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Worse, you have some societies doing BOTH at the same time AND shifting from one to another. The Classic case is the Ancient Jews. They appear to be herders even while in Egypt, but converted to farming when they took over what is now the the Palestinian highland (i.e. today's west bank). Thus they retain much of their previous culture of herding, but became mostly farmers do to the fact they took over a part of the Middle East that can be farmed WITHOUT extensive irrigation or the Iron plow. The Iron Plow is needed to break up the soil after a hard, cold and snowy winter, invented about 200 BC did NOT reach what is now England and France till about 700 AD. The Heavy plow is just NOT needed in the Mediterranean climate of Italy, Egypt, Spain or Greece, it is NEEDED in Germany, the Ukraine, Poland France and England. You can farm in those areas but it is simple spade work without a plow (and given that the Iron Spade was rare and expensive till the introduction of Chinese Iron making techniques to Europe about 700 AD. In many ways Constantinople's big fear in the 600s and 700s was NOT the Arabs who were taking over most of the Middle East, but the Slavs moving with the iron plow into the Balkans, an area of previous Roman Herding activity being converted to farming areas by the Slavs as they invaded (With the remnants of the Latin Speaking inhabitants of the Balkans gathering together for protection in what is not Romania while adopting the same farming techniques and many words from the Slavs moving around them. Why Romanian survived as a Latin outpost in what became a Slavic Eastern Europe (The Hungarians are the biggest exception, but they were herders that took over the Hungary Plain for herding purposes and then converted to Farming) is still a question mark in my mind. It is a little to far north for Mediterranean farming Techniques to be of much use (Western Europe is warmer then Eastern Europe do to the affect of the Gulf Stream, thus while France is about the same degree north as Romania, it has a warmer climate). The best explanation is the Romanians, when it was a Roman Province, was a place to trade for Horses from the Samartians who controlled what is now the Ukraine before the Slavic farming expansion of between 600-800 AD converted the area to a farming area. As the Smartians lost out to the Slavs (Either merged into the Slavs or pushed eastward, at the same time the Nomadic Germanic Tribes of what is now Eastern Germany where being driven Westward by the Farming Slavs) the Slavs became more and more important as did farming over herding. The Southern Slavs had reached as far south as Greece before they were turned back (and not only the Romanians but Constantinople adopted several Slavic "customs", butter was used for cooking instead of Olive Oil (this is traditionally attributed to the cut off of Olive Oil from Syria by the Arabic Invasion, but the change may have more to do with a one two punch, one by the Arabs taking Syria and Egypt and then the second punch being the Slavs who opened up the Ukraine as a source of Grain and butter to Constantinople.
Anyway, that was a long way from Ancient Jews to the Fall of the Roman Empire via the Arab Conquest. The Ancient Jews seem to be a ex-herding population that converted to farming, but given that the Rain line (i.e. the line where rain fall dropped off to a level that no longer could support farming) from the Mediterranean is about where the West Bank and Jordan Border is. Given that fact you still had a huge population of Ancient Jews that still did herding. Some time on the West Bank other times in what is now Jordan. Furthermore given where that rain line was, herding populations in time of drought saw Ancient Israel as a place to go to gather food for their animals when the drought stopped grass from growing at all in what is now Jordan and Arabia (Several books in the Bible show such times and the resulting conflict between the ancient Jews and their heading neighbors.
My point is BOTH Herding and Farming seem to develop at the same time, for the same condition i.e. the world had become less hospitable to hunters and gathers so most hunters and gathering adopted which technique (Farming or herding) brought the most food and wealth to them. In areas where farming could be done, it was farming and that conversion started with the Women, men would NOT join in for generations (For example Native Americans in the Eastern US were all dominated by female farming, men did NOT farm, they did burn down trees etc but never touched a hoe. All Farming Society went through this stage, and it was the stage where women had the most power for their produced the most food. Thus Native American traced themselves through their mother's family and it was the women who decided which female was able to farm what land (in this regard the Native Americans were weak, for such land did NOT go to the best farmer (All of whom were female), but the farmer married to the best warrior. This was a major weakness of Native American society in what is now the Eastern US and even acknowledged by the Native Americans as a major weakness by the 1700s, but a weakness they never overcame, losing out to the white farmers who were willing to do heavy farm work and when that was done then go hunting).
Now you did have some societies that switched from farming to herding, the Navajos are the best known. The main reason for the conversion was the Navajos had nothing to herd till Sheep was introduced to them by the Spanish, and once introduced the Navajos maintained those herds to this day (Some problems during the US Civil War, i.e. the Navajos were gathered up into concentration camps but afterward returning to a herding society with some farming).In fact the Navajos show what most herding Societies were, emphases on the herd but farming was still done.
In most of the world farming and Herding Societies lived side by side for thousands of years. Farming communities were able to support larger populations and generally able to force out herders when the two came into conflict, but even today they are areas where herding is more profitable to farming. The Scottish highlands is one such area. In the Middle ages and until about 1700 the Highlands were a mixed farming and herding society, but the main animal herded being Cattle. Sheep were introduced in the 1600s and slowly replaced cattle (The main opposition was the Sheep needed few people to guard them for they were only profitable in the spring when their hair was cut off, Cattle had value all year round and thus had to be constantly guarded. This need for guards was the backbone of the Scottish Clans, but once the Highland converted to sheep the clans were broken and most highlanders were driven off lands their families had been on for centuries. Till the conversion to Sheep lowland Scotland was the Farming area, the Highlands the Herding areas. These two areas often came into conflict but survived for centuries as one country.
Side note: At the same time Scotland was destroying their clans by introducing sheep into the highlands, England was doing the same for sheep were more profitable then crops. While the Hundred year war between France and England had many causes, the main reason it was fought was over control over the textile mills of Flanders. England and Spain raised Sheep and exported the Wool to Flanders for weaving starting about 1100. The Kings of England main source of revenue was wool, he taxed the wool as it was exported to Flanders for Processing, he then taxed the imported fabrics when it came back. The King of France wanted to control this trade so England invaded to defend those mills. Now other factors came into play but over the time period of the 100 year war the textile mills of Flanders slowly moved to what is now the Netherlands and Belgium. When that move was complete England no longer had an economic interest in France and most support for the war ended (Even as late as Elizabeth England made serious claims to the throne of France, but an invasion of France to take that throne had almost no support by that time for there was no economic gain in such an invasion for any in a position of power in England).
Back to the main subject, herding and farming societies interaction. The first rule in such interaction is who benefited? If both sides benefited, both sides would work together. The Herders of Germany supported the Roman Empire even while technically NOT under that empire. The support was in the forms of supplying slaves, horses, metals and troops that Rome wanted. Rome supplied the Germans with high end trade goods in return. When the Western Empire collapsed around 450 AD, it was the Germans that provided the troops to keep the Empire together (The last Western Empire was removed from office in 476 AD, but the Emperors had had no real power since 450 AD when the German head of the Army took over and made the Emperor nothing but his puppet). With the Slavic Invasion the Germans were pushed Westward, by 900 AD the Slavs were the dominate people as far west as cold War era East Germany (The Germans then pushed back, but as a farming society not a herding society taking over much of what had been East Germany and reaching into what is now Poland but that was stopped while before the Teutonic knights were crushed at Tannenburg in 1415). The Germans like showing this as a Farming Society beating out a Herding Society, but in truth both were farming societies using slavic farming techniques develop around the Heavy Iron Plow.
The main change between the Ancient world and the Middle ages was the introduction of the Iron Plow. The Iron Plow opened up huge areas of what had previously been herding areas. While China invented the advance Iron making techniques that made the Iron Plow to become a common device, the Iron plow itself seems to go from Europe to China in response to the introduction of advance Iron making techniques that hit Europe around 700 AD. Thus it is after Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire of the 1200s that you see the Chinese Farming communities moving even further into what is now Northern China and Inner Mongolia. Outer Mongolia (Marked on most maps as simply Mongolia) is a little to far north for wheat, even with the iron plow. and as such still a herding area. Inner Mongolia, on the other hand, was just far enough south for the Han Chinese to move in and using the Heavy Plow plant and grow wheat. Outer Mongolia was the Second Communist Country in the World, but that was because since about the 1700s it has been a satellite of Moscow, while inner Mongolia was either part of China or a satellite of China (Yes, Wheat China took over that part of Mongolia that could grow wheat while Russia, as the successor to the Mongol Empire, took over that part of Mongolia outside the reach of farming).
Yes, much of the above is rambling (it is late at night and I need to go to sleep) but I am trying to show examples of when and how herding and farming societies worked together and sometimes replaced each other. Both seem to develop out of the general drying up of the planet as the planet recovered from the Ice Age. When that drying out occurred, many land animals died out (For various reasons including hunting by humans) and people had to find some other way to live. In those areas were farming could occur, women (the traditional gathers of most tribes) decided to plant the crops they had been gathering so she would have more of that crop then anyone else (and easier to collect). This slowly built up till it became the dominate means of food gathering. In areas where no such crops could be farmed, then the men of the tribe tried to control the animals in their area and tried to collect them together so other tribes would not get to them first. This lead to moving the animals to other grazing areas and picking animals that would stay together as a herd (Cattle and sheep soon became the dominate animals, horses came in later).
As you can see BOTH societies could start about the same time do to the same economic pressure (And maybe even in the same tribe, just look at the Woodland Sioux and the Plains Sioux, the Woodland retains maternal parentage and farming, while the Plain Sioux adopted the horse and "Returned" to a male dominated hunting tradition, but with the horse the Sioux were more following the herd then truly hunting, and killing the bison as needed, thus more herding in nature then true hunting and probably how most herding societies started).
Anyway, as the two techniques became more and more refined, one or the other came to dominate. The method that dominated was the method that worked the best in that area, herding in northern Europe till the introduction of the Iron Plow, then farming for example. Herding is still the dominate rural occupation in Arabia (Most citizens of Saudi Arabia live in Cities do to their oil wealth, so I have to exclude them) for it is the best use of such land given the lack of water for crops. Farming works best in areas where water exists, where water is rare herding dominates. The other great area of herding in ancient times (Eurasia) was forced to far north when the Iron Plow made much of Northern Europe farm-able. Thus Eurasian herders are NOT a serious factor today, but were in the days before and during the Roman Empire. Herding appears to develop at the same time as farming but most societies converted to herding or farming as the world dried out about 6-8 thousand years ago. Which came first is unknown and once you look at the history of both unimportant, the adoption of BOTH appears to be about the same time.
Again I am rambling, it is time for me to go to sleep. I hope I made my point but I am to tied to re-write the above to make it more understandable, so I am ending this here. It is NOT a good ending but I have to end this rambling.
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