Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads.[1][2] In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world as of 1995[update].[3]
Nomadic hunting and gathering—following seasonally available wild plants and game—is by far the oldest human subsistence method.[4] Pastoralists raise herds of domesticated livestock, driving or accompanying them in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover.[5] Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to infertile regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources. For example, many groups living in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-nomadic, following forage for their animals.
Sometimes also described as "nomadic" are various itinerant populations who move among densely populated areas to offer specialized services (crafts or trades) to their residents—external consultants, for example. These groups are known as "peripatetic nomads".[6][7]
The English word nomad comes from the Middle French nomade, from Latin nomas ("wandering shepherd"), from Ancient Greek νομᾰ́ς (nomás, “roaming, wandering, esp. to find pasture”), which is derived from the Ancient Greek νομός (nomós, “pasture”).[8][dubious – discuss]
Nomads are communities who move from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. Most nomadic groups follow a fixed annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic people traditionally travel by animal, canoe or on foot. Animals include camels, horses and alpaca. Today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Some nomads may live in homes or homeless shelters, though this would necessarily be on a temporary or itinerant basis.[citation needed]
Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, and water. Aboriginal Australians, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life. Pastoral nomads, on the other hand, make their living raising livestock such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, or yaks; these nomads usually travel in search of pastures for their flocks. The Fulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands of Niger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may also move to raid settled communities or to avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers. They include the Gadia Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Roma traders, Scottish travellers and Irish travellers.[citation needed]
Many nomadic and pastorally nomadic peoples are associated with semi-arid and desert climates; examples include the Mongolic and Turkic peoples of Central Asia, the Plains Indians of the Great Plains, and the Amazigh and other peoples of the Sahara Desert. Pastoral nomads who are residents of arid climates include the Fulani of the Sahel, the Khoikhoi of South Africa and Namibia, groups of Northeast Africa such as Somalis and Oromo, and the Bedouin of the Middle East.
Most nomads travel in groups of families, bands, or tribes. These groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs.[citation needed]
In the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements generally occur during the summer and winter. The winter destination is usually located near the mountains in a valley and most families already have fixed winter locations. Their winter locations have shelter for animals and are not used by other families while they are out. In the summer they move to a more open area in which the animals can graze. Most nomads usually move within the same region and do not travel very far. Since they usually circle around a large area, communities form and families generally know where the other ones are. Often, families do not have the resources to move from one province to another unless they are moving out of the area permanently. A family can move on its own or with others; if it moves alone, they are usually no more than a couple of kilometres from each other. The geographical closeness of families is usually for mutual support. Pastoral nomad societies usually do not have large populations.
One nomadic society, the Mongols, gave rise to the largest land empire in history. The Mongols originally consisted of loosely organized nomadic tribes in Mongolia, Manchuria, and Siberia. In the late 12th century, Genghis Khan united them and other nomadic tribes to found the Mongol Empire, which eventually stretched the length of Asia.[9]
The nomadic way of life has become increasingly rare. Many countries have converted pastures into cropland and forced nomadic peoples into permanent settlements.[10]
Modern forms of nomadic peoples are variously referred to as "shiftless", "gypsies", "rootless cosmopolitans", hunter-gatherers, refugees and urban homeless or street-people, depending on their individual circumstances. These terms may be used in a derogatory sense.
According to Gérard Chaliand, terrorism originated in nomad-warrior cultures. He points to Machiavelli's classification of war into two types, which Chaliand interprets as describing a difference between warfare in sedentary and nomadic societies:[11]
There are two different kinds of war. The one springs from the ambition of princes or republics that seek to extend their empire; such were the wars of Alexander the Great, and those of the Romans, and those which two hostile powers carry on against each other. These wars are dangerous but never go so far as to drive all its inhabitants out of a province, because the conqueror is satisfied with the submission of the people... The other kind of war is when an entire people, constrained by famine or war, leave their country with their families for the purpose of seeking a new home in a new country, not for the purpose of subjecting it to their dominion as in the first case, but with the intention of taking absolute possession of it themselves and driving out or killing its original inhabitants.
Primary historical sources for nomadic steppe-style warfare are found in many languages: Chinese, Persian, Polish, Russian, Classical Greek, Armenian, Latin and Arabic. These sources concern both the true steppe nomads (Mongols, Huns, Magyars and Scythians) and also the semi-settled people like Turks, Crimean Tatars and Russians, who retained or, in some cases, adopted the nomadic form of warfare.[12]
Hunter-gatherers (also known as foragers) move from campsite to campsite, following game and wild fruits and vegetables. Hunting and gathering describes early peoples' subsistence living style. Following the development of agriculture, most hunter-gatherers were eventually either displaced or converted to farming or pastoralist groups. Only a few contemporary societies, such as the Pygmies, the Hadza people, and some uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest, are classified as hunter-gatherers; some of these societies supplement, sometimes extensively, their foraging activity with farming or animal husbandry.