Anthony Sattin, "Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World" (Norton, 2022)
New Books in Early Modern History
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The Importance of Nomadism
The word nomad has a very, very, very old origin way back into sort of early Indo European language. It originally comes from a word nomos, which means pasture or the right to access grazing on a particular piece of land. And out of that comes therefore the idea that you're somebody who hurts and who needs to move around. But coming forward in time, obviously this word morphs, it still applies even in this year to people who have to move around in order to feed their flocks. The interesting thing about Iran and the reason why true nomadism has survived is because much of the country is very very difficult to farm.
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