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- Convenor:
-
Yoshihito Shimada
(Nagoya University)
- Location:
- 102b
- Start time:
- 15 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
This panel discusses on three subjects of Afro-Eurasian Inner Dry land Civilization supported with pastoralist power: animal powers, pastoralist relationship to other cultures and transformation of pastoralist culture in socialist countries
Long Abstract:
We have studied Afro-Eurasian Inner Dry land Civilization from pastoralist point of view, considering its developpement having owned to pastoralist power. This was particularly transporting and military power. The formation of continental wide trade networks as well as that of great empires have been realizede with these two kinds of power, so that a global civilisationof continental wide has been realised where different peoples living in remote regions, different cultures in different regions have interacted between them. Here we want to discuss on the three subjects. First, milk and dung cultures no less important than transporting and military ones. Secondly, other cultures like clothes, leather tapistry, arts and religios,relatedly developped with pastoral civilization. Third, radical transformation of pastoralism going in ex socialist countries.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Animal power considered as main power for the formation of Afro-Eurasian inner dry land civilization, we discuss how this civilization has been supported with animal power so as to the re-evaluation of animal power. Animal power as one of the most important power pre-modern society could exploit.
Paper long abstract:
Afro-Eurasian Inner Dry land, spread from the Sahel in Africa to Mongol through Sahara, Middle East and Central Asia, has been the center for the formation of human civilizations: Great empires, long distant trade networks and world religions like Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Civilization is a global culture integrating many local cultures into one system. How did it become possible in Afro-Eurasian Inner Dry land?
It is because of animal power particularly strong in transporting and military power.
As a means of transport, animal power made it possible the Afro-Eurasian continental trading network including both of Saharan trade and Silk Road in it with lots of international trade cities, creating numerous artisan cultures like cloths, metrology, ceramics, carpets and leather crafts, creation of world economy in a word. As a means of military and political domination, animal power made it possible the formation of the greatest empires with horse and camel power.
The two kinds of power have worked together in order to make Afro-Eurasian Inner Dry land Civilization. This was global international civilization where diver's districts and peoples had interacted. This is also principal reason why almost every world religions appeared and developed there.
It is also important to take into consideration other kinds of animal power: meat and milk production, leather and wool production and even dung production important as fire materials and pasture fertilizing power
This inner continental civilization has been however replaced by ocean sea centered modern civilization in the dominant power position.
Paper short abstract:
Old world camels have been supporting human life in Afro-Eurasian inner dry land. The present distribution of and food production from old world camels in and around Afro-Eurasian inner dry land countries will be reviewed.
Paper long abstract:
Old world camels (Camelus dromedarius and Camelus bactrianus) have been contributing to the human life in Afro-Eurasian inner dry land. Camels have been providing food (milk, meat and blood), fiber for clothes and housing, and labor force for transport, agriculture and military activity.
The distribution of and food production from old world camels will be reviewed mainly based on the statistical data of FAO.
Considering the physiologic characteristics of camels and humans, humans have been depending on camels to overcome the heat and shortages in water and food to Afro-Eurasian inner dry land. In other words, domestication of camels should have been the key for humans to invade Afro-Eurasian inner dry land.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation presumes that milk culture originated in West Asia, and then the milk culture diffused and transformed in North and Central Asia under cool environmental condition. The hypothesis of monogenesis-polarization of milk culture can lead to the hypothesis of monogenesis of pastoralism.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation focuses on the origin and the diffusion of milk culture (milking, milk processing and uses of milk products) in the Eurasian Continent.
1) The invention of milking created a new strategy of food procurement: obtaining the benefit of milk keeping animals alive with no slaughter of living animals. It created a new subsistence of pastoralism.
2) Archaeological and anthropological surveys indicate that the milk culture originated firstly in West Asia, and then diffused over the Eurasian Continent. From the field study over 20 years, it became clear that the milk processing technique forms geographically the bipolar characteristics of northern region and southern region. It can be considered that the technique of West Asian fermented milk processing series developed in the southern region diffused to northern region.
3) This diffusion contributed also to the following technique of cream: separating series and alcohol fermentation in northern region under cool environmental condition. Here, the hypothesis of Monogenesis-Bipolarization of milk culture in the Eurasian Continent can be proposed.
4) The hypothesis indicates also that the pastoralism in North Asia and Central Asia were established secondarily because the milk culture makes the base of pastoral subsistence.
Paper short abstract:
In the cold and dry Mongolian plateau, dried livestock dung not only play an important role as fuel, but also have manifold usages in folk medicine, divination, etc. The use of livestock dung is one of the most important cultures in Mongolian pastoral society.
Paper long abstract:
Through the case of Inner Mongolia Xilingool League in Mongolian society, the study aims to notice the widespread use of livestock dung on economical, artistic, cultural, and religious aspects. Mongolian pastoralists mainly has raised 5 kinds of animals as core livestock: cattle, horses, camels, sheep and goats. We study how the dung of those 5 kinds of livestock have been classified and used in the daily life by Mongolian pastoralists. There are more than 30 categorcal names of the 5 kinds of livestock's dung according to wide utilization for different purposes. The dung are classified according to the kind of livestock and the properties of livestock dung, so that we can observe various utilizations of the dung: heating, cooking, hunting, well-digging, leather-tanning, and so on.The dung also has deep relationship with religious culture, as the dung of sheep has been used on divination to find lost livestock.
Paper short abstract:
Two elements constituted Saharan oasis culture. One is irrigated date palm, the main food for the people of oasis and trans-Saharan trade. The other is Saharan trade covering the Sahara. Nowadays, conditions of oasis life have changed. We discuss this big change.
Paper long abstract:
Human life of the Sahara oases had been supported by two factors.
The first is networks of oases realised with trans-Saharan trade of long distance by camel caravans. Being integrated in this network, the oases could enjoy economic prosperities and became centres of socio-cultural interactions between sub-Sahara and Mediterranean peoples and cultures. The second factor is irrigated agriculture at oases with particular under- ground water supply system called Foggara. The date palm is indispensable crop for oasis agriculture. The species are widely distributed from Sahara to Iran. The date palm is (1) a plant with a strong adaptation capacity to hyper dry condition in the tropical area. (2) It supplies also shade and humidity to other crops cultivated under the date palms. (3) Abundance of varieties is big because of dioeciom.
The date palm culture associated with other crops ones has been maintained with skilful indigenous knowledge and technology like Foggara irrigation. Foggara system can be found largely all over Afro-Asian inner dry land with different names (qanāt, karez tec.). Although this is a skilful system exploiting scarce water for irrigation, the water resource disappears some times. It is why Saharan peoples began to introduce deep well modern irrigation system working with electric motor engine. This affects deeply oasis life: development of large cereal field and predicament of water resources for traditional Foggara, which goes to the destruction of Palm field.
Paper short abstract:
Resource uses in dry land fisheries differ according to water depth. In deep waters it is difficult for fishermen with simple fishing methods to catch fish. Shallow waters are rich in resources, dugongs for example. It has become a serious problem to conserve coastal resources in the Red Sea.
Paper long abstract:
The maritime culture in dry land is our subject. The case study is offered by Dungonab Bay Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Sudanese Red Sea Coast. Resources are rich in Red Sea coral reef. Resource uses of coastal fisheries differ according to water depth.
By analyzing the location and water depth of each of 77 fishing grounds in the MPA, it was clarified that 84 % of the fishing grounds were less than 30 meters. Fishermen here tend to target the coral reef fishes in the shallow waters.
Most of deep fishing grounds (40 to 50 meters) were located outside the bay, where the fishermen caught Nagil (Plectropomus maculates): the most valuable fish in the Red Sea. While valuable resources locate in deeper water, it is difficult for local fishermen with simple fishing methods such as hand-line fishing without fish-finders to catch them.
Resources in shallow water are rich. The overexploitations of sea cucumber and dugong by-catch are however serious. Dugong is by-cached with the multifilament gillnets set in shallow sea grass beds during the night. Dugongs had been used as food and material of shield. Their demand recently declines however and they give damage to expensive gillnets. Fishermen don't like therefore to go catching dugongs. The local people began to discuss about the way of avoiding dugong by-catch; stop fishing when they find dugongs and not setting the multifilament gillnets in sea grass beds during nighttime.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation aims to discuss house form, construction techniques and materials, space use and housing culture in dry land area of the Sahara and Sahel.
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of this paper is mainly to discuss on what kind of cultural exchange has been done during the Trans-Saharan Trade Time from architectural and cultural perspective. This presentation is based on the results of research on the History of Afro-Eurasian Inner Dry Land Civilizations and their Modern Changes.
A comparative study on the subject was conducted in countries, which use to be part of the so-called Trans-Saharan Trade area. The field surveys were conducted in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
In this area exchanges have been made of construction technics and living habit and knowledge, which resulted from the dynamism of travel and trade activities supported by animal power.
The field survey focused on spatial organization and their social meaning. For understanding spatial organization of houses, the surveys were conducted by measurement of plans, observations material and construction details, interview of householders and householder behaviours' observation. Different ethnic groups were chosen as subjects for understanding the social role house spaces in their social interaction.
Paper short abstract:
By analysing the animal expressions depicted in Buddhist art and rock carvings in Central Asia, we will examines the historical interchanges which have existed between pastoralists and oasis dwellers and the deep influences that the pastoralist nomad culture has given to Buddhist art.
Paper long abstract:
The Kizil Caves is a Buddhist rock-cut Caves located in Baicheng Country, Xinjiang, China. This area was under the rule of ancient Qiuci Kingdom and a commercial hub of the Silk Road.
The subject of the wall paintings is mainly Buddhist stories. Of which, Jātakas and Avadānas were mostly painted on a barrel vault of the central-pillar-caves that forms the background for them and indicates Mt Sumeru said to be the highest mountain rising in the centre of the world.
Past several studies have been made on the analyses of mountain's shape and its source. It goes without saying that those paintings have been made based on Buddhist doctrine, but little attention has been given to a lot of elements which cannot explain by Buddhist context.
We will begin our discussion by analysing the animal expressions depicted in the mountain landscape of the Kizil Caves. There are many kinds of wild or domestic animals, for example, antelopes, gazelles, camels, cows, horses and so on. These are very similar to the animals depicted on rock art in Central Asia as well. In view of this fact, the animals of the Kizil caves express not only numerous previous lives of Syakyamuni, but also remains of memories which ancient nomadic people had been living a life of hunting and gathering in mountain forested steppe. It shows that the interchange between nomads and oasis dwellers existed in history as well as the nomadic culture had any deep influence on the Buddhist Art.
Paper short abstract:
In northern China mainly north of the Great Wall where Mongol people have been dominant expands however lots of multi ethnic villages and towns where China agricultures populate. We examine this socio-cultural dynamics accelerated in the 20th C. during which Chinese domination expanded to periphery.
Paper long abstract:
In northern China corresponding to the southern part of the Inner Mongol, north of the line of the Great Wall-liǔ tiáo biān柳条邊墙、lots of multi ethnic communities appeared where Mongol people of pastoralist origin and Han Chinese of agriculture culture have lived together with other peoples like Muslims.
This presents Chinese domination extended to northern region since the beginning of 20th century regardless of Chinese regime. The study of this process is important for us to understand the actual Chinese socio-political dynamics composed of 56 ethnic minorities, especially peripheral minority problem so serious in every parts of China. The case of the southern Inner Mongol is further more important, taking in consideration the encounter of two different ways of life: agriculture and pastoralism and its dynamism. This study offers a contrbution to the discussions concerning how 56 peples live together in China.
Paper short abstract:
This study will focus on the Chinese Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia in which time a severe ethnic oppression was conducted against the Mongolian people.
Paper long abstract:
This study discusses the "incident of the massacre of members of the Inner Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party" which took place in the IMAR between late 1967 and early 1970 with the background of the Cultural Revolution.
The IMPRP was founded in 1925 for the self-determination and independence of the Mongols, getting support from the Mongolian People's Republic as well as the Communist International. The IMPRP aspired to the unification with the Mongolian People's Republic at the end of WWII, when Japanese colonial rule ended. During the Cultural Revolution, the IMPRP was condemned by the Central Committee of the CCP as a "traitorous counter-revolutionary organisation conspiring to divide the great motherland of China". China endeavoured to unify 56 ethnic groups into one state system, while the Mongols were opposed to such unification, trying to build their own separate nation-state .
The tentative of Inner mongolians was violently oppressed so as to going to suffering an ethnic oppression. The "Mongolian genocide" reveals how the China socialist state treated ethnic minorities in that time; we call it "nation-state type genocide" by a bigger nation system refusing regional independence or autonomy of minortity ethnic group. The study of this type of oppression needs to be done by more wide comparative way about other oppressive nation-states.
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss drastic changes to which Inner Mongolian pastoral society is exposed with agricultural development. An Ordos society nearly situated to the Great Wall as well as to agricultural region offers a case study.
Paper long abstract:
Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, strong agricultural development politics has been applied on the Inner Mongolia of which main culture had been pastoralist. During last sixty years, Mongolian pastoralism has been obliged to accept more than more agricultural economy.
At Uushin banner of Ordos city, for example, which is a dry region with 330mm rainfall a year with a large sandy desert called Mu-Us, pastoral people have lived with an agro-pastoral economy, raising 5 kinds of domestic animals (mal) in pasture land and cultivating in farmland among sandy dunes. The main purpose of farming was however to get food sufficiency for their domestic consummation; millet called 'amu' in Mongolian was a daily food for Ordos Mongols, and it is still now. On the other hand, it is domesticated animals that gave them moneys.
This agro-pastoralism economy has become now agricultural one. The politics against "Desertification" has worked also for reducing pastoralism: animal breeding with pastoralist way has been forbidden to practice in certain pasturage for preventing the desertific Mongolian pastoralism has been changed drastically.
Paper short abstract:
While camel breeding in the Sahara has declined, it has increased in Kazakhstan because of the necessity for milk production. How and why has the modernization effect differently arrived between the Sahara and Central Asia in camel breeding culture? This question is reviewed.
Paper long abstract:
This study aims to think about the modernization impact on camel breeding culture in the Sahara Desert and Central Asia. The camel has been an important animal for the desert people to get milk, meat, wool and working power. There are two species of camel: Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) and dromedary (Camelus dromedarius). The former, Arabian Peninsula native is bred in tropical Middle East and in Africa, while the latter lives in the cold steppe of Central Asia.
In the Sahara Desert, the Touareg have lived with dromedary. The use for transportation is reduced; camels are now animals almost for tourism.
The number of camels in Kazakhstan had decreased from 1,200,000 in 1941
heads to 100,000 heads of camel. The camel breeding began to re-increase however recently. It is mainly because of the need of the milk production becoming more important. While the Bactrian camel has been kept as working animal in Kazakhstan, the camel milk has recently come to be highlighted as healthy drink; milk production became more important and the number of dromedary has increased.
In the socialist time of the Soviet Union, the collective farm system dominated Camel breeding. Today, the breeding form of the camel is various: big ranching system considered as enterprise, private individual pasturing, breeding in small yards, and traditional nomadic ways. Various kinds of effect and change to which pastoralist culture has been exposed with the modernization process are analysed here.