FORGOTTEN
BRONZE AGE
B. Lukács
President of the Matter
Evolution Subcommittee
of the
Geonomy Scientific Committee
of the
H-1525 Bp. 114. Pf. 49.,
lukacs@rmki.kfki.hu
ABSTRACT
Soviet archaeology proved that ancestors of Magyars
(now in
ALPHABETS
I have to use expressions &
names from many languages. While Unicode would permit almost any alphabets,
older Netscape Navigators would cause misrepresentations. So I keep midways. I
will not use anything else than Latin alphabet, and (Russian) cyrillics will be transcribed. However even Latin alphabet
has local varieties. Them I will handle as follows:
English
will be proper.
Magyar
will be almost correct, but for the long versions of ö & ü (so two primes)
I will use the ASCII characters ô & ű.
In Slovakian I generally
will omit diacritics not occurring in ASCII characters, but not always.
In Polish I will restrict myself solely to ASCII characters.
As for Russian, the traditional transcription will be used. However one point deeds clarification. There is an affricate
in Russian whose transcription is theoretically “c”, but most people uses “ts”
for acoustic similarity. However in
Manyshi
now uses a quite unsatisfactory Cyrillic alphabet. Until the terror of Stalin
they had a Latin-based national orthography, but it is not even Unicode.
Finno-Ugrists use professional transcriptions, which are quite complicated, and
indeed somewhat depend on the mother language of the actual linguist. So I will compromise. For vowels I will use
Magyar orthography, and for consonants some unholy hybrid of Magyar, Slovakian
& German. Namely: 1) for palatalized pairs of l, n, t & s I use the
Slovakian-like combinations l’, n’, t’ & s’ (but there s’ do not exist); 2)
single consonants you should read rather as in German (but s is unvoiced); and
for 3 single consonants I use the digraphs kh, gh
& ng. Digraph kh is the German ch, gh is the
voiced pair (more or less) and ng is read as in Finnish. I should then write
the name of the nation as “Man’s’i”, but I will not; let us tell that “Manyshi”
is in English.
Enjoy it.
0. ON THE GOAL
The origin of the Hungarian Nation
(Natio Hungarica on the proper paternal language of that Nation) is sometimes
regarded as obscure; but it is not obscure at all. The population of the
Carpatian Basin, called Onogurs, Ungars, Hungars & such after the Onogundur
Bulgars (so r-Turks) known there since VIIth century by Westerners, see e.g.
the mention of "Marcha Uungariorum" by Emperor Louis the German in
860 or that of Svätopluk, Kral' Uhorska, i.e. King of Hungary (Slovakian-English
mirror translation) at Year 880 by Lutheran Superintendent D. Krmán in 1708
amongst many others disturbed the Westerners. Then Eirik, Markgraf of Friuli,
made use of an internal struggle in the Basin. The Lord of Western Marches, the
Tudun, revolted and called for help; Eirik helped him, and then occupied
Then again the population of the
Basin started to perform effective raids on the West (and Southeast) as
everybody strong enough in that time. In that time the dominant power was at
the middle of the Basin. The dominant new horseriders, however, suffered two
raid failures from the German Empire in 933 & 955. While these failures
were serious to be felt, of course the traditional pictures in history killing
all the raiding Hungarians except 7 maimed survivors for example are absurd and
obviously served as propaganda for actual politics, on both sides. If you do not believe me (I am, of course, an
interested party in the question), think about how could you catch even
defeated light cavalry by means of infantry & heavy cavalry, which was
just the situation; obviously you must catch them all first, if you want to
kill them all. Obviously the greater part was able to escape; but it was the
interest of both top leaderships to tell differently; reasons are simple but I
do not want to go into unnecessary and trivial details.
Anyways, the Hungarian top leader
(Duke Taksony of the Magyars, who would have not been top leader if the
turbulents had become successful at Augsburg) made the Western raids to be
stopped, while the Emperors (three subsequent Ottos of the Saxon Dynasty) ate
up the trans-Oderan Slavs (cis-Oderan for their view), Obodrites, Daleminces
& such and then went to Italy. It
was not a real alternative to purge the Basin; first, because
He organised the hinterland, and his
son, Duke Geyza, took baptism. Then he was no more a pagan, so a crusade was
impossible. He was succeeded by his son Vajk, who took the baptismal name
Stephen and got Princess Giselle (Gisla, Gizella) of
This is the origin and genesis of
the Natio Hungarica; only the minor details depend on partial lies and
outsiders are not really interested on the details.
However what about the origin of Magyars? That is less trivial. Magyar
language is not Turkish, as you might expect for Middle Age horseriders
(Bulgar, Khazar, Avar, Hun &c.), but neither is Iranian as you would expect
for Late Antique ones (Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans &c.). Cavalieri-Sforza
correctly reports that the language is Siberian (well, Western Siberian), but then he is unable to find Siberian genes in
the Basin, so he concludes that Magyars first had taught the Siberian language
to the Europeans and then immediately died out; an interesting scenario. A
Magyar genetic expert, in one book, tells two mutually incompatible facts, that
1) the Magyar population is closest genetically to Germans & Slavs, and in
the same time 2) shows up 36 % of lactose non-digestion, unheard in Europe
while quite common in Eastern Asia.
In the same time, while Magyar
language is not Turkish, it contains hundreds of basic Turkish stems (not
simply borrowed Kulturwörte or phrases); and while it is definitely not
Iranian, its structure being diagonally opposite to any Indo-European
languages, the very fundamental "we-word", Magyar, comes from Iranian
"manush"="man". (Details will come in due course.) Strange enough.
It is even stranger that the
majority of proto-Magyars seem to have been Turcic. Just before the Conquest of
the Basin (or even just afterwards) the Magyars were the federation of 7 tribes
(+ another 3 counting as 1, however, the Turcic Kabars); now the names of 4 were r-Turkish, 1 was
z-Turkish, and only 2 were not Turkish. And still, Magyar is not a Turkish
language (although any Westerner could misclassify it).
But under this layer of
half-understood fragmented stories there is another, buried so deeply that we
seem not to remember anything at all about it. And still academic scholarship
(if you listen to it sufficiently) tells that we had that past, in Second
Millenium BC.
1. INTRODUCTION
And Poles always called themselves
in Middle Ages Sarmatian. Of course, the Natio Polonica (and Rzeczpospolita
Polska) meant the black- or brown-haired nobility
to be Sarmatian. Peasants were without doubt Slavic (being blond, with blue
eyes), and city people could be anything from German to Armenian, but who was
interested in the origins of people on foot?
We know from history that in the
north-south strip of lands of Poland-Hungary-Croatia the present states have
horserider ancestry and until
Robin Hood is a borderline hero. He
is an excellent archer (and in two more centuries North English archers would
crush the French nobility at Agincourt & Crécy), but what is the social status of Robin Hood? Is he a nobleman or a commoner? A very
important question in Middle Ages, and the answer is
eqivocal for nine centuries. Robin Hood is a warrior, without doubt, but not a
feudal knight. In continental
And
Do not be miscarried by the name
Finno-Ugrian. Finns are indeed European, but "Ugrians" are Siberian.
And there are more "Ugrians", than Finns; Poles are right when they
call the family "ugrofinskie". Magyars are relatives of Finns, but
far relatives. They are first relatives of the other "Ugors": the
Manyshi and the Khanti along the wide valley of the great Siberian river Ob. (I use always quotation marks for "Ugors".
The group exists, but the name is a mistake. No "Ugrian" called
himself by any name even similar to "Ugor"; German & Russian
scholars coined the term by wrong theories. As far as we know, the common
"Ugrian" name for "Ugors" was something similar to
Manush=Man. See Manyshi & Magy-Er. See also Appendix A.)
OK, Magyars on horseback could cross
fast the thousands of miles between River
Hungarian historiography hesitates
between the explanations that 1) Poles & Croats were mislead in Middle Ages
by legends or 2) relative small Sarmatian élites have organised Slavic masses.
However no Sarmatian idea ever occurred in
The problem is stated. Now comes the
surprising solution with proper references & citations; quite proper
academic & professional citations, mainly archaeologic, not historical. I
will be brief, partly because I used up a lot of space with the exposition,
partly because I only wanted to state the solution. It is surprising, but
clear. You can use it in any ways you want to.
But there is another surprising fact
as well. Let us see some commonplaces about Bronze Ages.
2. ON EXPENSIVE BRONZE &
IMPORTED TIN
According to historic commonplaces,
Bronze Ages were the times of oppression, big social differences, a small élite vs. masses of dependents, bound artisans
&c. See the classical Gordon Childe, e.g. [1].
While such thumb rules always
contain oversimplifications, in the present case there are good arguments.
First of all, Bronze was expensive.
Therefore Agriculture used a lot of stone tools throughout Bronze Age. True,
Bronze was used by military & craftsmen, but then in
Bronze was expensive (or, rather, in
societies without proper money, limited),
because one of its two constituents, tin, had to be imported from far places.
No doubt, originally some tin happened to exist at the
If you must get your fundamental
tools by means of long-range trade expeditions, that does not promote the
Rights of Commoners. Then Tin becomes a monopoly. In
the better case a monopoly of the Rich, but more probably the monopoly of the
Prince of the City. And then indeed the ruler taxes everything, redistributes,
checks and orders. This is seen in Bronze Age
OK; keep this in mind. And now, up
for "Ugrian" archaeology.
3. THE AGE OF
"UGRIC" UNITY
The 3 oldest Turcic loanwords in
Magyar, Manyshi & Khanti are the words for "swan",
"beaver" and "word"; the reconstructed forms are
"khotang", "khunt" and "saw", where the digraph
"kh" either stands for Scottish "ch" as in "Loch"
or still for the original "k"-sound which would go into
"kh" anyways. Now in Magyar/Proto-Turk they are
"hattyú/kotang", "hód/kund" & "szó/saw"; the
words are absent in Finnish languages, but "swan" is "khateng/khotyng"
in Manyshi/Khanti, and "beaver" is originally "khunt/khund"
(in Khanti the word now means rather "mole"), and "word" is
"saw/sau". The simplest explanation is that the still unitary "Ugric"
borrowed the word. But Turks are impossible (this single word stands for a
string of uninteresting arguments) near to "Ugors" before cca. Vth century BC, so in this time there is still an undivided
ancestor language of the present 3 "Ugric" ones. (To be sure,
archaeologists would prefer VIIIth century BC; again, I cannot imagine that you
would be really interested in the detailed arguments.)
Immediately after
this Khanty & Manyshi went to North, Magyar to South. So Hunnish
migration in IVth century AD and Bulgarian one in 463 AD (this latter recorded
by Priscus Rhetor as contemporary) missed Khanty & Manyshi, but surely did
not miss
So far, so good.
Of course, it would be nice to see some traces of the proto-Magyars trekking South, and there is a single trace. Near to
Maybe you are not impressed. But
decent Sarmatian burials point West. And also,
Archaeologist Sal'nikov found in one of these anomalous graves (to be sure, near
the village Razbegayevo, to be definite), legbones of a hare and a goose,
besides each other!
Now, a Sarmatian would not put goose
bones into a grave. But the Ob Ugor mythology knows about foremothers of
phratrias in the forms of both (female) hares and wild geese. So someone was
buried in the roughly Sarmatian kurgan with an "Ugric" mythologic
background but on the way to South. He must have been a Southern “Ugor”, so a Proto-Magyar.
So far again so
good. So Proto-Magyars going south mixed up with some Sarmatians,
learned steppe lore from them, but buried their dead with heads to North, not West, and somebody was born from the marriage of a Hare and
a Goose.
However, this picture is false, as
we shall immediately see.
4. THE ANDRONOVANS
Soviet archaeology discovered a
Central Asian- Southern Siberian Bronze Age culture called Andronovo. (The
eponym village is in the Achinsk rayon of the
Andronovo Culture is generally
regarded as Iranian or Indo-Iranian, in the first half of the second millenium
BC. Obviously Andronovo had evolutionary phases. Sal'nikov [2] distinguishes 3
phases as Fedorovka, Alakul’ & Zamarayevo. Filip puts Okunevo before
Fedorovka. Recently Koryakova (see e.g. [3]) distinguishes 3 steps as
Sintasha-Petrovka, Alakul' & Fedorovo and Sargary-Alexeevka. For any case
the culture occupies a Nortwest-Southeast strip bordered by the upper Eastern
corner of the Caspian Sea, Lakes Aral & Balkhas and the sources of River
Ob; for the Northern border the upper velleys of Ural, Tobol, Isim, Irtis &
Ob were parts of this culture. Today 4 types of vegetation occur on this
territory: from South to North steppe, steppe with sparse trees, a narrow strip
of temperate forests and tayga (pine forests) at the Northern border. However
vegetation was somewhat different in Andronovo times.
Older, noncalibrated, C14 analyses
gave 1400 bc for the Alakul' stage. However such an uncalibrated datum
generally corresponds to cca. 1700 BC. Koryakova [3] gives 1800 for
Sintasha-Petrovka, 1500 for Alakul' and 1000 for Alexeevka. (To be sure, this
Alakul' is not the substantial Lake Alakol' on the Kazak-Russian border, but a
much smaller lake near to Chelyabinsk. It is sometimes also written as Alakyl.
I think the uncertainty comes from Slavic/Turcic to English transcriptions.
Also note that there are as much as 3 Fedorovkas at the Northern fringe of the
Andronovo Culture.) According to Grigoryev [4] Sintasha starts
about 1800 non-calibrated, which must
mean 2150 BC.
The Andronovo culture shows material
homogeneity. It is a bronze culture. Bronze weapons & tools (axes, adzes,
pickaxes, sickles, daggers, knives, spearheads & arrowheads) are found as
well as bronze ornaments (as bracelets, pectorals or earrings) frequently;
these bronzes are not imported goods, but the culture had its own bronze
industry.
As for agriculture Andronovans were
dominantly stock-breeders: cattle, horse, sheep & goat. Of course I will
return to the horses; but I must mention here the dogs. Of course,
stock-breeders must have dogs; but in Fedorovka a dog was buried into its own kurgan.
That dog was important and honoured.
As for plant cultivation Andronovans
produced wheat, at least not far from rivers, and grinding stones are frequent.
True cities have not been found. The
sizes of villages vary between 1,000 and 40,000 sq. metres; the houses go up to
200 sq. metres. The big houses are partially underground, the walls are wooden
and they were divided generally into only two rooms.
I do not want to tell tales about
the high degree of Andronovo civilisation; surely the level is below
contemporary
5. ON NOMADISM
For a Westerner nomadism is a
synonyme of primitivity. One is a nomad if he has no home, no land, almost
nothing. The poor fellow is wandering to and fro, has a day-to-day existence.
This lifestyle either comes from negligence, or, in early times, from the
understandable lack of knowledge.
Now, this Western way of thinking is
simply absurd for a Hungarian. We learn that conquering Magyars were rich horse
nomads. They had silver & gold in abundance. They had lots of animals, and
while
Westerners call all non-fixed
superstructures "tents". However differences between a Navajo hogan
and a Magyar or Mongolian yurt are immense. The yurt has a wooden "skeleton",
a network, carrying felt covering. When transported, the wooden network is
partly dismantled, partly collapsed; the felt layers are dismantled. Then the
whole yurt can be put on a horse. A normal yurt is circular, conical at the
top, with cca. 3 m height and 5 m diameter. So it is
cca. 20 sq. metre, while not big, it is convenient to sit down, eat &c. for
a whole big family. With good felt cover it is dry in average rains. Felt
technology surely was improved in Andronovo Culture, although it comes from
Some kind of nomadism, recognised
more or less even by Hungarians existed already in
A horse nomad society is not
necessarily always on the move; and when it is not, it can grow some cereals.
But it can be on the move
indeterminably; then they barter corn from the neighbours, or raid them.
Otherwise the moving society is self-sufficient.
Such a society can be rich. Avar and
Magyar goldsmiths made better enamel than Western ones could. Some Hungarian
historians think they can recognise artifacts in
But this needs lots of technology.
You must be able to make very dense and homogeneous felt for thin yurt cover. You must be able to
direct unerringly your horse, which is both skill and technology. But very
first you must get the idea to move regularly. This all is the product of
Andronovo.
You may, of course, move in wagons;
then maybe you use oxen. Maybe this was done by the Hyksos
"shepherd-kings" arriving at
We know from archaeology of Avar
& Magyar graves that very frequently old horses were sent with the warrior
to the Otherworld. What is more, we know this motif from Hungarian folk tales:
the táltos horse seems old, in very poor condition, but when the hero sees it,
chooses it, gives it some nice food (e.g. "alive embers"), and then
the horse will rejuvenate, will be very tricky and will speak. (And the adjective
táltos is the Magyar translation of "shaman".) Obviously when the
warrior was younger, he had favourite horses. Some of them were preserved and
killed when the old warrior died. Then they could go to the Otherworld
together.
Now, we see this first in Andronovo.
First (before, say, 1500 BC) Andronovan horses are small. Surely, they were not
ridden; but they were fine food, so in the graves we find horse bones. The
deceased can eat well on Otherworld. But then horses become bigger. People eat
more and more horsemeat; but horse bones are rarer and rarer in the graves.
However there is one horse in richer
graves, This horse has full harness, and its head is
at reach of the deceased. He will be able to take the briddle. (Poorer graves
contain stuffed horses. Obviously the family could give away only a single
horse whose meat was eaten at the mourning banquet. Maybe the shaman can then
make it whole again. We know this practice from Magyar graves in Xth century.)
So indeed
Andronovo is the transition to horse nomadism. Why?
6. GLOBAL WARMING
An answer is global climate change
[5]. We do know that global climate does change. We do know that there were
such changes in historic times. We do know that in
Now, in
Contrary to modern thinking people
generally do not want warm. In
traditional farming societies they liked appropriate weather for their crops
& animals. With warmer weather the steppe became drier too, wheat starved,
and then stock-breeding became even more dominant for Andronovans.
But with warm dry weather even grass
became sparser. So Andronovans started to move. They did not move in all times,
of course. Maybe they kept the constant winter homes. But from spring to fall
they herded the animals to good pastures.
Possibilities are almost infinite.
Magyars just before and just after the Conquest (896 AD) had winter pastures
& summer pastures. Some Magyars were more frequently on move and they had
only yurts; some had fixed homes for winter and transient huts for summer. Huns
seem not to have had fixed homes at all. In XIXth century Hungary Magyars east
of
Maybe some Andronovans were on the
move twice a year, some monthly. They had the mounts from 1500 BC. They had had
the felt technology from the beginning but they were improving it. When the
steppes started to dry up, they were able to scope with.
The horseriders of the open grassland
honour the predatory birds. Obviously a bird can do something which is
impossible even for the horserider: fly. Compared to the farmer the horserider
is superiorly fast, and can attack from unexpected directions. But compared to
the horserider, an eagle, or falcon, or hawk, is even faster and can attack
from above.
So you can expect predatory birds in
the symbolism of grassland horserider nomads. And you must not expect this at
nongrassland nonrider nonnomads. For a settled agriculturist the hawk is not
Messenger of God or Spirit of State, but an evil force after the chicken.
(Still in a layered agriculturalist society the rich & privileged may keep
predatory birds. But they will not become national symbols; the great majority
will hate them.) And in a forest a predatory bird is not a strong animal but a
crazy one; it cannot catch anything.
So if somebody's national symbol is
a predatory bird then at least the ancestors were grassland horseriders even if
he is settled now. Think about Poles.
So Andronovans became horserider
nomads after 1500 BC. What else?
7. THE DEMOCRATIC WAY OF
BRONZE INDUSTRY
We saw that Bronze Industry led to
strong social differences in
And still: Andronovo Culture had decentralised bronze industry. In Early
Andronovo times even a village has more than one metal industry center! Maybe
each extended family.
You may ask, how was
this possible. My answer is: early people were not dumb and farmers are
not dumb. Plus: copper melts at 1084 °C and tin at mere 232 °C. In a
traditional substantial oven they can be melted. OK; but whence the tin, the
bottleneck of Classical Antiquity?
But first: why at all? Historians
like to tell that bronze has more stamina than copper. I have my doubts,
although alloys sometimes show more resistance to deformation than pure metals.
This is called "pinning force" and is caused by high translational
symmetry of the lattice of the pure metal. But
Probably because of the bad casting
of pure copper something was soon added. We know of arsenic "bronzes"
(Cu+As), antimon "bronzes" (Cu+Sb) and true
bronzes (Cu+Sn). Of them the last were the best.
Now archaeologists tell us that some
metal industry centers of the
And indeed, Altai is not too far
from the Eastern border of Andronovo Culture: Indeed, Altai is the Northeastern
border of the territory.
So
8. OUR OWN BRONZE INDUSTRY
And now we are at the main topic.
About 1500 BC the Finnish population in Seyma & Turbino (at the rivers Kama
& Belaya, in
Some 1200 km, as
much as
The handle of a Seyma knife shows
two horses. In 1500 BC there are no horses yet at Seyma. They are exotic
ornaments of the rich and fabulous East.
In the Rostovska cemetery (near to
And so on. So the Andronovo Lands
exported bronzes to Perm. And then
what?
And then nothing.
But now come the Soviet archaeologists about the
ethnic composition of Andronovo Culture. And I tell here that Soviet
scholarship was definitely not pro-Hungarian. Hungary was Hitler's last satellite;
oppressor of Slavs in XIXth century and any time before; and the inventor of
New Economic Model in 1968 and then the black sheep in Comecon (the Council of
Mutual Economic Help; imagine what was that). If a Soviet scholar told
something nice for Hungarians then the thing must have been very, very true.
So, what was the linguistic composition of Andronovo Lands?
First a negative
statement [7]. The authors tell that both Andronovo Culture and the
Bactria-Margiana Complex are routinely regarded as Indo-Iranian, and
"particular sites so identified are being used for nationalist
purposes"; indeed "ethnicity and language are not easily linked with
an archaeological signature".
Sure; Iranians may have claimed
Andronovo for nationalistic reasons & purposes, but no others. And it is
almost unequivocal in the literature that Andronovo has Iranian (or
Indo-Iranian) ties. The geographic position, for example, is excellent for
Airyana Vaejo, the Aryan Urheimat of Zarathushtra [8], [9]. Iranians must have
arrived to
And now comes
Soviet Archaeology. They told that life is more complicated. Andronovo was a
cultural unity but not linguistic or ethnic one. (As present
Now, Chernecov in 1973 argues for an
"Ugric" substrate among the Andronovans [7] and Stokolos is at
similar opinion [10]. Both Chernecov and Stokolos believe that "only the
Alakul" group had a specific Indo-Iranian identity; Sal'nikov also
believes that one branch of the Andronovo culture is "Ugric" [11].
Kosharev also sees an "Ugric" component [12].
While Sal'nikov conjectures about an
Eastern/Western dichotomy, others rather believe a Southern/Northern one, and
then it is obvious the guess that Sarmatians are the Southern group. When Fodor
synthetizes, he suggests a trial division: Iranians on South, "Ugors"
on North, and "Uralians" (Samoyeds) on East [5]. This would indeed be
a synthesis of Sal'nikov & Kosharev.
Now, in
Then came the
linguists, discovering the Finno-“Ugric" family and proving its reality.
So patriots accused the linguists for being mercenaries of the Austrian House.
Namely, common Finno-"Ugric" words did not reflect an important &
rich past. Rather common Uralic past can be reconstructed from common words as
centered about Reindeer. While such a reindeer economy was the top in
Magdalenien, say 15,000 BC, it was definitely not the leading culture of world
at 1,000 BC.
Linguists reconstructed the
evolution cca. as follows. The common
Finno-"Ugric" society separated from Samoyeds cca. in
3,500 BC. Samoyeds are par excellence reindeer herders now, so maybe ancestors
of Magyars were too in 3,500 BC.
Then "Ugors" separated
from Finns in, say, 2,000 BC. Now all Finnish nations (except Lapponians) are
stock-breeders (mainly cattle) and plant-cultivators (as much as it is possible
on the North), so maybe the ancestors of Magyars were too at 2,000 BC; but the
technique had to be rather rudimentary because names of domesticated animals are not common with any of the Finnish people,
and only horse & dog is common with Khanti & Manyshi. As for cultivated
plants, Magyar names are either (
So the pattern emerging from linguistics suggested a Siberian people civilised by Turkish
connection from cca. 500 BC, Early Iron Age. True, there were some old Iranian Kulturwörte.
I give the examples from a university textbook from 1951 as
"cow"="tehén"~daenus,
"milk"="tej"~dayah,
"odour"="bűz"~bud,
"gold"="arany"~zaranya (here the Iranian parallel is
Avestan) or "felt"="nemez"~namat (here it is Pahlavi).
Other Old Iranian parallels exist at least for: pay, meat, mule, chart, widow,
shirt, sword, 7, 10.
The etymologies here are not
perfect. Surely, the Magyar words are related to some Iranian language, but
very probably not just to the dialects/languages used in the demonstrations.
Lots of Iranian dialects may have existed. Also, the textbook tells that the
time of borrowing would be hard to tell. The general explanation was: more
civilized Iranians on the South. Some words can be found in Khanti &
Manyshi too (7, 10, gold, for example), others only in Magyar. (As for “Ugric”
metal words, see Appendix B.)
So a primitive
hunter-gatherer-fisher community learnt some tidbits of Civilisation from
Iranians on the South, then detached itself from the Northern relatives,
contacted some indeterminate Turkish tribe and learnt horse nomadism. (Note:
horse terminology is common with Khanti & Manyshi, so we cannot have
learned it from Turks; this was a drawback of the picture.) The scenario was
not heroic (except for fast and successful convergence to leading societies),
so patriots suspected that it was an Austrian (later Soviet) falsification for frustrating
national pride.
OK; could the patriots show an
alternative? Not really. They tried hard enough. Best choice was Sumerian
Relation. Since Sumerian had been the first civilisation with State, Writing
& such, they would be good for pride as Big Brothers. However there is
3,000 years gap in records, and the pronounciation of
Sumerian is scarcely known even now. However the idea was popular because Party
ordered the border control people to confiscate all Sumerologist books.
Other people operated with
Scythians, the close kins in Medieval tradition; but
language is not in kinship at all. And there were the Huns, of course.
But since the end of last Chapter
the reader can guess that Andronovo Culture would change the picture. Soviet
archaeology suggested "Ugors" on the Northern Andronovo Lands, with a
Late Bronze Age industry. Also, archaeology shows that 3,500 years ago
"Ugor" merchants carried the products of "Ugor" metallurgists
to Finns at Kama & Belaya. We had
our own Bronze Age history.
OK; it was common with Sarmatians. However I think it is a good analogy to
cite a Slovakian textbook for basic schools [14].
Observe that the book is Slovakian although it was printed in Magyar in
The population of
Italics are from the original, and I
translated the text as exactly as it is possible. But in
Using the analogy, there were the
Andronovan Lands. The South may have been called
9. THE GREAT TREK
And it was the Bronze Age of Khantis
& Manyshis too: there was still no separate Magyar language. But, maybe,
about 1200 BC the climate became drier. (Unfortunately climate reconstructions
are equivocal.) "Ugrians" on the North had two alternatives. On the
South of the North they started the mobile herding, and finally horse nomadism.
But on the North of the North a trek started Northward.
(The trek is archaeologic fact. Only the climate reconstruction is somewhat a
guess.) Lands were not too dry Northward, and plant
cultivation was still possible there.
And then again: colder & wetter.
That was Late Subboreal; I am not sure when it started, but it ended in 600 BC,
but then came Subatlantic, drier but even cooler. And then the Northern part of
"Ugrians" fell into the trap. They had a plant cultivation lifestyle,
but their new home became tayga. So they converted continuously to
hunter-gatherer-fisher life.
But what is the evidence for this
story? Anybody can invent a fabulous past for dear relatives, but I am not
interested in fairy tales. But there indeed are archaeologic evidences. The
nicest is the Ust'-Poluy finds.
"Uste" is
"mouth" in Russian: both our mouth, and the mouth of a river. But not into a sea, but into a bigger river. People familiar
with the Bohemian novel "Svejk, the Brave Soldier" may remember an
Odyssey around the city
However bronzes were found too, and casting negatives too, so the bronze is local. See
[16] too. Chernecov thinks about a colonisation from South. The Southerners sat
on top of a Northern substratum, and that is today's
The bird motif is frequent. A bone
comb shows two birds, probably predatory. A knife handle forms an
"eagle" head (you will see why the quotation marks). On the handle of
a bone spoon a predatory bird is eating the head of an animal. There is a
bronze spontoon with a predatory bird's head at the blunt end. And a
"cultic bronze (not from the Ust'-Poluy site) forms a big bird on the
breast (or in the stomach?) with 2 humans. Maybe the
bird carries them away, or maybe the bird is the forefather (-mother?).
Now think. Predatory birds are
victors on the open grassland but they are helpless in the tayga. Ust'-Poluy
Culture preserved a southern ideology.
Obviously the ideology of the superstrate colonizers.
Ust'-Poluy bird ornaments would be meaningless and unexplained without a
Southern grassland prehistory.
And indeed, see [5]: "Their
weapons (spontoons, arrowheads, swords) show especially numerous Southern
features, and they often do not differ at all from the weapons of Scythian and Sarmatian
warriors of the South." Or: "The Bandkeramik pots have their
parallels in Andronovo ceramics.". And so on.
In addition,
Look at the Song of Baptism. In 1715
the
Jagh únttöllum n'éwör-wój
s'un'öng kiwör
tórum sótröng khótal kastöl ti
khul'tös.
The
orthography here is ASCII-friendly, "ö" is cca. the
swa, prime on a vowel means length,
after a consonant palatalization, and
consonants are more Continental than English. The whole song with scholarly
orthography can be find in [17]. If you are curious
about the meaning, it is:
The usual sacrifice my
father gave to the God of Heaven,
the dish full of foal lard, I
will not make anymore.
True,
the hero tells that "not in a thousand days"; but that is a poetic
trick.
So earlier he made horse lard
sacrifice. You must not sacrifice fish oil to Numi Tórum if you can sacrifice
horse lard. From another song "Praise at Horse Sacrifice" we know
what happens with the meat: "the maiden from the
This is clearly horserider ideology
in a land unfit for horseriders. And the two Northern "Ugric" nations are now mere 26,000 together, while
10. THE TOGHRUL BIRD AND THE
ORZEL POLSKI
There is a white eagle in the arms
of the
What is more, the predatory bird is
on each banknote, and he is simply terrible. He is perhaps the Essence of the
State.
True, there are European states
without grassland tradition, where predatory birds are sometimes honoured. But
interestingly enough they are rather falcons. E.g. when Masarik built up
Now,
The last appearance was in the dream
of Emese, mother of Duke Álmos, in 818. Hungarian Christian chronicles tell
that she dreamt that a great bird settled on her; then she saw that she would
bear a big leader who will conquer a new land. Indeed, Álmos started the
Conquest in 895, and his son, Árpád finished it in 899.
No doubt, originally the story must
have told that the Turul was the father of Álmos. In some irregular intervals
the Heavenly Bird renovates the holidom of the leading dynasty. Even now nobody
may touch the Holy Crown of Hungary, kept in the Parliament under nitrogen
atmosphere in a very strong transparent case. The Holy Bird does not need care, He is flying very high in the Eternal Blue Sky.
Clearly we see here the Ust'-Poluy tradition; a predatory bird is the
representation of force. But remember that I expressed doubts when an
Ust'-Poluy bird was identified as an eagle; it may be, but it may be the Turul
as well. Even the Orzel Polski on the Polish banknotes does not seem too much
an eagle.
Interestingly enough, Medieval chronicles name the bird in zoologic way; although
it is possible that they were not familiar with predatory birds.
Note that our medieval chronicles
are written in Latin. Now, sometimes they write that the bird of Emese was the
"astur". And Simeon de Kéza, tutor of young Ladislas IV the Cuman
(seriously!) writes about King Attila of the Huns had a turul painted on his
armor. Now, moderns combine these two identifications
and in the Magyar texts they call Emese's Bird a Turul.
However
"astur"="héja", and héja is either hawk, or goshawk, or
kite. I am not an ornithologist.
But the astur bird is not too
popular in the countryside (he habitually eats chicken), so it is better to
leave everything at the supernatural Turul.
For any case, Polish and Hungarian
traditions are similar, and the two countries (a "Sarmatian" and one
with strong "Ugor" component) never
warred. And
11. THE ELUSIVE PAST
Interestingly enough, Magyar folk
tales and myths do not know anything about bronze.
Even the name is lost. Now we call "bronze" as "bronz". Borrowed from Europeans in relatively new times. All stories
are about blacksmiths. They indeed have great power. Turkish Tarkhans and
Mongolian Darhans are blacksmiths and
princes. The Magyar word is "kovács", but this word is Slovakian
(pronunciated in exactly the same way in both languages). "Kova" is
some stone or ore in Slovakian, in Magyar it is "flint". The
equivalent Turkish word exists, but as a name of a tribe: Tarján.
Surely, old Magyars had an abundance
of blacksmiths: there are folk tales how the hero got his excellent sabre. But
in these stories the word is Slovakian.
And no bronze in
the stories. We forgot a millenium of our history. Why and how?
Of course, you may use the lack of
Magyar Bronze Age memory as an argument against the whole scheme told here.
However that would have serious consequences.
First, the scheme told so far is
based mainly on archaeological finds. If you do not want palaeo-Magyar Bronze
Age at all, you must completely remove "Ugors" from Andronovo
Culture. Namely, one cannot put the end of Common "Ugric" into 2nd
millenium BC; the 1st millenium split is linguistic commonplace. Now, if you
remove all "Ugors" from the Culture, who where the Northern component?
Two answers are then imaginable.
Either Samoyeds, or another Iranians. Now, of course,
Samoyed tradition does not preserve more Bronze Age than "Ugric"
does, and Northern "Ugors" at least preserve some horse nomad
ideology. So you cannot gain anything by substituting "Ugors" with
Samoyeds in
To put out all Uralians from the scheme would be a radical enough solution,
causing more problems than solving it. First: then whither went those Northern
Iranians later? Second, then the Tomsk & Rostovka bronze industry,
exporting to Kama & Belaya would have been Iranian. But Permian (-Finnish)
languages do have some heavy proto-Magyar (Southern Common "Ugric"?)
influences, in the form of a linguistic league. (Identical
construction for infinitive, full series of voiced
stops & spirants, voicing after nasals &c.). But if there were
Iranians at the upper
So I think, it would be difficult to
remove the "Ugric" component from Andronovo, and Soviet archaeology
did not do it; surely for some reasons. In addition, we do know that Magyar
past is elusive in any time.
Look at later times, at and after
350 AD. Where are proto-Magyars at 350 AD?
Magyars are either already horse
nomads then (the scenario of this study) and then they are on the steppe, very
probably between Mtn. Ural & the
In the first case they meet the Huns
in 355. But we cannot find archaeologic traces of Magyars in the European Hun
Empire.
In the second case Magyars are
observers from the pine forests. Good. But Huns return to the East in 454,
while the Bulgarians start to migrate through the Ural-Caspi Gap in 463. This
would give exactly 9 years to learn
horse nomadism so well that finally Magyars can keep their independence on the
steppe, which is impossible.
Anyhow, Magyars start to West in 463
as latest time. And then there is no report of them and no archaeologic find for 4 centuries!
Remember, the Conquest of the
Where were the migrating Magyars
during 400 years between Latitudes 30° & 50°?
Some Western sources do not detect the conquest even at 896 AD.
They of course detect the raids and so believe that Avars collected again some
strength. Just for demonstration here I give an excerpt from Chapter XIX of
Widukind's "The Saxonian History". Widukind wrote his books about
959, and he was a close relative of the German Emperor (Saxon in that time).
"And then Charlemagne defeated
them [the Avars], ousted them across the
So, according to Widukind, there was no Conquest of Magyars at all.
Charlemagne fenced the Avars in, and Arnulf let them out, to get allies against
Moravians. We are not here at all; or we are Avars. Then it is only natural
that Westerners still call the
"Cervený kantár
Bielý kon';
Odavan az
ország!
Boze môj!"
Which means:
"Scarlet bridle,
White horse;
The country is lost!
Oh, my God!"
This
lament can illustrate Andronovo Culture too. Namely, 3 lines of this Slovakian
lament are indeed Slovakian, but Line 3 is Magyar!
So indeed Magyars were elusive
between 463 & 863 AD, and not too obvious even
later. Then maybe the forgotten Magyar Bronze Age is simply another Magyar
peculiarity.
12. ZARATHUSHTRA AT ALAKUL'?
Since
this Chapter is extremely multicultural, a variety of fonts will be used, as
follows. Neutral, scholarly notes remain in Times New Roman. Avestan texts will
be in Arial, Northern “Ugric” ones (Manyshi &
Khanty) in Lucida
Bright, and Southern “Ugric” (Magyar) in Lucida Sans.
The
title is rather a journalism: I cannot prove that
Zoroastrianism would have started in Southern Andronovo Lands. For example, it
is highly probable that Zoroastrianism, as we know it, is multilayered. This
may imply more than one Prophets. And if so, which one was the Zarathushtra?
Still,
Zoroastrianism is characteristic enough to be not hopeless to ask the
questions: (approximatively) when and (approximatively) where.
When?
From
Classical Antiquity the European majority opinion was VIIth century BC. Parsees
do not accept this datum and push him much, much down. I believe they are
right; but their opinions diverge as well.
The
holy books give the names of contemporaries, including King Gustasp, unknown
from non-Parsee literature. From VIIth century the name of the King should be
known. It is not. Also, the most archaic 2 layers of the holy books seem much
earlier than anything else Iranian known for us. The oldest parts of Avesta
show lots of parallels with Hindu RgVeda, closed in XVth century.
As
I told, Parsee experts are equivocal. Without proper references here, it seems
that Parsee experts consider 1500 BC as newest, and already not too probable.
P. B. Desai gives the death of King Gustasp (Vistasp) exactly at 2638 BC. He
elaborated the chronology of the Keyanian Kings; but these Kings have no
synchronisms in the outside world, so the results cannot be checked. Minocher
Karkhandawala pushes him back to 8,000 BC. And so on.
Now,
if European scholarship is not able to narrow down the range in lack of traditions,
European Science can do it.
If
there are good linguistic and phraseological parallels between Avesta and
RgVeda, Avesta must go down at least to 1500 BC, and Avesta cannot be older
than Zarathushtra. My guess is that the earliest records in Avesta seem to be
1300-1500 BC; but of course this can simply be the last formulation.
On
the other hand we cannot shift back the story indefinitely. The agriculture
depicted in Avesta is full-fledged if not too refined. Cattle are bred, which
puts the stories cca. not before VIth millenium BC.
Moreover, King Gustasp has horses. Now, the first massive horse domestication
is cca. 4400 BC at the Dneper. At other places I would
be surprised for anything not after 4000.
Even
4000 BC is fairly too old. See at the point Where.
Where?
They
could have come theoretically from East or North. North is much more probable:
anyways, Persians are fairly fair-complexioned even now.
If
you want to migrate to Historical Iran from the North, you must take one side
(or both) of the
Let
us go to [9]. Using Avestan texts, the author states that 1) in a not quite
definite time (which is, however preserved in Avesta) the delta of Rangha (Rha,
Etil,
There
is a story about the navigator Paurva, the angry demon-smiter Thraetaona and
the Water Deity Anahita. You can check in Khorda Avesta [18]. In the Ardui Sur
Bano (or Aban) Yasht, the Hymn to the Waters, from Par. 61 the story tells that
the navigator was going home to the mouths of Rangha, but became lost enough
when Thraetaona changed him into a vulture. The navigator (whose proper name is
missed from that Yasht, but not his nickname) flew 3 days, then gave up and
prayed to Ardvi Sura Anahita, promising a thousand libations plus meat and soma
(I mean, haoma) if Anahita helps him home. Anahita changed him transiently into
a maiden (Why? For her convenience? For his crying?),
and in Par. 65 put him down at his own house. So the proto-Iranian navigator
lived at the mouths of Rangha/Volga; but Anahita was also familiar with the
River Rangha, because the same hymn in Par. 129 tells us that Anahita bears a
dress made of beaver skins. Now, beavers live in Rangha, but not in more
Southern Oxus & Yaxartes.
Now,
while in Ardui Sur Bano Yasht Anahita speaks with Zarathushtra, the actual
story is probably pre-Zarathushtran. However the next clue is not. In Vendidad Fargard 5, Pars. 15-19 Zarathushtra asks Ahura
Mazda about a fundamental problem [18]. Dead bodies exude nasa, extremely polluting matter.
Now, Zarathushtra teaches the people to put the remains on elevated platforms.
Then comes Ahura Mazda, makes rain, and rainwater washes down the nasa. Is this proper? Is this logical? But Ahura Mazda tells
that this is OK; the waters originate indeed from the sea Vouru-kasha, but He
makes them flowing unseen to the sea Puitika, there they are “boiling”. They
become cleansed there, so then they may flow back to Vouru-kasha, and there is
no problem at all.
And
then comes Ref. [9] and shows that there is only one definite place where this
explanation had sense. If the Vouru-kasha is the Caspian Proper, and the
Puitika is its bay, the Kara-Boghaz, then everything is nice. Kara-Boghaz is an
extremely evaporating, salty and odorous gulf. Present salinity is cca. 35 %,
and lots of Glauber salt (and its anhydride) are also there. (And look: Ref. [9] suggests the translation of
Puitika not “cleansing”, but “foul” or “rotten”, through Pahlavi, and looks for
Indo-European etymologies. Surely, they exist. But there is a Magyar etymology
too: “büdös”=”putag”=”foul”. We do know,
that Magyar “bűz, büdös” comes from some Iranian language. So
indeed Puitika is The Foul, a Büdös.)
Now
what help is from the salt, Glauber salt, magnesium chloride and such of
Kara-Boghaz? The chemical cycle works as [9]: the level of the Puitika is
several metres below that of the mother sea (by evaporation). So the water from
the Vouru-kasha goes down into the Puitika, where 1) the extremely strong
solution dezinficies it; 2) the evaporation distilles the water. If Eastern
winds bring the vapour back into Vouru-kasha, it is already pure rain.
However
this circular process works only at the Kara-Boghaz. So that is the most
probable place to invent the Zarathushtran way of handling the dead. Q.E.D.
And,
see, that was the
Of
course, this does not imply that
And,
indeed, for example Andronovo practices show honour to dogs. (I mentioned a dog
in his own shallow kurgan earlier.) Now, look for the Fargards [18]. Fargard
13 tells the rules about dogs, and 20-45 of Fargard 15 tells how a good man has
to behave towards a pregnant bitch. Also look for "Shayest
Na-Shayest" i.e. "Proper and Improper" in [20]. Dogs are not at
the top, but they have their definite place and they are positive forces, not
much below the top. They definitely have spirits.
Now,
it is an argumentation of 200 years if any really old Iranian tradition can be
found in Old Magyar formulae or not. The problem is not settled, for obvious
reasons. For example, take the name of Iranian negative arch-power Ahriman. A Magyar world, "ármány",
meaning negative plots, is very similar. However the word may have been formed
any time between the Prophet Zarathushtra and XIXth century AD; and we do know
about poets in XVIIIth & XIXth centuries concocting Old Magyar mythological
personages.
Also,
we do know Magyar traditions of fighting shamans (táltoses) in the forms of white vs. black horses or bulls; the whites
are the positive. This seems Light vs. Darkness, as in
And
since not yet a single line of Magyar tradition is identified as from Second
Millenium BC, we cannot decide if we have preserved anything from that time.
However let us see Manyshi tradition.
Rombandeeva
is an ethnic Manyshi woman linguist who condensed the rules of Manyshi society
about matters female; from her own experience. Her opinion is that Manyshi
traditions about women were absolutely silly. On one hand it seems true, more
or less. In the other, that is a well known trick of Soviet communist
propaganda to turn women of ethnic minorities against the rules and the men of
their own society. However now let us see the rules for menstruating or
pregnant women according to [21].
But
first let us note that in medieval times lots of silly taboos existed for
menstruating women even in
First of all, Manyshi
society does believe in male supremacy. Therefore Manyshi theology teaches that
males have more "mobile spirits" than females. Quite definitely, at
death the mobile spirits (Magyar "iz", in "izé"="thingummy" or "izzad"="respirate";
Manyshi "ut"="something"; “l’akhtkhatne is”=”reincarnating spirit”) look for new bodies. Now, these mobile spirits
of a man can invade 5 bodies, but from a woman only 4. I do not think, however,
that this difference influences too much in Manyshi society.
Now, from maturation to menopausa a
Manyshi woman is always somewhat impure. However outside of menstruation or
pregnancy the impure area is practically the big toe. So the woman's shoes are
always impure. Therefore she must not touch any thing able to be impure with
her shoes, or must not hold her shoe above the object. She is not assumed to
put her spare shoes on places where men can meet them.
Any thing small enough is able to be
impure, except iron objects.
When menstruating, the woman is impure
up to her neck, therefore she is confined to a
"small house". She can leave the "small house", but cannot
enter the proper house. Also she has taboos when using a boat.
During pregnancy the whole female body
is impure except for the hairs. Lots of taboos exist during pregnancy.
And
now look at Shayest Na-Shayest [20]. The important term is "Nasa"; Nasa is the impure or polluting matter. Dog's look often can
neutralize the Nasa, at least partly. A lot of Nasa is present at the case of death, for example.
Fuel
(dried dung) or ashes are polluted if the limbs of a
menstruating woman touches them; so they (fuel & ash) must be washed.
The clothes of the woman, to be sure, are washed with salt & lime, and
afterwards still the salt & lime are still impure and have to be washed as
stone has.
At
the start of menstruation the woman must put down her jewels, especially the
necklace and the ear-rings. Cooked food is polluted if a menstruating woman
comes nearer than 3 steps. She must not touch the bedding of other persons.
Fargard
16 is especially about menstruation. The place of the menstruating woman is 15
feet from the fire, the same from water and the holy bundles of Baresma; and 3
feet from other humans. Her foods and drinks must be carried in metal
containers, again, not nearer than 3 feet.
Structural
similarity between Avestan and Northern “Ugor” ideas about the foulness of menstruation would be hard to deny;
but the actual rules and rituals differ enough. So if there is any genetical relation, that is from times before Zarathushtra. Again, Southern “Ugors”, Magyars, forgot everything. There is no more problem with menstruating
women than anywhere in
And
now let us see Kleijn [8]. He suggests 3 Iranian-Northern “Ugric” etymologies.
For Indian “soma” he suggests the Finno-Ugric “soima”. He cites [22], in the
sense that common Finno-Ugric “soima”=”vessel” tended to the meaning “mortar,
sacred wooden vessel”, because soma (see immediately) was made in mortars,
pressing the juice. I would like to see an explanation why the Indic, not the
Iranian form is similar to Andronovan “Ugor” forms, but let us proceed.
Then
he suggests that soma/haoma was the
juice of pangh (Khanty), so a special mushroom. It is told that the mushroom
is the “death-cap” or “fly-agaric”, and it lived only in the tayga. So
The
similarity pangh/bangha is not bad
indeed. Still, I would tell that present
Kleijn’s third etymology is for a mythic
multifeet deer-like animal with the name “sarabha” in Vedic, which reminds him
to the Northern “Ugric” multifeet elk “shorp”. However here is a
real problem. Not simply that we again would have an “Ugric”-Vedic contact,
instead of “Ugric”-Avestan one. The problem is that “shorp” is problematical from several viewpoints.
While
I am a Southern “Ugor”, my language is near enough to Manyshi & Khanty. The
word “shorp” does not exist, at least not in literary or majority Manyshi;
the “elk” is “sorp” in Manyshi. In addition it does not mean a multifeet elk; it is simply “elk”. And
it has a good all-Ugric etymology without any reference to feet. (Indeed this
etymology is even good Finno-Ugric,
but that is not important now.) Let us see step by step.
In
Magyar there is a generic animal name “szarvas”, denoting 3
animals with antlers: the
Now,
Manyshi “sorp” is Magyar “szarv” (the initial consonant is exactly the
same, only Magyar orthography is peculiar), and the etymology is considered
excellent by Finno-Ugrists. So “sorp” is simply
“horn, antler, protuberance”, so “elk”. Without any reference
to feet.
However,
indeed, there is a Manyshi tale about 7 peculiar elks. Look at Text 12 of [17]
(Sát sorp akw
lágl tarmöl l’úl’söt): the hunter finds 7 elks in the forest standing on exactly 1 foot. (In Magyar
the expression is equivocal: they may stand on 1 foot per animal or on 1 foot
altogether. I think the ambiguity would be the same in Manyshi, but you will
see clearer if you read the actual story.) The hunter invents a tricky scheme
and catches all of them.
Now,
in this story there is not an elk with multiplicity of feet, but rather the
opposite. So I would argue against a borrowing (Andronovan or not) sorp~szarv -> sarabha. Sorp is normal
elk.
Still,
even without “sorp”, cultural ties between old “Sarmatians” (Iranians) and “Ugors”
seem to have existed.
But there may be
another parallel; the unique bird. We saw that "Ugors"
honoured a predatory bird, real or imaginary. He is on the Ust'-Poluy bronzes,
he is the Toghrul Bird of Magyars, and traditionally Sarmatian Poles call him
now the Orzel Polski. Now, accepted Iranian Zoroastrians honour also a bird,
even if he is more legendary even than Orzel Polski. He is the giant Simurg
Bird, either a gryphon or not, but big enough. See also Appendix E.
13. DISCUSSION
I stop here. Obviously we could understand
better the prehistory of Magyars, and even the present Hungarian society if the
forgotten Bronze Age were discovered. If it has indeed been forgotten...
Let us see 2 parallels: the
orang-utan and Planet Pluto. Both examples show that even best science gives false results in a false
scheme.
The age of the Missing Link in human
evolution is a popular game of science. Somehow you classify human-like animals
& skeletons as Man and Un-Man, and then you start to find the last common
ancestor of the two groups, or calculate the age even if you do not find it. Be
careful; there is a trick in defining the problem; as you can guess it from the
wildly varying results.
In the 60's the Age of the Missing
Link was 20-25 My; now it is 5-6 My. How is it
possible?
Let us concentrate first on living
man-like animals. There are 5 hopeful ones: man, bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla
and orang. The last 4 are obviously not men, so let us look for the common
ancestor of man on one hand (Group Hominids, with lots of other skeletons), and
bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla & orang on the other (Group Pongids, with lots
of other skeletons).
Detailed anatomical knowledge was
used with the result that common ancestor of Hominids & Pongids (I mean,
all 5 living) was improbable after -20 My, and even more
probable at -25 My.
Then, about 1975, quantitative
genetic distance became measurable, and Sarich, Wilson, King, Bruce and Ayala
in 3 years worked down the age of the Missing Link of Man vs. Un-Man to 5-7 My.
How was it possible?
It became an answer to another question. Instead of a big
review, I take a fairly recent article [23] and demonstrate on it. There are 10
distances between 5 species. It seems that 4 forking happened; the last between
chimpanzee & bonobo some 3 My ago, but that will
be neglected here. The next newest forking was that of a common ancestor into
man on one hand and into a proto-chimpanzee, ancestor of both chimpanzee and
bonobo, on the other. This happened 5.1±0.8 My ago.
There was an earlier forking, into
gorilla vs. the common ancestor of man, chimpanzee & bonobo, 6.3±0.6 My ago. And orang comes into the picture only 13.8±0.8 My ago.
So there is no natural group
containing "the 4 anthropoid apes" vs. man, and earlier,
anatomy-based, research used a wrong scheme. Of course, the last common
ancestor of all five lived 13.8±0.8 My ago, and then the old 20 My is not too wrong. But nobody
should have been interested in the Age of Missing Link to orang-utan. Missing Link to man lived 5.1±0.8 My
ago. And man is much nearer to chimp than orang.
Planet Pluto produced lots of
anomalies since discovery. Then several years ago it turned out that Planet Pluto does not exist; instead
Pluto is the biggest member of a second asteroid belt (the Kuiper Belt). So
then there are no anomalies. Sizes drop both in the Main Belt and in the Kuiper
Belt; and asteroids are immediately discovered when astronomers start to look
for. In the main belt the Zach collaboration was successful in cca. 3 years; as
for Asteroid Pluto, Tombaugh was
ordered to look for Planet X on
If Magyars did not have any Bronze
Age but borrowed metallurgy in Early Iron Age (quite possible archaeologically,
since, as told, no Magyar find is identified at all until the Conquest!), then
Magyar society was a hunter-gatherer-fisher society. But then Ust'-Poluy
Culture was much more sophisticated; and in this scheme any trace of any 2nd
millenium civilisation (if found or at least suspected) will need mysterious wanderers
or missionaries, Sumer emigrants, Subartu metal collectors in Mtn. Ural &
so; or Mu. (And, while experts do not observe such traces, not quite such
experts detect lots of anomalies and look for
On the other hand, the Chernecov-Kosharev-Sal'nikov
scheme (as I may call it) explains the Ust'-Poluy bronzes, the peculiarities of
Northern "Ugric" shamanism or the unique "Ugric" horse
terminology and the traces of old "Ugric" equestrial tradition. If something will be detected later
about Bronze Age remnant traditions in the Magyar society, then that will get
its explanation automatically. (Unfortunately Hungarian linguists do not seem
to be conform with the Chernecov-Kosharev-Sal'nikov
scheme; see Appendix F.)
And I finish the discussion with a
discussion of the Sarmatian idea of XV-XVIIIth century
Namely, look at Iranians in
|
Cent. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
- |
Iazyges |
Roxolani/Alans |
Alans |
Sarmatians |
|
2 |
- |
Iazyges |
Alans |
Alans |
Sarmatians |
|
3 |
Antae |
Iazyges |
Siracians |
Alans |
Sarmatians |
|
4 |
? |
Iazyges |
HUNS |
HUNS |
Alans |
|
5 |
Alans |
HUNS/Iazyges |
HUNS/Antae |
HUNS/Antae |
? |
|
6 |
Alans |
AVARS |
Antae |
Antae |
Alans? |
Only
Iranians are shown + superstrates in UPPERCASE. The Table does not seem to tell
too much, but let us clarify somewhat the names, because sometimes alternative
names appear. So:
Sarmatians
include the tribes Aorsi, Siraces, Iazyges, Roxolani
& Alans. And especially Alans include Serboi, Choroates & Antae. So really all Iranians in
Look at the flatland (pol'e) above
the
We do not know when did Slavs arrive
to Poland/Ukraine; surely later than 3rd century. No doubt, now the
Finally, I declare that I did not forget about Finns. Finns are surely
related to Magyars. But this story was an essentially Western Siberian one;
only Perm Finns appeared as buyers of "Ugric" bronzes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Some discussions with Dr. Katalin
Barlai are acknowledged.
APPENDIX A: ON THE TERM “UGORS”
In this Appendix I do not give
references because the Appendix discusses a laughable mistake. Briefly, the
linguistic term “Ugor, Ugrian” is completely arbitrary, nobody ever called
himself so, and it appeared as a “Klingklang etymology” of Russian & German
(and Russo-German) linguists some 200 years ago. Let us see a few mistakes:
1)
2) The same word is Ungarn in
German. The word must have come from the Onogurs, because Emperor Louis the
German mentions a “Marcha Uuangariorum” as early as 860, when Magyars were not
yet in the Basin.
3) Herodotus speaks about some
“Iyrkas” at the Northern extremum of
4)
So when Magyar-Manyshi kinship became established,
German & Russian linguists believed that U(n)gar
and Ugra mean something similar and coined the name of the linguistic
(sub)family “Ugor”. Before the “Ugric” split “Ugors” called themselves cca. “*Man’c’e”. This word is preserved in “Magy-ar”, “Manyshi”,
and the name of one Khanty phratria of the two: “Mos’”.
However I would confuse
everybody by using Man’c’e instead of “Ugor”.
APPENDIX B:
I took 6 of the 7 "original
metals" (known in Classical Antiquity); quicksilver is omitted for
exoticity. The Magyar word is the mirror translation of English. If the Manyshi
one is the same both genetically and for meaning, then the Manyshi word is
given without any remark. If there is an etymology but the Manyshi word denotes
other metal, then first the Manyshi word is given and then the meaning is in
simple brackets. If, however, the equivalent is not etymologically connected,
then it is given in square brackets.
|
English |
Magyar |
Manyshi |
|
Gold |
arany |
tarn'e
(copper) |
|
Silver |
ezüst |
[oln] |
|
Copper |
réz |
[tarn'e] |
|
Tin |
ón |
oln
(silver) |
|
Lead |
ólom |
wólem |
Obviously,
for gold & silver, Manyshi does not distinguish between white silver and
white tin; and similarly between yellow-red gold and red copper. It is a question
how old, Bronze Age, Manyshis distinguished between them. There is good
Manyshi/Magyar agreement for lead; and none for iron, but Magyar/Manyshi split
may have been in Bronze Age.
However archaeology shows that 2,000
years ago some Northern “Ugor” around Ust’-Poluy produced his own bronze by
alloying tarn’e with oln. The question is: how he called the result?
APPENDIX C: SOME NOTES ON
MIR SUSNE KHUM
The main Manyshi deity is Numi Tórum
(Northern & literary Manyshi) or Num Tóröm (Pelim Manyshi). He lives in
Heaven, together, of course, with his extended family. Numi Tórum has some
horses; not too much for Mongolian or Magyar standards.
Numi Tórum has 7 sons; the idea is
quite familiar for Magyars where the tribal alliance consisted of 7 tribes.
Also, the youngest son became the
most successful, the same pattern as in Magyar folk tales. This youngest son
has a winged horse, and watches the world from above. His mother is Lady
Kaltesh; according to some sources Lady Kaltesh was thrown down from Heavens,
according to others she was terrestrial, but the son anyways was born on Earth.
Traditionally (at least from Reguly’s record in the 1840’s) he is referred as
Mir Susne Khum.
Some ethnographists believe that Mir
Susne Khum is a synchretistic figure from a Manyshi hero and Jesus. Others
suspect St. George, patron saint of
Mir Susne Khum is generally translated as “Man Supervising/Surveying
the World”. Now, the form and the canonical meaning are
peculiar.
The word “khum” means “hím”=”male”
in Magyar; surely the etymology is valid. Magyar “h” evolved from proto-“Ugor”
“k” through “kh” degree before velar
vowels; the process remained at the “kh” degree in Manyshi. The “í” is
palatal in “hím” now, but there are written proofs that it was velar several
centuries ago. Change from “u“ to velar “i” is almost trivial.
The word “susne” is a present
participle. However the root is anomalous; it should be “suns-“=”see, watch”.
It is either a remnant from an extinct dialect, or comes from regular “sunsne”
via losing “n”. Note that the name of the mother, Kaltesh, is certainly
dialectal: there is no “sh” in the literary Manyshi.
However the first word, “mir” is
peculiar enough. It is the nominative of a Manyshi word, “mir”, which comes
originally from Russian, and means “world” only in Russian. Let us go step by
step.
For first sight a Nominative here
seems strange if we accept the canonical translation “Man Supervising the
World”. We would expect Accusative. However 1) there is no Accusative ending in
literary Manyshi (while there is in the Southern dialect); and 2) even in
Magyar, where the regular accusative ending is “-t” in such composite
constructions the Accusative is formally in Nominative. The Magyar mirror
translation is Világ-ügyelô Férfi, where “Világ”=”world” in Nominative, “ügyel”=”watch”, “-ó/ô”=”-ing”, and “Férfi” is
“man”.
Now, “mir” is a Russian loanword,
and in the Manyshi vocabulary “mir”=”nép”=”folk”, not “world”, contrary to the
usual translations.
True, in the original Russian one
meaning of “mir” is “world”. There “mir” has 3 meanings: 1) “a subsystem of the
obshchina”, 2) “peace”, 3) “world”. It seems that meaning 2) was the original
(at least in Slavic Slovakian “mier” is only “peace”).
“Obshchina” is the original Eastern
Slavic land community (roughly a village), and “mir” is cca. its
council or Thing. As it is well known for any Hungarian with Marxist education
(obligatory at universities until 1990), there was originally no private
ownership of lands in
Now, when people are
undifferentiated parts of land communities, then the land community is cca. The
World, and peace is necessary in the operative body of
the land community. Hence the trial meaning in Russian.
There were no land communities in
Slovakian lands, surely not since the foundation of Regnum Hungariae. This is
the reason for the single meaning there, showing that the trial meaning is Eastern Slavic. But the problem is that
the meaning “World” would need intimate Manyshi-Russian bilingualism in
religious matters. I leave this problem open here.
Mir Susne Khum is clearly a title, not a proper name. A source
mentions a name (?) for the hero: Tari-pes’-nimala-s’aw. While I am unable to
etymologize it, it is at least does not seem partially Russian.
But the winged horse of the hero is
clearly horse nomad ideology; and maybe a descendant of the Preying Bird too,
seen in the Ust’-Poluy finds.
APPENDIX D: ON RELIGIOUS
PERSECUTIONS OF PETER THE GREAT
Even Westerners may have heard about
religious persecutions of Peter the Great. In Pravoslav countries State
dominates Church, and disagreement is unimaginable. So when raskol’niki (old
style believers) had some dissent, they were persecuted. Of course they could
not even imagine anything outside Pravoslavism; still they objected innovations
about how many fingers are necessary to make the sign of Cross, and also about the
actual translations of Psalms. They believed the changes to be dirty Catholic
innovations from
In the same time another brutal
persecution happened in
1) Emperor Peter the Great gave
the order (ukaz). He was the least fanatic of the 3, he even had
Calvinist & Lutheran friends, but while a Calvinist Dutchman or a
Lutheran German could be some force behind the Throne, and so useful, otherwise
religious homogeneity is good for
2) Filofey
Leshchinskiy, Pravoslav arch-bishop of
3) Georgiy Novickiy was not a Man of Power; quite
opposite. He was an Ukrainian exile in
The action started in 1712. 1715 was a brutal enough year, and Hungarian ethnographers put the origin of “Song of
Baptism” to that year. (They collected the song more than a century later.) In
the same year the Ukrainian exile produced a valuable ethnographic work [26],
which, for example, gives the detailed description of “Ugric” Bear Rituals,
mixed with Greek Orthodox propaganda & the apology of His Imperial Majesty.
According to Northern “Ugric” tradition Novickiy was not
simply fanatic, but maybe the most violent member of the group too. But in 1717
he met his fate. Tihon Nakhrach, Manyshi arch-priest of the
Of course later the arch-priest was thrown into a Russian
prison. Southern “Ugors” avoided such fates by their choice in 1000 AD.
APPENDIX E: ON BIG PREDATORY
BIRDS, ZOOLOGIC AND NOT
As I told, for a horse nomad a predatory
bird is the ideal horse nomad: it can raid even the horse nomad. Now let us see
the birds in possible connection to the Andronovo Culture from bird's eye
overview. But first a physicist's remark.
A bird cannot be arbitrarily big, if
flying. The biggest flying bird now is perhaps the condor (Sarcorhampus
gryphus); his wing span may reach 3 m, but even then the bird is lighter than a
man. If you increase the characteristic length L, then M~L3, but the
lifting power is proportional to L2. So either the stroke frequency
or the flying velocity should be increased too, which would put extra strain to
both bones and muscles. So flying ability breaks down
somewhere, according to phenomenologic experience just above the condor.
In accordance to this, running birds, as e.g. the ostrich, can be bigger.
Several Kainozoic running birds were at least 2 m high, and the biggest, the
moa, Dinornis maximus, reached 3.6 m, and was extant in 1350 AD. However we are
here not interested in non-flying birds.
This means that any bird being able
to carry a grown man is very probable belongs to pure religion. Now let us see the list.
The Simurgh Bird. We
know him from Avestan literature and he is surely big. In some descriptions he
has 3 feet. He is King of the Birds. In Shahname he helps to grow up the hero
Rustem, in which case he is probably beyond the theoretical line.
The Imdugud (Anzu) Bird of
The
Ust'-Poluy "eagle". From the Murlinsk depot, Ust'-Poluy Culture,
bronze. A rather sturdy bird, longer than one man and wider
than two. He carries two men in his stomach (?). Surely
unable to fly.
The Toghrul Bird. National symbol. Probably the real father
of Prince Álmos (819-895). He generally is flying very high, in the
Eternal Blue Sky (Kök Tängri in Turkish.) Probably goshawk or
kite. Size is not reported.
The Orzel Polski. White eagle,
national symbol, size is not reported.
The Bird of Jug 2 of the Nagyszentmiklós
Hoard. (In the
Gryphons. Big
birds in the general direction of the
APPENDIX F: ON HUNGARIAN
IDEAS ABOUT IRANIAN-FINNO-"UGRIC" LINGUISTIC CONNECTIONS
I very briefly recapitulate the
opinion of I. Harmatta about Finno-"Ugric" borrowings from Iranian [29].
As you will see, the timetable is off for some centuries compared to the
Chernecov-Kosharev-Sal'nikov scheme, but the chronology is purely linguistic, so it is possible that only there is some
discrepancy between Linguistics & Archaeology.
1) Proto-Iranian Period. From very old times to cca.
800 BC. Borrowed words are cca. equally frequent in
all Finno-"Ugric" languages, but it seems that languages borrow
rather individually. Magyar borrows the words of most developed agriculture;
Manyshi & Khanty borrow less. [Since this is still Common "Ugric"
time, surely they loose some words on the North. At the end of this Period
Andronovo Culture already does not exist.]
2) Old Iranian Period. Between 800 BC & 200 BC.
Komi & Permyak borrow most, Magyar lest. The influence of
Scythians. [It is rather difficult to choose a place for Magyars farthest from Scythians.]
3) Middle Iranian Period. Between 200 BC & 800 AD. Finn stops to
borrow, Magyar borrows the most. This is surely the separate life of
Magyar on the steppe (which is elusive, as I told).
REFERENCES
[1] V.
Gordon Childe: What Happened in History? Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1954
[2] K.
V. Sal'nikov: Ocherki drevnei istorii Juzhnogo Urala.
[3] L.
Koryakova: Social Trends in Temperate
[4] S.
A. Grigoryev: Sintasha i arijskie migracii vo II tis
do n. é. In: Novoe v arheologii Yuzhnogo Urala.
[5] I.
Fodor: Verecke híres útján... Gondolat,
[6] M.
F. Kosharev: Sredneobskii centr turbinsko-seyminskoi bronzovoi metallurgii. Sov. Arheol. 1964/4, p. 20
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[9] F.
J. Vajifdar: Avestan Geography: Some Topograhical Aspects.
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[10] V. S. Stokolos: Culture of the Tribes of
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[11] K. V. Sal'nikov:
[12] M. F. Kosharev: O kul'turah andronovskogo
vremeni v Zapadnoi Sibirii. Sov. Arheol.
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[13] G. Bárczy: A magyar
szókincs eredete. Tankönyvkiadó,
[14] J. Kloc: Történelem 7. Slovenské
pedagogické nakladatel'stvo,
[15] V. I. Moshinskaya: Material'naya kul'tura
i hozyaystvo Ust'-Poluya. Materiali i issledovaniya po arh.
SSSR 35, 72 (1953)
[16] V. N. Chernecov: Bronza ust'-poluyskogo
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[17] B. Kálmán: Chrestomathia Vogulica.
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[18] J.
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[19] A.
Mehta: Zarathushtra. http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/Zarathushtra-Ch.1-6,Draft.pdf
[20] E.
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[21] Evdokiya
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[22] K.
Rédei & I. Erdélyi: Sravnitel’naya
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[23] D. E. Wildman & al.: Implications of
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and Chimpanzees: Enlarging Genus Homo. PNAS 100, 7181 (2003)
[24] T. Sulimirski: The Sarmatians.
[25] Marx és Engels Művei, Vol. 18, p. 531.
Kossuth Kiadó,
[26] G. Novickiy: Kratkoe opisanie o narode
ostyackom.
[27] S. V. Bahrushin: Osnovy istorii Ob-Ugrov.
Uchenie zapisky Vol. 105, p. 257,
[28] B. Lukács & L. Végsô: The Chronology
of the "Sumerian King List". Altorientalische Forsch. 2, 25 (1975)
[29] I. Harmatta: Irániak és finnugorok,
irániak és magyarok. In: Magyar ôstörténeti tanulmányok, ed. A. Bartha, K.
Czeglédy & A. Róna-Tas, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1977, p. 167
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