Why did peoples of the steppe have such a penchant for cruelty?

What's your point?

Neither was an uncommon tactic. You have 2 choices with prisoners, feed and guard them or kill them.

Other people would loot and kill the population, sure, but the mongols intentionally wiped the cities off the map

So did the Romans.

You mean like Carthage?

>What is Carthage

Half myth. They burned defeated cities. Cities that didn't kill their diplomats and opened trade agreements and paid to use their postal system were otherwise left alone. A lot of city states killed their messengers and emissaries. Repeatedly. Big mistake.

The logical method one comes to when subduing a population and convincing others to capitulate without conflict.

Yeah if you read about mongol history you'll frequently come across cities that were 'destroyed' by the mongols getting 'destroyed' again two decades later because they backed the wrong title claimant or refused to pay their taxes.

I tend to understand "destroyed" when dealing with Golden Horde history in the same sense we use assblasted nowadays.

I'm looking at you, Moscow. The most butthurt destroyed city of them all.

Guys u don't get it
Carthage waz a center uf trayd
Dey wuznt scientists n shiy

Daily reminder that mongols did nothing positive for mankind.
Their only achievement is that they are still a country nowadays.

>I'm looking at you, Moscow. The most butthurt destroyed city of them all.
?

I heard that it was the other way around. In le ebin grossruthenia Moscow became the leading state over Novgorod and others because it was not in fact destroyed by Mongols

Carthage had it coming.

They invented the routed mail system of which all modern postal systems are based directly off of.

In fact, yam (the Mongol postal service), has remained working, uninterrupted, if fragmented occasionally by changing politics, ever since its first inception in the 12th century.

Before them, couriers directly delivered messages and parcels point to point themselves. The Mongol empire was so huge, they had to devise a system of routing and addresses. Person delivers mail with address and delivery priority postage to the yam. It then gets shunted and collected with other mail heading in the same direction and is passed off through several routing stations and and various couriers, and eventually to a delivery courier who works exactly like your modern day UPS man. They even had mail insurance of sorts, and insurance fraud was a thing and it was a serious offense.

After the horde broke up into smaller hordes and Khanates, the system became fractured, but the systems within those principalities kept running.

Russia's mail system was descended from the Golden Horde. It still runs to this day.

Russia was a vassal state to the Golden Horde for a while Something they were very, very butthurt about. You can see the influence it had on their culture.

animal husbandry

So did Baghdad

Citation needed
I'm familiar with the yam and it was significant but I think you're giving it too much credit.

I always wonder about the prehistoric ancestors Steppe Peoples and people like them (i.e. desert tribes).

They were stuck in an inimical environment for fuck knows how long and not a single one of them migrated out.

You know how some people discovered Agriculture and settled down?

Well some people discovered Pastoralism and kept moving. Most of them lived in the Steppes.

You can see it in their genetic history. Something like 50% have a mongolian gene that affects how they digest alcohol.

A pure nomad is a poor nomad. Most of these groups had constant interaction with settled groups (via trade) but stayed on the steppe because that was where their wealth was.

Meat and horses were expensive back in the day. Steppe groups had lots of both.

they were not more cruel, they were just better at it

rather like white people

Don't I know it. I pass for white, and I'm huge. My friend are always consistently surprised when they drink me under the table with a few beers.

Because the environment didn't quite allow for certain things to happen. The steppes had a mixture of settled people and semi-nomadic peoples. The nomadic peoples were nomadic specifically due to seasonal changes and the needs of their cattle. Land property didn't quite exist in the same way it does now in western countries. Clans had grazing rights, etc. Certain clans had certain tracts of land they would settle down in to feed their sheep, and they were rather protective of this land. Then, once the time came due to seasonal changes, they'd pack up and drive the herd to new ground.

In some parts of the steppe, it gets so cold and so harsh, you can't really settle down and build up agriculture as the weather simply just doesn't allow anything that is human edible to grow. So, you move sheep and goats around which will eat almost anything, get fat, then you eat them. Then trade your cattle for other food stuffs with long shelf life.

Most civilizations that developed agriculture had an environment conducive to growing crop.

Follow?

They were no worse than anyone else really

Thankyou based Herodotus.

>Why did peoples of the steppe have such a penchant for cruelty?

Didn't, it's all athrocity propaganda from defeated people.

They used human fat as tar for siege engines

Nomads are bad
Agriculturists are good

t. Zoroaster

In reality he was right. Nomads are bad because they constantly had territorial conflicts (more so than agriculturalists) and they also constantly devastated and looted peaceful agricultural communities. Zoroaster referred to the steppe nomads of Central Asia, but the same is true for the desert nomads of the ME.

Were they unusually cruel? Or was it just a psychological warfare tactic which the Mongols used.

One doesn't necessarily refute the other

not much law and longterm authority out in the steppe, so its important to always make a point, and final solutions are practical since you cant realy controll that many things let alone loose ends

plus endemic warfare, people get crue realy easily that way