Great Migration, from the Xiongnu exhibit in Henan Provincial Museum, by Zuo Guoshun
"While the story of agricultural societies was generally one of gradual consolidation, with city-states gradually giving way to multiple city-states and ultimately the emergence of centralized empires, pastoralist societies tended to stay more dispersed. They were nomadic and therefore difficult to conquer. Unlike farmers, the day-to-day existence of pastoralists involved riding horses, archery, hunting, and living off the land, all skills to make them formidable warriors. If a farmer’s land is conquered, so is the household, but herders moved animals to new lands. Nomadic herders only occasionally formed powerful coalitions, but if this process occurred, agriculturalist neighbors could be seriously threatened. The Scythians, for example, presented great challenges to the classical Greeks."
-China Versus the Barbarians: The First Century of Han-Xiongnu Relations by Jonathan Markley
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| Great Migration, from the Xiongnu exhibit in Henan Provincial Museum, by Zuo Guoshun. |
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