Origin of the Alans

[Michael Kerr]

  
Alanus wrote: I can partially agree with most of Riddle's claim, but not with their location-- "astride the Gansu Corridor and in the Tarim Basin." You couldn't find enough water in the Tarim Basin to keep a hundred horses alive, not to mention thousands. The basin was a near desert, inhabited by a modest, Tocharian-speaking, sedentary group now known as the "Tarim Mummies."  

You are correct that the Tarim Basin and the Gansu Corridor are extremely arid regions with low precipitation. As to the horses and livestock I think we have established that the Yuezhi were basically middlemen who seemed to control the trade in jade, precious metals, leather goods and horses to the Chinese for silk mainly. Whether they purchased these goods or received them as tribute we do not know but the nomadic elements of the Yuezhi, like the pastoralists of today probably didn’t spend that much time in the Taklimakan Desert.

 Even today there is still a considerable number of pastoralists in the three main regions of Chinese Central Asia (Gansu, Tarim Basin and Dzungaria) a bit over 1 million people, made up mainly of Kazakhs, Mongolians and Tajiks who still practice seasonal migration. If we look at the Gansu/Hexi corridor in particular pastoralists still employ seasonal grazing patterns practised for thousands of years where herds graze in the river basins in winter, move to the lower mountains to the south in spring and then to the high mountains in summer and then return to the basins in late Autumn.

   

As you can see from the satellite pics a lot of that surrounding winter snow and ice would have flowed into the Tarim in warmer months and there were still a lot of green areas around the river areas.

If the Yuezhi controlled the Tarim Basin, which was the gateway to the west, which would be highly likely before they were attacked by the Hsiung-nu in 209 BC. then there would have been a similar situation in regards to grazing their herds as in the Gansu. Being surrounded by mountains and being so dry the Yuezhi would have pastured their herds in the highlands except for winter and left the good citizens of the oasis cities or towns alone for the most part. They may even have pitched their camps near the towns in the winter months and expected fodder for their herds. Sir Aurel Stein mentioned in his book that in winter his party would break up river ice and load it onto large metal containers which were carried by his bactrian camel team when they were searching for lost cities.

Stein, the British-Hungarian explorer and archaeologist who made four archaeological expeditions to Central Asia between 1900 and 1930, in his book “On Ancient Central Asian Tracks” made some interesting observations about the climate and conditions for the Tarim Basin and Gansu Corridor. He wrote “The region for the most part is mostly desert surrounded by five mountain chains. To the north lay the T’ien Shan, to the south-east lay the high mountains and plateaux of the K’un-lun Mountains while to the south-west lay the Karakoram Mountains. To the west lay the Pamirs which connect the T’ien Shan to the Hindu Kush while to the east lay the Nan-shan which is itself a continuation of the K’un-lun and of then of course the Gansu corridor which contains a string of oases covered by the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau while to the north lay the Gobi desert and the outer Mongolian grasslands running south-east to the Yellow River. Even in 1905 when he wrote the book he noted that runoff from melting glaciers has been reduced as they retreat due to climate change and wetlands and lakes in the mountainous regions have been disappearing. The Lop Nor or the “Wandering Lake” and its associated marshland areas has completely disappeared since the 1970s, mainly because the course of the Tarim River, which is the largest inland river in China, has changed. Man-made erosion, overuse of water resources and conversion of pasture to crops hasn’t helped.

Shifting sand dunes over thousands of years seem to have affected the oasis towns on the Tarim southern Silk Road route more as the south to north flowing rivers cutting through the mountains offered little protection from the shifting sands while to the north the west to east flowing Tarim River allowed vegetation to create a barrier to protect fields from shifting sand dunes. A lot of the cities on the southern Silk Road route in the time of the Yuezhi were located approximately 100 kms south of their present location so the locals have had their work cut out fighting not only invasions but the deserts and shifting weather patterns, sometimes run off from melting glaciers causing rivers to cut new channels but also in times of heavy snowfalls which would also create havoc when melting. Maintaining wells and canals would have been an extremely labour intensive occupation for the sedentary town dwellers as well as growing their crops and fruit trees which although long dead when Stein visited seemed to line the streets of long lost cities in the Tarim.   

Regards

Michael Kerr