Page 180 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

inner eurasia 999

grain-based agriculture, bypassed most of Inner Eurasia. 4000 BCE, people began to exploit not just those prod-
So, while agriculture spread in much of Outer Eurasia, ucts of livestock that could be used after an animal’s
laying the foundations for several great agrarian civiliza- slaughter (its skin, bones, and meat), but also the ani-
tions, in Inner Eurasia agriculture made hardly any head- mal’s secondary products—products such as its wool,
way for many thousands of years. Instead, Neolithic tech- blood, milk, and traction power—that could be used
nologies entered Inner Eurasia in the less familiar form while it was still alive. These techniques raised the effi-
of pastoralism. ciency with which domesticated animals could be ex-
ploited, making it possible to build entire lifeways around
Pastoralism the use of domesticated animals such as sheep, cattle,
Unlike agricultural lifeways, which are dominated by do- goats, horses, camels, and yaks. Pastoralism proved an
mesticated plants, pastoral lifeways are dominated by the effective way of exploiting the vast grasslands that
exploitation of domesticated livestock. Pastoralism be- stretched from Hungary to Manchuria, and, for several
came a viable lifeway as a result of a series of innovations thousand years, it was the dominant lifeway throughout
that the archaeologist Andrew Sherratt has described as this region. The earliest evidence of pastoralism comes
the secondary-products revolution. Beginning around from the Sredny Stog cultures of eastern Ukraine, which

The peoples of Inner Eurasia used a variety of animals for transport. This photo from the
early twentieth century shows camels loaded with thorns for fodder.