The Nomadic Alternative – Page 80

III

Things hamper movement. Precious possessions tether their owner to a place. The nomad whittles them down as he asserts his independence of the economic system he has learned to despise. Organic materials, supplied from his own herds, account for most of his material equipment - skins to carry water, leather for sandals, boots, belts and harness, wool and hair for rugs, saddle-bags, clothing and tents. His other needs - knives, cooking pots and a few ornaments - he satisfies in simple trading deals with settlers. Nomad life is an education in asceticism. The Sherifs of Mecca sent their sons back to the desert to taste the automatic discipline of life in the black tents. Attila the Hun drank from a wooden cup and Genghiz Khan slept in a yurt to the end of his days. But nomads never inhibit the flamboyance of their dress. Barren wastes encourage a heightened sensitivity to colour, and nomad women are expert botanists, who gather plants and lichens to dye their costumes and rugs the colours of a perpetual spring.

Tents bulk largest in the nomad's equipment, yet are light enough for a horse or camel to carry. The tent is an ideal machine for living in. Earthquakes cannot destroy it. Problems of sanitation do not complicate its structure. It is simple to replace, rests lightly on the earth and does not wound the soil with its foundations. The black goat hair tents of Semite nomads have spread from Arabia to Morocco and Afghanistan. The women weave thin strips of tenting which they sew together into a great sheet, stretch over light wooden poles and anchor with guy ropes. The Touareg - aboriginals of the Southern Sahara - preserve a tradition of tent making yet more archaic and shield themselves from the searing sun under canopies of goat skin rubbed with red ochre. And Mongols and Turks make their yurts of thick felt stretched over lattices of supple willow branches, which withstand the howling winds of winter.

Herodotus heard of these tents but misunderstood their construction.