Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups includehunter-gatherers,pastoral nomads (owninglivestock),tinkers andtrader nomads.[1][2] In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world as of 1995[update].[3]
Nomadic hunting and gathering—following seasonally available wild plants and game—is by far the oldest human subsistence method known.[4] Pastoralists raise herds of domesticated livestock, driving or accompanying them in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover.[5] Nomadism is also alifestyle adapted to infertile regions such assteppe,tundra, orice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources. For example, many groups living in the tundra arereindeer herders and are semi-nomadic, following forage for their animals.
Sometimes also described as "nomadic" are variousitinerant populations who move among densely populated areas to offer specialized services (crafts ortrades) to their residents—externalconsultants, for example. These groups are known as "peripatetic nomads".[6][7]
The English wordnomad comes from theMiddle Frenchnomade, fromLatinnomas ("wandering shepherd"), fromAncient Greekνομᾰ́ς (nomás, “roaming, wandering, esp. to find pasture”), which is derived from theAncient Greekνομός (nomós, “pasture”).[8][dubious –discuss]
Roma mother and child Nomads on theChangtang,Ladakh Rider inMongolia, 2012. While nomadic life is less common in modern times, the horse remains a national symbol in Mongolia.Beja nomads fromNortheast Africa
Nomads are communities who move from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. Most nomadic groups follow a fixed annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic people traditionally travel by animal, canoe or on foot. Animals include camels, horses and alpaca. Today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Some nomads may live in homes or homeless shelters, though this would necessarily be on a temporary or itinerant basis.[citation needed]
Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, and water. Aboriginal Australians,Negritos of Southeast Asia, andSan of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life. Pastoral nomads, on the other hand, make their living raising livestock such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, or yaks; these nomads usually travel in search of pastures for their flocks. TheFulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands ofNiger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may also move to raid settled communities or to avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers. They include theGadia Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Roma traders, Scottish travellers and Irish travellers.[citation needed]
Most nomads travel in groups of families, bands, ortribes. These groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs.[citation needed]
In the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements generally occur during the summer and winter. The winter destination is usually located near the mountains in a valley and most families already have fixed winter locations. Their winter locations have shelter for animals and are not used by other families while they are out. In the summer they move to a more open area in which the animals can graze. Most nomads usually move within the same region and do not travel very far. Since they usually circle around a large area, communities form and families generally know where the other ones are. Often, families do not have the resources to move from one province to another unless they are moving out of the area permanently. A family can move on its own or with others; if it moves alone, they are usually no more than a couple of kilometres from each other. The geographical closeness of families is usually for mutual support. Pastoral nomad societies usually do not have large populations.
One nomadic society, theMongols, gave rise to the largest land empire in history. The Mongols originally consisted of loosely organized nomadic tribes in Mongolia, Manchuria, and Siberia. In the late 12th century,Genghis Khan united them and other nomadic tribes to found theMongol Empire, which eventually stretched the length of Asia.[9]
The nomadic way of life has become increasingly rare. Many countries have converted pastures into cropland and forced nomadic peoples into permanent settlements.[10]
Modern forms of nomadic peoples are variously referred to as "shiftless", "gypsies", "rootless cosmopolitans", hunter-gatherers, refugees and urbanhomeless orstreet-people, depending on their individual circumstances. These terms may be used in a derogatory sense.
According toGérard Chaliand,terrorism originated in nomad-warrior cultures. He points toMachiavelli's classification of war into two types, which Chaliand interprets as describing a difference between warfare in sedentary and nomadic societies:[11]
There are two different kinds of war. The one springs from the ambition of princes or republics that seek to extend their empire; such were the wars of Alexander the Great, and those of the Romans, and those which two hostile powers carry on against each other. These wars are dangerous but never go so far as to drive all its inhabitants out of a province, because the conqueror is satisfied with the submission of the people... The other kind of war is when an entire people, constrained by famine or war, leave their country with their families for the purpose of seeking a new home in a new country, not for the purpose of subjecting it to their dominion as in the first case, but with the intention of taking absolute possession of it themselves and driving out or killing its original inhabitants.
Primary historical sources fornomadic steppe-style warfare are found in many languages: Chinese, Persian, Polish, Russian, Classical Greek, Armenian, Latin and Arabic. These sources concern both the truesteppe nomads (Mongols,Huns,Magyars andScythians) and also the semi-settled people likeTurks,Crimean Tatars andRussians, who retained or, in some cases, adopted the nomadic form of warfare.[12]
Hunter-gatherers (also known as foragers) move from campsite to campsite, followinggame and wildfruits andvegetables. Hunting and gathering describes early peoples' subsistence living style. Following the development of agriculture, most hunter-gatherers were eventually either displaced or converted to farming or pastoralist groups. Only a few contemporary societies, such as thePygmies, theHadza people, and someuncontacted tribes in theAmazon rainforest, are classified as hunter-gatherers; some of these societies supplement, sometimes extensively, their foraging activity with farming or animal husbandry.
Agropastoralism: This is when symbiosis is between segments or clans within anethnic group.
True Nomadism: This is when symbiosis is at the regional level, generally between specialised nomadic and agricultural populations.
The pastoralists are sedentary to a certain area, as they move between the permanent spring, summer, autumn and winter (or dry and wet season) pastures for theirlivestock. The nomads moved depending on the availability of resources.[15]
The first nomadic pastoral society developed in the period from 8,500 to 6,500 BCE in the area of the southernLevant.[16] There, during a period of increasing aridity,Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) cultures in theSinai were replaced by a nomadic, pastoral pottery-using culture, which seems to have been a cultural fusion between them and a newly-arrivedMesolithic people from Egypt (theHarifian culture), adopting their nomadic hunting lifestyle to the raising of stock.[17]
Trekboers in southern Africa adopted nomadism from the 17th century.[20]Some elements ofgaucho culture in colonial South America also re-invented nomadic lifestyles.[21]
One of the results of thebreak-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent political independence and economic collapse of itsCentral Asian republics has been the resurgence of pastoral nomadism.[22] Taking theKyrgyz people as a representative example, nomadism was the centre of their economy before Russian colonization at the turn of the 20th century, when they were settled into agricultural villages. The population became increasinglyurbanized after World War II, but some people still take their herds of horses and cows to high pastures (jailoo) every summer, continuing a pattern oftranshumance.[citation needed]
Since the 1990s, as the cash economy shrank, unemployed relatives were reabsorbed into family farms, and the importance of this form of nomadism has increased.[citation needed] The symbols of nomadism, specifically the crown of the grey felt tent known as theyurt, appears on the national flag, emphasizing the central importance of nomadism in the genesis of the modern nation ofKyrgyzstan.[23]
From 1920 to 2008, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased from over a quarter ofIran's population.[24] Tribal pastures were nationalized during the 1960s. The National Commission ofUNESCO registered the population of Iran at 21 million in 1963, of whom two million (9.5%) were nomads.[25] Although the nomadic population of Iran has dramatically decreased in the 20th century, Iran still has one of the largest nomadic populations in the world, an estimated 1.5 million in a country of about 70 million.[26]
InKazakhstan where the major agricultural activity was nomadic herding,[27]forced collectivization underJoseph Stalin's rule met with massive resistance and major losses and confiscation of livestock.[28] Livestock in Kazakhstan fell from 7 million cattle to 1.6 million and from 22 million sheep to 1.7 million. The resultingfamine of 1931–1934 caused some 1.5 million deaths: this represents more than 40% of the totalKazakh population at that time.[29]
Fulani herdsman inTogo. Spread throughout West Africa, theFulani are the largest nomadic group in the world.
In the 1950s as well as the 1960s, large numbers ofBedouin throughout the Middle East started to leave the traditional, nomadic life to settle in the cities of the Middle East, especially as home ranges have shrunk and population levels have grown. Government policies inEgypt andIsrael, oil production inLibya and thePersian Gulf, as well as a desire for improved standards of living, effectively led most Bedouin to become settled citizens of various nations, rather than stateless nomadic herders. A century ago, nomadic Bedouin still made up some 10% of the totalArab population. Today, they account for some 1% of the total.[30]
At independence in 1960,Mauritania was essentially a nomadic society. The greatSahel droughts of the early 1970s caused massive problems in a country where 85% of its inhabitants were nomadic herders. Today only 15% remain nomads.[31]
As many as 2 million nomadicKuchis wandered overAfghanistan in the years before theSoviet invasion, and most experts agreed that by 2000 the number had fallen dramatically, perhaps by half. A severedrought had destroyed 80% of the livestock in some areas.[32]
Niger experienced a seriousfood crisis in 2005 following erratic rainfall anddesert locust invasions. Nomads such as theTuareg andFulani, who make up about 20% of Niger's 12.9 million population, had been so badly hit by the Niger food crisis that their already fragile way of life is at risk.[33] Nomads inMali were also affected.[34] The Fulani of West Africa are the world's largest nomadic group.[35]
Pala nomads living inWestern Tibet have a diet that is unusual in that they consume very few vegetables and no fruit. The main staple of their diet istsampa and they drinkTibetan stylebutter tea. Pala will eat heartier foods in the winter months to help keep warm. Some of the customary restrictions they explain as cultural saying only thatdrokha do not eat certain foods, even some that may be naturally abundant. Though they live near sources offish andfowl these do not play a significant role in their diet, and they do not eatcarnivorous animals,rabbits or the wild asses that are abundant in the environs, classifying the latter ashorse due to their cloven hooves. Some families do not eat until after the morning milking, while others may have a light meal with butter tea andtsampa. In the afternoon, after the morning milking, the families gather and share a communal meal of tea,tsampa and sometimesyogurt. During winter months the meal is more substantial and includes meat.Herders will eat before leaving the camp and most do not eat again until they return to camp for the evening meal. The typical evening meal may include thin stew withtsampa, animal fat and driedradish. Winter stew would include a lot of meat with eithertsampa or boiled flourdumplings.[36]
Nomadic diets inKazakhstan have not changed much over centuries. The Kazakh nomad cuisine is simple and includes meat, salads, marinated vegetables and fried and bakedbreads.Tea is served in bowls, possibly with sugar ormilk. Milk and otherdairy products, likecheese andyogurt, are especially important.Kumys is a drink offermented milk.Wrestling is a popular sport, but the nomadic people do not have much time for leisure. Horse riding is a valued skill in their culture.[37]
Ann Marie Kroll Lerner states that the pastoral nomads were viewed as "invading, destructive, and altogether antithetical to civilizing, sedentary societies" during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to Lerner, they are rarely accredited as "a civilizing force".[38]
Allan Hill and Sara Randall observe that western authors have looked for "romance and mystery, as well as the repository of laudable characteristics believed lost in the West, such as independence, stoicism in the face of physical adversity, and a strong sense of loyalty to family and to tribe" in nomadic pastoralist societies. Hill and Randall observe that nomadic pastoralists are stereotypically seen by the settled populace in Africa andMiddle East as "aimless wanderers, immoral, promiscuous and disease-ridden" peoples. According to Hill and Randall, both of these perceptions "misrepresent the reality".[39]
Peripatetic minorities are mobile populations moving among settled populations offering acraft ortrade.[40]
Each existing community is primarily endogamous, and subsists traditionally on a variety of commercial or service activities. Formerly, all or a majority of their members were itinerant, and this largely holds true today. Migration generally takes place within the political boundaries of a single state these days.
Each of the peripatetic communities is multilingual, it speaks one or more of the languages spoken by the local sedentary populations, and, additionally, within each group, a separate dialect or language is spoken. They are speaking languages ofIndic origin and many are structured somewhat like anargot or secret language, with vocabularies drawn from various languages. There are indications that in northern Iran at least one community speaksRomani language, and some groups in Turkey also speak Romani.
In Afghanistan, the Nausar worked as tinkers and animal dealers. Ghorbat men mainly madesieves, drums, and bird cages, and the women peddled these as well as other items of household and personal use; they also worked as moneylenders to rural women. Peddling and the sale of various goods was also practiced by men and women of various groups, such as the Jalali, the Pikraj, the Shadibaz, the Noristani, and the Vangawala. The latter and the Pikraj also worked as animal dealers. Some men among the Shadibaz and the Vangawala entertained as monkey or bear handlers and snake charmers; men and women among the Baluch were musicians and dancers. The Baluch men were warriors that were feared by neighboring tribes and often were used as mercenaries. Jogi men and women had diverse subsistence activities, such as dealing in horses, harvesting,fortune-telling,bloodletting, andbegging.[citation needed]
In Iran, the Asheq of Azerbaijan, the Challi of Baluchistan, the Luti of Kurdistan, Kermānshāh, Īlām, and Lorestān, the Mehtar in the Mamasani district, the Sazandeh of Band-i Amir and Marv-dasht, and the Toshmal among the Bakhtyari pastoral groups worked as professional musicians. The men among the Kowli worked as tinkers, smiths, musicians, and monkey and bear handlers; they also made baskets, sieves, and brooms and dealt in donkeys. Their women made a living from peddling, begging, and fortune-telling.
The Ghorbat among the Basseri were smiths and tinkers, traded in pack animals, and made sieves, reed mats, and small wooden implements. In the Fārs region, the Qarbalband, the Kuli, and Luli were reported to work as smiths and to make baskets and sieves; they also dealt in pack animals, and their women peddled various goods among pastoral nomads. In the same region, the Changi and Luti were musicians and balladeers, and their children learned these professions from the age of 7 or 8 years.[citation needed]
The nomadic groups in Turkey make and sell cradles, deal in animals, and play music. The men of the sedentary groups work in towns as scavengers and hangmen; elsewhere they are fishermen, smiths, basket makers, and singers; their women dance at feasts and tell fortunes. Abdal men played music and made sieves, brooms, and wooden spoons for a living. The Tahtacı traditionally worked as lumberers; with increased sedentarization, however, they have taken to agriculture and horticulture.[citation needed]
Little is known for certain about the past of these communities; the history of each is almost entirely contained in their oral traditions. Although some groups—such as the Vangawala—are of Indian origin, some—like the Noristani—are most probably of local origin; still others probably migrated from adjoining areas. The Ghorbat and the Shadibaz claim to have originally come from Iran and Multan, respectively, and Tahtacı traditional accounts mention eitherBaghdad orKhorāsān as their original home. The Baluch say they[clarification needed] were attached as a service community to theJamshedi, after they fled Baluchistan because of feuds.[41][42]
The Bukat people of Borneo in Malaysia live within the region of the riverMendalam, which the natives callBuköt. Bukat is anethnonym that encapsulates all the tribes in the region. These natives are historically self-sufficient but were also known to trade various goods. This is especially true for the clans who lived on the periphery of the territory. The products of their trade were varied and fascinating, including: "...resins (damar,Agathis dammara; jelutong bukit, Dyera costulata, gutta-percha,Palaquium spp.); wild honey and beeswax (important in trade but often unreported); aromatic resin from insence wood (gaharu, Aquilaria microcarpa); camphor (found in the fissures ofDryobalanops aromaticus); several types of rotan of cane (Calamus rotan and other species); poison for blowpipe darts (one source isipoh oripu: see Nieuwenhuis 1900a:137); the antlers of deer (the sambar,Cervus unicolor); rhinoceros horn (see Tillema 1939:142); pharmacologically valuable bezoar stones (concretions formed in the intestines and gallbladder of the gibbon,Seminopithecus, and in the wounds of porcupines,Hestrix crassispinus); birds' nests, the edible nests of swifts (Collocalia spp.); the heads and feathers of two species of hornbills (Buceros rhinoceros, Rhinoplax vigil); and various hides (clouded leopards, bears, and other animals)."[43] These nomadic tribes also commonly hunted boar with poison blow darts for their own needs.
^"Subsistence".explorable.com.Archived from the original on 2021-04-26. Retrieved2019-02-24.
^Homewood, Katherine; Rodgers, W.A. (1988), "Pastoralism, conservation and the overgrazing controversy",Conservation in Africa, Cambridge University Press, pp. 111–128,doi:10.1017/cbo9780511565335.009,ISBN978-0521341998
^Rao, Aparna (1987).The concept of peripatetics: An introduction. Cologne: Bohlau Verlag. pp. 1–32.Archived from the original on 2016-06-29. Retrieved2017-09-10.[...] peripatetics, [...] endogamous nomads who are largely non-primary producers or extractors, and whose principal resources are constituted by other human populations [...].
^Fouché, Leo (1936)."V: Foundation of the Cape Colony, 1652–1708". InWalker, Eric Anderson (ed.).The Cambridge History of the British Empire. Vol. VIII: South Africa, Rhodesia and the Protectorates. Cambridge: CUP Archive (published 1963). p. 136. Retrieved2016-11-16.[...]van der Stel recognised the roving tendency among the colonists and tried to arrest it. A proclamation of 1692 illustrated his fears: it stated that colonists were making a living by grazing cattle and bartering in the interior [...]. This seems clear proof that thetrekboer, as a distinct type, was coming into existence during the time of van der Stel. [...] Generation after generation of these hardy and self-reliant nomads pushed the frontiers of civilisation further into the wilderness.
^Slatta, Richard W. (1 January 1992).Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (reprint ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 189.ISBN9780803292154.Archived from the original on 23 April 2023. Retrieved23 April 2023.[...] the early nineteenth century witnessed 'the nomadgaucho of the colonial period converted into the loyalgaucho of theestancia.'
^Moussavi-Nejad, Ebrahim (December 2003). "Censuses of Pastoral Nomads and Some General Remarks about the Census of Nomadic Tribes of Iran in 1998".Nomadic Peoples.7 (2):24–35.doi:10.3167/082279403781826328.
^Gmelch, S B (October 1986). "Groups That Don't Want In: Gypsies and Other Artisan, Trader, and Entertainer Minorities".Annual Review of Anthropology.15 (1):307–330.doi:10.1146/annurev.an.15.100186.001515.ISSN0084-6570.
Kradin, Nikolay (2004). "Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective". InAlternatives of Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin,A.V. Korotayev,Dmitri Bondarenko, V. de Munck, and P.K. Wason (pp. 274–288).Vladivostok: Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; reprinted in: The Early State, its Alternatives and Analogues. Ed. byLeonid Grinin et al. (pр. 501–524). Volgograd: Uchitel'.
Kradin, Nikolay N. (2003). "Nomadic Empires: Origins, Rise, Declin"e. InNomadic Pathways in Social Evolution. Ed. by N.N. Kradin,Dmitri Bondarenko, and T. Barfield (pp. 73–87). Moscow: Center for Civilizational Studies,Russian Academy of Sciences.
Beall, Cynthia and Goldstein, Melvyn (May 1993). "Past becoming future for Mongolian nomads"National Geographic Magazine
Vigo, Julian (2005). "Nomadic Sexualities and Nationalities: Postcolonial Performative Words and Visual Texts".Inscriptions in the Sand Famagusta: Eastern Mediterranean University Press.
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