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Nomadic pastoralism or nomadic transhumance is a form of agriculture
Agriculture

Agriculture refers to the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the animal husbandry of domestication animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more Population density and Social stratification societies....
 where livestock
Livestock

Livestock is the term used to refer to a domesticated animal intentionally reared in an agricultural setting to produce things such as food or fibre, or for its labour....
 are herded
Herding

Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group , maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those....
 either seasonally or continuously in order to find fresh pasture
Pasture

Pasture is land with herbaceous vegetation cover used for grazing of ungulate livestock as part of a farm or ranch. Prior to the advent of factory farming, pasture was the primary source of food for grazing animals such as cattle and horses....
s on which to graze. The herded livestock may include cattle
Cattle

Cattle, colloquially referred to as cows, are domestication ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. They are raised as livestock for meat , dairy products , leather and as draft animals ....
, yak
Yak

The yak is a long-haired bovine found throughout the Himalayan region of south Central Asia, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and as far north as Mongolia....
s, sheep
Sheep

#REDIRECT Domestic sheep...
, goats, reindeer
Reindeer

The reindeer , also known as the caribou when wild in North America, is an Arctic and Subarctic-dwelling deer, widespread and numerous across the northern Holarctic....
, horse
Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
s, donkey
Donkey

The 'donkey' or 'ass', Equus africanus asinus, is a Domestication member of the Equidae or horse family, and an Odd-toed ungulates. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the Wild Ass, E....
s or camels, or mixtures of species. Nomadic pastoralism is commonly practised in regions with little arable land
Arable land

In geography, arable land is an agriculture term, meaning land that can be used for growing agriculture. Arable land is currently being lost at the rate of over 200,000 km? per year....
, typically in the developing world. Of the estimated 30–40 million nomadic pastoralists worldwide, most are found in central Asia
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
 and the Sahel
Sahel

File:Sahel Map-Africa rough.pngFile:AT0713 map.pngThe Sahel or Sahel Belt is a semi-arid tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion in Africa, which forms the transition between the Sahara to the north and the slightly less arid savanna belt to the south, known as the Sudan ....
 region of West Africa.






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Nomadic pastoralism or nomadic transhumance is a form of agriculture
Agriculture

Agriculture refers to the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of civilization, with the animal husbandry of domestication animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more Population density and Social stratification societies....
 where livestock
Livestock

Livestock is the term used to refer to a domesticated animal intentionally reared in an agricultural setting to produce things such as food or fibre, or for its labour....
 are herded
Herding

Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group , maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those....
 either seasonally or continuously in order to find fresh pasture
Pasture

Pasture is land with herbaceous vegetation cover used for grazing of ungulate livestock as part of a farm or ranch. Prior to the advent of factory farming, pasture was the primary source of food for grazing animals such as cattle and horses....
s on which to graze. The herded livestock may include cattle
Cattle

Cattle, colloquially referred to as cows, are domestication ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. They are raised as livestock for meat , dairy products , leather and as draft animals ....
, yak
Yak

The yak is a long-haired bovine found throughout the Himalayan region of south Central Asia, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and as far north as Mongolia....
s, sheep
Sheep

#REDIRECT Domestic sheep...
, goats, reindeer
Reindeer

The reindeer , also known as the caribou when wild in North America, is an Arctic and Subarctic-dwelling deer, widespread and numerous across the northern Holarctic....
, horse
Horse

The horse is a hoofed mammal, a subspecies of one of seven extant species of the family Equidae. The horse has evolution of the horse over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, odd-toed ungulate animal of today....
s, donkey
Donkey

The 'donkey' or 'ass', Equus africanus asinus, is a Domestication member of the Equidae or horse family, and an Odd-toed ungulates. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the Wild Ass, E....
s or camels, or mixtures of species. Nomadic pastoralism is commonly practised in regions with little arable land
Arable land

In geography, arable land is an agriculture term, meaning land that can be used for growing agriculture. Arable land is currently being lost at the rate of over 200,000 km? per year....
, typically in the developing world. Of the estimated 30–40 million nomadic pastoralists worldwide, most are found in central Asia
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
 and the Sahel
Sahel

File:Sahel Map-Africa rough.pngFile:AT0713 map.pngThe Sahel or Sahel Belt is a semi-arid tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion in Africa, which forms the transition between the Sahara to the north and the slightly less arid savanna belt to the south, known as the Sudan ....
 region of West Africa. Increasing numbers of stock may lead to overgrazing
Overgrazing

Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to livestock grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It reduces the usefulness of the land and is one cause of desertification and erosion....
 of the area and desertification
Desertification

Desertification is the degradation of land in arid and dry Humid subtropical climate areas, resulting primarily from natural activities and influenced by Climate variations....
 if lands are not allowed to fully recover between one grazing period and the next. Increased enclosure
Enclosure

Enclosure or inclosure is the process by which common land is taken into fully private ownership and use. Common land is land which is owned by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as arable farming, mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock....
 and fencing of land has reduced the amount of land available for this practice.

Origin

Nomadic pastoralism was a result of the Neolithic Revolution
Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunter-gatherer communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement ....
. During the revolution, humans began domesticating animals and plants for food and started forming cities. Nomadism generally has existed in symbiosis with such settled cultures trading animal products (meat, hides, wool, cheeses and other animal products) for manufactured items not produced by the nomadic herders.

Historically nomadic herder lifestyles has led to warrior-based cultures, that have made them fearsome enemies of settled people. Tribal confederations built by charismatic nomadic leaders have sometimes held sway over huge areas as incipient state structures, whose stability is dependent upon the distribution of taxes, tribute and plunder taken from settled populations.

In the past it was asserted that Pastoral nomads left no presence archaeologically but this has now been challenged. Pastoral nomadic sites are identified based on their location outside the zone of agriculture, the absence of grains or grain-processing equipment, limited and characteristic architecture, a predominance of sheep and goat bones, and by ethnographic analogy to modern pastoral nomadic peoples Juris Zahrins has proposed that pastoral nomadism began as a cultural lifestyle in the wake of the 6,200BCE climatic crisis when Harifian
Harifian

The Harifian is a specialized regional cultural development of the Epipalaeolithic of the Negev Desert. It corresponds to the latest stages of the Natufian culture....
 huntergatherers fused with PPNB agriculturalists to produce a nomadic lifestyle based on animal domestication
Domestication

Domestication or taming refers to the process whereby a population of living things becomes accustomed to a controlled environment by other plants or animals through a process of Selective breeding....
 developing a Circum Arabian nomadic pastoral complex, and spreading Proto-Semitic languages.

Nomadic pattern