Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World

‘In a book of sensitivity and grace, Sattin does not just describe the nomadic way of life, but also evokes it … This is A BOOK OF BEAUTY AND BEGUILING RHYTHM that offers unsettling lessons about our present-day world of borders’ The Times

‘Thoughtful, lyrical yet ambitiously panoramic … As fleet and light-footed as its subject, it takes us along a dizzying path, over many of the highest ridges of human history … AN IMPORTANT, GENEROUS AND BEAUTIFULLY-WRITTEN BOOK’ William Dalrymple

The ground-breaking story of Nomadic peoples on the move across history.

Humans have been on the move for most of
history. Even after the great urban advancement lured people into the great cities of Uruk, Babylon, Rome and Chang'an, most of us continued to live
lightly on the move and outside the pages of history. But recent discoveries
have revealed another story …

Wandering people built the first great
stone monuments, such as the one at Gobekli Tepe, seven thousand years before
the pyramids. They tamed the horse, fashioned the composite bow, fought with
the Greeks and hastened the end of the Roman Empire. They had a love of
poetry and storytelling, a fascination for artistry and science, and a
respect for the natural world rooted in reliance and their belief. Embracing
multiculturalism, tolerant of other religions, their need for free movement
and open markets brought a glorious cultural flourishing to Eurasia, enabling
the Renaissance and changing the human story.

Reconnecting with our deepest mythology, our unrecorded antiquity and our natural environment, Nomads is the untold history of civilisation, told through its outsiders.