Social Trends in Temperate Eurasia During the Second and First Millennia BC

This paper outlines some basic trends of social evolution and devolution that occurred in Central Eurasia mostly in the second and first millennia BC. These main long-term, cyclical regularities were characteristic for the whole Eurasian territory and comprised the alternation between complex social structures and simple, extensive lifeways. The factors stimulating social development were ecological and technological crises, which conditioned a search for the most effective forms of social adaptation. The social landscape of the temperate zone in the second millennium BC was represented by a variety of simple chiefdoms interacting with forest-zone tribes and steppe zone hunter-gatherers. These groups were succeeded by an extensive spread of population, including the colonisation of new landscapes and the discovery of new mineral resources. The transition to the Iron Age is marked by the disintegration of these chiefdoms, which stimulated a chain of recurrent westward migration, disrupting social developments in Central Eurasia. During the first millennium, the process of social stratification and elite military development resulted from the growth of the Eurasian 'world system'.