Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

landscapes with people
Hungary within a month. Even at the more leisurely pace of 25 km a day the journey
could be accomplished comfortably within the year. The very nature of the steppe
encouraged movement. On a horse, with nothing but swaying grass extending to the
horizon, why not go riding forever onwards? The German traveller, J. G. Kohl, visiting
the Ukraine in 1841 nicely summed up the character of the steppe, which by this
time was beginning to come under cultivation:
It is a mystery how a man could think of settling as a farmer in the steppe whose whole
nature cries out against this abuse, whose whole land is movement, whose soil abhors
deep-rooted plants, favouring instead mobile cattle-breeding, where winds carry
everyÂthing before them far and wide and whose flatness invites everything to move
across it in haste.
J. G. Kohl, Russia and the Russians, in 1842 (English edn., 1843)
This desire to constantly move on is noted by other travellers writing of the steppes:
the sheer monotony of it all, the endless swathes of gently moving grass, and the great
open skies offer no distraction to onward movement, while the line of the horizon is
always there to entice the rider forward.
The steppe is not an easy environment in which to exist. Temperatures in the summer
can rise to 45 o C and in the winter fall to −45 o C, but with 200–500 mm of rain
a year sufficient rich grass grows to sustain flocks and herds through the spring and
summer months so long as the animals are kept constantly on the move. For the winters
there are the river valleys offering shelter and water, while bushes, some trees,
and the all-important reed, phragmites, provide fodder to overwinter the livestock.
Maintaining the well-being of the flocks and herds within the constraints of the
environment drove everything. For some it meant that the entire community had
to be constantly on the move as the animals roamed. But others, particularly those
living near mountains, could practise vertical transhumance: the men took the stock
to the mountain pastures while the rest of the family remained at a home base. These
were but two of the multitude of survival strategies that developed to make steppe
life possible. Yet at all times existence was precarious and the lifestyle could be forced
to change almost overnight.
The Ever-changing Climate
Comparatively minor changes of climate in an ecozone like the steppe, bringing
about only slight or short-term changes, can have a disproportionate effect on the
lives of pastoral nomads. Minor oscillations in climate normally occur in the region
on a fairly regular cycle, a decade or so of moderate weather being followed by one or
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