HFC F2016: Nomads, and the Nomadic Lifestyle Inception of the City

This course, the History and Form of Cities, was conceived and developed by Professor Brigitte Knowles and utilizes text, research, and work compiled by her for previous iterations of the course. After teaching with Prof Knowles for several years it is my honor to kick off this semester, and the latest edition of the course benefiting from her extensive work, guidance, and encouragement.

On to our first lecture (as always this material and the material on blackboard should be reviewed):

Image of nomadic man and his herd, part of this photo collection group on flickr

Why do we need a history of city development ? There are clearly many reasons. The role of cities in the development of the history of mankind has been a constant one. Cities have been standard bearers for most of the decisive changes in the evolution of ideas and in the making of history. Over 5000 years separate us from the "Urban Revolution" or over 180 generations; however, neither the purpose nor the intellectual structure of cities has changed.

Image via P A U L Photography, flickr

The first cities were small enclosures with a limited number of inhabitants. These early cities were limited in concept and reflected man's vision of a limited universe, that similar to his city, sheltered him. Today, we perceive of the universe as unbounded, though not necessarily infinite. Similar to our conception of the universe today, the city appears unbounded, not clearly delineated. As we study the evolution of cities, we are also studying the evolution of ideas. Cities are the repositories of intellectual ideas, and these ideas are transmitted from generation to generation. A history of cities is a study of mankind and in particular, the study of the intellectual evolution of man. Cities are social products; economic conditions and motivations are secondary.
Why did early man develop cities ? Was it because they were lonely, bored in their isolation or sensed that as a group, they had more power and protection. Most likely, it was probably all of those reasons. As we progress through the evolution of cities, we see that cities formed out of a need for protection, a desire for worship, a need to engage in politics, attraction through the power of kings, and a necessity for industry, trade and colonial expansion. Based on the reason for the development, the physical form of the city was different in each case. Location of the city was also based on the logic or reason for its inception and existence.
Many historians attribute the first origins of cities to be the burial place of either the individual or the collective human being. Early man was nomadic in nature and the place he in fact paused permanently for the first time was in the grave. One of the first definitions of a city is that is that it must be a place of permanence. Aldo Rossi, a modern Italian architect offers a definition of the city as not only a place of permanence but also a place or locus of memory. If one accepts this definition, then clearly the burial ground can be interpreted to be a city, for it is a place of permanence, and a place which marks for the living the remembrance of the dead. The first city at least in the eyes of the historian is the grave, marking permanence and memory.
No matter where cities developed or for whatever reason, man had to establish a relationship between man and nature. For the first three thousand years, man was deeply embedded in nature. His experience with nature was one that was not based on abstractions but on a relationship in which the phenomena of nature was not seen as mere symbolism but as reality. Early man viewed nature as if nature was a divinity. The world and all the phenomena of nature was a mystery . Early man did not understand why it rained or snowed, the purpose of droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes or why the various seasons occurred and along with the seasons, the unique characteristics identifying each of these seasons. However, he very clearly understood that he was at the mercy of nature and that in order to survive he had to respect nature as if nature was a divinity. Early man felt that God or Gods and nature were intertwined and that it was necessary to pacify the wraiths of nature or the gods by means of worship. This first relationship that man had with nature is historically referred to as a Man to Thou Relationship. In this relationship, early man believed Nature to be the embodiment of God. Symbolism was concrete and came to life in visible form and not through analogies. Man's relationship with nature was permeated with the sense that nature and man were intimately interwoven.
Early man is often referred to as being primitive. When a society is viewed as primitive, this society is often defined as being culturally naive, crude or undeveloped. Though this may be true to some extent, primitive in the context of an evolutionary study of cities and the societies that formulated these cities means that these societies lacked a formalized framework of literacy. Though these societies did have a framework for communication, the thoughts or ideas that they were able to convey to one another were very simplistic in nature. Imagine that you are a writing a letter to someone. This letter could be quite complex or it could be absolutely the opposite, a letter of complete simplicity. The letter could say " Hello! How are you ? Please come to my party ! Or the letter or document could be quite complex, perhaps defining the principles and proof of the Pythagorean theorem which is a theorem in geometry - the square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle equals the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides . This is clearly a very complex theorem and its proof formulated by the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras is even more complex. The first message is so simple that we do not have to write it down in order to remember it. The second message or the theorem is not only complex and requires, particularly in its proof, for us to write it down not only to remember it but also to fully understand its implications.

Link to image and article on nomadic life + subsistence living interacting with the modern world, article

Mushtaq, Sheikh (2008 Dec 29) Fakes, neglect wearing thin Kashmir's pashmina trade. Reuters India Edition

The difference between the two messages is the difference or distinction between a society which can only convey simple messages by word of mouth or a society that has complex ideas and theorems and wishes to convey these complex ideas to the next generations. One is an illiterate society, the other is a literate society. Urban historians feel that a society must be literate before a collective settlement pattern can be identified as a city. Pre- urban societies are societies which are pre-literate. Such societies are referred to as Folk Societies.

Generic characteristics of Folk Societies are:

• Small homogenous group of people usually nomadic in nature
• All of their human energy is devoted to collecting food for daily usage
• No ability to store food for later usage
• No labor specialization
• No class distinction
• Pre-urban
• Pre-literate

A great scientific investigator, J. J. Bronowski in a book titled the Ascent of Man describes his immemorable experience living with a nomadic tribe in Bakhtiari in what was then called Persia. This nomadic tribe, though in existence today, very much resembles the nomadic tribes of early, primitive man. The following are his observations:
"Everything in nomad life is immemorial." The Bakhtiari have always traveled alone, quite unseen. Like other nomads, they think of themselves as a family, the sons of a single founding father. (In the same way the Jews used to call themselves the children of Israel or Jacob.) The Bakhtiari take their name from a legendary herdsmen of Mongol times, Bakhtyar. The legend of their own origin that they tell of him begin, And the father of our people, the hill-man, Bakhtyar, came out of the fastness of the southern mountains in ancient times. His seed were as numerous as the rocks on the mountains, and his people prospered. The biblical echo sounds again and again as the story goes on. The patriarch Jacob had two wives, and had worked as a herdsman for seven years for each of them Compare the patriarch of the Bakhtiari: The first wife of Bakhtyar had seven sons, fathers of the seven brother lines of our people. His second wife had four sons. And our sons shall take for wives the daughters from their father's brothers' tent, lest the flocks and tents be dispersed. As with the children of Israel, the flocks were all important; they are not out of the mind of the storyteller (or the marriage counselor) for the moment.
Before 10,000 BC nomad people used to follow the natural migration of wild herds. But sheep and goats have no natural migration. They were first domesticated about ten thousand years ago- only the dog is an older camp follower that that. And when man domesticated them, he took on the responsibility of nature; the nomad must lead the helpless herd.

Hilda, Joy May. Link to photo essay on Nomadic culture, weaving, textiles, The World of Beduin Weaving

The role of women in nomad tribes is narrowly defined. Above all, the function of women is to produce men-children; too many she-children are an immediate misfortune, because in the long run they threaten disaster. Apart from that, their duties lie in rearing food and clothes. For example, the women among the Bakhtiari bake bread - in the biblical manner, in unleavened cakes on hot stoves. But the girls and the women wait to eat until the men have eaten. Like the men, the lives of the women center on the flock. They milk the herd, and they make a clotted yoghourt from the milk by churning it in a goatskin bag on a primitive wooden frame. They have only the simple technology that can be carried on daily journeys from place to place. The simplicity is not romantic; it is a matter of survival. Everything must be light enough to be carried, to be set up every evening and to be packed away again every morning. When the women spin their simple, ancient devices, it is for immediate use, to make the repairs that are essential on the journey - no more.
It is not possible in the nomad life to make things that will not be needed for several weeks. They could not be carried. And in fact the Bakhtiari do not know how to make them. If they need metal pots, they barter them from settled peoples or from a caste of gypsy workers who specialize in metals. A nail, stirrup, a toy or a child's bell is something that is traded from outside the tribe. The Bakhtiari life is too narrow to have time or skill for specialization. There is no room for innovation, because there is not time, on the move, between evening and morning, coming and going all their lives, to develop a new device or a new thought- not even a new tune. The only habits that survive are the old habits. The only ambition of the son is to be like the father.
It is a life without features. Every night is the end of a day like the last, and every morning will be the beginning of a journey like the day before. When the day breaks, there is one question in everyone's mind: can the flock be got over the next high pass? One day on the journey, like the highest pass of all must be crossed. This is the ass Zadeku, twelve thousand feet high on the Zagros, which the flock must somehow struggle through or shirt in its upper reaches. For the tribe must move on, the herdsmen must find new pastures every day, because at these heights grazing is exhausted in a single day.
Every year the Bakhtiari cross six ranges of mountains on the outward journey ( and cross them again to come back). They march through snow and the spring flood water. and in only one respect has their life advanced beyond that of ten thousand years ago. The nomads of that time had to travel on foot and carry their own packs. The Bakhtiari have pack-animals - horse, donkeys, mules - which have only been domesticated since that time. Nothing else in their lives is new. And nothing is memorable. Nomads have no memorials, even to the dead. (Where is Bakhtyar, where was Jacob buried?) The only mounds that they build are to make the way at such places as the pass of the Women, treacherous but easier for the animal that the high pass.
The spring migration of the Bakhtiari is a heroic adventure; and yet the Bakhtiari are not so much heroic as stoic. They are resigned because their adventure leads nowhere. The summer pastures themselves will be only a stopping place - unlike the children of Israel, for them there is no promised land. The head of the family has worked seven years, as Jacob did, to build a flock of fifty sheep and goats. He expects to lose ten of them in the migration if things go well. if they go badly, he may lose twenty out of the fifty. Those are the odds of the nomadic life, year in and year out. And beyond that, at the end of the journey, there will still be nothing except immense, traditional resignation.
Who knows, in any one year, whether the old when they have crossed the passes will be able to face the final test: the crossing of the Bazuft River ? Three months of melt-water have swollen the river. The tribesmen, the women, the pack animals and the flocks are exhausted. It will take a day to manhandle the flocks across the river. But this, here, now is the testing day. Today is the day on which the young become men, because the survival of the herd and the family depends on their strength. Crossing the Bazuft River is like crossing the Jordan; it is the baptism to manhood. For the young man, life for a moment comes alive now. And for the old- for the old, it dies.
What happens to the old when they cross the last river ? Nothing. They stay behind to die."Only the dog is puzzled to see a man abandoned. The man accepts the nomad custom; he has come to the end of his journey, and there is no place at the end."

In death, a place of rest, is the beginning of the concept of the City.

Questions: 


1) Why were nomadic tribes not able to invent new ideas?

2) If nomadic life is so steadily, monotonous when compared with other forms that have since developed, why do theses tribes continue to be nomadic?

3) In your opinion, what could have altered nomadic life - i.e. what took it from the predominant for of human existence and altered into a new form of habituation?

Please post your answers to in the comments section below, sign your name as previously relayed in the 'Welcome' previous post.

(Note: in future weeks you will be asked to engage and respond to you classmate's writing, but for this lecture only your own answer is needed as everyone tests and gets used to our system and format)