!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Extra Information & Sometimes Corrections if Needed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ***Get your Private Internet 3 years subscription with 2 extra free months for only $2.08/Month -www.privateinternetaccess.com/MLaserHistory It should be pronounced "steppe" not step because it's spelled steppe not step. It is not a step you take nor a step you build for stairs. It is the steppe in the world, the steppe area. Come at me! This is an actual hill I am willing to die on! 2:00 The Bulgars emerged as a unified entity very closely before or after they where subdued by the Avars. The "Bulgarians" where formed by the unification of some kind of a Bulgarian core and the Kutrigurs, Utigurs and Onogurs tribes. 2:10 The Khaganate, even though not officially split into two halves until 603, due to its size was mostly governed as if it was split into a western and eastern halves since its creation, so from an administrative stand point this split in 603 did not have that much effect on the Khaganate. 2:35 The Western Turkic Khaganate became to also be known as the ten arrows. 3:01 Rashidun Caliphate, 632-661. Umayyad Caliphate, 661-750. Abbasid Caliphate 750-1258. I only update the map of the Caliphate when I mention it in the chronological overview not at it's exact date of dynastical change. This is mainly because I am too lazy to track all the changes on the map during this time and focus mainly on just displaying the changes in the video which I am currently talking about. 3:13 Tang dynasty also briefly controlled some Persian areas and the Amu and Syr Darya rivers. 5:06 They allied with also other tribes under Kangar control not just the Kimaks. However, the Kimaks where the most important ally hence I only mentioned them. 5:50 Also, a lot of the sources are in Chinese (and in China) or Arabic and, therefore, are very hard to access by western scholars like me. 11:30 The Uyghurs where between the Selenga River and the Yenisey River. Video scripts with all my sources are available for free on my Patreon.
Going directly off of conventional spelling in English as your primary justification is a little crazy. That said, "steppe" is apparently directly borrowed from German, where they do pronounce the e, so I can live with it in this case.
It's also important to remember that steppe people do not wander the grasslands at random. They would travel well-worn routes, making sure their herds always had fresh pasture. If you wandered into an area where someone else had just been your herds would starve. They might not have a fixed home, but they'd have a home range.
In Turkish we have the term "konar-göçer". Konar means settle and göçer means migrates. They had different places and builds for different times of the year. Modern equalivent of this is moving to your summer house when the summer holiday comes.
I think the Eurasian Steppe offers a very interesting parallel to the Sahel in West Africa. Both were geographically convenient for overland trade, but the lack of major mountain ranges to stabilize the climate made fully sedentary, predominantly-agrarian society impossible. So in both places you have these wildly overlapping cultures split between nomadic traders/herders and merchants in cities like Timbuktu or Samarkand. This is enticingly relevant to a series of videos that I'm preparing.
Interesting. During my research for what defines a nomad a lot of the books drew parallels to the nomads of Africa, although, they always emphasized the extreme importance of the horse in the Eurasian Steppe which was pretty much unparalleled anywhere else in the world. However, I can definetly see these overlapping lifestyles happening in other parts of the world as well.
As a slav I normally applaud efforts to have words look like they are supposed to be pronounced but "steppey" was so funny to me I found it hard to actually concentrate on the topic of the video :D
We call it steppe in America but we don’t always get foreign pronunciations right so I am here checking if maybe I got it wrong all these years. Good to know I did have it right lol.
The eurasian steppe seems such a foreign land from the western viewpoint, and yet like all parts of the earth it is so rich in history. I really like the way you explain the nomadic lifestyle by expanding on what one might already know and dispelling false notions one might have. Also, that map work in the beginning is incredible. Excellent Video overall, great watch
Problem is - many people like myself in the Eastern Europe also view nomads as "them". At school, we are taught that there was a confrontation and cooperation between "them" and "us". But as I dug just a few generations into the history of my own, "purely Russian" family, I realized that since my grandma was on the border of "Wild Field", in a village that two hundred years prior was inhabited by "Tartars" - I realized that I am at least 1/4 of "them". That the "stone baba"s, the Nomadic idols, are as much if not more a part of my blood heritage as onion-topped churches.
Simon Berger, a young French historian, is pushing for this revisioning of Eurasian nomadic history over here in France :D suffice to say he's being met with some resistance here. I hope this view gains more ground, thank you for your work.
Saray-Batu (the capital of the Golden Horde) was one of the largest cities in Eurasia (excluding the cities of China and India). Not surprising, due to the fact that nomads always looted the resources of the settled, and we all know how many richs the Golden Horde received from Eastern Europe. I wanna say that this is a great video, Yan. It's very rare to see an objective historical content! Greetings from the steppe nomads, from Kazakhstan! 👋😁
Magnificent video! There's so much information that I'll certainly have to watch it multiple times to really understand and remember all of it. Although, I had to pause it and go google 'steppe' to check the pronunciation, because I've kept thinking "had I've been wrong all this time, thinking that the -e is silent?". 😅
Yes, yes you have been wrong all this time with all the other people as well! Language changes over time and I hope to start a revolution. It's written steppe, and it should be pronounce steppe! Vote "YES" for "steppe" on article 24 this election!
Nice video with a lot of good points. I think you are right about them needing villages and cities to make things like compound bows, swords, and whatever else they needed. Farming the steppe was probably a difficult proposition with rainfall being fairly sparse at times. They might have wanted to be farmers, but droughts forced them back into herding.
The Turks were considered as the best warriors due to their horsemanship and skill in archery. Modern Asia, 1400-1750: Cavalry, Guns, Government and Ships (Bloomsbury Studies in Military History). p.24.
Well there is still one around that region in what is today called Chuvashia. They are the ones who migrated nord. They still speak a Turkic language and they are predominantly orthodox christians.
Turks indeed had a decisive role in triggering historical major events like the Migration Period, Crusades, Age of Discovery as well as ending the Middle Ages with the conquest of Constantinople, fall of the Roman Empire.
Me after wikipedia journey that started with article "Old Turkic script": "There's so much interesting history that feels like it's talked about very little".
An illustration of nomadic use of sedentary materials are the artworks of the scythians. at least some of these were supplied by artisans from neighboring greek cities. Exposure to this style then impacted the artwork produced for more local customers.
"Sex century"? Best century no doubt. ;p (Seriously: that's what I understood you said instead of "6th century", hopefully I won't me mercilessly censored for a silly comment).
Usually I don't comment on anyone's video but your content is superb so I am commenting on your video. Wow this video is fantastic. Every line is a point. Your channel deserve more subscriber. I regularly watch your videos from 6 years. As a old subscriber I want a help from you that please make a video on skanderbeg because I realised that only you can describe it nicely. As I know you from the old days, I think you will definitely make a video on this topic
Losing of a a war over the hegemony of a polity was more often than not a tactical retreat to an area with a weaker opponent rather than an all out defeat.
All nomads were not nomadic. They were all semi- nomadic. Summer and winter camps at the very least. Nobody truly wonders aimlessly. That got you killed
I respect your pronounciation of steppe, although it weirded me out at first. This is how it is pronounced in danish and german as well. (with the "e" at the end)
There's an interesting passage in FW Mote's "Imperial China 900-1800" about the Inner Asian nomadic lifestyle: "[Inner Asian pastoral nomadism] is an advanced form of social organization, the preference of peoples whose forebears probably had practiced agriculture. [...] To those reluctant agriculturalists the alternative of nomadism offered more than did the hard life of growing wheat and millet in arid regions. The Inner Asian core area offered conditions that permitted the highest development of the potential in nomadism, sustained by its wandering herds of cattle and sheep and the use of camels and horses for transport or war. Only under such conditions which to them represented failure would those nomads settle down in one place long enough to scratch out and harvest a summer's crop."
@@Aaron-pe7xk Not giving him any breaks when he's pronouncing it like this as a challenge. He claims to be correct in this pronunciation, which is fine, but people with counterpoints should be embraced just as much for supporting good debate.
@@aqxbjc5879 No, other way around. He recently said he's been studying German, and in German it's pretty common to have conjugate words like in English where the only difference is where you pronounce the "e" like he does in Steppe.
We have undisputed finds from the Avar Khaganate, such as yellow glazed pottery whose productions style originated from China or griffin style belts which originate from the central steppe, that show the Khaganate definetly had trading connections with the steppe and the silk road going through it. The most logical way for this trading connection to go through would be the Zmeplen passes or the Danube. This trade connection, however, fell silent after the fall of the Avar Khaganate as the area's trading shifted to be centered more to the west rather than the east.
It's an English paraphrasing of an old Turkic inscription so I don't think in this case the phrase "national identity" is meant to have the same kind of connotation as it has today.
Many historians and especially medievalists (from Norman Davies, through R. J. Crampton, Obolensky etc) claim that national identities did form and exist during the Middle Ages, at least in Europe. It's thus a modern myth that national identities appeared only in modern times, with the rise of the nation-states (the latter of which is indeed a modern development, but is certainly not the same thing as a national identity). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism_in_the_Middle_Ages Of course, there are also ethnic, cultural, religious and various other types of identities, which can equally well translate those medieval expressions.
Avars were not Rourans bro other option to discuss is a historical and cultural - but not linguistic - continuity; this would imply a language shift from the Mongolic-speaking Rourans to the Turkic-speaking Avars at some point of their history. In parallel, both disciplines suggest that at least some of the European Avars were of Eastern Asian ancestry, but neither linguistic nor genetic evidence provides sufficient support for a specific connection between the Avars and the Asian Rourans. Savelyev A, Jeong C (2020). Early nomads of the Eastern Steppe and their tentative connections in the West. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2, e20, 1-17. You ask us also in your epistle: "Of what people, of what family, and of what tribe are you?" Know that we are descended from Japheth, through his son Togarmah. [In Jewish literature Togarmah is the father of all the Turks.] I have found in the genealogical books of my ancestors that Togarmah had ten sons. These are their names: the eldest was Ujur, the second Tauris, the third Avar, the fourth Uauz, the fifth Bizal, the sixth Tarna, the seventh Khazar, the eighth Janur, the ninth Bulgar, the tenth Sawir. [These are the mythical founders of tribes that once lived in the neighborhood of the Black and Caspian Seas.] I am a descendant of Khazar, the seventh son. (Khazar Correspondance (Khazar Correspondence / King Joseph’s Reply) The 6th century historian Menandros Protektor states that the language spoken by the Avars is the same as that of the Huns. Assuming that language is one of the factors determining the origin, it can be argued that the Avars were a part of the Oghur Turks. [36]
greetings as crimean tatar turk we are all turks xiongnu(asian hun) and europan hun descent also golden horde,bulgari,khazar,avar,hunnic empires and western göktürk were oghur turkic(proto tatar,oghuz)
eurasians steppes were controlled by indo europeans for more than two millennia then the turkic and mongolians tirbes take the control , it's a big event in human history but it gets little interest by historians i think the reason for the domination of turkic tirbes was their use of steppe saddle and more importantly the stirrup
@@acolyte1951 yes but the shift in language means a shift in power even if both of theme lived a similar life and were mixed to gather and there was also a replacement especially after the mongol invasion because in antiquity the people from Altaï montains to the black sea were europoids but after the Huns and the Gokturks migration from Mongolia to the west the mongoloids became more numerous until they became the majority after the mongol invasion
@@acolyte1951 europoid is to describe a caucasian with light pigmentation which is mostly in europe and caucasian is to describe all europe middle east north africa and india the scythians in general were europeans in appearance closest to modern russians
As a historian who’s main focus is steppe culture in central and north Eastern Asia Excellent video, the only thing is steppe is pronounced “step” the E is silent my friend.
Im native to Russian and born in Ukraine Steppe maybe a foreign word to us and we say it as a Stepp But i like how people say it Steppeh Yet i very much dislike that a word SLAV in Scandinavian languages ....... Slave is a bit better word for it the way its pronounced.....i mean 🙄
Wasn't the First Turkic Khaganate which brought ferrous metallurgy from Sogdian cities to the Eurasian Steppe? If so, ferrous metallurgy necessarily requires sedentarity... This means that the lifestyle of Gokturks must have been similar to that of early Germanic peoples.
That is still debated. There is some evidence that Europeans could have come up with the technology on their own or at least in tandem with new technologies arriving from outside. Also these smelting technologies are more likely to have come through the Arab world to Europe rather than the steppe.
@@MLaserHistory Europeans? Who was talking about Europeans? I was talking about the Eurasian Steppe. Germanic people got ferrous metallurgy from the Romans...
You can make a bloomery as needed, and simple ironworking tools, like tongs, hammers, bellows, and stake anvils can be made light enough to be easily portable by a pack animal.
@@Faustobellissimo Ahh sorry, I miss read, I thought you just said Europe. When I was talking about Europe I meant complex ferrous metallurgy like crucible steel and such. As for the ferrous metallurgy in the steppe that is also quite a complicated subject. The first ever mention of the Turks are in connection of them being very good metallurgists for the Rouran. Plus we do see some fairly complex metallurgical practices in nomadic polities like the Avar Khaganate. However, despite this, I would agree a higher level of metallurgy does require a sedentary life. But as you can see even in the replies to this comment the extent of metallurgical practices by nomads are still debated. I would, however, agree that the fact that we see a spread of complex metallurgical practices across the steppe shows that a form of sedentarism was embraced in the steppe by the nomads.
The history of a sedentary region like western Europe is like a bunch if people sitting around tables in a club. The history of the steppes is like a mosh pit.
Every now and then , but only few times , you are flashing in the right upper corner a year number . . ? why can you not let it run constantly , while you are talking - as a continuous reference of the year . ?
It's a about building and managing a clan of steppe nomads set in one of the most imaginitive fantasy worlds I've seen. You're not going to find a lot of playthroughs of it. It's not a game that presents well, but if you're willing to try something unconventional it's one of the best games there is for showing what a settled lifestyle was for a nomadic people.