> [[torday]]. *Mounted Archers: The Beginings of Central Asian history*. The Durham Academic Press, 1997. See: [notes](mounted-archers.md) #need-to-buy #buy ## Notes **§1** (p.9) ***Shih Chi*** (Early Han view of nomads) > ...they have no writing and even promises and agreements are only verbal... **§2** (p.11) **Table 1.1** Development of mounted archery: | Date | Event | | - | - | | c.3500 BC | Discovery of solid, heavy wheel. Near East | | c.1800 BC | Discovery of light, spoked wheel. Near East | | c.1500 BC | Chariots, cheek-plates, bits | | c.1500 BC | PII with chariots. Near East | | c.1500 BC | Birth of true nomadism in Eurasia | | before 700 BC | Birth of mounted archery | **§3** (p. 11,12, ?)The change from *hunter-gathering* through *itinerant pastoralism* to *highly mobile nomadism* and/or to *farming* was accompanied by changes in religon and social structure. 1. The ***gatherers*** were pure animists/shamanists; they worshipped diverse nature gods to whome they sacrificed animals and humans. 2. Militant ***nomads*** had burial mounds, patrilineality, and high social stratification. Funeral furniture (pots; stone, bone, and copper things) were decorated with solar and lunar symbols which replaced earlier shamanistic symbols. **These "divine" heavenly objects were also linked with horses, reflected how mobility, a new technology and way of life, brought about a change in religion.** For example Herodotus said that the Scythians only worshiped one god, the sun, to which they offered horse-sacrifices. The sun god is also found in Indo-Iranian sources: *Hvar Kshaeta* in the Avesta, and *Svar* (later *Suriya*) in the Rgveda. Mitra & Mithra illuminate the sky by traversing it in chariots drawn by immortal horses. Helios of Rhodes, the pre-Greek precursos of Apollo, did the same. 3. **Gatherers/Nomads-turned-Farmers** also underwent changed. Their nature deities were merged with or replaced by female fertility deities (farming communities were also often matrilineal); else they were relegated to "shamanistic" functions of divining and healing. Animal and human sacrifices, originally offered by gatherers to nature spirits, were now offered to the Mother Goddesses. In some parts of Europe men, women, and children were ritually drowned in the early spring to guarantee good crops later in the year.