The Nomadic Military Advantage: why were nomads so difficult to fight? 

This is something that I have studied for a long time... long time ago. Here is what I remember. 1. Nomadic society's life by default involve hunting, herding, riding etc, all of this is literally just a coin flip away from actual warfare, those are basic prerequisite skills needed to survive in the steps, Where as sedentary people grow up to be farmers, the daily routine of a farmer don't have a lot in common with warfare 2. Nodmdic soceity's means of economic production is not tied to fixed land area so they can always be on the move if attacked where as sedentary people survive on farmland which cannot be moved when that is taken over to destoryed a lot of value are simply gone. 3. Material wise the sedentary people are far more wealthy in term of actual production and storage of good and nomadic people by comparisoin are a lot poorer, therefore the sedentary people have little economic incentive to go to war with nomadic people but nomadic people have a lot of incentive go raid sedentary people. 4. Life for sedentary people and nomadic people are very very different in term of security, life for sedentary people in general are much more predictble than nomadic people because they can store good and climates are usually predictable with rainfalls, harvest etc, but life on the plains are much more harsh, one bad winter can wipe out entire herd of animals, there is actually a correlation between natural disasters and invasion of nomands throughout history. 5. This is the most important factor of them all in my opinion: sedentary people in theory would have the abilitiy to gather up resources to wipe out the nomads, but then what?? They would not have the ability to settle the land so inevitably they would leave and create a power vacuum which in a few years/decads of time it would be filled by another groups of nomadic people, and the whole process would start all over again. I highly recommend you to study the military campaign of Emperor Wu of Han, he literally did everything right to wipe out the Xiongnu, the military methods that he used was absoutley absolutely amazing, but in the end they still cannot occupy the land which eventually leave the rise of the Turks to the forefronts, which was in turn defeated by Tang dynasty a few hundred years later but that too left a vacuum eventually to be filled by someone else. And of course, the modern age done away with all of that, warfare is less depended on life style/personal skills but more on industrial production, a horseman may need a whole life of training to be good, but you only need a few weeks of training for peasant on how to use a rifle. I think the way ISIS took over soo much land was the last similarity of nomadic vs sedentary warfare.

The situation somewhat reminds me of the Border Reivers. Though not true nomads, they were expert horsemen - bandits who lived on the Anglo-Scottish borders, they survived by transhumanance (moving between lowlands in winter and highlands in summer) with their cattle and raiding more settled communities (and other clans).

The last great nomadic invaders that have successfully changed culture on a global level are rock bands: Travelling fast, hitting hard, taking your women and gold, leaving everyone in their path dazed and confused but changed forever! Aaaalright!

There are already many great comments here to develop the different aspects of the question. I'd like to add something I read a while back, sorry about the lack of source. It's to do with logistics and how the preparation of a transhumance, the moving the herd to get to greener pastures is very similar to the exercice of logistics in warfare. For many nomadic people of Eurasia, that journey, sometimes of several hundreds of miles, would have necessitated careful planning. The animals would need food and water, so the herd would have to move along paths that offered rivers or springs as well as things to eat. At the same time, the politics of the tribe would complicate the picture. In the ever shifting web of alliances, rivalries and outwards hostilities that define the politics of nomadic societies, the herd would still need to find a safe path to pastures that they can graze. And so, that journey would be an exercise in planning, negotiating, calculating supplies and organising people. To add to the difficulty of the endeavour, the weather could also throw a wrench in the works. And that effort would have been taken twice a year.

Funny little tidbit of inaccuracy I noted: in some of the pictures of steppe horse archers used here, they are depicted using a European, 3-finger draw, instead of the correct "Asian thumb-draw", where the arrow sits on the right side of the bow. It's actually quite hard to knock an arrow in the European style whilst on the back of a galloping horse! the artist was clearly a European without too much knowledge of archery styles. Great video, thanks.

“Conan, what is best in life?” “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women”

14:50 Yeah it's interesting how similar the solutions to the "nomad problem" the large polities that finally ended the nomadic threat employed were. Usually a combination of infantry armed mostly or completely with muskets to decisively out-shoot enemy horse archers and a large professional light cavalry force of their own to beat them at their own game. The Streltsy/Cossack and Janissary/Timariot combos.

Fantastic video man, I'm really excited for the scythian content!

I like how all these beautiful pictures of the eurasian steppe show relatively diverse and complex terrain, but some parts, for example in eastern ukraine and along russo-chinese border (i think this is the single largest such area) are flat from horizon behind you to horizon in front of you. Not even "essentially flat", it's just a pan with micro-features at best (I do prefer the hilly parts which dominate most of this giant part of world stuff personally too, i just think these mind-boggling areas are very educational when it comes to development of steppe warfare)

Another great video! Thanks!!👍👍

Love the hint to a start of a series on this subject!

Much awaited, much appreciated excellent insights as always.

Looking forward to this series.

What a fascinating topic! Thanks for another great video.

Excellent Episode 👍

Great to see all the new subs glad you’re getting the attention you deserve. Keep up the great videos!

The strategy in the Eastern Europe steppe to retreat while burning anything of value down to deprive the enemy of supplies while straining their baggage trains seemed to have been effective until the 1940s It is also fascinating how many Native Americans were able to create basically nomadic societies once the horse was reintroduced to North America. I know that is an over simplification of the history.

Fascinating video! As an avid world builder it's kind of an obsession to understand how to make authentic representations of these sorts of cultures, it really blew my mind that yeah step nomads have things like wagons and carts to carry goods and possessions with them while migrating, they didn't all just carry their stuff in a horse. I wonder, during the several centuries that great plains American tribes acquired horses and began to develop their own steppe nomad culture, what sort of parallels and contrasts could be found between the Comanche, Sioux, etc and the Eurasia nomads of old

Thank you for the very concise explanations for thia question that eluded me for long...

Thank you for the great content

I love watching vids on this period and place of history for two reasons. The first is that it serves as a fantastic case study for both the basics and the finer points of attritional warfare, force multiplication, and other subjects. The second, and undoubtedly more important one, is that "Darius" is my cat's name, and he comes running towards the computer every time it comes up lol.

Love me some steppe history, please cover more the content is great!

Long story short the more comfortable you are with settled life the more your weak in combat and this wasn’t changed until very recent technological advances of the last 300 years that relied more on technology.

I love you and your videos. PLEASE MORE VIDEOS. And please more on nomads. thank you and have a great day

Awesome content as always

Excellent. Very excellent. Thank You. "A dead bird, a dead frog and three arrows". What the Scythians left on a trail for Darius to find, according to Herodotus. Darius barely made it out alive.

Sick, I cannot wait for this series to keep going

You Rock Mike. Thanks.

"The great closing of the steppe" sounds like it could be a very interesting way to end and summarise this series (eventually). I've always been interested in why exactly it is that the various nomadic societies declined so much earlier than the blossoming of the full fruits of the industrial revolution.

Thanks for using my map at 1:00!

Nomadic peoples had an appreciation of the logistics of force projection built into their lifestyle. Everything was organized around movement. Life on the march requires a considerable amount of camp discipline and initiative from everyone. Life on horseback gave them unprecedented range and speed to attack by surprise and retreat. Couple that with what the horse archer delivered in a fight: accurate, high volume mobile firepower and you have a formidable foe who isn't even trying hard, yet. The composite bow was itself a dominant piece of technology until, and well into, the age of firearms. Add in a charismatic leader with a vision, or a grudge, and there is a recipe for a thousand year recurring nightmare. The US military today consciously emulates Rome and the Mongols, combining speed , reach and firepower with lavish and deeply supported logistics.

The clash between settled peoples and nomadic peoples really is one of the most fascinating features of Human History. Great work on this one. Cheers.

I was so amazed to learn about Genghis Khan's war against Kwaresm in particular. Everything I've heard before that made me think of nomads, Mongols in this case, as barbarians, who just overwhelm their adversary by brute force. But learning how it was in reality has shown me just how cunning, and precise was Ghenghis with his strategy and how flexible were his commanders, who were able to gain a tactical edge against their enemy due to how well organised their forces were. Truly a terrifying enemy.

Subedei and Dzhebe did not need any supply lines when they raided Eastern Europe. They just took 5-7 horses per soldier with them. Those horses supply them with milk, blood, meat, leather and etc. so in that sense you are right 👌

Great video!

Hey welcome back. Feel like it has been a while since you released a video

Very insightful.

This is a great video. integrated a lot of good academic research and papers. one issue that is generally not well explored (maybe in academic circle but not in popular history) is that most large nomadic empires/states have some supplementary farming economy. a pure herding economy is very fragile and more prone to disaster than sedentary farming. This further complicates the relationship.

short and qualitative video, i like it

fascinating topic.

Very much enjoy the channel

Hard to defeat someone who is constantly running away from you. Thats it, even if you beat them, if you don't kill or capture all of them, they will regroup somewhere, and have a go at you later, they don't have temporary homes or places to stay, and can't relocate them as they won't mind. Unless you take them into hostile region, like mountains in heartland of your territory.

yt not lettin me subscr… great video

A fascinating and enjoyable video. Thanks! (by the way, in case it's helpful, "shi" in pinyin is pronounced more like "sure" in English, and "he" is pronounced more like "huh").

Will you be talking about the Cossacks at any point during your coming videos on the steppe? I just find them interesting, settled Slavic people adapting the steppe lifestyle and material culture as a response to the Tatars

amazing video as always. just one small criticism: the map you showed was quite hard to parce for me due to the low contrast between the greenish-blue for the oceans and the green for landmasses. had to pause and stare at it for a moment to actually recognize what I was looking at. Thanks for what you do!

Wow, this was again vastly educational. I particularly love how you go into the big picture stuff, like the "shadow empire" idea. It goes to show how our world is connected and interwoven. Whether it's Rome and the barbarians or settled and nomadic empires. They interact in space and in time. One missing link for me is to understand how and why nomads become mercenaries. What appeals to them? Is it the promise of riches? Do the nomadic empires fall prey to their own "incentive structures"?

Surely the superior weapon system of the horse archer Vs pre-gunpowder settled societies' armies has to be a big factor in why nomadic armies were dominant. The skilled horsemanship and archery of the nomads, along with the power of their composite bows were pretty dominant until the use of firearms and artillery? Dan Carlin explains their effectiveness in his series of podcasts pretty well

I hope this series will include a video about the history of the Sarmatian tribes.

9:53 I would argue that any states didn't have exact boundaries until very recently. In antiquity, the boundaries were a spectrum if there was no large geographical feature, such as Rhine present, and further into the Middle ages, boundaries were a spectrum of were does a King actually hold power, how much, and on the outer edge the allegiance is only token. Of course regions such as Dalmatia, Illyria, and parts of Italy would fluctuate between Rome and HRE a lot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty positive that any states in that time used to exert a zone of control with different levels of autonomy, not direct boundaries(even if such used to exist on paper sometimes)

I was wondering why those Horse Archer symbols looked familar, shout out to Total War 😁 3:00

I got one for my hat when playing airsoft and I gotta say it’s a game changer. If you’re using cover properly then most of the time when you’re hit it’ll be on your head/face. The hits are still obvious, but way less painful and won’t leave welts.

That video is very very useful for my video game development...

Btw will you solely focus on step or will it be leading topic, but with other topic presents?a

Because they were so In-Tents!

A good question would be this... Nomadic archers were good but settled societies needed two things at minimum to defeat them: A permanent local force or guard units that could rapidly respond to any raids and would need at least good armor and well trained in archery. The Eastern Roman Empire kinda had something similar with this with the Theme system where each province was pretty much its own "fortress" and formed a strong defense-in-depth.

Even now in Nigeria, there exists clashes between many of our settled and farming villages and the nomadic Fulani cattle herders. At least now I understand that the clashes. Between nomads and settled society is common across the world.

Taking about the location of Scythia (which intersects modern Ukraine) and in the same breath talking about lines on maps ... Mike, are you are a fellow watching of William Spaniel's channel ?

Any recommendation for books on the Dzunghar Khanate? Preferably military history, if any.

I expect you will touch on this at some point later but along with less division of labor (or less strict division of labor) was less rigid class boundaries in nomadic societies. In many or most settled states it was definitely not in the elites interest to have large numbers of peasants skilled in the use of weapons and military organization.

How can i access the full pdf of the "The perilious frontier"

The thumbnail from Mount & Blade?

I am Türk from western Balkan born in sweden. When we made 2 days car trips when I was a kid my father used to drive down in a straight with speed and even got fed buy mom while driving and even had coffe while driving. No cup holder or cups just a small plastic cup that you had to hold in your hand while driving a manual.. I as kid liked being mobile so when we arrived the next day I used to ask when will we return! When I say in straight some short sleeps were included but my father came home from work, loaded tha car and we drove off.

Chariots preceded cavalry in the Middle/Near East. The heydey of the former might be 1300 BCE, while cavalry did not appear until 900 BCE. The horses just were not large enough to be ridden. Remember that they were domesticated (on the steppe) for food, and at that time were quite small. The dates are earlier in the steppe, but I'm skeptical of evidence of horse riding in 3500 BCE.

Hearders vs. wall builders explains this topic perfectly

Would the Nomadic advantage explain the all conquering armies of the early Islam, as the Arabian peoples had just turned nomadic a century earlier with the collapse of the Yemen dams system, and the climate had just changed after centuries of the Roman Warm Period?

Nomads were not mad (No-Mad). that helped them have a steady mind. And they were always "IN STEP". that is why they lived on the STEPPE

i wanna add something on hunting. Nomadic hunt had another aspect making it useful for warfare: it was often group hunting on horseback. It wasn't just a single guy with a bow who just suddenly craved for some pork. Why is it important? Because horseback group hunting involves both the strategic training (gotta organize big mass of hunters into groups, gotta move and feed them before and after the hunt), discipline training (you need to follow orders and do exactly what's asked of you), the formation training (you need to know your position and maneuver) and the skill training with bow and horse riding. It's not exclusive for nomadic societies, in Western Europe one of aristocratic pastimes was mounted group hunting (which also contributed to combat training of knights). But nomads employed it en masse.

Always interested in nomads 😎

Using this for Mount and Blade warband strategy

1:46 Oh yeah! Oirat showing Ming their place!

As a Turk from Turkiye with relatively solid historic knowledge on the issue, I can try to summarize this phenomenon. A) No city and capital based civilization. Thus you can't be conquered. B) All time total war society. Women and even children fights. How they find the time to do this? Because they lack other professions more developed classical era societies had. C) Culture and language preserved through geography. When a land even as remote as Britain was being settled by different nations/cultures time after time, the steppes was foreign to others. Thus national identity especially through language and customs made tribes close to each other, creating a form of cohesion and kin hood. D) Tribes were ruled by chiefs, and chiefs were ruled by khans. And khans even united under a single khan in times of distress. People like Attila and Chengiz were good examples. You can't have similar social governence in most other places in the world. E) Finally horsemanship and archery, and warfare based solely on those. Never facing melee willingly, thus losing less. Not a big coincidence that many historic tacticians such as Sun Tzu was from China. They were facing continious assaults from the steppes all the time. And remember, in a battle what you seek is a lost enemy that lowered the weapons. If you can tire your enemy through constant mobile harassing, and finally it loses its rations and ammunition. So tired that it can't fight anymore. That is the best strategy. And you need the resources, talent, training, horses and bows to realize that aim. When they had those, they were invincible as the enemy couldn't defeat them. And give enough time, any battle would be won. If you compare it to European warfare, you don't need all the expensive armor to defend your soldiers on the battlefield. Thus you don't need mining operations, blacksmiths, a network of supply for armors. Instead all you need is horses. And while you can't make alternative uses of armor besides warfare, horses feed you besides you taking them to war. And they need pastures, thus you walk with them with your caravan of tents, from drought to the green pastures. A very limited type of living and culture. But sure it have military benefits up until the modern era where machine's killing power surpassed bows with a major blow. For all the statements I made there are very nasty disadvantages. I am not trying to tell they did the good, right or the better thing. But all in all it is history. I am not here to judge anybody.

A conspicuous data point is the Indoeuropeans. That did their unprecedented world changing expansion before horse back riding and maybe even before the chariot. From the same base area as later horse archer based cultures. I have no explanation. But it really has to be addressed in this context.

The great khan returns!!

This commentary is very similar to Deleuze and Guattari's "The War Machine", which adds a philosophical bent to the actions of nomadic peoples by putting these actions into a context of territorialisation and deterritorialisation, as well as the nomadic machinery to ward off the state

I'm trying to square the years here: The chinese example is 2000 years after the persian example, right?

Geography largely determines the economies and cultures of the people living on it. River Valleys, The Steppe and Mountains each have their own impact on the cultures that develop. Farming is a cooperative development but requires a lot of time and hard work devoted to it. It can however be the basis of a very rich culture. People who live on The Steppes and in the Mountains do not live on terrain that is conducive to farming. They tend to be poor animal herders. One of the things about being poor - is that there is a temptation to rob your neighbors. This breeds a warrior culture in that the men emphasize the importance of being able to rob their neighbors and keep themselves from being robbed. The nomadic culture I'm most familiar with is the American Plains Indians. They lived in villages belonging to a tribe - that were strung out in an east west line as the tribe, as a whole, moved as villages north and south with the seasons and the animals. These villages were largely family units led by the older males in a family group. Young people could not find romance within the village as they were related to everyone. So - the men would seek mates in Tribal Gatherings and by stealing them from other tribes. Raiding other tribes was a constant on going thing. You can't be a warrior if you don't have someone to fight - so now and again the young men would get together a War Party - and go looking for trouble raiding another tribe. Here - they were opportunists. They'd come across a situation and make a judgment call. _"Can we take them?"_ If the answer was - no - or - yes but we'll take casualties - they'd go else where looking for a better opportunity. If the Answer was - YES - they hit them. They'd kill all the men, rape all the women, steal the animals, steal women and children they wanted to keep - and kill the rest. The children would be brought into their tribe. The tales of being Adopted Into an Indian Tribe - are true. The Indians had horrendous youth death rates and were constantly looking for ways to increase their numbers. The women they stole - would have their wombs put to work for the tribe that had abducted them. Because of the nature of this raiding - these people *_HATED_* each other. They all had fathers and brothers who had been killed, mothers and sisters who had been raped and killed or kidnapped. I cannot emphasize how much these people hated each other. The Lakota and Cheyenne ganged up on the Crow and drove them out of their migratory lands. So - the Crow just flat out hated these people - and went to work for the Army. An Army officer trying to make peace on the plains had asked some Lakota Chiefs to come to his base to talk. As these Chiefs entered the base - the Army's Crow Scouts - saw them - and killed them all. When the Whites showed up - the Indians didn't treat them any differently than they had each other. The difference there - is that the Whites would call the Army. The American Indian Wars saw twice as many Whites die as Indians. The solution - was to put these nomadic peoples on reservations where the government would feed them and they wouldn't be out and about killing people. The thing is - these Indians didn't stand a chance. At the Little Big Horn - Custer had about 435 guys. There were maybe 6,000 Indian men women and children - with between 1,000 and 2500 men of military age. At the Battle of Gettysburg there were over 70,000 people - *_ON EACH SIDE_* . Though there were a few attempts to do so - the Indians were never able to over come their inter tribal hatreds and unite. Even if they had - they had all of Europe (which was full) feeding people into the New World and bringing their diseases with them. And here we come to the question of Why did the Mongols and Arabs - after hundreds of years of killing each other - unite. In the case of the Mongols - it was the Khans that politically united the different tribes. In the case of the Arabs it was Mohammad and Islam that united them. Another factor here - was good weather - which had caused a strong increase in their populations over a few generations. .

Weird but slightly related question: Does the Comanche Empire count as a Nomadic Empire?

Firepower and Maneuverability are the advantages.

The idea that they could mobilize a higher percentage of their population who just happened to have sick riding and archery skills had occurred to me. After centuries of warfare or just a few major defeats they might be pretty depleted. I also think that superior nutrition (and the mobility of that nutrition) was a major advantage. Herders have been showing up and whooping sedentary societies since Mesopotamia. For instance, the Egyptian diet was almost entirely grains and they were in terrible health. Hunters also have bigger brains.

Could the Plain Indians pre reservation be considered a nomadic steppe group albeit in North America

They where the ones who happily left themselves behind during civilization day.

Horses in short answer, and also one of the big reason is that their life style, make Nomads had to capture because they don’t have a city, you cannot find them, and they can always run when you find them.

i heard that 'mongolian neck signing' in the background???

I heard recently that the Israelites were a raider nation and that Yahweh was originally a warrior God; which explains some of His more violent moments in some of the more early stories.

The lack of need for a supply train is an advantage I’m guessing before I watch this

Funny thing history from that time, conquest been from mostly from North to South and East to West

couldt help but laugh a little bit so many of these aspects. Im from Denmark and we can find many of these aspects in the early days in our kingdom, from the 12th century and backwards to atleast 8th century, based on the factual data we have so far. Guess you can say that Germanic people kept alot of steppe elements, here in denmark we just replaced the horse with boats.

imho the idea that pastoral-nomadism makes better warriors has more to do with passive benefits of seasoned prior experience riding a horse and shooting a bow (or at least using a lance or lasso, etc) that's just inherent to the lifestyle and social model. Hunting and herding skills require at least one if not both of those skills from an early age, so without being more warlike or anything they'd just have an edge on some drafted peasant. The mamluke/ghulam phenomenon of slave-soldiery illustrates this the best. The boys and young men bought to enter that role and receive further training were pretty much exclusively drawn from steppe nomad societies, so they could be expected to already have horsemanship and archery under their belts. So the time they might have spent teaching any other slave or peasant how to ride a horse and shoot a bow could be spent on other skills, etc.

I think livestock raiding and tribal feuds about pasture/land prepared the nomadic herders for more organised warfare.

Worth noting that the final thing which killed the nomads weren't actually a simple military defeat, but their lands being settled by the Russians and the Chinese bringing them into the fold via a nomadic group being the conquerors on the form of the Qing

As long as they had grass forage and plants for their animals to eat, they had mobility above people who are living subsistence agrarian farmers As soon as people who are settled were able to project power, and his cases pointed out firearms and mechanized machinery, the mobility, the horse became obsolete Will just have to mention World War I and the advent of artillery aircraft, even with rudimentary moms and machine guns made a horse cavalry obsolete as a primary shock force

Because they got the fast with only the grass

I would ... maybe not argue, but make the case for that there existed a brief resurgence in the steppe military advantage in central Asia during the first half of the 19th, with both the Qing, and Russia having problems with their supposedly 'tamed' subject populations. You see this with the middle horde in the Kazakhs even into the eighteen forties, and with Madali Khan forcing the Qing to grant him extraterritoriality rights in Xinjiang to the Khoqandi the decade prior to that. The response to this was of course to build fortresses and apply greater administrative effort up to and including forced colonization and resettlement. I honestly think the decline of the steppe military advantage declined as a result of their politically fractured nature versus the increasing centralization and communications advantage of settled states, but that they enjoyed a local / regional advantage in to the mid nineteenth century despite these instances often being referred to as 'revolts' or rebellions by Chinese and Russian period writers.

Usually see nomadic ppl transforming into sedentary ones. Are there good examples of settled ppl who turned 😮nomadic and did well? 😮

O my God, that map with Androphags location is ridiculously wrong. They are said to be clearly farther to north-east, around the origins of Dniper and where wastelands are, far than Neuri, not in the dense woods almost among Scythians-farmers (Scuthai arothres or Βορυσϑενεἴται). And yeah... Nomads are countered with the help of mass foot archers/shooters (apart from cavalry strike) in case of massive clash, that's it.

I think that nomads just suffer from being villified by the "civilized" settled peoples because we dont have many written records from the nomads perspective. Settled empires were actually able to beat the nomads several times over. Nomads certainly had better logistics and a defensive advantage .While nomadic steppe life offers advantages, one should also not forget to think about the downsides and our own biases.

Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond call me what you will. Anywhere I roam Where I lay my head is home Though a settled society may appear fixed to a specific location, in a pinch a secondary place to retreat and evacuate to has already been selected and the tribe/village/settlers know where to go in the event of being overrun by invaders. While that might seem prudent and the wise thing to do, it inadvertently guts an army's defensive intensity. If an army is forced into a pitched defensive position, if that army has a ready and trusted optional place to go to, that army has already forfeit any hope of victory. Sun Tzu said victory can be had in an army's death ground. There is nowhere else to go. This ground is the only place to stand. If the opposing army can be convinced that it does not have to be on that land likely to die, but has someplace else to go and more likely live. One army has a choice of victory or death. The other army can take a defensive retreat and bug out to ideally fight another day. As if tomorrow or victory is guaranteed to anyone. A true nomadic army has no particular place to be, that depends on the moment and situation at hand. Home is where they rest their head. So laying seige to a town/village/city/fortress/castle is as normal as breathing. Doing something difficult in pursuit of that which is larger than oneself, is more satisfying than doing nothing and getting fat.

great video Michael i had no idea the persians went so deep into modern Ukraine

this is so sad 😭 rip eurasian nomads