Pazaryk culture and Turco-Iranic relations

Originally posted by Sarmat12 Originally posted by groovy_merchant On the other hand, we don't know much about Finno-Ugric before 1 mil.BC and Indo-Iranian languages before 2 mil. BC (let alone Iranic which, of due course, is younger then Indo-Iranic). So we can't really talk about borrowings from these lingos to Tocharian. It's really hard to make such a judgement for me. Definetely, there are some borrowings, the question is their significance for the general stucture of Tocharian language

Nothing in the general structure. We have several glosses from Eastern Iranian, a lot of words from Sanscrit and Prakrits and some traces from unidentified Finno-Ugric. The latter was important though since it influenced not only vocabulary but morphology too. It was a real close contact, maybe a language union.

Originally posted by Sarmat12 Originally posted by groovy_merchant Turks' ancestors  without any doubt lived between Altai and Ordos since circa 5-4 mil. BC if not earlier, they show very early contacts with different IE groups, specifically Indo-Iranian and German-Balto-Slavic and absence of early Tocharic traces in Turkic means that Tocharians migrated from some distant place or were just a small insignificant culturally community. Interesting. Can you please kindly elaborate more on the early contacts between proto-Turks and German-Balto-Slavic group in the area between Altai and Ordos?

I didn't say  contacts in the area between Altai and Ordos. I said a) Turks were living in that area since certain time and b) they have contacts with the said IE group and contact area was not defined by me.

The first suggestion could be concluded from the most archaic level of Pre-Turkic lexemas, that is Chavash,  Yakut  and common Turkic. I.e. flora and fauna known to them was ingenious to these two regions. That's the first thing. The second is that their ancestors came to these places from the South. I.e. Pre-Turkic had some very specialised words for monkeys,  elephant, lion, etc, creatures not to be found in either places.

The second proposal can be derived from some well-known lemmas. Say, common germanic mare "battle horse"  and its derivatives could be attested in any Altaic (Mong. morin "horse", Turk. bara "soul of a horse", etc). Since Altaic meaning is general and very old (attested in all languages of the very archaic family) and Germanic is comparatively new and specialised then it was borrowed from some Altaic. Since Turkic were and still are the most western Altaic lingos then it was Turkic-Germanic contacts. There were back borrowings of course, like Turkic alma "appla" from GBS *jablo-, etc. Quite many of them, to be exact.

Originally posted by Sarmat12 Originally posted by groovy_merchant 2. It's a common knowledge and a visual fact that blondes are extremely rare among Iranian speaking peoples and their physical appearance haven't changed a lot for the last three or four millenia. There are blondes among Pashto or in distant mountain areas like Badakhshan but they are rare anyway. I didn't say that blondes are so common among Iranics. However, the picture I posted proves that yet they exist and secondly again we don't have 100% data about the outlook of ancient northern Iranics. Yuezhi for example who are considered Iranics are described in Chinese chronicles as blondes and red hair people with blue eyes.

Chinese never described the appearance of the Yuezhi, that's a mistake. Red hair people with deep (or green) eyes were 1. Wusun, 2. Xiajiasi (that is Yenisei Kyrgyzes) and 3. Jie.

We don't know much about how the Wusun looked like but Chinese were saying that those of Yueban, the latest Xiongnu in the Southern Kazakhstan, who looked like apes with red hair and deep (or green) eyes were remnants of the Wusun population. Mind you, the Yueban were the Xiongnu.

Xiajiasi... Well they were the Kyrgyz folks, we have their runic inscriptions and we know their language, it's called Khakassian now.

Jie were part of the Southern Xiongnu group with high noses and deep eyes. Shi Le and all those funny people, part of Wuhu Shiliu Guo period.

I'd be much obliged if you can point me at anything like that on the Yuezhi, be it translation or the original.

And of course there is a very small percentage of blondes among Iranians, in the mountains or such high distant places with closed communities. That's genetics of cross-breeding. Hell, they even have albinos once in while. But that is really insignificant. Blond people live in the North. Like, there are great many blondes among Chuvash people, I think a good third of them are blonde and red-haired. Or Volga Tatars. Finland much more for sure, Sweden, Northern Russia, Baltic States, Scotland, the like. But definitely not in Iran, Afganistan or Tajik state.

Originally posted by Sarmat12 Originally posted by groovy_merchant 3. The Issyk inscription is definitely not Kharosthi.  Why? What makes the conclusion definite ?

It is not true.

Originally posted by Sarmat12 Originally posted by groovy_merchant  The second is that their ancestors came to these places from the South. I.e. Pre-Turkic had some very specialised words for monkeys,  elephant, lion, etc, creatures not to be found in either places.   This is extremely interesting. Could you please point me on some sources on these special words. Originally posted by groovy_merchant I'd be much obliged if you can point me at anything like that on the Yuezhi, be it translation or the original.     Seems that I indeed counfused Yuezhi with Bai people. Yet some say that Bai people are in fact Yuezhi   http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Yuezhi_-_Origins/id/602125   The Yuezhi were apparently a Caucasoid people, as indicated by the portraits of their kings on the coins they struck following their exodus to Transoxiana (2nd-1st century BCE), and especially the coins they struck in India as Kushans (1st-3rd century CE). Ancient Chinese sources do describe the existence of "white people with long hair" (The Bai people of the Shanhai Jing) beyond their northwestern border, and the very well preserved Tarim mummies with Caucasian features, often with reddish or blond hair, today displayed at the �r�mqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BCE, have been found in precisely the same area of the Tarim Basin.

You'd better start with Etymological Dictionary of Altaic Languages by Starostin, Dybo and Mudrak published by Brill coupke of years ago. A rather lengthy and detailed preface to EDAL by Starostin has a very good explanation and a good list of reference works.

Also, if you can read Russian, there are series of books under a general title like, pretty roughly, Historical development of Turkic languages, there  are several volumes on phonetics, grammar, dialects, etc. You need the last volume  on Turkic historical lexicology which was published by Nauka last year.

As for the Yuezhi, there are no archeological culture that can be tied with the Yuezhi with any degree of certainty. And though I also agree that the Yuezhi were Europoid,  there is no direct proof to that for one. And that can also be said about many peoples there - the Wusun were Europoid, large parts of the Xiongnu, etc. We have direct craniological and DNA data to support that view. Moreover, significant part of Chinese population itself was Caucasian, like in the city Handan for one instance.

The Yuezhi was a relatively small group of nomads that lived between Dunhuang and Qilianshan, that is in westernmost part of Gansu. There are simply not enough space for a big nation. The Yezhi in the course of their migration were mixed with the Sai and who knows with whom else. And last but not least, there is no proven connection between the Yuezhi and the Kushans, that's an opinion or a hypo, not a fact.

And of course, the Kushan coins were just copies of Greek-Bactrian coins, not portraits. If you take a close lock at, for example, Pseudo-Eucratides mints or any early coins of the region, you can easily see that.

So, a) there were lots of Europoids there and b) we don't know if the coins were cast by the Yuezhi and c) we don't know if those were portraits of real people and not just continuation of earlier Greek tradition. This is not a real argument, it is just an idea that you may or may not like.

Basically, all of those.

Let me clear up some misunderstandings here.

Blonde hair in mummies arises from discoloration. If you have 'black' hair, look at it near a strong light, you will see that its actually brown. Now over time the melanin dries off from the hair and you get that very light colored hair.

This is also seen in a mummy from Peru.



It would be foolish to attribute all of them to Nordics/Aryans/Tocharians/Iranics whatever, once you know this fact. 

Second, Tocharians are not the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi from Chinese history are an older people who spoke a Turkish language. And the "European" Tocharians, while the majority being brunette Caucasian/Mongoloid admixed people, are simply a variation of Caucasians who lived near the Urals and were mixed with Mongoloids prior to entering the Tarim basin. They did speak a language remotely related to PROTO-Indo-European, in other words the relation with IE stops even before the formation of a Indo-Aryan.

This is why the Eurocentrists, etc. have tried so hard to fit the Yuezhi with the Tocharians and Indo-European but failed. Otherwise it would have been very easy to connect the Tocharians with their supposed neighbors to the west (Iranians). What's more, the Tocharians had more Turkish influence than anything else because the proto-Turks have lived in the Aral regions thousands of years before their arrival.

Mainstream "historians" have not made progress in many decades. Today there are many that still believe the myth that the precursors of Iranian people inhabited the regions of the Central Asian steppes and it was the Turks who invaded those lands from Mongolia.
Their assertion relies on the incorrect belief that the Andronovo culture of 2000BC was Indo-Aryan; they couldn't be more far removed from the truth.

Andronovo and its predecedors are wholly Turkic.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/345686
From http://dienekes.50webs.com/blog/archives/000372.html

Current Anthropology, Feb 2003 v44 i1 p109(2)

More on archaeology and language. (Discussion). (response to C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Current Anthropology, vol. 43, p. 63) Mario Alinei; Richard N. Frye.

A migration-free theory that assumes the continuity of all European and Asiatic populations from Paleo-/Mesolithic times is gaining consensus not only among prehistorians (cf., e.g., Marcel Otte's and Alexander Hausler's work) but also, and especially, among linguists (Alinei 1996-2000 n.d.; Ballester n.d; Cavazza 2001; Costa 1998; Poghirc 1992). In this framework not only Andronovo but also the whole cultural sequence that precedes it, from Srednyi Stog to the Pit Grave, Catacomb Grave, and Timber Grave cultures (cf. Makkay's comment), can only be seen as expressions of an already developed Turkic branch of the Altaic population, originating in Central Asia in Paleolithic times. Among other advantages, this conclusion produces (1) a straightforward explanation of the numerous Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in Samoyed and other Uralic languages, as well as in Slavic, and (2) a convergence between a hippocentric geo-cultural scenario, on the one hand, and the continuity of the archaeological record, on the other ("The steppe tribes of horse-breeders and mobile pastoralists had already begun, in the Copper Age, to play the role which they were to continue to play for the next 5,000 to 5,500 years of human history" [Chernykh 1992:42-3]), pace Anthony and other scholars who continue to cultivate the myth of the hippocentrism of the Indo-Europeans and the Indo-Iranians.

The origin of the Iranians, in turn, must be sought in Iran itself, and their role in the steppes should be seen as an aspect of a later expansion from the south (see Khlopin 1990:177). The Bactrian Margiana complex, in my opinion correctly interpreted by Lamberg-Karlovsky as opposed to Andronovo, may well be an important aspect of the Iranians' earliest northern expansion.

We now get a clearer picture that the proto-Turks were a Caucasian (racially) group that transfered their culture and language to the Mogoloid people of Asia. 


Edited by CiegaSordomud - 04-Oct-2008 at 15:48

The problem has been the use of Scythian as a catch all description for people inhabiting a large area without critical analysis of who these people actually are. Too long have all Scythians being identified as being Indo-Aryans coming from an Indo-European homeland. The reality is that before any "Scythians" there were already well developed nomadic and sedentary Turkic and Altaic cultures in the eastern steppes. This is very important to the discussion of the Pazaryk.

We identified the culture in the Aral region to be Turkic, and it expanded into western Mongolia and China, as seen from the materials found in sites at Xinjiang. One of these culture is represented by the Turkic Andronovo culture.

The Pazaryk culture is a hybrid between Caucasian Turks and Mongoloids who adapted this culture. These Mongoloid people in turn developed the Altaic culture and languages. 

http://web.archive.org/web/20060208233118/http://www.bionet.nsc.ru/bgrs/thesis/99/
 
This study found the genetic Caucasian and Mongoloid contributions in the Pazaryk. To differentiate from East Eurasian people they call the westerners "Europoids", but they are not Europeans at all. Its only a label, just like we use Mongoloid to describe a general racial group but it does imply them being Mongolians.

Later on, we see a partial displacement of these populations by the expansion of Indo-Europeans moving east, and Mongoloid groups moving west

"Of special interest was to compare the results of molecular genetic studies to the modern paleoanthropological characteristics of Pazyryk population. Craniological studies of all presently available materials on burials of this culture have demonstrated both Mongoloid and Europoid components in the anthropological composition of Pazyrykians. Craniological variant occurring in the cattle-breeding tribes in the II millenium BC on the territories of the Southern Tadzhikistan, Southern and Southwestern Turkmenistan, and Northern Iran represents the Europoid component. In the epochs followed, this variant disappears from the territory of the Western and Middle Asia. It was suggested that the carriers of this morphological complex have been few and gradually assimilated into the mass of Eastern-Mediterranean Europoids. The Mongoloid component includes two anthropological types. One type, autochthonous, has been found on the Altai territory on the boundary of Neolithic and Eneolithic periods in the people buried in the Nizhnetitkeskenskaya and Kaminnaya caves and in the second half of the II millenium BC in Karakol Culture population. The typical combination of anthropological parameters characteristic of this type is similar to Southern-Siberian race complex, met currently in Kazakh, Kirgiz peoples, and certain groups of Khakas and Southern-Altaian peoples. The second type, Paleosiberian, dominated on the territory near Baikal during the Neolithic period. Currently, it occurs only in Evenki people in Northern Baikal region."

This is gives the explanation of why the Mongols worshipped the sky god TENGRI, borrowed from the proto-Turkic TENGIR. It is the same diety as the Sumerian DINGIR, that also become a word meaning god (all originating from a south Caspian expansion). The Sumerians also called their sky god AN, who was called ANI by the Etruscans.

Edited by CiegaSordomud - 04-Oct-2008 at 16:41

Scythian is a modern description for a nomadic Aryan group. Dont confuse other non-Aryan groups with a nomadic lifestyle as being Scythian. That is a mistake seen over and over again when people in descriptions.

The proper Scythians arrived much later, and infact have borrowed heavily from the Turkic population already living near the Aral region. This is also supported by linguistic evidence for the words horse, charriot, etc. that are not Indo-European but instead derive from Turkic.

So this sort of definition for Scythian:

"Scythian has been used broadly in the past to describe any Eurasian nomads so its not suprising if there were some Turkic elements among them."

It should be stopped, its stalling any intelligent and cogent discussion on this topic.

Next, there is already plenty of evidence for the connections between Sumerian, Elamic, Altaic, Turkish, Dravidian, Hungarian, Uralic, Etruscan languages available. The next step is describing how this came to be, I have another thread discussing this. All these groups share a common origin in the southern Caspian region. The migrations originating from  that region occured approximately 8000BC when we started seeing evidence of cultures emerging along the way towards, one moving towards Mesopotamia and the other into the eastern steppes. This of course began before the formation of a Turkic identity. The Turkic culture emerged in the Aral region later and penetrated into the Mongolia and western China.

Genetic evidence also supports this. Europeans and other groups closer to the homeland of the Indo-Europeans have a high concentration of the R1b male lineage (Y-Haplogroup). On the other hand, those who belong to Uralic, Altaic, Turkic groups, and other people who were influenced by them have a higher concentration of the R1a marker.


Red: R1b, Purple:R1a

R1a is the group that expanded from the Caspian region. There is a high amount on Iran, but also in the Atalics, Kyrgyz, etc. This also tells us that what occured in Iran was a conversion of this early group adopted the Indo-Aryan culture, as opposed to complete replacement.

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/8199/greatmapcp3.jpg


Edited by CiegaSordomud - 04-Oct-2008 at 21:07

"Blonde hair in mummies arises from discoloration. If you have 'black' hair, look at it near a strong light, you will see that its actually brown. Now over time the melanin dries off from the hair and you get that very light colored hair. 
This is also seen in a mummy from Peru."

This is not always the case, as the most of the mummies found, in the regions like Xinjiang or Eurasia are not marked with hblonde hair, morever that the discoloration is a probability taken for this matter. The other thing is that merely having blond hair is not anthropologically recognized as Caucasian, or Indo-European take the Mummies in Xinjiang for instance, they have long noses, long extent skulls too. The thing that only this brand new theory of yours Turks being Caucasians who migrated eastward and then dominated mongoloid people, would challenge it of course not even yet proven as a hypothesis. These mummies date back about 2000 BC and it is very probable that they weren't a ruling class just being commoners, contradicting theories which explain the presence of Indo-eropeans far east as ruling classes.

"Second, Tocharians are not the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi from Chinese history are an older people who spoke a Turkish language" Nowhere mentioned that they spoke any kind of something proto-turkic or even similar to that of Hsiung-nu.

"Mainstream "historians" have not made progress in many decades"

I think that above couldn't be denied with just one phrase.

"Today there are many that still believe the myth that the precursors of Iranian people inhabited the regions of the Central Asian steppes and it was the Turks who invaded those lands from Mongolia."

Because the human archaelogical, linguistic, comparative study of sources so far has pointed out this belief.

"Their assertion relies on the incorrect belief that the Andronovo culture of 2000BC was Indo-Aryan; they couldn't be more far removed from the truth."

firstly I can not access to those links please insert the links again, It hasn't been this wholly denied so far and if it ever turns out to be not Indo-Iranian as you remarked, it wouldn't prove it Wholly Turkic.

"A migration-free theory that assumes the continuity of all European and Asiatic populations from Paleo-/Mesolithic times is gaining consensus not only among prehistorians (cf., e.g., Marcel Otte's and Alexander Hausler's work) but also, and especially, among linguists (Alinei 1996-2000 n.d.; Ballester n.d; Cavazza 2001; Costa 1998; Poghirc 1992). In this framework not only Andronovo but also the whole cultural sequence that precedes it, from Srednyi Stog to the Pit Grave, Catacomb Grave, and Timber Grave cultures (cf. Makkay's comment), can only be seen as expressions of an already developed Turkic branch of the Altaic population, originating in Central Asia in Paleolithic times. Among other advantages, this conclusion produces (1) a straightforward explanation of the numerous Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in Samoyed and other Uralic languages, as well as in Slavic"

How could the author just deny without just giving any proper reason?! Besides the thing that today justify the lingual borrowings of the e.g. Horsemanship in diverse languages in or on the fringes of the steppes, is that they may have borrowed from earlier languages in the region, in the same case many words are the same cognates in those languages regardless of Iranian, Altaic or Slavic. I for example refer to a Avesta which their recordings date back linguistically to 1000 BC and the language which probably was in use in the Area in Central Asia near Aral sea. It yields at least considerable amount of terms related to horsemanship and direct reference to a horse culture in large area encompassing much of steppes.

  "The origin of the Iranians, in turn, must be sought in Iran itself, and their role in the steppes should be seen as an aspect of a later expansion from the south (see Khlopin 1990:177). The Bactrian Margiana complex, in my opinion correctly interpreted by Lamberg-Karlovsky as opposed to Andronovo, may well be an important aspect of the Iranians' earliest northern expansion. "

That is rather a hypothesis, there are many evidences which indicate the probability of earlier Iranian presence in Iranian plateau than presumed. Maybe the deciphering of the tablets found in Harirud may help some. But it wouldn't make impression of denying their long believed presence in steppe areas.


"Scythian is a modern description for a nomadic Aryan group. Dont confuse other non-Aryan groups with a nomadic lifestyle as being Scythian. That is a mistake seen over and over again when people in descriptions."

It's not modern. The term for only according only to Iranian narrations of the story included Sakas with man of the nomadic people of Iranian stock like Massagetae. 

"Scythian has been used broadly in the past to describe any Eurasian nomads so its not suprising if there were some Turkic elements among them."

The Turkic element amongst them should be proven first.

"Next, there is already plenty of evidence for the connections between Sumerian, Elamic, Altaic, Turkish, Dravidian, Hungarian, Uralic, Etruscan languages available."

It is also another theory not accepted broadly.

"The Turkic culture emerged in the Aral region later and penetrated into the Mongolia and western China"

Well i don't see any sources back this theory.

 "Genetic evidence also supports this. Europeans and other groups closer to the homeland of the Indo-Europeans have a high concentration of the R1b male lineage (Y-Haplogroup). On the other hand, those who belong to Uralic, Altaic, Turkic groups, and other people who were influenced by them have a higher concentration of the R1a marker."

Yes, cause heavy amount of intermarriages occured in those regions.


"R1a is the group that expanded from the Caspian region. There is a high amount on Iran, but also in the Atalics, Kyrgyz, etc. This also tells us that what occured in Iran was a conversion of this early group adopted the Indo-Aryan culture, as opposed to complete replacement."

It's not a new founding its shows at the first hand the intermarriages, and reveals that for example Kyrgyz are to some extent descendants of the Iranian nomads lived already in that area who hadn't disappeared, but intermarriaged the newcomers.

The mainstream "historians" apply their own completely biased Indo-European centric point of view to the discussion of the Yuezhi and other tribes in the steppes. They discard certain evidence, and try to combine disconnected accounts to match their idealized notion of the Scythians as supreme masters of Central Asia. They themselves admit that evidence for the existence of "Scythians" as they describe it is razor thin. For such an inffluential group that spanned from Eastern Europe to Mogolia they left virtually zero trace of their existence as an Iranic group.

Let me clear some misconceptions again.

The term Tocharian is a modern and false creation based on the TURKISH term TWQRY. Now these so called scholars assume, on their minds that Indo-European is the center of the universe, therefore whoever lived in Tocharia or were called Thocharians must all be based on Indo-Europeans. False. Tocharia is based on the turkish words for mountain TAGH and Snow KAR, you get the Tukhari. Those who dwelled in the mountain regions as apposed to the lower regions to the west and east. This name stuck, and whoever happened to live in the area were given that description, including anyone belonging to Indo-Aryan intrussions that arrived from the south in much later dates. The ancient westerners who refered to this term didnt know virtually anything except the name, they couldnt tell you anything related to the composition or origin of these people.

Now the Yuezhi name is incorrect because instead of Yue the pronounciation should be ROU. This is a known fact, but guess what? The establishment of western "historians" deem that its Yue. Its even in the Wiki page for Yuezhi. In other words their decision is what makes it true, nevermind the history of the Chinese who describe the names ROURUAN, RURU, RUIRUI, RUANRUAN to western and northern Altaic/Turkic tribes. So guess who are the RUOZHI? They are Turkic nomads from the west. Also forget the fact that the Rouzhi (Yuezhi) interacted for centuries with the Xiongnu. Instead western "historians" focus on the "history" of the Yuezhi not on Chinese accounts for that region and that timefreame, but on observers of the Indo-European world who were FAR removed from where the Ruozhi actually where.