'Civilised' & 'Barbarian'

The lecture today focused on what distinguished the civilisations of "Outer Eurasia" from the peoples of "Inner Eurasia". "Outer Eurasia" being the land close to the sea where conditions were right for agricultural success and thus civilisation, and "Inner Eurasia" being the large expanse of land away from the sea, where the ecology rendered agriculture far more difficult.

The major sites of civilisation were:

• Mesopotamia (Tigris & Euphrates Rivers)
• Indus Valley (Harappa & Mahenjo-daro, on Indus River)
• China (Yellow & Yangzi River regions)
• Egypt (Nile River Valley)

There are several explanations for where the origin of these archaic states lies:

• Capital accumulation due to new technologies, which resulted in class stratification and class struggle

• The rise of strong bureaucracies due to the need to organise large-scale irrigation projects
• Population increase and pressure in a circumscribed (or geographically insulated) environment leading to militarism, which in turn leads to state formation
• The need to control redistributional exchange
• The process of interacting with and responding to challenges from others, especially via long-distance trade

The Ecology of Inner Eurasia was however vastly different from the of "Outer Eurasia". Where "Outer Eurasia" had abundant water, plenty of rainfall and moderate climates, Inner Eurasiaas marked by limited rainfall, great fluctuations in temperature and restricted sunlight (it was "the land where the killing frosts come early"). There were three great areas of land in outer Eurasia: the tundra, the taiga (forest), and the steppe. The tundra was frozen and not possible for human settlement, the taiga was cold and survival here was difficult, but the steppe had massive grasslands going for miles. The water resources of steppe were generally concentrated in rivers, lakes or snow. This lead to oasis agriculture & nomadic pastoralism.

Because nomads did not defend territory, or land, so much as stock, the keys to their power were horses & mobility. Most of the horse population was controlled by pastoral nomads and thus, to the "civilised" states, they were difficult to defend against, hence the big walls like the Great wall of China. There could be peaceful interaction between the two, they traded with one another: the settled agricultural communities wanted horses and the nomadic communities wanted grain. There could also be periods of conflict between them, owing to the fact that the settled communities always wanted to expand.

Famous groups of Nomads:

• Scythians: 7th-3rd centuries BCE. They lived in the North Pontic steppe, north of the Black Sea and neighboured the greek civilisation.
• Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu): 3rd century BCE - 2nd century CE. They lived in Mongolia or eastern Eurasia.

The trade-raid syndrome was when these 2 powerful confederational tribal communities had periods of peaceful trade interrupted by conflict for political power.