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Origin of the Alans
1) Right. I'm about half way through "The Hunter, The Stag.." and I see a difference. Jacobson-Tepfer shares her interpretation of spiritual beliefs and in places get quite speculative. BUT, she documents everything meticulously (which I understand is not the point in a forum thread) and she still talks in current archaeological terms when she speaks of populations and people. I've yet to see her extensively connect material findings to linguistic, DNA or historical references.
Why is this not done a lot? Because sometimes DNA carries with it culture and languages, but not always. 

Quote: These two nearly identical illustrations are not ambiguous, do not link to other Scytho-Sarmatian cultures

I'm not sure that's entirely true though.

- I'm aware of the rhyton panel from the Bosphorus.  http://www.anthroglobe.org/docs/Sergei/s...4_fig4.gif
- then a Bosporan stele in Kerch: http://www.anthroglobe.org/docs/Sergei/s...4_fig1.gif
http://historylib.org/historybooks/Valer.../i_091.jpg
- a Bosporan grave mural also in Kerch: http://www.anthroglobe.org/docs/Sergei/s...4_fig5.gif

- I've seen it likened to the Hermitage belt plaques (it might've even been Jacobson who made the connection): 
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564...3e7ccf.jpg
- the Sakhnovka plaque: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564...107f5f.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/ori...e9b2f6.png
- the Chertomlyk plaque: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564...27b2b1.jpg
- these two plaques: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/t...7f3df62586
- the Kul Oba plaque: https://rhr.revues.org/docannexe/image/7665/img-2.png
- potentially this plaque also (another one from Chertomlyk) http://www.ka2.ru/under/graphic/atlantid...tomlyk.jpg
-there's the Karagodeuashkh headdress with a rather similar scene (though from a frontal perspective): https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564...41e707.jpg

Now for the non-scytho-siberian ones:
- there's a Hittite rhyton with a very similar scene: http://histoiredelantiquite.net/wp-conte...or-col.png
- Minoan ring: http://www.minoanatlantis.com/pix/Minoan_Gold_Seal.jpg
http://potnia.theladyofthelabyrinth.com/...-Kopi1.jpg
- and another one: http://madamepickwickartblog.com/wp-cont...crete3.jpg

I found many of the s-s ones through Leland Guthrie's thesis (who basically summarises Jacobson-Tepfer). His idea is that these depict people honoring or communicating with the goddess through ritualized drinking from a vessel  in front of the Tree of Life (which is a common motif in almost all of them), sometimes connected to sacrifice (human or otherwise).
Jacobson-Tepfer emphasizes that deer, a predator and a bird of prey are all death/rebirth related. Many of these depictions have birds of prey, the Hittite one even has a deer (two actually, one dead at the base of the tree, possibly a sacrifice. The othere is speculated to bear a fertility god on its back, which is a very similar function), though most of the s-s ones come from the later periods at which point Jacobson-Tepfer speculates the Deer goddess fully transformed into her anthropomorphic form.

(depending on which details you perceive as significant and which you want to match, you can get something, or nothing out of this.. I've been looking at a lot of Near Eastern artwork and the depictions of libation to a deity, petitioning a deity etc. are very much in this style - a seated deity often next to the Tree of Life, guardian or servant animals, celestial objects and the petitioners or participants in the ritual. Especially seals and steles from Iran, by Hittites, Kassites and some Babylonian ones. Another analog is the Master/Mistress of animals, depicted often around or over the Tree of Life, holding, wrestling or restraining panthers, deer or ibexes, lions, dragons, serpents, birds etc.
Both of these depiction types, which in Near Eastern context appear in the bronze age, have analogs in Scytho Siberian cultures much later in the iron age. For an example, the Master of Dragons from Tillya Tepe, attributed to the Kushans/Yuezhi.)

edit: This is really a sidenote, but I thought I remembered a Pazyryk-Persian connection: Rudenko identified this textile (from barrow 5, the same as the big carpet) as women in Persian (or sometimes also called Assyrian, though not sure how accurate that is) costume praying. That thing in the middle looks suspiciously like the mushroom-shaped censers in Achaemenid seals and indeed in the Hittite rhyton libation scene.
http://www.karakalpak.com/images/kiym87.jpg
http://www.rugkazbah.com/images/31/image59731595.jpg
Compare the censer and the female costume to this Achaemenid seal: http://www.iranicaonline.org/app/webroot...1-fig1.jpg
I don't own the Rudenko book, but Tamara Talbot-Rice's book "Central Asian Art" says other Pazyryk textiles, like the carpet with a procession of riders, were probably of Achamenid make.
I think it might be difficult to distinguish actual unique Pazyryk/Yuezhi motifs and acquired Iranian influence.  /edit

What does all this mean? I don't know. Big Grin
I think my point was - it's fine to speculate, but there's a difference between pointing to similarities in spiritual or material cultures in various places and times, possibly hinting at cultural exchange, evolution or influence, and between coming up with hypotheses on vast empires encompassing all of them. 
(for instance, the Tarim city states belonging to a massive Yuezhi kingdom is something I feel is not terribly well substantiated.)

2) The languages. 
Quote:But, if we go back to the Bronze age, we find an overlap-- both Andronovo and the Siema-Turbino Phenomenon lapping over Afanasievo-- in which we would see the major language of the Yuezhi confederation speaking Eastern Iranian. The Kushan coins were minted in Bactrian, a Eastern Iranian tongue, and we can extend it to the Aorsi/Arsi/Alan/Ossetic language. So I now believe Tocharian remained in the Tarim, localized.

Again, you're attributing languages to material culture and genetic data.
Do you then think the Tocharian speaking inhabitants of the Tarim were radically different from the Yuezhi? In what ways? More importantly -  where did they come from? 
And if the Yuezhi spoke an Iranian language (supposedly evidenced by Bactrian on Kushan coins), why wasn't this imposed on the Tarim people under Yuezhi rule?
Consider also that there were distinctive East-Iranian languages spoken and written in the western oases - like Khotanese Saka, Choresmian etc. Was proto-Tocharian somehow sandwiched between these and the Yuezhi language zones? 

Mallory and Mair in "The Tarim Mummies" write:
"We can refer to this hypothesis as the Tocharian gambit. It runs something like this. The Yuezhi, who occupied the area from Gaqnsu west tot he tarim basin spoke KA languages (Kuche-Agni = their term for Tocharian). By the time those who migrated west arrived in the Oxus, they had shed KA for an Iranian language or simply took up the expedient course of many foreign rulers and employed the local Iranian language for their administration."

That doesn't sound implausible to me, considering how much the Kushans changed from whatever they once were. They adopted both Hindu and Greek gods into their pantheon, their Buddhist texts were written in Sanskrit (and administrative texts seem to be written in many different Prakrits, which I assume were already established all over their empire by this point - during the Kushan eastwards expansion Prakrit was also adopted in Loulan) and their rulers accepted pre-established divine titles.

Summing up - I don't mean to sound combative or antagonistic. Rather I got a lot out of this thread and if I could myself add anything of value, I'd be happy to do just that.
Jan Pospisil - fantasy/historical/archaeology illustration
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Jan,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. Your many illustrations of "similar" motifs are quite the collection. However, what if we narrow the selection down by dismissing all "sitting-woman" depictions which don't show a definite Pazyryk-Alan connection? Here are few more examples which mirror the theme you presented. 

   
The Queen Mother of the West shown in a Han-era fresco (top panel) now in the Tokyo Museum. Here we have the same thing-- a seated woman with men offering libations. We also see the common depictions of birds, animals, and even a man astride a horse. 

We are viewing a deity which probably arrived from the mesolithic "Earth Mother." She's universal and has been around almost forever, not just in the Western illustrations you posted but also in the Far East. In China, she was known as 'Xiwangmu.'

   
Here she is in a late Chinese painting. She holds a branch, similar to the Tree of Life, and again we see more branches of the Tree plus a cute duckie.

   
Now we find her on a Gok-Turkic stele. Again, men offer her more libations. (By this time-- 5th to 6th century AD-- the Queen Mother must be ready to fall over sideways!)

These three illustrations could be amplified by more Eastern examples, BUT they are not the same as those I illustrated on my post, nor are they like the first set of examples you posted-- those from Kerch in the Bosphorus Kingdom. In particular, and different from all the others, these Bosphorus illustrations contain specific and unique links to the Alans... and to Pazyryk. We see horses with crenellated manes, a bow-case and quiver that echoes those from Niya and Orlat Plaque. We see a rider wielding a contus (which may have developed from the Shang halberd). One rider carries a long Alanic sword. We also see a yurt which is similar to an Amerindian teepee. This particular style of yurt is recorded by Herodotus as being used by the Argippians in the western Altai. The same shape was used at Pazyryk for inhaling cannabis. All of these Bosphoran features are culturally distinctive, not ambiguous, and unlike everything else... whether it originates from Minoa, the Hittites, the Chinese, or the Turks.

You're an artist. You have an "eye." I'm suggesting that your eye can differentiate the specific from the ambiguous, and you will become more enlightened than our critic, Mr. Azbelev.
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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Oh, I know of the Queen Mother of the West, I didn't want to drag the Chinese into this as well. Smile

To clarify, I have no interest in linking the Pazyryk to the Turks at all.

I think I'm just not quite convinced of the uniqueness of this supposed Pazyryk->Alan evolution.

- horse manes? OK, it seems a bit random, but I'll give it to you, they're there.
- bow cases? There are bowcases in many of the "scythian" pieces of art, there's even a quiver hanging from the Tree of Life in the Hittite piece. Doesn't seem that specific.
- contus? This is kinda weak. May have developed from the halberd? The Greeks also used pretty long lances, as did many other people the Alans would've been in contact with.
- alanic sword? But the Pazyryk didn't use long swords with scabbard slides, right? This seems more like a mid-connection to the Yuezhi.
- yurts? How specifically exclusive were they to the Pazyryk? Why are we sure the Sai, Saka, Wusun or even western Scythians and others didn't use them?
Jan Pospisil - fantasy/historical/archaeology illustration
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My Portfolio:
http://merlkir.deviantart.com
My Blog: 
http://janpospisil.blogspot.com
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Hi, Jan

This is just a quick reply; and I have yet to answer Michael on the info he found on the changing Tarim landscape. I forgot to mention the scabbard slide in connection to the long swords. According to Trousdale, the slide was a "steppe" invention introduced to the Chinese. He could not present physical proof; and this hypothesis, while generally accepted, is certainly under contention. What really matters are the nephrite scabbard slides carved by the Chinese. I have an authentic and early example, actually a complete set of fittings.

My set is dated to Late Zhou, actually early Qin. From China, the jade scabbard slide traveled westward. We see it (and the Chinese long-sword) on the Orlat illustration. This same buckle has horses with Pazyryk cow-hocs, men with either moustaches or goatees, and Chinese armor. To me, it was scrimmed by a Yuechi artist. The scabbard slide shows up next on Kushan frescoes, and then it arrives in the North Pontic area with the Alans. One Roxolani chieftain buried on the west side of the Danube was interred with his long-sword and jade slide. There can be no mistake where these slides originated, nor where the long-sword came from: China. What culture bordered and interacted (intimately) with China in the Qin period? It was the Yuezhi, as typified by our old friend Wushi Lau, who owned so many horses "he could only estimate their number by the valleyful." (Sima Qian in his chapter on "The Moneymakers.")

Along with the Chinese-carved scabbard slide, we find other new innovations showing up in the North Pontic with the Alans, such as the unique-styled Niya bowcase with its 2 quivers attached. We also find lamellar armor of the Chinese type shown on the Orlat plaque. Are these connections coincidence? They only show up in Qin to Han China, in Yuezhi-controlled Bactria, in Kushana, and finally in the Bosphorus and the Danubian edge of the Roman Empire. It's a clear timeline of weaponry and armor innovations traveling east to west... and there are no intermediaries. It's a clear link from Qin/Han China to the Yuezhi to the Alans. When you add further visual evidence, the distinct horse tail-sheaths and crenelated manes are depicted in Pazyryk K5 and on petroglyphs 75 miles from Ukok, so we are specifically pinpointing the Altai. They are next seen on Qin and Han illustrations, and finally in the north Pontic. Obviously, you can discount all cultures where they are not seen... including the Xiongnu and Turks.

Another observation-- there is a total lack of military weapons, swords and otherwise, observed in Pazyryk culture burials. Rudenko attributed this void to thorough ransacking by robbers soon after the kurgans were abandoned. This does seem feasible, since no gold items are found either. Only in the horse burials, outside the main chamber, do archaeologists find gold or gold-foiled artifacts. We do find remains of bows and arrows, the pervasive akinakes, and occasional sagaris; BUT these items are not necessarily war weapons. They were tools for hunting and everyday life. I have been discussing this "void" with Gala Argent, and it would appear the deceased didn't need weapons of war in their concept of Elesium. Instead, it appears they were headed to a proverbial "happy hunting ground." If this is the case, then the lack of long-swords, armor, and lances, in Pazyryk graves appears to be a cultural norm.

Lastly, I would reconsider the Yuezhi-Pazyryk connection (likewise the Yuezhi-Alan premise) if any historian or archaeologist can pinpoint a physical location in Gansu, the Hexi Corridor, or the Tarim Basin, which has burial sites of any culture even close to that of the Yuezhi. If you can't show me gold, artful sophistication, good horses, and Chinese trade goods, then my nod remains with the sites at Pazyryk, Ak-alaka, and Berel. Wink
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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I'm sure someone will point out the similarity between the side facing seated figures in the examples given here and those of Egyptian Gods, Godesses, Pharaoh's etc. I am more interested in the front facing, seated figures on thrones/chairs and their connection to the subject matter.
Adrian Coombs-Hoar
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Adrian,

Interestingly, the woman on the Pazyryk Kurgan 5 felt hanging is viewed from the side. The woman on the Ordos-styled buckle in the Peter the Great collection also faces sideways as her headdress entwines in the branches of the Tree of Life. (Also, a goryotos hangs in the tree.) Both of these women appear to be bald-headed. Herodotus describes the Argippians as bald-headed ("from birth"); plus the woman in P K5 had her head shaved bald, and so did the shaman-priestess from Ukok (aka the "Ice Princess). The K5 woman also had Chinese-styled tattoos unlike those of other Pazyryk deceased. Was she Chinese? We'll never know because her skull was crushed by robbers.

As speculation, I believe the woman in Berel K 11 was Chinese... and that her husband (buried 30 years earlier) may have been the famed horse dealer Wushi Lau (or Lou). Sima Qian claims he was treated with the same respect as "the lords of a state of 10,000 chariots." If anything, the Wushi Lau tale punctuates the lively trade between the Qin Dynasty and the Yuezhi.

On the other hand, the Chinese "Mother of the West" is always seated facing the viewer, but we wouldn't think she would have any connection to Egypt. These depictions are an enigma.

   
Here is a Han-era ink-rubbing from Chengdu. The Queen Mother of the West, again, is seated front-facing. She is totally surrounded by animals with offerings, even a frog (or toad). Huh
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
Reply
 I haven’t got much to add to the discussion on the source of the goddess images but in regards to the Pazyryk pile carpet from kurgan 5 possibly being of Achaemenid origin through its use of Achaemenid motifs, the jury is still out on this one but the claim by many including Rudenko, that the Pazyryk carpet was made in Achaemenid Persia because it has Achaemenid designs carries little weight from the carpet specialist's point of view. Furthermore, it was suggested long ago that the carpet belongs more to Central Asia or the region near the Aral Sea than to Persia.
 
 Harald Böhmer and Jon Thompson in their paper “The Pazyryk Carpet: A Technical Discussion” wrote from a specialist’s point of view;

There are, thus, three principal proposals for the carpet's provenance: the Iranian plateau; Central Asia (the most northerly part of Achaemenid territory); and the steppes. First, we must ask whether, from a technical point of view, the Pazyryk carpet is more likely to have been made by nomadic or urban weavers. The carpet is woven with the so called “Turkish” (double, symmetrical, closed, or Ghiordes) knot. The advantage of this knot is that it forms a robust, hard-wearing fabric. Its disadvantage is that the individual knots that are wrapped around two adjacent warps assume a rectangular shape, twice as wide (in the weft direction) as they are high (in the warp direction). Designs worked with the Turkish knot tend to become horizontally elongated—i.e., circles squash into ovals, and squares flatten into rectangles. During the last four centuries (the period of carpet weaving history that can be more or less re constructed), the “Turkish” knot has generally, though not exclusively, been used for weavings of a functional character. Urban weavings that incline toward refinement in both technique and design tend to employ the so called Persian (single, asymmetrical, open, or Senneh) knot, which, though less robust than the Turkish knot, lends itself better to the accurate rendering of designs without risk of deforming them. It is interesting to note that at the time of the Pazyryk burials, the Persian knot was already known, as the knotted-pile saddlecloth fragment from Bashadar reveals. 

There is no doubt that the carpet had Achaemenid influence with the borders and motifs as well as a lot of textiles found in kurgan 5, for example lion's heads on textiles also found seem to have wolf-like features.

 The procession of horses in the pile rug which do bear a resemblance to the Persopolis horses of Persia with thick body proportions and clipped manes similar to the so called Nisean horses. There seems to be an absence of a tail sheath in the Persopolis horses although their tails may have been knotted.

   

   

  There are other differences but the pile carpet is not the piece in question. The felt wall hanging also found in kurgan 5 is the one with the rider and the seated “goddess”. Rudenko believed that this felt wall hanging was of local or steppe manufacture. The distinct clothing of the moustachioed rider, the crenellated mane and the use of the tail sheath on the horse. The horse itself resembles the sleeker Turkoman horse, the now extinct ancestor of the akhal-teke as opposed to the fuller bodied horses on the pile rug. 
  Smile


   

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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Hello, all

Michael has made a good point. It's not the origin of the Pazyryk K5 rug, but rather the cultural features shown on the felt wall-hanging from the same kurgan. This piece has been identified as locally made, its wool coming from Pazyryk sheep. It shows the moustached preference of the Yuezhi/Kushans/Alans, a cow-hocked "mountain horse" with a crenelated mane and tail-sheath, a early (pre-siyahed) Scythian bow, a short cape, and so on. And it's found in context with several Chinese artifacts. Combine this 4th-3rd century BC depiction with the 2nd century BC Orlat plaque, then 1st century BC Kushan friezes, and again with Gandharan and the Bosphorus wall-art from the 1st century AD, we have a connection that's far from "ambiguous" and represents a migrational timeline of several distinctive features-- moustaches, short capes, tail sheaths, crenelated manes, and an evolving bow.

   
Petroglyph of Iron Age horses with crenelated manes, Baga Oigor, Western Mongolia, less than 100 miles from Pazyryk K5.

When we add the S-shaped psalia and saddles discovered first at Pazyryk K5, next found at Berel K11 and contemporaneously in Shihuangdi's mausoleum, we find distinctive links connecting the Pazyryks, to the Yuezhi, to the Chinese. We also note "Chinese-styled" lamellar worn by the riders on the Orlat plaque, along with the same 2-handed swords (with Chinese-carved nephrite scabbard slides) found in the North Pontic and even in Roman territory as introduced by the Alans. These features are not ambiguous, but quite distinctive... distinctive enough to positively link an evolving culture-- the Pazyryks-Yuezhi/Arsi-Aorsi/Alans. Wink

REFERENCES:
The Crenelated Mane and Scabbard Slide, Otto Maenchen-Helfen, 1957
The Crenelated Mane; Survival of Ancient Tradition in Afghanistan, Wm. Trousdale, 1968
The Long Sword and Scabbard Slide in Asia, Wm. Trousdale, 1970
Covered Tail and Flying Tassels, J. Ilyasov, 2003
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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I think it would be worth making a table with references for the Pazyryk/Yuezhi traits you found and the various locations and periods they would have to appear in.
Just to see them all in context and sequence.

(off the top of my head, there are a few that I don't remember from the Kushan context for instance)
Jan Pospisil - fantasy/historical/archaeology illustration
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Jan,

That's a good idea. The table would show both similarities and evolution. For instance, the bow-case quiver depicted on the Pazyryk K5 hanging isn't quite the same as the Western Scythian goryotos; it then gets an additional quiver and the bow receives siyahs as the centuries pass. The crenelated mane reaches the Pontic, then adopted by the Sassanians, and it shows up again in China during the Tang Dynasty. In the latter case, it could extend from middle Chinese dynasties (although no surviving illustrations) or it may have been reintroduced through documented contacts between the Tang and Sassania. The sword and scabbard slide is fairly straight-forward, although we have a lack of evidence it originated beyond the Chinese themselves (a position taken by Trousdale and, I think, Maenchen-Helfen). As for physical appearance, it carries through from Pazyryk to Kushana to the Pontic, including the description by Ammianus, with these people being "non-Aryan." We are looking a Scytho-Siberians, just as DNA results are showing.
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
Reply
While looking up an unrelated thing in John E. Hill's "Through the Jade Gate - China to Rome", I came across a chapter I haven't read through before - one discussing the origin of the Yuezhi. 
The book is from last year and he discusses various sources very thoroughly. I've not compared your hypothesis to his in detail, but he too feels the Gansu by itself would've been way too cramped.
Aside from an excellent translation of the Hou Hanshu, these two volumes also contain extremely extensive appendices, full of exactly this type of material. Really cool and they only cost like 20 USD each, since it's not a book published by a university, but rather self published through Amazon: 

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Jade-Gate...8QVNY8GZ31
Jan Pospisil - fantasy/historical/archaeology illustration
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My Portfolio:
http://merlkir.deviantart.com
My Blog: 
http://janpospisil.blogspot.com
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Hi, Jan

Thanks for the lead on John E. Hill's book. I just ordered it, plus an unduly expensive volume of Craig Benjamin's Origin of the Yuezhi etc. Hill's book has a decent price; and I noticed he went through Createspace (where I've published 2 books), so that's why it's cheaper-- 500 plus pages, 2 volumes, for $25. It'll be great to have an English translation of the Hanshu.

I'm working fulltime on 10-hour shifts, so I haven't come up with a list of "links" that connect the Pazyryks to the Yuezhi to the Alans... such as physical likenesses, similar weapon-styles, crenelated manes, etc. Here's an interesting illustration taken from an A.D. 1st Century Aorsi vessel buried in Kosika, Kuban. Here we see the collar-length hair and moustache shown on Kushan frescoes and textiles, the crenelated mane seen on the Pazyryk felt hanging, on the Baga Oigor petroglyphs (100 miles east of Pazyryk), and on the cavalry mounts in Shihuangdi's mausoleum.   Big Grin

   
Also notice he's wearing a head-band or diadem, so typical of individuals depicted in Kushana (Bactria). These tell-tale features run straight from Pazyryk to Bactria, then to Kuban and the Crimea, and they do not show up in illustrations of Western Scythians or Saka, both of whom wore full beards. To me, this is a unique link, not some ambiguous connection.
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
Reply
The Generals from the North

As stated previously, I believe the Pazyryk burials were those of the Yuezhi elite. Also, I have delved into Craig Benjamin's book on the Yuezhi migration, particularly the opening chapters. Benjamin, like Mair and a number of other researchers, confines his search toward the west, extending from Gansu into the Tarim Basin. He never looks north, despite some of the references he uses. Here are helpful tidbits from the Zhou annals, 7th century B.C. (Benjamin, p. 31)

"At the meeting of Cheng Zhou, the king stands facing towards the south... Tang Zhu, Xun Zhu, and Duke Zhou stand by his left, and Taigong Wang by his right... To the north of the platform in the west wing, stand the Yuzhi people with taotu." (Yi Zhou Shu, Chap. 59)

This passage places everyone in respective position to the four points of a compass. The "Yuzhi" stand in the northwest, indicating their tribe would be located in that direction. Now, if my bearings are correct, the Yuezhi lived somewhere north of west.

"King Tang orders Yiyin to come up with advice on paying tributes by the peoples of the four quarters. Yiyin thus says, As for those on the north [including]... Baohu, Daidi, Xiongnu, Loufan, Yuezhi, Qianli, Qilong, and Tong Hu, I request to let them bring in camels, white jades, wild horses, taotus, jwen, and good bows for tributes." (Yi Zhou Shu, Appendix to Chap. 59. Taotus and jwen were horse breeds.) 

The last time I checked my compass, north was roughly 90 degrees north of west. Benjamin stoutly refuses to look northward because the Indo-Iranian speaking northern tribes begin to stack up on the Altai and western Mongolia. They don't fit his All-the-Yuezhi-spoke-Tocharian scenario. He's rather blunt about his cultural preference (as am I) and dismisses the idea that the Yuezhi could have been Scythians: "Despite correctly dismissing Haloun's conclusion the Yuezhi were actually Scythians, both Pulleyblank and Henning subsequently agreed with his identification of the references, which indicated that the Yuezhi/Tocharian were probably known to the Chinese at least several centuries before the Han Annals were written, from sometime early in the seventh century BCE at least." Considering new information, I would say Haloun was correct, as were Haskins and Enoki.

   
A Loufan archer firing a "Parthian shot." His bow has siyahs and it's built asymmetrical. He wears Pazyryk-styled clothing, including the generic Pazyryk goose-head cap.

What the Yi Zhou Shu doesn't tell us, we can find through archaeology and art... as we discover a long line of Northern Generals, each arriving from the northern sector, not from the west. We can even go back to the Bronze age, look northward, and find some amazing connections. My following posts revolve around a large Yuezhi tribe-- the Loufan-- which actually lived within the northern borders of China. By going northward, we can pinpoint the Yuezhi as actual Sibero-Scythians. Please stay tuned to this thread as we discuss chariots, white jade, and the first recorded General from the North. Wink
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
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A) I've seen that hat section in the Loufan paper you mentioned some time ago. The paper itself is fine and interesting, but I find the identification of the hat a bit too specific. It could easily be a stylized depiction of the typical Phrygian cap, which is not exactly uncommon among the steppe people.

"Bronze figure of Saka period unearthed in Gongliu county, in the collection of the Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture Museum, Yining."
(the one to the right is in the museum of Urumqi)

[Image: ili5.jpg][Image: saka_soldier.jpg]

Hat from one of the Tarim mummies:  
[Image: 609p.jpg]

B) I'm still not sure how you determined the Northern tribes spoke an Indo-Iranian language. (when?)
If I remember Mallory et. Mair's "Tarim Mummies" correctly, their favoured hypothesis wasn't that the Yuezhi spoke Tocharian. Of course, the population would've spoken proto-Tocharian, a whole different language. (which easily bypasses the argument by time gap - that Tocharian is hundreds of years removed from the Yuezhi) We know the two (or more likely three) Tocharian languages evolved from another older language in a process that took quite a few centuries.  
MnM see pTch as the language of the original pastoralist settlers from the North, who were influnced by the oasis BMAC people and later by the lesser influx of Indo-Iranian people from the West. (in several waves, at least that's what linguistic loanwords seem to indigate)
While Afanasevo were originally favored as pToch speakers and therefore the ancestors of the Yuezhi, it seems the later culture, Andronovo is genetically closer to the Tarim mummies. 
Both would actually be quite well positioned to be the Northern people. (above Tian Shan, fairly close to your Altai) 
Now, if I get it right, you assume all the cultures we call Andronovo spoke and Indo-Iranian language? 
Looking at the situation now, and I'll admit it's quite late, so I might be missing something, it would be far easier to explain the presence of Tocharian by the eastern sub cultures of Andronovo adopting the language of the people they replaced there - the Afanasevo. (their relative isolated nature geography-wise would explain the isolated nature of Tocharian as a language)
I realize that by the now current dating of the two cultures, there's about a 400 year gap between them. Still, I have a hard time coming up with anything else to explain (proto)Tocharian in Central Asia. 

Simply sticking to Indo Iranian for the whole of Andronovo and subsequently the Yuezhi leaves us with unexplained presence of proto-Tocharian in the region. (especially since you consider the oasis towns to be part of a Yuezhi confederacy/empire)

edit: I should clarify that Mallory abandoned the Afanasevo -> pToch hypothesis by 2012:

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Hi, Jan

True, the Phrygian hat looks similar to the Loufan one, but the latter is a hooded cap and not a hat as it wraps down over the warrior's ears... just as the Pazyryk ones do. Fact is, it's just the tip of a cultural iceberg. Other findings in Loufan graves are a far more important connection.

I have no trouble believing the Tarim people spoke Tocharian. I simply can't swallow Benjamin's claim that the Yuezhi, evidently as a whole, were also Tocharians. Look at this, "It was the Afanasevo culture of the Middle Bronze Age that is the most likely candidate for having included the ancestors of the Yuezhi/Tocharians." (Benjamin, p. 43) He even calls them "Yuezhi/Tocharians"! Like all other Scythians and Saka, all of which were formed in the Arzhan core-group, the Yuezhi/Pazyryks are far more likely to have spoken Iranian, perhaps specifically Eastern Iranian... not Tocharian. This falls in line with the Kushan Yuezhi using Bactrian as their coined language, and it continues into the Aorsi spectrum until becoming Ossetic.

All I'm saying is this. Benjamin has a real problem in recognizing the Yuezhi for who they were. He talks about their horses without allotting enough room for pasturage. Imagine raising the finest horse-flesh in the ancient world in Gansu... or even worse, the Tarim basin! It's a ruddy desert! And as you know, the word for "horse" is absent in the Tocharian language. (see Mallory's lecture, posted above by Jan) The Tarim mummy people were millet farmers, humble at that; and if they became rich from selling white jade to the Chinese, they kept it a well-hidden secret.

I specifically want to do a post on "barbarian" generals within the Chinese army, so momentarily I'm "passing the hats" Wink  and even the wondrous pontifications of Professor Benjamin. I need to rest first, but I will continue.

PS: I can't believe I wasted $65 on that dumb book. What a crock!
Alan J. Campbell

member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians

Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)

"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
             Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
Reply


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