Joachim Radkau gives me food for thought

On page 68, Joachim Radkau writes:

"Nomadism is not a primeval way of life, nor is it likely to have evolved directly out of the stone age hunting way of life; instead, nomads generally live from trade with sedentary cultures and already presupposes [sic] the domestication of animals. For those nomads who moved across the wide expanses of the desert, the fundamental innovation was the domestication of the camel, presumably achieved around 3,500 years ago".

I recently asked myself how it could be that in the region with the longest, arguably richest history of sedentarism nomadism-- a philosophy in which people refuse to be settled-- could be stronger than anywhere else in the world. For those not all that familiar with the credentials of the Middle East in the history of sedentarization, Catal Huyuk, located in modern-day Turkey, is recognized as mankind's first major attempt at settling-down; the crops cultivated earliest anywhere were figs in what is now Israel; the pioneer cities on Earth were in "the land between the rivers" in present-day Iraq; Egypt, which today could be called part of the Middle East with little argument, was of course the site of the most mythologized, perhaps most revered early riverine civilization; and Damascus, the capital of Syria, is said to be the municipality that has been continually occupied for the longest time. I was not aware of how dependent on settled peoples and processes associated with settlement Middle Eastern nomads likely were in laying the groundwork for their way of life until reading the above passage. Now, I can see that one could argue that Middle Eastern nomads are so seemingly set in their ways (and adept at violently defending them if need be) because they have had such a lengthy history of interaction with the settled communities in their vicinity, which are of the greatest antiquity of any on the planet.

I am always trying to come up with subjects about which I could possibly write books, and the sedentarism-nomadism paradox of the Middle East, which before struck me as one such subject, now seems to me to be a matter already settled (pun). So, as for the subjects of books that could possibly come from me, I am now left with my plan for Africa, my theory about the psychology of evaluating people's physical attractiveness (it hit me in 2006 and has only gotten stronger since), and something relating to my first (and what will almost certainly prove on my deathbed to have been my only) love, professional wrestling. If there is any interest at all out there in responding to this, I would like to know from other people in the class what books (preferably ones unlike others already out there) they think they could write.