Talk:Turan/Archive 1

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The verifiability disclaimer displayed at the top of this article page is not justified: all the stated facts are based on documented research which has been cited (authors, titles, link). Those who demonstrate such overeagerness to question the evidence referred to here should also place similar disclaimers in those articles which claim that the Scythians were Indo-Europeans, and that the Uralic and Altaic groups have no connection to the Sumerians, otherwise the impartiality and objectivity of Wikipedia may be in question as well.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

History is clear

Please provide historical resources indicating the Turanians were the protogenerators of the Turks. There is only ONE primary source regarding the Turanians, and that is the Zoroastrian Gathas. All other sources are myths, written hundreds of years after the historical events described in the Gathas occurred. While the Gathas is a religious holy book it still holds valuable information on who the Turanians were. The Turanians are noted as being of Aryan (meaning Indo-Iranian, not the 19th century definition), meaning they spoke an Aryan language, and shared the same customs as the other Aryans. Until the prophet Zoroaster converted the Iranians the Gathas mentions the Iranians and Turanians had the SAME religious beliefs (probably closely related to Vedic Hinduism, as the Iranians and Indians shared the same ancient language). What does that tell us? The Turanians were an Indo-European ethnic group, like the Iranians. They were NOT a Ural-Altaic group. The Gathas also state the Turanians were converted to Zoroastrianism, and we never hear of them again as a distinct historicl group (only in myths). Can anyone provide evidence that ANY of the Turko Mongol tribes were Zoroastrian? If anything, it would seem more advantageous to the Zoroastrians if the Turanians were non-iranic (just as it was advantageous for Ferdowsi to mention the Turanians as being Turkic). Clearly the ancient Iranians had NO KNOWLEDGE of the ancient Turks (who I seriously doubt were even an ethnic group at the time). All religious citations are provided below.


Reply to "History is clear"

How far back in time do the Zoroastrian Gathas go? Do they cover the period from 5000-3000 BC? Archeological and anthropological evidence from this period indicates that Sumerian cultural influence and ethnic presence spread to Iran and Central Asia (refer to sources mentioned in my other postings below). The cited evidence also indicates that the Scythians originated at least in part from these Sumerian-related settlers, and the Scythian-type cultures spread to Mongolia where they merged with proto-Altaic peoples. The conclusion is that non-Indo-Europeans inhabited Central Asia (including Turan) before the Indo-Europeans, and the Ural-Altaic peoples are related to Sumerians and Scythians.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 29-01-06

Reply to hunmagyar.org

The Avestan language spoken by the prophet Zoroaster is nearly identical to the Vedic Sanskrit spoken by the Indo Aryans in the Indian Subcontinent. That, coupled w/geographic descriptions provided in the Gathas, indicate that the Gathas were first written approx 3600-4000 years ago; well within you ascribed time frame. Regardless of what you say regarding Scythians, Sumerians, and proto-Altaic peoples, it doesn't change the fact that the only primary source regarding the Turanians describe them as being clearly Indo-Iranian. It also doesn't change the fact that the Turanians disappear from history due to being converted to Zoroastrianism and assimilating into Iranian culture; and only reappear as a mythos created by some Turks.

68.4.210.29 is basically right except that the Gathas were probably not written down but transmitted orally until they were submitted to writing in the Sassanid era; there is a Zoroastrian tradition about the existence of an original proto-text that disappeared in the destructions of Alexander the Great, but that is probably a myth invented in a period when writing was more respected than the spoken word.
Furthermore, the date given by 68.4.210.29 is probably a little too high. Our only points of reference is the fact that the Avestan language is more archaic than Old Persian of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenid era (6th-4th cent. BC) and therefore probably also older; and the fact that Avestan is pretty much as archaic as the language of the oldest parts of the Rigveda (ca. 1,500-1,200 BC). On that ground, most specialists assume that the Gathas were composed around the begining of the first millennium BC. Enkyklios 07:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

My source regarding the dating of Zoroaster is from Mary Boyce.

This article is blatant propaganda for a minority opinion based on ethic and nationalist concerns and not on solid evidence from the social sciences. The article fails to mention that there is a minority opinion being presented and, instead, presents its viewpoint as undisputed fact.

Interesting logic (?) in the previous comment (above): because this article supposedly represents a 'minority' opinion (where is the survey?), that is it contradicts the 'majority' opinion (name of the beast?), it can only be 'propaganda' without 'solid evidence'. Without any logical argumentation, and without presenting counter-evidence, the above comment will not advance the debate. The article presents both sides of the debate and argues for the Turanian side based on cited documented evidence. If this evidence is dismissed without scholarly debate, then the discussion will leave the realm of scientific fact, and the neutrality of the individual who posted the propaganda accusation is what is in question.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

lots works to do for reality

could you correct this one too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythia

Questionable neutrality and objectivity of Sumerian, Scythian, Sarmatian, Saka articles

I recently added comments to the Sumerian, Scythian, Sarmatian, and Saka articles, to the effect that some of the claims made in those articles were in dispute (namely that the Sumerians were an isolated group with no relationship to any other group, and that the Scythians/Sarmatians/Sakas were Iranians/Indo-Europeans). However, it appears that these comments have been removed without any explanation, leaving the readers with the false impression that those claims are unanimously accepted facts.

Here is a partial list of the researchers who recognized, studied and documented the relationship between the Sumerian and Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages:

Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert, Francois C. Lenormant, Archibald H. Sayce, Edouard Sayous, Yrjo Sakari Yrjo-Koskinen, K. A. Hermann, Otto Donner, H. Gelzer, Friedrich Delitzsch, Eberhard Schrader, H. H. Howorth, Fritz Hommel, Sophus Ruge, Oscar Peschel, Richard Gosche.

The work of these researchers is documented in Miklos Érdy's The Sumerian, Ural-Altaic, Magyar Relationship: A History of Research, Gilgamesh, New York, 1974.

The history of the research on the Sumerians has some bizarre twists. It must be understood that politics and ideology have interfered with scientific research. To understand this fact, one must realize the ideological climate in which this research took place during the 19th and 20th centuries. These centuries saw the rise of nationalism and of various racist supremacist ideologies, such as the Aryan superiority myth - no, the Nazis didn't invent this one, they just re-used it - and although the term "Aryan" has been replaced by the more scientifically-sounding "Indo-European", many still adhere to the belief of this group's cultural superiority. One of the strangest episodes in the history of Sumerian research took place at the end of the 19th century, when Joseph Halévy began to preach the idea that the Sumerians had never existed and that the Sumerian language was just a secret language invented by the Semitic priests of ancient Babylonia...

Thus, it seems that the problem with the Sumerians is that they were neither Semitic, nor Indo-European. Had they been, they would most certainly have received a different treatment. As such, since neither Semitic nor Indo-European peoples could claim the Sumerians as their own, the Sumerians had to be quarantined to make sure that nobody else could claim them, hence the assertion that the Sumerians were an isolated group with no links to any other ethnolinguistic group. However, this claim appears to be in contradiction to the evidence uncovered so far.

The problem with the claims that the Sumerians were an isolated group and that the Scythians were Indo-Europeans is that these claims are based on questionable linguistic speculation which fails to take into consideration significant archeological, anthropological, and ethnological evidence. One of the most comprehensive studies examining this complex question is László Götz's 5-volume 1100-page research work entitled "Keleten Kél a Nap" (The Sun rises in the East), for which the author consulted over 500 bibliographical sources from among the most authoritative experts in the fields of ancient history, archeology, and linguistics. In his wide-ranging study, László Götz examined the development of the Sumerian civilization, the determining cultural and ethno-linguistic influence of the Near-Eastern Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Age civilizations upon the cultural development of Western Eurasia, and the linguistic parallels between the Indo-European, Semitic and Sumerian languages indicating that the Sumerian language had a considerable impact on the development of the Indo-European and Semitic languages which, as a result, have numerous words of Sumerian origin. László Götz also examined the fundamental methodological shortcomings of Indo-European linguistic research. His conclusion is that most Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups are related to one another in varying degrees, and that these groups, such as the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic groups, were formed in a complex process of multiple ethno-linguistic hybridization in which Sumerian-related peoples played a fundamental role.

Götz also pointed out that according to the anthropological evidence, the Sumerians and other related Near Eastern peoples were of the Brachycephalic Caucasoid type, just like the Turanians, and that thousands of years ago this type of population spread out accross Eurasia, where it can still be seen from Central Europe to Central Asia, even though significant intermingling with other groups, such as with the Mongoloid type, has occurred since.

All this to say that the currently dominant views about the Sumerians being an isolated group and the Scythians being Indo-Europeans need to be re-examined and revised.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

this article is not accurate and POV

This article is being messed up by Pan-Turkist 'pseudo-scientists' with absolutely no validity. The article does not even mention the origin of the name "Turan", and instead, tries to make a point by quoting non-verified and already disproven claims of Turkish nationalists. That's really sad ... -213.39.200.218 22:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

...

What is really sad is individuals like the one who made the comment above ('this article is not accurate and POV'), abusing such a forum to make unfounded accusations, without any rational argumentation or reference to any evidence, and they don't even have the decency or courage to identify themselves. Such rants have no credibility and have no place in a forum for scholarly debate. -Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

OMG this article is so messed up!

You people might not know this, but this article is not about Turanism (= nationalist Turkish blah blah), but about the region called Turan. This article should be about the name, history, peoples, and geography of Turan, which is more or less the southern parts of Central Asia.

The name Turan is Old Persian and means land of darkness. It is taken from the word tur (sometimes târ) which means dark (compare to Persian: târik, Pashto: tora, English: dark). According to Zoroastrian mythology, Turan is the enemy of Irân (which means land of the light, land of the nobles).

The original meaning of the word had nothing to do with Turks or Sumerians or whatever. It is clearly mentioned in the Avesta (Gathas: 11-12, Yasht XIII: 88, Vidêvdat III: 23;30-31) that "Turanians" were "Aryans", that they were from the same stock as Iranians, and they even had similar languages. The only difference was their religion: they were not followers of Zarathustra's good religion, and thus were called Tuiranians (people of the dark nation), unlike Iranians (noble peoples) who were followers of Zarathustra.

For those who know German: Iran and Turan

This article needs to be moved to the Pan-Turkist claims ... it has nothing to do with modern and serious science! And, most important, it has nothing to do with the region called Turan.

Besides that, most of the peoples claimed by this article to have been Turks were actually Indo-Europeans, mostly from the Indo-Iranian branch. Just check out the following articles: Scythians, Saka, Cimmerians, Parthians (who spoke a northwestern Iranian language, very similar to Proto-Kurdish), etc etc etc. Even the Chinese distinguished between Turks and Indo-Europeans:

... There are numerous debates about Hephthalite language. Most scholars believe it is Iranian for the Pei Shih states that the
language of the Hephthalites differs from those of the Juan-juan (Mongoloid) and of the "various Hu" (Turkic) ...
http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/artl/heph.shtml

More sources:

... Scythians and Sarmatians were of Iranian origin ...
[John Channon & Robert Hudson, Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia, 1995, p.18]
... Indo-European in appearance and spoke an Iranian tongue which bought them more closely to the Medes and Persians ...
[Tim Newark, Barbarians, 1998, p.6]
... The Sarmatians…spoke an Iranian language similar to that of the Scythians and closely related to Persian ...
[Richard Mariusz & Richard Mielczarek, The Sarmatians: 600 BC-450 AD, 2002, p.3]
... of Indo-European stock belonging to…the Iranian group, often called the Scythian group of peoples…they were akin to the ancient Medes, Parthians and Persians. Their language was related to that of the Avesta ...
[Tadesuz Sulimirski, The Sarmatians, London: Thames & Hudson, 1970, p.22]
... The river names, “Don”, “Donets”, “Dnieper” and “Dniester” are all of Iranian origin ...
[P.J. Mallory, Mallory’s map on p. 78]

And Sumerians were deffinitly NOT Turks or Proto-Turks. The Turks were a Mongoloid people, related to Mongols and other smaller tribes of West Asia. This is even confirmed by Roman sources who discribed Attila the Hun (Huns were Proto-Turks) as Mongolid:

... Atilla had a flat nose, swarthy dark complexion, broad chest, short stature and small eyes, but full of confidence ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila
... incoming minorities (...) conquer other populations and (...) impose their languages on them. The Altaic family spread in this fashion ...
- [Colin Renfrew, World linguistic diversity, Scientific American, 270(1), 1994, p.118]
... Around the third century B.C., groups speaking Turkish languages (...) threatened empires in China, Tibet, India, Central Asia, before eventually arriving in Turkey ... genetic traces of their movement can sometimes be found, but they are often diluted, since the numbers of conquerors were always much smaller than the populations they conquered (p.125)
... Turks ... conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453. ... Replacement of Greek with Turkish ... Genetic effects of invasion were modest in Turkey. Their armies had few soldiers (...) invading Turkish populations would be small relative to the subject populations that had a long civilization and history ...
- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi (2000). Genes, Peoples and Languages. New York: North Point Press. P.125, 152]

This article needs to be cleaned up by REAL experts. Right now, it is being messed up by some uneducated Pan-Turkist with EXTREME minority-complexes.

-Tajik 19:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


You can thank 'Indo-European-centrism' for messing things up

When referring to ancient written sources about the Scythians and the Huns, one should keep in mind that many of these sources were biased: the Scythians and the Huns were seen as barbarian enemies. One should therefore be very careful when trying to interpret these sources and to draw ethnolinguistic and historical conclusions from them.

Another problem arising from these sources is that they often distorted the few words or names attributed to these 'barbarians', and these were the only fragments of their language that were preserved. This led many Indo-Europeanists to the mistaken conclusion that the Scyhtians, Sarmatians, Medes, and Parthians were Indo-European, based on erroneous etymological interpretations of the few personal Scythian names which have been preserved (possibly in a distorted form) in ancient texts. Since then, even more Western historians have made the mistake of accepting without question this erroneous conclusion, thus giving the impression that this was a widely accepted fact. However, a number of researchers examined more carefully the assertions that the Scythians were Indo-European and came to the conclusion that the Indo-European etymological interpretations were doubtful and possibly incorrect:

According to K. Jettmar (Die fruhen Steppenvolker), the only supposed 'proof' that the Scythians were Iranians were some 'Iranian-sounding' names, and the Sarmatians were assumed to be also Iranians because, according to Herodotos, their language resembled that of the Scythians.

F. Altheim (Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter) explains that although the language of the Parthians is not known, it was presumed to be Iranian because, according to Appolodoros, it was somewhere between that of the Scyhtians and that of the Medes.

H. W. Haussig (Theophylakt's Exkurs uber die skythischen Volker) points out that the population of the Kushan Empire, which was thought to be Iranian, was in fact considerably mixed, and had a significant Altaic component.

O. Franke (Beitrage aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Turkvolker und Skythen Zentralasiens) determined that, based on Chinese sources, the place of origin of the Turks was in today's Turkmenistan. He also comes to the conclusion that the supposed existence of Indo-European peoples in Central Asia in those ancient times was not supported by any conclusive evidence, and that the Sakas and Kushans were Altaic peoples.

W. Eberhard (Die Kultur der alten zentral- und westasiatischen Volker nach chinesischen Quellen) also comes to similar conclusions about the origins of the Altaic peoples being in Turkmenistan, pointing out that from the most ancient times, this region had close contacts with the ancient Near East, and this also meant ethnolinguistic affinity. According to him, the anthropological evidence also supports the presence of Altaic peoples in Turkmenistan since the most ancient times.

G. Husing (Die Urbevolkerung Irans) states that the 'Indo-European-centric' historiography is a falsification, and that according to ancient sources, the population of Iran in Persian times was not purely Aryan, but highly heterogenous, and that therefore, before the appearance of the Aryans, the Iranian population was non-Indo-European and had an advanced culture.

Thus, thousands of years before the formation of the Indo-European peoples, peoples belonging to an ancient ethnolinguistic group spread out from the Near East and settled in the Mediterranean Basin (the pre-Hellenic Aegean peoples, the Etruscans, the Iberians), in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Iran and Central Asia. These peoples were neither Semitic nor 'Aryan', they were related to the Mesopotamian Sumerians. (G. Childe: Vorgeschichte der europaischen Kultur; L. Gotz: Keleten Kel a Nap)

The formation of the Western Eurasian ethnolinguistic groups - the Semitic, Indo-European, Caucasian, Uralic, and Altaic groups, was significantly influenced by the ancient Sumerian-related peoples originating from the Near East. This is clearly illustrated by the numerous words of Sumerian origin which can be found in those languages. The Western Eurasian languages can thus to a large extent be seen as the results of a process of pidginization (hybridization) in which the language of the Sumerian group played a determining role:

'The Indo-Europeanization of Europe did not mean total destruction of the previous cultural achievement but consisted in an amalgamation (hybridization) of racial and cultural phenomena. Linguistically, the process may (and must) be regarded in a similar way: the Indo-Europeans imposed an idiom which itself then adopted certain elements from the autochtonous languages spoken previously. These non-Indo-European (pre-I-E) elements are numerous in Greek, Latin, and arguably, Thracian... the Thracians were highly conservative in their idea of urbanism; their language reflects this reality in terms (words, place-names) the origin of which can be traced back to the idioms spoken in the Neolithic (pre-I-E) times... The Romanian name for Transylvania, Ardeal, is one of the clearest pre-I-E relics... place-names are of great importance in the reconstruction of vanished civilizations and it is almost inevitable that the identifiable pre-I-E elements come down from the Neolithic times: the dawn of the European civilization... the terms implying complex societies are of pre-Indo-European origin.' (Paliga, S., 'Thracian terms for 'township' and 'fortress', and related place-names', in: World Archeology, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1986, pp. 26-29.)

Based on the above-mentioned sources, it is most likely that a similar process of ethnolinguistic hybridization also took place in Iran. Thus, the ancient Turanians were not Indo-Europeans and they were in Turan long before the Persians called it Turan. It is only later that the original Caucasoid Turanians intermingled with Mongoloid peoples (creating the Altaic group), and it is therefore inaccurate to claim that the Turanians were always Mongoloid. This also means that not all 'Iranians' were 'Aryan' or Indo-European. In fact, the close scrutiny of the formation of the Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups reveals that they are to a considerable extent the result of the intermingling of the ancient Sumerian-related peoples with various 'proto-I-E' peoples. Thus the classical family-tree model of the origins and development of the I-E peoples is fundamentaly flawed: the I-E peoples did not originate from a single ancestral people, or from a single ancestral homeland, and there was no single ancestral I-E language either. The I-E peoples and languages are the result of a complex process of ethnolinguistic hybridization in which the Sumerian-Turanian peoples played an important role.

In conclusion, based on the significant linguistic (both lexical and grammatical), archeological, anthropological, and ethno-cultural evidence, the similarities between the Sumerians, Scythians, and Ural-Altaic peoples cannot be attributed to chance, but suggest the need for the re-definition of the ethnolinguistic term 'Turanian' to include the Sumerian-related peoples of the Near East, the Scythian-related peoples of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Iran, as well as the Uralic and Altaic groups.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

Drastic Surgery

This article was almost completely filled with nonsense. I tried to revise it to reflect more or less the scholarly consensus. AnonMoos 03:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


Surgery? More like drastic vandalism in the name of Indo-European-centric dogma

Below is the text which has been cut from the article because some 'experts' declared it to be 'nonsense', dismissing it without proper scholarly debate, in a manner reminiscent of an inquisition.

In order to address the issue of Turanian origins and identity, several major fundamental misconceptions must be examined:

1. The first misconception is that the Sumerians were an isolated ethnolinguistic group with no known relationship to any other ethnolinguistic groups. The historical, archeological, anthropological, and linguistic evidence which has been uncovered to date indicates that the Sumerians were not an isolated group and that they do in fact have wide-ranging ethnolingistic links with other groups. The Sumerians of Southern Mesopotamia, who were the creators of the first known civilization, the inventors of agriculture, metallurgy, the wheel, writing, and astronomy, among others (S.N. Kramer: History begins at Sumer), came from Northern Mesopotamia, and they were part of a larger ethnolinguistic group which included the Hatti (not to be confused with the later Hittites) of Central and Eastern Anatolia, the Hurrians and Subareans of Northern Mesopotamia, and the Kassites and Elamites of Western Iran, among others, and which inhabited these regions before the appearance of the Semitic and Indo-European peoples. It is therefore a fact that the Northern and Western regions of what is today Iran were originally inhabited by Sumerian-related ethnic groups such as the Medes and the Parthians, and not by Indo-Europeans.

The 19th century researchers who discovered and studied the ancient Mesopotamian Sumerian language determined that it was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and that it was related to the Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages (M. Érdy: The Sumerian Ural-Altaic Magyar Relationship). Comparative linguistic analysis has indicated that of all known ethno-linguistic groups, the Hungarian, Turkic, Caucasian and Finnic languages are by far the closest to Sumerian (K. Gosztony: Dictionnaire d'étymologie sumérienne et grammaire comparée). This is also confirmed by archeological and anthropological evidence which shows that thousands of years ago, the Sumerians and other related Near Eastern peoples settled in the vast region of Central Eurasia from the Carpathian basin to the Altai mountains, from the Urals and Siberia to Iran and India (L. Götz: Keleten Kel a Nap (The Sun Rises in the East)).

The historical evidence thus shows that Turan (Central Eurasia) saw the development of a highly evolved civilization of Sumerian (Mesopotamian) origin (S.P. Tolstov: Ancient Chorasmia). The descendants of these Sumerian-related peoples were known as the Scythians, Sakas, Sarmatians, Medes, Parthians, Chorasmians, Kushans, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Magyars, among others, and gave rise to the Uralic and Altaic ethnolinguistic groups. These Turanian peoples created flourishing cultures and states which exerted a determining influence on the peripheral Eurasian cultures of Europe, the Middle East, Persia, India, and China, as well as on the formation of the various Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups.

2. The second fundamental misconception is that the Scythians, and other related peoples such as the Sakas, Sarmatians, Medes, Parthians, Chorasmians, Kushans were "Aryans", or Indo-Europeans. This mistaken assumption derives from the first one stated above, and is not based on any scientific evidence, but merely on dubious linguistic theory which fails to take into account the fact that the Semitic and Indo-European languages have borrowed heavily from the Sumerian language. Thus, many words considered to be Indo-European are in fact of Sumerian origin, and this has led to the erroneous conclusion that the Scythians and the other above-mentioned ancient peoples of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Northern Iran were Indo-European.

3. The third fundamental misconception, itself deriving from the first two previously stated ones, is that there are no links between the Uralic and Altaic groups. As stated above, there is a substantial body of research which shows that Sumerian-related peoples migrated to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and that the Scythians and other related peoples (Sakas, Sarmatians, Medes, Parthians, Chorasmians, Kushans) evolved from these Sumerian-related peoples. This research also shows that the Scythians, besides having inhabited Eastern Europe, also reached present-day Siberia and Mongolia, and that both the Uralic and Altaic groups evolved to a considerable extent from the Scythian peoples, through a process of ethnolinguistic hybridization and convergence.

In conclusion, the evidence indicates that the Uralic and Altaic ethnolinguistic groups have evolved at least in part from the Scythian group, which itself originates from the Sumerians and the Sumerian-related peoples of the Near East, and that therefore there is a Sumerian-Scythian-Ural-Altaic Turanian continuity. This also suggests that there is a need to re-examine the above-stated misconceptions which still seem to be widespread about the Turanians. For further reference see http://www.hunmagyar.org/turan/magyar/tor/chron.htm

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

Reply

1) Please sign your comments by real name or Wikipedia User name, because "Webmaster - hunmagyar.org" serves no particular relevant identifying purpose, and does not give your remarks any greater authority.

> I would suggest that you nag on those who don't even sign their comments. You don't think my signature is authoritative enough? Then how about Dr. Who (Webmaster - hunmagyar.org)?

2) You didn't present any direct argument as such above -- instead you merely cut-and-pasted your whole pre-canned spiel boilerplate text.

> As a matter of fact, I did present arguments with source references in my previous comments, including the text you cut out of the article. - Dr. Who

3) There's no particular accepted evidence connecting Sumerians with the Central Asia region in any direct or obvious way. From the technical linguistic point of view, there's only a TYPOLOGICAL relationship between Sumerian and so-called "Altaic" languages, not a scientifically-ascertainable relationship of common linguistic origin. (Of course, many would say that there's only a typological relationship within the "Altaic" languages, not a scientifically-ascertainable relationship of common linguistic origin.)

> There is evidence, and not only linguistic, but also archeological, anthropological, and ethnographic (see source references in my previous comments). - Dr. Who

4) We have a fair amount of surviving written text in the Sogdian language, and in the Saka language, and they're both revealed to be Iranian.

> Source? How can I verify this? - Dr. Who

5) This article will not serve its purpose very well if it flagrantly condradicts all the other relevant articles on Wikipedia. For example, the articles on Sumerian language and Scythians don't endorse any Altaic hypothesis.

> What purpose are you referring to? - Dr. Who

6) Your version of the article didn't even mention the Shah-nameh (the work which in some ways popularized the word "Turanian" in the post-Islamic period), and didn't mention that the word Turan is first attested as a Persian word, expressing geography as seen from a Persian point of view.

> The point is that non-Indo-European peoples inhabited Turan and parts of Iran long before any Aryan set foot there. The problem is that the various Indo-European theories fail to take this into consideration or to explain it satisfactorily, due to their inherent methodological shortcomings and ideological bias. - Dr. Who

AnonMoos 18:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

> Comments added by Dr. Who (Webmaster - hunmagyar.org)

After having similiar POV pushing on de:, I'd like to thank AnonMoos for the rewrite. --Pjacobi 01:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What does Sumeria have to do with Turan?

Why is Sumeria, and it's culture, included in the article regarding Turan? They have nothing to do with each other and developed in isolation from one another. This is clearly pan-Turkish propaganda, intending to show that the Turks are the genesis of humanity. The Turks even try to claim George Washington was a Turk, as were the native americans. This is ridiculous.

Focus, please!

All evidence suggests that the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and Parthians were Iranian tribes. The Turkic hypothesis has no support in the authoritative scholarly milieu, but it is cultivated primarily by amateur historians with a clear nationalist agenda. Yet, if the war is going to be fought in wikipedia, we better not do it here also. It should be in the discussion pages of "Scythian language", "Parthian language", etc.

There is no evidence that the Turan of the Avesta were Turks. On the contrary, they seem to have been some kind of Iranians who stuck to the pre-Zoroastrian religion. Therefore, the article should not be about Turks (let alone Sumerians), but about Turan as the people and the area were described in the Avesta and in the Shahmaneh.

The modern ideological concept of Turan should be put in a separate article to avoid confusion. After all, Turan as a collective name of Turks, Mongols and Finno-Ugrians is no more satisfying than Aryan as a collective name of the Indo-European people. These words were constructed in opposition to each other, both in the Middle Iranian discourse and in the nationalist historical scholarship of the 19th century. Enkyklios 16:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Check this text out: http://www.compmore.net/~tntr/tur1.html. I am speechless! The Turkomanic author, Polat Kaya, derives all languages from "Turanic" through the process of "anagrammatizing". It is mad science at its best. Enkyklios 16:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Focus [on] this

Not all evidence supports the claim that the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Parthians were Indo-Europeans: see references in my previous postings - they are not Pan-Turkist sources, nor have they been used by Pan-Turkists.

The Indo-Europeanist claims are based on the 19th century ideological dogma of Aryan superiority which has fabricated a flawed linguistic theory and falsified history. Naturally, any questioning of the Indo-European dogmas is met with a medieval inquisition-witch hunt like reaction as demonstrated in this discussion.

There are examples of absurdities and mad science on the other side as well: the 19th century claim that the Sumerians did not exist and that their language was a secret language invented by the Semitic priests of Babylon, or the claim that the Sumerians were related to the Iranians (see discussion page of Turanism article).

Trying to discredit the entire field of Turanist research by using selected examples such as the Polat Kaya one is also nonsense and unscientific.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 29-01-06

The claim that the Scythians, Sarmatians and Parthians were Indo-Europeans is not based on any ideological dogma of Aryan superiority. First, this dangerous idea has only played a minor role in the field of Indo-European linguistics itself even though it enjoyed extreme popularity outside of the scientific world. Furthermore, I fail to see why Indo-Europeanists should have any interest in Indo-Europeanising the Scythians if they did in fact belong to another language family. It is not that the Scythian tribe is some kind of precious treasure without which the Indo-European language family would seem poor and trivial.
Admittedly, the linguistic evidence is sparse and equivocal, and one has to examine evaluate it with the uttermost diligence. The key argument in favour of the prevailing Iranian hypothesis is the vast amount of Scythian-Sarmatian personak names found in the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast. Most of them can be explained readily with Iranian etymologies assuming that the Scythian-Sarmatian language continuum was close to Ossetic and Sogdian. The keywork is Ladislav Zgusta, Die Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste. Die ethnischen Verhältnisse, namentlich das Verhältnis der Skythen und Sarmaten, im Lichte der Namenforschung (Praha 1955). Zgusta works within the framework of the method of historical linguistics, in so far as his etymologies follow certain regular phonetic developments and patterns of word formation.
The Turkic hypothesis, which plays no role in the scholarly literature on the subject, is based on two kinds of evidence: 1) The so-called runiform inscriptions found in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. 2) Etymologies of toponyms, ethnonyms and theonyms found in Greek authors (primarily Herodotus). The first source is all but unambiguous given that we have no idea what these texts are saying. The second source is not less problematic because the etymologies presented by the advocates of the Turkic hypothesis do not live up to the standard of historical linguistic as far as they do not pose regular phonetic developments or regular patterns of word formation. This criticism is not pedantic; it means that the proposed etymologies have no value at all since the similarity of the words in question may just as well be due to accidental similarity.
In other words, if one wants to prove that the Iranian hypothesis is wrong and the Turkic hypothesis is right, one has to argue that the very method of historical linguistics is erroneous; one has to claim that immediate (surface) similarity is in fact more important than the (depth) similarity consisting in regular sound developments. Good luck! I'm looking forward to hearing your arguments in favour of such a revisionist approach which would indeed revolutionise the way linguistics is taught and practised in all universities of the world. Enkyklios 08:11, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, L. Götz: Keleten Kel a Nap (The Sun Rises in the East), Puski, 1994, Budapest, already did just that: he demonstrated the flaws of the Grimm sound-change theory which claimed that the observable phonetic variations of words are the result of a regular and predictable evolution over time which is applicable to all Indo-European languages, and that based on these patterns, a hypothetical Indo-European language could be reconstructed.

Furthermore, this Indo-European linguistic theory is also flawed because it ignores the evidence that the Indo-European languages have numerous words of Sumerian origin. Götz provides many lists and tables showing the high probability of Sumerian origin of a large number of words in the Semitic and Indo-European languages, which render the statistical probability of coincidence highly unlikely. That the Semitic languages have many words of Sumerian origin should not come as a surprise given that they were in direct contact with the Mesopotamian Sumerians. In the case of the Indo-Europeans, this can be explained by the transmission of Sumerian words by other non- and pre-Indo-Europeans originating from the Near East and who settled in Europe before the arrival of the proto-Indo-Europeans with whom they later mingled to form the various Indo-European groups.

Götz's study of over 1100 pages also contains an impressive bibliography of over 500 sources (mostly Western), upon which he based his conclusions which can be summed up thus: the Sumerians were not an isolated group, but had in fact a tremendous ethno-linguistic and cultural influence on the development of the various Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups - the Semitic, Indo-European, Caucasian, Uralic, and Altaic groups, citing linguistic, archeological, anthropological, and other evidence. It would be advisable for all those who claim to be Indo-European scholars to take a good look at such research instead of dismissing it as some pan-Turkist propaganda.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 5-02-06

I take hunmagyar's words as a confession of my assumption that the Turanist hypothesis is incompatible with the principles of conventional historical linguistics. I have not read Götz' voluminous work, but I suspect that he is not a professional linguist. The problem is that, if one does not work within the stringent framework of comparative linguistics, the results one gets are useless. It can be proven mathematically. Without regular soundlaws and derivation patterns, the risk of identifying non-related words will increase virtually infinitely, and the probabilly does not increase by accumulating the evidence. If anything is valid, nothing is valid. I know that the philological approah is painstakingly boring and slow, but it has the great advantage that its results are trustworthy and probable (which is, of course, not the same as true). It is without doubt more fun to make long-distance comparison relying on one's immediate impressions, but the problem is that you have no method for distinguishing the probable and the improbable.
It is not controversial that the Indo-European languages have loan-words from the Middle Eastern languages, and some of them have been proven to be of proto-Indo-European age, since they have gone through all the regular sound-laws from PIE upwards! A popular example is Gk. πέλεκυς "axe" ~ Sanskrit paraśu- < *pelek̂u- <- Akkadian pilakku. However, most of the oriental loans are limited to the single Indo-European langauges and therefore probably borrowed only during the development of the particular language, e.g. Gk. χρυσός "gold" <- Akkadian hurāšu.
By the way, you have not put forward any evidence supporting your allegation that sound-laws are without any importance and the Indo-European language family relies on a methodological flaw. You have only quoted a Hungarian book claiming that, written by a person which is, to the best of my knowledge, unknown in the scholarly milieu and therefore probably no part of it. Enkyklios 12:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

All scientific theories must go through a process of questioning, re-evaluation and revision. The so-called conventional Indo-European historical linguistic theory is no exception. Based on the statements of those who claim allegiance to this theory, one would believe that this is some sort of infallible dogma which cannot be questioned, and if one dares to do so, then it is heresy punishable by excommunication.

The problem with the so-called conventional Indo-European historical linguistic theory is that the historical conclusions drawn from it are contradicted by archeological and anthropological evidence which supports the Turanist hypothesis (references in my previous postings).

This debate is still far from settled, the question being will it be a scientific debate or an ideological one?

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 6-02-06

I agree that "all scientific theories must go through a process of questioning, re-evaluation and revision". However, I do not think that you can discard a linguistic method with reference to the archaeological material - or, for that sake, an archaeological theory with reference to the linguistic material. The validity of the method of historical linguistics is independent of the historical conclusions which one may draw from the linguistic reconstruction that are made within the framework of that method.
As you probably know, there is no unanimity among Indo-Europeanists as to the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European culture or the location of the proto-home; the disagreement is not an indication of the falsity of the linguistic theory. The fact is that language and material culture are incompatible kinds of evidence, the latter being distributed rapidly and readily far beyond the borders of the single ethnos, the former being transmitted only slowly during long-term contact. Of course words can travel far if they are attached to prestigious objects and behaviours, but I am not speaking about single words but large linguistic structures.
Therefore, I am very sceptic of your attempt to reconstruct a large Turanic ethnos with a unified linguistic, material and racial character. It is simply improbable, unmethodological and potentially racist. Enkyklios 09:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


Basis for Turanian hypothesis

The Turanian hypothesis

Thousands of years ago, peoples originating from the ancient Near-Eastern ethno-linguistic group consisting of the Mesopotamian Sumerians, the Hurrians, Subareans, Elamites, Kassites, among others, settled in the Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Central Asia. The pre-Indo-European populations of Europe, and the Scythian, Uralic and Altaic peoples and languages originate at least in part from the Sumerian-related group.

Arguments supporting the Turanian hypothesis

Comparative linguistic analysis indicates the correspondence of hundreds of words (possibly more) with related phonetic structure and meaning between Sumerian and the Ural-Altaic languages, as well as similarities in grammatical structure (Érdy, Götz, Gosztony). In his Sumerian Etymological Dictionary and Comparative Grammar, Kálmán Gosztony, professor of Sumerian philology at the Sorbonne, demonstrated that the grammatical structure of the Hungarian language is the closest to that of the Sumerian language: out of the 53 characteristics of Sumerian grammar, there are 51 matching characteristics in the Hungarian language, 29 in the Turkic languages, 24 in the Caucasian languages, 21 in the Uralic languages, compared to only 5 in the Semitic languages, and 4 in the Indo-European languages.

Furthermore, the linguistic evidence is confirmed by archeological and anthropological evidence which traces the spread of culture across Eurasia back to its Mesopotamian origins (Götz).

So far, the opponents of the Turanian hypothesis have dismissed it in ignorance of the evidence presented by the sources mentioned above and in my previous postings. Dismissing evidence without proper analysis on the grounds that it contradicts certain IE theories or that the sources are not recognized in IE circles do not constitute rational arguments.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 7-02-06

(Would you please sign your contributions like anybody else in wikipedia, i.e. logging in with your username and signing your commentaries with 4x ~, thereby generating automatically the proper name and date. Anybody could sign a commentary with the name "Webmaster - hunmagyar.org" and claim anything in your "name". Furthermore, it is misleading to use "Webmaster" as part of one's name; it may give the impression that you speak in this room with some kind of authority, which you do not.)


I am afraid, you cannot use Kálmán Gosztony = Colman-Gabriel Gostony's Dictionnaire d'étymologie sumérienne et grammaire comparée (1975) as a reliable source. First, it is obviously biased by an ethnocentric approach which must make one sceptical and critical, and as I pointed out above, the reconstruction of "a large Turanic ethnos with a unified linguistic, material and racial character" is "improbable, unmethodological and potentially racist". Furthermore, typological similarity is not the same as genetic affinity (it is like sharks and dolphins or birds and bats). Even if Gosztony is right in drawing our attention to grammatical similarities between Sumerian and Hungarian and the Turk languages, it proves only little.
Indo-Europeanists do not dismiss evidence without proper analysis. The problem is that so-called evidence presented by the Turanists is not evidence that can be analysed within the framework of linguistics because it is not collected systematically, but intuitively and arbitrarily. It remains a postulate. And you cannot expect Indo-Europeanists to do the work for the Turanists and collect the material in a proper scientific way. The burden of proof lies on the shoulders of those who want to revise linguistics as it is taught in the universities all over the world. Enkyklios 10:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


I certainly do not expect, nor would I trust "Indo-Europeanists to do the work for the Turanists and collect the material in a proper scientific way". This being said, the fact is that this work is still far from over, but it is important to realize that there are major obstacles in the way of accomplishing this scientific work: political and ideological obstacles. Serious scholarly and scientific Turanist research started in Hungary in the early 20th c., but it has been suppressed under the Soviet occupation by the puppet communist regime and the politically and ideologically motivated censorship continues today as the former communist-era elites are still in power, including in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (for more on this, see: THE CONTROVERSY ON THE ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE HUNGARIANS at [1]).

Among other factors which hamper the development of scientific Turanist research are the vested interests of states such as Russia, China and Iran which occupy territories with large Turanian populations, and these states have obvious reasons to discourage any research which might promote a Turanian national identity. In the West, it is also clear that the dominant Indo-Europeanist view would not encourage research which holds out the prospect of establishing a Sumerian-Scythian-Ural-Altaic ethnolinguistic relationship. Such misleading statements as "the reconstruction of a large Turanic ethnos with a unified linguistic, material and racial character is improbable, unmethodological and potentially racist" illustrate this biased attitude. The Turanist sources I have referred to do not make any such claims of a "unified racial character". They make it clear that the evidence indicates that all ethnic groups are the result of complex processes of racial and linguistic intermingling, which implies that the members of a hypothetical Turanian ethnolinguistic group would be just as racially diverse as any other, and that the fundamental link is linguistic and cultural.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 8-02-06 (I see no need to login and change my signature as I don't intend to spend much more time here. I have a website to maintain and research to do!)

The Opinion Of An Observer

I am an avid student of Ural-Altaic languages, and Indo-Iranian religious beliefs. I am not a native speaker however, of a language in the above mentioned family, nor a national of any country whose mother toungue is one.

I have the following points to make:

- Early and Proto-Altaic peoples (Xiong-nu, Xien-pe, Tü-qüe, early Mongols etc.) were not Zoroastrians exactly, they were however followers of a Sun and Sky worshipping animistic religion that maintained a devotion to a deity similar to Ahura Mazda (who is often shown as or in a winged sun disk) and also showed an adoration for fire. These ancient Turco-Mongol beliefs can be seen as elements in common with Zoroastrianism. This is one fact in favor of the Magyar fellow's article.

- The language of the people of ancient Sumer is considered by many linguists to be a language isolate. It is also considered by some as a product of the Caucasus region. Caucasian languages are not considered to be of the Ural-Altaic family, but rather a distinct family divided into Southern, North-E astern, and North-Western branches. These languages are Agglutinative like Ural-Altaic languages, but possess a vastly different vocabulary with no visable relation to Ural-Altaic words. It has been ventured by some scholars that certain Proto-Altaic peoples in Ancient Europe such as Huns and Avars, shared a common ancestry with Caucasian peoples (In particular the people of Daghestan who call themselves the Avars raise some questions.) but this is incredibly difficult to prove seeing as very few words remain of these languages exist, let alone traces grammar. Furthermore Sumerians were a totally sedentary race, whereas historically Altaic and Uralic peoples were largely nomadic. This argument favors the opinion that this article is faulty.

- It is largely believed that Schythians and/or Saka were Indo-Iranian or Indo-European. This too is difficult to say seeing as this language/s is also quite dead. The basis for the belief that the Schythians were of Indo-European stock is purely baced on anthropological evidence, which abounds.

- Finally it must be said that there is some contemporary pollution to the Magyar's argument, by this I mean Pan-Turkist, Turanist, and Magyar nationalism. It is obvious that such an influence is present in the article. However, I believe that much of the argument against the article is also greatly unfounded. This subject is fundamentally and terminally obscured. No one may say weather such a link exists, nor may they say the opposite, it is simply something that either awaits more proof, or must simply be let go. I find that this article should be treated as fact because some believe it to be, I also believe that this article should feature certain aspects of the argument against it, so as to be well balaced.

The Information I used here is readily available to anyone, and commonly known to most linguists versed on the subject. Wikipedia itself feature most of this information within itself. Please E-Mail me with any further questions or critcisms azjilk@yahoo.com, Thank You.

I agree with most of your remarks. I shall only add that there are also important (if not 100% unequivocal) linguistic evidence for the belief that the Scythians were of Indo-European stock. The whole matter is discussed on Scythian languages, and it would be wise to keep it there. Enkyklios 11:34, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The oppinion of another observer

The article seems to have been corrected, thankfully, and the NPOV tag could be removed, I think. The links to Pan-Turanian sites should also be removed, however. As far as the views of master Hunmagyar above, being half-Magyar myself, I am aggrieved to see that such views have had even temporary representation here. I am in a position to be aware of Hungarian extreme nationalism. Hunmagyar would likely have us believe that Jesus was also a Parthian (which for him means Hungarian) Prince, and that Celts were a first wave of Hungarian colonists, as the name Celt is clearly, according to them, related to the Hungarian word Kelet (East). And yes, I have been presented with such books by my Hungarian relations, that also incidentally spoke of the Magyar-Sumerian link. Books that presented Sumerian as Proto-Magyar, and 'proved' how all languages were of Magyar origin. And incidentally read the Mycenian Linear B inscriptions as Magyar. The propagation of such views via respectable portals such as this one must necessarily be stoped. On a quite different note, as for the Huns' and/or Avars' relation to the Caucasian peoples, it seems quite probable at least as far as the Avars are concerned, but then, they would presumably be concidered Caucasian, not Altaic. Druworos 13:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the NPOV tag ought to be removed, since it is rather neutral in its present form. There should perhaps be an elaboration on the Turan concept and its development in the Avesta and the Shahnameh. Enkyklios 11:40, 19 February 2006 (UTC)