Who are the Kurds?

Originally posted by Hushyar ArmenianSurvival and Tatar44 ArmenainSurvival you are only very little right and Tatar44 you are completely wrong. This is true answer: Originally posted by Sharukin The Assyrians did in fact record the name "Kurti" in the regions where the later Carduchi, Carduene/Gorduene, and the Kurds inhabited, to the north of Assyria.  Some make the earliest reference to Kurds as the Guti of the Sumerian sources, inhabitants of the Zagros Mts., however the Assyrians knew them as the Kuti, at the same time they had knowledge of the Kurti.  Since the Assyrian references to the Kurti preceded that of the Median conquest of the region, we need to see Kurdish origins as a much more complex process.  They inhabited a region which was linguistically Hurrian, a situation which was in evidence since the third millenium BC.  They were perhaps Hurrians, or at least Hurrian-related.  When the state of Urartu was conquered by the Medes, the Kurti, which were also part of the Urartean state were also conquered.  While Urartu was Armenianizing, the Kurds were with much resistance, Aryanizing.  The process may have taken centuries since those mountainous regions were difficult to conquer, but even more difficult to hold.  The Assyrians were always trying to pacify those mountainous regions, but they knew that these were temporary measures, and even the Persians found these areas difficult to hold.  Xenophon, describing the penetration into the mountainous Carduchian region by the 10,000, related that a Persian army had been totally destroyed trying to subdue the region, and the region was thus independent when the 10,000 arrived.    and Originally posted by miller Kurds are a non-Arab Middle Eastern minority population that inhabits the transnational region known as Kurdistan, a plateau and mountain area in Southwest Asia including parts of Iraq, Turkey, and Iran and smaller sections of Syria and Armenia. They speak Kurdish, an Indo European language of a similiar lineage to that of Persian. They are widely thought to be descended of the Medes. Xenophon the ancient Greek historian recorded the Kurds in the Anabasis as "Khardukhi" a firece and protective mountain dwelling peoples who attacked his armies in 400 BC. The Kurdish languages belong to the northwestern group of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family; a close relative is Persian, which is in the southwestern group. I don't know what I must add to these quotes. Originally posted by Tatar44 the language "kurdish"is a persian language with a lot of Turkish and arabian words. wrong!!!! the correct answer is this: Persian and Kurdish are both considered as Iranic languages this does not mean that they are dialects of each other or dialect of a common language, It does mean they have common ancestor.Kurdish is considered  as a separate language and have its own syntax, grammar , phonetics and morphology which are specific to itself, by these standard Kurdish is considered as a separate  language or separate language group

Originally posted by Ardashir Originally posted by Maju Why? I made it myself only a few years ago based in the most modern and accurate archaeological research I could find. I'm not expressing the opinions of others... nor any fashion... but my own personal coclusions. If you have discrepances why don't you write about them? I will surely find them interesting, specially if they are as sound and well researched as your disqualification seems to imply. Yet, bring your "ultimate" theories and the facts behind to the forum, please. My links are enough and more than enough for rejection of your outdated theories.

You make me do all the work, what isn't very fair.

Still your links, thought interesting up to a point, give limited evidence, not to say none at all.

One relies heavily in the theory that IEs originally dwelt in the Nord-Pontic region, and also on written remains, which is obviously not much relevant, as I pointed out before. I must remind you that languages are, before anything, spoken languages and writing is only a possible accident that can happen to some languges at some times. Though written texts can be of great value they proof nothing but the latest possible date of arival of a given tongue to a given region, nothing more.

So the probable way of Indo-Aryan expansion could took place from Pontic steppes - via the Caucasus - to the Middle East - and then via Iran and Punjab to India. Else, they could reach India going crossing Central Asia, but in that case the Mitanni subgroup chose just another way from the Black Sea - to Mesopotamia.

Or they simply could have originally sprang from Central Asia. Also the Mitanni, could well be just a branch of the main Central Asia -> Iran -> India expasion of Eastern IEs, as I suspect most likely.

The Other is a hypothetical chronology of IE expansion based on what? Let's see:

        4000 BC - 3500 BC        Proto-Indo-European areal dialects

According to the comparative studies of all Indo-European languages, their phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactical similarities and differences we can now judge about dialectal history within the community which was only about to brake up.

The difference of certain languages in forming the medium voice of verbs and the relative pronoun is considered to have marked the earliest division of tongues within the Proto-Indo-European language. According to it, the community was slowly breaking into two dialectal groups: one, including future Venetic, Illyrian, Anatolian, Tocharic, Italic and Celtic groups, used the relative pronoun kwis (which) or its derivatives; its medium voice markers were almost everywhere -r (Latin datur, Hittite kittari, Irish tuigear). The other group consisted of Indo-Iranian, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Armenian and Thraco-Phrygian languages, which took up yos as a relative pronoun, and endings -oi / -moi as medium voice markers.

Well this just makes not much sense compared to what I know or think I know. It seems quite clear for instance that the closer relative of Latin is Germanic and vice versa.

I use the following tree, made up by the authors, based in the same methods they used in Genetic studies (two different methods that gave the same results, or so they say). Sorry but the text is in Spanish (I think it won't be difficult to identify the English equivalents, anyhow):

The only odd branches for my work-hypothesis (theory if you like) are Albanian and Celtic. And, up to a point, the close relation between Germanic and Latin. We must notice that, according to the info the authors give, the possibility of mixture altering the apparent chronology is not very likely (else each of the methods should had given discordant results), so I guess there must be other explanations and I have a couple of ideas about them. But I will let them for better occasion.

But once again I ask you: What's your explanation for existance of several common words between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic languages?

What about the Nostratic hypothesis. I must admit I don't have all the answers but the theory of the Nostratic superfamily (gathereing not just Uralic, Altaic and IE, but also Afroasian and Dravidic) could be your answer.

I like the idea of all those families migrating from Central Asia (Iran largely included) one after the other, with Semitic and Dravidic carriers marching first to the south (around 4000 BCE or maybe even before) and IEs to the West mainly (around 3500 BCE), while Uralic and Altaic groups would have remained behind by the moment.

I caress that hypothesis, specially liking the idea of Semitics (Afroasiatics) coming first from Iran and not Arabia or Syria (where evidence of any earlier Semitic tongue is just nul - and though Egyptians did speak an Afroasiatic-Hamitic dialect already around 3500 BCE, we can't know what they spoke in earlier)... but I can't proof anything and, thus, I only spoke because you asked.

Still, considering the cultural relationships between the Paleolithic European and (partly) SW Asian cultures, I suspect that is easier to believe these groups were somehow related linguistically (though very losely) and therefore were not IE. As the Neolithic of the Nord-Pontian area is ethnologically native (because archaelogy but also because some genetic studies seem to confirm that too) and that Neolithic (Dniepr-Don) lasts until 3500 BCE, I can't believe these were the earlier IEs.

Its self-evident that Basque is the last Western European native Paleolithic tongue and I can think that Caucasic families are also the last Eastern European (and Anatolio-Mesopotamian) native Paleolithic ones, both being cornered against the mountains though only losely related among the two, if at all.

Meanwhile the evil Pathriarchal Nostratic tribes sprung from Central Asia, invading and assimilitaing gradually everyone else.

...

I know I'm ranting but it's your fault: you asked.

Anyhow, just several comon words aren't enough to proof a linguistic relationship: they could be loans and even coincidences.

Edited by Maju

None of you guys are going back far enough.

Yea, but Turks were in Central Asia long before Ghengis's time. Gok Turks for example.

Edited by Zagros - 09-Nov-2006 at 14:32

It is clear  that Kurds are I.E. linguistically, but they look like more to Anatolian and northern middle eastern than Iranians. It is intresting that you can not make diffrence between an Azeri and a persian from Tehran, Isfehan or  mashhad ( north of Iran) but  can distiguish Kurds from other Iranian. Kurds should have the less amount of Iranian blood between the other Iranic groups.

decreasing amount of R1a1 percentage when you move westward in Iran(30% to 5%) and high percentage of j1 between people of Zagros, showing that they are originally  non Aryan. You should know that there are lots of words in Kurdish from Hurian language (not I.E.).