(On 5,000-3,000 BC, when natural disasters, the Bronze Age, and domesticated horses led to waves of destruction)
Not all human civilisations were as vulnerable to nature’s disruptive fits. While some grew up as fixed communities next to rivers such as the Nile and the Indus, or beside the ocean, like the Minoans, others stuck to a more nomadic way of life. These people didn’t depend on any fixed course of water, like a river, nor did they live in communities that could be swept away by the sea. Theirs was a life-style closer to the original hunter-gatherer state of nature, but with one important difference. Rather than always relying on hunting, they took with them domesticated goats, pigs and cows as a regular, dependable supply of food, drink and transport.
People who wonder from place to place living off domesticated flocks of animals that travel with them are called nomadic pastoralists. If disaster struck in one region, they simply moved on to another where conditions were less volatile. These people found they could make a handsome living as traders by wandering with their herds from place to place, carrying good from one civilisation to the next.
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