Murad ADJI-The Kipchaks

7/27/2019 Murad ADJI-The Kipchaks

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Murad ADJI

THE KIPCHAKS

An Ancient History of the Turkic People and the Great SteppeA Handbook for Schoolchildren and Their Parents

Moscow

This book is about the Turkic people, from its rise in the Altai Mountains and its spillover to therest of the Eurasian continent. The touching narrative and thrilling legends relate about little-knownfacts of world history and the life as it really was for the ancient Turkis, their contribution to humancivilization, their victories and setbacks. Nothing like this book has ever been published anywherearound the world.

Murad Adji, 2002 St. George International Charity Foundation (Jargan), 2002

IntroductionWho Makes a Nation?The Way We SpeakPeering Through the AgesAn Ivory Tower DiscoveryA Story Told by the RocksA First Wave Rolls from the AltaiFirst Light on the Ancient AltaiThe Spruce FestivalAncient Altai ArtistsA Miraculous Discovery Made by ChanceHow Mysterious the Scythians Really WereA Gift from TengriThe God of HeavenThe Turkis in IndiaThe Turkis in IranThe Illustrious Khan ErkeBound for the SteppeThe Great Migration of the PeoplesKhan AktashIdelThe CaucasusThe Turkis and ChristianityThe Cross on Europe's TemplesThe Turkis and the Byzantine EmpireEmperor Constantine the PerfidiousThe Battle for the DonThe Turkis in EuropeRome's DuplicityEurope Arose in the AltaiAttila, the Turkic RulerThe Turkis as Priscus of Byzantium Saw ThemBattling with Europe's United ArmyAttila's DeathThe New Desht-i-KipchakAppendix


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The Steppe is our Homeland and the Altai is our cradle

Introduction

Many people, in fact billions of them around the Earth, speak Turkic languages today, and havedone so since the beginnings of history, from snow-swept Yakutia in Northeast Asia to temperateCentral Europe, from chilly Siberia to torrid India, and even in a good many villages in Africa.

The Turkic world is vast and diverse. Turks are its largest tribe. They are the title nation of Turkey,a big country in West Asia and a long-familiar name for the rest of the world for its distinct identity,ancient customs and traditions, and high and unique culture, a subject of a myriad of books andfeatures.

At the other end of the Turkic world, the Tofalars, numbering only a few hundred, are not someoneyou can tell much about. It's a sure bet they are hardly known to anyone beyond their dense Siberianforests and the couple of villages they call home town. But then, the Tofalars, perhaps, still speak theoriginal, ancient Turkic tongue after many centuries of only occasional contacts with outside culturesthat could distill their speech with borrowings.

The Turkic world is great indeed, and thoroughly enigmatic, too. It is like a cut diamond, its everyfacet a nation - Azerbaijanis, Altaians, Balkarians, Bashkirs, Gagauzes, Kazakhs, Karaims, Karachais,Kyrgyz, Crimean Tatars, Kumyks, Volga Tatars, Tuvans, Turkmen, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Khakass,Chuvash, Shorians, Yakut - too many names to reel off in the same breath.

Dozens of peoples live in the Turkic world - all alike and different at the same time. You can alwaystell where they belong, from the special sounds and undertones of their speech. Which means a wordthat is one thing in one place may be a completely different thing in another. This diversity of meaningmakes the Turkic languages fathomless, on top of their simplicity and ancient heritage.

They were not always that different, though. There was a time, too long ago, when all members ofthe Turkic race spoke one tongue that everyone understood in every corner of the Turkic world.Around two thousand years ago, they started for various reasons to move away from one another,geographically and linguistically, from their next of kin and their common tongue, developing theirendemic dialects that were a closed book to outsiders. For a while, they were keenly aware of theircommon ancestry and remembered their shared language that they could still speak at bazaars andfairs drawing merchants from far away.

Their common primeval language provided a framework for belles-lettres. Poets and story-tellershoned every word of their writings, so they could then caress the ear of the Turkic world at large.Besides, the common language was spoken by government officials mustering the troops or collectingtaxes from their subjects. Large empires, from end to end, spoke and wrote Turkic.

Is it only the language that makes one Turkic nation different from another? Is it the linguisticdiversity that gives brilliance to the diamond we call the Turkic world?

Everything is much more complex than it looks on the surface at times.Can you image, some communities on Earth are ignorant of their Turkic origins and will never

believe you if you tell them who they are. They were conquered, at one time or another, andforbidden, on pain of death, to speak their native tongue. They just forgot it clean, out of fear ofreprisal. And with it their forefathers and all that had come before. They were now people withoutmemory or knowledge of their real past.

This is the kind of thing that happened to people on our planet, though.Of course, these people have visages that look exactly like the faces of their ancestors (what the

genes would then be good for?). Take the Austrians or Bavarians, Bulgarians or Bosnians, Magyars orLithuanians, Poles or Saxons, Serbs or Ukrainians, Czechs or Croats, Burgundians or Catalans.Nearly all of them blue-eyed and fair-haired (exact replicas of the ancient Turkic men and women),and all blissfully oblivious of their common roots. Doesn't that strike you?

Many unsuspicious Americans, Britons, Armenians, Georgians, Spaniards, and Italians have Turkicblood flowing in their veins. And especially Iranians, Russians and French. They, too, wear theunspoiled faces of their ancient Turkic forerunners, and they, too, are dead sure they are anythingbut.

A sad enough story. It has been made that way, though - sad, or more accurately, broken before itcould be written to the end.

The Cossacks are what you can label an exception: a nation - yes and no, a tribe - depends on theway you look at it. If you will understand it, of course. Their true story lurks somewhere behind a veil


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of cock-and-bull stories. What we have then, in the end, is that the Cossacks have contrived somehowto get lost on the crossroads of Time - they style themselves Slavs, and still remember much of theirnative Turkic tongue. Indeed, Turkic is palavered informally in some Cossack villages. True, they callit, with tongue in cheek, their kitchen-speak, not native language.

I have pondered for many long years why the Turkic world is so little known to so many people onEarth. Was it by fluke or design? You will hardly find another language with as many nuances and

dialects as the Turkic - really, people of common blood, common ancestors, common history speakingdifferent languages and thinking differently of themselves. Why, indeed?

I have stumbled on the answer in history, lost in the mist of times, and I am going to tell it in thisbook, "The Kipchaks: An Ancient History of the Turkic People." It will only be an initiation, to befollowed up by two more books - "The Oguz: A Medieval History of the Turkic People" and "A NewHistory of the Turkic People."

Who Makes a Nation?

Our planet is peopled by many different communities each calling itself a nation. How many arethey really? No one knows for certain. Some sources put them at four thousand, and others cite twicethis figure. It is difficult, if not impossible, to count them all. The reason is actually that we lackcriteria for what is a nation. What and who is it, indeed? Here viewpoints diverge widely.

People all look alike, until you stop to think more intently. Actually, they differ in many respects.Even in the way they look to the eye. African countries have predominantly black populations. China ispopulated by the so-called yellow-skinned race. And Europe is home to the white race.

All of them - blacks, whites and yellow-skinned - share a single planet.They are different within as well as without - in disposition, behavioural patterns, world views and

social habits. In short, all people are very similar in some ways and completely different in others.Frequently enough, the term "nation" is used to refer to the inhabitants of a country. For example,

Azerbajanis live in Azerbaijan, or Georgians in Georgia, the Caucasus.Does this mean that the number of nations is equal to that of countries?Yes and no. A nation suggests people who speak the same language at home or on the street, who

love the same songs, dances and festivals, wear similar clothing and eat identical food. They embracea common religion and take pride in a common history. What is more important, though, is that theyshare an attachment to their homeland. This is a criterion a person or a nation measures up to. Eachof us has a homeland, one and only.

A major city like Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, is also home town for people who do not speakAzerbaijani or call it their mother tongue, or profess Islam. Are they - Russians, Jews or Georgiansliving in Azerbaijan - Azerbaijanis? They certainly are.

A nation is more than the people living in a country. People may live in the same city or even in thesame house, but follow different customs and life-styles.

Are customs or traditions, then, a force that builds up nations?Again, the answer is yes and no. A nation is not a group of people living in the same place. An

accidental group, no matter how large, cannot be regarded as a nation, unless it has a commonhistory and common ancestors.

A nation arises in a very long and arduous process spanning many centuries. It is a historicaldevelopment driven by countless factors, many of them appearing completely out of place. Like agrowing fruit, a nation needs a certain time to mature by its own rules no one has succeeded informulating in black and white.

At the dawn of human history, people learned to watch and size up one another. Gradually, they

accumulated a store of knowledge about the life-styles and cultures of other peoples, theirrelationships among themselves and with others. In our days, that store of knowledge has developedinto a science called ethnography (ethnos is Greek for a tribe or people), a science that analyses andcompares human cultures.

Ethnography did not come to be by accident. People had taken note, a very long time ago, thatquarrels and fighting inside a country or between neighbouring countries are sparked off bydifferences. More often than not, differences arise because one community knows little or nothingabout its neighbours' customs and life-styles. All people are hurt deeply by anyone offending theirtraditions. It would be foolish to expect them to behave differently.

Ethnography is an important science precisely because it helps maintain the peace on our planet.


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Knowing your neighbour can keep you out of the trouble's way. A word or a simple gesture is at timesenough for your neighbour to smile back and hold out his hand to shake yours.

When you smile at another person and wish him well on a holiday, or any day, you both will livewith a light heart. Really, ethnography is a science helping to look for ways to live in peace withyourself and with people around you.

It won't harm a Georgian to say Salam aleikum to an Azerbaijani, or humiliate an Azerbaijani toutter Gamarjoba in greeting a Georgian. Both will be equally pleased and forget any grievances they

may have against one another.

The Way We Speak

Whichever way you look at it, the language they speak tells two nations apart, in the first place.Speech and writing are central to human existence. People hear what you say, if your words conveywhat you mean.

Every nation has its own language, and every one of its members speaks it and thinks in it the wayan outsider never will. This is a point noted by ethnographers as well. A legend that has come down tous from a time when there was no science to give ready answers tells us how people came to speakdifferent tongues.

Long, long ago, the legend says, all people spoke one language, so they could understand oneanother without going to the trouble of learning foreign words. All but a tiny few were, however,

drowned in the Flood that happened one day. To escape death next time, the survivors started tobuild a tower in the city of Babel, as high as the sky, so they could wait out another Flood. The godswere enraged and destroyed the tower, and to prevent people from conspiring to build another tower,they scattered the mortals around the earth, giving them different tongues. Since that time ofconfusion of the tongues, each tribe could only understand its own language, and so, goes the legend,all the different nations came into being.

A legend is an invention, of course, but it provided an explanation of why all tribes were differentand why they did not understand one another. And they made do with this explanation for a longtime.

If we follow the legend, one tribe found itself in mountains overgrown with coniferous forests, in aplace where glistening streams emptied into bottomless crystal-clear lakes and where the sky was ashigh as high can be and clear as the clear itself. That place was the Altai, in the language they nowspoke. The most beautiful place on earth, and the dearest of all.

What is really "Altai"? Some translate it as Golden Mountains. This is not exactly so. The ancient

Turkis read a different meaning into the word. It was the Ancestral Land or Heavenly Kingdom even.Pick whichever you want, that was the name they had for their, and our, homeland.

And then, Turkic was the language spoken here from time immemorial. The Chinese were probablythe first strangers who heard it being spoken.

At least, the Chinese put down in writing the word tiurk as tuchueh, which translated as "sturdy" or"strong" in their language. They could not be more right about their northern neighbours, the Altaians,who always struck foreigners with their exotic appearance - fair-haired and blue-eyed, very strong andvaliant.

Tele was another name Chinese wise men had for the Altaians. In fact, for only those of them whowere very much like the Chinese themselves in appearance - black-haired and brown-eyed.

These differences between the Turkis, noted at the beginning of recorded history, have survived tothis day. The word Turki has been around from about that time as well. The Chinese heard it from theTurkis themselves, but misspelled it to make it pronounceable in Chinese, a common practice forpeople speaking one language and borrowing a word from another language so it could be fit for their

tongues.Clever they were, those fabled gods - they even made sounds sound differently in different

languages.

Peering Through the Ages

Chinese chronicles are certainly a priceless source for ethnographers. They are not to be taken fully onfaith, however.

Chronicles, like people, even the most well-intentioned of them, are prone to exaggerate. An


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altogether honest person may at times exaggerate things monstrously not because of ill will, butthrough ignorance of details. Particularly, if he relies on hearsay or rumour.

Rumour was what the ancient Chinese chroniclers drew on. As for exact facts, they knew very little,if not at all, about the Turkis. And they put fable to the parchment. They had their reasons for blowingthings up immensely - the Turkis had attacked and conquered Chinese lands.

The huge Chinese army, the pride of the Yin and Chou dynasties, was defeated by a Turkic army.China had no choice but submit and pay tribute to the conquerors. This is a probable explanation for

the liberal use of tiurk - "strong" or "very strong," or else "invincible", completely extraneous forChina's northern neighbour. That was perhaps the Chinese way of accounting for the defeat.

Many ancient chronicles contain curious facts about events, people or origins of new place names.These are, of course, interesting facts by themselves. Ethnographers, however, rely on differenttechniques to obtain the information they need.

Take, for example, Chinese reports of the Turkis' distinct appearance. How can these reports beverified? They say that fair-haired and blue-eyed people, tuchueh or ding ling in Chinese, lived in theancient Altai. People of these outward characteristics were unknown to live in China at that time. Onechronicler went, for lack of imagination or better examples, as far as comparing the Turkis to monkeys(the blue-eyed species living in southern China). We do not take them to task for this - they had notseen people with such faces before, and so they focussed, of all things, on the outward appearance ofthe Turkis whenever they set out to write about the strangers.

Chinese chroniclers had different words for tele, the other part of the Turkic people who lived in the

eastern Altai. They paid no attention to tele looks because those people were little different from theChinese.

Two faces of a single people? Believe me, this does happen, sometimes.Contemporary scientists have corroborated the Chinese chroniclers' astute observations. One of

them is Mikhail Gerasimov. The celebrated anthropologist-turned-sculptor learned to reconstruct thefaces and bodies of long-deceased people from their remaining skulls and bones. He was unrivalled intreating the smallest details of heads and faces.

This is another branch of the science called anthropology. It is a powerful tool in skilled hands,indeed.

Sculptures fashioned by Mikhail Gerasimov, who ultimately became a member of the RussianAcademy of Sciences, have an astounding precision. His best portraits of ancients include the Russianczar, Ivan the Terrible, Russian Admiral Ushakov and the great Turkic astronomer, Ulugh Begh.

Gerasimov made some of his famous sculptures from skulls found in mounds, in which ancientTurkis buried their royals. He reconstructed Turkic faces, so now we know how our ancestors looked.

And as we look at those faces we wonder again and again - that handsome man, I saw him in thecorner store last week. Thank God, little has changed over the millennia. True enough, something haschanged, and even very much so at times, in those Turkic faces. But more about that later.

My objective, though, is first establishing how and when the Turkis turned up in the Altai.

An Ivory Tower Discovery

No matter how beautiful, the Tower of Babel legend little suited the scientists, who wanted exact facts,which legends conspicuously lacked, imprecise and foggy as they are. To get these facts, theethnographers turned to archaeologists.

Archaeology is a science that studies ancient cultures through remains to find out where and howpeople lived thousands of years ago. Archaeologists are rummaging through ruined ancient cities,burials, and deserted caves, peering into the faded outlines of ancient rock drawings, and sifting dust

and sand for pottery shards in an attempt to reconstruct a picture of the time long past.The Ancient Altai has drawn archaeologists' attention for almost three centuries, after remains of

ancient cultures - enormous burial mounds, tombstones, ruins of palaces, and fragments of sculpturesin styles without parallel anywhere in the world - were discovered here accidentally on deserted landplots in the 18th century.

Scientists who came here to investigate were in for another big surprise - some of the local rocksshowed impressive drawings and mysterious characters drawn or carved by ancient artists. All of themas good as new and still waiting to be researched in depth.

Who were the people that left these priceless cultural treasures? Who lived on these desolatedlands? No answer could be given to these and many other questions for much of the intervening


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centuries. The Altai remained an enigmatic Treasure Island in the centre of Asia, cloaked in a fog ofmystery.

Generations of European scientists have tried unsuccessfully for over a hundred years to unravel whatthey thought an unassailable puzzle of the Altai. The brightest minds in archaeology had no inkling ofwhere to look for an answer. Finally, they gave up trying, deciding by consensus that the "dead"lettering belonged to a long-extinct race and was unreadable.

The cloud of mystery continued to hang over the Ancient Altai. Its inhabitants' traces were, itseemed, on the surface, and multiplied as studies went on, but their profusion did not add clarity tothe challenge. The invisible race kept its secrets locked up.

Professor Vilhelm Thomsen of Denmark was the first scholar to succeed in deciphering the bafflinglines of rock lettering. He was no archaeologist, but he was an accomplished linguist.

Linguistics is generally concerned with the world's languages, dead and living alike. It has made aweighty contribution to our knowledge about ancient Turkis. But it has not said its last word yet. Thisscience offers enormous prospects and its greatest discoveries are yet to be made.

Professor Thomsen succeeded where archeologists had failed. He achieved his success routinely inthe quiet setting of his workroom without ever going to the distant Altai.

He announced his discovery in Denmark on December 15, 1893. It was as unexpected as it wasastounding. On that day, Professor Thomsen presented his report to the Royal Danish ScientificSociety, revealing the principal secret of the Ancient Altai, its "dead" race, to the world. The Danishprofessor deciphered the mysterious rock inscriptions of the Altai's ancient inhabitants - and found

them to be plain Turkic.Everything seemed to be in place now - the Ancient Altai was the Turkis' homeland and cradle of

the Turkic people, as we know them today.No one found courage or evidence to contest Professor Thomsen's findings. So convincing and

uncontestable they were. Nor did anyone hasten to side with him. A curious situation emerged: thereport unveiled a scientific discovery that was not, in formal terms at any rate.

Chinese manuscripts found decades afterward also spoke about the Turkis who lived in the AncientAltai. The veil of secrecy appeared to be lifted in the 19th century already. But that was actually notthe case. Scientists suddenly found their efforts being frustrated by politics and powerful people whowanted the truth to be concealed.

A Story Told by the Rocks

Do politicians need so much to have history told the way they want? Really, they have their own,

twisted view of history. They loathe the truth. They only want to see politics everywhere, in their ownlight at that. They appeared to miss the inscriptions immaculately interpreted by Professor Thomsen.

They certainly had their own reasons to act the way they did. Politicians had doubts, waiting forfresh findings to come. And right they were. Unless we know exactly when and how the Turkis firstsettled in the Altai, we cannot claim to know anything much about the history of the Turkic people.

Archaeologists continued excavations until they went back in history to a time when no nations,even the Turkis, existed and there was no one to write on the rocks for the simple reason that humansliving in the Altai in those distant ages could not speak articulate words, so they made themselvesunderstood by gestures and a few discordant sounds. That was the age of brute primitive tribes thatlived everywhere around the planet.

Judging by archaeological artifacts, primitive tribes first came to the Altai about two hundredthousand years ago. They came from the region known today as Indochina, southeast of the Altai,where the oldest human settlements in Asia, around a million years old, have been unearthed.There is evidence of tracks left by primitive people leading from Indochina to the rest of Asia, to

America and Europe. It was a kind of the Promised Land, a sort of breeding ground for the bulk ofhumanity, in particular, all Mongoloids and Europoids.Why did the ancients take to the Altai Mountains? Any answer would only be a guess. Their scenicbeauty? Hardly ever. More probably, the mountains gave them safety and enough food game.

Indeed, people living in that distant past did not fare much better than animals they hunted or werepreyed on. They lacked weapons to defend themselves against predators or tools to make their lifeeasier. For security reasons they lived high in the mountains or deep in dense forests where they hada higher chance to survive and hide from danger, their deftness and senses being their onlyexpedients.

Two hundred thousand years is quite a long time by human standards. Enough for traces of the


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first humans who settled in the Altai to be lost. And yet, we know relatively much about them, thanksto the archaeologists' persistence and luck. We know, for example, what they looked like, what theydid to scrape a living from their harsh surroundings, where they lived, which game they hunted andwhat clothing they wore.

We owe this knowledge largely to the efforts of Alexei Okladnikov, an archaeologist of great talentand vigour. He appeared to see through the thick rock mass, across ages.

He was propelled to fame by accident. Walking slowly one day along the footpath on the Ulalinka

River bank in the public park in Gorno-Altaisk, the area's central city, the unconventional scientist, ashe was already known at the time, was deep in thought, when high eye caught sight of a weird pebbleamong the myriad of others strewn over the place. Stopping to pick it up, Okladnikov made astupendous discovery, one that made him a celebrity known to millions of people on Earth. Could notbe simpler.

The pebble was actually a primitive man's tool that set him apart from beasts.Thousands had walked the riverside footpath every day before him, but Lady Luck smiled on him

alone. Or was it something else? Okladnikov was a born archaeologist and knew much about thescience that was his calling. Picking up that stone tool was more than a stroke of luck. Rather, it wasthat proverbial Newtonian apple.

The pebble in his hand. He knew that neither the water stream nor winter frosts could give it itsshape. This could only be done by human hand. Really, archaeologists are a strange breed. You haveto see them relishing possession of a simple chunk of rock. Enthusing in the knowledge that the handof another human being touched it many thousand years ago and feeling the warmth of that unknown

hand.The Ulalinka immediately shot into prominence - a swarm of archaeologists descended on its banks

to dig it up. And who else could lead them but Okladnikov himself.A brass band struck up at nightfall every day, as it had for years already, and young people flocked

in to have a dance, and older citizens, with nothing else to do at home, came to breathe in fresh air.And each time they were amazed at archaeologists digging up a cave or some other thing at that latehour. The cave, they were to learn much later, was the oldest primitive site in the Altai. After it hadbeen dug out and cleaned up, it was named Ulalinskaya, after the nearby stream.

More primitive living sites followed shortly. They yielded stone axes, knives, arrowheads andspearheads crudely fashioned by primitive craftsmen. As years went by, knowledge about the historyand cultures of the Ancient Altai built up.

Some of the artifacts were totally unique, raising the brows of archaeology gurus. All about themwas new and different from anything found at primitive sites elsewhere. To give an example, theirstone knives and daggers were razor-sharp, in condition to give an overworked digger a perfect

shave.A stone sharper than a razor, can this ever be? Yes, it can. Nowhere else but in the Altai. The fact is

that primitive people living in the Ancient Altai could make their knives as sharp as a razor or evensharper. Scientists overwhelmed with doubt argued long and heatedly over this possibility. A modernman put in a mountain setting would never accomplish the feat - he needs strong tools and high-precision machines.

How could the Altaic primitive man succeed where moderns fail? As simple as he was himself. Toget to the truth, however, archaeologists sought counsel from physicists. Together, they put onnumberless experiments. And, finally, they hit on the answer.

The Altaic craftsman, they were stunned to learn, did not chip off a stone with another stone, aswas the general practice in that primitive world. Instead, he treated a stone with fire and water. Histools were, therefore, without match around the world.

True enough, you cannot expose every stone to alternating fire and water treatment. The onlystone that fits this purpose is nephrite, a rare and very strong greenish mineral with black streaks.

Nephrite is relatively common in the Altai, and the primitive caveman lost no time putting it to gooduse.

This discovery showed that mountains were more than a convenient place to live in for the Altai'sancient inhabitants. They were a hoard of useful minerals. On this evidence we may assume that theAltaic tribes were the earliest geologists on the planet. They were keen enough to look for rocks theycould use to make their stone tools and weapons.

Really, geology started on its course in those distant mountain ranges.

A First Wave Rolls from the Altai


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People lived in the Altai's caves for thousands upon long thousands of years, very little, if at all,changing in their way of life - game hunting and fishing continued to provide livelihood.

For all the slow pace of prehistoric life, archaeologists sense from the artifacts they find a fasterthrobbing of life.

Change was presaged by metal artifacts (bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin, was the firstmetal to benefit the primitive man). They saw in the Bronze Age in the Altai, succeeding to the StoneAge.

Again, thousands of years were to pass before people realised the advantages metal had overstone. Stone arrowheads and spearheads continued to be used next to bronze ones for quite a longtime. The coming of metal signalled momentous changes in the life of the Altaic tribes. To begin with,a bronze ax was greatly superior to a stone one in felling trees.

With logs available in quantity now, man broke out of his primitive environment. His existence nolonger depended on the whims of the weather. He came out of the cave into broad daylight. Now, hecould choose where to live. He could build his own dwelling.

This was really a great watershed, without exaggeration. People could now build warm dwellingsfrom logs. Decades, if not centuries, crawled by before this became a reality, and when it did finally itwas a long stride forward. In the beginning, the huts were actually smoke huts.

It was not yet a house, as we understand it, nor was it a cave any more, nor a tree branch shelter.It had no windows or doors, or wooden floor. Just walls and a sloping roof. An earth parapet was piledup around the hut, or otherwise the hut was half-buried in the ground. It was an octahedron in plan.The hut was accessed through an entrance, or manhole, on its eastern side (a device that developed

into a Turkic tradition for ages to come). Animal hides were hanged up in the doorway for protectionagainst cold and winds, and the floor was covered with dry grass or straw matting. A hearth was madein the centre of the hut, and a hole was left in the roof above it to vent smoke from the interior.Smoke huts were warm inside even in severe Altai winters.

Dwellings of the new type were built wherever their owners' preferences lay, usually in a terrainthat gave them some sort of advantage. This is where the difference between cave and smoke hutwas - you cannot move your cave to a new location, the way you can manhandle the logs. Mansevered the umbilical cord that kept him tethered to nature.

Coming down from rocky slopes, people gradually built up valleys with their log cabins, clusteredinto villages. Usually, they settled in places convenient to live and teeming with game.

Nowhere else around the Earth did people build their dwellings from logs. At that time log cabinswere, without a doubt, the invention of Altaic tribes. A remarkable invention that brought primitivepeople into the wide-open world.

At about that time, some of the native Altaic tribes migrated northwestward to the Ural Mountains.

We are not absolutely sure that those were Turkic tribes. In actual fact, the Turkic people was not yetin existence five thousand years ago, when Altaic villages cropped up far from their homeland. It wasnot the time yet.

Altaic tribes only used a few dozen words that must have sounded like the chirping of a bird -simple and easy. It could hardly be called speech. Uncoordinated sounds reinforced with gestures, oreven a few articulated words do not make human speech. They were only the beginnings ofconversational language. More centuries were to elapse before they could rightly be called languageand people could converse.

Altaic tribes migrating to the Urals transplanted their know-how to the new environment - they builtsmoke huts exactly as their forefathers did back in the Altai.

They sited their new villages and camps in forests and on riverbanks. Their traces are found nowand again in our age. They look amazingly almost like accurate replicas of Altaic settlements. Eventheir utensils and tools, and much more else, were no different from what they were down in the Altai.

Cities, if you could call them that, have been found deserted in the Urals. We may safely assumethat their prototypes existed in the Altai as well. Indeed, we know of some ancient Altaic cities. But, Iregret to say, they have not been explored or researched. Little comfort from that.

But exist they did.Arkaim is the best-studied ancient city in the Urals. By all appearances, it was built five thousand

years ago, and its inhabitants smelted bronze from copper and tin they mined nearby. A smeltingfurnace used to stand in nearly every yard. Fire burned in it day and night. The craftsmen took someof their handiworks as far as the Altai.

Then, who lived in Arkaim? Who built it, in the first place? After so much debating, the opponentshave very little to show for it. My impression is that the city's residents had Altaic roots.


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Migrants from the Altai settled in compact communities or colonies in the Urals. Shortly, some ofthem moved on to the west where the climate was milder and nature more bountiful. Each colony ortribal community (not yet a state, but with rudiments of a nation state or princedom) roamed far andnear in search of the land where they could settle and lead a sedentary life for centuries to come.

Altaic tribes followed beast trails, untrodden roads, across uninhabited territories of NorthernEurope. And as they moved on and away, the itinerant tribes lost touch with their common base andsevered their ties with one another. Again, separation and alienation took centuries to have its full

effect.After centuries of wanderings, people built up conversational skills and changed their life-styles.

Instead of simple verbal communication accentuated by gestures and mimic, speech was growingmore complex, as different tribes developed new sounds and concocted new words to define newnotions, unknown to other tribes.

Was it surprising then that people who used to speak a common, if simple, language wereeventually estranged from one another (a Tower of Babel in fact, rather than in fable?).

Scattered by contingency and wanderlust across much of Northern Europe, the next of kin ofyesteryear now lived in isolation from the rest of the race, in small communities where everyone wassomeone's near or not so near relation. Nearby tribes (to be more exact, alliances of tribes) ended upcoalesced into peoples speaking different tongues with common Altaic roots.

Today, these are the Udmurts, Mari, Mordvins, Komi, Finns, Vepsi, Karelians, and Rus. Each hasgone through a centuries-long process of language evolution and custom-building, and every one ofthem has its own traditions, festivals and life-styles that make up a national culture.

Nation-building is an unpredictable process that takes many long centuries. Don't expect everytribe to develop into a full-blown nation, though.

First Light on the Ancient Altai

My guess is that the Ural settlers who had not broken their links with the Altai and gone on anoccasional visit to their ancient motherland were called a generic name, the Turkis, as also were theAltaic tribes. It is only a guess, without claims to the truth.

As Arkaim, Sintasht, and several other Uralian cities rose to prominence, the Altai stepped backinto the shadows and humbly waited for its hour of glory to strike.

Meanwhile the Altaic tribes were busy discovering the surrounding world and developing new lands.Completely unaware, they were preparing for events that were brewing in the beneficial conditions oflocal nature.

The pioneers were climbing unassailable cliffs and chopping their way through impassable thickets.

They crossed turbulent rivers in search of grazing lands for their cattle. Their road to glory was longand tortuous. The pristine Altai nature was giving in reluctantly.

They had a special word, taiga, for impregnable mountain slopes overgrown with forests.Taiga is today a household word on all continents and with every nation. Few people know,

however, where it originated. At most they suspect it comes from Siberia.Altaic people made good travellers. They could take accurate bearings on the Sun and read the

stars for directions. They related their routes to rivers and learned much about them - where therivers sprang and flowed to, and how they behaved in different seasons. In fact, rivers were their onlyhighways, so people started giving names to them. Thence comes geography.

Most certainly, rivers had no names to tell one from another in ancient times. They all were katuns,which translates "river". That one and only river that flowed past one's cave or village. Primitivepeople knew nothing about other rivers or even an inkling there could be any more.

After all other rivers had been given names, the Altai's major river, the Katun today, had theprivilege of retaining its original name (katun, the river). Another river descending from the white-

topped peaks was named the Biya. It is still shown under this ancient name on all geographic maps ofthe world. The Biya and the Katun roar down the mountain valleys to join in a wide and mighty river,the Ob, which flows as far as the Arctic Ocean, thousands of kilometres to the north.

A reminder, all these river names are of Turkic origin.Biya translates as "lord" and Katun as "lady" from Turkic, while Ob is Turkic for "grandma". The

names of mountains, rivers and lakes can tell much about the native population - its history andname-giving habits. Going to the roots of a name is as difficult a task as making a discovery in anyother science, and the effort deservedly merits a science status - toponymy. Good-faith toponymistsare very few and far between, for their science places stringent demands on people wishing to qualify- they have to be profoundly knowledgeable in history, geography, linguistics and ethnography. In


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short, everything there is to know.Eduard Murzaev was a true luminary in toponymy. His book, "Turkic Place Names", which

penetrates into many secrets of the Altai and Europe, is an eye-opener. After you read it, you will seethe geographic map in a different light.

Take the Yenisei, one of the world's biggest rivers and a household name in Russia. Here,toponymy gives a deep insight into the harmony of sounds making up the word.

A very old Altaic village used to stand in the upper reaches of the river. According to an ancient

legend, it is the birthplace of the Turkic nation. When Turkis first came here, they called the riverAnasu, Mother River.

The river, or more exactly water in general, had a special place in the life of ancient Turkis. Itbegan with the birth of a child who was, immediately after it came into this world, dipped for amoment in the river's icy water, summer or winter. If it survived the chilly bath, it was expected tolive healthy and strong, and if not, few pitied the loss. That baptism made the nation sturdy andhardy.

Remember tiurk in Chinese meaning strong? Indeed, quite simply.Moderns no long read much sense into the name of the world's deepest and cleanest lake, the

Baikal, or the lofty Bai-Kol, the Sacred Lake, in Turkic. Dowsing himself with a bucketful of bracinglake water was a matter of pride for a man.

Another great river, springing east of Lake Baikal ridges, carries a different name and its true storyis lost in history. The river that is the Lena today used to be Ilin, or East River, for the Turkis.

It was the easternmost stream of the Ancient Altai. Several Altaic tribes, or uluses, migrated to its

riverside areas at a hard time back home. Turkic has been spoken here from an age lost in humanmemory. Indeed, the vast expanse known as Sakha (Yakutia) is a veritable preserve of the ancientTurkic world - it has been spared political catastrophes and cataclysms, which it mostly owes to itsimmense remoteness from today's cross-currents.

Actually, the Ancient Altai began with Bai-Kol and Sakha (Yakutia), stretching far to the west, intothe boundless Eurasian steppe. It was a vast country, a cradle and home of the Turkic people.

Toponymy is surprisingly akin to a precise science. Not only in the case of Turkic names. Chinese,Arabian, Persian and Greek names are, by and large, easy to identify as well. The explanation issimple enough - they reflect national traditions and have always been forcefully to the point.

Name-giving, we learn, is a ritual reverently followed by each nation or tribe. The Turkis, forexample, were fond of giving names to mountains, but avoided saying them aloud - doing this was abad omen. The rule was: call that hill whatever you like, but keep it to yourself, and never tell it tome, for I don't want to be visited by misfortune. As a result, a mountain could have two or morenames without ever knowing it. People seemed to have their good reasons to nurture this tradition.

If we go by the legend, evil spirits lived in the mountains, which they considered their own. Theycould make a flock suddenly incapacitated with a disease, poison grazing grounds or dry up wells.Sacrifices were offered to those mountain masters and false names were thought up for themountains, to be purposely shouted about.

True, the say-aloud names were, by and large, jumbled and vague, so the evil spirits could bemisled and get lost, trying to figure out what was actually what.

To give an example, Abai-Koby, which is widely known in the Altai, translates as "Elder Brother'sRavine". Actually, however, this is Bear Gully, the bear being the patron of the place.

Or the tongue-twisting name of a mountain - Kyzyy-Kyshtu-Ozok-Bazhy. Today nobody knowswhere it comes from or what on earth it could actually mean. Locals say it in one breath, though. Ittranslates variously to something like "Winter hut at the mouth in a gorge head." What could thatmean, if at all? Anyway, no evil spirit has ever ventured there for lack of the exact address perhaps.

The ancient Turkis singled out some mountaintops for obos, or sanctuaries, so they could comehere with sacrifices to propitiate their gods or atone their sins. Little wonder, obo is part of some

mountain names in the Ancient Altai, like Obo-Ozy or Obo-Tu. A sinner - many of them would comehere from far afield - was to haul up to the very top a boulder as big as his sin was. The sinner wasfree, however, to pick one he thought was the right measure of his sin. The obos were actually builtfrom those atonement stones.

The ancient Turkis deified the mountains, and atonement was sought there. Exactly why? Folktradition had it that the souls of long-gone ancestors whiffed in here to sit in judgement on a sinner'sfate. They shunned all mountains, though, but the sacred ones.

How then could a mountain be sacred? On what merits? There's no one around to tell the answers.This is a Turkic mystery yet to be cracked. Don't the old folk know anything about it, and yet keepmum?


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The Uch-Sumer, the Three-Topped Mount, has always capped the sacred mountain list. It sits in theCentre of the World (Meru in Turkic). Everything began here and will end here, too. It was the holy ofholies of the Ancient Altai, so people spoke in low whisper in its holy presence. No game was huntednearby either. Not even a grass blade picked. Anything you did but pray was sin.

More sacred summits would come in succession - the Borus, Khan Tengri and Kailasa. They, too,had long been held sacred by the Turkis. People would come here in their thousands to celebratefestive events. The sanctuaries are still there - remembered by all, but visited by the most devout

few.Rivers and mountains were not alone in sharing the ancient Turkis' reverence among themselves.

They all were challenged to a place in people's hearts by the Spruce. The Spruce Festival wascelebrated once every year, an occasion impatiently awaited by small children and adults alike. Thistradition lives on today.

The Spruce Festival

The Altai is unrivalled for its spruces - tall and slender. The spruce was revered as a sacred tree by theancient Turkis. It was welcome in every home, and festivals were held in its honour between threeand four thousand years back, when people everywhere worshipped no one but pagan gods.

Originally, the festival was dedicated to Yer-su, who lived in the centre of the Earth, in a placewhere deities and spirits took time out for a breather.

Next to Yer-su in order of seniority was Ulghen, an old man with a bushy grizzled beard. Heappeared to mortals in no other garb but a rich red caftan. In fact, Ulghen was the king of the holyspirits. He presided over their gatherings, sitting on a gold throne in a gold underground palace with agold gate. The Sun and Moon, too, did his bidding.

The Spruce Festival arrived at the height of winter, at what is now December 25, when Day winsover Night and when the Sun lingers for a little while longer underground. Humans prayed to Ulghen,extolling him for the Sun being returned to them safe and shining as ever. For their prayer to be heardwhere it was addressed, they brought the Spruce, Ulghen's pet tree, into their homes and decorated itwith ribbons, and even put gifts next to it for good measure.

Merrymaking went on all night - what else would you expect when Night is reeling in defeat, lickingits wounds, and Day comes out a proud winner. All night they danced and chanted Korachun,Korachun. Indeed, this is the name of the festival - Let-It-Go in old Turkic.

Let Night go and Day stay on and grow longer.Roundelays, or Inderbais in Turkic, with revellers forming a circle around the spruce, went on into

the early hours next day. Curiously, they identified the circle with the Sun. That was their way ofhoaxing the luminary back into this world. And then they religiously believed that once they madeyour fondest wish that night it would certainly be fulfilled, sometime.

Really, Ulghen seemed never to let people down, not a single time - morning come, Night alwaysstarted slowly backing down, giving the Sun more time to stay in the sky with each passing day.

The spruce was Ulghen's Tree that linked the daylight world of mortals with the underground worldof deities and spirits. Like a sharp-pointed arrowhead, it showed Ulghen the way to the surface andup, or ol, which is "road" or "way" in Turkic.

The word is one of the countless Turkic borrowings in the Russian language (where it became yel).Many centuries later, the tree continues to be feted. For some it is Christmas Tree, others celebrate

it on New Year Eve. Ulghen, though, has changed its name to Santa Claus, or Father Frost, orwhatever. Name-swapping regardless, he still wears that old garb and is the centre of year-endmerrymaking, as ever.

Round dances are still done around the tree. Few dancers ever give thought to such details as the

caftan, fur-trimmed hat, colour belt or felt high boots - the way the ancient Turkis used to dress uptheir deity, for they knew of no other clothing but the one they wore themselves. If you have doubts,ask the archaeologists, who have these facts on record.

Tradition has it that Ulghen could change to a different person, Erlik. Not unlikely, for Erlik was hisown brother. It is difficult to establish the truth now, after so much water under the bridge. Is it soimportant now who was who and how then?

Something is more important than that. For the ancient Turkis, Ulghen and Erlik embodied the goodand the ugly, light and darkness. We witness this duality on December 25, when the evilest of peoplecan play good and generous. Why not Erlik, then, the symbol of evil as he was. On that Decemberday, he brought gifts to people in his backpack. No one was more overjoyed than children, who


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scampered looking for him. To coax him they sang and pleaded with him to give them happiness andwell-being.

Ancient Altai Artists

The ancient Turkis had a very keen eye for the world they lived in. They were little afraid of Nature orthe elements and boldly faced up to it, trying to understand what comes from where and why.

Gradually they acquired a peculiar world outlook and a sizeable store of knowledge about the world.We call it now the unique Turkic culture, like no other existing at the time. Regret as we do, we knowvery little about it, and rare is a scientist who has thoroughly studied it.

Why are we so cock-sure about that? Of course, from the paintings and drawings, thousands ofwhich have been found by archaeologists on rock faces. Untouched by anyone since they were firstmade in olden times, they amaze the viewer because, in the first place, they are scenes fromeveryday life, as it was lived then.

You must certainly have an inner sense to grasp their message, for every scratch or figure carries ameaning difficult to comprehend for modern humans. A ram, for example, stood for riches andprosperity. A lion carried power and a tortoise eternity and calm, a horse boded war, a mousepromised good harvest, and a dragon represented the Sun, welfare and happiness.

A simple image could have a wealth of meaning and provoke a wave of sentiments and thoughts.The drawing captured the life people led, the things they talked about, the forces they feared andworshipped. It was as unpretentious and simple as the people it was intended for.

This is precisely why we treasure rock art, which along with language made a nation out of arandom and disorderly community.

Turkic art originated between three and four thousand years ago. An artist picked subjects for hisdrawings as life unfolded them before him. Scenes drawn from life are especially precious to scientists- you only have to peer into the drawings to see the rocks come to life to tell the history as it wasbeing made.

It appears that artists had a special preference for yellow or brownish-coloured rocks. No one hascome up with a plausible explanation, so we have to accept the facts as they are. Scientists find thedrawings in groups all across an enormous cliff face. There must be some sense in this, who knows.The mystery is firmly locked up in the past.

No pigments or even charcoal were used by an ancient artist. His brush was a sharp chisel that heused to cut dots, one next to another, so they are formed up into a line. More lines defined outlines ofan object the artist wanted to tell the world about.

Archaeologists were immensely surprised to see animal figures in rock drawings forming groups of

five or ten. Doesn't this remind you of your hand or both, with their five or ten fingers? The artist wascertainly aware of what he was doing - no matter how simple their math was, ancient Turkis knewhow to count their sheep and horses.

And yet, they had trouble measuring time at first. Eventually, the ancient Altai populations couldboast a calendar based on an animal cycle twelve years long. An old legend tells us how it cameabout.

A local khan asked people around him to tell him about a war that had been fought in the area longbefore. No one could tell him when that was - the tribes had no measure for time or how a year couldbe divided into smaller time periods. The khan, a clever man he was, ordered his tribesmen to corralwhatever animals were around and to drive them into the river so they could swim across, for apurpose unknown but to himself. This was promptly done, and no more than twelve animals managedto get to the other bank. A good idea, the khan thought, to give each year the name of one of theselucky animals - the Cow, the Hare, the Snow Leopard, and so on. Taking guidance from this number,the khan decreed the year to be divided into twelve months and twelve major constellations in the

night sky to be given names.Legend apart, the twelve-year calendar was prompted to some ancient gurus by the motion phases

of the Sun and Moon. It had, we now know from scientists for sure, nothing to do with the khan or hiszoo, but was actually based on precise mathematical and astronomic calculations.

Don't we owe the twelve-month year to the Altaians? Or twice twelve-hour halves to make the 24hours we normally call day - one for the day and one for the night so they could square?

Very likely. How else would you explain ancient Turkic dating such as this one: " in the hour of theHorse on the Cow's day of the fifth month of the year of the Snow Leopard?" You won't believe it,everyone knew exactly what happened when. Unbelievable as it sounds, they had animal namesinstead of plain hours and days. Really, a bizarre way to see the world.


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Each animal-name year carried attributes everyone was well aware of. The year of the Hare orSheep presaged disaster or crop failure, while the Snow Leopard, Dog or Cow augured bumper cropand prosperity.

An inquisitive explorer could glean much information from ancient Altai drawings. For example, hecould learn about their hunting habits. With dogs, of course. The artist was certainly very attentive todetail. In one scene we see a man setting out on a hunt, as we can gather from the bow he has slungbehind his back and a leather quiver with a bunch of arrows sticking out of it at his side, followed by a

dog.The Turkis' early art was as amazing as it was inordinate. Not because of its artistic merits. Rather

because it portrayed everyday scenes of a very distant past, which is much more important for aresearcher. It gives him an insight into what real life was like then. Even such details as outlines ofbeasts, fishes and birds were more than the artist's whim - they were part of tribal spiritual culture.

The artists' mood started, around three thousand years ago, add or subtract a few hundred years,to undergo significant change. Animals seemed to be stepping into the background, to be replacedwith human figures.

Handsome faces stare at us from the depths of history. You do not feel like turning away fromthem, or forget them the very minute you walk off. They are actually the portraits of our ancestors,with between a hundred and two hundred generations separating us.

Early human sculptures made their appearance in the Altai at around that time. The ancient stonecarvers were all mostly inspired by female models. They could only make very crude copies of theoriginals - the figures were stubby and rough-hewn. But their faces, oh

The sculptors were certainly successful in capturing the sitters' moods. Their cheekbones, a littletoo heavy and their eyes, crescent-slit the way they are nowhere else, were the Altaians' hallmarks.And they still are today with all purebred Turkis.

As far as we can judge from the drawings, ancient Altaians were cheerful folk, fond of singing anddancing. They used to put on shows, so they could do their fiery dances, their hands joined. Theirmerriment is perpetuated on rock faces.

Art is the soul of a nation. It never dies, even if the nation is no more.

A Miraculous Discovery Made by Chance

Art was not the only thing that set the Turkis apart from other tribes or nations. They also weredifferent because they always wanted to see the world beyond the horizon. They loved to wander andwere moved by curiosity to learn more about nature and the mystery of the elements. Strange if theywouldn't, living in the mountains where winters were severely cold and summers suffocatingly hot.

Skills and knowledge were all that people needed to make the inhospitable Altai their comfortablehome.

Around two and a half thousand years ago, a kind of miracle occurred in the Altai. More exactly, itwas no miracle at all. It was an event that was to happen, sooner or later, to a talented nation.

Back then, someone awake in the dead of night saw a bright flash streaking across the sky andwhat appeared to be a star plunging to its death on the ground. That was a large black meteorite.Many people spotted the cold motionless stone-like intruder and all walked away unconcerned. All butone, whose name was Temir, who showed a more than momentous interest in the rock.

This was the ancient Turkis' first, or at least early, encounter with iron, the Heavenly Metal. Indeed,the meteorite proved to be made of pure iron.

In fact, meteorites were not that rare in the ancient world. Thousands of them had bombarded theEarth, and they were a familiar sight in the Altai, as also anywhere else. In Ancient Egypt, forexample, iron meteorites were beaten into knives and swords so strong that they outpriced gold.Kings and gentry only were privileged to carry iron weapons.

Temir, the inquisitive Altai Turki, did something more than anyone else could elsewhere - heinvented a smelting furnace to turn iron-containing rock into useful metal.

That was one of man's greatest inventions, comparable perhaps to the wheel only in the magnitudeof the impact it produced. There are two or three inventions of similar consequences in the history ofthe human race. They stand a way above all others. Each was a real stroke of genius, destined to liveto eternity. No adjective would be too overstretched in describing their significance.

Temir put iron within easy reach of everyone. "Face a club-wielding foe with an iron shield," theTurkis could proudly say now. Smacks of a petty boast, but really smelting iron was the Turkic nation'sgreatest secret that they long refused to share with other peoples.

Iron-making skills were handed down from one generation to the next, from father to son by word


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of mouth. And even then they were not broadly publicised but were confined within a small circle oftrusted families. Strangers were not allowed to come near them. Metal makers and ironsmiths werealways among the Turkis' most cherished treasures. A metal maker's son was forbidden to marry a girlfrom any family but another metal maker, so she could not learn secrets she was not supposed toknow.

Ironsmiths' work was ranked on a par with the deeds of saints. And rightly so, for iron brought theTurkis prosperity they had never experienced before. They became the strongest and richest nation in

the world. Amidst the reigning Bronze Age, they had iron in profusion, so much of it that they couldafford to make their kitchenware of it.

"Who was that clever guy who sold the idea to Temir?" wondered his kinfolk fondling in their handsthe still warm glistening iron ingots Temir had produced out of ordinary chunks of rock (we knowthose were fragments of iron ore). "Tengri, the God of Heaven, no doubt about it," they guessed.

This sealed the role of Tengri as the Altaians' kind patron god. Tengri translates as God of Heavenor the Eternal Blue Sky. Since that time the Turkis have always sought protection and solace fromhim.

Tengri sent his favorite son, Gheser, to the Ancient Altai to teach the tribes to lead a righteous life.Gheser was the first ever Prophet on Earth. The messenger of the God of Heaven, he illuminatedpeople on Tengri.

Central Asian peoples have composed many legends about Gheser and his holy deeds. True,Gheser's name has been modified over the centuries, by accident or intent, to Keder or even Khyzer,which is now his most common name among the Turkic people. And he is now best remembered in

association with Tengri, the God of Heaven.Gheser is a wise guardian of life on Earth. An immortal hero, who to some people is a bearded old

man leaning on his staff, and a strong young man brimming with health and vigour to others.Curiously, the figure of Khyzer (Keder or even Kederles) is common among many nations of the

world, those that had links with the ancient culture of the Turkis and their god, Tengri. A keen personwill hardly need any persuading to get the message.

Legends about Gheser sound like the echo of an age when happiness poured on the Altai Mountainsand when the Earth had been cleared from demons and monsters. It was an age when the Altaiansdiscovered iron ore in huge quantities and what they could make out of it and started building citiesand villages, when they learned about the God of Heaven and when life was changing beyondrecognition.

This period in the history of the Ancient Altai was thoroughly researched by Professor SergeiRudenko, an outstanding archaeologist. True, the great scholar never spoke about Turkis in hiswritings and he had a different name for the Altaians, the Scythians.

Professor Rudenko was neither forgetful nor careless, however.

How Mysterious the Scythians Really Were

At the time when Sergei Rudenko was digging out evidence of Turkic culture, no one dared speak outor write the truth about it. A scientist risking a mere mention of it could land in jail, or even be shot,in imperial Russia and later, in the Soviet Union. The subject was a strong taboo.

What anyone could discuss, without fear of repression, were the Scythians. Their living and burialsites could be unearthed and explored. And discuss and explore them the scientists did. They passedup some Scythian themes, however. Like, for example, the language the Scythians communicated inwith one another, where they came from or, what is most important, who they were, in the first place.

All these themes were under a harsh ban or rather a tacit covenant among researchers to avoiddiscussing them. Did the Scythians come from nowhere and speak a language no one knew anythingabout? As simple as that, did they just turn up suddenly in the steppes of modern Kazakhstan,

Uzbekistan, southern Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Hungary? Only to vanish in no time into theunknown. A situation you never see in real life.

The Greek writer, Herodotus, was the first European to tell the Western world about the Scythians.In his "History" he wrote about the life of this steppe race and its fetes and beliefs, traditions andfighting ability. Even about their outward appearance and clothing.

According to Herodotus, the Scythians had come to the European steppes from the East. A longway rather But wherefrom, he did not know, his knowledge of worldwide geography was clearlylimited, and very much so. They certainly could only come from the Altai Mountains, a land the Greekshad never heard about, and nowhere else.

Much time later, when scholars learned about the Altai and the Turkis, they developed an


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apprehension that the Scythians were actually Turkis who had migrated from the Altai, or moreexactly, those of their tribes who had been forced to leave their native lands forever, for one reason oranother.

Their apprehensions were not devoid of reason, because the Scythians and Turkis belonged to thesame culture. Looking for differences is like trying to find dissimilarities in twins - a waste of time.The Russian historian, Andrei Lyzlov, suggested some three hundred years ago that Scythians weredirectly related to Turkis. His sensational idea was rejected by the country's rulers, however, and the

scholar had sovereign wrath turned against him. Czar Peter the Great, the sworn enemy of the Turkicpeople, who had overrun the Great Steppe and turned the free Turkic land into Russia's colony, hatedthe idea. After all these wrongdoings, he wanted to blot out the truth that the Turkis were native toRussia and Ukraine, both of which had been their homeland from the beginnings of history. And henow asserted that the Turkic people had not, nor ever had, a homeland or culture. The direct effect ofhis assertions was that Russian historians started referring to the Turkic people as "savage nomads"and "accursed Tatars".

Scholars that were soon coming to Russia from the West in droves were paid huge sums to speakand write about Scythians as Slavs and Turkis, if things ever came to that, as barbarous nomads, noless.

From that time on the truth was no longer heard about the Turkis and Scythians. It was replaced bya vicious lie that was being implanted costs regardless. No one believed it, though, so outrageous thefabrication was. What did Slavs have to do with all that? They never lived in steppes; rather, theywere forest dwellers.

To save face, another lie was cooked up - the Scythians, you know, came from Persia and, sureenough, they spoke Persian. To much regret, this fantasy has taken root and is very much alive inRussian historical science today.

What is more, the ignoramuses remain unconvinced by written evidence found in Scythian moundsscribbled in Turkic runes. Nothing can make them change their mind. Indeed, everyone sees whateverhe wants to see.

The truth does not become a lie even if it is banned. It continues to beckon honest researchers.Fortunately, Professor Rudenko was one of them.

He did not defy the ban, though - doing so could certainly bring disaster on his head. Rather, heprovided an accurate account of the Turkis and their culture in his books. This is the main merit of hiswritings which are to be read between the lines (the practice followed by both writers and readers intimes of artistic freedom suppression).

Professor Rudenko found that the Scythians had lived in the Altai, whence they migrated to Europe;that they were a Turkic people, speaking and writing in a Turkic language. According to Herodotus,

they called themselves Scoltes.Iranians and Indians knew them as Sak (Shak), a name derived from the ancient Turkic word sakla,

which translates as "save". Appropriately, the Scythians abandoned the Altai, leaving it in full dignity,with the faith of their ancestors in their hearts. Science is yet to explain what forced the Scythians toforsake their homeland. For now, little is known about the background of their migration.

Most probably, too much blood had been spilled in the Altai at that time, two and half thousandyears ago, as high-pitched quarrels grew into warfare. Some tribes were upholding, arms in hand, thesupremacy of the old gods (Yer-Su, Ulghen and Erlik), while others were asserting the power of theirnew God of Heaven, the Almighty Tengri.

For the first time in human history, the world was witness to a struggle between polytheisticpaganism and a new, monotheistic religion. It was a war of faiths.The old believers, the Scyths (Scythians) (or Scoltes or Sacae) backed down and withdrew from thebattlefield. Certainly, they were not a new tribal confederation, one that turned up suddenly andvanished just as unexpectedly without a trace, like a meteorite in a blaze of fire. No, they were part of

a race that had been and will be.

A Gift from Tengri

Why did a religious argument arise in the Altai, of all places? Was it sparked off by the emotionsboiling in the Turkic nation's soul, an unfathomable receptacle of dreams and mysteries generating arich spiritual culture?

The ancient Turkis believed that patron spirits of their tribes held power over whether people livedin riches or in poverty. All tribes called their patron spirits the Lord, but different tribes each had itsown Lord - a swan, wolf, bear, fish, deer, and so on, whose protection they sought.


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And all together, the Turkis worshiped the Serpent or Dragon. (In ancient Turkic, the serpent wasmaga or yilan, the dragon was lu, and the lizard was got, which was probably modified to Goths as theTurkis were henceforth known in Europe.)

A tribe's Lord was depicted on its banner, which was believed to be the repository of the patronspirit, so banners deserved a special treatment. Incidentally, the ancient Altaians did not distinguishbetween the words banner and spirit - both had the same meaning and were pronounced identically.

Initially, the ancient Turkis made their banners out of animal hides, which were then replaced with

common or silk fabric. Allowing a banner to fall was considered bad luck, and tilting it was utterdisgrace.

The Serpent was revered by all tribes by more than mere chance. It was held that it was theforefather of humans and made people wise and knowledgeable. This fable has survived from thatdistant past. Today too, the Serpent (or Dragon) is deeply venerated in Central Asia, where feasts areput on in its honour and its images can be seen in every conceivable place.

Interestingly, legends of the Turkis' neighbours frequently refer to them as nagas, or serpentpeople. According to folk tradition, the Serpent was master of the underworld. This explains why thedeities under its control (Yer-Su, Erlik and so on) lived underground, and people adulated them asrulers of the netherworld.

Tengri, the new God, came from quite another world, the Heaven. He brought a different religion topeople. And a different life, too. A life in the Iron Age. He was the God of Heaven and Lord of theWorld for the Turkis, and more exactly for those of them who had lost faith in the old gods.

The new God was not to everybody's liking, however. Its opponents conceded defeat and retreated

from the Altai, loyal to their old faith and their underworld rulers. Their departure from the Altai in the5th century BC laid the beginnings of the history of the Scythians, the tribe called Scyths, or Sacae, inthe classical sources (or Scoltes).

So they departed, clearing the ground for momentous changes to start in the Altai inevitably underthe impact of iron tools and implements. Professor Sergei Rudenko focused his research specifically onthis period. He dug out a large cluster of mounds at Pazyryk in modern Kazakhstan, retrieving anenormous cache of fabulous treasures. I am not referring to the price of the gold and silver artifactshe found. His finds were much more valuable for they provided an insight into the life of the Turkisonce they started using the advantages of iron. Indeed, he unearthed the evidence of the Altaians' artand skills he had been looking for. This was Professor Rudenko's great contribution to Turkic studies.

A true and honest scientist, he contributed archaeological discoveries to the treasure-trove ofscience, in contrast to empty theories concocted on sovereign orders. Without a doubt, his mostprecious find was a horse bridle that he recovered from a mound hoard, its leather and iron mouth bitcompletely intact. And also iron crosses that Turkis used for ornaments.

What's so interesting about a bridle today? Few people know, however, that the bridle was firstmade in the Altai and that it introduced a new culture we call Turkic Culture. It appears to be simpleenough, next to modern widgets. Back then, though, it made a Turki warrior what he was to hiscontemporaries - an invincible horseman who could handle his warhorse the way no one else couldand ride it across much of the world in triumph.

The horse moved apart the boundaries of the Ancient Altai and opened up broad vistas for traveland conquest; and it provided a new type of transport and draft force that drove the Turkis forward onthe road of progress. The Altaians had an instinct and real knack for inventions destined to becomestaples for all races and peoples.

Back to those mounds. Archaeologists uncovered swords, scimitars and daggers from them, andalso stirrups and shirts of mail, helmets and armour plates, and much more. Doesn't sound grand? Itmust. The Turkis' weapons were without match anywhere else in the antique world. Remember, theygave a severe beating to the Chinese emperor's crack armies? Their awesome strength made Chinesechroniclers look for an explanation, which they promptly found - the tuchueh (strong), that simple.

And more. Back in the 4th century BC, the Chinese adopted elements of the Turkis' war gear,trousers, in particular, which they swapped for long flowing coats. Shortly they learned horse riding,too.

The Altaians now knew that Tengri gave them unchallenged strength and skills, such as ploughingtheir crop fields, a job no other people could do so well. The earliest forged iron ploughshares(forerunners of modern ploughs) on Earth were found in the Ancient Altai.

The Altaians reaped their crops with iron sickles and threshed their sheaves with iron flail bars.They cultivated rye and millet and stored the harvested grain in pottery jars. For larger crop harvests,they built granaries and drying barns, and made sacks and flour bins. They had ovens to make roundloaves of bread they called karavais (made by karavaichis, or full-time bakers). The breads were


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round, to look like small brown suns - yeasted tasty wonders with a crunchy crust.Hunger had become a thing of the past for the Altaians.The age of plenty entered the ancient Turkis' homes as well. Their smoke huts gave way to log

cabins (isi binas, a warm place, a word adopted and modified by Russians to izba), really a warm andcozy place, with a high-standing brick oven inside. Strangely, we call it the Russian oven today.Memories are short, of course. Incidentally, Russians borrowed the Turkic word kirpech (oven clay) forbrick, which was the Turkis' main building material.

The Turkis were unsurpassed in building their houses from bricks and logs.The ancient Turkis have preserved their identity of body build and complexion through the ages.

You won't confuse it with anyone else's. To begin with, they looked differently from other peoplesbecause of their national garments. Their diet abounded in meat and sour milk products, and theirsumptuous brown bread made their meals luxurious. Other peoples baked their loaves differently.

Clothing and national cuisine are distinctive traits for an ethnographer. Little surprise, a horse-riding race would certainly wear different garments and eat different foods from those of, say, a tribeof fishermen.

Everyone, young children to old adults, could ride a horse in the Altai. Walking was a disgrace. Aninfant was first taught to sit on a horse and then to walk. A Turki, in fact, grew up and died next to hishorse. The two were inseparable centaur-like. And were even buried together.

Now we know why the horse-riding Turkis needed those loose-fitting trousers and high-heeledboots more than any other nations. Also, they were the first to discover the advantages of saddleswith stirrups, steel scimitars, daggers, spears and super-power bows, objects other peoples had no

need for. Even if they had, they lacked the Turkis' knack with those weapons.Among the inventions the hardworking Turkis contributed to world civilization were iron sickles and

axes, forged iron ploughshares, magnificent palaces and attic houses, wagons and carriages, andmany more useful things.

Some of them are illustrated on these pages. "Good and evil, poverty and wealth all come fromTengri," the ancient Altaians said to comfort themselves.

And right they were.

The God of Heaven

Who was then that Great Tengri, the heart of Turkic culture?Tengri was an invisible spirit inhabiting the Heaven, as vast as the Heaven itself and as wide as the

whole world. The Turkis reverently called Him the Eternal Blue Sky or Tengri Khan, the latter nameemphasising His supremacy in the Universe.

He was the Only God, the Creator of the world and all forms of life on Earth, the Lord. So much wassaid in ancient legends, which are still remembered in our time.

To understand the wisdom and depth of faith in Tengri, people were to embrace one simple truth -God is one and He sees everything. You cannot conceal anything from Him. He is the Lord and Judge.

The Turkic people developed a habit of looking forward to Judgement Day. Not in helpless fear,though, for people were sure that supreme justice existed in the world. It was the Judgement of God,to be passed on everybody, king or slave.

God is protection and punishment, all in one. This was what the Turkis' faith in the Only God wasbased on.

Religion was the supreme achievement of the Turkic people's spiritual culture. The Turkis threw outtheir pagan gods and turned to Tengri - each in one's own tongue, Bogh (Bogdo or Boje), Hodai (orKodai), Allah (or Ollo) or Gospodi (or Gozbodi).

These words resounded in the Altai Mountains as long as two and a half thousand years ago. And,of course, many other words were addressed to Tengri as well.

Bogh was the most frequent word on people's lips, though. It invoked peace, calm and perfection.The Turkis now went into battle with Bogh in their hearts and minds. And took up every challenge withBogh at their side.

Another form of address to God, Hodai (literally, Be Happy), emphasised the unique qualities ofTengri - the Almighty in this world, its Creator. All-powerful and Benevolent.

Allah (or Ala) was the least frequent word used by ancient Turkis. It only came to their minds inmoments of desperation when they wanted to ask the Great Tengri Khan for something veryimportant in their lives. The word derived from the Turkic al (hand), suggesting "giving and taking". Inits original sense, Allah could only be uttered while saying a prayer with hands held out in front of youand palms up to face the Great Blue Sky.


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Gospodi was the rarest of all - it could only be spoken by priests. Literally, the word means "seeingthe light" or "eye opener". It was an address one could say in a moment of truth, and it was full ofphilosophical wisdom. A truly righteous man could ask for guidance in penetrating the inner sense ofthings.

The rules to be followed in prayer, celebration or fasting were polished over the centuries, todevelop into a code of behaviour or rites, performed by priests.

Turkic priests could be told from laymen by the way they dressed and behaved. Their clothing

consisted of long robes (caftans or mantles) and peaked hoods, which were white for senior clergy andblack for the rest of the priesthood.

You can guess all right that ancient artists cut images of priests on Altai rocks. So we now knowwhat those "white wanderers" (a popular phrase for them) were - preachers of the faith.

The Turkis chose a simple equal-armed cross, aji, for a symbol of Tengri Khan. The cross was notnew to Turkic culture, though - it had been an important element in Turkis' lives, along with a "skew"cross that was a sign of the underworld and old, underground gods.

As can be expected, aji crosses were very crude and simple, gradually evolving into real works ofart crafted by jewellers, who used to give them a gold coat and adorn them with gems to please theeye and heart.

Skew crosses appeared in the Altai between three and four thousand years ago. In actual fact,those were not crosses and were named so by Europeans when they first learned about Tengrireligion.

Semantically, the cross is an intersection of two lines. The Tengri sign shows no intersection, and

is, in fact, a solar circle with four equally spaced rays radiating from it. Get the difference?Sun rays, otherwise interpreted as grace of God emanating from a single centre. They are a

Heavenly sign that marks off Turkic culture, the culture of a people that had profound faith in thepower of the Eternal Blue Sky.

Occasionally, a crescent was added to the Tengri sign (or cross, if you like), to convey a differentmessage - a reminder of time and perpetuity. The Sun and Moon were closely related to ancient Turkis(hence their twelve-year calendar).

The Tengri sign was embroidered on battle banners and worn on a chain on the chest. It wastattooed on foreheads and woven into designs and ornaments by artists. It was all in the spirit ofstrong national tradition.

The Turkis in India

Tidings of Almighty God of Heaven and his affluent country flew from Altai mountaintops like a flock of

birds to every corner of the world. Metaphor aside, the new religion was disseminated by Turkisthemselves, by word and deed. Their White Wanderers made their way to other countries to spreadthe word of Tengri.

China sent back Turkic preachers from its borders. With a vengeance, literally. It was shortlyoverrun by Turkic horsemen who put China to its knees by force, the defensive Great Wall regardless.Eventually, however, people in the country that styled itself the Celestial Empire learned about Tengri.The Chinese probably had their own ideas about the cult of the Heaven and tried to uphold them.

It was all different in India, however. Interest in Tengri caught on immediately, and an Indian pageopened in Turkic history two thousand and a half years ago, or even slightly earlier.

The Altai and India now shared a common spirituality. They certainly had solid backgrounds for thatcommunion, faith in the first place. (In truth, the Hindus interpreted their Buddha in a way differentfrom what Turkis made out their Tengri, and still they felt free to search for an eternal truth and havespiritual dialogues with one another.) Indian legends of nagas are a reminder of that distant past.

In Hindu mythology, nagas were semidivine beings, half human and half serpentine, who had the

Serpent as their forbear. They lived in a country far north of India, in a land where incalculabletreasures and an iron cross lay buried in the ground. That distant land was known to Hindus asShambhu (Benevolent), or Shambhkala (Shining Fortress in Turkic).

According to legend, nagas had human faces and long snake bodies. They could assume eitherhuman or wholly serpentine form. They were very gentle and musical creatures who loved poetry, andtheir women were of striking beauty.

An ancient Hindu holy book, Mahabharata, tells of the origins of religion and the evolution ofspiritual culture. The book is really a chronicle of Ancient India, with some of its pages devoted to thenagas and their mysterious northern land. No, this is not a fairytale. It is an account of real eventswhich is told, in a long-standing Indian tradition, in legend form. (Indian scholars approach their


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It was found later that tashty or dashty was "abroad" in Turkic and that it came from Sanskrit, thelanguage of Indian priests (more about that later). "Abroad" gave the name "Tashqand" an entirelydifferent undertone. In plane language it translates as "a stone city in a foreign land". The messagewas that it was not a town of log cabins, a predominant type of settlement in the Altai, but exactly acity of stone buildings.

Why exactly "abroad"? We have an answer, by way of explanation.A large and prosperous state, Bactria, a part of the Persian Empire, used to lie in the very centre of

Asia. Its fame spread in all directions, including Europe, and it is actually to blame for Alexander theGreat's Macedonian armies being lured by its wealth. Bactria died off instantly politically, and longyears of warfare that followed on its territory finished it off economically as well as politically.

In fact, the weakened Bactrian state was embroiled in long wars, trying to fend off the "savagenomads" (a staple name used for Turkis by modern historians) descending on the prostrate countryfrom the north. Yes, they were the notorious Sacae, and they knew what they wanted when theyinvaded Bactria. Their business done, a part of the their army turned around to push, across theSuspension Pass in the unassailable Pamir Mountains, towards India.

Three hundred years after these devastating campaigns, in the 1st century AD, new forces burstout of the Altai to rewrite history again. They had a cross on their banners and a new faith in theirhearts. Their westward drive opened another Iranian page in Turkic history.

Azhi Dahaka's (or rather his proselytizers') failure did not stop the Turkis in their resolve - they senttheir cavalry to make up for the failure in their earlier Iranian inroad. This time, the Turkic armiesmatched up to their long-standing reputation. Fighting for succession to the lifeless Bactria was brief

and decisive.The wars cleared the stage for a new state, the Kushan Khanate, which is today hidden behind a

thick fog of ignorance. Kushan history is linked to whatever people comes to mind - Greeks, Persiansand whoever happened to be near, but the Turkis.

Tashqand was actually the first Turkic city in the area. It was built close to ancient Bactrian cities,including Maracanda, near an iron ore deposit that drew the Turkis here, above all.

The Turkis renamed the ancient Bactrian city Samarqand (probably, derived from Sumerqand), andcalled the nearby iron-rich area the Iron Gate - no one took any interest in iron but the Turkis.

The Kushan Khanate wielded awesome military power. It controlled modern Central Asia,Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of India and Iran, and even parts of China. Very little truth is so farknown about the legendary Kushan Khanate, even the true names of its rulers, which all appeared tobe concealed deliberately. We know their Hindu, Iranian or Chinese surrogates, but never their Turkicoriginals. The founder of the Kushan Khanate, for example, is known as Guwishka. His name,Gowerka, was stamped on his coins. Who knows what it was in Turkic? Hardly anyone.

Many objects dating to that period have been unearthed. Some of them bear inscriptions in clearTurkic runes. They confirm the hypothesis that Turkis started settling in this foreign land before theonset of the new era (AD). Turkic runes and the "stone city in a foreign land", Tashqand, were signs oftheir presence - iron artifacts and runes are dated to the same period.

French archaeologists digging at Dasht Navur (Dasht again?) uncovered remains of another Turkiccity, and a cliff with similar runes nearby, on the territory of modern Afghanistan. Another Turkic citystood at Kara Tepe, a short distance from Tashqand. The cache of artifacts uncovered there containedearthenware with ubiquitous inscriptions, a message from long-gone ancestors. Taking the cue fromtheir respective governments, scientists close their eyes to this multiple evidence.

We certainly can time events using a different set of signs. For example, Turkic populations, Uzbeksin particular, the direct descendants of settlers from the Altai. Their modern state, Uzbekistan, withTashqand (Tashkent) as its capital city, is the pride of the

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