From: Robert Subject: Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars Date: 25 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <36AC3460.856801F6@earthlink.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <369E3BE1.5C45@sbu.ac.uk> <77li2j$qi0$1@whisper.globalserve.net> <369F52FE.2B6@sbu.ac.uk> <77rc86$auj$1@brokaw.wa.com> <36A444B3.F3B70F1C@alum.mit.edu.-> <7827sb$269$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36A52D70.9E372DD2@alum.mit.edu.-> <36A556AB.9927BD29@montclair.edu> <36a63533.58309714@news.yale.edu> <7866ud$i9m$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36cdb21e.883120019@news.wxs.nl> <36A7FCC8.79790A6B@earthlink.net> <36d77e23.1000882888@news.wxs.nl> <36a8d455.81661202@news.yale.edu> X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-ELN-Date: 25 Jan 1999 08:59:08 GMT X-ELN-Insert-Date: Mon Jan 25 01:05:05 1999 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,sci.lang Cluster User wrote: > > On Fri, 22 Jan 1999 13:51:26 GMT, mcv@wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) > wrote: > > >On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 20:21:28 -0800, Robert > >wrote: > > > >>However, Peter Dobrev, a Bulgarian anthropologist championing the > >>Pamiric hypothesis, has used Dardic and other eastern Iranic cognates to > >>decipher the inscriptions. [...] The evidence he cites to buttress his > >>argument is quite persuasive, at least to a layman such as myself. > > > >Well, I didn't exactly claim the Bolgars were all Turkic, just that > >some (R-)Turkic speaking people were among them, as suggested by the > >fact that Chuvash is now spoken in former Bolgaria on the Volga. > > volga bolgar is known from some inscriptions in arabic script and is > definitely a turkic language (of the -r variety), which can be > described as "old chuvash" if you like. also medieval accounts, like > the lexicographer mahmud al-kashgari testify that it was a variety of > turkic. Interesting. I recall reading something like this in the past. Can you point me to a source where I can read up on these Arabic turkic inscriptions? There have, however, also been other Arab sources who claimed that the Bulgars spoke a language all their own unrelated to that of their neighbors. I'd go through the trouble of looking it up and citing it, but I'm guessing you're probably more knowledgable of this than myself (I don't know what your backround is, but I'm just a hobbyist). Ibn-Fadlan(sp.?) himself mentions and describes a variety of Turkic tribes by name on his way to Volga Bulgaria, but when he arrives there, he only speaks of the saqaliba. Why the dichotomy? How sure are we that the inscriptions don't belong to the ancestors of the turkic chuvash as a tribe apart from the Bulgars? When the Bulgars arrived on the Volga, there were finnic and turkic people already there, weren't there? In addition, it's generally accepted that the culture possessed by the Bulgars was a heavily sarmaticized one with Kushan elements as well. Physical type (brachiocephalic Europoids with rarely expressed weak mongoloid characteristics) as well as cultural elements point to a genesis in the Pamirs around southern Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan. There is some evidence in the archaeological record that a people left this region bearing stong Bulgar cultural elements (burial practices as evidenced by necropolises) in the 2nd century for the sea of Azov area. This, incidentally, fits in perfectly with Dobrev's timetable with respect to his translations of the Nominalia of the Bulgar Khans and the progenitor of the Bulgars, Avitohol. To my knowledge, there is no evidence of turkic tribes in the Bactrian region until centuries later. Some scholars have maintained that turkic Bulgars swept into Bactria from the Northeast and mingled with the population, adopting the local cultural markers. They find evidence for this sort of intrusion in about the 2nd century B.C. However, this is precisely when the Yueh-Chih are thought to have entered Bactria, forming the Kushan empire. Last I heard, most scholars lean towards regarding the Yueh-Chih as Indo-European rather than Turkic people. Coincidentally, they, like the Bulgars, were fond of skull deformation. As I've said, I find Dobrev's arguments fascinating, and he cites many modern Bulgarian words of non-Slavic origin (once thought to be Turkish holdovers) which have exact parallels only among the Dardic languages in Pamir, and sometimes in the Caucusus where the Bulgars sojourned. I'm probably boring you by now, but I eat this stuff up. After all, I am of Bulgarian extraction, one of those people who one poster on this newsgroup dismissed as people with an "identity crisis. They have to be told that they were all heroes suffering from the Barbaric Turks (Ottomans)." I wonder what makes this guy thinks he's on expert on Bulgarians. Oh well... Robert