442 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



maize, potatoes, tobacco, and other plants were introduced from the 

 Americas. Instances of this phenomenon, in regard both to plants 

 and to animals, might easily be multiplied. 



THE RISE OF NOMADISM 



By the first half of the first millennium B. C, an important cultural 

 development, the rise of pastoral nomadism, had begun to take form in 

 central Asia. That region, as abundant remains show, was once 

 occupied by a sedentary planting population similar to that of Neo- 

 lithic northern China, already mentioned. Apparently about the time 

 named, however, we find indications of a change. How far this was 

 due to growing desiccation we do not know definitely,^® but its form 



DISTRIBUTION 



-OFTHE- 



TRACTION PLOW 



-BEFORE THE - 



AGE OF DISCOVERY 



Figure 5. 



was determined by the acquisition of domestic animals — sheep and 

 cattle — adapted to a pastoral and nomadic manner of life. 



The predecessors of the present peoples of central Asia seem to have 

 gone about on foot.^'' They knew the horse-drawn chariots of their 

 Chinese neighbors, but never adopted them, probably because their 

 own cultural level was too low. During: the earlier half of the first 



*" That some climatic change has occurred seems certain. On the fluctuations in level 

 of the Caspian Sea cf. Ellsworth Huntington, The pulse of Asia, New Yorlc and Boston, 

 1007, passim. At the opposite end of Asia, nortliern Chinese Neolithic sites have yielded 

 remains of warmth- and moisture-loving animals, notably the water deer {Hydropotes 

 iyiermis) which could not survive there today. 



"• More than one ancient Chinese text, referring to wars with the northern barbarians 

 even as lato as the sixth century B. C, saya, "They fight on foot, but we in chariots." 



