国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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 agricul-
turists 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 produc-
tivity 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 expan-
sion 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 (Torf-
schaf) 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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