ome and go, but their type never
materially changes. Their culture is stationary amid persistent
movement. Only when here or there in some small and favored spot they
are forced to make the transition to agriculture, or when they learn by
long and close association with sedentary nations the lesson of drudgery
and progress, do the laws of social and economic development begin to
operate in them. As a rule, they must first escape partly or wholly the
environment of their pasture lands, either by emigration or by the
intrusion into their midst of alien tillers of the soil.

But while the migrant shepherd originates nothing, he plays an
historical role as a transmitter of civilization. Asiatic nomads have
sparsely disseminated the culture of China, Persia, Egypt and Yemen over
large areas of the world. The Semite shepherds of the Red Sea deserts,
through their merchants and conquerors, long gave to the dark Sudan the
only light of civilization which it received, Mohammed, a Bedouin of the
Ishmaelite tribe, caravan leader on the desert highways between Mecca
and Syria, borrowed from Jerusalem the simple tenets of a monotheistic
religion, and spread them through his militant followers over a large
part of Africa and Asia.

[Sidenote: Mental and moral qualities of nomads.]

The deserts and grasslands breed in their sons certain qualities and
characteristics-courage, hardihood, the stiff-necked pride of the
freeman, vigilance, wariness, sense of locality,[1169] keen powers of
observation stimulated by the monotonous, featureless environment, and
the consequent capacity to grasp every detail.[1170] Though robbery
abroad is honorable and marauder a term with which to crown a hero,
theft at home is summarily dealt with among most nomads. The property of
the unlocked tent and the far-ranging herd must be safeguarded.[1171] The
Tartars maintained a high standard of honesty among themselves and
punished theft with death.[1172] Wide dispersal in small groups is
reflected in the diversity of dialects among desert peoples;[1173] in the
practice of hospitality, whether among Bedouins of the Nejd, Kirghis of
the Central Asia plateau,[1174] or semi-nomadic Boers of South
Africa;[1175] in the persistence of feuds and of the duty of blood
revenge, which is sanctioned by the Koran.

Isolation tends to breed among nomads pride of race and a repugnance to
intermixture. The ideal of the pastoral Israelites was a pure ethnic
stock, protected