Origin of the Alans

[Alanus]

Jan,

This is just a short note to let you know your last post was not ignored. I bought Elizabeth Barber's book when it first came out, and since then I've "lost" it in the pile. Agreed, the Tocharian connection to the Yuezhi was perhaps a substantial one. My point has always favored the elite as Northern Iranian speakers, mainly because the personal names of the Kushan kings were Iranian... and that the final language of the Yuezhi/Saka/Sarmatian ethnos of the Ossetes was also Northern Iranian as still spoken today. Nobody knows how many tribes were contained in the Yuezhi confederation, but it appears to be something like 21 to 31 prior to the break between the Lesser and Da Yuezhi. That said, it could well be the Tarim city states were a Tocharian-speaking portion of the greater union.

Right now, I'm trying to connect the final links in the earliest (eastern) portion prior to the southern advancement of the Xiongnu (the earlier or Type 1 graves in the Northern Zone). I believe the c. 1250 BC intrusion into Hebei, Shanxi, and northeastern Shaanxi in the Shang period has not been truly evaluated. Just discovered that 28.8 % of all the burials in Yinxu-Anyang were prostrate. That is a significant "foreign" element, and it had to influence the Shang-era polity. It bolsters Victor Mair's hypothesis. This intrusive culture arrived from mid to southeastern Mongolia and Manchuria, yet long before the genesis of the Xiongnu. The highest number of Karasuk-style knives, rein-holders, and jingle-items, come from this sector... while they are absent in Gansu and the west.

So, I'll add more as I filter through a stack of PDFs, hopefully with something that clarifies what might be called a mystery. Basically, the "Tocharian problem" sits on the back burner.