Note 1097 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

Thus certain geographic conditions produce directly the habitual and systematic migration of the nomads, and through this indirectly that military and political organization which has given the shepherd races of the earth their great historical mission of political consolidation. Agriculture, though underlying all permanent advance in civilization, is handicapped by the lack of courage, mobility, enterprise and large political outlook characterizing early tillers of the soil. All these qualities the nomad possesses. Hence the union of these two elements, imperious pastor superimposed upon peaceful tiller, has made the only stable governments among savage and semi-civilized races.1097 The politically invertebrate peoples of dark Africa have secured the back-bone to erect states only from nomad conquerors. The history of the Sudan cannot be understood apart from a knowledge of the Sahara and its peoples. All the Sudanese states were formed by invaders from the northern desert, Hamitic or Semitic. [See map page 487.] The Galla or Wahuma herdsmen of East Africa founded and maintained the relatively stable states of Uganda, Kittara, Karague, and Uzinza in the equatorial district; the conquerors remained herders while they lorded it over the agricultural aborigines.1098 In prehistoric times when the various peoples of the Aryan linguistic family were spreading over Europe and southern Asia, the superiority of the shepherd races must have been especially marked, because in that era only the unobstructed surface of the steppes permitted the concentration of men on a vast scale for migration and conquest. Everywhere else regions of broken relief and dense forests harbored small, isolated peoples, to whom both the idea and the technique of combined movement were foreign.