History of Russia - История России

[Altair]

While Fomenko and Nosovsky include some sources, my impression is they also overlook some others like archaeological finds. They often use analysis of words.

Yes, and this analysis seems sometimes too far-fetched to me (like confirmation bias). For example (from the quote above):

Азиатский Татарский Хан -> АС+ТР+ХАН.

They basically take 2 consonants from the first 2 words and the last word (ХАН) and create an abbreviation АС+ТР+ХАН. I'm not an expert in linguistics but this linguistic transformation seems off to me.

They analyze ancient text, astronomic events and so on but the chronology shifts seem sometimes far-fetched as well. For example, they write in Христос. Русь и Рим (Christ. Rus' and Rome):

В 2003 году в итоге многолетних исследований нам удалось окончательно установить датировку евангельских событий: вторая половина XII века н. э. При этом оказалось, что подлинный год Рождества Христова это примерно 1152 год н. э., а подлинный год распятия и Воскресения Христа — 1185 год н. э.

In 2003, as a result of years of research, we were able to finally establish the dating of the Gospel events: the second half of the 12th century AD. It turned out that the true year of the birth of Christ is about 1152 AD. and the true year of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - 1185 AD.

So basically using time shift of 1185 years! On the other hand, on their website they present a chronology map which uses 3 different chronological shifts: 330, 1050 and 1800 years. 330 years is closer to the chronological shift mentioned by C's:

(Pierre) Maybe you can ask this question. Caesar was born roughly 2,114 years ago according to our official calendars. In reality, how many years ago was Caesar born?

A: 1635. {Difference of 479 years}

 

[Altair]

After writing this post, Session 9 December 2017 where I linked to a Russian video with a map with locations in Northern Germany and also presents links to the history of ancient Russia, I found some videos in Russian, that put ancient Slavic/ancient Russian influences in Germany on the map in still more details

Here is a repost of the answer to your post in the thread Session 9 December 2017:

(Joe) The idea was that they're trying to create some kind of bioweapon that's genetically specific...

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) ...against Russians.

A: Yes

Q: (Mikey) Why not just get samples...

A: Unfortunately, since most Caucasians are related to Russian forebears, this is a dangerous and delusional undertaking.

Part of the delusion might be that many are unaware of past links between the West and East of Europe.

I recently finished Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich and here are some related quotes:

...the data show that the Yamnaya also made a major demographic impact—in fact, it is clear that the single most important source of ancestry across northern Europe today is the Yamnaya or groups closely related to them. This suggests that the Yamnaya expansion likely spread a major new group of languages throughout Europe. The ubiquity of Indo-European languages in Europe over the last few thousand years, and the fact that the Yamnaya-related migration was more recent than the farming one, makes it likely that at least some Indo-European languages in Europe, and perhaps all of them, were spread by the Yamnaya.

His key observation is that all extant branches of the Indo-European language family except for the most anciently diverging Anatolian ones that are now extinct (such as ancient Hittite) have an elaborate shared vocabulary for wagons, including words for axle, harness pole, and wheels. Anthony interpreted this sharing as evidence that all Indo-European languages spoken today, from India in the east to the Atlantic fringe in the west, descend from a language spoken by an ancient population that used wagons. This population could not have lived much earlier than about six thousand years ago, since we know from archaeological evidence that it was around then that wheels and wagons spread. This date rules out the Anatolian farming expansion into Europe between nine thousand and eight thousand years ago. The obvious candidate for dispersing most of today’s Indo-European languages is thus the Yamnaya, who depended on the technology of wagons and wheels that became widespread around five thousand years ago.

This suggests to me that the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians.

These results reveal a remarkably parallel tale of the prehistories of two similarly sized subcontinents of Eurasia—Europe and India. In both regions, farmers migrating from the core region of the Near East after nine thousand years ago—in Europe from Anatolia, and in India from Iran—brought a transformative new technology, and interbred with the previously established hunter-gatherer populations to form new mixed groups between nine thousand and four thousand years ago. Both subcontinents were then also affected by a second later major migration with an origin in the steppe, in which Yamnaya pastoralists speaking an Indo-European language mixed with the previously established farming population they encountered along the way, in Europe forming the peoples associated with the Corded Ware culture, and in India eventually forming the ANI. These populations of mixed steppe and farmer ancestry then mixed with the previously established farmers of their respective regions, forming the gradients of mixture we see in both subcontinents today.

The period around five thousand years ago north of the Black and Caspian seas corresponds to the rise of the Yamnaya, who, as discussed in part II, took advantage of horses and wheels to exploit the resources of the open steppe for the first time. The genetic data show that the Yamnaya and their descendants were extraordinarily successful, largely displacing the farmers of northern Europe in the west and the hunter-gatherers of central Asia in the east.

Gimbutas argued that the arrival of the Yamnaya in Europe heralded a shift in the power relationships between the sexes. It coincided with the decline of “Old Europe,” which according to Gimbutas was a society with little evidence of violence, and in which females played a central social role as is apparent in the ubiquitous Venus figurines. In her reconstruction, “Old Europe” was replaced by a male-centered society, evident not only in the archaeology but also in the male-centered Greek, Norse, and Hindu mythologies of the Indo-European cultures plausibly spread by the Yamnaya.

...ancient DNA data have provided evidence that the Yamnaya were indeed a society in which power was concentrated among a small number of elite males. The Y chromosomes that the Yamnaya carried were nearly all of a few types, which shows that a limited number of males must have been extraordinarily successful in spreading their genes. In contrast, in their mitochondrial DNA, the Yamnaya had more diverse sequences.

The descendants of the Yamnaya or their close relatives spread their Y chromosomes into Europe and India, and the demographic impact of this expansion was profound, as the Y-chromosome types they carried were absent in Europe and India before the Bronze Age but are predominant in both places today.

...in our data around 90 percent of males who carry Yamnaya ancestry have a Y-chromosome type of steppe origin that was absent in Iberia prior to that time. It is clear that there were extraordinary hierarchies and imbalances in power at work in the expansions from the steppe.

From Wikipedia:

 

[Chu]

Interesting! I haven't read Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich yet, but the above is really close to what David Anthony writes about in The Horse, the Wheel and Language, which I thought was fascinating. In the book he expands his theory a lot more, and gives very good (IMO) explanations for why some languages spread out more than others, and not always because of war and domination, but also because some peoples wish to emulate what more successful communities have achieved, for example. The Wikipedia entry gives a pretty good synopsis:

Anthony gives a broad overview of the linguistic and archaeological evidence for the early origins and spread of the Indo-European languages, describing a revised version of Marija Gimbutas's Kurgan hypothesis. Anthony describes the development of local cultures at the northern Black Sea coast, from hunter-gatherers to herders, under the influence of the Balkan cultures, which introduced cattle, horses and bronze technology.

When the climate changed between 3500 and 3000 BCE, with the steppes becoming drier and cooler, those inventions led to a new way of life in which mobile herders moved into the steppes, developing a new kind of social organisation with patron-client and host-guest relationships. That new social organisation, with its related Indo-European languages, spread throughout Europe, Central Asia and South Asia because of its possibilities to include new members within its social structures.

Part One covers theoretical considerations on language and archaeology. It gives an introductory overview of Indo-European linguistics (ch. 1); investigates the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (ch. 2); the dating of Proto-Indo-European (ch. 3); the specific vocabulary for wool and wheels (ch. 4); the location of the Proto-Indo-European homeland (ch. 5); and the correlation of these linguistic discoveries with archaeological evidence and the role of elite recruitment in language shift (ch. 6).

Part Two covers the development of the Steppe cultures and the subsequent migrations out of the Pontic-Caspian region into Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. The splitting of the major branches of Indo-European (except perhaps Greek) can be correlated with archaeological cultures, showing steppe influences in a way that makes sense chronologically and geographically in light of linguistic reconstructions. Anthony gives an introduction to Part Two (ch. 7); describes the interaction between Balkan farmers and herders and steppe foragers at the Dniestr River (in western Ukraine) and the introduction of cattle (ch. 8); the spread of cattle-herding during the Copper Age and the accompanying social division between high and low status (ch. 9); the domestication of the horse (ch. 10); the end of the Balkan cultures and the early migrations of Steppe people into the Danube Valley (ch. 11); the development of the steppe cultures during the Eneolithic, including the interaction with the Mesopotamian world after the collapse of the Balkan cultures and the role of Proto-Indo-European as a regional language (ch. 12); the Yamna culture as the culmination of these developments at the Pontic-Caspian steppes (ch. 13); the migration of Yamna people into the Danube Valley and the origins of the western Indo-European languages at the Danube Valley (Celtic, Italic), the Dniestr (Germanic) and the Dnieper (Baltic, Slavic) (ch. 14); migrations eastward which gave rise to the Sintashta culture and Proto-Indo-Iranian (ch. 15); migrations of the Indo-Aryans southward through the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological complex into Anatolia and India (ch. 16); and concluding thoughts (ch. 17).

Part One: Language and Archaeology
Chapter One: The promise and Politics of the Mother Language
Anthony introduces the similarities between a broad range of languages and their common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. He proposes that "the Proto-Indo-European homeland was located in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas in what is today southern Ukraine and Russia."[1] Anthony gives a short overview of the history of the linguistical study of PIE[2] and then presents six major problems that hinder a "broadly acceptable union between archaeological and linguistic evidence."[3]

Chapter Three: Language and Time 1. The Last Speakers of Proto-Indo-European
Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology, Don Ringe and Tandy Warnow propose the following evolutionary tree of Indo-European branches:[4]

• Pre-Anatolian (before 3500 BCE)
• Pre-Tocharian
• Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (before 2500 BCE)
• [Pre-Germanic][note 1]
• Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek (after 2500 BCE)
• [Pre-Germanic];[note 1] Proto-Germanic c. 500 BCE[6]
• Pre-Balto-Slavic;[4]
• Proto-Indo-Iranian (2000 BCE)

Chapter Four: Language and Time 2: Wool, Wheels and Proto-Indo-European
Anthony proposes that the Proto-Indo-European emerged after ca. 3500 BCE. He bases that especially on his analysis of Indo-European terms for wool textiles and wheeled vehicles:

Neither woven wool textiles nor wheeled vehicles existed before about 4000 BCE. It is possible that neither existed before about 3500 BCE. Yet Proto-Indo-European speakers spoke regularly about wheeled vehicles and some sort of wool textile. This vocabulary suggests that Proto-Indo-European was spoken after 4000–3500 BCE.[7]​

Chapter Six: The Archaeology of Language
Anthony, following the methodology of Ringe and Warnow, proposes the following sequence:[8]

• Pre-Anatolian (4200 BCE)
• Pre-Tocharian (3700 BCE)
• Pre-Germanic (3300 BCE)
• Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic (3000 BCE)
• Pre-Armenian (2800 BCE)
• Pre-Balto-Slavic (2800 BCE)
• Pre-Greek (2500 BCE)
• Proto-Indo-Iranian (2200 BCE), split between Iranian and Old Indic 1800 BCE

A key insight is that early expansions of the area in which Indo-European was spoken were often caused by "recruitment," rather than only by military invasions. With the Yamna culture as a nucleus candidate, the original recruitment would be to a way of life in which intensive use of horses allowed herd animals to be pastured in areas of the Ukrainian / South Russian steppe, outside of river valleys.

Part Two: The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes
Chapter Eight: First Farmers and Herders: The Pontic-Caspian Neolithic


Ukraine rivers

According to Anthony, the development of the Proto-Indo-European cultures started with the introduction of cattle at the Pontic-Caspian steppes,[9], which, until ca. 5200-5000 BCE, were populated by hunter-gatherers.[10] The first cattle herders arrived from the Danube Valley at ca. 5800-5700 BCE, descendants from the first European farmers.[11] They formed the Criş culture (5800-5300 BCE), creating a cultural frontier at the Prut-Dniestr watershed.[12]

The adjacent Bug-Dniester culture (6300–5500 BCE) was a local forager culture from which cattle breeding spread to the steppe peoples.[13] The Dniepr Rapids area was the next part of the Pontic-Caspian steppes to shift to cattle-herding. It was the most densely-populated area of the Pontic-Caspian steppes at the time and had been inhabited by various hunter-gatherer populations since the end of the Ice Age. From ca. 5800-5200, it was inhabited by the first phase of the Dnieper-Donets culture, a hunter-gatherer culture contemporaneous with the Bug-Dniestr culture.[14]

Chapter Nine: Cows, Copper and Chiefs
At ca. 5200-5000 BCE, the non-Indo-European Cucuteni-Tripolye culture (5200-3500 BCE) appears east of the Carpathian mountains, [15] moving the cultural frontier to the Southern Bug valley,[16] and the foragers at the Dniepr Rapids shifted to cattle herding, marking the shift to Dniepr-Donets II (5200/5000-4400-4200 BCE).[17] The Dniepr-Donets culture kept cattle not only for ritual sacrifices but also for their daily diet.[18] The Khvalynsk culture (4700-3800 BCE),[18] located at the middle Volga, which was connected with the Danube Valley by trade networks,[19] also had cattle and sheep, but they were "more important in ritual sacrifices than in the diet."[20] According to Anthony, "the set of cults that spread with the first domesticated animals was at the root of the Proto-Indo-European conception of the universe"[20] in which cattle had an essential role.[21] The Samara culture (early 5th millennium BCE),[note 2]

Chapter Ten: The Domestication of the Horse and the Origins of Riding: The Tale of the Teeth
The domestication of the horse had a wide-ranging effect on the steppe cultures, and Anthony has done fieldwork on it.[26] Bit wear is a sign of horse-riding, and the dating of horse teeth with signs of bit wear gives clues for the dating of the appearance of horse l-riding.[27] The presence of domesticated horses in the steppe cultures was an important clue for Marija Gimbutas's development of her Kurgan hypothesis.[28] According to Anthony, horseback riding may have appeared as early as 4200 BCE,[29] and horse artifacts show up in greater amounts after 3500 BCE.[29] Horseback riding greatly increased the mobility of herders, allowing for greater herds, but also led to increased warfare by the need for additional grazing land.[30]

Chapter Eleven: The End of Old Europe and the Rise of the Steppe
The Sredny Stog culture (4400-3300 BCE)[31] appears at the same location as the Dniepr-Donets culture but shows influences from people who came from the Volga River region.[32] The Sredni Stog culture was "the archaeological foundation for the Indo-European steppe pastoralists of Marija Gimbutas,"[33] and the period "was the critical era when innovative Proto-Indo-European dialects began to spread across the steppes."[33]

Around 4200-4100 BCE, a climate change occurred, causing colder winters.[34] Between 4200-3900 BCE, many tell settlements in the lower Danube Valley were burned and abandoned,[34] and the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture showed an increase in fortifications[35] and moved eastwards, towards the Dniepr.[36]

Steppe herders, archaic Proto-Indo-European-speakers, spread into the lower Danube valley in about 4200-4000 BCE, causing or taking advantage of the collapse of Old Europe.[37] According to Anthony, their languages "probably included archaic Proto-Indo-European dialects of the kind partly preserved later in Anatolian."[38] According to Anthony their descendants later moved into Anatolia at an unknown time, maybe as early as 3000 BCE.[39] According to Anthony, the herders, forming the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka complex,[note 3] probably were a chiefly elite from the Sredni Stog culture at the Dniepr Valley.[41]

Chapter Twelve: Seeds of Change on the Steppe Borders. Maikop Chiefs and Tripolye Towns
The collapse of Old Europe lead to a decrease in copper grave gifts in the North Pontic steppes. Between 3800 and 3300, substantial contact took place between the steppe cultures and Mesopotamia via the Maikop culture (3700-3000 BCE), in the northern Caucasus.[42] To the west, Tripolye pottery begins to resemble Sredni Stog pottery, showing a process of assimilation between the Tripolye culture and the steppe cultures and a gradual breakdown of the cultural border between the two.[43]

Between 3800 and 3300 BCE, five eneolithic steppe cultures can be discerned, and Proto-Indo-European dialects may have then served as a regional language.[44]

• Mikhaylovka culture (3600—3000 BCE), on the Black Sea coast between the Dniestr and the Dniepr.[45] Mikhailovka I people looked less like the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka people and may have intermarried more with Tripolye culture people or people from the Danube valley.[46] Mikhailovka II upper level (3300-3000 BCE) imported pottery from the Repin culture (see below) and is regarded as early western Yamna.[47] In the steppes northwest of the Black Sea l, the Mikhailovka culture was replaced by the Usatovo culture after 3300 BCE.[46] The Mikhailovka culture at the Crimea developed into the Kemi Oba culture.[46]
• Post-Mariupol culture (early phase 3800-3300 BCE, late phase 3300-2800 BCE):[48] around the Dnieper Rapids, near the Donets River.[49] According to Ina Potekhina, the people looked most like the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka people.[46]
• Late/Phase II Sredny Stog culture (Dniepr-Donets-Don), c. 4000–3500 BCE.[50]
• Repin culture (Don) and late Khvalynsk culture (lower Volga):[51] the Repin culture developedby contact with the late Maikop-Novosvobodyana culture (Lower Don),[52] which penetrated deeply into the Lower Volga steppe.[53] Anthony also believes that Repin was highly significant to the establishment of the Afanasevo culture in eastern Siberia, c. 3700–3300 BCE.[54]

Chapter Thirteen: Wagon Dwellers of the Steppes. The Speakers of Proto-Indo-European


Location of early Yamna culture

The Yamna horizon (3300-2500 BCE)[55] originated in the Don-Volga area,[56] where it was preceded[57] by the Middle Volga's Khvalynsk culture (4700-3800 BCE)[18] and the Don-based Repin culture (ca.3950-3300 BCE),[58] and late pottery from these two cultures can barely be distinguished from early Yamna pottery.[59] The Afanasevo culture, at the western Altai Mountains, at the far eastern end of the steppes, was an offshoot from the Repin culture.[60]

The Yamna horizon was an adaptation to a climate change between 3500 and 3000 BCE. The steppes became drier and cooler, herds needed to be moved frequently to feed them sufficiently, which was made possible by the use of wagons and horseback riding, leading to "a new, more mobile form of pastoralism."[61] It was accompanied by new social rules and institutions to regulate the local migrations in the steppes, creating a new social awareness of a distinct culture, and of "cultural Others," who did not participate in the new institutions.[55]

The early Yamnaya horizon spread quickly across the Pontic-Caspian steppes between ca. 3400 and 3200 BCE.[62] According to Anthony, "the spread of the Yamnaya horizon was the material expression of the spread of late Proto-Indo-European across the Pontic-Caspian steppes."[63] Anthony further notes that "the Yamnaya horizon is the visible archaeological expression of a social adjustment to high mobility - the invention of the political infrastructure to manage larger herds from mobile homes based in the steppes."[64]

The Yamna horizon is reflected in the disappearance of long-term settlements between the Don and the Ural and the brief periods of usage of kurgan cemeteries, which begin to appear deep into the steppes between the major river valleys.[65]

The eastern part (Volga-Ural-North Caucasian) of the Yamna horizon was more mobile than the western part (South Bug-lower Don), which was more farming-oriented.[66] The eastern part more male-oriented, and the western part was more female-inclusive.[67] The eastern part also had a higher number of males buried in kurgans, and its deities were male-oriented.[68]

Chapter Fourteen: The Western Indo-European Languages


Course of the Danube, in red

According to Anthony, Pre-Italic, Pre-Celtic and Pre-Germanic may have split off in the Danube Valley and the Dniestr-Dniepr from Proto-Indo-European.[69]

The Usatovo culture developed in southeastern Central Europe at around 3300–3200 BCE at the Dniestr.[70] Although closely related to the Tripolye culture, it is contemporary with the Yamna culture and resembles it in significant ways.[71] According to Anthony, it may have originated with "steppe clans related to the Yamnaya horizon who were able to impose a patron-client relationship on Tripolye farming villages."[72] According to Anthony, the Pre-Germanic dialects may have developed in the culture between the Dniestr (western Ukraine) and the Vistula (Poland) in c. 3100–2800 BCE, and spread with the Corded Ware culture.[73]




Approximate extent of the Corded Ware horizon with the adjacent 3rd-millennium cultures (Baden culture and Globular Amphora culture, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture)

Between 3100–2800/2600 BCE, when the Yamna horizon spread fast across the Pontic Steppe, a real folk migration of Proto-Indo-European-speakers from the Yamna-culture took place into the Danube Valley,[74] moving along Usatovo territory toward specific destinations, reaching as far as Hungary,[75] where as many as 3000 kurgans may have been raised.[76] Bell Beaker sites at Budapest, dated c. 2800–2600 BCE, may have aided in spreading Yamna dialects into Austria and southern Germany in the west, where Proto-Celtic may have developed.[77] Pre-Italic may have developed in Hungary,l and spread toward Italy via the Urnfield culture and Villanovan culture.[77] According to Anthony, Slavic and Baltic developed in the Middle Dniepr (Ukraine)[78] in c. 2800 BCE, spreading north from there.[79]

The Corded Ware culture in Middle Europe probably played an essential role in the origin and spread of the Indo-European languages in Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages.[80] According to Anthony, the Corded ware horizon may have introduced Germanic, Baltic and Slavic into Northern Europe.[77]

Chapter Fifteen: Chariot Warriors of the Northern Steppes
The expansion eastwards of the Corded Ware culture, north of the steppe zone, led to the Sintashta culture, east of the Ural Mountains, which is considered to be the birthplace of the Indo-Iranians.[81] Anthony skips over the post-Yamna cultures in the steppe zone (Late Yamnaya, Catacomb (2800-2200 BCE), and Poltavka (2700-2100 BCE)) but gives an extensive treatment of the intermediate Middle Dniepr culture (3200-2300 BCE) and of the Corded Ware cultures in the forest zone (Fatyanova (3200-2300 BCE), Abashevo (2500-1900 BCE), and Balanovo (3200-2300 BCE).[82]

After ca. 2500 BCE, the Eurasian steppes became drier, peaking in ca. 2000 BCE, with the steppes southeast of the Ural mountains becoming even drier than the Middle Volga steppe.[83] In ca. 2100 BCE, Poltavka and Abashevo herders moved into the upper Tobol and Ural river valleys, close to marshes which were needed for the survival of their herds.[84] They build fortified stringholds, forming the Sintashta culture at the southern range of the Ural mountains.[85] Via the BMAC, they stood in contact with middle eastern cities like Ur, and the Sintashta settlements reveal an extensive copper producing industry, producing copper for the Middle Eastern market.[86] The Sintashta culture was shaped by warfare, which occurred in tandem with a growing long-distance trade.[87] Chariots were an important weapon in the Sintashta culture and spread from there to the Middle East.[88]

Anthony notes that "the details of the funeral sacrifices at Sintashta showed startling parallels with the sacrificial funeral rituals of the Rig Veda."[81]

Chapter Sixteen: The Opening of the Eurasian Steppes
Steppe cultures between 2200-1800 BCE are the Multi-cordoned ware culture (2200-1800 BCE)(Dniepr-Don-Volga), Filatovka culture, and Potapovka. In the forest zone are the Late Middle Dniepr and the Late Abashevo cultures. East of the Urals are the Sintashta and the Petrovka cultures. East of the Caspian Sea is the non-Indo-European Late Kelteminar culture.[89]

The Catacomb, Poltavka and Potapovka cultures were succeeded by the Srubna culture, and the Sintashta and Petrovka cultures were succeeded by the Andronovo culture.[90]

I think it makes a lot of sense, but I'm not a historian...

 

[Altair]

Coming back to our discussion about "Penitent Avian Lords" and their connection to Etruscans mentioned by C's:

Session 21 June 1997

Q: Change of subject: I am tracking the clues through the various languages and alphabets. I would like to know which of these alphabets, Runic, Greek, or Etruscan, preceded the others, and from which the others are derived?

A: Etruscan.

Q: Well, who were the Etruscans?

A: Templar carriers.

Q: What does that mean?

A: Seek and ye shall find.

Q: Well, how am I supposed to do that? I can't find anything else on the Etruscans!

A: No.

Q: What do you mean 'no?' You mean there is more out there on the Etruscans?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. What are Templar carriers?

A: Penitent Avian Lords.

Q: What does that mean?

A: For your search. All is drawn from some more ancient form.

Session 16 August 1997

Q: Ark suggested that the Etruscans may have gotten their alphabet as a mirror image. Could it be that they lived on the 'other side' of the mirror?

A: Latter is closer.

I was reading Gods of Cataclysm by Hugh Fox and the following excerpt caught my attention:

I suspected that Quetzalcóatl, like Itzamna, was a deified figure traceable to the bringing of East Indian science and technology to the New World, and I found it very helpful in elucidating the nature of the Olmecs to read in Caso’s The Aztecs: People of the Sun that Quetzalcóatl “is the very essence of saintliness; his life of fasting and penitence, his priestly character, and his benevolence toward his children, mankind, are evident . . . but side by side with this aspect of saintliness we find also in Quetzalcóatl an aspect of sin;

The etymology of Quetzalcoatl:

The Nahuatl nouns compounded into the proper name "Quetzalcoatl" are: quetzalli, signifying principally "plumage", but also used to refer to the bird—resplendent quetzal—renowned for its colourful feathers, and cohuātl "snake". Some scholars have interpreted the name as having also a metaphorical meaning of "precious twin" since the word for plumage was also used metaphorically about precious things and cohuātl has an additional meaning of "twin".

And here are excerpts from the interpretation of the legend of Quetzalcoatl:

In his Promethean aspect Quetzalcoatl is involved in the creation of human beings and in inspiring them with intelligence. Before Naollin's roseate splendour had burst into full day and brought the present world to light, Quetzalcoatl had to descend into the realm of the dead, Mictlan, to secure the precious bones of man so that humans might again inhabit the earth. In Mictlan, the realm of the fleshless, he confronted Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl, Lord and Lady of the Land of the Dead, the 'masks' or reflections of Ometeotl and Omecihuatl in the lowest sphere of duality, beyond which is unknowable darkness, just as there is the Unknown above Omeyocan, the highest heaven. When Quetzalcoatl demanded the bones, Mictlantecuhtli offered them on condition that Quetzalcoatl sound the conch-shell and circle the kingdom four times. Whilst this seemed to be a genuine challenge, the shell had no sounding-hole and was ever mute. Quetzalcoatl called upon the worms to pierce the shell, and bees entered through the hole and made it sound. Whilst appearing to yield possession of the bones, Mictlantecuhtli called upon the forces of the underworld to prevent Quetzalcoatl from fulfilling his charge. Mirroring this deception, Quetzalcoatl sent his double, nahualli, who is Xolotl, his twin and another aspect of himself, to inform the Lord of the Dead that the bones would be left in Mictlan. Even whilst this message was being delivered, Quetzalcoatl gathered the bones of Man and Woman and fled.

The forces of the underworld did not pursue Quetzalcoatl directly; they had prepared a trap. Quetzalcoatl fell into the trap and lost consciousness for a time. When he recovered, he found the bones damaged and in disarray. Crying out to his nahualli, he asked, "What shall I do now?" His twin gave the pre-ordained response: "Since things have turned out badly, let them turn out as they may." And Quetzalcoatl took the bones to the gods.

And as soon as he arrived, the woman called Quilaztli, who is Cihuacoatl, took them to grind and put them in a precious vessel of clay.
 Upon them Quetzalcoatl bled his member. The other gods and Quetzalcoatl himself did penance. 
And they said, "People have been born, O gods, the macehuales – those 'deserved' into life through penance." Because for our sake, the gods did penance!

Manuscript of 1558
[...]

In tlalticpac, the dream world which is earth, Quetzalcoatl is the divine king who, like Osiris, the second divine pharaoh of Egypt, brought civilization to humanity. As the divine ruler in Tollan, he taught all the arts and sciences, from cultivation of maize to metallurgy and from astrology to poetry, as well as the sacred tlilli tlapalli, red and black ink, that is, writing and, by extension, wisdom. During the golden age he dwelt in his invisible form, guiding and governing in a kingdom of innocent joy. Yet the forces of limitation, shadows in this realm of light, plotted Quetzalcoatl's downfall. Tezcatlipoca took a mirror and invited Quetzalcoatl to gaze into it. To his horror, he thereby gained a body, rather like Anthropos, and seeing himself reflected in the mirror of inchoate Nature, became one with it, according to the Hermetic tradition. In his confusion he allowed a mask and feathered head-dress to be made for him, so that people might look upon him without fear. Whilst he was disoriented, demons made pulque, a fermented drink from sap of the maguey, and gave it to Quetzalcoatl. Thus intoxicated, he took Quetzalpetatl, his feminine aspect from which he now felt alienated, and slept with her, falling afterwards into a stupor. As the archetype of humanity, his deeds brought pain and suffering to humanity – the pain of having a body, the suffering of loneliness, the disharmonies of striving, contention, fear and guilt, which pit person against person and turn the powers of human consciousness into instruments of selfishness and its inevitable offspring, conflict and greed.

In the morning Quetzalcoatl awoke filled with grief and remorse. As god, he knew the unavoidable problems of incarnation, but as king, he saw the massive failure of civilization. Between potentiality and actualization fell the dread shadow of self-induced ignorance. Within the architectonics of human life, the problems of creating man had been wholly reflected, and thus Quetzalcoatl's earthly work was completed. He resolved to leave his beautiful Tollan and set out with his closest devotees. He journeyed throughout his kingdom, leaving at different sites marks of his presence – a sacred footprint here, a raised stone there – and stripped himself of his arts and powers as he went so that these might remain with humanity in his absence. He ordered a stone casket to be made, and when it was finished he lay in it for four days so that his most precious secrets might be absorbed into it. When he was ready, he ordered the stone box sealed up to prevent theft or contamination of its contents. Only those who have redeemed Quetzalcoatl's wisdom through severe penance and self-sacrifice can hope to know the contents of that mystic sarcophagus now secreted in the human breast, in the place of purity where Quetzalcoatl was accustomed to bathing.

There at Tlillin Tlapallin, the place of burning, he built a huge pyre, mounted it and set it aflame. His ashes rose into the air and the rarest birds of the earth appeared. As the red flames lit up the celestial vault, Quetzalcoatl became again the Lord of the Dawn.

When the ashes had ceased to burn,

Quetzalcoatl's heart rose up.

They say it was raised to heaven
.
And entered there.

Wise men say it became

The morning star, appearing at dawn,

And they add that it was not seen

For four days after his death,

Whilst he had sojourned in the Kingdom of Death.

And in these four days, he gathered arrows,

And eight days later, he appeared again

As the great star.

Since then he has sat enthroned.

The heart of Quetzalcoatl became Venus, the morning star which promises first the dawn, then the rising sun itself.

So what does it all have to do with Etruscans?

Here is what Hugh Fox writes:

I moved on out of the Rig Veda into the later Vedic and heroic period of Indian literature. I felt that I had moved back through Chinese and Aryan Indian civilization to a protocultural level, a genesis, back to a people who were perhaps the foundation for Chavin, and I really felt I couldn’t move on to any other Amerindian cultures until I had “solved” the Chavin mystery. At this point, though, I didn’t realize that by solving Chavin I would solve the mysteries of the Olmecs and the Mayas on the Atlantic side of the Americas, because I had no idea that these same “Dasyus,” these same Dravidians, under different names and in different “thrusts” and “migrations” had not merely gone eastward through Burma to China, but also westward into the Mideast, the Mediterranean, to Spain, the British Isles, and (perhaps) across the Atlantic to the east coast of Meso-America.

[...]

The reference to the “serpent race” here is crucial, Naga is Sanskrit for “cobra,” the Nagas were the snake people, the cobra people, and as Gilbert Slater points out in The Dravidian Element in Indian Culture, “that cobra worship was dominant among the Dravidians in the Vedic period is shown by the term Naga gradually superseding the other names used in Sanskrit literature for the Dravidians.” The Naga kings in ancient times even called themselves Nagas, Cobras. The connection between ancient Indian snake kings and the ancient Mexican snake king Quetzalcóatl already began to form in my mind.

It was at this point that I discovered the Jesuit scholar H. Heras’ Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture, and the worldwide importance of the Nagas as cultural movers, innovators, creators became clear to me. Chavin had led me to an ancient race which, according to Heras, had moved across the globe in prehistoric times influencing and shaping cultures that in turn had later influenced the New World in a kind of two-stage, two-step influence pattern.

[...]

We are so far back that we are forced to conceive of the Dravidians at this time as a kind of proto-Indo-Mediterranean race, the essential, bottom stratum of Indo-Mediterranean culture, which is still in the process of acquiring its identity and creating its cultural forms.

This proto-Indo-Mediterranean race migrates out of India (the Indus Valley) westward across the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf where, at the end of the Gulf in the Mesopotamian area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it establishes Sumer. This is one key proto-Indo-Mediterranean migration route.

[...]

The primitive Indians were preeminently seafarers. One tribe, the Minas, were actually called “fish.” Another, the Tirayars, were “the people of the sea.” They traded and colonized not merely in Mesopotamia and Egypt but also in Crete, mainland Greece, Italy and Spain to the west, and to the east in Burma, Sri Lanka, and China! They seem to have had a major cultural influence on the development of ancient Minoan culture, and Heras even goes as far as tracing the pre-Celtic inhabitants of France, Ireland, and England back to Iberian settlers who in turn can be traced back to these same primitive Indians. In other words, what we have here is an explosive, energetic, competitive, vigorous race expanding out from India in ancient times, touching, forming, stimulating vast cultural areas in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the Orient.

[...]

According to Heras Horus, the hawk-man god in Egyptian culture arrived in Egypt via a migration of the Naga-people from India. So the same kind of bird symbolism can appear in various places visited/ colonized by Nagas, including Minoan Crete, Druidic England, and Etruscan Italy, along with all the rest of the Naga symbolic repertory. I mention this to stress the fact that finding similar symbolic patterns among other cultures does not necessarily mean a direct link with the Americas, but an indirect link from a common source.

Can it be a possible connection? I'm still reading the book and trying to wrap my head around it.

 

[Altair]

Another possible link between Etruscans and Dravidians:

ETRUSCAN, A DRAVIDIAN TONGUE?

by Arysio Nunes dos Santos

Introduction

We have, some years ago, made the remarkable discovery – which we now prove in full detail – that Etruscan, the ancestral tongue of the ancient Romans, is indeed a member of the Dravidian family of languages. The importance of this discovery cannot be overstated, as it radically alters all that is known of human prehistory. Among other things, it shows that the mobility of early man was far larger than allowed by the conventional academic doctrines of historiography and archaeology.

Secondly, the present discovery demonstrates the great importance that coy India had in civilizing the other nations, not only in the Far East, but also in the Mediterranean region, the so-called Old World. Dravida, even today one of India’s main tongues, is also closely related to the Austronesian languages, spoken all over the South Seas, from Madagascar in the West to Easter Island in the East. So, in a very literal way, we can say that Dravida – the name given the family – is indeed a global tongue that well deserves the name of Proto-World, the tongue formerly spoken in the primordial center where humanity first evolved, before its great diaspora.
[...]

Identification

In order to render the identification of the individual Dravidian roots and words we followed the genial numbering scheme devised by Burrows and Emeneau (BE) in their magistral work which indeed sets new, seminal trends in Linguistics. Without it, our decipherment of the Etruscan affinity with Dravida would have been utterly impossible. All previous attempts probably failed because the specialists did not dispose of this recent masterwork, and hence could not do a relatively thorough job, such as we pressure to have done here for the first time ever.

In fact, if our thesis succeeds, the largest share of the glory rightfully belongs to them and their Etruscological peers, rather than to our humble person. It is only because BE grouped the individual languages under collective entries for each base and each etymon that the global pattern for the family became apparent. Otherwise, anyone would be lost in the maze of tongues (about two dozen) and etyma, which present an enormous variety of subtle changes in both spelling (alphabets inclusive), as well as in form and etymology.

With this device – their device – all the reader has to do is to note the entry number in our paper and look for it in their dictionary, and then confirm, if he/she so desires, the root we gave and the presence of the corresponding etyma inside the group. Even if a particular etymology does not exist for a specific language within the group, this does not matter, as we explained further above, since it is attested elsewhere within the base.

No better proof of the existence of a particular transition, either phonetic or etymological, can be given than the fact that the evolution actually occurred in practice. Besides, in this way, they will be able to check directly the presence or not of the cerebrals whose marking we skipped in the present document, for the notational reasons expounded above.

Despite its apparent simplicity, the method we used is, however, actually extremely reliable, verifiable, testable and, hence, strictly scientific. Moreover, it has the advantage of filling up the enormous gaps that still exist – in the present state of the affair – in our knowledge both of Etruscan and of Dravida. The work of BE on Dravida has barely started, compared to, say, Sanskrit and the other languages both of India and elsewhere. We hope that the present discovery of its former importance for the origins of Western Civilization results in a greater interest in this charming and fantastically well endowed family of languages.

But the fact that the importance of Dravida today is relatively lesser, and that most tongues are now only spoken by primitives lost in the jungles of South India – savages who only welcome the inquisitive strange when they could cook him for dinner until recently – does not mean that they were also so in the far past.

Times change, and civilizations rise and fall, and often leave no traces of their former grandeur. Some once mighty civilizations go and leave almost no vestige at all, until the archaeologists and the linguists get to work on them. Such was the case of Egypt, Crete, Troy, Sumer and, even more surprisingly, of the fabulous Indus Valley Civilization, the realm of the very Dravidas we are mooting here in this context for the first time ever, we believe.

So, if our discovery indeed proves to be real, we have finally a direct evidence that the fantastic Indus Valley Civilization once extended not only over most of India and the Far East itself, but also all the way to the Mediterranean, where it was later reborn as the mighty Roman Empire itself, the brainchild of Etruria and its magnificent civilization.

We also hope that the present discovery of the Dravidian presence and role in prehistoric Europe – a fact thus far ignored by all – contributes to restore the former glory and dignity of that great people, the true enlighteners of the Occident, and serves to show that rather than enemies, Aryans and Dravidas actually shared the role of civilizers both in the East and in the West. So, the raging Aryan Invasion controversy finds its serendipitous end in the inescapable realization that both nations were one and the same originally, and only parted company rather late in time, well within historically documented times.

[...]

The article itself is pretty big (here is the 2nd part) and targets mainly linguists though it's still very interesting to read.

There is also an article Etruscan and Dravidian by Sten Konow published in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Freely available is only a small extract:

The remarks which follow are based on notes which I have made in reading Professor Torp's Etruskische Beiträge, vols. i–ii (Leipzig, 1902–3). I have never myself studied the Etruscan language, and my knowledge of Dravidian is rather limited. I was, however, at once struck by the apparent analogy of several features in both families, and I have thought it worth while to arrange my notes and make a short abstract of them. I do not think that I have solved the vexed question about the origin of the old inhabitants of Etruria. But I hope to have shown that there are many interesting points in which their language follows the same principles as that of the Draviḍas, and that I have, in so doing, added something to the probability of the theory that the old Etrurians did not belong to the Indo-European stock.

 

[Altair]

Q: Change of subject: I am tracking the clues through the various languages and alphabets. I would like to know which of these alphabets, Runic, Greek, or Etruscan, preceded the others, and from which the others are derived?

A: Etruscan.

Q: Well, who were the Etruscans?

A: Templar carriers.

Q: What does that mean?

A: Seek and ye shall find.

Q: Well, how am I supposed to do that? I can't find anything else on the Etruscans!

A: No.

Q: What do you mean 'no?' You mean there is more out there on the Etruscans?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. What are Templar carriers?

A: Penitent Avian Lords.

Q: What does that mean?

A: For your search. All is drawn from some more ancient form.

Recently I came across the idea that Etruscans were believed by some ancient authors to be descendants of Pelasgians.

Pelasgians​

An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelargos ("stork") and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Egypt, where they nest. [Strabo. Geography, 5.2.4.] Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy The Birds. One of the laws of "the storks" in the satirical cloud-cuckoo-land, playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians, is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare. [Aristophanes. The Birds, 1355ff.]

According to Fragment 76 of Hellanicus's Phoronis, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings: Phrastōr, Amyntōr, Teutamides and Nasas (kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly).[34] The Pelasgians under Nasas "rose up" (anestēsan) against the Hellenes (who presumably had acquired Thessaly) and departed for Italy where they first took Cortona and then founded Tyrrhenia. The conclusion is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly (and indirectly of Peloponnesus) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans.

Hellanicus of Lesbos

His work includes the first mention of the legendary founding of Rome by the Trojans; he writes that the city was founded by Aeneas when accompanying Odysseus on his travels through Latium.[7] He also supported the idea that an incoming group of Pelasgians lay behind the origins of the Etruscans. The latter idea, from Phoronis, influenced Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who cites him [I.28] as a source.

Strabo. Geography, 5.2.4.:

” Likewise Æschylus in his Suppliants, or Danaids, makes their race to be of Argos near Mycenæ. Ephorus likewise says that Peloponnesus was named Pelasgia; and Euripides, in the Archelaus, says, “‘Danaus, who was the father of fifty daughters, having arrived in Argos inhabited6 the city of Inachus, and made a law that those who had before borne the name of Pelasgiotæ throughout Greece should be called Danai.’” Anticlides says, that they first colonized about Lemnos and Imbros, and that some of their number passed into Italy with Tyrrhenus, the son of Atys. And the writers on the Athenian Antiquities,7 relate of the Pelasgi, that some of them came to Athens, where, on account of their wanderings, and their settling like birds in any place where they chanced to come, they were called by the Athenians Pelargi [or Storks].

The Birds (play)​

The plot of the play revolves around Pisthetaerus, an Athenian who convinces the birds to create a great city in the sky, and thus regain their status as the original gods. Pisthetaerus eventually transforms into a bird-like god himself, and replaces Zeus as the king of the gods.

Aristophanes. The Birds:

LEADER OF THE CHORUS
Return to your ranks and lay down your courage beside your wrath as the hoplites do. Then let us ask these men who they are, whence they come, and with what intent. Here, Epops, answer me.

EPOPS
Are you calling me? What do you want of me?

LEADER OF THE CHORUS
Who are they? From what country?

EPOPS
Strangers, who have come from Greece, the land of the wise.

LEADER OF THE CHORUS
And what fate has led them hither to the land of the birds?

Plutarch about Pelasgians founding Rome (Romulus 1.1):

From whom, and for what reason the great name of Rome, so famous among mankind, was given to that city, writers are not agreed. Some say that the Pelasgians, after wandering over most of the habitable earth and subduing most of mankind, settled down on that site, and that from their strength in war they called their city Rome.

Can it be the "avian" connection?

 

[thorbiorn]

On 1tv.ru I found Monday evening a film about the history of the Century of the USSR, including highlights from some of the former republics. Here is a screenshot, in case you wish to look for it.

In the film, there are clips that show the results the USSR achieved and comments or contrasts these with the situations in the West. A comments hit closer to the last 10 years, since the republics are followed briefly also after the collapse of the USSR.

I enjoyed the images from the former central Asian republics. In the section about Tadjikistan, they claim this was where Zarathustra came from or lived.

Elsewhere, I found only the memory is left:
Why do the Zoroastrians of Tajikistan hide their religious affiliation?
Still, in an article by the president of Tadjikistan from 2009, he says:

My thoughts go back to Zarathustra, who created the immortal Avesta, he was the first prophet of the Tajiks.

Another article wrote:

Zoroastrianism in Tajikistan
From the book by B. G. Gafurov “Tajiks. Ancient, Ancient and Medieval history”
It has already been pointed out above that "Avesta" is a complex alloy of heterogeneous and non-simultaneous elements. For a long time, researchers have been working to dissect these elements and identify the oldest layers of the Iranians ' religion, and these studies have especially advanced over the past two decades. I. Gershevich proposed three names instead of one general name "Zoroastrianism": "Zarathustrianism" (the religion of the time of Zarathustra himself, as it is reflected in the "Ghats"); "Zarathustricism" (the religion of the time of Zarathustra himself, as it is reflected in the "Ghats"); later Avestan texts); "Zoroastrianism "(a religious doctrine of the Sasanian period).