The warrior-priestess woman ―​ A documentary on the NGC

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It ended a few minutes ago on the local (dubbed) broadcast of National Geographic - Europe. I took notes of the flow.

The Russian archeologist Leonid Jablonsky conducts an excavation at the southern Russian steppes north of the Black Sea. Digging up a seemingly undisturbed kurgan, the American colleague Janine Davies Kimble joins him. They discover a grand grave of a warrior with a complete skeleton with perfect bones and the skull including the chin. The body was burried in "attacking position" which isn't extraordinary for a warrior. They find a lot of artifacts including an earring, plentiful gold, lots of arrowheads and a mirror with a bronze handle. Further research, including the DNA tests, reveal that the body belongs to a warrior woman, who was also a kind of priestess, lived in the 6. - 4. centuries BC.

The German physical anthropologist Joachim Berger conducts further DNA research in München and Mainz, which prove the earlier conclusion. Jablonsky and Kinble consider the probability of the grave being related to Sarmatians but Kimble travels to the western part of Mongolia (near Ölgiy) inhabited by Kazaks, a Turk people, for field research within nomadic families.

She comes up with a traditional archery contest amongst women in which real composite bows are used. The women are also decorated with acessories identical to those found in the grave and depicted on ancient Greek vases.

She's told that one of the nomadic families have a blonde daughter with brown eyes. She goes to visit "Meryemgül" and her family, who are continuing the nomadic lifestyle complete with horseback riding, herding, living in the Jurts et. (The only alien element on the screen was one of the native girls wearing a denim jacket. ~;)) The Jurt is decorated with artifacts again identical to the burial findings.

Finally she collects mithacondrial DNA samples from Meryemgül and her mother. Berger compares them with the samples taken from the warrior-priestess' bones.

They are in very close proximity. ~:)

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Yeah, its a Scythian or similar Iranian, no doubt. The mirror is found in all women's kurgans. And many Iranians were absorbed by the Turks, and the Mongols, though Mongols less so because they were later.

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The really interesting part is that either the offspring or very close relatives of the warrior-priestess migrated eastwards and settled thousands of kilometres away.

:charge:
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Mouza buddy, you usually take notes while you're watching TV? that's kinda nerdy. you smarty smart guy you.

on a serious note, since the steppes is one of the great intersection points of human migration, i wonder what percentage of the ostensibly turkish peoples currently living there today, are also descended from iranians, mongols, russians and chinese.

Well Mongols and Turks were once sort of the same, then split up (there language base is similar, though not mutually understandable).
Steppe people always either absorbed their enemies, or their enemies moved on (traditionally West, ending up in Hungary). For example, by the time the Mongols conquered Russia, they were primarily Turks. The "Golden Horde" is often called the Qipchaq Horde, because it was primarily made up of Turkic Qipchaq (Kuman) that they defeated. As for Russians, more would probably be Turkish than Turks Russians. Turks never really defeated the Russians, but many Turks served or joined the Russians. And steppe people didn't absorb settled peoples that often, which would lesson the Chinese and Russian as well. It is more often that the nomads settle and are absorbed instead of vice versa.
It is possible that the Scythians moved East instead of the traditional West, or at least some of them. But the Scythians did have large reaches in the East.

I made a comment on this a few month ago... Nice to see someone else had watched it.

The scientists actually concluded that the girl and the woman in the grave were directly related, not just distantly, but directly given the similarity of the normal DNA and the mitochondrial DNA. It is though possible that the girl is not a grand grand grand ect ect -child of said woman, but of the woman's sister (would have the same mitochondrial DNA).

I was duly fascinated by this, and it is most interesting.

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Well Mongols and Turks were once sort of the same, then split up (there language base is similar, though not mutually understandable).

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I wouldn't subscribe to that idea very easily. The similarity in the languages is limited to grammar (and such similarities exist between Japanese, Magyar, Finnish etc.). There are seemingly no cognates and serious differences in phonetical structures. However, the two people (and most probably many more, who are not represented in modern day folks) have blended with each other speedily from earliest times due to the life conditions and cultures of the steppes.

The Qıbchaq khanate in Russia, AFAIK, predates the Golden Horde. (Qibchaqs were basically the part of Kumans who adopted Islam.) Many offsprings of Genghis's assimilated amongst large Turk and Iranian populations adopting their language eventually. The dynasties of the fragments of the Golden Horde kept to their Mongol ancestry and Genghis's Yasa for long even after they abandoned their language to that of the local population. Same is valid for Tamerlane and his line.

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Originally Posted by nokhor

Mouza buddy, you usually take notes while you're watching TV? that's kinda nerdy. you smarty smart guy you.

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Not unless I'm going to make a Monastry thread. ~;)
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Originally Posted by Kraxis

I made a comment on this a few month ago... Nice to see someone else had watched it.

The scientists actually concluded that the girl and the woman in the grave were directly related, not just distantly, but directly given the similarity of the normal DNA and the mitochondrial DNA. It is though possible that the girl is not a grand grand grand ect ect -child of said woman, but of the woman's sister (would have the same mitochondrial DNA).

I was duly fascinated by this, and it is most interesting.

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:medievalcheers:
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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

For example, by the time the Mongols conquered Russia, they were primarily Turks. The "Golden Horde" is often called the Qipchaq Horde, because it was primarily made up of Turkic Qipchaq (Kuman) that they defeated.

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Or hired, or pressed, or convinced...the Golden Horde was only an army run by Mongols, not composed of them.

Mouza, I didn't mean to say that the Qipchaqs weren't around before the Golden Horde. I meant that the Mongols absorbed the Qipchaqs, giving the Golden Horde the name Qipchaq Horde. But before that, they were major rivals of the Russians.

And Mongol and Turkish thing, I never understood the languages, or anything, I just knew that many of the books I've read claimed they had a common ancestory.

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Mouza, I didn't mean to say that the Qipchaqs weren't around before the Golden Horde. I meant that the Mongols absorbed the Qipchaqs, giving the Golden Horde the name Qipchaq Horde. But before that, they were major rivals of the Russians.

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I see, sorry. I agree on the absorbtion/assimilation but Qybchaq Horde I'm not sure. AFAIK it was still called the Golden Horde when Tamerlane defeated Toqtamysh, which led to the eventual fragmentation and destruction of the horde.

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

And Mongol and Turkish thing, I never understood the languages, or anything, I just knew that many of the books I've read claimed they had a common ancestory.

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That has been one of the major rivalries of the scientists of the area. I read some articles examining Chinese sources related to alleged Proto-Mongols and Proto-Turks. I can't remember the details now (can pick up the article sometime not too soon, is burried in a mountain of magazines) but the alleged Proto-Mongols, according to the article and its sources (translated from Chinese directly, on occasion giving the original text), started off in Manchuria and migrated west, while Proto-Turks were somewhere near the Altai mountains and moved from there.

The only phonetical common point in the languages is vocalic harmony, which is still common with Finnish, Hungarian (AFAIK) and ancient Japanese.

:book2:
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i've always kinda assumed there's a lot of chinese DNA in the steppes, not because the chinese conquered the steppe peoples. but rather because the steppe peoples conquered parts of china.

fake example:
say khublai founds the toba dynasty in a part of china and he's 100% turkish. he's got 100 wives of which probably 98 are chinese and 2 are mongoll. he father's kids by half of them which means 49 of his kids are 50% chinese. those kids are probably going to marry other half chinese or 100% chinese simply because there are a lot more of those than there are of 100% mongol. by the 4th or 5th generation, when the toba dynasty is expelled from china by a native revolt, the people who flee, i.e. the ruling class are going to be predominantly ethnically chinese, but culturally they will see themselves as sincized turks. anyways, they are pushed out of steppes and they start another wave of human migrations along the steppe gradient that ends in hungary. regardless of how they perceive themselves to be culturally, they have basically extracted DNA from china and transferred it to the steppe over the course of several generations.

From what I understand, rarely do nomads who settled down become nomadic again. They end up just becoming part of the rest of settled peoples they once ruled. It's not so much a cultural thing, as a survival thing. You need to have a lot of skills to survive as a nomad, and once you've settled down, you lose those. You can try and hold on to your military traditions, and some did so better than others, but the huge horse herds, the weeding out of the weak, the skilled riding due to neccesity is just not easy to learn (or relearn).

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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

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That has been one of the major rivalries of the scientists of the area. I read some articles examining Chinese sources related to alleged Proto-Mongols and Proto-Turks. I can't remember the details now (can pick up the article sometime not too soon, is burried in a mountain of magazines) but the alleged Proto-Mongols, according to the article and its sources (translated from Chinese directly, on occasion giving the original text), started off in Manchuria and migrated west, while Proto-Turks were somewhere near the Altai mountains and moved from there..

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Those alleged "proto-Turks" were most probably either the Xiongnu or their ancestors, the Xianyun, Hunzhu, or Shanrong ("Mountain Barbarians"), or the Dingling peoples. The Shanrong are first recorded in the Shi Ji 110 as appearing in the Inner Mongolia region, north of Yan and Zhao (two of the 3 warring states that bordered the northern nomads, the other being the Qin) in central and south-eastern Inner Mongolia. OTOH, the homeland of the Xiongnu is suggested to have been the Ordos steppe on the southern tip of Inner Mongolia. It is clear that these Turkic peoples first appeared in the Inner Mongolia region, not the Altai region, which was inhabitted by Iranic-speaking Sakae peoples, as indicated by the Pazyryk burials (which also indicate that the population of the Altai was mixed, but according to some other studies I've read, the "Caucasoid" type seemed to have been more represented until the coming of the Xiongnu). The Dingling are first recorded as living south of Lake Baikal, in the northern-central Mongolia region. There are a whole host of people recorded in the SJ 110 to have been living north of the Xiongnu (living in the heart of the Outer Mongolia), ie the "Hunyu, Qushe, Dingling, Gekun, and Xinli". Besides the Dingling who are almost certainly Turkic-speakers, the Hunyu, Qushe, Gekun, and Xinli could've also been Turkic peoples. Thus, it would appear that the ancestral homeland of proto-Turkic/Turkic peoples would be the Inner Mongolia and possibly the entire Outer Mongolia region (if we accept that all the peoples living between the Dingling and the Xiongnu, ie the Hunyu, Qushe, Gekun, and Xinli, were Turkic).

As for the "proto-Mongols", they were most probably the Donghu living in the eastern Mongolia - western Manchuria region, specifically the Hinggan Mountains region in western Manchuria. Both the Wuhuan and the Xianbei were descendants of the Donghu that were conquered by the Xiongnu, as indicated by the Hou Han Shu 90 (zhuan 80).

The linguistic differences between the Turkic and Mongolic peoples may be debatable, but anthropologically, they were almost the same, ie that they were Mongoloid peoples. Read this anthropological study on the skeletal remains from burials of the Egyin Gol Valley from northern Mongolia here: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJH...013/35013.html The proportion of Caucasoids (west Asian types, not European types, as indicated from the article, "No member of the major European cluster H, which occurs in >40% of most European populations (Richards et al. 1996) was found." and these Caucasoids might've been conquered Sakae from Tuva, conquered Wusun, Kangju or Yuezhi tribesmen or conquered Gushi/Loulan people relocated to certain settlements by their Xiongnu masters to work) to Mongoloids found among the skeletal remains was 11% Caucasoid and 89% Mongoloid. What is important is this observation mentioned from the article:

"and (ix) the level of genetic diversity detected in the protohistoric population, as well as some of the haplotypes reported, are similar to those obtained in modern Mongolian populations (authors' unpublished data; Kolman et al. 1996)."

which suggests the similarity of the physical appearance of early Turkic peoples with those of modern-day Mongols. Though this study and analysis from one burial may not be enough, there is more evidence to suggest that early Turkic and Mongolic peoples were closely related in terms of physical appearance.

From Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies : The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History, p. 39:

"In its central and eastern regions, Mongolia was also home to a completely different ethno-cultural group. This cultural complex is known as the slab-grave culture after the type of burial practiced, in which simple pits were lined with slabs of stone and not surmounted by a moundlike structure. The physical type of this group, distinctly Mongoloid, is also very different from the Europoid "Saka" people of the Altai. Nevertheless, in the early Iron Age these two distinct cultural and anthropological areas shared elements of material culture ranging from the shape of their arrowheads to psalia and bridle bits, animal-style motifs, and the so-called deer stones (large stone slabs engraved with stylized deer and anthropomorphic motifs)."

- citing in notes from V. Volkov, "Early Nomads of Mongolia," in Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age, pp. 324-325

More proof regarding the physical appearance of the Xiongnu or their northern neighbors though the finds of actual Xiongnu "fortified villages" I find even more interesting, ibid, p. 251, note 156:

"The Ivolga gorodishche was a Hsiung-nu [my comment: irritatingly, Di Cosmo uses the old Wade-Giles system of transliteration instead of Pinyin even in times like this] fortified village located near Ulan Ude (in the Buryat A.S.S.R.). Russian archaeologists began working on it in the 1920s. The extensive excavations at the Ivolga site yield ample information on the agricultural activities of the Hsiung-nu. This village had primarily an agricultural and handicraft economy, although the raising of domestic animals, hunting, and fishing also played important roles. The village's specific function, within the context of a nomadic society, was to supplement the steppe peoples with those products, such as grains, textiles, and various artifacts, that a pure nomadic economy could not supply. Villages such as this were "trading centers" in the steppe, where the wandering nomads could acquire the products they needed and "overcome the narrow economic basis of nomadic economy." The population of the village was "composed of settled Hsiung-nu, of the aboriginal population [my comment: could be anyone ranging from the Hunyu, Qushe, Dingling, Gekun, and Xinli that lived north of the Xiongnu as described in the SJ 110] conquered by the Hsiung-nu, and of alien craftsmen from the ranks of deserters and prisoners of war." From craniological investigation, however, it appears that the population of the village was racially homogeneous and belonged to the South-Siberian branch of the Mongoloid race. See A.V. Davydova, "The Ivolga Gorodishche. A Monument of the Hsiung-nu Culture in the Trans-Baikal Region," Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 20 (1968): 209-45................."

So while the linguistic similarities of early Turkic and Mongolic peoples are debatable (though it is almost clear that certain Turkic and Mongolic words had the same cognate, ie Turkic "Khaghan" with Mongol "Khakhan", etc.), it is clear that early Turkic and Mongolic peoples were nearly indistinguishable in terms of physical appearance.

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Thanks Jurchen Fury, an experts touch really livened up this thread.

Some questions have been in my mind about the alleged proto Turks, though; without any significant written records in the language how can it be concluded that the Xiong Nu or other peoples mentioned were Turkic? Did the Chinese record foreign languages of those nomad barbarians accurately? What phisical-anthropological relations have been attested to between the alleged proto-Turkics and the true Turks (from 6th C. AD on) if at all?

As a side not, I'm not in a position to claim anything but, I remember reading the Qaghan/Khakan being the Chinese Huang Di, hence a common loanword, not a cognate.

Thanks again and eager to read more. :bow:
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Very interesting discussion. Please continue.

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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

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Some questions have been in my mind about the alleged proto Turks, though; without any significant written records in the language how can it be concluded that the Xiong Nu or other peoples mentioned were Turkic? Did the Chinese record foreign languages of those nomad barbarians accurately? What phisical-anthropological relations have been attested to between the alleged proto-Turkics and the true Turks (from 6th C. AD on) if at all?.

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The Wei Shu (Book of Wei, as in the Northern Wei dynasty of the Turkic-speaking Tuoba Xianbei in north China c. 4th - 6th centuries CE) Ch. 130 on the Gaoche says that their language was similar to the Xiongnu, but with only slight differences. It also says that the origins of the Gaoche can be traced back to the Chidi ("Red" Di, as Di was a general term referring to nomadic peoples north of China during the Warring States Period, the Dingling might've even been the same as the Chidi, which also sounds like Tiele) and the Dingling peoples of the 3rd century BC. According to one of the origin myths of the Gaoche recorded in ibid, the Gaoche were descended from a Xiongnu mother and a male wolf (obviously, this is only a myth but these myths were common among steppe peoples and the role of the wolf played here resembles that of the wolf in one of the origin myths of the Turkut/Tujue and what is noteworthy is the connection with the Xiongnu). According to the Jiu Tangshu, Ch. 206 on the Huihe/Huigu of Mongolia, aka the Uygurs (the official Chinese transcription of the Uygurs today is "Weiwuer", sounding like the "Weiwuer" of the Yuanshi), the Huihe were part of the Gaoche tribe, who in turn belonged to the Tiele tribe during the Northern Wei period (c. 4th - 6th centuries C.E.) The same JTS 206 also says that the Huihu were descendants of the Xiongnu. According to the Sui Shu 84, the Weihu (another transcription of Huihe/Huihu/Huigu) were part of the Tiele confederation. Ibid (Sui Shu 84) also says this about the Tiele (they had territory stretching from northern Mongolia to the Caspian, which was ruled by the Tujue/Turkut):

"The customs of the Tiele and Tujue are much alike. However a man of the Tiele lives in his wife’s home after marriage and will not return to his own home with his wife until the birth of a child. In addition, the Tiele bury the dead in the ground." (from Lin Ying's article "Some Chinese Sources on the Khazars and Khwarazm" from here.

From all these sources, it is clear that the Chidi and the Dingling, being the ancestors of the Gaoche, who were a tribe of the Tiele and in which the Huihu/Huigu/Huihe (Uygurs) were a tribe of the Gaoche. Besides the connection of the Tiele with the Tujue/Turkut, almost all scholars agree unanimously that the modern-day Uygur language is Turkic. Today's Uygurs now live in modern-day Xinjiang province in the PRC, and are descendants of those same Uygurs who emigrated out of Mongolia in 840 CE when the Kyrgyz invaded Mongolia from the Yenisei. Apparently, they mixed with the local Tocharian and Iranian peoples, accounting for the Caucasoid physical appearance of some of the Uygurs, though they seemed to have kept their mother tongue, ie Turkic. What is also clear is that the Xiongnu were almost always linked as the ancestors of the Tiele and the Tujue, both of whom were largely Turkic-speaking peoples, which might suggest that the Xiongnu spoke a Turkic language.

Interestingly, I've found this parallel passage from a secondary source, from Bell-Fialkoff, The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe : Sedentary Civilization vs. "Barbarian" and Nomad, p. 216:

"If we turn to the Chinese sources, we find that they consistently identify the Turks as descendants of the Hsiung-nu: "The Ka-ch'e (Turks) were formerly `Red Ti', and their speech was like that of the Hsiung-nu, but now is a little different" (Samolin 1957, 149, n.41); "the Turks who lived to the right of the Western Lake are a separate branch of the Hsiung-nu" (Samolin 1957, 149, n.43). Hsiung-nu origin was also ascribed to the Uighurs (Samolin 1957, 150, n.45).

Thus, all the tribes derived from the Hsiung-nu are Turkic. There are other affinities between the Hsiung-nu and the Turks, such as slashing one's face in mourning. This was characteristic of other groups as well: the Kutrighurs, who cut their cheeks with daggers (Maenchen-Helfen 1973, 274, n.123); the Turks, who cut off their hair and slashed their ears and cheeks (274, n.124); the Huns..........."

Though he doesn't directly cite his sources for the statements from the "Chinese sources", they're most probably from the accounts in the Weishu (Book of Wei), Beishi (History of the North), Beizhoushu (Book of Northern Zhou), Suishu (Book of Sui) regarding the Gaoche, Huihu, and Tujue.

As for their "phisical-anthropological relations", besides the sources cited above, there is also archaeological evidence as well. A life-like part (head) of a statue of Kul Tigin, brother of Bilge Khagan (4th ruler of the newly revived Turkut empire that had successfully overthrown Tang rule of Mongolia in the early 680's CE and reestablished the Dong Tujue [Eastern Turkut] empire) and supreme commander of all the Kok Turuk armies:

https://img440.imageshack.us/img440/...ltegin19yk.jpg

https://img440.imageshack.us/img440/...ultigin0qo.jpg

Kul Tigin doesn't look very Caucasoid to me.

Furthermore, the Chinese sources don't seem to have said anything particular about the physical appearance of the Turkut. OTOH, there are plenty of references in Chinese sources on peoples that appeared peculiar and looked physically different in terms of racial characteristics from the Chinese. On peoples speculated to have spoken Indo-Iranian or Tocharian languages, there is plenty of evidence. Yan Shigu's commentary in the Hanshu 96B indicates that the Wusun had green eyes and red hair and that they were the most peculiar of the Rong peoples and the commentary to the Shi Ji 123 says that the Yuezhi were pink and white in color. The Beishi 97 says that all the inhabitants of the Tarim except the Khotanese (interesting, this may indicate that proto-Tibetan groups like the Qiang may have altered the appearance of the Khotanese as time changed) had deep-set eyes and high noses.

On the origin of the Turkut, the Beishi account indicating the "Western Lake" was most likely Lake Qinghai of Qinghai province, so the origins of the Turkut may have been mixed because there were numbers of remnant Xianbei as well as Xiongnu and Qiang and even Sogdians (though they came to China mostly as merchants and would appear to have been far less numerous than the three former groups) in the Gansu-Qinghai areas. The Xiao Yuezhi were already absorbed by the Qiang at this time so we can rule them out. The strong claim to the Xiongnu may have indicated perhaps a closer affinity to them. They weren't the native inhabitants of the Altai nor was that their homeland; they only later emigrated there, according to the Beishi account, and fled to the Rouran, then the dominant power in Mongolia in the 5th - 6th century CE and became iron miners in the southern Altai serving under the Rouran. However, when the Turkut overthrew the Rouran and expanded their empire, there can be no doubt that among the peoples they incorporated into their empire when they expanded to the western steppes that some of them had features like Indo-Iranians or Tocharians.

Also, the Tujue/Turkut weren't "true" Turks. Certainly, there were Turkic peoples that preceded the Turkut, such as the above-mentioned Chidi, Dingling - Gaoche - Tiele peoples, as well as perhaps the Xiongnu. There were also other Turkic peoples contemporary with the Turkut, as you probably know, and one of the Turkut's closest Turkic neighbors were the above-mentioned Tiele, who were one of their great enemies. In fact, it was the Huihu (Uygurs), then a Tiele tribe, who overthrew the Turkut in 744 - 745 CE. The Oghuz Turks, ancestors of the Seljuqs, and who appeared later in history in the steppes above the Caspian-Aral sea regions may have been descended from the Tiele more so than the Turkut, who disappeared in history. There is mention of a people called the Shatuo Tujue (whose ancestors were probably the Turkut) whom the Tang employed as mercenaries near the end of the dynasty in the late 9th - early 10th century CE; in fact, some of the dynasties in north China during the Wudai period during the first half of the 10th century were established by rulers who had some Shatuo Tujue blood in them. The Ongguts of the 12th - 13th century of the Inner Mongolia region guarding that area for the Jin dynasty against the Mongols may have been the descendants of the Shatuo Tujue.

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Originally Posted by Mouzafphaerre

.As a side not, I'm not in a position to claim anything but, I remember reading the Qaghan/Khakan being the Chinese Huang Di, hence a common loanword, not a cognate.
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Do you remember your source for this?

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:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by jurchen fury

Do you remember your source for this?

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Most likely an encyclopedia article. Chances are 50% that the article includes true reference.

:bow:
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