Don't trust to popular science

[obyknven]

Don't trust to popular science.

As example upcoming "historic" book "Armies of the Volga Bulgars & Khanate of Kazan" by Osprey publishing.

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/Armies-of-the-Volga-Bulgars-and-Khanate-of-Kazan_9781782000792

The Bulgars were a Turkic people who established a state north of the Black Sea. In the late 500s and early 600s AD their state fragmented under pressure from the Khazars

 Book illustration of Ottoman-fashioned Bulgars must cause recognition from European reader: "Oh, they are Turks!".

 

But Bulgar language is not Turkic.  Only one language from Bulgar group is survieved. It is Chuvash language.

 

From "Introduction to Altaic philology: Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu" by Igor de Rachewiltz and Volker Rybatzki.

Chapter One: Chuvash-Turkic

In our scheme, Chuvash (and to a lesser extent Khalaj) deserves special mention because it is quite different from other Turkic languages, insofar as it does not share some of their common characteristics, to such an extent in fact that some scholars regard it as an independent member of the Altaic family, like Turkic or Mongol. This is why a compromise solution for the purpose of classification has been found by combining Chuvash with Turkic in the designation of this stock. Incidentally, Chuvash is spoken by about 1.3 million people in the Chuvash Republic in the middle course of the Volga and comprises two main dialects.

 

Other work show common root's  of Old Bulgar language with Pamir languages (i.e. Eastern Iranian languages,  for example  Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian ).From "The language of the Asparukh and Kuber Bulgars, Vocabulary and grammar" by Peter Dobrev.

 

 

One of the most characteristic features of the old Bulgar language is the high frequency of the sound KH, occurring in specific combinations – in words such as ALKHASI, EALKH, OLKH, ALKH, KHUMSKHI, KHONSA, DOKHS, SHEKHTEM, KAVKHAN, etc...

 

 

There are not too many languages in the world with such high frequency of KH. It occurs mainly in the Pamirian languages, for example – in the Ishkashimi and Jazguljami, in which KH frequently substitutes the K or G sounds of other Indo-European languages. Even more – most of the Bulgar words containing KH are Pamirian in origin or were remodelled under a Pamirian influence. Such are the words ALKHA (from which was derived ALKHASI), KHLOBRIN, DOKHS (compare also to the Persian TOKHS), KHONSA, SHEKHTEM, KAVKHAN, as well as the personal names ASPARUKH, AVITOKHOL, SANDILKH, VINEKH, etc.

 

Most of the Volga Bulgar words are also found in the Pamirian languages – such as KHALICHE (‘a lake’), KHADANG (‘a white poplar’), KHALANDZH (‘a type of oak’), SAKHRADZH (‘an earthen pot’)...

Mediaval autors don't known about Turkic nature of Bulgars.

Ahmad ibn Fadlan write about Bulgars: "They have a lot of merchants who journey to the land of the Turks,"

http://www.s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/10_History/IbnFadlanEn.htm#Bulgars

 

And last thing. Turks firstly appears in VI century AD in Rouran Khaganate. The early Bulgars (or "Proto-Bulgars") may have been present in the Pontic Steppe from the 2nd century, later Bulgars took part in the Hunnic raids on Central and Western Europe between 377 and 453. In this time no Turks exist yet.

 

But people don't read historic sources, or serious scientific books.

[Hurlshort]

Yes, let us trust Oby instead 

 

This is also not popular in any way.  It needs to be on Oprah's Book Club list first.  

 

We should start an Oby's Book Club!  

Edited July 11, 2013 by Hurlshot

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

We should start an Oby's Book Club!

There are only so many times we can read Putin's autobiography.

[Walsingham]

Why the hell are you so fired up about central Asian 'purity'?

[obyknven]

It's post not about 'purity', but about truth and lie. Turkic Bulgars it's obvious lie. But history is politics projected onto the past. Because Ideas of Pan-Turkism Volga-Bulgars must be Turkic people.

[HoonDing]

 

 

Don't trust to popular science.

[Walsingham]

It's post not about 'purity', but about truth and lie. Turkic Bulgars it's obvious lie. But history is politics projected onto the past. Because Ideas of Pan-Turkism Volga-Bulgars must be Turkic people.

 

I've yet to see the contents of a man's blood or the colour of his skin make a tuppeny f***'s worth of difference.

 

I find your obsession with proving 'racial' inheritance one way or another a bit creepy.

[Amentep]

Statement: "Bulgars were a Turkic people"

 

Claim: "But Bulgar language is not Turkic. Only one language from Bulgar group is survieved. It is Chuvash language."

 

Refutation proof: "In our scheme, Chuvash (and to a lesser extent Khalaj) deserves special mention because it is quite different from other Turkic languages"

 

Emphasis mine, but doesn't the fact that Chuvash is a Bulgar language and the refutiations classes it as kin to other Turkic Languages" actually prove the opposite of the claim?

 

What am I missing?

[obyknven]

 

It's post not about 'purity', but about truth and lie. Turkic Bulgars it's obvious lie. But history is politics projected onto the past. Because Ideas of Pan-Turkism Volga-Bulgars must be Turkic people.

 

I've yet to see the contents of a man's blood or the colour of his skin make a tuppeny f***'s worth of difference.

 

I find your obsession with proving 'racial' inheritance one way or another a bit creepy.

 

Really don't understand why fixing of rude errors performed by unaccurete ( or too politizied ) historians looks creepy for you.

Or meybe you want moar proofs?

Ok, i can moar. Modern Turkizied descendants of Volga-Bulgars named as Tatars. Mahmud al-Kashgari in XI century wrote: "Turks use name Tatars for Farsi-speakers". Turks also use this name for Chinese people and other non-Turkic foreighners. In ancient Turkic language "Tat" mean alien outlander. Very strange name for "Turkic" people really.

 

Or again Ahmad ibn Fadlan mentioned Bulgar ruler as Malik of As-Sakaliba. Two interpritation can be here. "Sakaliba" (Saqaliba) in Arabic is "White Saka", a calque from the endoethnonym "Kipchak", which in Turkic means "White Sak", continuing the tradition started by Herodotus that Persians call Scythians "Saka". Or alternative meaning can be - It is generally thought that the Arabic term is a Byzantine loanword: saqlab, siklab, saqlabi etc. is a corruption of Greek Sklavinoi meaning Slavs. Anyway Central Asian Iranians or a Slavs are not Turkic people.

[Meshugger]

Now i am confused. I always though that bulgarians and their language descended from ancient Thrace.

[obyknven]

Statement: "Bulgars were a Turkic people"

 

Claim: "But Bulgar language is not Turkic. Only one language from Bulgar group is survieved. It is Chuvash language."

 

Refutation proof: "In our scheme, Chuvash (and to a lesser extent Khalaj) deserves special mention because it is quite different from other Turkic languages"

 

Emphasis mine, but doesn't the fact that Chuvash is a Bulgar language and the refutiations classes it as kin to other Turkic Languages" actually prove the opposite of the claim?

 

What am I missing?

Chuvash (and to a lesser extent Khalaj) deserves special mention because it is quite different from other Turkic languages... it as an independent member of the Altaic family, like Turkic or Mongol.

 

 

combining Chuvash language with Turkic languages in one group is political decision, its all about Pan-Turkism. Too many people want destroy Russia, and steal rich lands for yourself.

Pic related - Wet dreams of Pan-Turkists

 

[Walsingham]

I'm being very lazy in my search, because of the OP, but there seems to be some shake at present about Russians getting upset by militant Islam in what they see as their soft underbelly. The Kazan Khanate and the tartars come up. Oby posted some material from a film a while back which was a kind of Apocalypto for the Monghol Horde - called Horde. That's all central Asia blah blah weren't the monghols crap, good thing we're all orthodox Christians blah.

 

 

So I guess I should award XP for staying in character.

Edited July 11, 2013 by Walsingham

[Rostere]

Actually I wrote a lengthy response to the last topic about this. Regardless of the opinions of a certain OP the topic in general is an interesting one (defining culture either through language or genetics).

 

I'll give you a Wikipedia link to one of many interesting relevant articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_Turkish_people

 

So, in conclusion, Turks today are not genetically "Turkic", or at least not significantly related to other speakers of typically Turkic language.

 

Another interesting map: http://www.pnas.org/content/vol98/issue18/images/large/pq1713050001.jpeg

 

But of course, the conclusions differ depending on which lineages you decide to look at.

 

Anyway the most important point is that it's a fallacy to try to identify so old cultures with existing ones, just because we use the same name for them. In many cases the original cultures have changed language, been split across borders, been united with different cultures, been invaded, that they no longer can be identified with their ancestors. It seems possible if not likely that the Bulgarians of old is not similar at all to today's Bulgarians. "Turkic" is also a word whose meaning has changed with time. In addition, many cultures we today look upon as homogenous are in fact genetically very diverse (see the map again), and languages can also have literally tons of loan words we fail to recognize today.

 

But really, many of these studies are really lacking from a mathematical/statistical point of view - you'd want them to do a "cluster" graphical representation based on several alleles and not only lump everything together based on our modern borders between cultures, analyzing only a single one. They give only a very crude oversight of the reality.

[Amentep]

 

Statement: "Bulgars were a Turkic people"

 

Claim: "But Bulgar language is not Turkic. Only one language from Bulgar group is survieved. It is Chuvash language."

 

Refutation proof: "In our scheme, Chuvash (and to a lesser extent Khalaj) deserves special mention because it is quite different from other Turkic languages"

 

Emphasis mine, but doesn't the fact that Chuvash is a Bulgar language and the refutiations classes it as kin to other Turkic Languages" actually prove the opposite of the claim?

 

What am I missing?

Chuvash (and to a lesser extent Khalaj) deserves special mention because it is quite different from other Turkic languages... it as an independent member of the Altaic family, like Turkic or Mongol.

 

combining Chuvash language with Turkic languages in one group is political decision, its all about Pan-Turkism. Too many people want destroy Russia, and steal rich lands for yourself.

 

So what you're arguing is that the classification of Chuvash as Turkic is wrong, and thus Bulgar too?

 

Rostere - is their a link about what those lineages on the graph means? This isn't a topic I'm very familiar with.

[Rostere]

 

Rostere - is their a link about what those lineages on the graph means? This isn't a topic I'm very familiar with.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Human_Y-DNA_haplogroups

 

Although some have different names, YAP for example.

[rjshae]

What the heck does an obscure history book have to do with popular science?

[Zoraptor]

Volga Bulgarians are culture group Mongol. I checked in CK2(+). So that's the definitive answer.

[AGX-17]

This is neither popular nor science, unfortunately for some parties. Popular science is stuff along the lines of "Popular Science" and "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman."

 

The book in question is not an article in a peer-reviewed journal following the scientific method, it's a niche military history (not a science,) publication from a niche publishing house aimed at niche audiences. It's the polar opposite of popular.

Edited July 12, 2013 by AGX-17

[Gorth]

Basque is an interesting subjects (just checked the map links). Nobody really know where they originate from, but they are one of the, if not the oldest existing European people.

[obyknven]

That's all central Asia blah blah weren't the monghols crap

European Historian madskillz detected.

Central Asian tribes initially are East Iranians. Google Turan from Avesta. Their Aryan-Turanids war's reflected in many Indo-European mythologies. Funny when someone from European periphery of Aryan world mumbling something about mongols crap from Turan.

 

In medieval period East Iranians are defeated by Turkic peoples and migrate. Central Asia become Turkic land from this time. But Turks <> Mongols anyway.

Mongol's obviously from Mongolia, not from Central Asia. We have more respect to them than to better Europeans. At last only Batu-Khan conquered Russians, meanwhile European loosers constantly fail this goal.  Your dismissive tone about them looks so stupid for us.

 

Turks are cool also (True Turks, nor Turkizied Greeks from Ottoman Empire). Only Timur help to Russian's crush Golden Horde, meanwhile Europeans always had been allied with this "mongol crap" as you say.

 

Just for your education.

True Turks:

http://youtu.be/MbgGXTM5UJs

Mongols:

http://youtu.be/1NJKEFcCmZI

 

 

Volga Bulgarians are culture group Mongol. I checked in CK2(+). So that's the definitive answer.

It's reason why i don't play into pseudo-historical games. Too many rude errors, lie and modern stereotypes here. Because this pure fantasy settings are better.

Edited July 12, 2013 by obyknven

[Walsingham]

I think I've deduced the general strategy: post something technical for us nerds to latch onto, then salt liberally with nearly boobs. You can't deny it's been generating comment.

[Rostere]

Ah, here's a page with much better graphical representations explaining the different Y-DNA haplogroups:

 

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml

 

Basque is an interesting subjects (just checked the map links). Nobody really know where they originate from, but they are one of the, if not the oldest existing European people.

 

Well, the ancestry of the Basques is not THAT mysterious (compared to other peoples), the big mystery is exactly how their language is connected to other languages. To refresh everyone's memory, Europe was invaded by Indo-European peoples as a continuous process between about 4000 to 1000 BC (which is not that long ago when you think about it). From this, we have gotten virtually all our languages we speak today! Except for Basque, which is (widely accepted as) belonging to those who already lived there, the "native" Europeans, so to say. The Basque people indeed have the most significant native European maternal ancestry - the conclusion we must make is that their society was at one point composed of a majority of Indo-Europeans among men (and also almost no Indo-European women - connected to the low frequency of mtDNA haplogroup T). So, the children probably learned the language of their mothers.

 

Indeed the Basques do not have a "unique" genetic heritage, just an extreme composition of already known genetic strains, coupled with a unique language.

 

Now here and here's something REALLY mysterious.

 

There are a few other interesting observations you can make. The Irish and the Finns are two of the most ethnically homogenous larger groups in Europe (from an Y-DNA perspective), with the Irish being paternally related to the original western (westward?) Indo-Europeans and the Finns to their own Finno-Ugric Y-DNA haplogroup N. You tend to think of the Finns as a people few in number, but a lot of the area of current Russia is full of people with Finnic genetic heritage (reflecting the areas the Finno-Ugrian peoples were originally native to). 

 

Now when you look at the maps on the link above, "native" European paternal ancestry is found (in interesting amounts) today in two flavours: in Sweden and in northern former Yugoslavia. Sweden was probably too remote and sparsely populated for anyone to bother to invade, and perhaps the inhabitants of that certain part of the Balkans were already significantly advanced to be able to defend themselves. So, regardless of the similarities of the languages, the dominant genetic heritage of Serbs and Croats are native European, not eastern Indo-European like in Russia.

 

Now back to the Huns: They probably had a very mixed heritage, just like most people originating in that region from that certain timeframe (and it is actually known that what we today call "Huns" were a confederation of many different tribes). It is known on the other hand, that the Scythians of old were almost exclusively from Y-DNA haplogroup R1a, which corresponds with the majority of western Russia, Belarus, eastern Poland and northern Ukraine. So while I think it unlikely the "proper" Huns themselves were not predominantly R1a, they might very well have picked up large numbers of R1a tribesmen in former Scythian territory.

 

This blog makes an interesting case that the "proper" Huns belonged to haplogroup Q.

 

Something I like about genetics is that it's often a fart in the face of older racist ideas, for example:

• Most Turks are NOT related to other Turkic-speaking peoples - on the other hand, they are closely related to Greeks, Armenians and Kurds. Which the Turks have been persecuting for ages.
• If Hitler's "Aryan" race was to be found in Germany, then either 1. It would have been the Indo-Europeans (R1a/R1b). In that case, the "purest" population would have been found in Ireland and coastal France, not in Germany. And he would have spent years fighting and murdering his Indo-European cousins the Russians. How ironic. 2. He really meant the native Europeans, in which case the swastika would be a completely misleading symbol. In this case, he should have abandoned Germany altogether and traveled to Yugoslavia or Sweden, two rather weak countries militarily where his political ideas did not go down well at all.
• If you look at European Jews, the parts which stand out genetically are parts which are found most ofthen in the Middle East, especially among the Arabs in today's Israel. So while Israeli right-wing presidents brag to each other about how they have managed to reduce birth rates among Palestinians, they are actually discussing their own genetical brethren.
• During and before WW2, the Japanese occupied China and Korea and inflected horrible atrocities upon those countries. If you look at genetics however, the Japanese are a mixture of Chinese and indigenous Ainu. Considering that the Ainu have been a persecuted minority for ages in Japan, that can't have been the reason of their stance. Yet they accuse this other part of their lineage, the Chinese, of being "inferior". That's not just racist and hypocritical, it's also mind-numbingly stupid.

I you were to generalize this, I would say that it says something about how futile these wars are. And how ironic it is that we often end up fighting our neighbors, who we have the most in common with.

[Walsingham]

Just noticed: why 'profanation' in the tags?