The Idea of Space among the Nomads of Great Steppe

Abstract

Nomads were the Mongolic and Turkic peoples that inhabited vast territories of Inner Asia, including natural areas from the desert to the tundra, from highlands to steppe plains. The development of this diverse space is one of the debated issues in the history of nomadic societies, which still remains relevant. A wide range of ecological zones led to the formation of a rich worldview which created mythological, ethnic, and symbolic images of spaces. For each particular natural zone there was formed a particular mechanism for comprehending and developing territories.

Modules of Stone Construction and the Building of Ritual and Social Traditions in Prehistoric Xinjiang (China) and Mongolia

“…A relatively untapped source for identifying and testing such factors is the cultural knowledge of the conceptualization of space from ethological studies. It has been widely documented that burials and commemorative places are spatial markers that originate in sacralized views of the human relationship to the physical elements of the environment and are then used in the symbolic zoning of a landscape (Sodnompilova and Nanzatov 2019). The scale, orientation, and location of a habitation or a burial are not solely determined by an unvarying set of factors based on subsistence practices or social customs.…”