Of the many books on the Eurasian steppe written recently by historians and archaeologists, this is one of the most accessible, while remaining vast in its scope and detail. Ball's book provides a comprehensive view focusing primarily upon the nomadic aspects of Bronze and Iron Age prehistory of the Eurasian steppe and subsequent histories of the Huns, the Turks, the Khazars, the Tatars of the Golden Horde, the Mongols, and the formation of nineteenth-century nation-states. It draws on a vast amount of primary and secondary material including texts, archaeology, art history, linguistics and related fields. Warwick Ball is ideally placed to write such a treatise owing to his lifelong experiences as a Near Eastern archaeologist with a fine-grained approach to textual sources be they biblical, Greek, or Latin.
In the opinion of this reviewer, the earlier chapters describing pastoral nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppe lack a degree of anthropological balance. For example, pastoral nomads are the subject of a substantial body of theoretical and empirical studies indicating that most Eurasian nomadic groups engaged in a wide range of subsistence practices from foraging plants, hunting game, and fishing, to the cultivation of millet, barley, and wheat as well as the tending of flocks of sheep and goats, cattle, horses, camels, and yaks. Drawing on recent ethnographic research on pastoral nomadic societies in Eurasia might have improved chapters 1 and 2. That said, the author does an admirable job of discussing recent archaeological controversies about a proto-Indo-European linguistic homeland in the third millennium bc as the product of pastoral nomadic movement and inventions (horse, wheel, and chariot). His discussion also includes the most recent findings of aDNA studies linking the European corded ware groups to Eurasian steppe peoples (Yamnaya and others). His discussion of Amazon women within the Scythian tradition of the first millennium bc and later, is a wonderful nod to feminism, while avoiding Bachofen's notions of mother-right as put forward by the late Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas argued that the warrior kurgan people (steppe groups) conquered the peaceful agrarian (matriarchal) societies of Old Europe. Ball cleverly avoids the major intellectual pitfall of many recent books on the Eurasian steppe – an over-reliance upon the Silk Road trope. It is refreshing to read a history of the Eurasian steppe that decries the use of the silk route model and points to where the “silk route(s)” has a distinctive propagandistic element used by the Chinese and others for geopolitical purposes.
As someone not trained in history, I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book which discusses the impact of steppe cultures, traditions, and migration upon the making of Europe from the medieval through modern periods. This is history that takes the longue durée approach to nomadic steppe societies and their impact upon the “outside world”. It also avoids viewing invasions by nomadic tribes, states, or empires as “barbaric”, although they are often described in ancient and modern texts as “barbarians”.
What is particularly refreshing about this massive compendium is the clear exposition of the complicated movements of various ethnic and linguistic groups across Eurasia. The maps offer great clarity, especially in complicated historical descriptions: for example, in the discussion in chapter 10 presenting the impact of steppe groups on early medieval Europe and exploring the formation of ethnic or national groups such as Finns, Estonians, and Karelians, Avars, and Bulgars. The well-illustrated maps are most useful, especially for readers who might otherwise become lost in the morass of ethnonyms and geographical places. Throughout the text there are colour photographs illustrating “animal-style” Scythian artefacts, site excavations such as the Khazar site of Sarkel monuments, statues, churches, mosques, mausoleums, and artwork.
While Scythians and Amazons have dominated modern-day perceptions of the horse-riding nomad with his/her double compound bow and military prowess, it is facile to dismiss a difficult and more complicated history, that of the earlier strata of steppe tradition. The age-old saw of Indo-European linguistic and ethnic homeland provided the basis for much nineteenth-century nationalism. The twentieth century experienced the outcome of such nationalism in the form of Aryan fascism, thus making discussion of the objective foundations for an Indo-European homeland on the Eurasian steppe almost impossible. Yet with understatement and clear cognizance Warwick Ball does just that. I was particularly intrigued by the historical fact that early Kievian Rus (chapter 9) could have easily adopted Islam or Judaism in the ninth century, but instead chose Byzantine Orthodoxy. In chapter 13 Ball discusses the continued tension between the Slavic Orthodox identity and those who argued for a pan-Eurasianist identity for the twentieth-century Soviet state. He also provides a decent summary of the Mongols and their infliction of two “horrors” on Europe in the fourteenth century, the introduction of Chinese gun powder and the Black Death.
It goes without saying that the book is well researched and represents a broad synthetic history of a vast geographical region by a person who wears his immense scholarship and erudition lightly. This is a book that is suitable for a popular audience as well as specialists. The historical narrative follows the chronological march of time but does so in an engaging manner, serving up archaeology, folktales, place names, important primary sources to check on later, and a lifetime of deep appreciation of the distant lands and peoples he writes about. I found myself taking extensive notes, often in dialogue with the author who is neither dogmatic nor propagandistic in his approach.
