Golden Peter B. An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples

Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992. — xiv; 483 p. — (Ethnogenesis and state-formation in medieval and early modern Eurasia and the Middle East). — ISBN: 3-447-03Z74-X.We shall be dealing with groups that were (and sorne still are) primarily pastoral nomads. That is, their fundamental economie activity was livestock production which was carried out through the purposeful seasonal movement of livestock and their human masters (living in portable dwellings) over a series of already delineated pasturages in the course of a year. This was not aimless wandering in search of grass and water, as the cliché of the Chinese sources would have it. The ecology of a given group's particular zone determined, to a considerable extent, the composition and size of its herds and the attendant human camping units (usually 8-12 farnily units). This is a form of economie production that appears to have developed out of sedentary animal husbandry among groups that practiced both agriculture and stockbreeding. Most pastoral nomadic societies of Eurasia continued to practice sorne form of at least vestigial agriculture.