Post by chichak on Nov 27, 2009 1:13:44 GMT 3
I intended to create this topic as separate from the Hungarian threads, because I would like to discuss the undocumented stages of Hungarian prehistory.
Perhaps you might have read about the controversies surrounding the origins of Hungarians. How the academically supported thesis contrasts with that supported by Hungarian nationalists, confusing outsiders.
I will be posting rather long explanations so I will post it in different sections:1.-Ugric age 2. Proto-Hungarian age
I will soon also including additional photo uploads.
Referring to academical sources that were available for my use, I will attempt to construct a clearer picture of the early stages of Hungarian prehistory, by putting the puzzle pieces from here and there.
What an average Hungarian gets to know in school during history class is perhaps a page or two on Hungarian prehistory. I personally see it as too abbreviated to understand such a complex process. This abbreviated explanation results in the formation of misconnects at a young age. Those two pages would also include a short summary of the language relations of Hungarians. How its part of the Finno-Ugric group of languages. Showing a few comparisons of words. Unwisely they choose to give Finnish and Hungarian comparisons without explaining that the two languages are at opposite ends of the language family spectrum. Comparisons with the closest languages to Hungarian: Khanty and Mansi are lacking as well as one of the most puzzling questions:
How on earth is such a cultural gap possible between our closest linguistic relatives?:
Hunter-gatherer Ob-Ugrians
Compared to the nomadic culture of ancient Hungarians.
Someone unfamiliar with Steppe history according to a simplified linear logic, would associate equestrian nomadism with the Turkic people (prior to.the appearance of the Mongols). One might suppose, that the Turkic people introduced equestrian lifestyle to the early Hungarians, converting their hunting-gathering lifestyle into advanced nomadism. In light of the above, questioning the genuinity of academical research is often triggered by the misconception of how linguistic and genetic origins have common roots.
Its sad to note, that the academical circles simply seem to ignore their amateur opponents, who on the other hand are very active and are up to date with the technological means of popularizing their theories, some of which are getting more and more obscure.
Now moving on from the introduction, let us start with the current historical understandings on the root of origins. The point of origin of the Uralic languages is situated in a rough sphere around the Ural Mountains (hence the name and this period could be called the Uralic age). After the separation of the Samoyedic group, there are suggestions that the spread of the Finno-Ugric people to a large area is related to early craftsmanship and a trading network with canoes on the tributary rivers on a larger region (within the framework of hunting-gathering), although I have to brush up on my sources for that. The ancestors of the Hungarians (lets call them proto-Ugrians) stayed relatively near to the place of hypothetical origin, moving onto its southern reaches (on the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains). We have to note here that the Finno-Permic languages and Ugric languages broke of at an early stage, between 4 and 3 thousand years ago and there is currently a linguistic debate to make the two groups different subgroups of the Uralic languages, the linguistic differences being so great, thus dismissing the expression of ‘Finno-Ugric’ languages.
Early Finno-Ugric contacts with the Indo-European languages are presumed to have left some traces in vocabulary (which gave rise to the Indo-Uralic language family hypothesis, dismissed by most academicians).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Uralic_languages
The Ugric Age
The most significant event in Hungarian prehistory was contacts with the Andronovo culture, which brought radical changes especially for the proto-Ugric people.
The so called Andronovo-like cultures (I suppose amongst others this would denotes the Seyminsko-Turbine culture) is associated with Ugrians. These Andronovo-like cultures gave up their hunting-gathering lifestyle and around the mid-second millennium BC gradually turned toward animal husbandry grazing horses(!); cattle and goats. Along with this, the simultaneous adaptation of agriculture from the Andronovo people made them to create permanent settlements. Important technological terms of Ancient Iranic origin have been borrowed. Horse sacrifices are observable in archaeological finds, indicating of a horse cult. That had a strong presence even in the culture of the later Ob-Ugrians (discussed in quote bellow)
I feel it is time I should quote a direct source: A cultural History of Hungary, Volume I, Corvina Books Ltd Budapest, 1999 ISBN 963 13 4836 9.
Hungarian linguists in the 1930s observed the most important words connected with equestrian culture, such as ló (horse), nyereg (saddle), fék (bridle) and ostor (whip) as well as the phrases designating two and three-year-old foals, másodfo; and harmadfo; ló (literally: ‘second-grass-horse’ and ‘third-grass-horse’), are also found in the related Ugrian languages. This led them to reject what was then the current view: that the early Hungarians were to adopt their equestrian culture from some Turkic people at a later date, and to conclude instead that our ancestors were already equestrian people in the Ugric age. Many researchers at the time opposed this idea because today’s Ob-Ugrians, living as they do in a more inclement climate, naturally do not breed horses, nor were their remote ancestors ever thought to have done so. The opposers were, however, forgetting the rich poetry and popular traditions of the Ob-Ugrian Voguls and Ostyaks, who sang heroic songs about horses and horse-heards, and who until comparatively recently still took the trouble to bring white horses up from south, several hundred kilometers away, for particularly important sacrifices. Today the archeological evidence of horse bones excavated at the settlements and from the graves has settled the old argument: there is no longer any doubt that the majority of the Ugrians, except for those living in the most northerly regions, were a horse-rearing people from the middle of the second millennium B.C. onwards. This must also have been the period when the role that the horse played in Ugrian belief systems evolved: from this time onwards horses were often sacrificed to honour the illustrious dead or the greatest gods.
Horse rearing and horse riding are not, however the branches of animal husbandry that developed on their own. This is borne out by animal bones found at the settlements and in the graves, which provide sufficient evidence of other types of animal husbandry, especially of cattle, sheep and goats as well as horses. It is quite telling, in this respect, that the Hungarian word for ‘cow’, ‘milk’ and ‘felt’, tehén, tej and nemez are definateky Old Iranian in origin, which strongly suggests where animal husbandry, as practiced in the Ugrian period, was derived from. There can be little doubt that the Hungarian word for ‘cart’, szekér, is also an Old Iranian loanword from the period, its equivalent in Ostyak means ‘sleigh’, which can be attributed to the change in the way of life that was to take place among the people related to the Hungarians. From their southern neighbours the Magyars obviously learnt the secret of making carts, the likes of which were found in the Sintashta graves. Further evidence to support this view may be found in the fact that in the Bronze Age horses were used not only for riding but also for carrying loads. In the order of battle, horse-drawn chariots, the tanks of the age, constituted the most effective fighting unit, surpassing mounted warriors in efficiency.
The archaeological finds provide evidence not only of the animal husbandry of the Ugrian period but also of farming. The grains of wheat, bronze scythes and grindstones found in the South Uralic area make it clear that some sort of rudimentary agriculture was being practiced. True, the Ugrian vocabulary of the Hungarian language provides no conclusive evidence; possibly because the relevant words became extinct in the modern Ob-Ugrisn tongues after their speakers had been driven northwards up to the taiga and tundra zone in the distant past. The only Hungarian word to possess equivalents in those languages is a verb, horol, which may have referred to the act of shallow ploughing with the primitive plough.
From: In search of a new homeland-The prehistory of the Hungarian people and the conquest, István fodor, Corvina books ltd, Budapest, 1975 ISBN 0139-3014
Claims about the multi linguism of the Andronovo culture
“The Andronovo culture is probably mainly the legacy of three fairly large groups of people: in the southern and central territories lived communities which undoubtedly spoke Proto-Iranian, while in the norhern part (the eastern side of the southern Urals, the wooded plains of the Tobol-Irtysh region) was inhabited by the Ugrians and the eastern part (the Tomsk region) by the Samoyeds. It is worth noting that Ob Ugrian folk art retained a number of significant Andronovo elements well into later historical periods” ... “We can trace the development of the Andronovo culture in this area of the wooded steppe from around 1800B.C.”
I supose this has been revised since. Proto-Iranic groups being in charge of the majority of the culture with the addition of Turkic on the Eastern fringes and the reduction of the size of the Ugric involvement, but maybe because the Andronovo-like cultures are now being treated separately from the Andronovo culture and have been previously grouped under the Andronovo perhaps?
Quotes from: The Urals and Western Siberia in the Bronze and Iron Ages (linked by Altar)
from the notes section
...One tendency is visible through the archaeological record – the spread of Indo-European languages,
most probably Indo-Iranian, to the east and the rise of cultural diversity
and regional and local traditions against the technological unification of metal
production.
The western Siberian forest-steppe was the area of active interaction between
the Indo-Iranian and Finno-Ugrian groups. It is possible that an Iranian language
was the lingua franca of communication, just as a Turkic language was in
medieval time.
Proto-Ugric is thought to have been spoken in
the forest and forest-steppe of the southern Urals
and western Siberia (Hajdu 1985; Carpelan &
Parpola 2001).
Later, we read the “support for the Proto-Iranian (or Indo-Iranian) linguistic
attribution of the Alakul and Fyodorovo cultures, or related branches of the
Andronovo cultural confederation, requires the supposition that the extension
of these languages increased and partly overlapped the distribution of the
Proto-Ugric languages. . . . All . . . [the] data representing the Andronovo-like
cultures in western Siberian forest-steppe and southern forest are evidence for
the hypothesis that suggests very active contacts between the Indo-Iranian and
Finno-Ugric languages, expressed in numerous mutual borrowings, a part of
which relates to the second millennium bc.”
Therefore, the forest-steppe regions of western Siberia were strongly impacted by the steppe groups, from direct colonization and assimilation of the local populations. In its turn, in the forest zone the syncretic cultures, which are known in the literature under the name of “Andronoid” or “Andronovo-like,” came into being. After the first wave of the Andronovo colonization, which seems to have been stronger from the side of the Fyodorovo groups, than others, and mixture with the local population, some internal transformations took place. On the one hand, one can see an astonishing similarity in the material culture within the forest-steppe, but, on the other, some differences are also clearly visible.
To support the hypothesis about the Ugrian affinity of the local component of the forest-steppe culture, which is probable because of cultural continuity there, we shall have to suppose the introduction of an Iranian linguistic component (southern nomads) into the Ugrian surroundings (Koryakova 1994c, 1998).
This does not contradict the model of a later cultural process
occurring in the territory during the course of the formation of the Siberian Tatars. For example, Tomilov (1986) writes that in the thirteenth century ce the Turks5 came to settle in the Tura region (Trans-Urals), which was originally occupied by the Ugrians. In about three hundred years, historical documents tell of a predominantly Turkic-speaking population in this region. The nomads
of different clans very often competed for control over forest-steppe and forest areas, from where itwas possible to obtain fur, undoubtedly valuable at all times.
Artefacts and reconstructions from the Ugric age cultures (thanks to Gie's link on Siberian reconstructions and other sources)
Ust-Polui archaeological finds from the Ugric age (the site also yielded finds from the 1st century BC):
Eagle decorations-
Bone knife
Bone comb
Eagle feeding on reindeer (or horse?) head
Bronze axeheads
Bronze lance and knife from Turbino finds
Swords from Seyma and Rostovka
Rostovka Swords with horse figures
Horse figure close up
Reconstruction of an early use of the horse as a means of transport.
Seyminsko-turbine culture warrior reconstruction based on grave finds.
Andronovo charriot
The earliest evidence of horse riding from the Ugric age: Bit and bridle fragments
The Proto-Hungarian age:
Quotes from: A cultural History of Hungary, Volume I, Corvina Books
On the Sargatka culture (Google translation is quite bad but the main points are still clear):
translate.google.com/translate?hl=ro&ie=UTF8&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://history.novosibdom.ru/node/43&rurl=translate.google.com
Location
Timeline
Conversion to nomadism and contributing cultures
”The ancient Hungarians must have been in especially close contact with their immediate neighbours, the Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, and obviously this relationship also left its mark on their material and spiritual culture.
For a long time the Hungarians preserved numerous elements of the so-callaed Scythian culture which pervaded a large area extending from the lower reaches of the Danube as far as the Altai mountains, and which included not only the Scythians themselves but also the early Sarmatians and Asian Sakas.”
Nonmetric traits in Early Iron Age cranial series from Western and Southern Siberia, V. G. Moiseyev, from the Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia journal, Volume 25, Number 1 / July, 2006
THE IRON AGE SARGAT WOMEN: STUDY OF KURGAN BURIALS
Natalia Berseneva, Ural Branch of RAS, Chelyabinsk, Russia
Kurgans, Ritual Sites, and Settlements in the Eurasian Bronze and Iron Age Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Eileen M. Murphy, Ludmila Koryakova and Leonid T. Yablonksy
Ludmila Koryakova
Notes About Material Culture of Eurasian Nomads
Institute of History and Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Ural State University
Ekaterinburg, Russia 2000
The Urals and Western Siberia in the Bronze and Iron Ages
Undoubtedly, at first the forest-steppe inhabitants adopted many military
inventions from the southern nomads. However, in the second half of the first millennium bc, they made their own contribution to the general development of warfare. It seems likely, that the big composite (so-called Hunnic) bow appeared in the Sargat area earlier than in the Sarmatian territory. Most probably, the Sarmatians adopted it from their northeastern neighbors. The bow of the Hunnic type was the best bow of the late first millennium BC (Khudyakov 1986).
Sargat culture finds:
Sargat heavy weaponry: (1) iron spear; (2) iron helmet; (3) iron armor
and belt (after Pogodin 1998b).
From a random page: www.w-siberia.com/turisticheskie-resursy/the-ingalskaya-valley
Perhaps an armor reconstruction? Or an unrelated picture:
Facial reconstructions of Sargat culture elites:
Post-Sargatka culture, from A cultural History of Hungary, Volume I, Corvina Books Ltd Budapest
Perhaps you might have read about the controversies surrounding the origins of Hungarians. How the academically supported thesis contrasts with that supported by Hungarian nationalists, confusing outsiders.
I will be posting rather long explanations so I will post it in different sections:1.-Ugric age 2. Proto-Hungarian age
I will soon also including additional photo uploads.
Referring to academical sources that were available for my use, I will attempt to construct a clearer picture of the early stages of Hungarian prehistory, by putting the puzzle pieces from here and there.
What an average Hungarian gets to know in school during history class is perhaps a page or two on Hungarian prehistory. I personally see it as too abbreviated to understand such a complex process. This abbreviated explanation results in the formation of misconnects at a young age. Those two pages would also include a short summary of the language relations of Hungarians. How its part of the Finno-Ugric group of languages. Showing a few comparisons of words. Unwisely they choose to give Finnish and Hungarian comparisons without explaining that the two languages are at opposite ends of the language family spectrum. Comparisons with the closest languages to Hungarian: Khanty and Mansi are lacking as well as one of the most puzzling questions:
How on earth is such a cultural gap possible between our closest linguistic relatives?:
Hunter-gatherer Ob-Ugrians
Compared to the nomadic culture of ancient Hungarians.
Someone unfamiliar with Steppe history according to a simplified linear logic, would associate equestrian nomadism with the Turkic people (prior to.the appearance of the Mongols). One might suppose, that the Turkic people introduced equestrian lifestyle to the early Hungarians, converting their hunting-gathering lifestyle into advanced nomadism. In light of the above, questioning the genuinity of academical research is often triggered by the misconception of how linguistic and genetic origins have common roots.
Its sad to note, that the academical circles simply seem to ignore their amateur opponents, who on the other hand are very active and are up to date with the technological means of popularizing their theories, some of which are getting more and more obscure.
Now moving on from the introduction, let us start with the current historical understandings on the root of origins. The point of origin of the Uralic languages is situated in a rough sphere around the Ural Mountains (hence the name and this period could be called the Uralic age). After the separation of the Samoyedic group, there are suggestions that the spread of the Finno-Ugric people to a large area is related to early craftsmanship and a trading network with canoes on the tributary rivers on a larger region (within the framework of hunting-gathering), although I have to brush up on my sources for that. The ancestors of the Hungarians (lets call them proto-Ugrians) stayed relatively near to the place of hypothetical origin, moving onto its southern reaches (on the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains). We have to note here that the Finno-Permic languages and Ugric languages broke of at an early stage, between 4 and 3 thousand years ago and there is currently a linguistic debate to make the two groups different subgroups of the Uralic languages, the linguistic differences being so great, thus dismissing the expression of ‘Finno-Ugric’ languages.
Early Finno-Ugric contacts with the Indo-European languages are presumed to have left some traces in vocabulary (which gave rise to the Indo-Uralic language family hypothesis, dismissed by most academicians).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Uralic_languages
The Ugric Age
The most significant event in Hungarian prehistory was contacts with the Andronovo culture, which brought radical changes especially for the proto-Ugric people.
The so called Andronovo-like cultures (I suppose amongst others this would denotes the Seyminsko-Turbine culture) is associated with Ugrians. These Andronovo-like cultures gave up their hunting-gathering lifestyle and around the mid-second millennium BC gradually turned toward animal husbandry grazing horses(!); cattle and goats. Along with this, the simultaneous adaptation of agriculture from the Andronovo people made them to create permanent settlements. Important technological terms of Ancient Iranic origin have been borrowed. Horse sacrifices are observable in archaeological finds, indicating of a horse cult. That had a strong presence even in the culture of the later Ob-Ugrians (discussed in quote bellow)
I feel it is time I should quote a direct source: A cultural History of Hungary, Volume I, Corvina Books Ltd Budapest, 1999 ISBN 963 13 4836 9.
Hungarian linguists in the 1930s observed the most important words connected with equestrian culture, such as ló (horse), nyereg (saddle), fék (bridle) and ostor (whip) as well as the phrases designating two and three-year-old foals, másodfo; and harmadfo; ló (literally: ‘second-grass-horse’ and ‘third-grass-horse’), are also found in the related Ugrian languages. This led them to reject what was then the current view: that the early Hungarians were to adopt their equestrian culture from some Turkic people at a later date, and to conclude instead that our ancestors were already equestrian people in the Ugric age. Many researchers at the time opposed this idea because today’s Ob-Ugrians, living as they do in a more inclement climate, naturally do not breed horses, nor were their remote ancestors ever thought to have done so. The opposers were, however, forgetting the rich poetry and popular traditions of the Ob-Ugrian Voguls and Ostyaks, who sang heroic songs about horses and horse-heards, and who until comparatively recently still took the trouble to bring white horses up from south, several hundred kilometers away, for particularly important sacrifices. Today the archeological evidence of horse bones excavated at the settlements and from the graves has settled the old argument: there is no longer any doubt that the majority of the Ugrians, except for those living in the most northerly regions, were a horse-rearing people from the middle of the second millennium B.C. onwards. This must also have been the period when the role that the horse played in Ugrian belief systems evolved: from this time onwards horses were often sacrificed to honour the illustrious dead or the greatest gods.
Horse rearing and horse riding are not, however the branches of animal husbandry that developed on their own. This is borne out by animal bones found at the settlements and in the graves, which provide sufficient evidence of other types of animal husbandry, especially of cattle, sheep and goats as well as horses. It is quite telling, in this respect, that the Hungarian word for ‘cow’, ‘milk’ and ‘felt’, tehén, tej and nemez are definateky Old Iranian in origin, which strongly suggests where animal husbandry, as practiced in the Ugrian period, was derived from. There can be little doubt that the Hungarian word for ‘cart’, szekér, is also an Old Iranian loanword from the period, its equivalent in Ostyak means ‘sleigh’, which can be attributed to the change in the way of life that was to take place among the people related to the Hungarians. From their southern neighbours the Magyars obviously learnt the secret of making carts, the likes of which were found in the Sintashta graves. Further evidence to support this view may be found in the fact that in the Bronze Age horses were used not only for riding but also for carrying loads. In the order of battle, horse-drawn chariots, the tanks of the age, constituted the most effective fighting unit, surpassing mounted warriors in efficiency.
The archaeological finds provide evidence not only of the animal husbandry of the Ugrian period but also of farming. The grains of wheat, bronze scythes and grindstones found in the South Uralic area make it clear that some sort of rudimentary agriculture was being practiced. True, the Ugrian vocabulary of the Hungarian language provides no conclusive evidence; possibly because the relevant words became extinct in the modern Ob-Ugrisn tongues after their speakers had been driven northwards up to the taiga and tundra zone in the distant past. The only Hungarian word to possess equivalents in those languages is a verb, horol, which may have referred to the act of shallow ploughing with the primitive plough.
From: In search of a new homeland-The prehistory of the Hungarian people and the conquest, István fodor, Corvina books ltd, Budapest, 1975 ISBN 0139-3014
Claims about the multi linguism of the Andronovo culture
“The Andronovo culture is probably mainly the legacy of three fairly large groups of people: in the southern and central territories lived communities which undoubtedly spoke Proto-Iranian, while in the norhern part (the eastern side of the southern Urals, the wooded plains of the Tobol-Irtysh region) was inhabited by the Ugrians and the eastern part (the Tomsk region) by the Samoyeds. It is worth noting that Ob Ugrian folk art retained a number of significant Andronovo elements well into later historical periods” ... “We can trace the development of the Andronovo culture in this area of the wooded steppe from around 1800B.C.”
I supose this has been revised since. Proto-Iranic groups being in charge of the majority of the culture with the addition of Turkic on the Eastern fringes and the reduction of the size of the Ugric involvement, but maybe because the Andronovo-like cultures are now being treated separately from the Andronovo culture and have been previously grouped under the Andronovo perhaps?
Quotes from: The Urals and Western Siberia in the Bronze and Iron Ages (linked by Altar)
from the notes section
...One tendency is visible through the archaeological record – the spread of Indo-European languages,
most probably Indo-Iranian, to the east and the rise of cultural diversity
and regional and local traditions against the technological unification of metal
production.
The western Siberian forest-steppe was the area of active interaction between
the Indo-Iranian and Finno-Ugrian groups. It is possible that an Iranian language
was the lingua franca of communication, just as a Turkic language was in
medieval time.
Proto-Ugric is thought to have been spoken in
the forest and forest-steppe of the southern Urals
and western Siberia (Hajdu 1985; Carpelan &
Parpola 2001).
Later, we read the “support for the Proto-Iranian (or Indo-Iranian) linguistic
attribution of the Alakul and Fyodorovo cultures, or related branches of the
Andronovo cultural confederation, requires the supposition that the extension
of these languages increased and partly overlapped the distribution of the
Proto-Ugric languages. . . . All . . . [the] data representing the Andronovo-like
cultures in western Siberian forest-steppe and southern forest are evidence for
the hypothesis that suggests very active contacts between the Indo-Iranian and
Finno-Ugric languages, expressed in numerous mutual borrowings, a part of
which relates to the second millennium bc.”
Therefore, the forest-steppe regions of western Siberia were strongly impacted by the steppe groups, from direct colonization and assimilation of the local populations. In its turn, in the forest zone the syncretic cultures, which are known in the literature under the name of “Andronoid” or “Andronovo-like,” came into being. After the first wave of the Andronovo colonization, which seems to have been stronger from the side of the Fyodorovo groups, than others, and mixture with the local population, some internal transformations took place. On the one hand, one can see an astonishing similarity in the material culture within the forest-steppe, but, on the other, some differences are also clearly visible.
To support the hypothesis about the Ugrian affinity of the local component of the forest-steppe culture, which is probable because of cultural continuity there, we shall have to suppose the introduction of an Iranian linguistic component (southern nomads) into the Ugrian surroundings (Koryakova 1994c, 1998).
This does not contradict the model of a later cultural process
occurring in the territory during the course of the formation of the Siberian Tatars. For example, Tomilov (1986) writes that in the thirteenth century ce the Turks5 came to settle in the Tura region (Trans-Urals), which was originally occupied by the Ugrians. In about three hundred years, historical documents tell of a predominantly Turkic-speaking population in this region. The nomads
of different clans very often competed for control over forest-steppe and forest areas, from where itwas possible to obtain fur, undoubtedly valuable at all times.
Artefacts and reconstructions from the Ugric age cultures (thanks to Gie's link on Siberian reconstructions and other sources)
Ust-Polui archaeological finds from the Ugric age (the site also yielded finds from the 1st century BC):
Eagle decorations-
Bone knife
Bone comb
Eagle feeding on reindeer (or horse?) head
Bronze axeheads
Bronze lance and knife from Turbino finds
Swords from Seyma and Rostovka
Rostovka Swords with horse figures
Horse figure close up
Reconstruction of an early use of the horse as a means of transport.
Seyminsko-turbine culture warrior reconstruction based on grave finds.
Andronovo charriot
The earliest evidence of horse riding from the Ugric age: Bit and bridle fragments
The Proto-Hungarian age:
Quotes from: A cultural History of Hungary, Volume I, Corvina Books
“Why and how the Hungarians emerged and became separate is explained by the sweeping changes that took place at that time in the way of life in the wider neighbourhood of the territory they inhabited. The Eurasian steppe underwent another fundamental economic transformation around the eight century B.C. It was then the nomadic way of life emerged: a form of animal husbandry in which the animal stock was grazed in a cyclical manner, in summer and winter quarters which differed in their geographical features. This novel mode of animal-rearing enabled the herdsmen of the steppe to make maximum use of the vegetation of these territories, thus multiplying their stocks. This form of animal husbandry evolved on the basis of the shepherding experience which the herdsmen of the steppes had accumulated over centuries, and within a few hundred years it spread throughout the steppe and wooded steppe zones irrespective of the ethnicity and language of the peoples inhabiting them.”
“The widespread nomadic way of life also characterized by the Finno-ugric-speaking ethnic groups, especially those living in the Eurasian wooded steppe zone. In the light of the knowledge now available, it is clear that these include the southern groups of the Ugrian community, particularly the ancient Hungarians. On the basis of linguistics and historical data we may safely assume that around the middle of the first millennium B.C., the Early Iron Age, in archaeological terminology the Hungarians emerged as an independent ethnic group. The precise circumstances under which they assumed their separate identity as a people are not known, but the larger-scale economic change which have just been described: the appearance of the nomadic way of life, probably played a significant role. The southern Ugrian groups too must have adopted the nomadic economy at this time, while their linguistic relatives living further to the north carried on their earlier way of life.”
“The archaeological legacy of the ancient Hungarians is believed to lie in the Sargatca Culture of the Iron Age, in the region of the Tobok, Isim and Irtis rivers. The semi-nomadic and nomadic population of the region lived in settlements where the houses were built either on the surface of the ground or half sunken in it. They raised small mounds over the graves of their dead...”
On the Sargatka culture (Google translation is quite bad but the main points are still clear):
translate.google.com/translate?hl=ro&ie=UTF8&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://history.novosibdom.ru/node/43&rurl=translate.google.com
Location
Timeline
Conversion to nomadism and contributing cultures
”The ancient Hungarians must have been in especially close contact with their immediate neighbours, the Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, and obviously this relationship also left its mark on their material and spiritual culture.
For a long time the Hungarians preserved numerous elements of the so-callaed Scythian culture which pervaded a large area extending from the lower reaches of the Danube as far as the Altai mountains, and which included not only the Scythians themselves but also the early Sarmatians and Asian Sakas.”
“The religious beliefs and the whole spiritual culture of the ancient Hungarians also bore the marks of the general steppe culture. The ancient version of the Hungarian legend of Saint Ladislaus, so popular in the Middle Ages, can confidently be dated back to this period. The hero defeats the enemy, sets free the captive girl and, taking rest after the battle, the girl “looks into the head” of the hero: in other words, she searches his hair for lice. This scene appears on a gold disk kept in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, a gem of Asian Scythian art.”
Nonmetric traits in Early Iron Age cranial series from Western and Southern Siberia, V. G. Moiseyev, from the Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia journal, Volume 25, Number 1 / July, 2006
The “Uralic” ancestry of Sargat people, are corroborated by archaeological studies suggesting that the Sargat culture was associated with proto-Hungarians
THE IRON AGE SARGAT WOMEN: STUDY OF KURGAN BURIALS
Natalia Berseneva, Ural Branch of RAS, Chelyabinsk, Russia
The Iron Age Sargat population occupied the vast area of the Ural-Siberian foreststeppe. Chronologically, the sites covered the period from the 6th century BC to the 3-4th centuries AD. These people may be called semi-nomadic and their economy was based on stock-breeding. The majority of the population inhabited permanent settlements and fortresses. Cemeteries of the Sargat cultural groups are represented by burial mounds (kurgans).
Kurgans, Ritual Sites, and Settlements in the Eurasian Bronze and Iron Age Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Eileen M. Murphy, Ludmila Koryakova and Leonid T. Yablonksy
Between the 7th century BC
and the 3rd century AD, nomads and semi-nomadic herders,
now known as the Sargat Culture, occupied the forest, foreststeppes,
and steppes east of the Ural Mountains. Excavations
in this region revealed the symbiotic interaction of the diverse
populations, particularly during the Early Iron Age, that created
a distinctive architecture and practiced their specific mortuary,
economic, and the stylistic traditions.
and the 3rd century AD, nomads and semi-nomadic herders,
now known as the Sargat Culture, occupied the forest, foreststeppes,
and steppes east of the Ural Mountains. Excavations
in this region revealed the symbiotic interaction of the diverse
populations, particularly during the Early Iron Age, that created
a distinctive architecture and practiced their specific mortuary,
economic, and the stylistic traditions.
Ludmila Koryakova
Notes About Material Culture of Eurasian Nomads
Institute of History and Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Ural State University
Ekaterinburg, Russia 2000
Ethnographers and archaeologists consider horse harness accouterments to be a prime marker of the nomadic mode of life: horse bits in the graves and special horse burials are widely spread throughout the nomadic territory from the Iron Age ( i.e. ca. 1000 BC) to the Medieval period ( i.e. ca. 1500 AD). In the Sargat Culture, for example, one out of every two graves yielded remains of a horse harness. The horse harness is one of the typical chronological indicators of a nomadic culture. In contrast, during the Bronze Age ( i.e. ca. 2000-1000 BC) the frequency of any object associated with horse transport was quite limited. The wagons and chariots, and bone cheek pieces were, however, characteristic for some Eurasian steppe cultures of the Middle Bronze Age ( i.e. ca. 1500 ± 200 BC).
The Urals and Western Siberia in the Bronze and Iron Ages
Beyond the Urals, the best studied and well presented area archaeologically
is the Sargat culture
is the Sargat culture
It is precisely the Sargat culture that must have
had considerable demographic and military resources in order to compete
successfully with the Sarmatians and to maintain trade links with
Central Asia and China.
had considerable demographic and military resources in order to compete
successfully with the Sarmatians and to maintain trade links with
Central Asia and China.
Undoubtedly, at first the forest-steppe inhabitants adopted many military
inventions from the southern nomads. However, in the second half of the first millennium bc, they made their own contribution to the general development of warfare. It seems likely, that the big composite (so-called Hunnic) bow appeared in the Sargat area earlier than in the Sarmatian territory. Most probably, the Sarmatians adopted it from their northeastern neighbors. The bow of the Hunnic type was the best bow of the late first millennium BC (Khudyakov 1986).
Sargat culture finds:
Sargat heavy weaponry: (1) iron spear; (2) iron helmet; (3) iron armor
and belt (after Pogodin 1998b).
From a random page: www.w-siberia.com/turisticheskie-resursy/the-ingalskaya-valley
Perhaps an armor reconstruction? Or an unrelated picture:
Facial reconstructions of Sargat culture elites:
Post-Sargatka culture, from A cultural History of Hungary, Volume I, Corvina Books Ltd Budapest
The genetic make-up of the steppe-dwellers underwent a significant change in the first century A.D., when dozens of peoples of Asian origin were driven towards Eastern Europe by the Huns. Though it is not always possible to identify the language spoken by ethnic groups mentioned in the sources, it is safe to assume that most of them belonged to the Alati family, especially the various versions of the Turkic language, In the sixth century A.D., the emergence of the Central Asian Turkic empire triggered another great migratory wave, and new Turkic speaking ethnic groups appeared on the borders of Europe and Asia. By then the steppelands were inhabited mainly by Turkic spaekers.
Over the fifteen hundred or so years that preceded the Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian basin, the culture of the ancestors of the Hungarians was typical of the nomadic world of the steppe and was indeed part of the nomadic community of cultures. However, it also boasted a number of unique features. The language, in the first place, differed from the majority of those spoken on the steppes, the Iranian and later Turkic tongues. We know that the early Hungarians were the only ancestors of modern Finno-Ugrian peoples who had adopted nomadism in the period in question, and were thus the only nomadic representatives of the Finno-Ugrian family of languages.”
Over the fifteen hundred or so years that preceded the Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian basin, the culture of the ancestors of the Hungarians was typical of the nomadic world of the steppe and was indeed part of the nomadic community of cultures. However, it also boasted a number of unique features. The language, in the first place, differed from the majority of those spoken on the steppes, the Iranian and later Turkic tongues. We know that the early Hungarians were the only ancestors of modern Finno-Ugrian peoples who had adopted nomadism in the period in question, and were thus the only nomadic representatives of the Finno-Ugrian family of languages.”
“The second period of the history of the ancient Hungarians begins in the mid-sixteenth century, with the great migratory wave that followed the emergence of the Turkic empire. Now it was not only the peoples of the open steppes who started moving, as had happened at the time of the Hun-induced immigration in the third and fourth centuries. This time the majority of the nomads inhabiting the wooded flatlands were also moved from their quarters in Western Siberia to the western side of the Ural mountains, the territory between the Urals and the river Volga. There are graves dating from the sixth to the eighth century on this territory, which have much in common with the tenth-century graves of the conquering Hungarians in the Carpathian basin. Around 750 A.D. the majority of the population in this area moved on to the region of the rivers Volga and Don and the Sea of Azov, the territory of the former Khazar Kaganate or its immediate neighbourhood. The remainder stayed behind, and their descendants were found in the same place as late as the year 1236 by the Dominican monk Julian, who revisited the region and named it Magna Hungaria, that is: Old Hungary.”
I'm glad u liked the picture! Sure I was tired when I wrote the article, but I hope I was still sane enough to keep track of what I was writing. I wouldn't be sure either that the idea of transportation could be serious enough, if I wouldn't consider the turn to equestrian nomadism happening only approximately 6-700 years later in the 8th century B.C. It is almost certain they already rode horses, but we do not know how consistently they did that.