National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

CHAPTER V.—MIGRATIONS.

Some important inferences may be safely drawn from what has been said in the preceding pages ; but, first, it is desirable to restate the following as premises :

The cultivation of cereals was discovered in Asia long before 8000 B. c.—before

the founding of the oldest settlement at the North Kurgan. The domestication of cattle, pigs, and sheep, and probably of the horse, was accomplished at Anau between 8000 and 6800 B. c. ; that is, after the founding of the North Kurgan settlement. Consequently, the agricultural stage preceded the nomadic shepherd stage in Asia.

It follows, therefore, that before domestication of animals was accomplished,

mankind in Central Asia was divided sharply into two classes—settled agriculturists on the one hand, and hunters who wandered within a limited range on the other hand. When the nomadic hunters became shepherds, they necessarily wandered within ever-widening limits as the seasons and pasturage required for increasing herds. The establishment of the first domestic breeds of pigs, long-horned cattle, large sheep, and horses, was followed by a deteriorating climate which changed these to smaller breeds. This climatic deterioration, by diminishing the productivity of the fully peopled oases, caused unrest and migrations of agriculturists. Its effects were not so acutely felt till much later by the nomad shepherds, because, being dependent on the grasses of a semi-arid region, they would be able for a long time to maintain their herds by extending the range of pasturage.

This process of expansion, together with branchings off, would in time cover

the plains of Central Asia from the Caspian eastwards with nomadic shepherds, until the principal races of peoples of Inner Asia had been raised to this stage of civilization. In considering the length of time needed to effect an overcrowding of the pasturage areas, we may not use the experience of the ranges of the Americas and Australia during the past half century ; for these were suddenly fully stocked, and breeding was forced, to supply food for half the world. In Asia the problem was simply to feed and clothe the family group. It is, therefore, probable that the pasture ranges of Asia sufficed for expansion and maintenance of herds through the first succeeding dry extreme of climate. It was during the following favorable climatic oscillation, lasting till into the III millennium B. c., that the great expansion of population of shepherd nomads and their herds over all Inner Asia took place.

Dr. Duerst identifies the second breed of sheep with the turbary sheep (Torfschaf) and the pig with the turbary pig (Torfschwein), which appear towards the end of the neolithic period in the Swiss lake-dwellings, and other neolithic stations of Europe, already as domestic animals, and unaccompanied by any transitional forms that might indicate local origins. These animals must therefore have been descendants of those domesticated on the oases of the Anau district. The turbary

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