Sedentarism

For Mongolian Brothers

Eleri Bitikči

Above all, one should know that in each zone of the Earth
there are separate [from each other] populations, [one] sedentary, [another] nomadic
Rashid al-Din Hamadani

Sedentarism is historical discourse and representation of the nomads by the sedentary world. Sedentarism based on ‘Otherizing’ of the nomads, and it formed hierarchically structured binary: sedentary (good, progressive, civilized) - nomadic (bad, wild, and bloodthirsty). Sedentarism is originated and developed in all sedentary historical traditions, regardless of place or culture, but it was legitimized through European understanding of history and Orientalism [1]. Sedentarism (like Orientalism by England or France) is used and still is being used, for the most part, by Russia and China for restructuring and governing its [former nomadic] Turkic and Mongolian colonies. After destruction of nomadic civilizations, its descendants, forced to socio-economic and intellectual sedentarization, perceived ‘sedentaristic’ representations about their good, savage and fierce ancestors

The Main Traces of Sedentarism

1. Hierarchical Binary Structure: civilized sedentary world had an influence on wild nomadic world; cultural and political influence of the sedentary world on the nomadic one all the time and under any circumstances
2. Intellectual Hierarchy: socio-historical theory and methodology based on study of the sedentary world are used for study the nomadic one
3. Imaginative Geography: all the nomads were the same, and the whole of the nomadic world lived by same way and same rules of development
4. Absence of History: the nomadic world is the world of stagnation, and even modern ethnographic materials could be used for study of ancient nomads
5. Absence of Cultural Changes: the nomadic culture once emerged (or separated from sedentary one) and did not change for millennia (and even modern ethnographic materials could be used for study of ancient nomads)
6. Nomads were tightly bound with Sedentary World:
6а. the nomadic culture and economy were scanty and the sedentary world filled up this inferiority
6b. cultural changes were connected to only influence of sedentary civilizations and religions generated by them

The modern historical research is not limited by methods, methodology; it also deals with epistemological questions which help to better understanding the nature of a knowledge. The postmodernist and poststructuralist criticisms of historical science lay structures on 'reality' and 'natural facts' of the past and examine the history as 'narrative', 'story telling.' The history of nomads, from this point of view, is the history which was narrated and written by sedentary historians, who portrayed the nomadic world as savage, wild and uncivilized. Theories of a state, socio-political relations, historical and cultural developments etc., which were worked out in the frameworks of the sedentary cultures and on the sample of the experience of the sedentary peoples, are used for study, description and explanation of historical and cultural processes in the nomadic world. Such theoretical comparisons between two incomparable worlds led to scientifically proven conclusions about backwardness and wildness of nomadic world

Modern Scientific Approach

Mankurtize* and Rule

One post-Soviet Russian archaeologist dedicated a whole monograph to the animal style in applied art of the ancient nomads. After detailed analysis with all known scientific methods, he came to conclusion that the animal style - is "the art of expressive deformations reflected aggressiveness, blood-thirstiness, and unbalanced wildness dominated in mentality of ancient warrior-hunters". This conclusion is logical and worthy result of consecutive exclusion of nomads from human civilization, result of otherizing nomads as 'beasts', 'lewd centaurs', 'drones of mankind', made by sedentary chronicles for millennia, and legitimized in the historical science and archaeology by European Orientalism

‘Self’ and ‘Other’. The making of binary oppositional structures is the way of our look at ourselves and others. The German philosopher Hegel was among the first to introduce the idea of Other as constituent in self-consciousness. ‘Others’ or ‘constitutive others’ is opposite to ‘us’ ('Self') and is integral part of what defines or even constitutes the self and other phenomena and cultural units. "What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the Other is devalued in some way" [2]
The concept of ‘Others’ has been used in social science to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude 'Others' who they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society. Surely the concept works not only for constructing ‘self’ as a form variational process of excluding or stigmatizing actions and reactions against ‘Others’, it could be competitive, comparative, imitative etc., relations with ‘Others’
All cultures have a view of other cultures that may be exotic and harmless to some extent, but it is not this view that it argues against and when this view is taken by a militarily and economically dominant culture against another, it can lead to disastrous results. In the case of colonialism in Eurasia, the West built opposition "Occident/Orient” and these two sides were very different: retarded Orient and progressive Occident with strong moral principles. This opposition confirmed and vindicated the ‘white man’s burden’, when colonizers accepted their own perception of ‘the destiny to rule’ over ‘the Others’ who were ‘inferior Others’

Orientalism. Intellectual division between the West and the East was sharply defined by Edward Said in his book "Orientalism” which became the classics of postcolonialism. He says that all discourse, especially cultural discourse, is inherently ideological, therefore, regardless of the subject, historical discourse occurs in a given ideological structure. Orientalism, especially the academic study of, and discourse, political and literary, about the Arabs, Islam, and the Middle East that primarily originated in England, France, and then the United States actually creates (rather than examines or describes) a divide between the East and the West.
For E. Said ‘Orientalism’ is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction’ made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of time) ‘the Occident’. Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (Said used the Foucauldian – ‘Power is Knowledge - Knowledge is Power’). Orientalism is authoritative representation of the Orient for both the Occident and the Orient itself. The Orient does not exist on its own, its past and present orientalized by orientalism (Orientalizing the Oriental)
Orientalism is not a result of purposeful expression of the Western superiority over the East; it rather the result of this domination which gave birth to hegemony of particular ideas at the West. Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. Orientalism never afraid of recognition of grandeur of the Orient, but this greatness is reposed in remote history available in classic texts contained keys to understand its great past and degenerative present. The science was dependent upon the state and such ideas became hegemonic in united cultural habitat of Europe, though E. Said indicated some peculiarities of orientalism in various European states, including Russia. He states that it fails to include Russian Orientalism and explicitly excludes German Orientalism, which he suggests had "clean" pasts, and could be promising future studies [3]

Animal Style or Animal's Art?

The 'Orientalism' of Edward Said or postcolonialism theory deal mainly with European (British, French) colonialism, American neocolonialism, but fail to take into consideration Russian and Chinese colonialism and neocolonialism. The Russian and Chinese continental colonial policy directed toward arid zones populated by nomads. They could not use Orientalism in its 'pure' condotion, because of their own 'backwardness' from the West. And here sedentarism was a good explanation of 'progressiveness' of Russia and China which used same tools of restructuring and ruling nomads, adopted from Orientalism and European colonialism. The nomads in sedentarism are not even retarded, (because of Russian and Chinese own retardness from the West), but wild, violent and furious, and the problem of their Turkic and Mongolian descendants is that they become to proud by such savage ancestors

Sedentarism is as ancient as first historical reports about nomads. The Greek historian Herodotus in his History ascribes to Idanthyrsus, Scythians king, such reply to Persian emperor Darius: "You do not understand me, my lord of Persia, I have never yet run from any man in fear; nor do I do so now from you. There is, for me, nothing unusual in what I have been doing: it is precisely the sort of life I always lead, even in times of peace. If you want to know why I will not fight, I will tell you: in our country there are no towns and no cultivated lands; fear of losing a town or seeing crops destroyed might indeed provoke us to hasty battle—but we possess neither…” The Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien in his 110th chiuan of the Shih chi devoted to on the Hsiung-nu writes: "They move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture”
Both records contain the most ancient myth №1 generated by sedentary world: nomads had no agriculture and they (using the word of Gothic historian Jordan) "ignorant of the fruits of the earth, [and] live from their flocks and by hunting” and they had no permanent settlements. Indeed the frontier nomads who lived near sedentary areas sowed nothing because products of cattle-breeding bartered to cereals from their sedentary neighbours. As for the rest of nomads, who lived far away from settled population, they had agriculture and, therefore, permanent settlements [4]
Thus 'fathers-founders of Western and Eastern' Histories - Herodotus and Ssu-ma Ch'ien became also the first 'sedentarist' who marked a beginning of representation of nomads as people, who were devoid of agriculture, and, probably hence, devoid of productive creation. "Appropriative economy" of nomads is comfortably docked with "appropriative behavior" of nomadic robbers. A trade between nomads and independent (from state) Chinese merchants at free frontier markets is still represented in Chinese sources as robbery; T'an-shih-huai, leader of the Hsien-pi is famous by his 'Great Plunder'; Muslim chronicles often adduced a parable about some Turk, who refuses Elysium because of ban on robbery there; 'food affords pleasure for Turk, only if it was a loot or trophy' and so forth
The frontier interexchange and barter between nomadic and sedentary populations gave birth to myth №2 about nomads, generated by sedentary historical annals: nomadic economy is scanty and depends on sedentary one. The modern 'sedentarist' historians follow the logics of Ibn Khaldun who writes in Muqaddimah: "The civilization of desert yields to urban one, because inhabitants of deserts are not able to satisfy all its wants, on their own. Whereas they [Bedouin] need cities for their life support, townsfolk need [Bedouin's goods] only for comfort and luxury". There is no even hint of interdependency or symbiosis between nomads and sedentary world in the modern nomadic studies

In sedentarism, the sedentary written sources prevails over archaeological data and simple logic

After scientific and technological revolution, the materialistic European science made economy and culture to be closely related. After archaeologist Gordon Child and Co., whose canonical determination of civilization necessarily included grain growing and city culture, nomads gradually lost their right to have not only civilization, but even culture. Two previous myths: myth №1 (nomads had no agriculture and had no permanent settlements) + myth №2 (nomadic economy is scanty and depends on sedentary one) together with canonical definition of civilization, constituted new idea about nomad's cultural dependence on sedentary world. The Western cultural doctrines, based on economic determinism, still teach about interdependence between intellectual and general progressive development
The colonial archaeologies of Russia and China worked and still works only for one aim - to find prototypes in sedentary cultures for artifacts, excavated in areas populated by nomads. Their successful works created new myth №3 about nomads, for this once, scientifically proved: all cultural elements of nomads are adopted from sedentary world. The Russian archaeology either does not know any other methodology or does use only required one, but almost all publications devoted to comparative and contrastive analyses of nomadic artifacts with the earliest sedentary prototypes. Dating of such nomadic artifacts is similar with the case of Tuleberdiev (Kyrgyz) and Matrosov (Russian). All books and teachers in the Soviet Russia were saying that Tuleberdiev (1942) reiterated the feat of arms of Matrosov (1943)

Sedentarism easily proves that even saddle and stirrups are adopted by nomads from sedentary cultures

Russia and China entered into new relations with their Turkic and Mongolian [former] colonies through old opposition between sedentary and nomadic worlds: Rus/Steppe, Chung-go/Steppe, which also means civilized/wild, progressive/stagnant etc. Their eternal everlasting civilizing role and cultural superiority is now scientifically proved by history and archaeology. And while China associates itself with Middle Kingdom, Russia associates itself with all sedentary world, but especially with white race: it is unbelievable, but Russian archaeology is still racist one. All traces of sedentary prototypes for nomadic artifacts, all unique cultural values and inventions lead to Iranian, European, Greek, Roman and other White Man's lands (the Chinese archaeology, naturally, opposes to White Barbarians its own arguments). The superiority and domination at the present entailed the notion about cultural hegemony at the past, because the past is the part of our present, especially if "who controls the past - he controls the present, and who controls the present - he controls the future (George Orwell)". The Great Archaeological Battle between Russian and Chinese archaeological ideological schools, is waged at the field of which cultural influence prevailed on nomads of Eurasian Steppes - Chinese or White Man's. It is natural, that under the circumstances, there is no room for indigenous nomadic cultures. Sometimes it seems that Nazi's words: "when I hear a word 'culture', I am plucking a gun" - describes attitude of colonial archaeology and historiography to nomadic [Mongolian and Turkic] cultures
The extending of civilizing 'white man's burden' even up to 'Oriental' [retarded] sedentary Iranians or Arabs, who influenced on the nomads, highlights the main target of Russian colonial archaeology and history: the Turks and Mongols. The Russian culture (as the Chinese one) generated the image of eternal savage enemy-nomad, and this enemy is a Turk or (Mongol-)Tatar, and every Russian imbibes this hostile image through proverbs and sayings, bylinas and legends, history and literature (including school textbooks), cartoons and films etc, from the cradle to the grave. This image of enemy can explain one of the reasons of undisguised aversion and animosity of these colonial scientific-ideological schools against the Mongols and Turks

For hundred of years, the colonial Turkology states that hundreds of such Turkic inscriptions are written not bottom-up as it is, but from right to left, because "the writing system is adopted from the Sogdians". Turkology does not care about the Sogdians, it cares for the Turks. And cares well: the Mankurtized Turks* believe it for hundred of years, and ceased to believe their eyes

Recommended solutions

When possible, one should avoid full stops in sentences

1. Hierarchical Binary Structure. When possible, one should avoid structuralism, especially hierarchical structures, but, at the same time, it should be remembered that structural thought is typical for all peoples and cultures. Poststructuralism does not urge to reject, for example, methodology of structural anthropology; this approach call upon to study of advent and consequences of binary structural hierarchical thought, especially in social sciences and humanities of the West and its influence on the rest of the world. The practice of deconstruction (Jacques Derrida) is aimed revelation and deconstruction of hierarchical binary structures with oneterm being privileged over the other, for example: man/woman,western/eastern, mind/body, public/private ..... the list could go on (including sedentary/nomadic). Moreover, each termis defined by its opposite and thus these conceptual oppositions are unstable. Together with Orientalism (representations of the West about the East) there is Occidentalism (representations of the East about the West), studies of influence of sedentary world upon nomadic one entailed researches of influence of nomads on sedentary world
When possible, one should remember that existed binary structures (or conceptual oppositions), first of all, give birth to essentionalism (at this point: explicit evaluative 'natural' characterizations of Self and Other groups: Self - good, Other - bad) and therefore redouble subjective perception of the past by historians. Probably one should avoid general hierarchy in any direction in the binary sedentary/nomadic, which help to repudiate evaluative comments like superiority, influence, developed, retarded, cultural, wild etc. Nobody excludes 'influence' (political or cultural) or (military) 'superiority', if they considered not as general, but as individual cases between separate peoples in one or other period of history of mutual relations of the nomadic and sedentary worlds
Initially in sedentarism, nomadic way of life was proclaimed as intervening branch between hunting-collecting [appropriative] economy and agricultural [productive] economy, which was ideal for linear progressive perception of historical. However such theory provides evidences of the backwardness of the nomads, but it gives them, to some extend, self-dependency, and crucial independence from sedentary world. That's why modern sedentarists, rejecting erroneous linear history, begin to argue about nomadic way of life and culture as separated from sedentary world. Whatever the case, both theories are based on hierarchically structured binaries: sedentary/nomadic, that is to say civilized/wild, centre/periphery

Rise of Europe

2. Intellectual Hierarchy. This hierarchy is generated from a sense of superiority of European culture and (social) science inoculated to the rest of the world, from Eurocentric (social) science which used socio-political, historical and cultural theories (formulated from their own experience) to study the rest of the world, following their ideas about humanism, general way of development which lead to Progress. History was represented as one [Eurocentric] way of development, way to Progress, and Europe became a synonym of the History.European theory of perception, as any other one, is built on classifications and typology of all the 'things' and phenomena of the environment and surroundings. It is natural that Europeans defined, first of all, their own 'things' and phenomena ('bulls'). The crux of the problem of the intellectual hierarchy consisted in the fact, that European 'things' became determinants for evaluation of things which are 'common to all mankind' ('mistake of humanism'). Acting through a way of exclusion - 'bulls/nobulls' [5], European science tried to find the compliances for their own 'bulls' in things and phenomena of the other worlds and cultures, and, after failure of such attempts, Europe declared the rest of the world as retarded and uncivilized ('mistake of evolutionism'). 'Nobulls' do not corresponded to European 'bulls', not because they are retarded, but because they are different, and they belong to different reality ( 'horses', 'llama', 'elephants', 'rhinoceros', 'kangaroo' etc)
If, for example, one use any Western theory of state or nation-state (Marx, Weber, Gellner, Anderson), the nomads will be deserving to live in "pre-state" formations, chiefdoms, or, if they were lucky, in "early" or "primitive" states, because nobody cannot find classes, bureaucracy, or other features of a State (needs to add "sedentary state", or so called "modern state", or better "eurostate"). The absence of such features in "ephemeral unions" of nomads, confirms lack of development of political organization of the nomads, which once again confirms retardation of the whole of the nomadic world

"V. M. Frunze inoculates the Kyrgyz children"

However, the difficult 'burden of white man', who carried out his 'historical duty,' military and political predominance of Europe, gave birth to inoculated sense of "dreadful secondaryness (Edward Said)" in hierarchical binaries like western/eastern, sedentary/nomadic which also meant master/slave, centre/periphery, civilized/uncivilized, developed/developing etc, among the rest of the world. The 'dreadful secondaryness' entailed a whole scientific trends in Turkic and Mongolian historiographies aimed for equalizing of historical rights within European socio-historical theory and methodology. Native historians trying to 'knocking on the History's door', trying to "not be backward from Europe", began to use European socio-historical theory to find characteristics of European 'bulls' in their 'horses', 'llama', 'elephants', 'rhinoceros', 'kangaroo' ("ha ha, bizimki de böylesi vardı!" - (Turkish) "ha ha, we had this too!": we had classes too, we had bureaucracy too, we had monopoly on violence too etc). Actually there was no theoretical study of the nomads, there were attempts to bring nomadic 'horses' to conformity with features of European 'bulls'. But "The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (Audre Lorde)”, and today's socio-historical theory and methodology are the tools built European house for confirmation of this hierarchy. The practice of deconstruction is aimed to unmask such hierarchical binaries (Moscow>Bishkek), not to equalize it (Moscow=Bishkek), but to its deconstruction (Bishkek)
Foucault says that function of "author" is needed for operating particular discourses in some society. After independence of some colonies, the empire fights against dangerous nomadic statehood [Turkic and Mongolian]. "The empire writes back" using 'Weber' to prove that the empire of Hsiung-nu is not a state, but "super-compound chiefdom"(!); it needs 'Marx', 'Gellner' or 'Anderson' to prove that state and nation came to the Mongols and Turks with development of socio-economic relations during capitalism or socialism (Marx-Stalin), with development of industrialization and high culture (Gellner). It does not need constructivism ('Anderson'), but it does need the idea of Kyrgyz Republic or Mongolia were constructed by imperial centre (Moscow or Beijing) to prove, once more, civilizing role of empires, to create new hierarchical binary with former colonies: old/new, experienced/inexperienced, creator/created etc [6]. No wonder, surely these theories of nation are production of imperial Eurocentric political science, because according to them, a nation is possible only under European way of development. There is no even idea about existence of other alternative ways of human socio-political organization (for example, Mongolian ulus or Turkic eternal divine el based on copying celestial order)
Thus, because of humanism and evolutionism, because of the right of progressive empires to rule, to care for its retarded little brothers, the differences between two different worlds, between sedentary and nomadic populations and cultures had vanished in theoretical and methodological approach. The cultural elements of nomads, because of their "adopted" nature, explained from point of view of sedentary cultures from which they were borrowed. Semantics and meaning of any nomadic artifact, symbol, pattern were explained from already known semantics and meaning of their sedentary prototypes, and as a result, the nomads have lost their independent original cultures. There is no any independent general study of Turkic or Mongolian cultures, because, according to logic of sedentarism, they do not have independent culture at all, they borrowed it from sedentary world
It is needed to create separate methodology, research methods, and if its is not unreasonable, separate theories, indicators, and definitive terms for study of nomads. The intellectual hierarchy is the main problem in study of nomads by different scholars, including those who consider themselves as descendants of nomads. It is real problem indeed, because during hundred years of loneliness of European (and sedentary) historical and ethnographic science, nomadic 'horse' was recorded as 'bull', and now it is very difficult to discern 'horse' in all those works

Knowledge is power, power is knowledge

3. "Imaginative Geography (Edward Said)" of the nomadic world is originated from Orientalism, which studied nomads of Asia and Africa in the framework of one subject - 'Oriental Studies' (for example: 'History of Asia and Africa' in Russian universities) and its branch: 'Nomadic Studies'. The 'sameness' and 'otherizing' of the nomads is the common result of any sedentary historical written tradition of the Old World and its legitimization by European historical and ethnographic science. It is significant to note that nomads and settled population opposed to each other, this is so indeed, but they opposed only in the frameworks of their ethnocultural or political boundaries. One should represent these contrapositions not as general - nomadic/sedentary, but as separate, for example, nomadic civilization of the steppes of the Eastern Eurasia and sedentary Chinese civilization
The Hsiung-nu which tried to unite "all of the people who live by drawing the bow" into "one family", probably repudiated the Yueh-chih as 'Others', and, despite the fact that the Yueh-chih also lived "behind felt walls" made cup from the skull of their leader (in exactly the same way, the 'sedentary' Chinese reject hard European values: "It is too early to draw conclusions from French Revolution"). No doubt that comparisons of nomads of Arabia and Mongolia made for theorization and it was made because of seeming lack of sources on history of nomads. First, is there need theorization of history of all nomads at all, if there is no need for political discourse, and second, there are a lot of historical sources on nomads left by them, but sedentarism ignored them. If one cannot avoid contrastive analysis, he probably has to make it within one ethnocultural group of nomads and within close temporal and spatial limits, because even within the only Great Steppes (steppes of Eurasian temperate zone), there are probably three different initial nomadic civilizations

4. Absence of History. According to Orientalism, History and even Time is the way to Progress passed by Europe, and, later by its colonies which were attached to Progress, and consequently to History by Europeans. Before Europeans came, the life of the rest of the world (including nomads) was a life of eternal oft-recurring identical routine without even hint of development, and therefore nomads of XX century are the same with nomads of V B.C. Orientalism and sedentarism use written sources on history of Kök-Turks (VI C.E.) for explanation 'same' processes of history of Scythians (V B.C.), and it is not only because of 'lack of sources', it is because of 'absence of History' among nomads. Relying (mainly) on ethnographic data collected in XIX and XX centuries, Soviet Orientalism derived the thesis about "patriarchal feudalism" for Timeless history of nomads. The conclusion of Ernest Gellner about socio-political structure of the nomads of High Atlas ("stability without government") made during his own ethnographic research, easily used by sedentarism to explain all the history of all nomads, no matter where and when. Meanwhile ethnographical researches of nomads made in XIX and XX centuries met with mortally wounded nomadic cultures

Different Perception of Time

5. Absence of Cultural Changes. Absence of History bereft the nomadic cultures (either retarded or separated from sedentary one) of the right to change even because of impact of Time, which changes and absorbs even archaeologists. That's why cultural elements and symbols, and its interpretations by nomads, fixed by today's ethnographical data of XIX and XX centuries are used by sedentarism for explanation of the 'same' cultural elements and symbols. Meanwhile only one symbol (pattern, legend etc) could be expounded differently by one ethnic group in different times, moreover, it could be explained differently by different contemporary representatives of one ethnic group

6. Nomads were tightly bound with Sedentary World in the chronicles of the sedentary world, in its subjective written sources, which mainly described the nearest nomads who were tightly bound with sedentary world indeed. Meanwhile, the contact boundary between nomadic and sedentary worlds (where better to write about mutual interdependence and symbiosis) occupies the modest part of the Great Steppe and other arid zones populated by nomads. The contact exchange zone was really very narrow; the Kyrgyz archaeologists excavated permanent settlements with agricultural tools of the nomadic Saka in the high-mountain Qochqor valley, which is one-two-day horsed way from the nearest "sedentary" area. Sedentarism spread conclusion about [hierarchical] tightly bounds of two worlds, made from research of sedentary annals, to all the nomads. It's quite another matter, that contact zone between sedentary and nomadic worlds could widen due to conquests of either sides, with today's terminal 'victory' of one. The problem of sedentarism is in the fact that 'winners' automatically extend this 'victory' and today's domination to the past
The idea about tightly bound worlds is a part of hierarchical binary sedentary/nomadic. Nobody denies contacts between these two worlds (one-sided or mutual), but such contacts cannot be represented as continual one-sided hierarchical connection - sedentary/nomadic. Indeed, some nomads in contacts zone depended on sedentary world, they took its political organization, religions, culture, - but it was not consequence of their general inferiority - that is sedentarism to say. Such examples allowed to sedentarism write about scanty nomadic culture and economy, and this inferiority was filled up by the sedentary world. And certainly, because of absence of history, stagnant culture, domination of sedentary world, cultural changes in the nomadic world were connected to only influence of sedentary civilizations and religions generated by them

Notes

* Mankurt - (ad verbum 'i-am-worm') is the personage of Čïngïz Aitmatov, the Kyrgyz writer's novel, who was deprived of his memory to be ruled by his enemies
[1]. Essentially here mainly used ideas of Edward Said's Orientalism. However, the necessity to mark out sedentarism from orientalism appeared because, despite of sedentarism was legitimized in science by Europeans, it (sedentarism) inheres in also 'Orient' and any other sedentary civilization acted toward nomads as to 'Others'
[2]. Lawrence Cahoone. From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), 16; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other
[3]. Edward Said. Orientalism (London, Vintage Books, 1978)
[4]. For example the Yenisei Kyrgyz, nomadic people lived far from sedentary world in the Southern Siberia, according to Chinese chronicles of Tang dynasty, "sow millet, barley, wheat, Himalayan barley. Flour is grinded with hand mills; they plant wheat at third moon and reap it at ninth one. Wine is made from squash. They lacked fruits and vegetables. They raised horses, camels, cows and sheep, especially the latter two”. There are a lot of archaeological evidences of existence of agriculture and permanent settlement in other Eurasian steppes populated by nomads
[5]. In Chinese philosophy, beginning from Mo-chi ([treatise] of Teacher Mo) there is often cited an instance of dialectical dispute with its resolving through a sample of 'bull': "All bulls and nobulls constitute a Two. It is impossible to be something out of the Two". From the Two of alternatives, one wins as corresponded to reality with necessity
However, one should begin to think about agenda agent, who determines indicators and components for 'bull', for 'reality' and 'truth'
[6]. It also helps the classic scientific schools of the imperial centres to flay the new historiographies of the new independent states for their amateurishness, nationalism, mythologization, inferiority complex, pan-Mongolism, pan-Turkism, irrepressible fantasy and so forth