Nomad

A **nomad**, sometimes called, itinerant or wanderer is a type of civilization that travels daily. A nomadic tribe scarcely stays in one place and can sometimes, but not always, be homeless. Nomadic tribes usually own livestock, like sheep.

## Biography

Nomads typically are apart of Roma, Sinti, Sami, or Irish descent, but anybody can be apart of the Nomadic group. Nomads are people that do not stay in one place and wander in search of food. They usually have a herd of cattle that they move around with themselves. They do not have permanent settlements and make temporary houses. We all know that the Early men were nomads. They lived in trees and caves. These people did not know agriculture. Many other ethnic groups and communities are traditionally nomadic; such as Berbers, Kazakhs, and Bedouin. People are nomads for many reasons. Most nomads are family men herding their livestock, such as cattle, or horses from pasture to pasture. These people have to change places because of the weather. Other nomads are traders and craftsmen,

## Way of Life

Nomadism, way of life of peoples who do not live continually in the same place but move cyclically or periodically. It is distinguished from migration, which is noncyclic and involves a total change of habitat.

## How The Word Came To Be

Nomad comes from the Middle French word *"People without fixed habitation"* and were normally used by Europeans towards gypsies.

## Characteristics

A nomad is a person with no settled home, moving from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. The word "nomad" comes ultimately from the classical Greek word νομάς (*nomás*, "roaming, wandering, especially to find pasture"), from Ancient Greek νομός (*nomós*, "pasture"). Most nomadic groups follow a fixed annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic peoples traditionally travel by animal or canoe or on foot. Today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Most[*quantify*] nomads live in tents or other portable shelters.

Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, and water. Aboriginal Australians, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life. Pastoral nomads, on the other hand, make their living raising livestock such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep or yaks; these nomads usually travel in search of pastures for their flocks. The Fulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands of Niger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may also move to raid settled communities or to avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers. They include the Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Romani traders, Scottish travellers, Irish travellers.

Most nomads travel in groups of families, bands or tribes. These groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs.

In the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements generally occur during the summer and winter. The winter destination is usually located near mountains in a valley and most families already have fixed winter locations. Their winter locations have shelter for animals and are not used by other families while they are out. In the summer they move to a more open area that the animals can graze. Most nomads usually move in the same region and don't travel very far to a totally different region. Since they usually circle around a large area, communities form and families generally know where the other ones are. Often, families do not have the resources to move from one province to another unless they are moving out of the area permanently. A family can move on its own or with others; if it moves alone, they are usually no more than a couple of kilometers from each other. Nowadays there are no tribes and decisions are made among family members, although elders consult with each other on usual matters. The geographical closeness of families is usually for mutual support. Pastoral nomad societies usually do not have large population. One such society, the Mongols, gave rise to the largest land empire in history. The Mongols originally consisted of loosely organized nomadic tribes in Mongolia, Manchuria, and Siberia. In the late 12th century, Genghis Khan united them and other nomadic tribes to found the Mongol Empire, which eventually stretched the length of Asia.

The nomadic way of life has become increasingly rare. Many countries have converted pastures into cropland and forced nomadic peoples into permanent settlements.[*citation needed*]

Although (or because) "[t]he sedentary man envies the nomadic existence, the heck for green pastures [...]" sedentarist prejudice against nomads, "shiftless" "gypsies", "rootless cosmopolitans", "primitive" hunter-gatherers, refugees and urban homeless street-people persists.