Balkans, an Irano-Germanic land!

The theory of the Turkic origin of Bulgarians has been brought up during the Ottoman ruling by some Western scientists who have never been in Bulgaria, or seen a Bulgarian. They just assumed it (I can dig up the names of those scientists if you're interested). Later everyone copied them. Few decades after winning independence from the Ottomans we fell under communism - USSR wanted Bulgaria to become the 16th republic so it was very good for them to say that Bulgarians were Slavic and proto-Bulgarians were just a bunch of aggressive people on horses. Of course, if Bulgarians were so minimal in numbers, Bulgaria would be part of Byzantium not partnering it. Other very disturbing truth for the USSR was that USSR is full of people claiming to be Bulgarians. The history was so manipulated that we first heard about the Volga Bulgarians less than 10 years ago. The official info that Bulgaria was founded in 681 is also false because that's just the year of the first peace treaty between Byzantium and Bulgaria. Probably that's a topic for a separate discussion, but, trust me, we're not Turks :) There are numerous facts supporting the Iranian origin and basically 0 supporting the Turkic origin. Thanks for the Wladimir etymology, that was my point also - Wladimir and Stanimir aren't exactly Slavic names.
A bit upper in the discussion there was something about the name of Sofia - Sofia is the post-Christian name of the city, the original one is Sredetz, which means "in the middle".

Originally posted by leda The theory of the Turkic origin of Bulgarians has been brought up during the Ottoman ruling by some Western scientists who have never been in Bulgaria, or seen a Bulgarian. They just assumed it (I can dig up the names of those scientists if you're interested). Later everyone copied them. Few decades after winning independence from the Ottomans we fell under communism - USSR wanted Bulgaria to become the 16th republic so it was very good for them to say that Bulgarians were Slavic and proto-Bulgarians were just a bunch of aggressive people on horses. Of course, if Bulgarians were so minimal in numbers, Bulgaria would be part of Byzantium not partnering it. Other very disturbing truth for the USSR was that USSR is full of people claiming to be Bulgarians. The history was so manipulated that we first heard about the Volga Bulgarians less than 10 years ago. The official info that Bulgaria was founded in 681 is also false because that's just the year of the first peace treaty between Byzantium and Bulgaria. Probably that's a topic for a separate discussion, but, trust me, we're not Turks :) There are numerous facts supporting the Iranian origin and basically 0 supporting the Turkic origin. Thanks for the Wladimir etymology, that was my point also - Wladimir and Stanimir aren't exactly Slavic names. A bit upper in the discussion there was something about the name of Sofia - Sofia is the post-Christian name of the city, the original one is Sredetz, which means "in the middle".

Of course was there a lot of propaganda influencing the history of Bulgarians, so I understand that you are sceptical. But the recent attempts to denie any Turkic origin is as well ideologically influenced.
And I don't have to trust you. You are indeed no Turks. I didn't claim that. I said the origin of the Proto-Bulgarians was Turkic, but that they soon included indo-iranian groups from the steppe belt. And finally these indo-iranian/turko-hunnic mix assimilated into the slavic people to both sides of the Danube and formed the modern, slavic Bulgarians.

Chuvash is the most distinctive language of the Turkic family, belonging to the oghuric branch, together with avar, bolgarian, khazar and probably hunni. Chuvash is therefor the closest existing language to proto-bulgarian. These Proto-Bulgarian, allthough Oghuric, seem to have had a lot influence from indo-iranic languages, maybe comparable to todays english, which is a Germanic language, but has a very strong influence by Roman.
Modern Bulgarian is based on Old Bulgarian, which is a Slavic language, namely those of the Slavic people who lived inside the Bulgarian Empire.
Maybe the Bulgarian situation is similar to those of France. The Franks, a germanic confederation of tribes, or exactly the merovingians, the ruling dynasty of the Salians, founded an empire, which gave birth to modern France. French people in majority aren't Frankish, but in majority genetically western people or Gaulish. Their language isn't Frankish as well, but Roman. It is as well interesting, that French people felt as Frankish during main parts of the medieval. With the revolution the royalty was seen as Frankish and therefor rejected. During revolution French people searched for Roman roots. Later the Celtic heritage was favorised to seperate them from the "Roman" Italians and the "Germanic" Germans. That's similar to Bulgarian traditions. A Turk origin was less problematic before the age of nationalism and the liberation wars against the Turks. A Slavic origin wasn't problematic during times of Pan_germanism, but when Russians instrumentalized Pan-Slavism for their interests,a Thracian tradition was favorised.

I say it again, modern Bulgarians are Slavs, but their roots are manyfold.

with the excuse that this discussion is turning into a Bulgarian origin discussion.... i'm going ahead :)

Originally posted by beorna ... the origin of the Proto-Bulgarians was Turkic, but that they soon included indo-iranian groups from the steppe belt. And finally these indo-iranian/turko-hunnic mix assimilated into the slavic people to both sides of the Danube and formed the modern, slavic Bulgarians.

ok, so what's for a fact is that Bulgarians have something Turkic, something Slavic, something Gothic, something Thracian, something whatever, and of course :) something Iranian. What I disagree is the timetable and the quantities. I'll try let's say tomorrow to post some documental material, for not to look like the crazy Bulgarian... mostly what I have in mind are artifacts extremely close to Iranians.

In the period before 2nd century B.C. when Bulgarians have lived on the north-east from nowadays Iran (and to my view were of Iranian origin :)) it's very possible to have done deeds much closer to China, prove for that is the Bulgarian calendar that is similar to the Chinese. Acting on the East they've probably mixed with Turks, but artifacts and language show predominantly Iranian characteristics. So I don't see what kind of superhuman Turkic minority would give its name and ruling over whatever other peoples, in the same time leaving minor cultural influence. The research on the first Bulgarian texts up until the Ottoman ruling (started in the 14th century) shows a very low number of Turkic words (I can give exact numbers let's say tomorrow :)). The vast number of Turkic words in Bulgarian have entered the language during the 5 century long Ottoman ruling - that's the case with Danube Bulgaria. In Volga Bulgaria the major Turkic influence starts with the Mongols defeating Bulgarians in the 13th century. There are several republics in nowadays Russian Federation claiming Bulgarian origin, and thought most of them are mongoloid (obviously Bulgarians and Mongols mixed) there is the republic of Tatarstan, with predominantly non-mongoloid population (The big joke now is that Tatars argue with the mongoloid peoples that Tatars indeed are the real Volga Bulgarians.) Up until the October revolution Tatarstan was called Bulgaristan. Poor Lenin was of Bulgarian origin and hated it (much like poor Hitler hated his Austrian origin) so quickly Bulgaristan became Tatarstan accompanied with all known repressions for the population to be forced to deny Bulgarian origin. (Similar acts were done also in Danube Bulgaria)
That's what I can say about the Turkic influence - most of it is very late - 13th and 14th centuries, although surely there has been some pre-Christ mixtures also.
As of the Slavic issue - what we studied in school was that Slavs were the vast majority, and Bulgarians were like 10 wild guys on horses. Obviously that was Soviet propaganda. Now scientists say Bulgarian army when going South from the Danube was about 100 000 soldiers (which makes perfectly sense - if it was smaller Byzantium would have never let Bulgarians expand their country on this already discussed commonwealth yummy territory). Earlier Khazar, Armenian and Arab sources say Bulgarians were as many as the sand particles on a beach and very well organized, with cities of stone, centralized plumbing and heating systems; man and women (who were soldiers too) wearing trousers, shoes, etc.. The agriculture was as well on a good level - seeds found in Pliska and Preslav (the first capitals of Danube Bulgaria) have been proven to be result of a 600 years of selection (no wonder that the seed mix of Bulgur is called like this till nowadays). So Bulgarians were numerous and not at all wild. Bulgarians mixed with Slavs and bits of Goths, but the main character of the nation was Bulgarian. As of the Thracians, by the time Bulgarians came South from the Danube, Thracian culture wasn't a living one, the remains of Thracians have been already Romanized, so Bulgarians don't claim to be inheritors of Thracian culture, we just dig it up from our land. By the way what I said before about possible circle of influence between Thracians and Iranians was a fully intuitive and fast pop-up :)

About the Slavic language - it's very hard to say how exactly influences went. Nowadays the language of Volga Bulgarians is more Turkic, this of Danube Bulgaria is more Slavic, to a degree that we don't understand each other (normally since we have 14 centuries of split history). What can be said about Slavic language, is that before spreading of Christianity (started 9th century) it was compiled of very small number of words similar to the other languages - words that describe mainly material objects. The project of the Cyrillic alphabet and spreading of Christianity was enormous, very expensive and long - you can imagine how much the production of a single book costed in those times, and for a single church the needed books were about 20, you can also imagine the vast territory that has been Christianized - all Slavic European peoples including Russia. This project is now viewed as the biggest political victory of Bulgaria ever. So, about the language - the point is that the bigger part of the language was actually invented by the scholars working in Bulgaria - the abstract words just didn't exist in Slavic or Bulgarian languages before the translation of Christian texts. Probably that's the point when Bulgarian language lost some of it's Iranian characteristics to Slavic - Bulgarians wanted to make the books more understandable to the Slavs, so these new abstract words that have been invented, were rooted more in Slavic than in Bulgarian - the result is that the languages of all these peoples has been unified. So, the so called Slavic characteristics of Bulgarian are very late and to a large degree artificial.
There is however another detail supporting early Turkic influence - the Glagolitsa, which is the earliest variant of Cyrillic, had the construct of each sign corresponding to a syllable, as well as to a single sound like in later Cyrillic. So Glagolitsa is similar both visually and in syllable correspondence to Chinese, but I've heard this only by one historian and to me it sounds absolutely extravagant since there have been at least 10 centuries since the time Bulgarians were possibly near China.

Originally posted by beorna the recent attempts to denie any Turkic origin is as well ideologically influenced

I don't feel any ideological urge to link Bulgarians to Iranians or to unlink them from Turks. Ideology inflicted would be only to unlink Bulgarians from Slavs due to recent communism, but there's no need for that - we just obviously look Slavic much less than Iranian like.
What is true though is that communism left Bulgaria absolutely devastated intellectually and culturally - our society was cleansed much harsher than in any other European communism. So presently Bulgarian society is quite pitiful and this fact combined with the bitterness of decades/centuries long manipulations of history, and constantly emerging facts about a great history, could bring some nasty form of nationalism. Put in other words Bulgarians presently are quite stupid and angry :) So, ideologically inflicted would be, in reguards of nationalism, to try to prove as old history as possible. Anyway, if such history is actually true, it's better to be professionally explored and stated, in order for this bitterness of injustice to be halted. Bulgarian nationalism is typically a very peaceful one, although very strong - after all it has preserved the nation throughout the 5 centuries long Ottoman ruling. Anyway there are traces of Christian fundamentalism in the region which I find both funny and disturbing. In the region of Kosovo presently there are some illegal military units comprised mainly by Serbs but also Bulgarians, they have some totally ridiculous black flags with Christian crosses and skulls on them.... in addition we have a totally ridiculous nationalistic party in the parliament that is partnering perfectly well with the ex-communists - so the situation is a bit nasty ideologically viewed, normal Bulgarians are protesting against parliament and government for six month already without any success - but that's politics already, so I stop :) I just want to add how ashamed I feel because of the nasty way we're treating Syrian refugees at the moment, again due to some simple minded nationalism.... no more politics.... I must be optimist :)

P.S. An interesting fact reguarding early mixtures of population is that when Alexander the Macedonian conquered the world, Bulgarians were the only ones that he couldn't defeat categorically, so instead he married 10 000 of his soldiers to Bulgarian GIRRRLSSS :))) At least that's what the director of the Bulgarian National Museum sais, but he's an ex-communist secret service agent, so who knows.......... :)))))))))))

OK, WASN'T THAT A LONG LONG MESSAGE!!!!

We also cal "charshanbesuri",thanks giving day,Surva=Pro(o)chka.

Edited by medenaywe - 02-Jan-2014 at 08:13

But to come back to the OP's claim. There are two major hypotheses. The first of Gimbutas. Indoeuropeans from the steppe moved into Old Europe cultures and transformed these cultures into new indo-european dominated cultures, from about 4000 BC on. The second is those of Renfrew, who connects the distribution of agriculture in europe with the indo-europeans. Then the steppe influence would just be a further indo-european input. In both cases, the migrations are way before any Germanic-Iranians.

Hi there!!! I picked up some nice images relating Bulgarian and Iranian art, but seems like I can't upload files here due to some insufficient permission, I'll try to upload things elsewhere and use only url's.

Apart of it all I found proofs of my poor memory :). Some mistakes in my first post here - Bulgarians first stepped South from Danube in the year 480 (not 4th century as I wrote). First stable migrations started a century later. Goths have been on the Balkans since the year 251. They have formed 2 countries there, thought not recognized officially by Byzantium. These two countries first fought between each other, later unified. I don't know whether this country existed by the time Bulgarians came. In the Bulgaria/Byzantium peace contract from 681 is written that Bulgarian territory includes 7 Slavic tribes + a tribe called Severi - scientists argue whether this is a Goth or Thracian people. For sure Bulgarians trusted them well since the Severi were entitled to guard over the South border.
Another thing incorrect - this huge Bulgarian country I mentioned before the Balkan period is infact from Volga to Dnepar, not Danube. By the end of the life of Kubrat, Asparuh's father, the Khazars split this country into 2 - that's how the 2 Bulgarias have formed. That's the point when the Western Bulgarians started moving towards the Danube.

Originally posted by beorna Not only the Bulgarian empire helped to let the Slavic language spread across the balkans. it was as well the christianity preeched by kyrill and methodos.

Well, that's why I took the time to depict the scale of this project - it was backed and funded by Boris I, so you can't split the two brothers' activity from Bulgaria. Further there are some clues they were partially Bulgarians. In several religious biographies of Cyril it is written that he was of Bulgarian origin, one of them sais he's coming back to the country his ancestors have failed - so the hypothesis is the brothers are partially offspring of some Bulgarian noble man who has exiled in Byzantium. The practice in such cases have been to be given a similar position in Byzantium, thus the high social position of the brothers' family. Another proof is found in the Vatican Library, in the documents from the debate on the "holiness" of Bulgarian language, that was to break the canon of the 3 holly languages - Hebrew, Greek and Latin. So in this document Cyril is called with two names - the second one is Strahota, which is pure Bulgarian. Anyway those are hypothesis and not important. If the Cyrillisation process wasn't backed politically and financially by Bulgaria, the alphabet/Bible translation would have died, just like this of Wulfila, as well as the earlier Thracian alphabet/Bible translation, made by Nikita Remisianski. Furthermore the two brothers died early, even before the official Christianization of Bulgaria, so the job was hugely done by their pupils, appointed to them By Boris in the 50s of 9th century when they first visited Bulgaria - all 5 of the pupils were sons of Bulgarian aristocrats. Infact the nowadays, simplified Cyrilics is invented by one of them - Climent. Before that in act was the Chinese looking Glagolitsa I mentioned.

Originally posted by beorna Well, hard to expect Bulgarians 800 years before they were mentioned first :)

I think Bojidar Dimitrov, the director of the National History Museum, takes that Balhara (Bacrtria according to ancient Greeks) is Bulgaria, which is sane. It's also known there was indeed such mass wedding. What's extravagant is that the women were indeed Balharians and not Persians in general. Otherwise, yes, the first 100% sure written source of Bulgaria as an unified country is in 2nd century A.C. by Armenian source.

As of the number 100 000 of Bulgarian soldiers in the war with Byzantium from 680. That number comes again from Bojidar Dimitrov. His reasoning is that Constantine IV goes in this war with his whole ground and navy army, so Dimitrov just equals the numbers of the two armies. Anyway Bulgarians have had a fighting technique very different from the Byzantium (martial arts similar to Chinese, another proof for early Bulgarian-Turkic influences). An early Arab source sais that 10 man couldn't fight one Bulgarian. So... the math could be done otherwise and the number of Bulgarian army could be as well 10 000. Bojidar Dimitrov calculates the whole Bulgarian population to be at least 1 million - which is huge, I'd rather believe that many women were fighting too. Byzatine sources say every Bulgarian family was obliged to keep 2 fighting horses (there was a death sentence for those who used fighting horses in agriculture). It's also believed that Imperator Nikiforus (can't remember which number) was killed by a female troop.

As of the count of Turkic words in pre-Ottoman Bulgarian. Professor Mladenov counts 15 (:)!!), professor Bakalov counts 200, so let's say they were 200. Anyway minimal.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0056779
Here's something interesting. A genetic research from 2013 on Y chromosome in Bulgarians. It's made by Bulgarian and Italian scientists so it's credible. It shows that Turkic genes are only 1.5%. Iranic genes are about 20%. It also shows we are mostly close to Italians and Greeks, and those common genes are ancient ones (obviously there's a technique to mesure mutations in time, thus the dating). So either Thracians were much more numerous when Bulgarians came on the Balkans, either there have been early movement of Thracian in Asia (by the way I fell upon some forum writings similar to my previous intuitive idea of a circle of Thracian/Iranian influence, anyway those guys seem to be some of the crazy Bulgarians...) We could be close to Italians due to another reason - when Khazars split Bulgaria into 2, one of Asparuh's brothers moved with some people to the region of nowadays Italy, where they were Romanized. The research shows also we're quite away from Slavs although we have some common genes. The data in this research is a bit complicated for orientation but with persistence it works. I also read some interviews of the scientists summarizing the data, but those are in Bulgarian, sorry.
There have been earlier genetic researches made both on male and female - those have shown much more Iranic genes in X chromosome :))) giving a miraculous shoulder to Dimitrov's theory of the mass wedding. Anyway this research has been made on a very small scale, thus it can't be credible.

Edited by leda - 04-Jan-2014 at 03:12

Thanks Ollios, good map. I have some data from eupedia for Bulgaria,
I-26%, R1a-17%, R1b-11%. G-5%, J-14%, E1b1b-23.5%, T-1.5%, Q-0.5%, N-0.5%.

I have the same data from eupedia for Turkey, I-5.5%, R1a-7.5%, R1b-16%, G-11%, J-33%, E1b1b-11%, T-2.5%, Q-2%, N-4%.

The main Y-DNA in Siberia is C, N and O. If I e.g. Look on the Y-DNA of Turk-speaking people, i find 88% N among jakutians, 41% among Chakassians, 34% among Dolgans and 54% among bashkirs from Sterlibash. There 11% O among karakalpakians, 26% among South-Altaian Kazakhs and among Uighurs 11%. There is 37% C among Dolgans, 23% among karakalpakians, 40.67% among different kazakhin groups, 11 among uzbeks. Turkmenians have 17% J, Kirgisians have 60-70% R1a, Samara bashkirs 48% R1a. Bashkirs from the perm habe 85%, Turkmenian 37% R1/R1b.

So, please tell me, what's a Turk? And we can ask the same question for the Indo-Iranians. What, concerning Y-DNA, is a Indo-Iranian?

Originally posted by yomud lol why do you think genetic can help you ?  how many sample they have ? 5 or 50 or 500 could we took 500 for all nation ? ofc NOT

but this is the way

 which election poll takes the decision of all nation or which medical pill tests on all humanity?