The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and MankindWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World history
But in the less fertile and more seasonal lands outside these favoured
areas, there developed on the other hand a thinner, more active
population of peoples, the primitive nomadic peoples. In contrast with
the settled folk, the agriculturists, these nomads lived freely and
dangerously. They were in comparison lean and hungry men. Their herding
was still blended with hunting; they fought constantly for their
pastures against hostile families. The discoveries in the elaboration of
implements and the use of metals made by the settled peoples spread to
them and improved their weapons. They followed the settled folk from
Neolithic phase to Bronze phase. It is possible that, in the case of
iron, the first users were nomadic. They became more warlike with better
arms, and more capable of rapid movements with the improvement of their
transport. One must not think of a nomadic stage as a predecessor of a
settled stage in human affairs. To begin with, man was a slow drifter,
following food. Then one sort of men began to settle down, and another
sort became more distinctly nomadic. The settled sort began to rely more
and more upon grain for food; the nomad began to make a greater use of
milk for food. He bred his cows for milk. The two ways of life
specialized in opposite directions. It was inevitable that nomad folk
and the settled folk should clash, that the nomads should seem hard
barbarians to the settled peoples, and the settled peoples soft and
effeminate and very good plunder to the nomad peoples. Along the fringes
of the developing civilizations there must have been a constant raiding
and bickering between hardy nomad tribes and mountain tribes and the
more numerous and less warlike peoples in the towns and villages.
For the most part this was a mere raiding of the borders. The settled
folk had the weight of numbers on their side; the herdsmen might raid
and loot, but they could not stay. That sort of mutual friction might go
on for many generations. But ever and again we find some leader or some
tribe amidst the disorder of free and independent nomads, powerful
enough to force a sort of unity upon its kindred tribes, and then woe
betide the nearest civilization. Down pour the united nomads on the
unwarlike, unarmed plains, and there ensues a war of conquest. Instead
of carrying off the booty, the conquerors settle down on the conquered
land, which becomes all booty for them; the villagers and townsmen are
reduced to servitude and tribute-paying, they become hewers of wood and
drawers of water, and the leaders of the nomads become kings and
princes, masters and aristocrats. They too settle down, they learn many
of the arts and refinements of the conquered, they cease to be lean and
hungry, but for many generations they retain traces of their old nomadic
habits, they hunt and indulge in open-air sports, they drive and race
chariots, they regard work, especially agricultural work, as the lot of
an inferior race and class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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