LL-L "History" 2007.03.30 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L - 29 March 2007 - Volume 04

=========================================================================

From: Marcel Bas <roepstem at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.03.30 (01) [E]

John Welch wrote:

>It seems that the people noted by Snorri the Ases (Alans), or Asir may have
been the Azer (which >means Fire in Persian and High in Turkic)

Herman(n) Wirth thought that the the Ases' name originated from the word
'Asia'. Ases were gods and not mortals like the Alans. But then again, Wirth
also thought that certain tribes have been deified in later mythologies,
like the Wodan cult had been doing during and after the great Indo European
migrations.

Do you think it is likely that a word like Alans has lead to a word like
Asir?

Best regards,

Marcel.

----------

From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.03.30 (01) [E]

Dear John:

Subject: L-Lowlands
Here is a quote from David Faux "DNA Origins of R1a, Q and K in
Scandinavia".

His history may be as brave as his science is:

(quote)."Basically Snorri said that the ancestors of the Norse kings resided
east of the river Don, and were led by Odin, who had vast holdings south of
the Ural Mountains. He and his people were known as Ases, or Asir, and after
many battles (in one case his possession of a severed head is emphasized),
he left two brothers in charge of his main power base along a ridge of the
Caucasus Mountains (Asgaard - likely Chasgar) and with his people headed
north. Most, however were men as apprently they took "women of the land" in
Scandanavia as wives.

I won't challenge the quote of Snorri Sterlusson, but other parties than
David Faux might bear in mind that the so-called 'European' race is
otherwise defined as 'Caucasian' on rather better paleo-anthropoligical
grounds. Our common ancestor predated the Wurm Glaciation, which can not be
said of the Woden-born, the Aesir, or Scandanavians. Common gene-tracers may
go back at least that far.

In the old Viking zones of settlement, moreover, the Norse families all had
slaves who were not as a matter of course - well - Norse. I estimate the
number of slaves in a non-plantation type economy amounted to about
one-on-one of Norsemen. Now Ibn Batuta writes of Norse slave traders which
make it clear that there was a trans-Eurasian market in human chattels. A
slave with a rare & desirable craft was a highly marketable commodity,& a
comely one of exotic racial origins even more so!

If not on the grounds of my first argument, then at least on my second, I
would expect or at least not be unduly surprised to find traces of Eastern
Samoyed blood-lines, or others even more remote,even in Iceland, so isolated
a gene-pool as it may be. What does it prove?

Yrs,
Mark

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yhoo.com>
Subject: History

John,

آذر  āzar does indeed mean 'fire' Iranian languages, in Kurdish agir.  Being
only one word for 'fire', it occurs especially in contexts of ancient fire
cults.  Note, though, that the word is written with the letter ﺫ  zāl (<
Arabic ḍāl) usually used in Arabic loans and pronounced [z] in Persian in
lieu of the foreign sound.  Somehow it must have gotten reinterpreted as
Arabic, because it does seem to be of Iranian origin, derived from Avestan *
ātar* > Middle Persian *ādar* ~ *ādur*.  (Any connection with Germany
ild'fire' perhaps?)  Its use became pretty much specialized to denote
the
sacred fire of Zoroastrianism.  (The ordinary Persian word for 'fire' is اتش
*āte*š -- related perhaps.)

And in which Turkic language(s) does azer mean 'high'?  I have never come
across it.  If it's a compound (which virtually all native words with more
than one syllables are), then az 'few' and är 'man', 'men' spring to mind
("select few men"?).  If it is a loanword, chances are it's an Iranian one
(less likely a Mongolic one).  In that case I wouldn't be able to make the
semantic connection between 'fire' and 'high'.  Or is it perhaps an Old
Anatolian loan?

The name "Azerbaijan" does indeed contain the word for fire.  It is an
Arabized form of Persian Āzarābādagān (āzar 'fire', ābādag 'cultivated
land', -ān [plural]), thus something like "region of fire clearings."

Mark:

Obviously, Eurasia is an ancient melting pot with people migrating to and
fro, and most ethnic groups that donated their genes never even got as much
as a cursory mention, mostly because they were chattle of various sorts.
Latest DNA research seems to point toward settlement of early Europe mostly
from (Central) Asia.

As you no doubt know, the eastern branch of the Huns (匈奴 Xiongnu < *Hiunnu)
attacked China and their western branch attacked Europe.  Chinese sources of
the Tang (唐 618–907), Song (宋 960–1279) and Yuan (元 1271–1368) dynasties
mention all sorts of foreigners in the country, apparently including
blond-haired dancing girls.  And that is the relatively recent past.  Bear
in mind the mummies recently unearthed in Eastern Turkestan (China's
Xinjiang), some as old as four thousand years, with what seems like
Caucasian characteristics, wearing clothes woven in a manner elsewhere only
known in Western Europe. Of course, this does not need to mean that those
people immigrated here or there, but it may point toward larger spreads in
ancient times.  Yes, Sogdians and other Iranian people used to live in that
area.  They may have been merely a remnant, people left behind by those that
migrated westward.  When you visit the Buddhist funerary caves of Western
China, especially the Mogao Caves (莫高窟) of Dunhuang (敦煌), China's Gate to
Central Asia in Gansu (甘肃) province, you'll be struck by the wall paintings
depicting congregations of bodhisattvas and worshippers of all sorts of
"races," with a predominance of what appear to be East Asians, Indians and
Iranians, with the odd "European-looking" type thrown in.

Westerners still have a hard time getting their little heads around the idea
of such sorts of ancient migrations and contacts, still prefer to believe
that Marco Polo discovered China.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20070330/8b268a0f/attachment.htm>