Nomads, then and now
Today's New York Times has a piece by Ilan Greenberg ( accessible without registration via the IHT) on how the ancient social order of nomadic societies in central Asia weighs upon their present political realities: Scientists are discovering that nomadic cultures are flexible, switching between transient and more sedentary ways of life, and assimilating and inventing new ideas and technologies. Nomads created durable political cultures that still influence the way those countries interact with outsiders or negotiate internal power struggles. While reading this, I was reminded of Mark Whittow's observations about the Eurasian steppe peoples in his 1996 book, The Making of Byzantium . While noting that "the potential of steppe nomad states was enormous," Whittow writes that social underpinnings based on small tribes and familial connections didn't do much for the stability of those states: The closer to its roots a nomadic society was, the more likely it was to ...