20. The Harsh Life on the Steppe Transformed its Inhabitants Into Formidable Warriors
Another advantage was the nomads themselves. Life on the harsh Steppe, much of it spent on horseback, created a deep pool of tough natural cavalry. Although the population of the civilized lands that bordered the Steppe vastly outnumbered that of the nomads, only a minority of the civilized lands’ population could be mobilized as warriors. That is because civilization rests upon the employment of most civilians in sedentary civil pursuits such as agriculture or crafts in workshops or the such. Steppe nomads had few fields and less manufacture, and their food source, their grazing animals, could be tended to by children and women.
As a result, almost the entire adult male population of fighting age nomads was available as warriors. Civilization only survived because, luckily, it was often difficult to unite the feuding and fractious nomads in large enough numbers to overwhelm their settled neighbors. Small-scale nomadic raids on the borders of civilized lands were quite frequent, but leaders who could unite the nomads, and thus realize the Steppe’s terrifying potential, were rare. Nonetheless, such leaders did emerge from time to time, and when they did, the world trembled. Genghis Khan was the greatest of them, and he made the world tremble greatly.
