Being condemned to
live on cereals and beans was not altogether a disaster for the
peasants of the hydraulic societies. In the long run, a different
consequence of the absence of herds was to prove a far heavier
penalty for the hydraulic societies as a whole.
In some at least of
the hydraulic societies, the state did maintain some livestock, and
a few of the peasants were split off from the rest to keep them. At
Ur, around 2000 b.c., the state was able to profit from a
considerable textile industry, based on the wool of sheep. But as
the two forms of food production drew further and further
apart, separate herding societies of outcasts or adventurers began
to form beyond the borders of the hydraulic states. The peasants
had taken first pick of the river valleys, and the herders had to
be content with grasslands on the outskirts of the desert. These
"pastures of the wilderness," as the prophet Joel called them, are
pastures in the wet season only. When the dry season comes, the
grass is withered by heat and drought, and there is no water for
the animals to drink. So the way of life of the herders, like that
of the peasants, was forced into a special pattern by the seasonal
shortage of water. They evolved a system called
trans-humance. In the wet season, they grazed their herds on
the "pastures of the wilderness"; in the dry season, they moved
into the wetter hills or the river valleys where grass still grew.
The herders of Syria to this day move their flocks in summer to the
Antilebanon mountains or to the upper valleys of the Euphrates or
the Orontes. This yearly pattern of transhumance meant that the
herders could not settle in permanent homes; their way of life
diverged more and more from that of the settled peasant. But their
dry-season need for the hills and river valleys drove them into
head-on collision with the expanding hydraulic societies, which
needed just these regions all year round. The borders of the
hydraulic states became the scene of repeated conflict. The
restless herders could never develop the elaborate paraphernalia of
hydraulic civilization. But their way of life, which often included
some hunting and gathering to supplement their food supplies,
taught them mobility, resourcefulness, knowledge of large tracts of
country, and efficient, flexible combined action. These qualities
made them formidable in war. They became robbers and raiders.
Sometimes, a herder chief and his henchmen actually conquered a
hydraulic state. Their descendants were absorbed by the more
complex society they now governed, and became typical kings and
nobles of hydraulic societies. In this curious interaction, the
ruling dynasties of the great kingdoms and empires were repeatedly
supplied from the outcast groups beyond their borders. In the
second and first millennia b.c., lower Iraq (for instance) was
successively ruled by Amorite, Kassite, and Chaldean dynasties, all
typical kings of civilized states, but all originating from herding
communities outside the valley. Throughout history, the kings and
nobles of civilization have betrayed their ultimate pastoral origin
in two ways. They practised hunting as a sport, monopolizing
extensive game preserves; and, as we have seen, they ate quantities
of meat.
