The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [41]
From the land mass at the center of the Old World, east of the Urals and west of Mongolia north of the Caspian and Black Seas, came raiders steadily battering the civilizations along the great rivers of the ancient world. These threats came from nomadic peoples living deep in the Eurasian land mass, and apparently living without large permanent cities. The nomadic invaders toppled or weakened empire after empire. We do not know why the invaders kept appearing from the same general location. Experts theorize that a “sea of grass,” stretching from China to Europe, allowed the nomads to travel from one end of the Eurasian land mass to the other while raiding all the way. The sea of grass was essentially non-broken grassland where nomads grazed horses and moved freely from the border of China to Eastern Europe. Still, miles of unbroken grassland cannot explain everything. Certainly, the region of the Black Sea and beyond was vast, and could maintain large numbers of inhabitants, but why move south repeatedly? In addition, why were these invaders so effective in overcoming the civilized people in Mesopotamia, Greece, Italy, Turkey, India, and China? When these clans moved south, they had effective leaders, an excellent military organization, and sometimes superior arms. So far, archeologists have not discovered numerous significant ancient cities to the north of the Fertile Crescent or agricultural societies with great irrigation systems, large buildings, permanent roads, libraries, or other trappings of organized power; thus, the origin of these invaders is tough to establish with certainty.
Recent discoveries (2007-09) of new civilizations in the region of Turkistan dating from 2000 BC by Russian archeologists may explain where the nomadic invaders came from. These cities are large and well organized urban environments that possibly sustained sizeable populations, probably five to ten thousand or more. To date only a few cities are under excavation, but the Russian archeologists are only scratching the surface. Unfortunately, written languages are not part of the present discoveries. Note the climate in the area of discovery is wet, and this kind of climate quickly dispatches evidence of civilization. Pottery that was painted grey is the most common find (painted grey ware). Pottery may be the longest lasting product of civilization because it does not decay easily, although normally found in a shattered condition. The painted grey ware is not located in Mesopotamia or Egypt, but India has numerous examples; thus, we assume the pottery came to India by trade or possibly the people creating the painted grey ware were the Aryan clans who invaded India.
We should note that in areas with significant rainfall ancient civilizations are hard to find. The climate has a marked influence on the remains of civilizations in such areas. Decay, flooding, effects of vegetation growing amongst the ruins, and other climatic impacts, destroys evidence quickly. Numerous insects also have a detrimental impact on artifacts, and such creeping life is most prevalent in wet areas. Dry areas, such as we have in Egypt and Mesopotamia, help preserve the ancient ruins and artifacts; thus, we have a lot more information about civilizations of these desert areas than we do from northern climates.[52]
Accordingly, we do not know why the invaders came, how they developed advanced warfare methods, or even where they lived beforehand. Recall these same types of nomadic invaders eventually conquered the Western Roman Empire. It seems the center of the world incubated warriors capable