Early Pastoral Nomads: Scythian Expansion East

1^st Millennium BCE

Pit-grave (Yamnaya) culture

Agro-pastoral watershed

3500-2500 BCE

Farming bases in river valleys

Copper tools

Herding on steppe

Secondary products revolution

Cattle and sheep raised for milk wool and hides

Cattle and horses provide transport

Horseback riding, ca. 3500 BCE

Ox carts, 2900 BCE

Spread of Agro-Pastoralism on Steppe Highway

Afansievo, 3000-2500 BCE

Europoids

Off-shoot of Yamnaya?

Colonizers of Xinjiang oases?

Transportation Revolution

Wagon invented in W. Asia, ca. 3300-3100 BCE

Yamnaya culture, ca. 2900 BCE

Wagon tracks discovered at Chinese Erlitou sites

Dated ca. 1900-1600 BCE

Pulled by ox or person?

Chariot invented in Inner Asia

Invented, ca. 2100 BCE

Andronovo spread widely by 1500 BCE

Fortified settlements

Agro-pastoral economy

Bronze

Chariot and horse

34 kg (1/20^th weight of war cart)

Narrow gauge

8-12 spokes

Military value

Speed

Frees hands

Spread to Egypt

Building Pharaoh’s Chariot, Films on Demand

Building Pharaoh's Chariot, PBS Nova, © 2013

Route of transmission east to China is unknown

Closest sites in modern NW China

Shang Dynasty China Chariot

Appears fully formed with horse, 1200 BCE

Resembles Inner Eurasian chariots

18-26 spokes

Axle under middle of box

Process of socio-political adaptation

Prestige vehicle

Shang times, ca. 1200 BCE

Modern analogy: Rolls Royce

Military vehicle

Zhou, 850-300 BCE

Massed chariot warfare

Modern analogy: Tank

Chinese Chariots Revealed, PBS Nova, © 2017

Prestige vehicle again

After 250 BCE

Horseback Riding/Cavalry Warfare

Early agro-pastoralists, from 3500-1000 BCE

Long period of experimentation

Breeding

Training

Equipment

Scythians, ca. 800 BCE

Cavalry warfare

Bridle

Bit

Saddle

Composite bow

Spread of Bronze Metallurgy on Steppe Highway

Afansievo

3000-2500 BCE

Agro-pastoralists

Bronze metallurgy

Spread of Bronze to China

Earliest bronze

Majiayao

ca. 2800 BCE

Small knife

Machang

ca. 2500 BCE

Knife and awl

Qijia (Ch’i-chia) in E. Gansu

ca. 2000 BCE

50 small objects

Iron Metallurgy

Hittite invention, Anatolia

13th c. BCE

Bactria (Silk road oasis)

ca. 1000 BCE

Tuva (S. Siberia/N. Mongolia steppe)

8th c. BCE

N. Ordos (China’s steppe borderlands)

ca. 700 BCE

Xinjiang (Silk road oases)

10th-7th c. BCE

Stark, "Nomads and Networks: Elites and Their Connections to the Outside World."

1. According to Stark, what types of objects were buried in the kurgan tombs of Scythian/Saka elites in Pazyryk and other places in modern Kazakhstan and Southern Siberia?

• Why were exotic luxuries “necessities of the political culture of the nomadic elite” (p. 109)?

2. According to Stark, what were the modes of transmission objects of such value come into the hands of early Scythian/Saka elites? (pp. 111-113)

• Trade, Is there much evidence for this?
• Diplomatic gift exchanges
• “Razzias” or raiding
• Migration of artisans (p. 116)

3. What are the modes of transmission from the Achaemenid Empire in the west? What is Stark’s evidence?

• What are the modes of transmission from the India in the south? What is Stark’s evidence?
• What are the modes of transmission from the China in the east? What is Stark’s evidence?

4. Going back to David Christian’s “Silk Roads” or “Steppe Roads” model from the previous reading, does Stark’s chapter seem to support the idea that one or the other was more important in the transmission of objects and artistic motifs in the first millennium BCE?