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"Primitives"? Surely not the Mongols!mike salovesh (T20MXS1@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU)Thu, 13 Oct 1994 10:01:00 CDT
nomads, has Dan Foss arse-around--but he, and Scott Holmes, did get ME wrong. It's probably my fault for being unclear: primitive is a word I was applying to a form of conflict, not to people in the first place. And when I mentioned the word "nomad" it was in context a reference to Julian Steward's view of one form of the hunting/ gathering way of life. I guess my choice of the word nomad (or nomadic) was a bad one and the source of misunderstanding. It just didn't occur to me that people would think I was talking about nomads when I meant non-sedentary, low population density, technologically simple hunter/gatherer bands such as what Steward presented as the Shoshone. OK, I agree "nomadic" was a bad choice when I might have said what I just did in the previous sentence. But the topic was "primitive war", not "war among the primitives". Neither the Mongols nor Asiatic steppe pastoralists fit the model I was trying to present--but they do raise interesting questions about territorial control. Which Dan Foss has answered neatly as far as the Mongols are concerned. I throw in the steppe pastoralists because it's always struck me that Kroeber's dictum about peasants,"part societies with part cultures", also fits them. Their way of life demanded interaction with both agriculturalists and cities. To try another dictum, that of Owen Lattimore, "the only pure pastoralist is a poor pastoralist". Rich ones go to live in cities. The poorest ones either die or go back to farming. But none of them are hunters and gatherers! mike salovesh <t20mxs1@mvs.cso.niu.edu>
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