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Hun, Alan, Avar, and other Steppe Nomad Movements
#41
Hi Evan, not meaning to labour the point as I know you feel that there is no connection between Xiong-nu and Huns but when you speak of the upper Ob the tribe that occupied that area was the Chien-kun (Ko-Kun) who were proto-Kirgiz people known as 'field people' so probably semi sedentary, who roamed the foothills between the upper Yenisei and upper Ob. They had to acknowledge the Xiong-nu chief Chih-Chih as their nominal overlord before he was killed by combined Kang-chu and Han army in 36BC. Interestingly this is the battle where Homer Dubs believed that Roman survivors of Carrhae ended up fighting as mercenaries for Chih-Chih. Apparently the Chinese general Chen-Tang had authorised a silk painting to show the Emperor at a feast on New Years Day in 35BC. This silk painting had eight scenes showing Chen-Tang’s troops storming the city. The first scene showed the gate of the fort defended as Chen-Tang wrote in his field journal, by more than a hundred foot soldiers, lined up on either side of the gate in a fish-scale formation. Probably linked shields in Testudio fashion which the Chinese had never seen according to Professor Dubs but they could also have been Bactrian Greeks. Also the third scene showed an earthern wall with a double palisade of wood which was a standard feature of Roman fortification and was not used by Xiong-nu or Han, but I think that Dubs theory has been discredited. I think that the Kang-chu who were Indo-Iranian dominated the delta south of the Aral Sea. I am reading a book at the moment called Mounted Archers by Laszlo Torday and he is presenting good evidence that the Kang-chu were the original Alans as they dominated the Yen-ts’ai (Yancai) Alanliao going by the Hou Hanshu 88 where the Yancai were never mentioned again as an independent tribe. The Chinese believed the Yen-ts'ai were the Alans although some might disagree. The Kang-chu were traditional enemies of the Wusun. I would be interested to know Alanus's thoughts on this theory. 8-)
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
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Hun, Alan, Avar, and other Steppe Nomad Movements - by Michael Kerr - 03-26-2014, 05:57 PM

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