neo-nomadics - james c allen on the nomadic turkmen.docx

8/10/2019 Neo-nomadics - James C Allen on the nomadic Turkmen.docx

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This brilliant article from the pen of James C Allen lays out the groundwork for an ongoing

study of the nomadic lifestyle

In the future to come. life for those who have survived the onslaught against the west may

look surprisingly like this time capsule of a life gone by.

Neo-nomadics is the pursuit of that lifestyle, as practiced by peoples of the post-western world.

The Turkmen

by James C. Allen1 March 2004

In my study of Turkmen ethno-history and in my travelsto their ancient lands Ive built up an image of an alien

type or form of human being. No less strange to us today

than something visiting us from another world.The Turkmen, or nomadic, way of life was very
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seductive to Chinese peasants who saw the nomads freedom as a wonderful alternative to their

heavily taxed and mortgaged lives. The Chinese ran several different waves of these nomads

from their Northern border regions all the wayuntil they were all lost in the trackless wastelandsof Central Asia.

I suspect Central Asia served as the melting pot for nomadic warriorsocieties being pursued by much larger and better equipped military

forces. The persecution of these nomads resulted in the diversity and

richness of pre-modern Turkmen life and their rich weaving traditions.

The simple reason that Turkmen weavings

are so important today is that the Turkmen represented the last horsemounted horde of freely mobile nomadic warriors the world has seen or

known. Their traditions were simply extensions of those written about in

the 13th and 14th centuries by Catholic priest/secret agents of the

Western Christian powers who visited Genghis Khans court and those of

his successors, a la Marco Polo. They reported on the nomads drinkingfermented mares milk, living in felt covered yurts supported by

collapsible wooden modules including a sky wheel, its spokes, and anexpandable interlocking series of wooden slats that supported the felt

sheets. These modules were simply lashed together with strong animal

hair cords and the felts were then passed over the skeleton and secured

again by strong woven cords. In side the yurt was a fire whose smokehopefully exited the sky hole through the gap produced by adjusting a

moveable flap. In the back behind the fire were the sleeping and love

making areas. In a wealthy mans yurt this area would be strewn withgreat carpets and the stacks of blankets and other weavings would have

itself been covered by a special weaving. The interlocking side panels

would be festooned with glorious trappings and silk embroideries that

would glow in the light from the fire. It must be noted that trulyauthentic Turkmen weavings that were actually used in situ will always

have some residue of smoke.

The

Turkmen only required that their culture remain intact with the

bare minimum of resources, and those being chiefly sheep,goats, and the wood they found all over the world, for them to

survive, not marginally but Royally in what can be called

nothing less than the wasteland of Earth.

They lived in real comfort in dwellings that resemble nothing

more than a womans breast. Their encampments looked like

breasts dotting the landscape as if here was nourishment forthe land. The land provided pastures for their sheep and by

summering them at high altitude their wool was famous all along

the Silk Road.
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There were many wealthy Turkmen khans who controlled vast herds and many long knives.

It is so simple a fact as to be obvious - a nomadic herding society cannot exist in a world whererule is by law and property rights are granted to individuals by powerful organizations called

governments. This is the nexus of the problem for these two societies. The onslaught of

civilization, with its literacy and legalities, has carved up the whole world into countries, states,and regions. These things dont really exist; in fact there are no lines drawn in the sand between

countries. Sure a fence can be raised and property rights protected. Herein lies the problem. A

free ranging society that depends on good pastures and unimpeded access cannot flourish in theface of national boundaries and modern military forces. The Turkmen were routed in 1882 by the

Russian military who used artillery and rifle shot to subdue this last fierce remnant of the

descendants of Able, whose blood cries from the ground.

I dream of riding free over trackless fields of green grass and thinking to myself, God! What a

wonderful world! A man bonded with his horse, his hunting bird, his favourite hound, and his

women. How I cringe at the pale comparison I make to the worst of them!

Collectors dont stand apart from their possessions, they fondle them and caress their soft

exteriors lovingly with their hands. We collectors all long for their lost lives, our imaginationabout their freedom and for their free Love in ancient pre-islamic time.

One might ask what did it take to be a Turkmen.

It took the enculturation of millennia of experiments into those few truly necessary skillsrequired to reign supreme across the abysmal depths of Asia. These included the Zen required

to fire an arrow from a bow held by a man in complete harmony with his mount and its motions.

He must subconsciously subdue all the chaos that is created by riding a horse to concentrate only

on bringing the bow, with its ready arrow, into resonance with the target. This is in fact exactlywhat is required to shoot a wild hare with a bow and arrow from horseback! These skills were

tested once ever year or two in great hunts were all the tribes would congregate and set out with

nets to corral the game and give both young and old horsemen a chance to show their skills andcompare them one to another.

It has been theorized that it was under just suchcircumstances that

Genghis Khan fell from his horse possibly

splitting his liver. Through

this evaluation and comparison process a mobileforce was established

that could shoot with deadly accuracy from any

number of difficultpositions and who, with long curved knives,

could easily kill anybody

they might touch. These men rode rough shodover the best Europe could

muster until a Jesuit priest acquired the secret of gunpowder from those
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horse mounted nomads who had stolen the secret from the Chinese. Sir

Francis Bacon was supplied with the formula for gun power in code from

another Jesuit priest, John De Carpini, who had travelled to the GreatIn conclusion the horse mounted Turkmen nomad wasnt significantly different from many ofour own Native American Societies, especially those horse mounted ones in our western regions.

Native warfare in some cases had evolved into bouts between rival chiefs with coup being farmore important than the actual killing of ones opponent. These early yet advanced societiestended to be simple bi-pedal ones and not as mobile as later Plains Indians whod acquired wild

horses, let loose from Spanish missions from the 15th to the late 18th centuries. The Plains

Indians also acquired sheep from those Spanish Missions and almost overnight began weavingtheir gathered wool into fine garments of great cultural and utilitarian significance. After the

introduction of Anatolian kilims and a few Turkmen weavings to these same Indians in the

1880s, their repertoire of designs blossomed overnight.

It is my firm belief that the

incorporation of mythic designs into the durable media of woven and piled weavings resulted inthe stable transmission of the most poignant and necessary information for each and every

nomadic society. What we so blithely relegate to the category of floor covering is in reality thesacred documents of a previous and flourishing alien way of life.


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Every time a numb and dumb Westerner walks unknowingly across the

surface of one of these sacred documents his soul takes another blow inhell.

neo-nomadics - james c allen on the nomadic turkmen.docx

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