The Herders of Northern Tibet: Notes from an Anthropological Field Survey

Abstract

One day, we got up again before daybreak, and in the silent darkness of the night looked toward the north. Thenceforth, we would leave the high mountains and narrow valleys and traverse uninhabited sand flats and grasslands. There were no roads to speak of on these broad lands; digging a ditch or two or piling up a couple of rocks did duty as road markers. Sometimes more than a dozen wheel ruts led in different directions, and if locals had not served us as guides we would never have known which path to take. From Tibet's Ngamring county town all the way to Ngari's Shiquanhe township, the road leads for the most part through sandy plains, also known as the "ten thousand li of North Tibet," in Tibetan called the jiangtang or "wilderness of North Tibet." Documentation shows that this jiangtang, some 1,200 kilometers from east to west and 700 kilometers wide, bordered by the Kunlun, Tangula, and Nianqing Tangula mountain ranges, is one of the few large deserts in the world that is still in a pristine state. As with other regions in Ngari, it was not always as barren as it is now. According to a geological survey, The natural features of the North Tibet region have undergone momentous changes in the history of geological development. In the Tertiary period, a large ancient lake was formed here. A series of lakes became linked together, the climate was humid, and grass and trees grew in profusion. After the Quaternary period, along with the rise of large areas of the Tibetan Plateau, the climate became drier and colder and profound changes took place in the natural environment. The lake shrank and broke up, and a multilevel lake bank took shape, as did a lakeside plain with large areas of marsh grass close by or with rivers passing through it.… In some places there were springs and natural caves in which people could live.… These natural conditions were suited to such human activities as gathering, fishing, and hunting, and [the area] therefore became a paradise for human habitation in the later period of the Paleolithic Age and in the Mesolithic. It is estimated that natural conditions at the time were more favorable and the climate less dry and cold than they are today, which makes it easier to explain why there were human habitation and activities in the Two Lakes region that has gradually become barren.