What factors created the revulsion that many settled peoples had for the lifestyles of the steppelanders?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: Real differences underpinned this mutual revulsion. Four ingredients of pastoralist diets were, for farmers, literally stomach-churning: first, dairy foods, which most farmers' digestive systems rejected, because after early childhood they did not naturally produce lactase (the substance that makes milk digestible); second, fresh blood and organ meats eaten for vitamin C, which farmers obtained from fruit and vegetables; third, raw meat, important in the treeless environments of the steppe and the desert, where the only cooking fuel was dried animal dung; finally, raw fat. One of the great resources of the Eurasian steppe was the fat-tailed sheep, specially bred to drag its tail—as broad as a beaver's—behind it. Even if nomads had no time to heat the wonderfully soft fat, or no available kindling, they could eat the fat raw and digest it quickly. These were all elements of a rational food strategy for the nomadic life, but they inspired denunciations of the "barbaric" customs of eaters of raw meat and drinkers of blood. The nomads responded with equal contempt. For them, the settled life was soft and corrupted by luxury. Farming involved grubbing and groveling in mud. Cities and rice paddies were cramped and unhealthy.