Re: [tied] Re: Dravidian in Persia?

Dear Piotr,

   I am in full agreement and would go a bit further in positing that on the fringes of farming communities where rainfall is less or wide grassland is the ecological niche that families would exploit both economic areas for their common benefit, some sons on the farm and some on the prairie. As the prairie exploitation proved to be productive in terms of animal protein, trade in animals would be profitable and shift wealth to the herders.

   I suspect that there may have been more rainfall in the south of Iran from Khusistan through the Gedrosian desert and up the Indus Valley than anyone comprehends now, with plentiful forests and grasslands. This rich area could have been good for the herders in the uplands and the farmers in the lowlands. A mere 20" more rainfall than the present averages would enable this to occur. Deforestation for expanding crop areas, household fuel, bronze smelting etc. could have contributed to the desertification process, just as the Sahel region of modern Africa.

  As the area dried out there would have been movement of the inhabitants to more verdant areas, to the east being better because of lower population densities. This could have been paralleled in the Carpathian Basin as well as the Hungarian plains.

Best regards, John

In a message dated 9/21/01 3:17:15 PM Central Daylight Time, gpiotr@... writes:

. I hope you agree, as a historian, that pastoralism is not a "barbarian" transition stage (a la Lewis Morgan) between
mesolithic huntin'-&-gatherin' and agriculture, but a specialisation
that typically emerges within mixed economies where farming is
combined with livestock-raising. Nearly all pastoralists either
supplement their basic mode of subsistence with horticulture, or
develop some type of trade symbiosis with farming communities. I see
no reason why groups originating from an urban culture should not
have adopted a semi-nomadic way of life, turning pastoralists, if
there were sufficient economic or environmental incentives