separate languages, the Persians and the Medes. Some of
them intermarried with the Elamites. Around the ninth cen-
tury b.c.e. the Persians occupied the land in southern Iran,
southeast of the territory of the Elamites. Th e Medes took the
land to the north, along the southern coast of the Caspian
Sea. Th e Scythians, a nomadic people from Pontus, moved
into Media in the seventh century b.c.e. Th e Scythians also
spoke an Iranian language.
Th e Persians began to spread through Mesopotamia un-
der Cyrus the Great, who unifi ed Persia in 559 b.c.e. Under
his leadership Persians moved into Media, Lydia in Asia Mi-
nor, parts of central Asia, and Babylon. Under his son Cam-
byses (r. 529–522 b.c.e.), Persians took over Egypt. Darius I (r.
522–486 b.c.e.) led Persian armies into the Indus River valley,
Th race, and all the way to Greece. Xerxes I (r. 486–465 b.c.e.)
also led a Persian army into Greece. Th ese Persian expedi-
tions were populations of their own; Xerxes’ forces may have
numbered 60,000, which was a large number of people to
move across the countryside.
Although the Persians usually allowed the inhabitants of
their conquered lands to keep living in their homes, they also
deported many of them to other places. Many Greek slaves
ended up living in Persia. Persians themselves made new
homes in conquered territories. Both of these phenomena fa-
cilitated the spread of cultures from place to place.
To the east of Media was the land of the Parthians. Th is
land was occupied by horse-riding nomads from the Cauca-
sus and Iran. Th ey spoke an Indo-European language of the
Iranian family. During the third century b.c.e. the Parthians
used their cavalry to occupy most of northern Persia, Assyria,
Babylonia, and Elam and moved east into Bactria.
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
BY CRAIG G. R. BENJAMIN
Th e history of ancient Asia and the Pacifi c is characterized
by migrations on an oft en vast scale, and in Asia by the inter-
action of those migrants with the sedentary agrarian settle-
ments, kingdoms, and civilizations already established in the
region. Ever since the evolution of Homo erectus some 1.6
million years ago (the fi rst hominid to migrate out of Africa
and into Asia) and certainly since the migration of groups of
Homo sapiens out of Africa perhaps 100,000 years ago, the
valleys, steppes, and desert tracks of Asia have acted as con-
duits along which successive waves of migrants have passed.
In inner Asia the emphasis really was on passing through, at
least until comparatively recently, because even in the more
benign environments of the region the generally harsh cli-
mate and forbidding terrain oft en made permanent settle-
ment diffi cult. Th e sporadic evidence available indicates that
before approximately 50,000 years ago there were only oc-
casional attempts to settle even the more hospitable regions
around the fringes of the Inner Asian heartland.
However, by the Upper Paleolithic Era (about 40,000 to
50,000 years ago) more reliable archaeological evidence from
a large number of sites ranging from the Ukraine to eastern
Siberia and southern Mongolia indicates the presence of sub-
stantial numbers of hunter-gatherers who had migrated into
Inner Asia. In the millennia that followed, these communi-
ties gradually adopted a seminomadic, semisedentary way of
life, so that by the middle of the fourth millennium b.c.e.,
subsequent waves of migrating pastoralists from the southern
Russian steppes were confronted by semiagrarian communi-
ties already in occupation of the more fertile niches. Con-
frontations between aggressive, oft en militarized migrants
and sedentary farmers generally progressed from invasion to
occupation to cultural assimilation.
Th is tension between residents and invaders remained
the fundamental dynamic of much of inner and eastern Asia
during the pre- and protohistoric eras. Th ere is evidence of
periodic aggressive migrant activity right across the southern
Siberian and Mongolian steppes from the fi rst millennium
b.c.e. until the Mongol invasions of the sedentary kingdoms
of Eurasia during the 12th and 13th centuries. But it would be
incorrect to suggest that all interactions between migrating
pastoralists and farmers were necessarily confrontational, as
there is also evidence of long periods of relatively stable, mu-
tually cooperative relationships between the two.
Th e geography of Asia remained a crucial determinant.
With the available routes for large-scale movement oft en lim-
ited by impassable deserts and high mountain ranges, it was
inevitable that the migration of a group or tribe into any given
area would aff ect other communities already occupying sites
along those routes. Because of this, a second characteristic
of ancient Asian migration was a domino eff ect whereby any
substantial migration from one region to another would oft en
result in the disruption of a whole series of other groups ahead
of the invading tribes. It hardly mattered what the cause was
of the original migration. Once a group had chosen (or been
forced) to uproot and relocate, they had few options other
than to follow a very limited range of possible routes, and this
inevitably brought them into confl ict with other communi-
ties already settled along the selected path. If the invading
party was strong enough, the occupants were expelled, and
they in turn moved ahead along the same route, disrupting
and expelling other communities until each had found a new
location in which to resettle, or achieved some compromise
with the invaders.PASTORALIST MIGRATION AND COLONIZATION IN
THE BRONZE AGE
Th e most signifi cant migrations in ancient Asian history
were those undertaken by nomadic pastoralists speaking
Indo-European and Indo-Iranian languages. Th ese migra-
tions were an indirect result of the appearance of agriculture
in southwestern Asia from about 9000 b.c.e. A range of at
least three alternative lifeways subsequently emerged over the
following millennia. Certain communities embraced farm-
ing and became solely dependent on agricultural produce for
their livelihood. Others remained nomadic hunter-gatherers702 migration and population movements: Asia and the Pacific