Everywhere (except at least in those countries where he is still a savage), man has advanced from the stage of hunting and fishing to that of nomadism and cattle-grazing, and from nomadism to agriculture proper.
In some things the Iranians preserved the traditions of nomadism more firmly and persistently than the Indians, who generally stood nearer to the original forms.
As theistic religion always grows up out of the elements of myths, the religion of Nomadism must be essentially a worship of the night-heaven.
These myths must exist in every nation which has won its upward way from nomadism to agriculture, or from tribal life to society.
But even at that stage the connexion of the feast with nomadic life and the past nomadism of the nation itself, lived long in its memory (see Lev.
This is to be explained from the fact that in Persia nomadism itself lived longer as an actual stage of civilisation, and was more fostered, than in India; for indeed it even now maintains its position there.
When a nation emerges from the stage of Nomadism and advances to an agricultural life, its relation to external nature is changed.
Nomadism holds in itself nothing essential to the world’s history.
We have to tell now of the last and greatest of all the raids of nomadism upon the civilizations of the East and West.
Nomadism cuts men off from fixed temples and intense local associations; they take a broader and simpler view of the world.
The first destructive vigour of Hulagu's Mongols soon subsided, but in the fifteenth century a last tornado of nomadism arose in Western Turkestan under the leadership of a certain Timur the Lame, or Timurlane.
In America and Europe the nomadism is of trade and curiosity; a progress, certainly, from the gad-fly of Astaboras to the Anglo and Italo-mania of Boston Bay.
In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomadism and Agriculture are the two antagonist facts.
Where nomadism is made imperative by aridity, the agriculture which accompanies it tends to become fixed, owing to the few localities blessed with an irrigating stream to moisten the soil.
Pastoral nomadism can support in a given district of average quality from ten to twenty times as many souls as can the chase; but in this respect is surpassed from twenty to thirty-fold by the more productive agriculture.
The Bedouins of the Nubian steppes adhere strictly to all their ancient customs, and reproduce to-day the pastoral nomadism of Abraham and Jacob.
The very unequal native equipment of the several continents with plant and animal forms likely to accelerate the advance to nomadism and agriculture also enters into the equation.
A similar substitution of agriculture for pastoral nomadism of another type has in recent decades taken place in the semi-arid plains of the American West.
