Origin of the Alans

[Alanus]

Let's Raise Horses in the High Altai, Gansu, and the Turfan Depression

Thank you, Michael, for a knowledgeable post. With your above information, we can rule out the High Altai as a horse breeding and raising area. The best places to raise steppe horses must have been the lower altitude valleys and the periphery of the Altai... especially in areas of spring run-off and along the lower courses of rivers. This is precisely where we see ritual khirigsuurs and deer-stone complexes; they may not have been far from where the Pazyryks actually raised their livestock. Strange, that so many academics have studied the high-altitude burial grounds yet avoided the Real questions, "Where did this culture live?-- and who in hell were they, anyway?"

For a little humor, and irony, we can look at the "dummying-up" of academia, which goes back to at least the 1990s as research papers (and books) give us some silly geographical statements which totally avoid the importance of climate and pasturage. Kato Kyuzo, writing in 1992, claimed, "I doubt the Pazyryk people were the Yueh-Chih because the latter mainly inhabited the Gansu region." Likewise in 1997, we have Zadneprovsky placing the major Yuezhi burial ground at Haladun in Gansu Province, and he was legitimized by Craig Benjamin in 2007.

     
Errors happen, especially after eating too much turkey. First, we return to Sima Quan who said (quite distinctly) that the Yuezhi lived, "west of Dunhuang to the Quilan Mountains." Dunhuang is on the western end of Gansu, Haladun is well to the east of Dunhuang, so the chances that the Yuezhi lived in the major portion of Kansu are geographically slim. Second, as we have discussed before, Gansu would not have sustained the large number of horses the Yuezhi were recorded as having. Granted, the province has changed in two millennia but the area around Haladun is one to the driest-- and hottest-- locations in China. It's similar to the Oklahoma "Dust Bowl" of the early 20th century. Caption for the Kansu photo above, "Quick! Let's grab the last pasturage before it blows away!"

   
Obviously, the Yuezhi lived somewhere else. More recently (2010) Xinru Liu suggested the Yuezhi, "lived in a region relatively near China, northwest of its western borders, between the northern foothills of the eastern end of the Tianshan Mountains and the Turfan Depression." Any location east of Tianshan is the Turfan Depression, the lowest point below sea-level in China, and the hottest place in the country with an average rainfall index of .9 inches per annum. "Quick! Save that last drop of steaming water before our horse drops dead!" Not that the Turfan Basin is totally useless; you can watch Matt Damon ride through it in The Great Wall while being chased by taoties.

So the Turfan Depression also makes a lousy place to raise any number of horses.
How much pasturage is required to raise a horse, anyway? Just about every Farm Extension Bureau in the U.S.A publishes a pamphlet on the basic needs of a single horse.
California-- Carrying capacity for 1 horse on dryland pastures in the San Francisco Bay area may range up to 60 acres per year.
North Dakota-- For 1 horse for a year, 20 to 36 acres.
Arizona-- 60 acres per year for 1 horse.
Wyoming-- For a yearly grazing season, a horse needs about 13,120 pounds of dry matter and about 38 acres of example pasture to provide it.
Utah-- Average Animal Feed Requirements of Hay in tons per Month: 1 horse, .5 tons; 1 cow, .4 tons; 1 sheep, .1 tons per month. To sustain these three typical steppe culture animals for a year, the requirements are 12 tons. 

These statistics can't tell us where the Yuezhi or Pazyryks lived, but they certainly show the incredible amount of pasturage needed to sustain a single horse. According to the Shi-ji,  some Yuezhi "nobles" had horse herds of up to 5,000 head. Wushi Luo, alone, "had so many herds of horses and cattle he could only estimate their number roughly by the valleyful." Horses are a finicky bunch; they love apples. They won't touch grass that grows near where they defecate, they love sweet-grass, and they will go back and eat their favored grass until they've snipped it to the soil. Therefore, pastoralists have to change locations on a frequent basis, allowing the pasturage to recuperate for the following year.

We shall continue in another post, but the above facts are never mentioned by archaeologists or anthropologists. This is the reality of what was physically needed to raise large stocks of horses. In the meanwhile, we have not just tribes but an entire "confederation," a huge steppe polity, with absolutely no place to live.