From: e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,sci.lang Subject: Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars Date: 30 Jan 1999 13:23:17 GMT Organization: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK In article <36b0d7ec.2343569@news.yale.edu>, cluster.user@yale.edu says... >On 28 Jan 1999 13:41:09 GMT, e.karloukovski@uea.ac.uk (Vassil Karloukovski) wrote: ... At the end, even the Scythians were thought to >>be Turkic in the 19-th century, so - be patient and probably in the due time >>the scholars will start to study the old Bulgars' question more seriously and >>without the constant repetition of the Turkic mantra. >what I object to is calling the prevailing view a "mantra". it is not >made up of whole cloth. Yes, a prevailing view and that is for decades. The Nagy Saint-Miklosh inscription is in the process of translating from Turkic for decaded, and newer and newer translations are being offered. Which only means there is something inherently wrong with all of them. Kizlyasov made the same observation regarding the contradicting to each other Turkic translations of the runic inscriptions from southern Russia. The same with the nominalia of the Bulgarian princes which is known since the mid-19-th century. The Turkologs had a plenty of time to analyze it but in order to make their 'translations' look plausible they had to pronounce half of the records in it incorrect. What is the problem then if an alternative reading - be it Iranian, or Mongolian or Gypsy or whatever, is offered which fits better to the records? But to discard linguistic or material evidence in favour of some theory looks indeed like a religious belief. Regards, Vassil Karloukovski