Studies on the Peoples and Cultures of the Eurasian Steppes (original) (raw)
A Brief Outline of the Oldest History of the Turkic People
The content of the article consists of a generalization of the results of multidisciplinary research conducted using the graphic analytical method and the study of ancient anthroponymy and toponymy of Eurasia. To confirm the conclusions drawn during the research process, historical information, and data from archeology, anthropology, ethnography, geography, and other disciplines were used. The narration of this article begins with the substantiation of the Urheimat of the Proto-Turks in Transcaucasia in the area of Mount Ararat. The further history of the Turks continues in the steppes of the Azov and Black Sea regions, which ends with their expansion as carriers of Corded Ware cultures and the migration of most of them east towards Altai. The return of former CWC carriers to the steppes heralds the beginning of the Scythian period in history. The article contains links to 82 authors from different countries in Europe and Asia, as well as 11 illustrations, mainly maps. Genetics show that 80-90% of Y-chromosomes of the Bronze Age in Europe have counterparts in the steppe, i.e. they were brought by the Turks. The presence of the Turkic people in Western Europe is also confirmed by toponymy.. Most of the Turkic people who migrated from the steppes were men who married local women and had many children. The children were raised by their mothers in their language, so they learned their mothers' language better than their fathers.
Mongolic and Turkic Peoples: What They Actually Were, What They Imagined
“SMSR - Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni” (A-rated journal), n. 89/1, 2023
This is my "lateral" contribution to a monographic dossier concerning the legend of the Priester John. Many of the other contributions tell what the Western, Christian peoples "knew" about the peoples of the steppes and their relations with the imaginary clercyman-king. Hence the title of my paper, where I draw a sinthetic picture of their ancestral culture, from tengrism to totemism, from their matching colors and cardinal points to their ability in tapestry.
Cultural Changes in the Turkic World
2008
in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
(2010) Archaeology of the Eurasian Steppes and Mongolia
International interest in the prehistory and archaeology of the Eurasian steppes and Mongolia has increased dramatically since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This article surveys important new evidence and interpretations that have emerged from several collaborative projects in the past two decades. A particular emphasis is placed on issues that are crucial to regional studies in the steppe ecological zone; however, it also is suggested that steppe prehistory must come to play a more significant role in developing more comprehensive understandings of world prehistory. Key developments connected with the steppe include the diffusion of anatomically modern humans, horse domestication, spoke-wheeled chariot and cavalry warfare, early metal production and trade, Indo-European languages, and the rise of nomadic states and empires. In addition to these important issues, thoughts are offered on some of the current challenges that face archaeological scholarship in this region of the world.
Conference: Union Institute Graduate School Seminar Series, at UIGS Colloquium: “The Archaeology of the Eurasian Steppe, January 21, 1998
This paper begins as a critical review of the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age Eurasian steppe, primarily in seeking the distinctions of its postulated horse-riding nomadic inhabitants known variously as Cimmerians, Scythians, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, Saka, Alans, etc., within a dialogue of what defines archaeological evidence as opposed to historical evidence and the problem of conflating one with the other. Eschewing historical labels, archaeological evidence alone for LBA/EIA Eurasian steppe cultures has been primarily based on recognizing artefacts and ecofacts as assumed remnants of a pastoral nomadic adaptation to the steppe environment; however, such a presupposition requires reflection on how a nomadic lifeway may be ascertained with any degree of confidence from a particular residue of material culture and ecofacts. In addressing this question, the paper veers into a discussion of pastoral nomadism itself, whether it exists independent of other modes of subsistence, and if it can be specifically identified among the cultural and environmental residue constituting a particular archaeological site. From this question, the argument proceeds to a critical understanding of archaeology itself, its goals, its areas of expertise, its theoretical principles, its methods of discovery and evaluation, its relationship to anthropology and history, its strengths and limitations, and how archaeology may be identified as a distinct academic discipline.
The given article is devoted to characteristic features of material factors that can be used in justifying a nomadic life-style of the population that manufactured relevant goods, weapons, tools and that organized its economic and cultural production in accordance with natural and ecological possibilities of its habitat. Nomadic traits are most easily established on the basis of the following factors: a means of using draught animals (teaming bulls and bullocks in a wagon-transportable house); a wide use of nomadic herding economy products in the production (sheep wool, bones of relevant animals are main types of raw materials); a character of small ceramic forms that practically do not change their technological and typological characteristics; a degree of spread and a specific weight of leather and felt products in relevant cultures, they are reflected in real samples and in tools (special knifes for cutting leather and felt, and, on a greater scope, versatile tools for cutting animal carcasses); organization of nomadic houses heating in the conditions of constant fuel shortages (a use of censers on legs and their varieties). A great degree of technical culture compactness and a transfer of techniques, shapes and ornamentation characteristics of goods from one sphere of production to another are typical for the whole technology of nomadic cultures of the region. A particular attitude to the recovery and spread of metallic (metallurgic) raw materials was a specific feature of the nomadic environment of the given region, this fact making a specific imprint on the improvement of technology for digging, underground, mining work conducted by these tribes. Due to a well developed herding economy, nomads not only occupied sparsely populated ecological niches in the steppe where the agricultural population could develop only sectors of river valleys and river basins full of water, but also became a transparent medium for a spread of experience and skills in metallurgy, strengthening cultural, economic and spiritual, ritual links between synchronous groups that settled in large territories. The article has been stipulated by a necessity to emphasize the factors of cultural, production and spiritual closeness that was developed due to a unification of the nomadic life-style. Other aspects of the processes linked with an extensive settlement in the steppes during the Bronze Age, namely, ethnocultural characteristics of various groups, a possibility of the ethnic population formation, new principles of the territorial and ethno-social (including family) division of the population were just mentioned. It is understandable as differentiating processes could be connected to a greater extent with changes in the political situation and historical events taking place both in the steppes and the environment (forests, deserts, mountains), while integrating processes, a leveling of demographic environment are more closely related to ecological constants of the region, against the background of which the isolation of sharp demarcation lines stable in space and time that existed between close groups of population of the single ecological niche can outline the territories controlled by the population that belongs to different linguistic macro-families. In the region under consideration, factors for such observations have not been fully systematized, and it is this direction of investigation that can provide a justification in the form of facts for the resolution of the Indo-European issue. Research approaches that have been available for a long period of time are not sufficient for a definite narrowing of the study to establish a common homeland of the Indo-Europeans, the stages and specific directions and succession of their settlement. There is only one thing that is clear: the culture of the North Indo-Aryans is a local, later manifestation of a relevant ethnolinguistical stratum, deformed by innovations introduced to all spheres of life of the given population due to the appearance of war chariots drawn by horses that resulted in a new strategy of aggressive wars that support and strengthen the processes of extended (migrational) settlements.
Early Influence of the Steppe Tribes in the Peopling of Siberia
Human Biology, 2006
The Yakuts, Middle Age Turkic speakers (15th-16th centuries), are widely accepted as the first settlers of the Altai-Baikal area in eastern Siberia. They are supposed to have introduced horses and developed metallurgy in this geographic area during the 15th or 16th century a.d.
Early nomads of the Eastern Steppe and their tentative connections in the West
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2020
(The corrigendum is attached as a separate pdf file.) The origin of the Xiongnu and the Rourans, the nomadic groups that dominated the eastern Eurasian steppe in the late first millennium BC/early first millennium AD, is one of the most controversial topics in the early history of Inner Asia. As debatable is the evidence linking these two groups with the steppe nomads of early medieval Europe, i.e. the Huns and the Avars, respectively. In this paper, we address the problems of Xiongnu–Hun and Rouran–Avar connections from an interdisciplinary perspective, complementing current archaeological and historical research with a critical analysis of the available evidence from historical linguistics and population genetics. Both lines of research suggest a mixed origin of the Xiongnu population, consisting of eastern and western Eurasian substrata, and emphasize the lack of unambiguous evidence for a continuity between the Xiongnu and the European Huns. In parallel, both disciplines suggest that at least some of the European Avars were of Eastern Asian ancestry, but neither linguistic nor genetic evidence provides sufficient support for a specific connection between the Avars and the Asian Rourans.
The Bronze Age in the Eurasian Steppes
Japanese Journal of Archaeology, 2021
Scholars have long been aware of the interaction and migration sweeping across the vastness of the Eurasian Steppes in the Bronze Age, but the historical significance of individual cases of interaction has not been clear. This study demonstrates the major qualitative change that took place in interactions in the Steppes immediately before the emergence of the Scytho-Siberian culture and presents a new theory of interaction to replace the monistic/pluralistic approach.
Areal, historical and typological aspects of South Siberian Turkic
2012
Son yıllarda Türkiye içinde ve dışında Türkoloji çalışmalarının çağdaş Türk lehçeleri üzerinde gittikçe yoğunluk kazandığını monografik eserlerden ve süreli yayınlardan takip etmekteyiz. Bununla birlikte özellikle yaklaşık son on yıldır, Sibirya Türk dili alanında yer alan lehçeler ile ağızlar üzerine yapılan çalışmaların artmış olması önemli bir gelişmedir. Bu yoğunlaşma içinde; Almanya Türkolojisinin yetiştirdiği dilbilimcilerin Sibirya bölgesinde bulunan diller hakkında inceleme yapan meslektaşlarıyla yaptıkları ortak çalışmalar ayrı bir yere sahiptir. Yukarıda künyesi verilen ve Marcel Erdal, Irina Nevskaya ile Astrid Menz’in editörlüğünde hazırlanmış bu eser, Almanya ve Sibirya Türkologları arasındaki işbirliğinin bir ürünüdür. Dil özellikleri bakımından Güney Sibirya Türkçesi içinde değerlendirilen Tuva, Hakas, Altay, Şor, Duha, Sarı Uygur Türkçeleriyle ilgili sahasal-tipolojik özelliklerin monografik ve karşılaştırmalı olarak ele alındığı 19 bilimsel makalenin derlenmesiyle o...
The Steppe and the Caucasus during the Bronze Age: Mutual Relationships and Mutual Enrichments
Interpretation of the data which is currently available for the populations of the Steppe and the adjacent North Caucasus areas during the Bronze Age has enabled the analysis and reconstruction that follows. From this time onwards the way of life of the population that manufactured goods, weapons, tools and organized other aspects of its economic and also cultural products is reflected in pastoral movements from the south, i.e. the North Caucasus, to the north, i.e. the Steppe, and vice versa. The reasons for such movements might have included climate change, seasonal economic cycles, the necessity to control the exploited areas and the development of cross-cultural links, including marriages. During such movements different population groups developed their relationships in a mutually enriching fashion. With new data we are able to produce not only generalized reconstructions of the prehistoric pastoral societies inhabiting these two regions, but also gain insights into individual lives, so that personal stories begin to emerge.