112 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



with a hierarchy of units, but all this remains far cruder in regions where 

 the hoe is the instrument of cultivation than where the plough is used and 

 especially where the horse is available. 



It is important to bear in mind contrasts between the various steppe 

 lands of the Old World. In the first place, one may distinguish the 

 northern steppe, north of Iran, from the southern steppe including Iran, 

 Arabia and parts of northern Africa. For considerable periods in the 

 Pleistocene the southern steppe was in many parts better watered than it 

 now is, and included much land that is now desert. On the other hand, 

 much of the northern steppe was apparently either under ice or under the 

 water derived from the melting of ice. Parts of the southern steppe were 

 of special importance as a home of hunting groups ; of the northern steppe 

 at that stage we know little. Parts of the southern steppe have a little 

 rain in winter, the northern steppe is subjected to the fiercest cold at that 

 season. 



The rivers of the southern steppe lend themselves to fertilisation of 

 land tracts as well as to movement of trade, and, with the aid of the climate, 

 agriculture developed far earlier and far more highly than it did in the 

 northern steppe, and there are far more ancient cities. 



In the southern steppe, ass, sheep, goat and camel are characteristic 

 and traditional, with cattle in the vicinity of water. The camel appears 

 to have reached Egypt, presumably from Arabia, at a very early period 

 (in or before the First Dynasty), and it no doubt promoted trade. The 

 northern steppe by way of contrast had large herds of cattle, sheep and 

 horses, and milch mares gave a very valuable and complete food which 

 was not available on the southern steppe. The latter is so dry and hot 

 that the horse does not seem to have been fully adapted until the days of 

 the Arab horse, inured to abstinence and evolved in Nejd in post-Roman 

 times. The horse was, however, of great importance in the southern 

 steppe before this. It is thanks to the horse, acquired from the Hyksos, 

 that the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt transformed that once self-contained 

 country into a far-flung empire. It is thanks to the horse that the lowland 

 ways of Palestine became important under the kingdoms of Israel and 

 Judah, and Israel broke away from the old-fashioned Judah to throw 

 herself more fully into the new life. The horse was the ally of the Persian 

 Kings of Kings, whose cradleland was among the hills of Ears with grass 

 and streams. But all these earlier mentions of the horse are connected 

 mainly with the fertile border of the steppe. 



The multiplicity of relations between nomad and cultivator in the 

 southern steppe has led the conquering herdsman to use the scribes of 

 the cities he took in order to get written records of his prized genealogies 

 and ancestral achievements, once he had become too busy with adminis- 

 tration and policy to carry these in his memory as in the old days of the 

 simple life and the blood feud. There is naturally far less of all this on 

 the northern steppe, which a French writer has described as the land of 

 peuples sans histoire. The many contacts of the southern steppe, and its 

 nomads and its citizens, have led to the exchange of ideas and the broaden- 

 ing of the religious vision, so that this is the cradle of the mono- 

 theistic religions ; in so far as the northern steppe has become 



