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While Hungary and Bulgaria were directly founded by steppe nomads, the influence of steppe rulers also helped shape the political forms taken by Poland (whose szlachta nobles claimed Sarmatian descent well into the 19th century), Bohemia, Denmark and even, it is claimed, France.
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The political and cultural landscape of early medieval Europe was shaped by the fusion of Roman and Inner Asian influences.” “In some ways,” Ball argues, “the incipient idea of a nation state might have been stronger with the nomadic groups from the steppe, who were bound more closely by tribal loyalties” than among the polyglot peoples of the imperial Roman successor states they conquered.ĭid the steppe peoples then create the fractious patchwork quilt of nationalities that we understand as Europe? Ball cites the archaeologist Hyun Jin Kim who claims that: “The political and cultural traditions of Inner Asia brought to Europe by Central Asian immigrants, the Huns and the Alans, were just as fundamental to the formation of western Europe as the rich legacy left behind by the Roman Empire. Europeans from further west have for centuries been prone to viewing the steppe as the haunt of wild tribes, and the source of occasional, fearsome destruction.īut what if the Europe of today is in fact the product of steppe dynamics? As Ball argues, rather than being a product of 19th century nationalism, some historians trace the origin of Europe’s oldest nation states to the steppe, observing that “Peoples newly arriving from the east were also among the first to create nationally defined states, such as kingdoms of the Bulgars or Magyars”. Yet the gruelling war of attrition in the country’s east is taking part in a very different landscape, in the open steppe that was once the home of nomadic peoples.īut then, as The Eurasian Steppeby the archaeologist Warwick Ball makes clear, rather than a semi-wild anteroom to the continent, “the history, languages, ideas, art forms, peoples, nations and identities of the steppe have shaped almost every aspect of the life of Europe”. The war in Ukraine has taken place in two very different climatic and cultural zones: its initial phases saw Russian armour wend its way through the dark forests and marshes of northern Ukraine, the ancient homeland of the first Slavic peoples, to be destroyed in close fighting on the narrow wooded roads in a stunning and unexpected Ukrainian victory. Their constant irruptions into Europe sounded the death knell in turn for other, settled civilisations, part of the endless cycle of growth, invasion and collapse that has shaped our continent’s history. They founded great empires, which time and the steppe grasses would soon swallow up, leaving barely a trace. Known as balbals, they are funerary monuments erected by the Cuman Turks, known in Russian archaeology as the Polovtsians, who once ruled this vast sea of grass, long before Russian or Ukrainian speech was ever heard in this region.įor thousands of years, the empty, spreading steppe, stretching from Hungary to Mongolia, was the home of nomadic peoples, speakers of Iranic, Turkic and Mongolic languages, who drove their herds across the vast plains in search of fresh pastures.
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On the road between the frontline cities of Sloviansk and Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, three stone statues stand mutely by the side of the road, observing the coming and going of military traffic with impassive detachment.