Nomadic peoples have no permanent homes. They earn their living by raising herd animals, such as sheep, horses, or other cattle, and they spend their lives following their herds from pasture to pasture with the seasons, going wherever there is sufficient food for their animals. Most nomadic animals tend to be hardy breeds of goats, sheep, or cattle that can withstand hardship and live on marginal lands. Traditional nomads rely on natural pasturage to support their herds and grow no grains or hay for themselves. If a drought occurs or a traditional pasturing site is unavailable, they can lose most of their herds to starvation.
In many nomadic societies, the herd animal is almost the entire basis for sustaining the people. The animals are slaughtered for food, clothing is woven from the fibers of their hair, and cheese and yogurt may be made from milk. The animals may also be used for sustenance without being slaughtered. Nomads in Mongolia, for example, occasionally drink horses' blood, removing only a cup or two at a time from the animal.
In mountainous regions, nomads often spend the summers high up on mountain meadows, returning to lower altitudes in the autumn when snow begins to fall. In desert regions, they move from oasis to oasis, going to the places where sufficient natural water exists to allow brush and grass to grow, allowing their animals to graze for a few days, weeks, or months, then moving on. In some cases, the pressure to move on comes not from the depletion of food for the animals but from the depletion of a water source, such as a spring or well. At many desert oases, a natural water seep or spring provides only enough water to support a nomadic group for a few days at a time.
In addition to true nomads—people who never live in one place permanently a number of cultures have practiced seminomadic farming: The temperate months of the year, spring through fall, are spent following the herds on a long loop, sometimes hundreds of miles long, through traditional grazing areas, and then the winter is spent in a permanent village.
Nomadism has been practiced for millennia, but there is strong pressure from several sources to eliminate it. Pressures generated by industrialized society are increasingly threatening the traditional cultures of nomadic societies, such as the Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula. Traditional grazing areas are being fenced off or developed for other purposes.
Environmentalists are also concerned about the ecological damage caused by nomadism. Nomads generally measure their wealth by the number of animals they own and will try to develop their herds to as large a size as possible, well beyond the numbers required for simple sustainability. The herd animals eat increasingly large amounts of vegetation, which then has no opportunity to regenerate. Desertification may occur as a result. Nomadism based on herding goats and sheep, for example, has been blamed for the expansion of the Sahara Desert in Africa. For this reason, many environmental policymakers have been attempting to persuade nomads to give up their traditional lifestyle and become sedentary farmers.
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