History of Asia

"Which components of the reconstructed Indo-European proto-culture can be used as evidence of a steppic location?... two arguments are generally singled out by the proponents of the steppic theory: the case of the horse and that of the chariot. The domesticated horse, on the one hand, and the chariot on the other, are supposedly well-attested in the shared vocabulary and are particularly valorized in the earliest Indo-European mythologies, where the sacrifice of a horse is the ultimate royal sacrifice... The most common root for the horse is certainly found in a significant number of Indo-European languages... Its absence in Slavic is all the more surprising since the historical “cradle” of the Slavs is often said to be located in the North Pontic Steppes, or close by, precisely where the earliest domestication of the horse is reputed to have occurred."

"“Gimbutas, following most recent Russian work, has departed from Childe, to the extent of deriving the Kurgan cultures from the steppes on the Lower Volga and farther east (…) While linguistic opinion has been moving in the direction of putting the Indo-European homeland in the region of the Vistula, Oder or Elbe, archaeological opinion is now putting it in the Lower Volga steppe and regions east of the Caspian Sea.”"

"“Local evolution cannot account for such abrupt changes (…) The pottery is relatable to the earliest Neolithic in the Middle Urals and Soviet Central Asia.”"

"Russian scholar N. Merpert traces the Kurgan culture to the “Volga-Ural region, developing there under the influence of Neolithic cultures of the south-east Caspian zone”."

"The willingness... to see even 10% ancestry as if a good case for a language spread is reminiscent of their interpretations in the cases of Mycenaean Greek and South Asia. In both cases their own ancient DNA analyses support no “massive” migration of people of Steppe origin. On the contrary, overall percentages are generally very low, and in South Asia also too late for a plausible first arrival of Indic languages here (let alone Indo-Iranic as a whole). But however small and late, and however implausible that they replaced all languages from Iran right across to northern India, that is what has to be claimed for these weak signals, for the Steppe hypothesis to be right. ...the cat is out of the bag: not all Indo-European goes back to the Steppe. Now freed from the Steppe hypothesis as the base presumption (or aspiration) for interpreting aDNA data, we can look forward to a neutral re-evaluation of the most plausible candidates for tracing multiple other branches of the Indo-European family out of the original Caucasus/Zagros homeland, without all having to travel via the Steppe."

"“All the migrations postulated by Renfrew ultimately stem from a single catalyst: the crossing of Anatolian farmers into Greece… For all practical purposes, Renfrew’s hypothesis disregards Tocharian and Indo-Iranian.”"

"In the 1990s, this view was briefly challenged by the British archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who posited a Homeland in Anatolia. Thence, the IE-speaking tribes would have spread as early as about 7000 BCE, on the strength of their mastery of agriculture. This new development allowed for a fast population growth, as illustrated by the more recent spread of the Bantu languages throughout Africa along with agriculture. His merit was that he tied the spectacular expansion of IE to a powerful mechanism, the demographically useful new technology of agriculture. However, this theory has been widely rejected as linguistically untenable and archaeologically unsupported. The targeted studies that sought to decide between the Anatolian and the Russian Homeland have generally favoured the latter option."

"[The whole issue has been] simplified by Professor Renfrew to the ludicrous formula 7000 BCE Anatolia = farming Indo-Europeans."

"Anatolia is remarkable for its lack of steppe ancestry down to the Bronze Age."

"What they do not state, however, is just how low are the proportions of Steppe ancestry in these cases. The “massive migrations” into Corded Ware northern Europe proved elusive elsewhere... 10% is no “massive migration” that might be expected to rewrite the language identity of central Anatolia (and western Anatolia, where these languages also dominated). More likely it left no major linguistic effect; the Anatolian branch remains better explained by stronger candidates."

"It is important to realize, however, that the exaltation of the Indo-Europeans or the Aryans—especially during the nineteenth century, but also later, for example, for the socialist Gordon Childe—was a song of praise for the modern citizen with a scientific out­ look, liberal values, and humanistic ideals. In the nineteenth century, the Indo-Europeans were mainly models for a progressive bourgeois ideology, and the attacks on Jewish and Semitic religiosity (which sometimes included Christianity) aimed to form a worldview that fitted modern society and was not necessarily connected to any racial ideology."

"The classification "the Indo-European branch of humanity" could be defined either as the group of people who spoke some Indo-European language (Latin, Sanskrit, French, Swedish, Persian, and so forth) or as the group of Aryans, who were typically imagined as tall, blond, and blue-eyed specimens of homo sapiens."

"The role of the Indo-European peoples in the ancient world has been portrayed too often as the incarnation of northern virility sweeping down in massed chariots to bring new vigour to a decadent south."

"Competent authorities have warned against the “semi-conscious prejudices on original genetic characteristics of the Indo-Europeans: they are supposed to be blond and blue-eyed”."

"We don’t exclude the possibility of contacts between the ancient Indo-Europeans and their Caucasian contemporaries, but no precise trace has so far been brought forward. The structural similarities that one may envision for a very distant period would not imply a common origin nor a period of symbiosis."

"Indo-European: a term borrowed from comparative linguistics and most usually used to designate the blond North-European race (Homo europaeus), but which may provoke confusion since in most of these regions, originally settled by the North-Europeans, race and language have not overlapped for some time due to the bastardization (Bastardierung) of the Northern European speakers of Indo-European languages."

"Central Asia has either too many languages and too few archaeological cultures or too few languages and too many archaeological cultures to permit an easy fit between archaeology and language."

"It seems really as if the Phoenician coast was further away from us than the Iranian plateau. ... That the Phoenicians occupied Carthage and possessed half Tunisia only concerns Africa. That the Carthaginians in their turn conquered Spain and three-quarters of Sicily is [all right because they are] only, as we say, Africa. But when we find Phoenician traces at Marseilles, Praeneste, Kythera, Salamis Thasos and Samothrace, in Boiotia and in Lakonia at Rhodes and in Crete we do not want, as in Africa, real occupations; we only talk about temporary landings or simple trading posts ... If we go as far as pronouncing the words fortresses or Phoenician possessions we hasten to add that they were only coastal establishments ... This European chauvinism becomes a veritable fanaticism when it is not in Gaul, Etruria, Lucania or Thrace but in Greece that we meet the stranger. ... We see, nevertheless, from their material and tangible monuments that the Greeks ... were the pupils of Phoenicia and Egypt, and we see that they borrowed from the Semitic Orient right up to their alphabet; yet we recoil with some shock at the sacrilegious hypothesis that their institutions, their customs, their religions, their rituals, their ideas, their literature and all their primitive civilization could also be inherited from the Orient."

"May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, or the Phoenician, or whoever it was that invented books!"

"Had it not been for waves of continental invaders, Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians and the destruction of Phoenician libraries, we may have been talking more of our debt to Phoenicians and Greeks rather than Greeks only, but Greece was to survive due to its geography and tenacity of its people."

"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."

"These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus and of whom the Gephyraeans were a part brought with them to Hellas, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which had been unknown before this, I think, to the Greeks. As time went on the sound and the form of the letters were changed. At this time the Greeks who were settled around them were for the most part Ionians, and after being taught the letters by the Phoenicians, they used them with a few changes of form. In so doing, they gave to these characters the name of Phoenician, as was quite fair seeing that the Phoenicians had brought them into Greece."

"Of late a decided reaction has set in against the popular theory of the great influence exercised by the Phoenicians on Greece, which is perfectly justifiable, but it is not always to the point. The real reason why people contest the existence of Phoenicians in Greece is that they object to make the Greeks indebted to Phoenicia for anything of importance. We believe we have proved that the widespread influence ascribed to them ... originates solely in caprice. But why should there be a reluctance to admit the existence of mere settlements of Phoenicians in Greece, when supported by historical criteria which are considered valid in other cases? Phoenicians were once there, but their influence was inconsiderable."

"Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.""

"And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work."

"Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine."

"The Carthaginians, like the Phoenicians from which they came, appear to have been a people who were hard and sad, sensual and greedy, and adventurous without heroism. ... at Carthage too the religion was atrocious and full of frightful practices."

"And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift."

"And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons: and they built David an house."

"The Sidonians are said by historians to excel in various kinds of art, as the words of Homer also imply. Besides, they cultivate science and study astronomy and arithmetic, to which they were led by the application of numbers (in accounts) and night sailing, each of which (branches of knowledge) concerns the merchant and seaman; in the same manner the Egyptians were led to the invention of geometry by the mensuration of ground, which was required in consequence of the Nile confounding, by its overflow, the respective boundaries of the country. It is thought that geometry was introduced into Greece from Egypt, and astronomy and arithmetic from Phœnicia. At present the best opportunities are afforded in these cities of acquiring a knowledge of these, and of all other branches of philosophy.If we are to believe Poseidonius, the ancient opinion about atoms originated with Mochus, a native of Sidon, who lived before the Trojan times. Let us, however, dismiss subjects relating to antiquity. In my time there were distinguished philosophers, natives of Sidon, as Boethus, with whom I studied the philosophy of Aristotle, and Diodotus his brother. Antipater was of Tyre, and a little before my time Apollonius, who published a table of the philosophers of the school of Zeno, and of their writings."

"The Phoenicians, inhabiting an arid coast, made themselves the agents of exchange between peoples. Their vessels spread throughout the Mediterranean. They began to reveal nation to nation, astronomy, navigation and geography perfected each other. The coasts of Greece and Asia Minor were filled with colonies ... From the mixtures of these independent colonies with the ancient peoples of Greece and with the remains of successive barbarian invasions the Greek nation was formed ... by these multiple mixtures this rich language was formed, expressive and sonorous, the language for all the arts."

"Thou madest self-sufficiency thy rule, Eschewing haughty wealth, O godlike Zeno, With aspect grave and hoary brow serene. A manly doctrine thine: and by thy prudence With much toil thou didst found a great new school, Chaste parent of unfearing liberty, And if thy native country was Phoenicia, What need to slight thee? Came not Kadmos thence, Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing?"

"The idea of the war chariot originating on the steppes has recently been revived, chiefly on the basis of the calibrated radiocarbon dates from Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero... The present reconstructions of the Sintashta and Krivoe Ozero vehicles above the axle level raise many doubts and questions, but one cannot argue about something for which there is no evidence.It is from the wheel-track measurements and the dimensions and positions of the wheels alone that we may legitimately draw conclusions and these are alone sufficient to establish that the Sintashta-Petrovka vehicles would not be manoeuvrable enough for use either in warfare or in racing."

"Herodotus describes the great victory of Tomyris thus:[1.214] “Tomyris mustered all her forces and engaged Cyrus in battle. I consider this to have been the fiercest battle between non- Greeks that there has ever been…. They fought at close quarters for a long time, and neither side would give way, until eventually the Massagetae gained the upper hand. Most of the Persian army was wiped out there, and Cyrus himself died too.”"

"Herodotus tells us more about the life of the Mahājaṭa: [1.215] “These Massagetae are like the Scythians in their dress and way of life. They are both cavalry and infantry (having some of each kind), and spearmen and archers; and it is their custom to carry battle-axes.” [1.216] “They never plant seed; their fare is their livestock and the fish which they take in abundance from the Araxes. Their drink is milk. The sun is the only god whom they worship; they sacrifice horses to him; the reasoning is that he is the swiftest of the gods, and therefore they give him the swiftest of mortal things.”"

"The scholar Marshak summarizes thus: “From the third to the eighth century Sughd [Sogdiana], which had originally lagged behind its neighbours to the south and west, became one of the most advanced countries and the leader of all Transoxania. It was neither a powerful state itself nor firmly subjected to any of the neighbouring empires. From the second or first century BCE, each district had developed independently, maintaining ancient community traditions. Private individuals such as merchants, missionaries and mercenary soldiers were extremely active and penetrated into distant lands. Thus political isolation did not entail cultural isolation.”"

"Among other Indian curiosities, which Callisthenes transmitted to his uncle, was a technical system of logic, which the Brahmins had communicated to the inquisitive Greek."