GRASSLAND AND FARMLAND—SMITH 367 
in the vast plain, such as the banks of the Oxus, Syr Darya, Don, 
Volga, and other rivers that were favored with wood, water, and 
possible garden patches. 
A new and very different era began when the man of the plains got 
sheep, goats, cattle, and, lastly, the horse. The steppe people domes- 
ticated the horse (E. A. Speiser, of the University of Pennsylvania, 
concurs), and it became thoroughly integrated into every feature of 
the life of the people of the steppes. A new force, a new dynamic 
had appeared upon the Eurasian scene—the man on horseback. Here 
was revolution. It upset the affairs of man and was far reaching in 
its effects. Indeed, the man on horseback has had but two analogs in 
human affairs—steam transport and the airplane. 
Carl Bishop, of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, says that 
the Indo-European languages were developed by these horse-using 
people on the steppes somewhere in southeastern Europe or south- 
western Asia. He further states that these people whom we call Indo- 
Europeans had the word for wheeled vehicle before they separated 
into eastern and western groups. Louis H. Gray concurs. 
These Indo-Europeans of the steppes and the horse-using Turanians 
who appeared later in the same area, have profoundly influenced the 
history of Europe and Asia, both as spreaders of culture and as de- 
stroyers of states and civilizations. It is as destroyers that they made 
their conspicuous contribution. 
The grassland nomad lives by flocks, the flocks live by grass. Ani- 
mals must move to obtain grass, and man must move with the animals. 
The nomad has mobility—here today, gone tomorrow—and mobility 
is a very important factor in warfare. It is also a sad fact that the 
grassland can produce more men than it can feed. Thus there exists 
the expulsive force of hunger. These factors make migration so easy as 
to be almost a part of the social organization. Many will be familiar 
with Ellsworth Huntington’s thesis to the effect that periods of 
drought and scanty grass made an expulsive force that sent Central 
Asian nomads to overrun surrounding lands. Farmer peoples living 
east, west, and south of the Eurasian plains had abundant and oft- 
repeated cause to mourn the fact that such a region as the Eurasian 
grassland existed. 
About 2000 B. C. bands of nomads from the steppes began working 
their way around the western end of the Black Sea and southward 
through Thrace and into Greece. They were shepherds accompanied 
by their flocks and with rude carts loaded with household goods and 
drawn by oxen. These people later became the ancestors of the Classic 
Greeks. By 1400 B. C., or in about 600 years, these shepherd migrants 
~had learned from the more cultured Aegeans to build ships. In their 
ships they sailed to Crete and conquered it. These barbarians burned 
