The low population densities of the steppe have always puzzled me.
A cow produces 6-8 gallons of milk a day and a gallon has enough calories for an adult human. Pre modern cows may have produced half as much, but it still seems like each cow should have been able to support the caloric needs of around 3 humans, especially when you consider dairy cows are eaten once they're 6 years old or so. A modern cow would give you over 300 kgs of beef, each kg of beef 2500 calories. Even if we half that, that's still a lot of meat.
Even if we're generous and assume each cow-calf pair required 10 acres of pasture (NRCS says 2 acres), a square km of land (250 acres) could feed 25 cows. And their product could sustain 75 people. Let's halve that. We're still looking at a density of 37 people/sq km. This would give the steppe a population of hundreds of millions.
Now naturally grass takes time to regrow and humans have other needs than milk and beef. But considering:
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steppe nomads historically have been quite carnivorous,
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grass regrows infamously quickly, and
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pastoralists had access to other food sources like fish and game,
I'm surprised population densities were orders of magnitude below 37 people/sq km.
So I'm curious how many people per sq km did, say, Kazakh or Mongolian pastures actually support in pre modern times?
Thank you!
Exerpt from The World without us, by Alan Weisman (2007)
This is a fragment about the Maasai who are pastoralists (ranchers) and the relationship to the land, subsistence, and dominance.
...
Partois ole Santian heard the story often when he was growing up, wandering with his father’s cows west of Amboseli. He listens respectfully as Kasi Koonyi, the gray old man living with his three wives in a boma in Maasai Mara, where Santian now works, tells it again.
“In the beginning, when there was only forest, Ngai gave us bushmen to hunt for us. But then the animals moved away, too far to be hunted. The Maasai prayed to Ngai to give us an animal that wouldn’t move away, and He said wait seven days.”
Koonyi takes a hide strap and holds one end of it skyward, to demonstrate a ramp sweeping down to Earth. “Cattle came down from heaven, and everyone said, ‘Look at that! Our god is so kind, he sent us such a beautiful beast. It has milk, beautiful horns, and different colors. Not like wildebeest or buffalo, with only one color.’”
At this point, the story gets sticky. The Maasai claim all the cattle are meant for them, and kick the bushmen out of their bomas. When the bushmen ask Ngai for their own cattle to feed themselves, He refuses, but offers them the bow and arrow. “That’s why they still hunt in the forests instead of herding like we Maasai.”
Koonyi grins, his wide eyes glowing red in afternoon sun that flashes off the pendulous, cone-shaped bronze earrings that stretch his lobes chin-ward. The Maasai, he explains, figured out how to burn trees to create savannas for their herds; the fires also smoked out malarial mosquitoes. Santian gets his drift: When humans were mere hunter-gatherers, we weren’t much different from any other animal. Then we were chosen by God to became pastoralists, with divine dominion over the best animals, and our blessings grew.
The trouble is, Santian also knows, the Maasai didn’t stop there.
Even after white colonials took so much grazing land, nomadic life had still worked. But Maasai men each took at least three wives, and as each wife bore five or six children, she needed about 100 cows to support them. Such numbers were bound to catch up with them. In Santian’s young lifetime, he has seen round bomas become keyhole-shaped as Maasai appended fields of wheat and corn and began to stay in one place to tend them. Once they became agriculturali
... keep reading on reddit ➡I often see that in genetic studies (such as this one) the CHGs and the Iranian Neolithic peoples (which, please correct me if I'm wrong, descended mainly from Iranian HGs/Pastoralists) are treated as very close (almost identical) populations.
In some cases, the two terms seem to denote the same population, for example (citing from the Wikipedia page of CHGs):
>At the beginning of the Neolithic, at c. 8000 BCE, they were probably distributed across western Iran and the Caucasus, and people similar to northern Caucasus and Iranian plateau hunter-gatherers arrived before 6000 BCE in Pakistan and north-west India [...] before the advent of farming in northern India. They suggest the possibility that this "Iranian farmer–related ancestry [...] was [also] characteristic of northern Caucasus and Iranian plateau hunter-gatherers."
The 2 populations are also both usually associated with Y-DNA haplogroups J1 and J2, and genetic similarities have been found between a Mesolithic hunther-gatherer from the Hotu cave dating from 9,100-8,600 BCE and the CHG from Kotias Klde. Citing:
>The Iran_HotuIIIb individual belongs to the Y-chromosome haplogroup J (xJ2a1b3, J2b2a1a1) (an independent analysis yields J2a-CTS1085(xCTS11251,PF5073) probably J2a2). Then, both KK1 and Iran_HotuIIIb individuals share a paternal ancestor that lived approximately 18.7k years ago (according to the estimates of yfull). At the autosomal level it falls in the cluster of the CHG's and the Iranian Neolithic Farmers.
If they were in fact genetically close populations, was it only because of intermixing, or did they also share a common origin? Or, even, were they essentially the same ancestral population (i.e. not more diverse than groups of EEFs were to each other, or WHGs groups, or EHGs groups, etc)?
Thank you in advance
It seems to me that the nomadic pastoralist way of living, traveling around large areas grazing huge herds of sheep, goats, cattle etc could’ve developed two ways. Either, the ancestors of these pastoral nomads were among those who settled and took up agriculture during the Neolithic revolution, and then for whatever reason (probably because the land that they lived on wasn’t very fertile or fruitful) decided to abandon settled life and agriculture and focus solely on raising animals, leading them on a never ending quest for good pasture; or that the ancestors of pastoral nomads were bands and tribes of hunter gatherers that never settled down into agricultural societies, but over time acquired domesticated animals as a extra food source from adjacent cultures and societies that had settled and taken up agriculture, and over time these domestic animals became more important to their diets and hunting less so, and thus they adapted their lifestyle of following herds of wild game to following better pastures.
Which was it?
>there are also flowers and trees and animals grazing - it's weirdly pastoral and, well, alive for a From Software game
Envision an Arcadian scene in a glade or meadow. Some forest clearing full of animals, both normal and wonderful. A breeze in the trees. Perhaps a nearby brook flowing. All cleansed of angry spirits, hostile humans, and fauna corrupted by the Shattering madness, there is only peace on the air.
The Tarnished sits down while wearing the clothing of a satyr or faun, appearing a natural fixture in the harmonious landscape graced by rest. Toast gesture. A nearby circle of friends test new weapon skills under the setting sun. Sleep gesture.
On the morrow, as the rising dawn brings refreshment to the posies and daffodils, peonies and roses, they rise for a hunt and a ride on their well-fed and watered mounts.
An accord binds them, a never-ending curse haunts them... but here, they find rest.
Well, until they suddenly hear boss music and a random encounter comes trudging into the Wood...
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I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find information on this (or if anyone has the answer itself). I'm looking for resources like this page or this page, but for pastoralists (nomadic or otherwise).
I'm trying to get an understanding of what pastoralists do all day other than just stand around following their animals. For example, I've heard that animals are "rarely slaughtered", however this raises the question: when do they slaughter animals?
I feel a little foolish because I feel like this should be easy information to find out but for some reason all my google searches are unhelpful (mostly, they have to do with the legal and sociological problems facing pastoralists in the modern day).
https://preview.redd.it/qp9pungga8171.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=7670a576fdeeb887a2b7a9a74446848f271b4e00
Situation
My question related to a semi-nomadic band of mountain men, who keep tribes of goats and flocks of mountain sheep, who hunt and gather, and possibly do a little bit of primitive farming. They live north of the Alps, somewhere near the modern Swiss-French border. The tech level is about the 1400s, so they do trade for steel and tools, but otherwise they're so poor you could mistake them for a stone age people.
I presume they like to hang out around forested mountains, so they and the animals can shelter under the trees and so that they can get wood, fruit, and game from the woods. So long as they still have access to pasture, I expect this is fine?
There are about 300 of them in the clan, including men, women, children, and elderly. But this clan actually has a tradition of the adult women assisting in combat, so they have up to 200 combatants, with the elderly and children mostly being able to handle affairs at camp. The women are self-sufficient, even conducting a ritual where they spend months living on their own, and so many of them have axes and other tools of their own.
One day, with little warning, there is a land dispute in the early spring with another clan. So, with little time to prepare, they decide to go to war with that neighboring clan. They plan to drive them off if they attack and, if they can, to raid the enemy's villages, to dictate terms to them on where the borders are between their clans.
However, this clan is poor, not especially warlike, and has had little time to prepare... so about 90% of their weapons are tools. Of course, that includes hunting tools, such as slings, boar-spears, javelins and bows. Tools includes wood axes, machete or falchion like knives, plenty of working knives and daggers in general, and maybe a few mallets and hammers.
One of the few weapons they take time to make specifically for war, I expect, would be shields without metal rims or bosses, and some simple wool and leather armours (or perhaps they convert winter clothing into armour?). A few of the leaders own swords and iron helmets, the chieftain has a shirt of maile, and the clan smith has made himself a large war ax.
Question
So, what I'm wondering, is what kind of ratio of weapons might they have? How many wood axes and machetes might be a reasonable estimate, for a clan of pastoralist hunter gatherers? How many would be able to wield boar-spears and javelins? I'm not expecting a precise answer, since I don't know I could give enou
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Did their cockyness and big dick energy^TM work against non steppe pastoralists?
