gasconians, Bretons and the Kingdom of Navarre. After the death of John the Good, his eldest son Charles became king and another, Philip, the Duke of Burgundy. It would seem that the brothers were supposed to get along, but they were more dependent on their barons than they were on the Duke. The Valois dynasty of Burgundy rose to head the eastern regions of France, annexed Artois, Flanders, and Francheconte to Burgundy, and, with the sympathy of the Parisians, claimed supremacy over France. The Burgundians were opposed by the inhabitants of the west and south of the country under the leadership of the Count of Armagnac. The war between them opened the way for the English, who allied themselves with the Burgundians and the Parisians, who believed that the "Armagnacs," natives of the south and Brittany, "did not belong to the French kingdom,"[18] that is, were not French. France was saved by Joan of Arc, who spoke French with a German accent. Isolated Burgundy was defeated by the Swiss, and again fell to the French in parade with Brittany and other outskirts. The reason for her long resistance was explained by the last duke, Charles the Bold. "We are other Portuguese," he said,[19] equating the difference between the Burgundians and the French with the difference between the Portuguese and the Spaniards. He was not hindered by the fact that he himself bore the surname of Valois and was of French descent.
Yet ethnic diversity gave way to the theory of "natural frontiers," articulated in the "Grand Conception," which Minister Sully attributed to his King Henry IV. The Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine, i.e., the territory of ancient Celtic Gaul, which the king and the minister declared for this purpose the predecessor of France, were declared the "natural frontiers" of France. On this scientifically very shaky basis the Bourbons sought to restore France to its former glory, i.e. to annex lands inhabited by Basques, Italians and Germans, despite Henry IV's statement: "I have nothing against the Spanish king ruling where Spanish is spoken, and the Austrian emperor where German is spoken. But where French is spoken, I must rule. [20]. Despite this principle, France occupied Navarre, Savoy, and Alsace, for geography outweighed philology.
The same process took place in England, where the French feudal lords partly perished in the Scarlet and White Rose War, partly merged with the Anglo-Saxon nobility, and then the kingdom in the 18th century expanded to its natural borders-the shores of its island. England included agricultural Kent, inhabited by Anglo-Saxons, pastoral Scotland, Wales and Northumberland, inhabited by Celts and Scandinavians - descendants of the Vikings, as France annexed Provence, Brittany and Gascony, inhabited by peoples who spoke their own languages, had their own way of life and their own system of economy.
Can the process described be called "ethnic integration"? Hardly, because in both cases there was a direct conquest, carried out with all possible cruelty, and, moreover, the conquered ethnic groups have survived to this day. But are modern England and France physical-geographical regions? Certainly, otherwise they would have long ago disintegrated with the existing ethnic heterogeneity. So, geographical and ethnological categories do not coincide, and consequently, the relationship between landscape and ethnos is mediated by the history of the ethnoses which mastered the landscapes and rearranged the geobiocenoses. This phenomenon is called succession, in our case anthropogenic succession.
Adaptation to the new conditions is a geographical aspect of ethnogenesis, which did not result in mutual assimilation and revelation. but emerged ethnic systemic integrity, where the defeated were in the position of sub-ethnos. However, the centuries of neighborhood with the conqueror ethnos did not go in vain: the Celts of Brittany became friends with the French, and the Celts of Wales with the English. But the ethnologist should remember that today's friendship of these peoples has replaced the recent enmity, and what will happen next will be shown by ethnic history, to which geography passes the baton in this matter.
In contrast to O. Thierry's conception of historical discreteness, Fustel de Coulanges saw in the life of French peasants the features of the institutions of the Roman era. And he was also right. He first noted the character of migration, the second the influence of the landscape. But both the nature of migration in general and the degree of adaptation can and should be regarded as phenomena belonging to geographical science, to that section of it which is called ethnology, for it is here that humanity's relations with the geographical environment, through which they influence one another, are concentrated.
So, not only individuals, but also ethnoses have a homeland. The homeland of an ethnos is a combination of landscapes, where it first formed into a new system. And from this point of view birch groves, glades, quiet rivers of Volga- Oka interfluves were the same elements of Great Russian ethnos, formed in XIII-XIV centuries, as well as Ugro-Slavic and Tatar-Slavic mestization, architecture of temples, brought from Byzantium, epic and fairy tales about magic wolves and foxes. And wherever the fate of the Russian man took him, he knew that he had "his place"- the Native land.
And about the English, R. Kipling wrote: "But our mothers taught us that old England is home. And the Arabs, the Tibetans, the Iroquois all have their original territory, defined by a unique combination of landscape elements. And as such, the "homeland" is one component of a system called "ethnos."
LOCATION
The above examples are enough to conclude about the influence of the geographical landscape on ethnic communities as collectives of the species Homo sapiens. But I hasten to make a reservation: this conclusion was already drawn in 1922 by L. S. Berg for all organisms, including humans. "The geographical landscape influences the organism forcibly, forcing all individuals to vary in a certain direction as far as the organization of the species permits. Tundra, forest, steppe, desert, mountains, aquatic environments, life on islands, etc. - all these put a special imprint on organisms. Those species which are unable to adapt must move to another geographic landscape or become extinct. A "landscape" is understood as "an area of the earth's surface, qualitatively different from other areas, bordered by natural boundaries and representing an integral and mutually conditioned natural totality of objects and phenomena, which is typically expressed in a significant space and is inextricably linked in all respects with the landscape shell"[22]. Let us call this notion by the apt term of P.N. Savitsky - "place-development"[23], similar to the similar notion of "field".
The reader may be surprised and even offended that the author, having begun to compare people with animals, has reached minerals. But there is no need to be offended! Each of us touches one side of any natural law, while the human personality is multifaceted; there will still be room for aesthetics, ethics, and everything that is now commonly referred to as "information" or "noosphere”. But we shall return to earthly matters for now, for our discussion of landscapes is not over.
XV. The role of the combination of landscapes
THE MONOTONY AND HETEROGENEITY OF LANDSCAPES
Not every territory can turn out to be a place-development. For example, not a single people or culture has emerged from the entire band of continuous forests, the taiga from Lake Onega to the Sea of Okhotsk, in the space of Eurasia. Everything there is, or was brought in from the south or from the north. The pure, continuous steppe does not allow for development either. The Desht-i Kip-chak, i.e. the Cumans steppes from the Altai to the Carpathian Mountains, is a place without Genius loci. These steppes were inhabited by peoples who developed in other areas, such as Mongolia, a country with rugged terrain and diverse landscapes. Dense forests grow on the slopes of the Hentei and Khangai. The green steppe of the lower Tla and Kerulen in the south turns into the stony Gobi desert, where the snow melts in March, giving grazing to cattle until the summer heat. The fauna is correspondingly diverse, and the archaeological cultures reflect a succession of peoples known not only to historians: Huns, Turks, Uigurs, Mongols, and Oirats.
Conversely, the western part of the Great Steppe from the upper reaches of the Irtysh to the lower reaches of the Don and from the edge of the Siberian taiga to Balkhash and the Aral Sea is monotonous, and the peoples who inhabited it are little known. Nowadays the Kazakhs occupy a vast area with a monotonous steppe landscape. In the XIII century the steppe was depopulated after the cruel Mongol-Traveller war and was divided between three Mongol hordes: the Golden, or Big, - on Volga, the Blue - between the Aral Sea and Tyumen, and the White (i.e. senior) - in Tarbagatai and on the upper Irtysh[24].
On Volga from a conglomerate of peoples have developed Tatars.
The Blue Horde was not viable and in the XIV century merged with the Volga people. But the White Horde, leaning on the outskirts of the Siberian taiga to the Orb, the slopes and foothills of the Altai and the steppes of the Syr Darya, at that time interspersed with pine forests,[25] developed into an independent ethnos, which later mastered the estranged steppes of the Aral Sea, Mangyshlak and Rynpeski.
Genuine place-developments are territories of a combination of two or more landscapes. This provision is true not only for Eurasia, but also for the entire globe. The main processes of ethnogenesis in Eurasia arose: a) in the eastern part, with a combination of mountain and steppe landscapes; b) in the western part, forest and meadow (glades in the Volga-Oka interfluves); c) in the south, steppe and oasis (Crimea, Central Asia); d) in the north, forest tundra and tundra. But I propose to single out the northern ones into a special department of circumpolar cultures, because separated from the Eurasian locality by the "taiga sea" (pine forests), they have never influenced it.
Let's check. The Huns evolved on the forested slopes of Inyl-nya, and then only moved into the Mongolian steppes. The Uigurs were on the slopes of Nanshan. Türkuts, on the slopes of Altai. Mongols - on the slopes of Khingan and Khentai. Kidans - on the "tongue" of the steppe, which stretches into the Manchurian forest. Yenisei Kirghiz - on the "island" of the Minusinsk steppe and the slopes of the Sayan Mountains.
The Tatars of Kazan, descendants of the ancient Bulgarians, - on the Kama, where the forest borders the steppe. The Crimean Tatars - on the border of the steppe Crimea and the South Bank, a solid oasis. They are the Turkic Levants of different origins, merged into a single people. The Khazars are in the foothills of Dagestan. Their first capital, Semender, is located in the middle course of the Terek.
Developing the above principle, it can be assumed that where the boundaries between the landscape regions are blurred and smooth transitions from one geographical conditions to another are observed, the processes of ethnogenesis will be less intense. For example, the group of rich oases of the Central Asian interfluves is bordered by semi-deserts and dry steppes, sometimes separating the oases from each other. Indeed, ethnogenesis in Central Asia proceeded so slowly that it is almost imperceptible. The bands of deserts from the north and south-west were easily passable by armed robbers, but hardly livable. But in the foothills of the Kopetdag, Tien Shan and Hissar the Turkmen - Seljuk formed in the 11th century, the Kyrgyz - in the 15th century, the Tajiks - in the 8th-9th centuries and the Uzbeks - in the 14th century, limiting the area of the descendants of the ancient Sogdians to the Pamirs and Hissar, where they survived as isolates [26].
The systems of mountain ranges, despite the vertical belts, should be considered as regions of uniformity, as the belts constitute a single geographical economic complex in relation to man. Therefore, the Western Pamirs, Dardistan, Hindu Kush, Himalayas, as well as the Caucasus and Pyrenees are convenient for the preservation of relict ethnos-persystems. And it is by no means a matter of the difficult passability of the mountain landscape. Military detachments easily crossed gorges and passes even under Cyrus and Alexander the Great. However, new peoples did not arise within the mountainous areas, but on their outskirts.
It has already been noted that the peoples inhabiting the solid steppes, even if very rich, have found extremely small opportunities to develop, for example, the Saks, Pechenegs, Kipchaks, Turkmen, except for that part of them which, under the name of Seljuks, left for Asia Minor and Azerbaijan in the XI century, both ethnically and socially are stable.
The Levant, or Middle East, is a combination of sea, mountains, deserts and river valleys. There new ethnic combinations arose frequently, except in the Transcaucasian highlands, where there are natural conditions suitable for isolates. Such are, for example, the Kurds, who defended their ethnic identity from the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and even the Ottoman Turks. The exception that proves the rule.
China was a country once reclaimed from water (in ancient times it was a solid swamp with shallow lakes and rivers that changed their course every year). The Chinese nation was formed on the banks of the Huang He, in a combination of landscapes: river, mountain, forest, steppe, and the jungle south of the Yangtze, the Chinese mastered only in the first millennium AD. However, having migrated to the south and mingled with the local population, the ancient Chinese became the modern South Chinese ethnic group, different both from their ancestors and from the northern Chinese, who mingled with the Huns and Xianbi in the Huang He valley.
India, surrounded by sea and mountains, can be seen as a semi-continent, but unlike Europe it is poorer in landscape. Deccan landscapes are typologically close to each other, and the processes of ethnogenesis, i.e. the emergence of new ethnic groups over the historical time, are poorly expressed there. On the other hand, two major nations were formed in northwestern India: the Rajputs [27] around the eighth century and the Sikhs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It would seem that the deserts of Rajstan and Sindh were far less favorable to man than the rich, forested valley of the Ganges. However, the Indus valley has a distinct combination of deserts and tropical vegetation, and although culture flourished in inner India, the formation of new peoples is associated with the frontier regions.
Equally intensive were the processes of people's formation in the Lower Narbada basin, where the jungle of northern India meets the grassy plains of the Deccan-Maharashtra. In the 6th century the Chalukya, a state of militant kshatriyas, who must have migrated from Rajputana,[28] and in the seventeenth century the Marathas, having abandoned some of the constraints of the caste system, formed a nation that challenged the Mughals for supremacy over India. The Marathas differ from the general mass of Hindus as noted by all historians of India.
The country of Marathas is a combination of three physical and geographical areas: the coastal strip between the Western Ghats and the sea, the mountainous country to the east of the Ghats and the black earth valley bounded by chains of hills[29]. There is, therefore, every reason to classify this region in what we call a place-development category, even though the culture of Bengal was incomparably superior.
In North America the vast forests and prairies did not create favorable conditions for ethnogenesis. Even there, however, there were areas where Indian tribes folded into nations before the historian's eyes. On the rugged coastline of the Great Lakes the Iroquois union of five tribes emerged in the fifteenth century. It was a new ethnic entity, not congruent with the former one, as it did not include the Hurons, related to them by blood and language.
On the shores of the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska, where rocky islands serve as rookeries for walrus and seals and the sea feeds the coastal inhabitants, the Tlingit created a slave society, sharply different from the neighboring hunting tribes both in language and in customs.
The Cordilleras drop steeply into the prairie for the most part, and the mountainous landscape is adjacent to, but not conflated with, the prairie. However, in the south, in the state of New Mexico, where there is a smooth transition between these landscapes, the "pueblo" culture emerged in ancient times, and around the XII century there was a group of nagua, to which the famous Aztec tribe belonged. The greater part of the continent, also inhabited by Indians, was a kind of Hinterland, a territory to which the peoples who had developed in the area had retreated or spread out. Such, for example, are the Blackfeet, the people of the Algonquin group, and many other tribes.
This pattern can be seen even more clearly in South America. The highlands of the Andes - a combination of mountain and steppe landscapes - contain cultural monuments created by many peoples in different centuries, and in the forests of Brazil and the plains of Argentina, contrary to the hopes of Captain Fossett, no cultures were formed. And, as we see in numerous examples, it could not have been formed, because the nature of these countries is monotonous, which, however, does not prevent and has never prevented the use of its wealth by peoples who emerged in other places; the Araucan highlanders penetrated Patagonia; the Incas tried to develop the Brazilian forests in the 16th century, and in the 19th century Portuguese planters became fabulously rich there.
We shall find the same pattern in Africa and Australia, but it is more expedient to concentrate on the ethnic groups connected with the sea in order to note their local peculiarities.
ON THE SHORES OF THE SEAS AND THE MARGINS OF THE GLACIERS
The role of the sea, depending on the nature of the shoreline and the level of civilization of the coastal inhabitants, can be twofold. The sea is a limiting element of the landscape when it is undeveloped and impassable. Such was the Atlantic Ocean for the American Indians, the Indian Ocean for the Negroes and the Aborigines of Australia, and even the Caspian Sea for the Pechenegs. But when one begins to draw food from the sea and learn navigation, the sea turns into a constituent element of development. So the Hellenes used the Aegean Sea, the Vikings the North Sea, the Arabs the Red Sea, and the Russian Pomors the White Sea. By the 19th century, almost all seas and oceans were part of the Oikumene, but we must keep in mind that this is not characteristic of all eras. Throughout the historical period two ethno-cultural areas can be registered in which the sea is an integral part of the place-development: circumpolar cultures on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and Polynesia, about which so much has been written that there is no need to repeat it. It suffices to recall that the Polynesian culture housed, before the arrival of the Europeans, a variety of entities which, even on such an isolated stretch of land as Easter Island, struggled among themselves, creating their own cultures, although quite similar in character.
Less well known is the history of the circumpolar peoples. Once a chain of similar cultures surrounded the Arctic Ocean, which was their breadwinner. They were mainly sea-beast hunters and ichthyophagi. Already in historical times, their territory was cut in two by the Ugro-Samoyeds, who later exterminated the western part of it. Then the Tungus exterminated the eastern part, with the exception of the Paleo-Asians and the Omok people of Java and Indigirka, the latter were exterminated by the Yakut invasion. The Yakuts' movement from south to north was one-sided and irreversible, as they floated on rafts on the rivers and could not return against the current[30].
The young circumpolar people were the Eskimos, who spread out from Oceania around the 1st century AD and drove the Indians to the southern border of Canada in the 10th century, and who drove the descendants of the Vikings in Greenland into the sea in the 13th century[31]. Here again there is a combination of landscapes: the feeding sea and the forest-tundra or glacier.
But not only the feeding sea, but even areas covered by ice and therefore completely barren, can contribute to the emergence of ethnic groups, which took place in the Baltics and Scandinavia around the 10th millennium BC. The mechanism of this phenomenon is simple.
GLACIERS
A glacier, in order to grow, must receive a sufficient amount of atmospheric moisture from the ocean - cold rain and wet snow. But since there is always an anticyclone over the glacier, the moist air breaks over its rim and there the rain pours out. For the Eurasian continent, this is the western rim, where the Atlantic cyclones come from, all the way to Taimyr. Consequently, the glacier grows to the west, while its eastern part melts under the rays of the sun, for where there is no cloud cover, insolation and its lack, operates unimpeded.
There is a geographic paradox: where the absolute temperature is higher, it is damp, windy, cloudy, and therefore people and animals suffer from cold; but where the temperature is lower, it is quiet, clear, dry, and people and animals get warm under the direct rays of the sun, without paying attention to the cold air. The glacial anticyclone is always larger than the glacier itself, and covers the glacial areas, turning them into dry tundra. Streams flowing down from the glacier form freshwater lakes and streams where fish and waterfowl settle. Around them, groves of fur-bearing animals grow, and herds of herbivores graze in the dry tundra, where there is little snow cover. This is a paradise for the primitive hunter and fisherman.
These were the conditions in Eastern Europe at the end of the Pomeranian stage of the last glaciation. Sparse forests began to appear in the tundra adjacent to the receding glacier, fringing rivers and lakes. Then, on the banks of the Neman and Dvina, the ancient ethnic groups of the Baltic group formed, surviving to this day in a landscape that had become monotonous from warming. The Baltic toponyms and hydronyms bear the stamp of deep antiquity [32], as a memory of the time when the natural environment around their ancestors was different. Not only ethnoses, but also landscapes have a history.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHARACTER OF THE LANDSCAPE ON ETHNOGENESIS
Now we can formulate the conclusion from this analysis: monotonous landscape area stabilizes the ethnic groups dwelling in it, heterogeneous landscape stimulates changes leading to the appearance of new ethnic entities.
But there is a question: is the combination of landscapes the cause of ethnogenesis or only a favorable condition? If the cause of the emergence of new peoples lay in geographical conditions, then they, as a constantly acting, would cause the formation of peoples constantly, but this is not the case. Hence, although ethnogenesis is conditioned by geographical conditions, it occurs for other reasons, for the disclosure of which we have to turn to other sciences. These problems will be dealt with in special sections, and will finally answer the main question: how and why are ethnic groups different from each other, and what does ethnogenesis have to do with other natural phenomena?
One of my opponents disputed my thesis that the emergence of new ethnic groups is confined to regions where two or more landscapes meet, while their development proceeded unhindered in monotonous landscapes[33]. But in the same paragraph he writes: "Ethnogenesis is not localized in any (underlined by us. - Л. L.G.) special landscapes, but in fact it was going on in all the regions of the planet, though in some cases the natural conditions could somewhat (underlined by us. L.G.) accelerate or delay the course of the ethnic processes". My opponent for some reason does not notice the contradiction he has admitted, which removes his objection. After all the appearance of a new ethnos, i.e. a new systemic integrity is always connected with the dismantling of the old ethnoses which belong to the new one as ethnic substrata. This work requires an impulse that either gives rise to a new ethnic process or fades out due to environmental resistance, and here the mentioned "somewhat" becomes crucial, which we have noted and then will be explained.
So far we have talked about landscapes as phenomena of pristine nature, although we firmly knew that there is no landscape on Earth that has not ever been influenced by man. We introduced this simplification deliberately in order to clarify the problem, but man-made, i.e. urban, landscapes have been known since ancient times. Babylon had about a million inhabitants, Rome more than a million and a half, Constantinople more than a million and a half. These huge cities can be seen as independent landscape regions. And they manifest themselves as such: sub-ethnoses have always emerged on the borders of city and village, more often ephemeral, sometimes persistent, but always with original, unique stereotypes of behavior, obligatory for their members.
There is also another painful question: is not our time, the era of technological civilization, a special epoch to which the patterns discovered in the study of history, rather than modernity, are inapplicable? This question has already been posed very pointedly and clearly: "Has the steppe remained as the steppe and the desert as the desert in the landscape sense of these terms? The vegetation has been changed most of all (in the steppe by farming, in the desert by grazing, irrigated farming), as a consequence of which the runoff, soil cover, erosion process and the whole further "chain" of components of natural complexes have changed"[34].
Indeed, the anthropogenic factor of landscape formation has acquired and continues to acquire an important place in the face of the earth's surface over the past three thousand years.
Agriculture changes the flora and fauna, architecture becomes an important element of the relief, the burning of coal and oil affects the composition of the atmosphere. From this point of view, Paris should be considered as an anthropogenic geochore [35], in a forest landscape zone with an accelerated rhythm of development, because the modern appearance of this microdistrict differs both from the look of the medieval castle of the Parisian Count and from the Roman Lutetia. But even a non-flowing lake, shallow, quickly turns into a swamp, while the surrounding forest does not change during the same time. The difference between anthropogenic and hydrogenic formations, no matter how big it may be, is not fundamental in the aspect of natural science. But there is no answer to our question: why and how did man change the face of the Earth? So let us continue the "search for truth," as the ancient Hellenes called historical research.
XVI. Formation of anthropogenic landscapes
SOCIETAL DEVELOPMENT AND LANDSCAPE CHANGE
Since we are talking about the "behavior" of individuals belonging to different ethnic groups, the simplest thing to do is to pay attention to the way they affect the particular natural landscapes in which they have been thrust by historical destiny. In other words, we have to trace the nature and variations of the anthropogenic factor of landscape formation, taking into account the division of humanity into ethnic collectives that we have already noted.
It is not a question of how great the changes produced by man are, or even of whether they are beneficial or pernicious in their consequences, but when, how and why they occur. It is indisputable that the landscape of industrial areas and areas with artificial irrigation is more altered than that of the steppe, the taiga, the rainforest and the desert, but if we try to find a social pattern here, we will encounter insurmountable difficulties. The Maya agricultural culture of the Yucatan was established in the fifth century B.C. under the tribal system, it fell into decline at the birth of class relations, and was not restored under the rule of Spain, despite the introduction of European technology and the patronage of baptized Indians.
The economy of Egypt slowly but steadily declined during the period of feudalism, while in Europe at the same time and with the same social relations there was an unprecedented rise in agriculture and crafts, not to mention trade. In terms of our study this means that the landscape in Egypt at this time was stable, while in Europe it was radically transformed. The introduction of anthropogenic monuments into the relief of Egypt in the 19th century - the digging of the Suez Canal - is connected with the penetration there of European peoples, the French and the English, rather than with the activity of the aboriginal Fellahs.
In England in the 16th century, "the sheep ate the people" at the beginning of capitalism, and in Mongolia in the 13th and 14th centuries, the sheep "ate" the Tungus hunters who lived on the southern slopes of the Sayan, Khamar-Da-Ban and the northern Great Khingan, although even feudalism was undeveloped there. Mongol sheep ate grass and drank water in shallow springs, which served as food and drink for wild ungulates[36]. The number of the latter decreased, and at the same time the hunting tribes were deprived of their habitual food, weakened, became dependent on the steppe herders, and disappeared from the ethnographic map of Asia. More examples: the Azores were turned into bare cliffs not by Spanish feudal lords, who were rampant in Mexico and the Netherlands, but by goats; the latter were planted there by Asturians and Basques, whose tribal system had not yet disappeared. The bisons in America were exterminated by joy-hunters under capitalism, and the moa bird in New Zealand by the Maori, who did not yet know class stratification; they also acclimatized American potatoes on their islands, and in Russia the entire military-bureaucratic machine of Empress Catherine II was needed for the same purpose. It follows that the pattern lies on a different plane.
Let us pose the question differently: not how does mankind affect nature, but how do different peoples in different phases of their development affect nature? This introduces an intermediate link, which we have so far lacked to account for the mediated nature of this interaction. Then a new danger arises: if each nation, and even in each era of its existence, affects nature in a different way, it is impossible to view this kaleidoscope, and we risk losing the opportunity to make any generalizations and, therefore, to make sense of the phenomenon in question.
But here the usual classification and systematization of the observed factors in the natural sciences come to the rescue, which, unfortunately, is not always properly applied in the humanities. Therefore, speaking of ethnic groups in their relation to the landscape, we remain on the foundation of geographical ethnology, without passing into the field of humanitarian ethnography.
Abandoning the features of ethnic classification accepted in the humanities - race, sociality, material culture, religion, etc., we must choose the original principle and aspect lying in geographical science. Such may be the already described phenomenon of the biocenosis, where the characteristic feature is the proportionality between the number of individuals in all the forms that make up the complex. For example, the number of wolves in a given area depends on the number of hares and mice, and the latter is limited by the amount of grass and water. This ratio usually fluctuates within the tolerance range and is rarely and briefly violated.
It would seem that this picture has nothing to do with humans, but not always. After all, there are a huge number of ethnic units, albeit numerically insignificant, that are part of the biocenoses in one biocenosis or another. Compared to these small nationalities or sometimes just tribes, modern and historical civilized ethnic groups are leviathans, but they are few, and, as history shows, they do not last forever. This is the basis on which we have built our primary classification: ethnoses that are part of a biocenosis, fit into the landscape and thus limited in their reproduction; this mode of existence is characteristic of many species of animals, as if they had stopped in their development. In zoology these groups are called persistents, and there is no reason not to apply this term to ethnic groups frozen at a certain point of development; and 2) ethnic groups intensively breeding, dispersing beyond their biocenosis and changing their primary biocenosis. The second state in the aspect of geography is called succession.
Ethnoses composing the first group are conservative both in their attitude to nature and in a number of other regularities. Here are a few examples.
INDIANS, SIBERIAN PEOPLES, AND THEIR LANDSCAPES
Most North American Indians of Canada and the prairie region lived as part of the biocenoses of North America before the arrival of Europeans. The number of people in the tribes was determined by the number of deer, and since this condition required the limitation of natural increase, wars of extermination between tribes were the norm of dwelling. The purpose of these wars was not to seize territories, to subdue neighbors, to expropriate their property, to dominate politically... No! The roots of this order go back to antiquity, and its biological purpose is clear. Since the quantity of prey is not limitless, it is important to ensure to yourself and your offspring the actual possibility to kill animals, and thus to get rid of the rival. These were not wars in our sense, they were struggles supporting a certain biocenosis. With such an approach to nature, naturally, there could be no question of making any changes to it, which were seen as an undesirable spoilage of nature, which was, according to the Indians, at the zenith of perfection.
Similarly, the agricultural tribes, the so-called Pueblo Indians, behaved in the same way, the only difference being that they substituted maize for the meat of wild beasts. They did not expand their fields, did not try to use river water for irrigation, and did not improve their techniques. They preferred to limit the growth of their population, letting disease take away the weak children and carefully raising the strong ones, who then died in skirmishes with the Navajos and Apaches. The way of farming is different, but the attitude to nature is the same. The only thing that remains unclear is why the Navajos did not adopt the farming skills of the Pueblo Indians and why they did not borrow the tactics of devastating raids from their neighbors. However, the Aztecs, who belonged to the Nahua group, migrated to the Mexican highlands from the 11th to the 14th century and changed the landscape and terrain very intensively. They built teocalli (landform variation), built aqueducts and artificial lakes (man-made hydrology), sowed maize, tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes and many other useful plants (floristic variation) and bred cochinel, an insect that produced a beautiful dark crimson dye (faunistic variation). In short, the Aztecs were modifying nature at a time when the Apaches and Navajos were protecting it.
One might assume that the hot climate of southern Mexico played a decisive role here, although it was not so different from that of the Rio Grande coast. However, in the heart of North America, in the Ohio Valley, grandiose earthworks have been discovered - ramparts, the purpose of which was unknown to the Indians themselves[37]. Apparently, once there lived a people who changed the nature, and climatic conditions did not interfere with it, as they do not interfere with the Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin.
At the same time, note that one of the Indian tribes, the Tlingits, as well as the Aleuts, practiced slavery and the slave trade on a large scale. Slaves accounted for up to one-third of the population of the American Northwest, and some Tlingit rich people had as many as 30-40 slaves.
Slaves were systematically sold and bought, used for dirty work and sacrifices at funerals and initiation rites; slaves served their masters as concubines[38]. But for all that, the Tlingit were a typical hunter-gatherer tribe, with a primitive type of appropriating rather than producing economy.
The situation was similar in northern Siberia. The peoples of Ugrian, Tunguska and Paleo-Asian groups by the character of life and economy were as if a fragment of the landscape, a completing component of biocenoses. More precisely, they "fit" into the landscape. A certain exception was made by the Yakuts, who, when moving north, brought their cattle breeding skills, brought horses and cows, organized hayfields and thus introduced changes into the landscape and biocenosis of the Lena valley. However, this anthropogenic succession only led to the formation of a new biocenosis, which was then maintained in a stable state until the arrival of the Russian explorers.
The Eurasian steppe presents a completely different picture. It would seem that here, where extensive nomadic cattle-breeding was the basis of life, the change of nature should not have taken place either. And in fact, the steppe was covered with mounds that changed its relief, herds of domestic animals that displaced wild ungulates, and from the deepest antiquity, fields of millet appeared in the steppes, albeit briefly,[39]. Primitive farming was practiced by the Huns, Turks, and Uigurs. Here one can see the constantly arising desire for the careful transformation of nature. Of course, quantitatively, compared to China, Europe, Egypt and Iran, it is insignificant and even fundamentally different from the impact on nature of agricultural peoples in that nomads tried to improve the existing landscape rather than transform it radically, but still we must classify Eurasian nomads as the second tier of our classification, just as we put there Aztecs but not Tlingits, even though class relations of the latter were incomparably more developed. However paradoxical these conclusions may seem at first sight, in order to obtain a scientific result of the study, we must maintain our principle of classification strictly consistent.
The internal contradiction that caused the decline of the nomadic culture was the same point that initially provided it with progressive development - the inclusion of the nomads in the geobiocenoses of the arid zone. The nomads' population size was determined by the amount of food, i.e. cattle, which, in turn, was limited by the area of pastures. During the period considered by us the population of steppe spaces fluctuated very insignificantly: from 300-400 thousand during the Hunnish time [40] up to 1300 thousand people during the heyday of the Mongol ulus [41], afterwards this figure decreased, but there are no exact demographic data for the 16th-17th centuries [42].
Contrary to popular belief, nomads were far less inclined to migrate than farmers. As a matter of fact, a farmer with a good crop receives a supply of provisions for several years and in a very portable form. It is enough to fill sacks with flour, load them on carts or boats, and stock up on weapons - then one can start on a long journey, confident that nothing but military force will stop him. This is how North American squatters and South African Boers, Spanish conquistadors and Russian explorers, Arab warriors of the first centuries of the Hijra, natives of Hijas, Yemen and Iran, and Hellenes, who pounded the Mediterranean Sea, moved.
The nomads, on the other hand, have it much harder. They have provisions in living form. Sheep and cows move slowly and must have constant habitual food. Even a simple change of understory fodder can cause a fall. And without livestock, the nomad immediately begins to starve. By plundering the defeated country, it is possible to feed the soldiers of the victorious army, but not their families. Therefore the Huns, Turks and Mongols did not take wives and children on distant campaigns. In addition, people get used to the nature around them, and do not tend to change their homeland for a foreign country without good reason. And when the need to move, they choose a landscape similar to the one they left.
That is why in 202 B.C. the Huns refused territorial gains in China, over whose army they had defeated. The motive was formulated as follows: "Having acquired the Chinese lands, the Huns would not be able to live on them anyway"[43]. And not only to China, but even to the Semirechye, where though the steppe, but the seasonal moisture system is different, the Huns did not migrate until the II-III centuries BC. And in the II-III centuries, they left their homeland and occupied the banks of the Huang He, Ili, Emba, Yaik, and Lower Volga. Why?
Numerous and unrelated data from a wide variety of sources suggest that the 3rd c. AD was very dry for the entire steppe zone of Eurasia. In northern China the transition from the subtropical jungles of the Qinling range to the Ordos and Gobi deserts was smooth. The thickets are replaced by meadows, meadows by steppes, steppes by semi-deserts, and finally, the barchans and cliffs of Beishan prevail. With increased moisture this system shifts to the north, and with decreased moisture to the south, and along with it herbivores and their herders move[44].
It is this movement of landscapes that the most erudite historian of the East, R. Grusse, failed to notice. Rightly polemicizing with the attempts to relate the great nomadic wars against China with the periods of drying up of the steppes, he writes, that the Chinese authors gave reasonable explanations of these collisions every time, based on the political situations inside China. In his opinion, nomadic invasions were more easily explained by the poor defense line of the Chinese Wall than by climatic fluctuations in the Great Steppe[45].
He is partly right; major military operations are always episodic, and their success depends on many reasons, where discerning the role of subsistence economics is not always possible. The constant raids of nomads on the axial farmers are not indicative either, for this is a disguised form of inter-ethnic exchange: in the raid the nomad reclaims what he loses in the bazaar through his simple-mindedness and lack of cunning. Both have nothing to do with migration.
But a closer study of events makes it easy to identify the gradual displacement of the civilian population, avoiding conflicts with sedentary neighbors, but seeking to water their cattle from streams that have not yet dried up. A similar situation arose before our eyes in the Sahel (the dry steppe south of the Sahara) and entailed a tragic disintegration of the Tuareg ethnos, but not a war[46]. It is true that here the matter was complicated by the fact that Western European capital converted the Tuareg economy from subsistence to commodity farming, which increased the trampling of pastures, but this principle is applicable to more ancient periods with adjustments.
If we study in sufficient detail the events on the northern border of China, i.e. in the area of the Great Wall, we can outline first the tendency of the Xiongnu retreat in the north (II century BC - I century AD), and then their advance to the south,
Then the Huns and Xianbi (ancient Mongols) settled the northern fringes of Shaanxi and Shanxi even south of the Wall. However, they did not penetrate into the Hunan humid areas.
It is very important to note that the initial penetration of nomads to the south was not connected with grandiose wars. It was not conquerors who came to China, but poor people who asked permission to settle on the banks of rivers to be able to water their cattle. Subsequently, the conquest of northern China occurred, but mainly at the expense of the Chinese tillers also gradually and discreetly leaving their fields in the north and retreating to the south, where there was enough rain. Thus, the nomads occupied the empty fields and turned them into pastures.
But already in the middle of the fourth century the opposite process was observed. A large tribal group of Teleuts, which included Uigurs among other tribes, migrated from the Gansu oases to the Jungaria and Khalkha; the same way the ancient Turks came, and in the 6th century formed the Great Kaganate, limited by the steppe zone.
What does it mean, only that the Great Steppe again became suitable for the nomadic cattle breeding. In other words, the grassy steppes were restored there instead of deserts, i.e. the climate zonality shifted to the north. But if so, then in northern China should have been restored a humid climate, convenient for the Chinese and destructive for the nomads. So the advantage in the war should have been on the side of the Southerners. And so it was. By the beginning of the 6th century, the nomadic Toba Empire that occupied the whole Huang He basin turned into the Chinese Wei Empire, where Xianbi clothes, manners and even language were forbidden under the penalty of execution. And after that, the natural Chinese exterminated the members of the ruling dynasties and created their own empire, the Sui, hostile to everything foreign and very aggressive.
Similar migrations took place at the same time on the western edge of the steppe. The northern Huns, having suffered a crushing defeat from the Xianbi in 155, retreated to the west. A part of them became entrenched in the mountainous area of Tarbagatai and subsequently (when the steppe began to moisten) took possession of Semirech. Another group migrated to the banks of the Lower Volga, where they encountered the mighty Alans. The Huns "conquered the Alans, wearying them by unceasing struggles" (Jordanes), and in 370 crossed the Don. At that time they were a formidable force, but by the middle of the fifth century they were defeated in the west by the Gepids and in the east by the Bulgars and disappeared. The natives triumphed over the newcomers.
The next wave of migration of the nomads came in the 10th century[47]. At that time the Pechenegs who moved from the shores of the Aral Sea, the Turks from modern Kazakhstan and the Kipchak Polovtsi from the Barabinsk steppe appeared in the Black Sea steppes. And Skova, it was not a conquest, but a gradual penetration in small groups, with skirmishes and raids replacing battles and campaigns.
A similar situation developed then in the Middle East. The Karluks from Jungaria migrated to Kashgar and Khotan oases fed by glacial and groundwater. The Seljuk Turkmen left their nomads in the Kyzyl Kum and infiltrated into Khorasan. There they organized themselves into a mighty force and defeated the regular army of Masud Ghaznavi in 1040. Then they captured Persia and, defeating the Byzantine emperor Roman Diogenes in 1071, took possession of all Asia Minor and Syria. And it is curious that they chose dry steppes and highlands for their settlements, resembling the landscapes of their abandoned homeland.
We do not see anything like that in the XIII century, when the Mongol koks carried their riders to the jungles of Annam and Burma, the Jordan Valley and the azure Adriatic. No migrations were associated with these campaigns and victories. The Mongols waged war in small, mobile, poorly armed, but perfectly organized units. Even when it was necessary to give the rulers of the western ulus some loyal troops, the central Mongol government allocated contingents from among the conquered tribes. Hulagu-khan was granted Naymans, and Batyi was given Mangyts and Jurchens (Hins) in the numbers of only several thousand men.
There is no reason to link the campaigns of Genghis' children and grandchildren with climatic fluctuations. Rather, we can think that in the steppe at that time there were optimal conditions for nomadic cattle breeding. There were enough horses for three armies, the number of cattle after the brutal inter-tribal war of 1200-1208 was easily recovered, the population grew to 1300 thousand people. Conversely, during the relatively peaceful time of the 16th century Mongolia lost its independence, and in the 17th century it completely lost its independence.
The reason of this weakening of the strongest power of the world at that time is reported by a 17th century Chinese geographer: "All Mongolian clans and tribes are scattered in search for water and good pastures, so that their armies are no longer united"[48]. This is indeed a migration, but how imperceptible to the world-historical scales was the eviction of the Mongolian nomads from the drying homeland to the harsh highlands of Tibet, to the banks of the multi-waters Volga and to the oases of Turkestan[49]. The last fragment of the nomadic culture, the Oirat Union, survived until 1758, because its economy was based on the mountain pastures of the Altai and Tarbagatai. But it, too, fell victim to the Manchus and the Chinese.
Thus, during the two-thousand-year period from the 3rd century B.C. till the 18th century A.D. we noted three periods of the steppes drying up, which each time was associated with the eviction of nomads to the outskirts of the Great Steppe and even beyond its borders. These resettlements did not have the character of conquests. The nomads moved in small groups and did not set themselves any goals other than satisfying the thirst of their animals and their own hunger.
On the contrary, when the steppe zone was moistened, the nomads returned to the country of their fathers, increased their four-legged wealth and the warlike policy associated with abundance, and the conquests were made for reasons of state and not at all for the acquisition of "living space". The nomads were no longer merely prostrate; their goal became domination.
The consideration of the tribes and peoples of the tropical belt will not bring us anything fundamentally new in comparison with the already known material, and therefore it is advisable to turn to the classical examples of the transformation of nature: Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. We will leave Europe aside for the time being, because our task is to look for a pattern, and it can only be discerned in complete processes.
ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE "GRACEFUL CRESCENT"
According to the research of E. Brooks, during the Virmian glaciation the Atlantic cyclones passed through the northern Sahara, Lebanon, Mesopotamia, Iran and reached India[50]. At that time the Sahara was a blooming steppe crossed by high-water rivers, full of wild animals: elephants, hippos, wild bulls, gazelles, panthers, lions and bears. Images of these animals, which still decorate the rocks of the Sahara and even Arabia, were made by members of the modern human species Homo sapiens. The gradual desiccation of the Sahara at the end of the 4th millennium B.C., associated with a shift in the direction of cyclones to the north, led the ancient inhabitants of the Sahara to turn their attention to the swampy Nile valley, where the "ancestors" of wheat and barley grew among the wild grasses on the valley edges[51]. Neolithic tribes mastered farming, and during the Copper Age the ancestors of the Egyptians began the systematic cultivation of land in the Nile floodplain[52]. The process ended with the unification of Egypt under the rule of the pharaohs. This power was based on the huge resources of the already transformed landscape, which did not undergo any fundamental changes afterwards, except, of course, architectural canals, dams, pyramids and temples, which, from our point of view, were anthropogenic landforms. However, changes on a smaller scale, such as the creation of the famous Fayyum oasis during the XII dynasty, took place until the XXI dynasty, after which Egypt became an arena of foreign invasions. Nubians, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans drew the wealth of Egypt, and the Egyptians themselves turned into fellahs, stubbornly maintaining the biocenosis created by their ancestors.
A similar picture can be observed in Mesopotamia, despite a number of physical and geographical differences. The lands formed from the sediments of the Tigris and Euphrates on the edge of the Persian Gulf were fertile, the channels and lagoons abounded with fish and waterfowl, date palms grew wild. But the development of this primitive Eden required hard work. Arable land had to be created by "separating water from land." The bapot had to be drained, the desert irrigated, and the rivers fenced off with dams[53]. These works were done by the ancestors of the Sumerians, who were simple cattle farmers who had no other means of livelihood. These people did not yet know writing, did not build cities, and had no practically substantial class division,[54] but they modified the landscape so thoroughly that succeeding generations benefited from the labors of their hands.
It should not be thought that primitive peoples have an advantage over civilized peoples in transforming nature. The valley of the Nile and the valley of the Euphrates were transformed again and again, until many Egyptian villages of the Ancient Kingdom era were under the desert sand and the Sumerian and Akkadian villages under the silt. The former pastures west of the Euphrates were already sparkling under the rays of the Baghdad Caliphate because of the salt crystals that had covered them. Babylon, the first city in the ancient world, had already been abandoned by the population after twenty centuries of prosperity from local resources. The history of land reclamation in China is even more revealing, which should be mentioned in more detail.
[The second half of Part Four will be in the next section # 9.]
NOTES
[1] Leroy Ladurie E. A history of climate since 1000.
[2] Gumilev D.N. Discovery of Khazaria. М., 1966.
[3] Gumilev L.N. Ancient Türks. С. 87-100.
[4] Kozlov V.I. About biologo-geographical concept of ethnic history // Voprosy of history. 1974. - 12. С. 72.
[5] Ibid. С. 80.
[6] Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. Vol. 37. С. 394.
[7] Kalesnik S.V. Fundamentals of General Earth Science. С. 359.
[8] Marx K., Engels F. Opus. Vol. 8. P. 568.
[9] Ibid. Т. 21. С. 32.
[10] Berg L.S. Nomogenesis. Pg., 1922. С. 180-181.
[11] Kalesnik S.V. Problems of geographical environment // Vestnik LSU. 1968. -12. С. 91-96.
[12] Kalesnik S.V. Problems of geographical environment // Vestnik LSU. 1968. -12. С. 91- 96
[13] Budyko M.I. On the causes of the extinction of some animals in the conceptualistocene // Izv. Ser. geographic. 1967. - 2. С. 28- 36.
[14] Dorst J. Before Nature Dies. М., 1968. С. 54- 55.
[15] Thierry O. Selected Works, Moscow, 1937. С. 207-208.
[16] Urlanis B. C. Population Growth in Europe. М., 1941. С. 40.
[17] Ibid. С. 57.
[18] The Archive of K. Marx and F. Engels. VOL. IV. M., 1939. С. 320.
[19] Grousset R. Bilan de l'histoire. P. 33.
[20] History of Diplomacy: In 5 vol. /Ed. by V. A. Zorin, A. A. Gromyko. A. Zorin, A. A. Gromyko. Т. 1. М., 1959. С. 269- 271.
[21] Berg L. S. Nomogenesis. С. 180-181.
[22] Kalesnik S.V. Fundamentals of General Earth Science. С. 455.
[23] Savitsky P.N. Geographical peculiarities of Russia (I). Prague, 1927. С.30-31.
[24] Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Western Mongolia and Uryankhay region: In 3 vols. Т. 2. 1926. С. 502.
[25] Gribanov L.I. Change of the southern border of the pine habitat in Kazakhstan // Vesti, agricultural science (Alma-Ata). 1965. - 6. С. 78-86.
[26] Rychkov Y.G. Anthropology and genetics of isolated populations (Ancient Pamir isolates).
[27] Sinha N.K. Banerjee A.C. History of India. М., 1954. С. 113-II 4.
[28] Ibid. С. 106-107.
[29] Ibid. С. 256.
[30] Okladnikov A.P. History of the Yakut ASSR: In 3 vols. Т. 1. М.. Л., 1955.
[31] Rudenko S.I. Ancient culture of the Bering Sea and Eskimo problem. С. 113.
[32] Seibutis A. Paleogeography, toponics and ethnogenesis // Izv. AS USSR. Ser.geographic. 1974. - 6. С. 40- 53.
[33] Kozlov V. I., Pokshishevsky V. V. Ethnography and geography //Soviet ethnography. 1973. - 1. С. 9-10.
[34] Saushkin K). G. About one polemic, in Russian // Bulletin of Moscow State University. 1965. - 6. С.79- 82. Cf: Kalesnik S.V. Some Results of New Debate on "Unified" Geography // Izv. 1965. - 3. С. 209-211.
[35] Geochor - is an area of the earth's surface, homogeneous in its ecological peculiarities, and differing by these peculiarities from the adjacent areas.
[36] Grumm-Grzhimailo G. E. The growth of deserts and destruction of pastures and cultural lands in Central Asia for historical period // Izv. VGO. 1933. Т. 65. Vol. 5.
[37] Morgan. L. G. Houses and Home Life of the American Natives. Л., 1934. С. 146-163.
[38] Okladnikov A.I. Neolithic and Bronze Age of Pribaikalia. III. (Glazkovskoe time). MOSCOW; L., 1955. С. 238-239
[39] Gumilev L.N. Hunnu. С. 147.
[40] Hatoun G. Zur Ue-tsi Frage /Ztechr. Disch. Morgenland. Ges. (Liezig). 1937. S. 306.
[41] Munkuev N. Ц. Notes about ancient Mongols //Mongolo-Tatars in Asia and Europe / Edited by CJI. Tikhvinsky. М., 1970.
[42] At the beginning of the 20th century. the population of Outer Mongolia was 900 thousands, but not more than 3 mln Mongols lived in the Inner Mongolia, on the territory of the former Tungut kingdom and Chjurchen empire Kin.
[43] Gumilev L.N. Hunnu. С. 66.
[44] Gumilev L.N. Huns in China. С. 10[45] Grousset R. Bilan de l'histoire. P. 283
[46] UNESCO Courier. 1975. May.
[47] Gumilev L.N. Search for an imaginary kingdom.
[48] Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Desert growth and destruction of pastures and cultural lands.... С. 437-454.
[49] Gumilev L.N. Climate changes and migration of nomads // Nature. 1972. - 4. С. 44-52.
[50] Gordon C. Ancient East in the light of the latest excavations. М., 1956. С.44-47.
[51] Ibid. С. 67.
[52] Ibid. С. 93.
[53] Ibid. С. 179-180.
[54] Ibid. С. 191-192.
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