Which Animal Was Most Important To Saharan Transportation Beginning In The First Millennium B.c.e.?
Horses and Camels
 | The people [of Ferghana]...have...many good horses. The camel...manifests its merit in unsafe places; it has Crying camels come up out of the Western Regions, |
Animals are an essential part of the story of the Silk Road. While those such as sheep and goats provided many communities the essentials of daily life, horses and camels both supplied local needs and were keys to the development of international relations and trade. Even today in Mongolia and some areas of Kazakhstan, the rural economic system may still be very intimately continued with the raising of horses and camels; their milk products and, even occasionally, their meat, are a role of the local diet. The distinct natural environments of much of Inner Asia encompassing vast steppe lands and major deserts made those animals essential for the motion of armies and trade. The animals' value to the neighboring sedentary societies, moreover, meant that they themselves were objects of trade. Given their importance, the horse and camel occupied a pregnant place in the literatures and representational fine art of many peoples along the Silk Road.
With the development of the low-cal, spoked wheel in the 2d millennium BCE, horses came to be used to describe military chariots, remains of which have been establish in tombs all across Eurasia. The use of horses as cavalry mounts probably spread eastward from Western Asia in the early on part of the showtime millennium BCE. Natural weather suitable for raising horses big and strong enough for war machine use were to be found in the steppes and mountain pastures of Northern and Fundamental Inner Asia, simply generally not in the regions best suited for intensive agronomics such every bit Central Mainland china. Marco Polo would note much later regarding the lush mount pastures: "Hither is the best pasturage in the world; for a lean animal grows fat here in ten days" (Latham tr.). Thus, well before the famous journey to the west of Zhang Qian (138-126 BCE), sent by the Han emperor to negotiate an alliance against the nomadic Xiongnu, Prc had been importing horses from the northern nomads.
The relations between the Xiongnu and China have traditionally been seen as mark the real start of the Silk Road, since it was in the second century BCE that we can document big quantities of silk beingness sent on a regular footing to the nomads as a way of keeping them from invading Communist china and also as a means of payment for the horses and camels needed by the Chinese armies. Zhang Qian'southward report well-nigh the Western Regions and the rebuff of initial Chinese overtures for allies prompted energetic measures by the Han to extend their power to the due west. Not the least of the goals was to secure a supply of the "blood-sweating" "heavenly" horses of Ferghana.
This relationship between the rulers of People's republic of china and the nomads who controlled the supply of horses continued down through the centuries to shape of import aspects of the trade across Asia. At times the substantial fiscal resources of the Chinese empire were strained to keep frontiers secure and the essential supply of horses flowing. Silk was a course of currency; tens of thousands of bolts of the precious substance would be sent annually to the nomadic rulers in exchange for horses, along with other bolt (such as grain) which the nomads sought. Clearly not all that silk was beingness used past the nomads but was being traded to those further west. For a time in the eighth and early ninth centuries, the rulers of the T'ang Dynasty were helpless to resist the exorbitant demands of the nomadic Uighurs, who had saved the dynasty from internal rebellion and exploited their monopoly as the primary suppliers of horses. Outset in the Vocal Dynasty (11th-twelfth centuries), tea became increasingly important in Chinese exports, and over time bureaucratic mechanisms were developed to regulate the tea and horse merchandise. Government efforts to control the horse-tea trade with those who ruled the areas n of the Tarim Basin (in the Xinjiang of today) continued down into the sixteenth century, when information technology was disrupted past political disorders.
The best known example to illustrate the importance of the horse in the history of Inner Asia is the Mongol Empire. From modest beginnings in some of the best pasturelands of the north, the Mongols came to command much of Eurasia, largely considering they perfected the art of cavalry warfare. The indigenous Mongol horses, while not large, were hardy, and, as contemporary observers noted, could survive in winter conditions because of their ability to observe nutrient under the ice and snow covering the steppes. It is important to realize though that the reliance on the equus caballus was also a limiting factor for the Mongols, since they could not sustain large armies where there was not sufficient pasturage. Even when they had conquered Communist china and established the Y�an Dynasty, they had to continue to rely on the northern pastures to supply their needs within Red china proper.
The early on Chinese experience of reliance on the nomads for horses was not unique: nosotros tin can run across analogous patterns in other parts of Eurasia. In the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, for example, Muscovite Russia traded extensively with the Nogais and other nomads in the southern steppes who provided on a regular basis tens of thousands of horses for the Muscovite armies. Horses were of import bolt on the trade routes connecting Cardinal Asia to northern India via Afghanistan, because, like central Prc, Republic of india was unsuited to raising quality horses for military purposes. The great Mughal rulers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appreciated this as did the British in the nineteenth century. William Moorcroft, who became famous as one of the rare Europeans to accomplish Bukhara in the early nineteenth century, justified his dangerous trip north from Bharat by his effort to institute a reliable supply of cavalry mounts for the British Indian army.
Of import as horses were, the camel was arguably of far greater significance in the history of the Silk Road. Domesticated equally long ago as the fourth millennium BCE, past the first millennium BCE camels were prominently depicted on Assyrian and Achaemenid Persian carved reliefs and figured in Biblical texts every bit indicators of wealth. Among the most famous depictions are those in the ruins of Persepolis, where both of the main camel species--the ane-humped dromedary of Western Asia and the 2-humped Bactrian of Eastern asia--are represented in the processions of those bearing tribute to the Farsi king. In Mainland china awareness of the value of the camel was heightened past the interactions betwixt the Han and the Xiongnu toward the end of the first millennium BCE when camels were listed among the animals taken captive on military campaigns or sent equally diplomatic gifts or objects of trade in substitution for Chinese silk. Campaigns of the Chinese regular army to the northward and westward against the nomads invariably required support past large trains of camels to carry supplies. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE, the success of Arab armies in rapidly carving out an empire in the Middle East was due to a considerable degree to their utilize of camels as cavalry mounts.
The camel's slap-up virtues include the ability to behave substantial loads--400-500 pounds--and their well-known capacity for surviving in arid weather. The secret to the camel'south ability to get for days without drinking is in its efficient conservation and processing of fluids (it does not store h2o in its hump[s], which in fact are largely fatty). Camels can maintain their carrying capacity over long distances in dry weather, eating scrub and thorn bushes. When they potable though, they may consume 25 gallons at a fourth dimension; and then caravan routes practice have to include rivers or wells at regular intervals. The use of the camel as the dominant means of transporting goods over much of Inner Asia is in part a matter of economic efficiency--as Richard Bulliet has argued, camels are cost efficient compared to the apply of carts requiring the maintenance of roads and the kind of back up network that would be required for other transport animals. In some areas though downwards into modern times, camels continue to be used as draft animals, pulling plows and hitched to carts.
Given their importance in the lives of peoples beyond inner Asia, non surprisingly camels and horses effigy in literature and the visual arts. A Japanese TV crew filming a series on the Silk Road in the 1980s was entertained past camel herders in the Syrian desert singing a love carol most camels. Camels frequently appear in early Chinese poetry, often in a metaphorical sense. Arab poetry and the oral epics of Turkic peoples in Central Asia often gloat the equus caballus. Visual representations of the horse and camel may celebrate them as essential to the functions and status of royalty. Textiles woven by and for the nomads using the wool from their flocks frequently include images of these animals. One of the well-nigh famous examples is from a royal tomb in southern Siberia and dates dorsum more than 2000 years. It is possible that the mounted riders on it were influenced past images such as those in the reliefs at Persepolis where the animals depicted were involved in royal processions and the presentation of tribute. The royal fine art of the Sasanians (3rd-7th century) in Persia includes elegant metal plates, among them ones showing the ruler hunting from camelback. A famous ewer fashioned in the Sogdian regions of Central Asia at the terminate of the Sasanian period shows a flying camel, the image of which may have inspired a afterwards Chinese report of flying camels existence constitute in the mountains of the Western Regions.
Examples in the visual arts of Red china are numerous. First in the Han Dynasty, grave appurtenances often include these animals among the mingqi, the sculptural representations of those who were seen equally providing for the deceased in the afterlife. The best known of the mingqi are those from the T'ang period, ceramics often busy in multicolored glaze (sancai). While the figures themselves may be relatively small-scale (the largest ones normally not exceeding betwixt 2 and three anxiety in peak) the images propose animals with "attitude"--the horses accept heroic proportions, and they and the camels often seem to be vocally challenging the world around them (peradventure here the "crying camels" of the poet quoted above). A recent report of the camel mingqi indicates that in the T'ang period the often detailed representation of their loads may correspond not so much the reality of transport along the Silk Road but rather the transport of goods (including nutrient) specific to beliefs of what the deceased would need in the afterlife. Some of these camels send orchestras of musicians from the Western Regions; other mingqi frequently portray the non-Chinese musicians and dancers who were popular among the T'ang elite. Amongst the almost interesting of the mingqi are sculptures of women playing polo, a game which was imported into Prc from the Middle Due east. The 8th-9th century graves at Astana on the Northern Silk Road contained a wide range of mounted figures--women riding astride, soldiers in their armor, and horsemen identifiable by their headgear and facial features every bit being from the local population. It is pregnant that the human attendants (grooms, caravaneers) of the animal figures amongst the mingqi unremarkably are foreigners, non Chinese. Along with the animals, the Chinese imported the expert animal trainers; the caravans invariably were led by bearded westerners wearing conical hats. The use of foreign animal trainers in People's republic of china during the Y�an (Mongol) period of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is well documented in the written sources.
Apart from the well-known scuptures, the images of equus caballus and camel in China likewise include paintings. Narrative scenes in the Buddhist murals of the caves in Western People's republic of china often stand for merchants and travelers in the first instance by virtue of their being accompanied by camel caravans. Among the paintings on newspaper found in the famous sealed library at Dunhuang are evocatively stylized images of camels (drawn with, to the modern eye, a sense of humor). The Chinese tradition of silk coil painting includes many images of foreign ambassadors or rulers of China with their horses.
-- Daniel C. Waugh
Reading/Viewing:
Source: https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/trade/horcamae.html
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