Identifications (identify each term in 5 sentences including the definition, significance, and time frame)
• 1) Silk Road (definition)• 2) “Friendly Relations” (Heqin policy)• 3) Kushan Empire• 4) Attila• 5) Persian “Great Wall”Short Papers:Short Paper #1:Discuss the nomads in ancient Central Eurasia and their contributions to the rise of the long-distance trade in Central Eurasia. Who were Scythians and Xiongnu? How did Scythians and Xiongnu contribute to the growth of the trade on the Silk Road?
Short Paper #2:
Discuss the “opening” of the Silk Road during c.200BC- c.100 AD. How did the Han and the Roman Empires contribute to the opening of the Silk Road? What was the structure of the Silk Road trade during the Roman and the Han period like? How was the Roman and Han involvement with the Silk Road similar to, and different from each other?
I attached the review sheet for information required in these papers. I also attached the reading.
For the book Ancient China and its Enemies, the pages where youll find this information are 13-43, 161-205, 206-254
For some reason the other book wouldnt attach to this but the name of the book is Silk Roads: A New History of the World. It has more helpful info for this paper, you can find it on libgen.com. If you are able to access it, the necessary pages are 1-60.
Review
Identifications
• 1) Silk Road (definition
• 2) “Friendly Relations” (Heqin policy
• 3) Kushan Empir
• 4) Attil
)
)
e
a
• 5) Persian “Great Wall”
• 1) 5-7 sentence
s
• 2) Time frame; definition; significance
Essays
• 1) Discuss the nomads in ancient Central Eurasia and their
contributions to the rise of the long-distance trade in Central
Eurasia. Who were Scythians and Xiongnu? How did Scythians
and Xiongnu contribute to the growth of the trade on the Silk
Road?
• 1) Essay forma
t
• 2) 8-10 paragraphs
1) Intro.
• 1) The first powerful nomadic people in Central Eurasian stepp
• 2) Made significant contribution to the rise of long-distance
trade in Central Eurasia:
• A. by constantly conducting material exchange with the settled
populations through trade and exaction of trade;
e
• B. Including luxury trade: ?
2) Scythians
• A. Definition: northern Iranians; first appeared in the 8th century
BC in Greek record
• B. Complex society
:
s
• C. Arts: animal theme; gold: ?
3) Xiongnu
• A. The first powerful nomadic state in eastern Eurasia;
Mongolia; 3rd century BC
• B. Formation of the Xiongnu state:
• C. Relations with Han empire of Chin
• i) Friendly relations
a
?
.
:
• Ii) Han-Xiongnu war:
4) Scythian contribution to the long-distance
trade on the Silk Road
• Continued trade relations with settled populations:
• A. Exports: animals; grains to Greek cities on Black se
a
• B. Imports: gold (from the Greek cities; Altai area)
5) Xiongnu contribution
• A. Extraction of tributes from China: silk, foodstuff, etc
.
• B. Stimulating the Han empire’s trade relations with Central
Asian oases.
6) Conclusion
• 2) Discuss the “opening” of the Silk Road during c.200BC- c.100
AD. How did the Han and the Roman Empires contribute to the
opening of the Silk Road? What was the structure of the Silk
Road trade during the Roman and the Han period like? How
was the Roman and Han involvement with the Silk Road similar
to, and different from each other?
1) Intro
• “Opening” of the Silk Road trade: unexpected consequences of
imperial expansio
• A. Ha
n
n
• B. Roman
2) The Han Empire
• A. The Han imperial expansion into Central Asia: consequence
of the Han-Xi0ngnu wa
• B. Motivation: horses; making allies; cutting allies from Xiongn
u
r
• C. Resulted in the Han empire’s long-distance trade with Central
Asia
3) Roman empire
• A. The Roman conquest of Egyp
t
• B. The conquest provided wealth/income to Roman citizens
with which they could by luxury goods from faraway places
including silk; also the trade posts in Red Sea area.
4) Structure of the Silk Road trade
• 1) Long distance trade: luxury (Romans) and strategic goods
(horse) (Chinese)
• 2) Mixture of maritime and overland trade
s
• 3) Indirect trade: mediated via Central Asian/Indian states of
Kushan empire (and other oasis cities) on overland routes, and
via coastal cities of India on maritime trade route.
The Silk Road, c.600-c.900
5) Conclusion
Ancient China and Its Enemies
It has been an article of faith among historians of ancient China that Chinese culture
represented the highest level of civilization in the greater Asia region from the first
millennium b.c. throughout the pre-imperial period. This Sinocentric image – which
contrasts the high culture of Shang and Chou China with the lower, “barbarian”
peoples living off the grasslands along the northern frontier – is embedded in early
Chinese historical records and has been perpetuated over the years by Chinese and
Western historians. In this comprehensive history of the northern frontier of China
from 900 to 100 b.c., Nicola Di Cosmo investigates the origins of this simplistic image,
and in the process shatters it.
This book presents a far more complex picture of early China and its relations with
the “barbarians” to the North, documenting how early Chinese perceived and interacted with increasingly organized, advanced, and politically unified (and threatening)
groupings of people just outside their domain. Di Cosmo explores the growing tensions between these two worlds as they became progressively more polarized, with the
eventual creation of the nomadic, Hsiung-nu empire in the north and Chinese empire
in the south.
This book is part of a new wave of revisionist scholarship made possible by recent,
important archaeological findings in China, Mongolia, and Central Asia that can now
be compared against the historical record. It is the first study investigating the antagonism between early China and its neighbors that combines both Chinese historical
texts and archaeological data. Di Cosmo reconciles new, archaeological evidence – of
early non-Chinese to the north and west of China who lived in stable communities,
had developed bronze technology, and used written language – with the common
notion of undifferentiated tribes living beyond the pale of Chinese civilization. He analyzes the patterns of interaction along China’s northern frontiers (from trading, often
on an equal basis, to Eastern Hun–Chinese warfare during the Ch’in dynasty) and
then explores how these relations were recorded (and why) in early Chinese historiography. Di Cosmo scrutinizes the way in which the great Chinese historian, Ssu-ma
Chi’en portrayed the Hsiung-nu empire in his “Records of the Grand Historian” (99
b.c.), the first written narrative of the northern nomads in Chinese history. Chinese
cultural definitions are explained here as the expression of political goals (for example,
the need to cast enemies in a negative light) and the result of historical processes.
Herein are new interpretations of well-known historical events, including the construction of the early walls, later unified into the “Great Wall”; the formation of the
first nomadic empire in world history, the Hsiung-nu empire; and the chain of events
that led Chinese armies to conquer the northwestern regions, thus opening a commercial avenue with Central Asia (to become the Silk Road). Readers will come away
with an entirely new, more nuanced picture of the world of ancient China and of its
enemies.
Nicola Di Cosmo is Senior Lecturer in Chinese History at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand). He has been a Research Fellow at Clare Hall,
Cambridge, and has taught at Indiana University and Harvard University. He is a contributing author of The Cambridge History of Ancient China (Michael Loewe and
Edward Shaughnessy, eds., 1999) and State and Ritual in China (Joseph McDermott,
ed., 1999). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Asian Studies,
Asia Major, and the Journal of East Asian Archaeology.
Ancient China
and Its Enemies
The Rise of Nomadic Power
in East Asian History
Nicola Di Cosmo
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
To My Parents
published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
cambridge university press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
© Nicola Di Cosmo 2002
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2002
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
Typeface Sabon 10/12 pt.
System QuarkXPress [BTS]
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Di Cosmo, Nicola, 1957–
Ancient China and its enemies: the rise of nomadic power in
East Asian history / Nicola Di Cosmo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-77064-5
1. China–History – to 221 B.C. I. Title.
DS741.3 .D5 2001
931–dc21
2001025577
ISBN 0 521 77064 5
hardback
Contents
Acknowledgments
page vii
Introduction
1
Part I
1
2
The Steppe Highway: The Rise of Pastoral Nomadism as a
Eurasian Phenomenon
13
Bronze, Iron, and Gold: The Evolution of Nomadic
Cultures on the Northern Frontier of China
44
Part II
3
4
Beasts and Birds: The Historical Context of Early Chinese
Perceptions of the Northern Peoples
Walls and Horses: The Beginning of Historical
Contacts between Horse-Riding Nomads and
Chinese States
93
127
Part III
5
Those Who Draw the Bow: The Rise of the Hsiung-nu
Nomadic Empire and the Political Unification of
the Nomads
v
161
CONTENTS
6
From Peace to War: China’s Shift from Appeasement to
Military Engagement
206
Part IV
7
8
In Search of Grass and Water: Ethnography and History
of the North in the Historian’s Records
255
Taming the North: The Rationalization of the Nomads in
Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s Historical Thought
294
Conclusion
313
Glossary
Select Bibliography
Index
319
335
361
vi
Acknowledgments
So many times have I thought that this page would never be written, that
it is with great relief that I can now begin to thank all the friends and people
who have in one way or another given me assistance or inspiration. Because
in a previous incarnation part of this book was my doctoral dissertation,
my first debt of gratitude goes to the members of my doctoral committee
in the then Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies at Indiana University:
Christopher I. Beckwith – with whom I first discussed my idea – and Yuri
Bregel, György Kara, and Elliot Sperling, who allowed me to pursue an
interest that was at best tangential to the mainstream of the discipline. Lynn
Struve was an exceptionally scrupulous and insightful external member. I
must also thank Denis Sinor for encouraging me, while I was still a graduate student, to present papers at several conferences. I did much of the
research that eventually went into this book at Cambridge University, where
I was a Research Fellow in the Mongolia Studies Unit (1989–92); my sincere
thanks to Caroline Humphrey and to the staff of the Mongolia Studies Unit
and the Faculty of Oriental Studies for having given me valuable and muchappreciated support.
The dissertation being written, I had no intention of continuing my
research in ancient Chinese history. If I have persevered, the merit belongs
to Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy. In different ways, they are
among the best scholars I have ever worked with. Loewe’s valuable works
were the first that I read in this field and also the last, given the inexhaustible
pace of his scholarship. Although not an Inner Asian specialist, Loewe (in
collaboration with Hulsewé) has done more to enlighten our understanding of the ancient relations between China and Central Asia than any other
scholar, including Pelliot and Chavannes.
Loewe and Shaughnessy’s influence on this book has also been essential
in a very direct way. I was thrilled when they asked me to contribute a
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
chapter to the Cambridge History of Ancient China, but I accepted the
task without a clear notion of how I was going to fulfill it. Having had
to train myself in the basics of archaeological scholarship to write the
chapter, my work for the History helped me to keep my interest in ancient
China despite pressure “to return” to my original field, Manchu and Qing
history. My participation in the making of the volume and the chance to
meet the greatest scholars in the field were an invaluable psychological
boost. My gratitude, then, goes to all the participants in the “Starved Rock”
preparatory workshop. By the time the chapter was written, I had had
some ideas that perhaps could be developed further. In talking with Ed
Shaughnessy I decided to try to consolidate those ideas into a book; Ed also
volunteered – a selfless act for which I am very grateful – to read a first
draft. Needless to say, neither Shaughnessy nor Loewe is in any way responsible for any shortcomings of this book, but their support and encouragement have been essential to keeping me in this field long enough to
finish it.
Over the years, I have become acquainted with many Early China scholars who in different ways provided me with help, advice, and useful criticism when required. Among these, I wish to mention Jessica Rawson, whose
scholarship, insightfulness, and enthusiasm I have always admired. I have
also profited from my acquaintance with David Keightley, Robert Bagley,
and Donald Harper. Lothar von Falkenhausen has been generous with
advice and assistance whenever needed, and his writings have been a source
of knowledge for me. I am most indebted to Emma Bunker among the art
historians working on the “barbaric” frontier. She has helped me to appreciate the visual aspect of the material culture of northern China. Others
whose active research on the “northern frontier” of China has been
especially valuable to me are Jenny So, Louisa Fitzgerald-Huber, Fredrik
Hiebert, Victor Mair, Thomas Barfield, Gideon Shelach, Katheryn Linduff,
and Yangjin Pak.
The greatest archaeologist I have known, during my time at Harvard,
was the late K. C. Chang. To my eternal regret, I was just a little too late.
Long before my arrival at Harvard, I had developed a revering admiration
for K. C. Chang, whose books were for me, as for everyone in my generation, the formative introduction to Chinese archaeology. When I came to
know K. C., a terrible illness had already started to erode his small, hard
physique. Over time, we had several conversations, which I will always
remember with great joy and great sadness. Yet the memory of the K. C.
Chang I used to talk with will survive: probably the strongest and most
generous man I have known.
Many of my former colleagues at Harvard provided me with advice and
help in my work in the ancient world; I wish to thank in particular Professor Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, with whom I had extremely rewarding
talks. Of the Early China scholars, I would like to thank Bruce Brooks and
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
the Warring States Working Group for keeping me informed about developments in the field as I was disengaging myself from my Early China
studies. I owe special thanks also to Professor Denis Twitchett, whose
unparalleled knowledge of Chinese history and scholarly energy, breadth,
and vision are inspirational.
I am also indebted to several librarians, in particular Charles Aylmer, the
Chinese Librarian at Cambridge University Library; the Librarian and staff
of the Harvard–Yenching Library; and finally Martin Hejdra, the Gest
Librarian at Princeton University.
My stay at the Institute for Advanced Study, where I wrote the last part
of this book and tidied it up before final submission, was made especially
pleasurable by the acquaintance of several scholars whose fascination for
the ancient world I happen to share. Among them I should mention Professors Glen Bowersock, Oleg Grabar, and Heinrich von Staden. Last but
surely not least, I must thank profusely the many valiant scholars in China
who study northern China’s archaeology. Some of them, like Wang Binghua
and Guo Suxin, I have had the pleasure to meet personally. Without their
efforts, work in this field would be impossible.
Among the institutions that provided me with teaching relief, assistance,
time, and support, all or part of which I used in preparing this book, I wish
to thank, first of all, at Cambridge University, the Mongolia Study Unit and
Clare Hall, which allowed me to work in blissful freedom for three years;
the Chiang Ching-kuo and Rockefeller Foundations, for postdoctoral
grants; Harvard University, which provided me with sabbatical leave on
two occasions; and, finally, the Institute for Advanced Study, which is the
best working environment I have ever experienced. Cambridge University
Press has been marvelous in its care and assistance. I wish to thank in particular Mary Child, Camilla Knapp, and Mike Green. It is with enduring
admiration that I thank them for their patient and careful work.
Naturally I cannot ignore my wife, Lia, for her patience and support,
and my son, Francesco, for having had to share my time with an “older
brother” he could not see.
Whatever debts I have incurred in writing this book, responsibility for
it rests solely with me. This book is by no means an arrival point; rather,
it is a temporary stop on a journey that cannot be charted for sure. No
doubt our understanding of the “northern frontier” of China will become
increasingly rich, but this process of accumulating knowledge must be
guided by a sense of history that has sometimes been obfuscated, or simply
overwhelmed, by the combined weights of millenarian literary tradition and
quantities of archaeological data. Trying to find its way between the Scylla
of archaeology and the Charybdis of tradition, this book is an attempt to
recover that sense of history. In all, I must say that (while not without its
perils) it has been a marvelous voyage.
ix
Introduction
In the time of Duke Huan of Ch’i [the position of] the son of Heaven had
become humble and weak, while the feudal lords used their energies in attacking [one another]. The Southern Yi and Northern Ti engaged the Central
States in battle, and the continued existence of the Central States seemed [to
hang by] a thin thread [. . .] Duke Huan was troubled about the distress of
the Central States and the rebelliousness of the Yi and Ti. He wished to keep
alive what was dying and to preserve what was ceasing to exist, to bring
esteem to [the position of] the son of Heaven and broaden civil and military
occupations. Therefore the Book of Kuan-tzu grew out of this situation.
(Huai-nan-tzu, 21:7a)1
It seems a shared human experience that the malleable substance at the
origin of “civilizations” – a sense of cultural cohesion, shared destiny, and
common origin – coagulates into a harder and stronger matter when the
peoples who belong to it are confronted, at times in a threatening way, by
other peoples who are seen as being different and “beyond the pale.” The
pale, the wall, the furrow in the soil are potentially dividing lines, demarcating the territory a community recognizes as its own, whose crossing, by
an alien entity, can generate conflicts and threaten the stability of the community and, in extreme cases, cause its demise.
No wonder, then, that the antagonism between those who are “in” and
those who are “out,”2 and the criteria the community adopts to demarcate
1
2
Adapted from Alan Rickett, trans., Guanzi, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 5–6.
On the separation between “in” and “out” in the Chinese conception of world
order, see Lein-sheng Yang, “Historical Notes on the Chinese World Order,” in
The Chinese World Order, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1968), p. 21.
1
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
not only its territory but also the characteristics that are assumed to be the
very basis of its raison d’être (a faith, a race, a code of behavior, a shared
set of values) are at the foundation of how a “civilization” defines itself.
Although a sense of “belonging” to the community might exist prior to an
external challenge, the fact of being challenged makes its members acutely
aware of their common boundaries, forcing them to define cultural differences and leading them to build psychological and physical defenses. If there
is one characteristic that civilizations have in common, it is their ideological need to defend themselves not just against their own enemies, but against
the enemies of civilization, the “barbarians.” This opposition between
civilization and its enemies can be recognized as one of the great ongoing
themes that we encounter in world history. Frontiers, however, are neither
fixed nor exclusively defensive. With the expansion of civilization, the
opening of new spaces to investigation, the acquisition of broader geographic and cultural horizons, frontiers acquire ever-different meanings.
Because of their marginal yet critical status, frontiers are often gray areas,
liminal zones where habitual conventions and principles can lose value,
and new ones begin to appear. In this sense, the study of frontiers often
promotes a critical stance toward definitions of “community,” “culture,”
or “civilization.”
The subject of the present work is the early history of China’s northern
frontier, the area that is understood as both crucial to a fuller understanding of ancient China and the locus of one of the great themes of Chinese
history until modern times, namely, the confrontation between China and
the steppe nomads. The blueprint of this “theme” was fixed in the historical literature during the Han dynasty, as the Grand Historian Ssu-ma
Ch’ien composed, probably around 100 b.c., a monograph on the steppe
nomadic people called Hsiung-nu, which he included in his Shih chi
(Records of the Grand Historian). Ssu-ma Ch’ien based his history of the
north on the assumption (or the pretense of it) that a chasm had always
existed between China – the Hua-Hsia people – and the various alien groups
inhabiting the north. That assumption is still with us, reflected in modern
notions that the northern frontier has always been characterized by a set
of dual oppositions – between pastoral and settled people (steppe and
sown), between nomadic tribes and Chinese states, between an urban
civilization and a warlike uncivilized society.
The main questions that this book explores are all about the historical
realities hidden behind these dualisms: how and when did pastoral
nomadism appear on the northern fringes of the Sinitic world? What was
the genesis of these two opposite principles – what the medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) called the civilization (umran) of the
settled and the civilization of the nomad – in Chinese history? How did the
Inner Asian geographic, political, and ethnographic space become an integral part, consciously researched, of China’s first comprehensive history?
2
INTRODUCTION
Given the primary need to contextualize the cultural and political dimensions of this relationship, the historical circumstances of the northern
peoples’ interaction with China will form the arena of our first investigation. Two phenomena are particularly important here: the expansion
of Sinitic political power into alien areas throughout much of the preimperial period, and the formation of the nomadic empire of the Hsiungnu that emerges soon after the imperial unification. We need also to examine
the cultural paradigm constructed by Ssu-ma Ch’ien to establish the
meaning of the north within the mold of a unified vision of China’s history,
a paradigm that could also be used by his contemporaries and by future
generations for gathering information about the north.
The main difficulty in discussing these issues is that early Chinese history
is an exciting but extremely fluid field of study: new texts and artifacts
regularly emerge from archaeological excavations, pushing new analyses
and interpretations to the surface. Because the material excavated is varied,
and the questions posed by archaeologists fan out in different directions,
the interpretive “surface” is continually bubbling with novel possibilities.
The historian is placed in suspension under these circumstances, as narratives are constantly being destabilized. Striving to match archaeological
“narratives” and historical text-based narratives is a thankless task and
often of limited use given the intrinsic incompatibility of the two sets of evidence. The textual sources often refer to an inherited tradition and, in any
case, incorporate the thought process of their authors; the material evidence
(as a body) is relatively accidental, and its interpretation and usefulness
depend on the questions asked by modern scholars. Yet all the information
available can be placed side by side to form a series of “contexts” that in
their interaction may provide useful leads. Thus data collected from disparate sources “rebound” on each other within what is essentially a comparative analysis that tends to establish possible similarities, analogies, and
points of contact and, by a logical process, suggests scenarios for possible
solutions.
These problems have, if anything, even greater cogency in the study of
China’s northern frontier, where the analysis of cultural contacts must span
huge geographical expanses and long periods of time. That alternative paths
of inquiry exist does not mean that the historian is forever prevented from
reaching any solution. To the contrary, it is the growing body of evidence
itself that offers the most exciting possibilities, while demonstrating that an
analysis is needed that moves away from the claustrophobic narrowness
of the Chinese classical tradition (largely endorsed by the modern Western
exegesis). This tradition has firmly enclosed the analysis of cultural contacts across the northern frontier between the Scylla of “sinicization”
and the Charybdis of “natural” (and therefore cultureless) behavior. The
“other” in the Chinese tradition seldom rose above a person regarded either
as someone who was suitable material for cultural assimilation or someone
3
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
whose nature was hopelessly different and impermeable to civilization
and thus destined to remain beyond the pale, often in unappealing or
dangerous ways for the Chinese. Under these conditions, a history that
critically examines cultural contacts and ethnic differences as part of
the formation of various cultures is written only with great difficulty.
In fact, the history of the northern frontier has frequently been reduced
to a recital of mutual conquests by peoples representing two opposite
principles.
This book is an attempt to expand that narrow space and to place the
history of the northern frontier on the level of a cultural history, by establishing various contexts in which such a history can be articulated. Let me
say from the start that these “contexts” are not meant to be exhaustive.
Nor do I try to espouse a single narrative. My principal aim is to provide
more than one key, in the hope of opening up different possibilities of
interpretation. Hence four separate, but interconnecting, contexts are introduced here, each of which is examined as a separate problematique of the
frontier. Partly as a consequence of the type of sources available, partly as
a function of the historical discourse itself, these four contexts have
been arranged in more or less chronological order. Even though these
contexts (and the narratives that they produce) are still tentative and, as
already noted, intrinsically unstable, this is not to say that this type of
investigation necessarily leads to a blind alley. By moving from one set
of evidence to the next, asking questions that emerge especially from the
comparative analysis of the materials, and proposing answers that have not
been previously envisaged, I hope to see a rich context emerge that will
place the history of the relations between China and the north in a new
light.
The book is divided into four parts, each having two chapters. Each
part represents a separate narrative of the frontier. Although other scholars have treated these topics with great knowledge and competence, their
results are different from mine because they base them on radically different premises. For instance, let us take two books, published in the same
year, that are classics in their genre and closely relevant to the subject matter
of this book, namely, Jaroslav Pru° šek’s Chinese Statelets and the Northern
Barbarians in the Period 1400–300 B.C. (Dordrecht, 1971) and William
Watson’s Cultural Frontiers in Ancient East Asia (Edinburgh, 1971).
Pru° šek’s control of the classical sources exceeds that of anyone else who
has ever written on this topic, but he bases his narrative on certain premises
(the rise of pastoral nomadism in north China, for instance) that are outside the reach of the textual tradition and that can be confirmed only by
archaeological investigation. Pru° šek’s deep erudition provides a reading
that, in the end, goes far beyond the texts he so expertly analyzes, and
the resulting picture remains too close to a single set of evidence to be per4
INTRODUCTION
suasive.3 In contrast, Watson’s archaeological work is extremely rich and
truly insightful, but if we look for answers to historical problems, this evidence immediately shows its limits. The same can be said of other scholarly works that have provided much enlightenment on discrete issues and
problems but have remained limited to a particular period, set of sources,
or scholarly tradition and disciplinary training.4 All of them, of course,
provide a generous platform onto which one can climb to look farther
ahead.
The first part, devoted to archaeology, is concerned with a frontier
defined through separate material cultures, the “northern” and the Chinese,
that can cross borders and interact but that by and large represent two completely different traditions. The second part refers to a frontier defined not
through material objects, artifacts, and burial rituals, but through written
words and the ideas they convey. This is a frontier that separates peoples
holding deeply divergent understandings of life, of society, of morality, and
of the values that inform and define them. It is also a frontier found between
those who write and those who do not (hence the one-sidedness of the evidence). The third part describes a frontier that is more properly political,
one that is the result of political events, recorded in history, that led to profound transformations in the concept of frontier. From a place frequented
by mythological and beastlike beings, the frontier became more concrete, a
place where soldiers were deployed, merchants went to trade, and politicians sought to exploit. The fourth and last part deals with the historiography of the frontier as it was “created” in the first historical narrative in
Chinese history, the Shih-chi of Ssu-ma Ch’ien. The influence of this early
narrative cannot be overstated, as it colored deeply later understandings of
the formative process of the frontier, a process whose main lines have
remained largely unquestioned.
part i. The two chapters in Part I attempt to define the archaeological
context of the emergence of nomads in northern China. The first chapter
3
4
This is not a criticism of Pru° šek’s work, especially since Pru° šek did not have
at his disposal the type of information we enjoy today, but rather a caveat on
placing excessive faith on the written sources when trying to articulate a historical hypothesis.
As a paragon of philological accuracy we could mention, for instance, A. F. P.
Hulsewé and Michael Loewe, China in Central Asia: The Early Stage, 125
B.C.–A.D. 23. An annotated translation of chapters 61 and 96 of the History
of the Former Han dynasty (Leiden: Brill, 1979); on a different level, Jenny So
and Emma Bunker’s archaeological expertise is brought to bear in the bold reevaluation of the trade between China and the North in their Traders and Raiders
on China’s Northern Frontier (Seattle and London: Arthur Sackler Galley and
University of Washington Press, 1995).
5
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
delineates the process through which pastoralism expanded in the Eurasian
steppe zone and the emergence of cultures that had developed advanced
bronze metallurgy and handicraft technologies. The introduction of horseback riding and wheeled transportation gave these cultures further impetus
and probably played a role in their ability to spread across Central Eurasia.
During the early first millennium b.c. mounted nomads, recognizable as
“early” or “Scythian-type” nomads, are evident in clustered cultural centers
throughout Eurasia. Northern China – as we see in Chapter 2 – was by no
means extraneous to this continentwide cultural process. Mixed economies
practicing both agriculture and stock rearing, culturally related to the Inner
Asian metallurgical complex, emerged between the world of the Shang and
the bronze cultures of Central Asia, Siberia, and the Altai. At this early
stage, the northern frontier societies constantly interacted with the Shang
and early Chou, and, even though a frontier did exist, no sharp demarcation can be detected. In fact, China’s early frontier was permeable to the
introduction of forms of art and technology both from and through these
neighboring northern societies.
Gradually, northern China also experienced a transition to greater
reliance on animal husbandry. Here “Scythian-type” societies began to
appear, characterized by expert horsemanship, martial valor, and taste for
animal-style art whose formal conventions were shared across Central
Eurasia. These societies, which most likely developed a degree of internal
specialization, included farmers and herders and a nomadic aristocracy that
seems to have achieved a dominant position. Horse riding and iron technology gradually became widespread in northern China, possibly as a result
of a general evolution, among pastoral nomads, toward more sophisticated
forms of social organization. The final phase of the development of this
“archaeological” frontier in pre-imperial China unearths an abundance of
precious objects, mostly of gold and silver, which point to a commercial
role for the aristocracy and increased trade with China, dating, probably,
from the fifth or fourth century b.c.
part ii. If archaeology can help us to define cultural types in terms of their
way of life, technical abilities, local customs, and even spiritual realm, only
through written sources can we learn about the cultural and political perspectives of the Chinese regarding the north. This issue is inextricably linked
to a “culturalist” perspective that has long dominated the study of foreign
relations in early China. This perspective emphasizes the sharp dichotomy
between a world that is culturally superior and literate, with a common
sense of aesthetic refinement, intellectual cultivation, moral norms, and
ideals of social order embedded in rituals and ceremonies, and a world that
lacks such achievements. The boundary between these two worlds, supported by abundant statements in the early Chinese sources, was easily
interpreted as a boundary between a community that shared civilized values
6
INTRODUCTION
and a community that did not recognize those values. This interpretation
has been so dominant as to preclude any other approach, even in the face
of notable contradictions, such as, for instance, that a single term analogous to the European “barbarian” did not exist in ancient China. This is
not to deny that the world “outside” the Central Plain was at times portrayed, in the ancient literature, as a hostile and different environment or
that foreign peoples often were lumped together under an abstract concept
of “otherness” and regarded as inferior, uncultured, and threatening. But
we need to ask what this meant for the actual conduct of foreign relations.
How can we connect these statements about cultural difference to the historical reality that produced them?
In my view, we cannot limit the discussion about the relations between
Chinese (i.e., Central Plain, or Chou) states and these other political
communities to a series of “cultural” statements retrieved from terse historical sources open to diverse interpretations. Such an approach would
tend to establish that a system of cultural values existed, defined both as
“Chinese” and in opposition to the system of “anti-values” supposedly
embraced by non-Chinese peoples, regardless of the historical context in
which these statements appear. But how can we accept that these statements
marked a true cultural boundary without analyzing the circumstances
under which they were made? To answer this question, Chapter 3 investigates the actual contexts of political relations between foreign states
and Chinese states. This chapter argues that the separation between a
“Hua-Hsia” Chinese cultural unity and an external barbarism, although
perceived of and expressed in those terms, was actually embedded in a
pattern dominated by the political and military strategies essential to
the survival of the Chinese states. Moreover, those states adopted a variety
of attitudes and strategies vis-à-vis the northern peoples, along a spectrum
ranging from virulent opposition to alliance, political equality, and
peace.
It is against a background of endemic warfare and ruthless conquest, and
within a logic finely tuned to exploit every advantage that might promote
the survival of the state, that we must place the statements that we find in
Chinese sources stressing cultural differences. Recourse to arguments pointing to the inferiority of alien peoples served, at times, the political need to
escape norms regulating interstate relations and legitimize the conquest and
annexation of these peoples. At other times, the Chinese used foreign
peoples as resources for strengthening the state and as allies in interstate
relations.
Chapter 4 focuses on the early history of the relationship between
nomads and the northern Chinese states. During the late fourth century b.c.
a new type of protagonist appears in Chinese history: the mounted steppe
warrior. Contemporary sources hesitatingly acknowledged the existence of
horse-riding warriors, documented primarily through a famous debate in
7
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
which the king of the state of Chao expounds on the necessity to adopt the
methods of mounted warfare predominant in the north.
Analysis of events at this time reveals a new transformation taking place
on the frontier. The incorporation of various Jung and Ti peoples by the
stronger Chinese states did not exhaust the states’ need to expand or to
increase the resources at their disposal. In fact, the demands of the new military situation, which resulted in the need to sustain prolonged, expensive
wars and in a great increase in the number of armies, may have been at the
root of the northern states’ expansion in the north. Offering a new interpretation for the motives behind the construction of the early “long walls”
in northern China, this chapter will argue that the construction of static
defense structures served to establish firm bases from which Chinese “occupation” armies could control the surrounding, non-Chinese territory. Using
textual and archaeological evidence, this chapter will revisit the traditional
interpretation according to which the fortified lines of defense, the precursors of the Great Wall, were built to defend the Chinese civilization (or the
incipient Chinese empire) from the incursions of the nomads. Rather, walls
were meant as a form of military penetration and occupation of an alien
territory that the Chinese states could use in a variety of ways, including
horse breeding and trade, and as a reservoir for troops and laborers. Once
the Chinese began a more sustained pattern of relations with nomadic
peoples, the fundamental attitude they adopted toward the nomads shows
continuity with the policies and strategies that had dominated Chinese relations with the Jung and Ti, not the rupture that a purely defensive strategy
(implied by the erection of “defensive walls”) would entail.
part iii. The issues considered in Part II are essential to understanding
the next transformation of the frontier, which coincides with the emergence
of a unified nomadic power, the first such “empire” in world history and
precursor to the Türk and Mongol empires. The policy of occupation and
creeping expansionism practiced by the northern Chinese states in the third
century b.c. was endorsed with a vengeance by the unifier of China, Ch’in
Shih Huang-ti, who in 215 b.c. sent an enormous army to conquer and colonize the pasture grounds located in the Ordos region. Chapter 5 argues
that the relentless pressure of the Chinese states on the northern frontier
possibly acted as a catalyst for deep social transformations among the
nomads. In a partial reappraisal of the genesis of the Hsiung-nu empire, I
discuss in this chapter a pattern of state formation among Inner Asian
nomads that aims to be consistent with the events as they are narrated
in the historical sources. The rise of the Hsiung-nu empire forced radical
modification of traditional approaches to “frontier management,” as the
Chinese were now in a position of military inferiority. A new world order
thus emerged wherein the main powers split the world that they knew
into two large areas of influence; although unified, China was no longer
8
INTRODUCTION
hegemonic. The policy that dominated the relations between Hsiung-nu and
Han in the early Former Han period was one of appeasement and accommodation in which China became a virtual tributary of the Hsiung-nu.
Chapter 6 demonstrates why this policy eventually had to be abandoned
and why the Han dynasty needed to turn to more aggressive strategies. Two
factors emerge: first, the ripening of conditions that on the political, military, and economic levels enabled China to invest more of its people and
resources in an all-out war effort; and second and most important, the
ideological shift that accompanied the realization that the ho-ch’in policy
of appeasement did not guarantee peace. Several explanations have been
offered to account for the Han endorsement of a military stance, and this
chapter will explore why the ho-ch’in policy did not work, by looking more
closely at the Hsiung-nu side. From an Inner Asian perspective, it appears
that the “appeasement” policy failed owing to a structural incompatibility
between Hsiung-nu and Han understandings of their mutual international
obligations.
Chapter 6 ends with a survey of Han westward expansion and of the
Han motives in establishing a military presence in the “Western Regions.”
Again, the debates are not new, and most of the opinions I express here
coincide with those of other scholars. Yet my perspective emphasizes not
so much the economic factors as it does the military and political ones,
which seem to have prevailed in a context in which destruction of the
Hsiung-nu empire as a single political entity was the overriding concern.
part iv. A further, decisive, “transformation” of the frontier occurred in
the first century b.c., when the north finally became an object of conscious
historical and ethnographic inquiry. The relationship between the Hsiungnu and China, as constructed by Ssu-ma Ch’ien in the Shih chi, became a
polarity between two antithetical principles whose genesis coincided with
the dawn of Chinese history. Together with the “crystallization” of Inner
Asian history into a pattern that had not been recognized before in any way
even remotely comparable to the grand scheme erected by him, the historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien opened the door to an empirical investigation of
the north, made not of mythological accounts and moral precepts, but of
information that was as historically rigorous as one might expect from the
“Grand Historian.” He selected his sources carefully, acquired much information from persons who had been closely engaged in Hsiung-nu affairs,
copied memorials and diplomatic correspondence, and narrated events with
precision and an abundance of detail. Part IV is based on the identification
of two chief strands in Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s narrative, one the collection of information vital to understanding the Chinese confrontation with the Hsiungnu empire; the other, no less vital, the construction of a pattern that
rationalized the relevance of the north in Chinese history. Chapter 7 focuses
on the information that Ssu-ma Ch’ien incorporated in his monographic
9
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
account of the Hsiung-nu (chapter 110), effectively starting an ethnography and a literate history of the north that also served as a model for later
dynastic histories. Chapter 8 looks at how Ssu-ma Ch’ien rationalized the
history of relations between the north and China into a broad pattern
resting on two elements. One was the creation of a “genealogy” of northern peoples that could match the historical “genealogy” of Chinese dynasties and hegemonic states from the mythical beginning of history to the
historian’s time. The other was the insertion of the north and its inhabitants within the system of correspondences between the celestial and the
human spheres that was believed, in Han times, to constitute cosmic order.
Events such as wars or the downfalls of rulers were regarded as manifestations at the human level of the workings of that cosmic system, and, therefore, history was the “output” of a machinery of correlations that could
not exclude the Hsiung-nu or more generally, foreign peoples. Thus foreign
peoples and their lands become equal partners in the construction of
Chinese history, whereas in the past they had been (as far as I can tell)
excluded from the system of correlations and predictions upon which
historical causality was ultimately based.
Our knowledge of the genesis and earliest evolution of relations between
China and the north, down to the Han dynasty, is still gotten through the
lens of Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s “master narrative.” This narrative effectively made
the north into a historical protagonist. At the same time, it trapped the
history of the northern frontier into a dichotomous patterns from which
we have yet to free ourselves. By identifying the history of the frontier as
an artifact, as a “narrative” that must be placed in a given time and intellectual milieu, and as the culmination (obviously not the end) of a long and
intricate process, we can also re-establish the northern “sphere” of Chinese
history as an area with its own autonomous, internally dialectical, historical, and cultural development.
10
p a r t
i
chapter one
The Steppe Highway
The Rise of Pastoral Nomadism as a
Eurasian Phenomenon
Geographic Features
A Note on Terminology
The terminology for the regions inhabited by the nomadic and seminomadic peoples of Inner Asia in pre-historical and historical times is inherently unstable, given that geographic areas such as Central Asia, Inner Asia,
the Northern Zone, and Central Eurasia are usually defined ad hoc.1
Because the present work is concerned mostly with what Owen Lattimore has called the “Inner Asian frontiers of China,” I have adopted “Inner
Asia” or “Inner Asian frontier” as a general term for the eastern part of
the continental mass of Eurasia. In practice, it includes three geographical
areas: in the east, Manchuria; in the center, Mongolia, including parts of
Kansu, northern Shensi, and northern Shansi; and in the west, not only
today’s Sinkiang but also the Minusinsk Basin and the northern part of the
Altai Mountains.
This central definition must be accompanied by two others. The narrower term, the so-called Northern Zone, is used, especially in China, to
describe the ecological and cultural frontier between China and Inner Asia.
Today this area is entirely within China’s political boundaries and runs from
the Liao Valley in the east, to the T’ai-hang Mountains up to the Ordos
region in the center, and to the Ning-hsia–Ch’ing-hai cultural region in the
west. This term often refers to the area of the Great Wall, but to avoid
1
For an extensive discussion of the definition of Central Asia, see Shirin Akiner,
“Conceptual Geographies of Central Asia,” in Sustainable Development in
Central Asia, ed. Shirin Akiner et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp.
3–62.
13
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
anachronisms, “Northern Zone” is clearly preferable to “Great Wall
Region.”
The broader term, “Central Eurasia,” is particularly useful for referring
to the part of the Eurasian landmass that is crossed horizontally by a grassland belt stretching from western Manchuria to the Danube. Beginning in
the second millennium b.c., this region saw the development of pastoral
nomadic cultures that flourished from the Pontic Steppe across the
Altai and to Mongolia.2 On the Asian side, this broad expanse incorporates, the region that Alexander von Humboldt called Central Asia in
1843 and Ferdinand von Richtofen later defined as the part of continental
Asia forming a closed hydrological system, with no access to the open
sea. The boundaries he proposed were the Altai Mountains in the north,
the Khingan Range in the east, the Pamirs in the west, and Tibet in
the south.3 Others have defined it in even broader terms, including the area
running from the Caspian Sea and the Ural River Basin in the west to the
Ferghana Valley and Pamir Range in the east, and from the limits of the
Kazakh Steppe belt in the north to the Hindu Kush and Kopet-Dagh in
the south. Today “Central Asia” has acquired a narrower meaning from
its use in the former Soviet Union, and it can be said to include the
territory of the Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Kirgiz, and Kazak states, plus
the Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Uighur Autonomous Province in northwest China,
which, in ancient times, was closely connected with the rest of Central
Asia.
Before we address the issue of the formation of pastoral cultures of
China’s Inner Asian frontier, it is necessary to survey the natural environments in which these cultures emerged, environments that placed limitations on the directions and extents of their development. The vast territory
that separates China from Siberia and Central Asia can be divided into three
major geographic zones: the Manchurian Plain; the steppes and forests of
Mongolia; and the oases, deserts, and steppes of Sinkiang.4
2
3
4
Denis Sinor defines Central Eurasia not only in geographical but also in cultural
terms; see his Inner Asia: A Syllabus (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987, 3rd
rpt.), pp. 1–5.
See L. I. Myroshnikov, “Appendix: A Note on the Meaning of ‘Central Asia’ as
Used in This Book,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, ed. A. H. Dani
and V. M. Masson (Paris: Unesco, 1992), 1: 477–80.
The following geographic survey is based primarily on: George B. Cressy, Asia’s
Lands and Peoples (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1963); Robert N. Taaffe,
“The Geographic Setting,” The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis
Sinor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 19–40; V. M. Masson,
“The Environment,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, 1: 29–44; Hisao
Matsuda, “The T’ian-shan Range in Asian History,” Acta Asiatica 41 (1981):
1–28.
14
The Steppe Highway
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Baikal
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
Manchurian Plain
Located to the northeast of present-day China, the Manchurian Plain differs
from the Yellow River Plain in that it is not depositional, but erosional, and
it presents a rolling topography. Divided into a northern and a southern
half by the Sungari and the Liao River systems, the Manchurian Plain is
everywhere surrounded by mountains. To the east and southeast the Long
White Mountain separates it from the Korean Peninsula. To the north rises
the Little Khingan Range, running parallel to the Amur River, and to
the west the Great Khingan Range, which develops on a north-south
axis and separates the Manchurian Plain from the Mongolian Plateau. To
the southwest, a series of mountain ranges, such as the Ch’i-lao-t’u and
the Nu-lu-erh-hu, separate it from Inner Mongolia and from the Yellow
River Plain.
In the south the Liao River Valley has a hundred and twenty kilometers
frontage on the Gulf of Liao-tung. Between the mountains and the sea,
the strip of coastal lowland leads to the Yellow River Plain through the
Shan-hai-kuan, which served historically as one gateway for those seeking
to enter (or invade) China. In the northeast the Sungari enters the Amur
lowland through a narrow passage between hills, and in the northwest
a low section of the Great Khingan mountain range gives easy access to
Mongolia.
In Manchuria three natural environments are found: forest in the
uplands, especially in the northern half; arable land in the river valleys; and
grassland in the west. Because of the continental climate winters are long
and bitter and summers short and hot. Snow falls from October through
April in the south, and September through May in the north. Precipitation
is concentrated in July and August, and amounts roughly to 630 millimeters in the east and 380 millimeters in the west. Soil is very fertile owing to
the natural cover of grass; the growing season is relatively short, but agriculture, precarious in the dry west, is possible in the east because of the
moisture from the sea.
The Manchurian uplands extend in the east from Liao-tung to the Amur
River, in between the mountains and the river valleys. Thanks to the greater
volume of rain and moisture at higher altitudes, we find vast forested areas,
which are deciduous in the south and coniferous in the east. This is the land
of hunters, and today local people still practice trapping, but agriculture is
also possible.
The western part of the geographical Manchurian Plain is today the
northwestern part of Inner Mongolia. The climate is more arid, unsuitable
for agriculture. The Great Khingan Range constitutes the eastern limit of
the Mongolian Plateau, and in fact both the environment and the lifestyle
16
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
of the people here resemble those of Mongolia.5 In terms of vegetation, the
north is a forest of Siberian larch and birch, while the south is a Mongoliantype steppe. Traditionally, its inhabitants have mostly been hunters and pastoralists. The southwestern mountains are rugged and difficult to cross,
serving as a natural boundary between two economic zones, the Liao Valley
in the east, suitable for agriculture, and the Mongolian Steppe and Gobi
Desert in the west. This mountainous area extends into northern China, in
particular, the provinces of Hopei and Shansi, where the T’ai-hang mountain range acts as a natural divide running from north to south.
Moving westward from the northern part of the T’ai-hang Range, one
runs into the southernmost fringes of the Gobi, that is, the Ordos Desert,
circumscribed within the bend of the Yellow River. Surrounded by a rim of
mountains, the Gobi is the most northern and furthest inland of all the
deserts on earth, and for the most part it has a climate similar to that of a
dry steppe. The ground is covered with pebbles and gravel, and it has
enough water to sustain some vegetation and animal life. Extremely arid
patches, with sand dunes and almost complete absence of vegetation, cover
only five percent of the whole desert, mainly in the southwest.
Mongolia
Mongolia is divided into four vegetation zones, which run almost parallel
to each other from east to west.6 The southernmost part is a desert zone,
which is succeeded, going north, by a desert-steppe belt. North of this
is a dry steppe zone to the east and, to the west, a continuation of the
desert-steppe belt in the lower elevations and, in the higher elevations, a
mountain-steppe and forest-steppe zone alternating with patches of dry
steppe. The northernmost zone is heavily forested, though we also find
alpine meadows that provide excellent pastures interspersed with areas of
Siberian taiga. The southern Gobi extends from western Inner Mongolia to
eastern Sinkiang; to the north the Gobi occupies Mongolia’s southern half.
Mongolia also has several important mountain ranges. In the west, the Altai
Mountains extend northwest to southeast, and their southeasternmost
extension merges with a range known as the Gobi Altai Mountains, which
forms a series of ridges crossed by intramontane valleys and basins. North
of the Altai, in northwestern Mongolia, are mountain ranges that extend
further north into Siberia; to the east, a large depression known as the
5
6
Owen Lattimore, The Mongols of Manchuria (New York: John Day Company,
1934).
An extensive introduction to the topography, hydrographic system, flora and
fauna of Mongolia is included in: The Academy of Sciences MPR, Information
Mongolia (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1990), pp. 3–49.
17
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
Valley of Lakes is interposed between these ranges and the large mountainous area known as the Khangai Mountains. This latter area has a rolling
topography, dotted by sand hills and dry river beds.
The central artery of the Khangai Mountains has a northwestern orientation, similar to that of the Altai, and is crossed by several rivers, forming
a watershed between the drainage system of the Arctic Ocean Basin, into
which the northern rivers flow, and the closed drainage system of Central
Asia. The relief of the Khangai is smooth and gentle in its northern and
northwestern parts; in the south, precipitous escarpments and breakages of
the plateau are more typical. In the north-central part of Mongolia, the
Khentii mountain ridge also forms a continental divide between the Pacific
Ocean drainage system and the Central Asian Basin. The eastern region of
Mongolia is a raised plain with abundant grassland, and an average altitude of 800 to 1,100 meters above sea level.
The major waterways of Mongolia are concentrated in the north and
flow in the direction of the Arctic Basin: The Selenge is a tributary of Lake
Baikal, and the Orkhon is the main tributary of the Selenge and is fed by
the Tula. The rivers in the east of the country, particularly those flowing
from the eastern slopes of the Khentii Mountains, belong to the Pacific
Ocean drainage system; among these the Onon, a tributary of the Amur,
and the Kerulen, which ends its course in the Dalai Nor lake on the western
side of the Great Khingan Range, are the most important waterways and
natural avenues of communication between Central Mongolia, Transbaikalia, and northern Manchuria.
Sinkiang
Sinkiang may be viewed as consisting of three major subregions: the desertic Tarim Basin in the south, the vast T’ien-shan Range in the center, and
the semi-arid Zungarian Basin in the north. The Tarim Basin is drier than
any other desert in China, and it includes a totally dry desert in the center,
the Taklamakan, which is surrounded by a string of oases on its northern,
western, and southern edges. Amongst these oases, the largest are Yarkand,
Khotan, Kashgar, Aksu, Kucha, and Karashar. These oases are formed by
semi-permanent water streams originating from the glaciers at the tops of
the mountains encircling the Tarim Basin, that is, the T’ien-shan in the
north, the Pamirs in the west, and the Kunluns in the south. Irrigation
ditches allow water from the mountains to spread over the river’s alluvial
fan, creating relatively large stretches of farming land. Each oasis constitutes a self-enclosed system that commands some of the desert around it,
an irrigated area with a principal city, barren foothills, and well-watered
mountain valleys upstream.
18
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
Into this southern, more desertic region flows the main river of Sinkiang,
the Tarim, which is the final destination of the streams flowing from the
surrounding mountains, although many evaporate or disappear underground before reaching it. Owing to the aridity of the climate, there is no
cultivation on the Tarim’s banks. Eventually, the Tarim flows into the Lop
Nor lake, located in the eastern part of the region. Directly to the north of
Lop Nor, close to the southern slope of the Bogdo Mountain in the eastern
Altai, is the Turfan depression, 266 meters below sea level. North of the
Tarim Basin, the T’ien-shan extends east into China for 1,600 kilometers.
Elevations reach 6,686 meters in the west and 5,089 meters in Bogda Ula,
north of Turfan, in the east. The orography is rugged, although there are
elevated plains and broad valleys covered with alpine meadows in some
parts.
The northern half of Sinkiang is occupied by an arid zone known as
Zungaria. This is a desertlike area, but it is less arid than the southern
part and closer in appearance to the Gobi. Some oases are along the
northern slopes of the T’ien-shan, but they are smaller and less richly
irrigated than the southern ones. To the west, the T’ien-shan splits into
two branches that embrace the fertile valley of the Ili River, which
flows to the northwest, draining into Lake Balkash. North of the Ili, the
Zungarian Gate, at 304 meters of altitude, is a deep corridor between the
northern edge the T’ien-shan and the Tarbagatai Range in the northwest.
This is the lowest pass in all Central Asia, and it was used by nomads
as a gateway to the Kazakh Steppe. The extreme northern and northeastern limits of the region are marked by the Altai. The foothills of the
Altai form a rolling plateau with excellent pastureland. The valley of the
Irtysh, in the far north, between the Tarbagatai and the Altai, at an
elevation of approximately 430 meters, forms another gateway to Central
Asia.
In addition to these mountain chains, the southern edge of the Tarim
Basin meets the Altyn Tagh mountain chain to the east, whereas the southcentral and southwestern sides of the Taklamakan are blocked by the lofty
Kunlun Mountains, extending down from the Tibetan Plateau. On mountain slopes, precipitation is sufficient to allow growth of a relatively dense
grass cover. Indeed, the best pastures to be found in this region are on the
slopes of the Altai and in the intermontane valleys and alpine meadows of
the T’ien-shan; nomads can pasture their herds in these areas through the
year. Forests also grow above the steppe belt, at altitudes of between 1,400
and 2,500 meters.
Finally, an important area for the development of early metallurgy and
pastoral nomadic culture is defined by the Altai and Sayan Ranges, which
begin near the Zungarian Gate, close to Lake Baikal, and extend east for
1,600 kilometers. The central ridges of both ranges are rolling uplands,
which reach an altitude of about 2,586 meters. The Altai system, coming
19
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
into Siberia from northwestern Mongolia, is enclosed between the Irtysh
and Ob Rivers, where we find the Altai Mountains proper, culminating in
Peak Belukha, at about 4,300 meters. East of the Ob lies the eastern Altai
Range, reaching almost to the Yenisei. The two ranges of the Sayan system
encircle the Minusinsk Basin: the eastern Sayan Range extends from Lake
Baikal to the Yenisei, while the western Sayan Range cordons off the basin
in the south. Here, too, the prevailing orography is of rolling hills. Steppe
vegetation covers the lower slopes of the Altai-Sayan mountains up to some
860 meters; above it is a forest of Siberian larch, cedar, fir, pine, and birch
up to and above 1,720 meters, followed by alpine meadows to the snow
line at around 2,580 meters.
Sinkiang commands the communication routes between China and
Central Asia. Before the advent of modern rail transportation, the caravans
going west from Hsi-an (Shansi province) en route to the western êntrepots
and markets reached Lan-chou and then began to cross the arid Kansu
region following the base of the Nan Shan (Ch’i-liang) Range and traveling from one irrigated oasis to another. The so-called Kansu Corridor – a
depression less than 80 kilometers wide and over 960 kilometers long – is
dotted with oases drawing water from the Nan Shan Range. At the end of
the corridor, Jade Gate (Yü-men) opened the way to Sinkiang, after passing
the cities of An-hsi and Tun-huang. This area, at the western end of the
Gobi, is today a barren desert, but there are signs that in antiquity the climatic conditions were more favorable and that it was then possible to travel
along a line tangential to the southern edge of the Tarim Basin.7 The betterknown route, however, crossed the desert and proceeded northwest to
Hami, on the eastern fringes of the T’ien-shan mountain range, and only
then divided into routes to the south and to the north of the T’ien-shan
Range.
To the south, two routes developed, skirting, respectively, the northern
and the southern fringes of the Taklamakan Desert. They joined in the
western part of the Tarim Basin, where the large oasis of Kashgar is located,
and proceeded to the Terek Pass, and through this to Ferghana and Transoxiana. North of the T’ien-shan, the route passed through Urumqi, and
from there, via Kulja, reached the Ili Valley and the Zungarian Pass. Finally,
yet another gateway to Central Asia is located farther north, where the
uninterrupted steppe belt along the base of the Altai provides a passage to
the valley of the Irtysh.
7
See Hou Can, “Environmental Changes in the Tarim Oases as Seen through
Archeological Discoveries,” in Between Lapis and Jade, ed. F. Hiebert and N. Di
Cosmo, Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia (Spring 1996): 55–66;
Mutsumi Hoyanagi, “Natural Changes of the Region along the Old Silk Road in
the Tarim Basin in Historical Times,” Memoirs of the Research Department of
the Toyo Bunko 33 (1975): 85–113.
20
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
Pastoral Nomadism in the Steppe: Preconditions
The forests, deserts, and especially grasslands of Central Eurasia have historically been associated with the rise of pastoral nomadism. The first historical descriptions of these nomads, the Scythians, come down to us from
Greek historians and geographers. Although their individual conceptions
of the Asian nomads varied substantially, they clearly believed that in the
prairies of Central Asia a different strain of people had developed, one
whose customs and lifestyle were incompatible with those of sedentary
peoples.
I praise not the Scythians in all respects, but in this greatest matter they have
so devised that none who attacks them can escape, and none can catch them
if they desire not to be caught. For when men have no established cities or
fortresses, but all are house-bearers and mounted archers, living not by tilling
the soil, but by cattle rearing and carrying their dwellings on wagons, how
should these not be invincible and unapproachable.8
How had this different way of life arisen? In the nineteenth century, following Darwinian and positivist theories, scholars believed that nomadism
was an evolutionary stage, more advanced than hunting, from which it was
supposed to have sprung, but less developed than agriculture, in the progressive march of humankind toward civilization. This idea can be traced
back to Lewis Henry Morgan’s influence on positivistic ethnographical and
sociological thought: the people who first domesticated animals became
accustomed to pastoral life before learning to cultivate cereals.9
At the end of the nineteenth century, scholars began to criticize this viewpoint, arguing that “the domestication of animals was possible only under
the conditions of a sedentary way of life.”10 The domestication of animals
requires a long process of experimentation and accumulation of technical
knowledge, and presupposes the existence of other sources of economic
production that could allow for the surplus in fodder and grains needed to
feed the animals. Thus we may conclude that plant domestication with
primitive farming was probably a precondition for the domestication of
animals. In the first instances of domestication of animals, which date to
8
9
10
Herodotus, Histories, IV:46. Quoted in John Gardiner-Garden, Greek Conceptions on Inner Asian Geography and Ethnography from Ephoros to Eratosthenes,
Papers on Inner Asia no. 9 (Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian
Studies, 1987), p. 5.
Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, ed. Leslie A. White (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 290.
S. I. Vejnshtein, “The Problem of Origin and Formation of the EconomicCultural Type of Pastoral Nomads in the Moderate Belt of Eurasia,” in The
Nomadic Alternative, ed. W. Weissleder (The Hague: Mouton, 1984), p. 127.
21
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
between 7500 and 6000 b.c. in the area of the Fertile Crescent, the animals
were kept as a nutritional complement to agricultural products. Some of
the animals – for example, the ox, the onager, and the dog – were then used
for other purposes, such as a means of transportation or as protection for
domestic animals against predators.
With characteristic insight, Owen Lattimore emphasized the importance
of the oasis economy for the evolution of Inner Asian steppe nomads.
He hypothesized that early domestication was possible in areas where the
natural environment was equally favorable to agriculture and to animal
husbandry. In the steppe oases, where large herbivores captured in the
steppe could be kept and fed, people gradually learned how to use them,
and eventually moved out into the open steppe, thus becoming “specialized
pastoralists.”11 Lattimore attributed the causes that ignited this process and
“pushed” the first nomads into the steppe to an economically more efficient
adaptation to the natural environment of the steppe.12
Although Lattimore’s displacement theory is not supported by archaeological evidence, archaeologists have emphasized the importance of agricultural production in the oases, which could also spark revolutionary
changes in economic patterns, social organization, and cultural development. For example, the colonization of oases was at the root of what has
been called the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, as well as of the
later “Oxus Civilization” of Central Asia.13 In terms of the development of
conditions suitable for the advancement of pastoralism, the oasis environment is thought to have been conducive to the appearance of a mixed
farmer-pastoralist economy because the proximity of grasslands imposed
fewer restrictions on stock raising than did valley agriculture, where an
imbalance between humans and animals could be disastrous.14 According
to some theories, the oasis dwellers who specialized in stock breeding eventually separated themselves from their original environment and became
nomadic pastoralists.15 Yet these nomads retained close ties with farming
communities, upon which they remained to an extent dependant for agricultural and handicraft products.
Extensive archaeological studies have made it clear that the line that separated early pastoral and farming communities, at least to the late Bronze
11
12
13
14
15
Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962
[1940]), pp. 158–63.
Ibid., pp. 63–64, 409–12.
Fredrik T. Hiebert, Origins of the Bronze Age Oasis Civilizations in Central Asia,
Bulletin 42 (Cambridge, Mass.: American School of Prehistoric Research, 1994).
A. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984), p. 89.
Shinobu Iwamura, “Nomad and Farmer in Central Asia,” Acta Asiatica 3 (1962):
45–50.
22
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
Age, between the second and the first millennium b.c., was not neatly
defined, and even specialized pastoral nomads are known to have engaged
in agriculture.16 In the Central Asian steppes, the first mixed pastoralistagriculturalist communities appeared following a period during the
Paleolithic in which a sparse population of hunters of large game (“megafauna”) dominated the human landscape. Organized into small societies,
these communities were characterized by “relative stability, embodied in
nomad base camps, and intellectual progress, reflected in a large number
of prestige, symbolic innovations from statuettes to symbolic marks.”17 Pastoral cultures appeared first in the western Eurasian steppes, west of the
Urals, in the mid-third millennium b.c. These pastoral communities are
identified by their distinctive mound burials (kurgan).18
From the mid-third millennium b.c., the northern regions of Central
Eurasia, east of the Urals, were transformed by the shift from an economy
of predation to an economy of production. The steppe regions became populated with diversified communities of Neolithic hunters and fishermen as
well as Bronze Age pastoralists and agriculturalists. Possibly because of a
climatic desiccation that affected soil productivity, a general transition to
more pronounced forms of pastoralism occurred in the steppe and semidesert areas of Eurasia.19 These environments created conditions favorable
to the breeding of animals, and agriculture could also be practiced. Pastoralists occupied the higher alpine pastures, such as those in the T’ien-shan
and the Altai regions, whereas along the lower course of the Amu Darya,
in Central Asia, animal breeding co-existed with irrigated agriculture
modeled after the system of irrigation of the Khorezmian civilization, at the
northeastern end of the Mesopotamian world.
Although herders became gradually more mobile and the aridization
of the climate made agriculture more problematic in several areas, this evolutional trajectory did not necessarily mean the abandonment of agriculture. The more common picture in central Asia during the first half of
the second millennium b.c., was the development of settled agro-pastoral
16
17
18
19
S. Vainshtein, Nomads of South Siberia. The Pastoral Economies of Tuva (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 145–65.
V. M. Masson, and T. F. Taylor, “Soviet Archaeology in the Steppe Zone: Introduction,” Antiquity 63 (1989): 779–83.
These have been identified with a “macro-culture” known by the name of Yama
culture; see Natalia I. Shishlina and Fredrik T. Hiebert, “The Steppe and the Sown:
Interaction between Bronze Age Eurasian Nomads and Agriculturalists,” in The
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, ed. Victor Mair
(Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 1998), 1: 224–25.
P. M. Dolukhanov, “Paléoécologie de l’Asie centrale aux ages de la pierre et du
bronze,” in L’Asie centrale et ses rapports avec les civilisations orientales, des
origines à l’age du fer, Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique Française en Asie
Centrale (Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 1988), 1: 215–17.
23
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
societies that appear to have wielded considerable political and military
power. In addition to the aforementioned climatic changes, the interaction
between steppe peoples and more advanced agricultural cultures in the
oases of Central Asia and an internal evolution toward greater economic
specialization seem to have played an important role in the formation of
mobile pastoral societies, such as those of the early Andronovo period
(1900–1750 b.c.).20
According to Khazanov, the evolutionary pattern in the formation of
pastoral nomads has four phases: (1) sedentary animal husbandry, (2)
semi-sedentary pastoralism, (3) herdsman husbandry or distant pastures
husbandry, (4) semi-nomadic pastoralism and pastoral nomadism proper.21
David correlates these four stages with as many types of archaeological cultures, thereby proposing an evolutionary development.22 The first phase is
represented by the early horse breeders, evidence for whom has been found
in the forest-steppe zone of southern Russia, at the site of Dereivka. Primitive horseback riding, presumably a development in the steppe between the
Ural and the Volga in the mid-third millennium b.c., characterizes the
second phase, resulting in the increased mobility of these early pastoral
communities. The third phase, during the second millennium b.c., corresponds to the flourishing of the bronze culture in the steppe region and the
emergence of wheeled vehicles pulled by horses. Covered wagons provided
transportation and shelter during migratory moves, and light chariots may
have been used in warfare and for herd control. The fourth phase, from the
beginning of the first millennium b.c., corresponds to the emergence of
ancient nomads, when horseback riding had already evolved into a mature
stage of development. It is during the third phase, therefore, that we may
assume that horses began to be ridden, but how widespread this was, and
how important it was for the general social and economic life of these agropastoral communities, is moot. These data today have to be reconsidered
in light of new evidence that places the earliest form of horseback riding in
the late fourth millennium b.c.
The Horse
The role of the horse in the transition from agro-pastoralism to fully developed mounted pastoral nomadism has been considered crucial. In particular, horseback riding allowed different herding strategies, making it possible
20
21
22
Shishlina and Hiebert, “The Steppe and the Sown,” 1: 231.
Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, pp. 19–25.
T. David, “Peuples mobiles de l’eurasie: contacts d’une périphérie ‘barbare’ avec
le monde ‘civilisé,’ à la fin de l’Age du Bronze et au 1er Age du Fer,” in L’Asie
Centrale et ses rapports, pp. 159–68.
24
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
for fewer people to control larger herds, and, by allowing increased mobility, leading to expansion of the political and cultural horizons of early pastoralists.23 The horse is an animal that is notoriously difficult to tame, and
according to some, the first equid to be domesticated was not the horse,
but the more docile onager.24 Nonetheless, the large number of horse
remains recovered at the site of Dereivka (4200–3700 b.c.), in the south
Russian Steppe, leaves no doubt that the domestication of the horse probably began in the fifth–fourth millennium b.c.25 Among horse remains
found at the Dereivka site, evidence of tooth wear caused by a hard bit,
dating from before the invention of the wheel – therefore ruling out the
hypothesis that the horses had been hitched to carts – indicates that the
Dereivka horses were not only bred but also ridden.26 The finding of cheek
pieces made of deer antlers with holes drilled in them supports this conclusion. It is also based on the assumption that hard bits were in circulation and that their use was generalized (bit wear was found on the tooth
of a single horse). Horseback riding is also assumed to have been developed
to control large herds of horses. It is not clear, however, if this evidence suffices to prove that the horse was actually ridden, since horses might have
been used as draft animals even in the absence of the wheel.27 Even if the
first horse breeders actually mounted the horse, the communities remained
predominantly agricultural, also raising pigs, cattle, and sheep. Although
the horse was the most important of the Dereivka animals, it remained so
within the economic context of early agro-pastoralists.28
23
24
25
26
27
28
David Anthony, “The Opening of the Eurasian Steppe at 2000 bce,” in The
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 1: 94–113.
J. F. Downs, “Origin and Spread of Riding in the Near East and Central Asia,”
American Anthropologist 63 (1961): 1193–1203.
Dmitriy Yakolevich Telegin, Dereivka: A Settlement and Cemetery of Copper Age
Horse Keepers on the Middle Dnieper, ed. J. P. Mallory, trans V. K. Pyatkovskiy
(Oxford: B.A.R., 1986); Marsha Levine, “Dereivka and the Problem of Horse
Domestication,” Antiquity 64 (1990): 727–40.
David Anthony and Dorcas Brown, “The Origin of Horseback Riding,” Antiquity 65.246 (1991): 22–38.
A striking example of this use of the horse comes from a bronze figurine adorning the handle of a dagger from the Rostonska burial, near Omsk, showing a
horse bridled at the mouth pulling a human being on a pair of skis; see E. N.
Chernykh, Ancient Metallurgy in the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), p. 228. This use of the domesticated horse, although attested later
than Dereivka, must have been possible during the Dereivka period and demonstrates that tooth wear caused by a bit, in the absence of corroborating evidence
such as petroglyphs and other visual representations, is not necessarily evidence
of horseback riding.
Claudia Chang and Perry A. Tourtellotte, “The Role of Agro-pastoralism in the
Evolution of Steppe Culture in the Semirechye Area of Southern Kazakhstan
25
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
Nonetheless, these early domesticators played an important role in the
selection of the species. The Dereivka horses are not significantly different
from those recovered thirty-five hundred years later, at Pazyryk, in the Altai
Mountains of Kazakhstan, although they are very different from the smaller
wild horses. The type of bones proves that human-controlled selection took
place, and, whether or not they invented riding, these early communities
must be given credit for their high level of specialization in breeding.29
In northern Kazakhstan a settlement of the fourth–third millennium b.c.
has been excavated where 99 percent of all animal remains recovered
belong to horses, indicating that those people – who lived in large, semisubterranean houses – specialized in horse breeding.30 At this site cheek
pieces have also been found, but the economic and social characteristics of
this settlement do not suggest a mobile lifestyle.
A conservative interpretation would date a significant impact of early
horseback riding on western and Central Asia to between the mid-third
and early second millennium b.c.31 The early horse-riding communities,
however, were not properly nomadic. Although some communities were
more or less mobile, riding in wheeled carts to follow their herds, their
pastoralism cannot be defined as a regular cyclical migration seasonally
alternating among different pasture grounds; rather, this was “herder
husbandry” or at most semi-nomadism.32 These communities also depended
on agricultural production and had settlements; the migrations of some
groups documented by archaeological data were most likely permanent dislocations due to causes that could have ranged from pasture exhaustion to
climatic changes to external threats.33
29
30
31
32
33
during the Saka/Wusun Preriod (600 bce–400 bce),” in The Bronze Age and
Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 1: 266.
V. I. Bibikova, “On the History of Horse Domestication in South-East Europe,”
in Telegin, Dereivka, pp. 163–82.
A. P. Derevyanko and D. Dorj, “Neolithic Tribes in Northern Parts of Central
Asia,” in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, 1: 185.
M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in
the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1979), pp. 45–47, 65–68. The development
of horseback riding as a specialized activity, by the way, was a long process
that reached completion with widespread diffusion in Inner Asia of the saddle
and the stirrup at a still undefined time that might have fallen within the first half
of the first millennium a.d.; see A. D. H. Bivar, “The Stirrup and Its Origin,”
Oriental Art, n.s. 1, 1 (1955): 61–65. On the stirrup, see also Lynn White,
Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962),
pp. 14–28.
Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, p. 93.
Earlier authors tended to see such large-scale migrations as evidence of the existence of pastoral nomads in the Central Asian steppe as early as the third mil-
26
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
The Aryan terminology that appears in a fourteenth-century b.c. Hittite
treatise on horsemanship illustrating the training of the chariot horse
suggests that such training may have been developed by steppe IndoEuropean peoples, perhaps the Iranian ancestors of the Achaemenian
dynasty.34 What does seem clear is that most improvements in the training
and domestication of the horse were achieved by a people who were already
familiar with animal breeding and who had been specializing in this economic activity, although they still practiced farming. It is also possible that
the steppe environment allowed contacts among early pastoralists that
favored the spread of horse-training techniques. Nevertheless, the transition to actual pastoral nomadism as practiced by horseback riders was
probably not completed until the beginning of the first millennium b.c., and
the first Scythian mounted archers appear on the scene only in the tenth or
ninth century b.c.35
Andronovo’s Chariots
Climatic changes may have led to the increased mobility of the steppe
people starting in the third millennium b.c. In the Bronze Age the technological level of the people of the steppe region was greatly advanced by the
widespread introduction of metal artifacts into all branches of production,
leading to the emergence of groups skilled in metallurgy who moved about
in wheeled vehicles.36 The earliest wheeled vehicles in the Eurasian steppes
were heavy wagons, dated to 2900 b.c. and attributed to the Yamnaya
culture, located on the lower Dnieper.37 Only much later, in the late third
and early second millennium b.c., do wheeled vehicles appear east of the
Urals, in connection with the spread of the Andronovo people. The people
of this widespread and singularly successful Central Asian culture were
adept at animal husbandry, and their craftsmen had mastered the art of
34
35
36
37
lennium b.c. Cf. Raphael Pumpelly, ed., Explorations in Turkestan. Expedition
of 1904. Prehistoric Civilizations of Anau, 2 vols. (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1908).
Pentti Aalto, “The Horse in Central Asian Nomadic Cultures,” Studia Orientalia
46 (1975): 4–7. On the linguistic evidence for the word “horse,” see Juha
Janhunen “The Horse in East Asia: Reviewing the Linguistic Evidence,” in The
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 1: 415–30.
Franz Hančar, Das Pferd in praehistorischer und frühistorischer Zeit (Wien:
Herold, 1956), pp. 551–63.
V. Dergachev, “Neolithic and Bronze Age Cultural Communities of the Steppe
Zone of the USSR,” Antiquity 63.241 (1989): 801.
Anthony, “Opening of the Eurasian Steppe,” 1: 102–103.
27
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
bronze metallurgy. These metalworkers were able to manipulate alloys
so that the quality of the bronze would be harder or tougher according to
the specific function of the weapons and tools that they made. Later,
Andronovo people, because of their long-distance migrations, may have
played an important role in the development of oasis economy, a point suggested by similarities in the nomadic ceramics from distant areas.38
The broader utilization of mineral ores from multiple independent metallurgical sources and the expansion of the use of wheeled vehicles and
bronze objects are all signs of economic development. Yet the concomitant
abundance of weapons indicates that there were increasing tensions among
various communities:39 During this “second epochal type of culture,” after
the Neolithic revolution, it seems that “[t]he struggle for forcible redistribution of pasture and accumulated wealth [gave] rise, at a certain stage, to
a type of militarization of society that found expression and progress in the
production of weapons.”40
Moreover, chariots, mostly used for war, should be distinguished from
the four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts used to transport people
and goods. Though based on pre-existing models of wheeled vehicles, the
war chariot seems to have been developed by the agro-pastoralists of the
Andronovo culture.41 The chariots were light and fast; they had spoked
wheels and a rear axle supporting a box in which normally no more than
two warriors could either stand, kneel, or sit.42 Recent discoveries have
revealed fully formed chariots with spoked wheels of the SintashtaPetrovka culture, and these may date to as early as 2026 b.c.43 These are
technically and conceptually very similar to chariots found both in western
Asia – at the Lchashen site in the Caucasus – and in East Asia, at the Shang
royal site of An-yang. However, according to the expert opinion of Littauer
and Crouwel, the Sintashta-Petrovka chariots had a gauge and especially a
wheel nave that were too narrow, resulting in a very unstable structure that
could not have been efficient for hunting, racing, or fighting. The inefficiency of this type of chariot is made even more evident by the probable
availability of horseback riding, which clearly was a superior means of
38
39
40
41
42
43
Hiebert, Origins of the Bronze Age Oasis Civilization in Central Asia, p. 135.
V. M. Masson, “Les cultures anciennes d’Asie moyenne: dynamique du développement, occupation des aires écologiques, rapports culturels,” in L’Asie centrale et
ses rapports, p. 34.
Masson and Taylor, “Soviet Archaeology in the Steppe Zone,” p. 780.
V. F. Gening, “Mogil’nik Sintashta i problema rannikh indoiranskikh plemen,”
Sovetskaia Arkheologiia 4 (1977): 53–73.
Stuart Piggott, The Earliest Wheeled Transport: From the Atlantic Coast to the
Caspian Sea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 95.
David Anthony and Nikolai B. Vinogradov, “Birth of the Chariot,” Archaeology
48.2 (1995): 38.
28
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
transportation, herd control, and warfare. Hence Littauer and Crouwel
imply that chariots, which originated in the Near East, where a continuous
line of development can be seen from four-wheeled carts to two-wheeled
carts to light chariots, were taken on by the nomads predominantly for the
symbolic of accompanying the dead to their burial place. In other words,
the “prestige value” that the chariot enjoyed in the Near East prompted its
construction in the steppe, not its “workaday” usefulness.44
The Andronovo people’s unquestioned economic superiority propelled
this culture across the Eurasian steppe from the Urals to South Siberia
whether by horseback or by chariot, and numerous studies indicate that the
chariot was imported into China from the west, through Central Asia, possibly around the thirteenth century b.c.45 Although no definite evidence has
emerged yet, it is plausible that the Andronovo culture’s contacts with the
eastern part of Central Asia, and especially its interaction with the archaeological context of northwestern China (present-day Sinkiang), may be
responsible for the introduction into China of the chariot, whose western
origin is doubted only by few. These contacts are attested to by the archaeological evidence, including similar bronze artifacts such as axes, celts
shaped as spades, and other implements.46
The earliest Chinese chariots to have been found were discovered in
burials of the Shang dynasty at An-yang; buried with the chariots were
their horses and drivers, who served as sacrificial victims. This type of
vehicle was used by the aristocracy for display, for hunting, and in war. It
was made of a central pole, with one horse harnessed on each side, and a
box – typically rectangular or oval; a spoked wheel was at each end of an
axle attached crosswise to the rear end of the central pole. The chariot
44
45
46
M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, “The Origin of the True Chariot,” Antiquity
70 (1996): 934–39.
Edward L. Shaughnessy, “Historical Perspectives on the Introduction of the
Chariot into China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48.1 (1988): 189–237;
Stuart Piggott, “Chinese Chariotry: An Outsider’s View,” in Arts of the Eurasian
Steppelands, ed. Philip Denwood, Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia no.
7 (London: Percival David Foundation, 1978), pp. 32–51; Littauer and Crouwel,
Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East. For a detailed
study of the Chinese chariots of the Shang dynasty, see Magdalene von Dewall,
Pferd und Wagen im fruhen China (Bonn: Habelt, 1964), pp. 109–77. See also
Robert Bagley, “Shang Archaeology,” in Cambridge History of Ancient China,
ed. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 202–208.
E. E. Kuzmina, “Cultural Connections of the Tarim Basin People and Pastoralists of the Asian Steppes in the Bronze Age,” in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age
Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 1: 63–93; Ke Peng, “The Andronovo Artifacts
Discovered in Toquztara County in Ili, Xinjiang,” in The Bronze Age and Early
Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 2: 573–80.
29
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
appears in China already fully formed.47 There seem to have been no other
wheeled vehicles, such as wagons or carts, pulled by cattle or equids, in use
in China before the introduction of the chariot. Later, during the Chou
dynasty, chariots were a common feature of the funerary inventory of the
richest tombs, as well as forming the core of both the Chou and foreign
armies.
Further Cultural Developments
Much of what happened in the second millennium b.c. is still open to question: we see the depopulation of some areas of Central Eurasia, and more
contacts take place between settled farmers and mobile herders. Moreover,
the movement of people, formerly occurring from west to east, seems to be
partly reversed as we can also track an east-to-west movement, possibly as
part of a more general migration phenomenon radiating from the SayanoAltai region. Around the late second millennium b.c. the progress of Central
Asian peoples in metallurgy was stimulated by the so-called Seimo-Turbino
transcultural complex. The Seimo-Turbino became consolidated as a cultural phenomenon, including both pastoralists and mobile Neolithic hunters
of the forest, in the seventeenth century b.c. Chernykh places the point of
“departure” of these fast-moving people in the Sayano-Altai region, further
east than the eponymous Uralic sites that lent their names to the complex.
In this region the encounter of pastoral steppe cultures with metal-working
forest people gave rise to a metallurgically advanced, extremely mobile,
warlike society. From this part of Inner Asia the Seimo-Turbino people
spread westward, a movement well documented by Chernykh based on
metallographic analysis.48
The Rostovka site, on the Irtysh River, is representative of the eastern,
or Siberian, variety of the Seimo-Turbino complex. Here bronze production, consisting of tin bronze and associated with the ancient mines of the
Rudny Altai Mountains, was mostly comprised of weapons such as socketed axes, socketed spearheads, and dagger-knives. These tin bronzes
eventually reached the Urals, evidence of the westward motion of the
Seimo-Turbino people. A further clue to the Altai region as the original
home of the Seimo-Turbino people is found in their iconography, which
includes animals, such as the wild sheep, typical of the Altai and T’ien-shan
regions. As they moved west they came into contact with the Andronovo
people, and they may have disappeared as a separate cultural unit by the
fifteenth century b.c. It is possible, however, that the Seimo-Turbino met47
48
Yang Pao-ch’eng, “Yin-tai ch’e-tzu te fa-hsien yü fu-yüan,” K’ao-ku 1984.6:
546–55; K’ao-ku 1984.6: 505–09.
Chernykh, Ancient Metallurgy in the USSR, pp. 215–31, chapter 9.
30
T H E S T E P P E H I G H WAY
allurgical phenomenon played an important role in the formation of
Karasuk metallurgy in the Sayano-Altai region and western Mongolia.
From around the twelfth to the eighth century b.c. a new culture, known
as Karasuk, came to dominate the region of South Siberia, the Yenisei and
Minusinsk Basin, and the Altai extending as far as western Mongolia.49 Like
their neighbors in northern China, the Karasuk people had a mixed
economy, which, although mainly based on livestock, also relied on agriculture and other supporting activities.50 Findings of antelope and deer
bones suggest extensive hunting by the Karasuk, whereas cattle and horse
remains indicate that animal husbandry was their main productive activity.
During the Karasuk period improved metallurgic technology resulted in
important innovations, among them the bronze bit, which greatly enhanced
the possibilities offered by horseback riding.
This vast cultural complex extended its influence and contacts to northern China, and the Karasuk metal inventory presents many analogies with
the bronzes of the so-called Northern Zone complex. For instance, we find
a type of knife with a hunched blade, similar to the “foreign” bronze knives
found at An-yang and widespread across northern China, and similar to
the Chinese daggers of the “Ordos” style, with a narrow guard. The pickaxes display tubular sockets for hafting such as those of the Northern Zone,
though the blade’s pointed cutting edge may have been derived from a
Shang prototype.51 These similarities indicate that the Northern Zone of
China was in contact with a wide cultural area and possibly functioned as
a clearinghouse for new technical developments into and out of China.
Early Nomadic (Scythian-type) Cultures
in the Eurasian Steppe
The Karasuk people lived in felt tents, traveled in hooded carts, ate a variety
of dairy products, and adapted remarkably well to a mobile way of life.52
Yet “true” early pastoral nomads, that is, pastoralists moving with their
herds according to a fixed seasonal cycle, appear only in the late Bronze
and early Iron Age, a phenomenon that brought about a great expansion
across Central Eurasia of mounted warlike nomads. The emergence of this
new anthropological type is attested to by the iconography of tenth-century
b.c. Iran and ninth-century b.c. Assyria and is confirmed by Assyrian and
49
50
51
52
S. V. Kiselev, Drevniaia Istoriia Iuzhnoi Sibiri (Moscow: Nauka, 1951).
A. P. Okladnikov, “Inner Asia at the Dawn of History,” in Cambridge History of
Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
pp. 85–88.
The metallurgical cultures of northern China will be discussed in the next chapter.
Okladnikov, “Inner Asia at the Dawn of History,” pp. 94–95.
31
ANCIENT CHINA AND ITS ENEMIES
Greek sources of the ninth and eighth centuries b.c. who assign these groups
names such as Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sakas.53
These ethnonyms are associated with the pastoral nomadic peoples who
inhabited the region of the Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea and Central
Asia from the eighth century b.c. From the eastern to the western parts of
the Eurasian steppe region, these early Iron Age peoples shared a cultural
universe that was remarkably homogeneous, at least at the level of their
material development and artistic expression. These “early nomads” or
Scytho-Siberian peoples, as they are sometimes called by archaeologists,
engaged in pastoral nomadism as their primary economic activity and thus
their livelihood was based on cattle, sheep, and horses. Most prominent in
this society was the …