15 Comments
Apr 9, 2021Liked by Razib Khan

Wonderful piece! Can't wait to read the full series. I've come to believe that one cannot even understand something like Indian history without understanding the steppe. But your article also made me realize how great settled civilizations are. Testosterone gets big things done, but apparently doesn't get you into the history books as much as the written word, philosophy or monuments.

Expand full comment

I too have bene haunted by the steppe from high school. But I grew up in an ancient small town in India filled with temples and a sense of 'glorious in the past but a dump today". I read too much. I too was writing my own steppe thesis in college. But i gave up because evolutionary biology got hold of me. I now sit by your feet like they say in Upanishad, and yearn to go back to my old times.

Expand full comment

Pretty exciting field, Razib. I accept that none of this is going to be easy but, if I had one request, it would be for a geography of the steppe. Most all the resources I've consulted focus on other priorities (national boundaries, place names, mountain ranges, etc...) and leave the steppe as an afterthought.

For sure, thanks for this great intro.

Expand full comment

I too am haunted by the steppe. In fact, I have resolved to do something about the wistful longing to see it with my own eyes that has gripped me since childhood. Later this year I intend on journeying overland from Europe to Steppelandia, in a sort of reverse migration, and to document it on my Substack. Planning on going through all your suggestions above as part of my background reading. This was first posted a couple of years ago so wondering if you have an extra suggestions since then?

Expand full comment

Just finished the 9-part series. Incredible journey, thank you.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this wonderful article on the Stepps. I have also been interested in It's history & as you state not that much available, so much thanks for this article.

Expand full comment

Steppeson would make a nice T-shirt statement for razib to wear

Expand full comment
founding

"The centuries-long Tatar oppression under which Muscovy suffered and against which they rebelled, haunts Russian historiography. Tatars are cruel and barbaric, Russian resistors heroic."

I take it that you realize Russian historiography is garbage.

Expand full comment
founding

I guess Clubhouse not accessible by those of us who are not part of the Apple ecosystem.

Expand full comment

Great article, very illuminating

Expand full comment

This seems like a cool idea. That said....it this gonna ultimately go in a "race realist"/"human biodiversity" direction? Or more like a history/guns germs and steel direction?

Expand full comment

*is* this

Expand full comment
author

i'm going theory-free. see where it goes

Expand full comment

I think this piece is excellent! I think a much better model would be Charles C. Mann's "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus," which illuminates the Indigenous American civilizations, where he similarly has to understand the nature of a civilization where all or nearly all of the written documentation is from the European colonizer point of view.

Expand full comment

I meant to say that 1491 would be a better model for this piece than Guns, Germs and Steel would be; the parallels in having to fill in with physical evidence, due to the lack of written material. At least in the case of the Americas, there are *some* translated writings from their point of view, with the steppe peoples, there's basically none!

Expand full comment