civilizations, Roman history and numismatics, and has written extensively on Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Viking culture.
Harl applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization, and reported the following:
Page 99 is in chapter 5 and it discusses how the charismatic nomadic leader (the first known in history) Modu chanyu (209-174 B.C.) used Chinese scribes to create a bureaucracy so that he could rule his nomadic confederation of the Xiongnu more effectively. Foremost, they adapted the Chinese ideograms to the language of the Xiongnu.Learn more about Empires of the Steppes at the publisher's website.
Page 99 is an appropriate introduction to the work, because I wrote from the perspective of the nomads who are known largely from written accounts of their foes and victims so that they are demonized as uncouth barbarians. The information on page 99 instead depicts these nomads on the Mongolian steppes as very quick studies who appreciated writing, technology, and material goods of the urban civilization of imperial China. They were far from maniacal barbarians bent on seizing plunder and slaves. They had to learn and adapt from their neighboring sedentary civilizations if they were to survive on the harsh conditions of the steppes. Therefore page 99 deals directly with a major theme of the book.
I wrote this book during the pandemic of 2020-2021, when my wife and I had to isolate given our age and medical condition. I had recorded a version of this course ten years earlier for the Teaching Company, but since then I gained so much more knowledge and rethought my ideas. Foremost, I wanted to present the little known history of these people from their perspective and also their contributions to the civilizations of Eurasia. The first half of the book deals with the earliest Eurasian nomads in Antiquity. The second half covers the Middle Ages in which the Turks and Mongols figure as the main nomadic peoples. The reader will be struck by how all these diverse nomadic peoples struggled to survive in such harsh conditions. They twice changed warfare by devising the light chariot in the Bronze Age, and then the mounted horse archer in the early Iron Age. Foremost, Attila the Hun emerges as a crucial figure in the birth of Medieval Europe, and one of the great ifs of history. If he had succeeded in taking Rome and marrying the empress Honoria, he might have created a Hun-Roman state so that the history of Europe would have been very different. Genghis Khan emerges as an exceptional strategic genius, but even greater credit goes to Kublai Khan, his grandson, who united China for the first time in four centuries and ensured that China would emerge as a world power. The reader will be amazed to realize that the thirteenth century was the Mongol century because they imposed a peace over Eurasia that resulted in revolutionary changes due to trade and the transmission of technology, ideas, and goods. Throughout the book, I have striven to make these people of long ago come alive so that the reader can sense what the spirit of these distant times was like, and why we should study these people.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
