What made the steppe produce so many peoples that became others scourges time to time?
And why didn't most of these folk manage to transform into a long lasting empires? Most of them seemed to have vanished in a few generations, or at least fade into irrevelance like Mongols today.
Hungarians are the only counter-example I can think of that actually managed to do more and become a feudal kingdom, what was different there?
>>345705
>Hungarians are the only counter-example I can think of that actually managed to do more and become a feudal kingdom
Bulgars as well
Hey, don't forget the Bulgars.
But I think a big part of it was that the steppes were so shit that they just wanted to get out
>>345705
>Hungarians are the only counter-example I can think
You're wrong then
>Ottomans
>Timuid-Mughal
>Jurchens
>Parthians
>Mamluk Egypt
>>345705
Don't forget the Ottomans. And the Mughals.
>>345708
Oh yes I forgot them. They didn't seem to be able to impose their culture on Slavs though, as how they forgot their original language and such.
>>345705
They're nomads, they were used to using tactics that weren't easy to deafeat by standing armies.
And empires typically require its rulers to stay in one place and not move around alot.
Also I wouldn't call the Mongols Irrelevant, .5% of the worlds population theoretically can trace their DNA back to the family of Genghis khan.
>>345726
Apart from language, what makes the Hungarians different from their slavic neighbours? They seem pretty well integrated into the central/eastern european ethos.
>Hungarians are the only counter-example
You're forgetting someone.
>>345721
Also Ghaznavids, Seljuk, Qajars... pretty much all the turkic dynasties.
Several mesopotamian and egyptian dynasties were also barbarian nomads, though not from the steppe.
>>345705
You can't live a settled live in the steppe. Or maybe it would be better to say that you can have some urban settlements, often thanks to trade, but most of the steppe will still be populated by semi-nomadic pastoralists.
Settlers and nomads have always been rivals, mainly because both lifstyles can complement each other sometimes but are often contradictory.
They never built lasting empires because, despite painting the map just as good as settled empires do, nomadic confederations are not the same. To become a lasting empire, they need to adapt to the ways of the settled peoples and this isn't always easy. For starters it means conflict with the nomads that formed the confederation.
>>345705
The steppes aren't conducive to river valley -esk agriculture so they are mostly pastoral and rely heavily on horses. Obviously they couldn't support nearly the same population as river valley societies and thus couldn't field nearly as large armies, but horses and their riders have a disproportionately high military value.
Any sedentary civilization in its prime could field trained mounted forces as well and usually played the people of the steppes off one another to keep them from uniting. Agriculture is very powerful and history reflects that. However when sedentary civilizations fall into decline they are left vulnerable to the people of the steppes.
China was especially hard hit by the Mongols because their decline coincided with record rainfall in Mongolia, meaning a sudden increase in the scale of the Mongol threat at the worst time.
>>345721
>>345723
>>345743
Alright you are all right, although I thought in sense of more direct and fast transformation or diminishment, obviously lot of people can be traced back to steppe origins ultimately.
I mainly found the 180 degree turn of Hungarians interesting in my readings while preserving their language.
>>345739
Nowadays I guess nothing. But going back, what made Bulgars lose their Turkic language and Magyars keep theirs? Just number games of invaders vs pre-existing populations?
>>345799
Magyars were defeated at the battle of Lechfeld which halted further invasions to the west. There were hostile Pecheneg tribes to the east and the Magyars decided to permanently settle in the Carpathian basin and turned to agricultural sedentary society instead of a nomadic one, eventually being assimilated by the neighboring Slavs and Franks into Christendom. Eventually Stephen I. of Hungary got crowned the first Christian king and he proceeded with completely annihilating the pagan nomadic ways of his rival Koppany in a battle near Veszprem.
>>345756
Nah, Seljuks and Ghaznavids are the very definition of overnight Steppe Empires. The Great Seljuks barely lasted a century before it collapsed.
>>345799
Magyar language is Uralic, not Turkic.
>>345721
Ottomans are Islamized Greeks not fucking steppe nomads, stop perpetrating this shitty meme just because a mongol screwed your 30th great grandmother
>>345903
>Ottomans are Islamized Greeks
>>345721
I'm not sure you can count the ottomans, since the turks were already well established in anatolia before the ottoman expansions.
>>345903
>Descendants of Turkic nomads
>Greek
W e w l a d
>>346029
Not him but they aren't actually descended from Turkic nomads. They just turkified the population that was already there.
Source: basically any population DNA research ever
>>346029
By 1400 all of Anatolia was Greek or Armenian. The Ottomans absorbed upwards of 20 million people in Anatolia and Greece.
>>345705
The steppes are a great place for horses and a shit place for agriculture. This gives rise to nomadic tribal cultures, which guarantees hardy warriors due to all the infighting and raiding. When these tribal cultures are united, hit critical population mass, or one of the neighboring settled states weakens enough, BOOM, nomad invasion. Even before the Mongols or Magyars, the Huns were a perfect example of this.
As for why they don't stick around, once they're out of the steppes and ruling over some newly conquered people, they have to adapt. This either means assimilating into the conquered people or getting their shit kicked in a few generations later when they've lost the warrior culture that allowed them to conquer in the first place. There are exceptions besides the Magyars, like the Mongols (sigh) and Mughals, but that's usually how it goes.
If you're wondering why the same thing didn't happen as much elsewhere, such as the various European tribes during the migratory period, it's because they weren't changing their environment or way of life as radically.
>>346059
then where did all those Turks go? You're seeming to imply that they showed up, conquered some land, taught all the people there to speak Turkish, then just up and left.
>>345705
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/41/16384.full
>>346095
>shit place for agriculture
>>346114
They didn't go anywhere, but what you have to understand is that there wasn't a six gorillion Turks roaming around to begin with. Invading populations are always pretty insignificant in raw numbers relative to the natives.
>>346124
I read somewhere it was too dry to farm without modern irrigation technology
>>346114
There's some genetic contribution but the population is still mostly Anatolian. It's like the anglo-saxons. They left their language and their culture but by and large genetic studies reveal that the English are the basically the same people they always were. Displacing an entire native population is pretty hard.
>>346150
>but by and large genetic studies reveal that the English are the basically the same people they always were
Genetic studies don't reveal that though.
>>345705
90 minutes in MS Paint.
>>346222
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought this.
>>345739
>>345799
I have no idea as a Hungarian. By every logical reason we should be speaking Slovakian or Croatian. The Hungarians didn't have large numbers, in fact all nomad tribes don't have large population compared to settled agricultural societies. Maybe there were previous non-Slav population in the Carpathian basin comprised mainly of Avars, who were Ogur-Turkic in origin and could easily assimilated into the Hungarians. Then again, there are speculations that the lingua franca was Slavic in the Avar Khaganate just like Slavic became the lingua franca in Bulgaria.
>>345903
Ottomans are the ruling family not the fucking people. And if anything they were circassian rape babies, not greeks.
>>346114
>all
>a few thousands in a population of millions
>>348417
But Avars were probably as small in numbers than the magyars, they don't really play a role here.
>>346124
so which one's the good which one's the bad
i know entisol is shit because that's the desert
>>348417
same reason why romanians retained their latin roots, probably
>>348502
>Romanians existing
Yeah, that doesn't help me out either. It's just another odd phenomenon I cannot give an explanation to. Eastern territories of Romania were a highway for nomadic tribes for many thousand years while Transylvania after the Roman Empire era was ravaged by a number of conquerors in the great migration period (from various German and Sarmatian tribes to Huns, Gepids, Avars, Bolgars and finally Hungarians) and throughout all this traffic, the Romanians just lived happily and undisturbed? It doesn't make sense.
>>348814
Sometimes when a foreign culture makes it's presence known the response of the natives is to, rather than assimilate, to enhance their own culture and put emphasis on the differences between it and the culture of the foreigners. This is a phenomena that can be observed in certain rural areas, especially those that have become tourist attractions for urban people, where the local's dialect become even more extreme than they were before the city dwellers started going on vacation there.
>>345705
I'm going to take a guess that it was because of horses
