NOMADS

A meditation on human wandering through history, looking deep into past and future alike.

Sattin tells the story of a life-and-death rivalry between settled farmers and roving pastoralists. That conflict was not always thus, writes the author, a British traveler with long-standing interest in the Middle East, and he begins with a consideration of “the challenges of being a herder in the Zagros Mountains in the twenty-first century.” The challenges they face today are similar to those of their ancestors, fulfilling a biological imperative to move and keep on moving, hard-wired into human DNA. Sattin digs into the urban-rural divide, noting that one of the earliest cities known to history, a Turkish site called Göbekli Tepe, sturdy and well built, was apparently never meant to be inhabited: It was a place of the gods. Just so, there was ancient Baghdad, built on a circular plan “around which the nomadic world could turn.” At some point in history, those who stayed close to or within the walls began to fear those who moved freely outside, and for good reason. Sattin considers the history of the Mongols, who, from deep within Asia, built an empire that encompassed much of Europe but whose wandering ways, albeit violent, “stimulated the nearest thing the world had ever seen to a global trade network.” One has to wander in order to make sales, after all. The author observes that people will be made to move in the future because of climate change—perhaps a net positive given that nomadic ways are “less damaging for the natural world and therefore better for the future of the planet on which we all depend.” Brimming with literary, historical, and anthropological references, Sattin’s book makes a splendid rejoinder—and without its fictions—to Bruce Chatwin’s now-classic book The Songlines.

A treat for any thoughtful traveler, armchair or otherwise.