Herding Ground

Herding is one of the original forms of basic agriculture that was disseminated around the Mediterranean in the Neolithic age. Populations that practiced herding obtained everything from food to furniture from the animals they owned, so were not tied to the land and could move freely in search of new grazing. This enabled a population to sustain itself in arid conditions unsuitable to cultivation, as well as making it resilient to climatic changes that might be devastating to a settled culture. The same mobility made herding populations famously difficult to control, especially as the habitual raids on the livestock of others led to the development of fearsome combat skills.