1.
Chinese language
–
Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
Chinese language
–
The
Tripitaka Koreana, a Korean collection of the
Chinese Buddhist canon
Chinese language
–
Hànyǔ (Chinese) written in
traditional (left) and
simplified (right) characters
Chinese language
–
"
Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion " by
Wang Xizhi, written in
semi-cursive style
2.
Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
Pinyin
–
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak
Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Pinyin
–
In
Yiling,
Yichang,
Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin
3.
Corvus (genus)
–
Corvus is a widely distributed genus of medium-sized to large birds in the family Corvidae. In Europe, the crow is used to refer to the carrion crow or the hooded crow, while in North America, it is used for the American crow, fish crow. The crow genus makes up a third of the species in the family Corvidae, the members appear to have evolved in Asia from the corvid stock, which had evolved in Australia. The collective name for a group of crows is a flock or a murder, the genus name is Latin for raven. Recent research has found some crow species capable of not only tool use, crows are now considered to be among the worlds most intelligent animals with an encephalization quotient equal to that of many non-human primates. Corvus species are all black or black with white or grey plumage. They are stout with strong bills and legs, the members of the Corvus genus are believed to have evolved in central Asia and radiated out into North America, Africa, Europe, and Australia. The latest evidence regarding the evolution indicates descent within the Australasian family Corvidae, Corvus has since re-entered Australia and produced five species with one recognized subspecies. The genus was described by Linnaeus in his 18th-century work Systema Naturae. The name is derived from the Latin corvus meaning raven, the type species is the common raven, others named in the same work include the carrion crow, the hooded crow, the rook, and the jackdaw. The genus was originally broader, as the magpie was designated C. pica before being moved later into a genus of its own, at least 42 extant species are now considered to be in this genus, and at least 14 extinct species have been described. The fossil record of crows is rather dense in Europe, corvids are found in major cities across the world, and a major increase in the number of crows in urban settings has occurred since the 1900s. Crows were uncommon in the Pacific Northwest in the 1900s, except in riparian habitats, populations in the west increased substantially from the late 1800s to mid 1900s. Crows and ravens spread along with agriculture and urbanization into the part of North America. Crows gather in communal roosts numbering between 200 and tens of thousands of individuals during nonbreeding months, particularly in the winter. These gatherings tend to happen near large food sources such as garbage dumps, countless incidents are recorded of corvids at play. Many behaviourists see play as a quality in intelligent animals. Crows and the members of the genus make a wide variety of calls or vocalizations
Corvus (genus)
Corvus (genus)
–
Hooded crow (Corvus cornix) in flight
Corvus (genus)
–
Jungle crow (Corvus macrorhynchos) scavenging on a dead shark at a beach in
Kumamoto, Japan
Corvus (genus)
–
Crow on a branch
4.
Proto-Indo-Europeans
–
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the prehistoric people of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that reconstruction, along with evidence from archaeology. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the late Neolithic, or roughly the 4th millennium BCE, mainstream scholarship places them in the forest-steppe zone immediately to the north of the western end of the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe. Some archaeologists would extend the depth of PIE to the middle Neolithic or even the early Neolithic. They had domesticated horses – *eḱwos, the cow played a central role, in religion and mythology as well as in daily life. A mans wealth would have been measured by the number of his animals, as for technology, reconstruction indicates a culture of the late Neolithic bordering on the early Bronze Age, with tools and weapons very likely composed of natural bronze. Silver and gold were known, but not silver smelting, thus suggesting that silver was imported, sheep were kept for wool, and textiles were woven. The wheel was known, certainly for ox-drawn wagons and they practiced a polytheistic religion centered on sacrificial rites, probably administered by a priestly caste. Important leaders would have been buried with their belongings in kurgans, many Indo-European societies know a threefold division of priests, a warrior class, and a class of peasants or husbandmen. Georges Dumézil has suggested such a division for Proto-Indo-European society, if there was a separate class of warriors, it probably consisted of single young men. They would have followed a separate warrior code unacceptable in the society outside their peer-group, traces of initiation rites in several Indo-European societies suggest that this group identified itself with wolves or dogs. Researchers have made attempts to identify particular prehistoric cultures with the Proto-Indo-European-speaking peoples. The scholars of the 19th century who first tackled the question of the Indo-Europeans original homeland, had essentially only linguistic evidence and they attempted a rough localization by reconstructing the names of plants and animals as well as the culture and technology. In the early 20th century, the question became associated with the expansion of a supposed Aryan race, a fallacy promoted during the expansion of European empires, the question remains contentious within some flavours of ethnic nationalism. A series of major advances occurred in the 1970s due to the convergence of several factors, first, the radiocarbon dating method had become sufficiently inexpensive to be applied on a mass scale. Through dendrochronology, pre-historians could calibrate radiocarbon dates to a higher degree of accuracy. The Kurgan hypothesis, as of 2017 the most widely held theory, depends on linguistic and archaeological evidence and it suggests PIE origin in the Pontic-Caspian steppe during the Chalcolithic. A minority of scholars prefer the Anatolian hypothesis, suggesting an origin in Anatolia during the Neolithic, other theories have only marginal scholarly support
Proto-Indo-Europeans
–
Scheme of Indo-European migrations from ca. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the
Kurgan hypothesis. The magenta area corresponds to the assumed
Urheimat (
Samara culture,
Sredny Stog culture). The red area corresponds to the area which may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to ca. 2500 BCE; the orange area to 1000 BCE.
5.
Eurasian Steppe
–
The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It stretches from Romania, Moldova through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang and Mongolia to Manchuria, with one major exclave located mostly in Hungary, the Eurasian Steppe extends thousands of miles from near the mouth of the Danube River almost to the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded on the north by the forests of Russia and Siberia, there is no clear southern boundary although the land becomes increasingly dry as one moves south. The steppe narrows at two points, dividing it into three major parts, the Western Steppe begins near the mouth of the Danube and extends northeast almost to Kazan and then southeast to the southern tip of the Ural Mountains. Its northern edge was a band of forest-steppe which has now been obliterated by the conversion of the whole area to agricultural land. In the southeast the Black Sea-Caspian Steppe extends between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to the Caucasus Mountains, in the west, the Great Hungarian Plain is an island of steppe separated from the main steppe by the mountains of Transylvania. On the north shore of the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula has some interior steppe, the Ural Mountains extend south to a point about 650 km northeast of the Caspian Sea. This is not a barrier to movement, but the area near the Caspian is quite dry. The Central Steppe or Kazakh Steppe extends from the Urals to Dzungaria, in the southeast is the densely populated Fergana Valley and west of it the great oasis cities of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara along the Zarafshan River. The southern area has a history, while in the north. On the east side of the former Sino-Soviet border mountains extend north almost to the forest zone with only limited grassland in Dzungaria, Xinjiang is the northwestern province of China. The east-west Tien Shan Mountains divide it into Dzungaria in the north, Dzungaria is bounded by the Tarbagatai Mountains on the west and the Mongolian Altai Mountains on the east, neither of which is a significant barrier. Dzungaria has good grassland around the edges and a central desert and it often behaved as a westward extension of Mongolia and connected Mongolia to the Kazakh steppe. To the north of Dzungaria are mountains and the Siberian forest, to the south and west of Dzungaria, and separated from it by the Tianshan Mountains, is an area about twice the size of Dzungaria, the oval Tarim Basin. The Tarim Basin formed an island of civilization in the center of the steppe. The Northern Silk Road went along the north and south sides of the Tarim Basin, at the west end of the basin the Pamir Mountains connect the Tien Shan Mountains to the Himalaya Mountains. To the south, the Kunlun Mountains separate the Tarim Basin from the thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau, the Mongol Steppe includes both Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. The two are separated by a dry area marked by the Gobi Desert
Eurasian Steppe
–
Russian steppe in the
Orenburg Oblast
Eurasian Steppe
–
The Eurasian Steppe Belt (in red)
Eurasian Steppe
–
A map of Eurasia with emphasis on deserts. Note the oval
Tarim Basin at the center of the map.
Eurasian Steppe
–
The Kazakh Steppe in the north with the Tarim Basin (Takhlamakan) and Dzungaria
6.
China
–
China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
China
–
Yinxu, ruins of an ancient
palace dating from the
Shang Dynasty (14th century BCE)
China
–
Flag
China
–
Some of the thousands of life-size
Terracotta Warriors of the
Qin Dynasty, c. 210 BCE
China
–
The
Great Wall of China was built by several dynasties over two thousand years to protect the sedentary agricultural regions of the
Chinese interior from incursions by
nomadic pastoralists of the northern
steppes.
7.
Qilian Mountains
–
The range stretches from the south of Dunhuang some 800 km to the southeast, forming the northeastern escarpment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the southwestern border of the Hexi Corridor. The eponymous Qilian Shan peak, situated some 60 km south of Jiuquan, at 39°12′N 98°32′E, rises to 5,547 m. It is the highest peak of the range, but there are two higher peaks further south, Kangzegyai at 38°30′N 97°43′E with 5,808 m and Qaidam Shan peak at 38°2′N 95°19′E with 5,759 m. Other major peaks include Gangshiqia Peak in the east, the Nan Shan range continues to the west as Yema Shan and Altun Shan. To the east, it passes north of Qinghai Lake, terminating as Daban Shan and Xinglong Shan near Lanzhou, sections of the Ming Dynastys Great Wall pass along its northern slopes, and south of northern outlier Longshou Shan. The best known of these streams is the Ejin River, the characteristic ecosystem of the Qilian Mountains has been described by the World Wildlife Fund as the Qilian Mountains conifer forests. Biandukou, with an altitude of over 3500 m, is a pass in the Qilian Mountains and it links Minle County of Gansu in the north and Qilian County of Qinghai in the south. The Shiji mentions the Qilian mountains together with Dunhuang in relation to the homeland of the Yuezhi and this Qilian however has been suggested to be the mountains now known as Tian Shan,1,500 km to the west. Dunhuang has also argued to b the Dunhong mountain. Qilian is said to be as a Hunnic word meaning sky according to Yan Shigu, the mountain range was formerly known in European languages as Richthofen Range after Ferdinand von Richthofen, who was the Red Barons explorer-geologist uncle. The mountain range gives its name to Qinghais Qilian County, the Man Who Loved China, the Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. ISBN 978-0-06-088459-8 peakbagger. com Climatological Information for Qilian Shan
Qilian Mountains
–
Qilian Shan mountains, China
8.
Dunhuang
–
For the 2005 full-length documentary Dunhuang, directed by Zhou Bing. Dunhuang is a city in northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. The 2000 Chinese census reported a population of 187,578 in this city, Dunhuang was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road and is best known for the nearby Mogao Caves. It has also known at times as Shazhou and, in Uyghur. Dunhuang is situated in a rich oasis containing Crescent Lake and Mingsha Shan, named after the sound of the wind whipping off the dunes, administratively, the county-level city of Dunhuang is part of the prefecture-level city of Jiuquan. There is evidence of habitation in the Dunhuang area as early as 2,000 BC. Its name was mentioned in relation to the homeland of the Yuezhi in the Records of the Grand Historian. By the third century BC, the area dominated by the Xiongnu. Dunhuang was one of the four garrison towns established by the Emperor Wu after the defeat of Xiongnu. The name Dunhuang, meaning Blazing Beacon, refers to the beacons lit to warn of attacks by marauding nomadic tribes, Dunhuang Commandery was probably established shortly after 104 BC. Located in the end of the Hexi Corridor near the historic junction of the Northern and Southern Silk Roads. The Great Wall was extended to Dunhuang, and a line of fortified beacon towers stretched westwards into the desert, Dunhuang prospered on the heavy flow of traffic. The first Buddhist caves in the Dunhuang area were hewn in 353, during the Sui and Tang dynasties, it was the main stop of communication between ancient China and the rest of the world and a major hub of commerce of the Silk Road. Dunhuang was the city of all three main silk routes during this time. From the West also came early Buddhist monks who had arrived in China by the first century AD, the caves carved out by the monks, originally used for meditation, developed into a place of worship and pilgrimage called the Mogao Caves or Caves of a Thousand Buddhas. A number of Christian, Jewish, and Manichaean artifacts have also found in the caves. During the time of the Sixteen Kingdoms, Li Gao established the Western Liang here in 400 AD, in 405 the capital of the Western Liang was moved from Dunhuang to Jiuquan. In 421 the Western Liang was conquered by the Northern Liang, as a frontier town, Dunhuang was fought over and occupied at various times by non-Han Chinese people
Dunhuang
–
Dunhuang
Dunhuang
–
The ruins of a
Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) Chinese
watchtower made of
rammed earth at Dunhuang.
Dunhuang
–
White Horse Pagoda, Dunhuang
Dunhuang
–
Tang Period (618-907) Buddhist sutra fragment from Dunhuang
9.
Gansu
–
Gansu is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the northwest of the country. It lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, the Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Gansu has a population of 26 million and covers an area of 425,800 square kilometres, the capital is Lanzhou, located in the southeast part of the province. Gansu is a compound of the names of Ganzhou and Suzhou, Gansu is abbreviated as 甘 or 陇, and is also known as Longxi or Longyou, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu. Gansu is a name first used during the Song dynasty of two Sui and Tang dynasty prefectures, Gan and Su. In prehistoric times, Gansu was host to Neolithic cultures, the Dadiwan culture, from where archaeologically significant artifacts have been excavated, flourished in the eastern end of Gansu from about 6000 BC to about 3000 BC. The Majiayao culture and part of the Qijia culture took root in Gansu from 3100 BC to 2700 BC and 2400 BC to 1900 BC respectively, the Yuezhi originally lived in the very western part of Gansu until they were forced to emigrate by the Xiongnu around 177 BCE. The State of Qin, later to become the state of the Chinese empire, grew out from the southeastern part of Gansu. The Qin name is believed to have originated, in part, Qin tombs and artifacts have been excavated from Fangmatan near Tianshui, including one 2200-year-old map of Guixian County. In imperial times, Gansu was an important strategic outpost and communications link for the Chinese empire, the Han dynasty extended the Great Wall across this corridor, building the strategic Yumenguan and Yangguan fort towns along it. Remains of the wall and the towns can be found there, the Ming dynasty built the Jiayuguan outpost in Gansu. By the Qingshui treaty, concluded in 823 between the Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty, China lost a part of Gansu province for a significant period. After the fall of the Uyghur Empire, an Uyghur state was established in parts of Gansu that lasted from 848 to 1036 AD, during that time, many of Gansus residents were converted to Islam. Along the Silk Road, Gansu was an important province. Temples and Buddhist grottoes such as those at Mogao Caves and Maijishan Caves contain artistically and historically revealing murals. An early form of paper inscribed with Chinese characters and dating to about 8 BC was discovered at the site of a Western Han garrison near the Yumen pass in August 2006, the province was also the origin of the Dungan Revolt of 1862-77. Among the Qing forces were Muslim generals like Ma Zhanao and Ma Anliang who helped Qing crush the rebel Muslims, the revolt spread into Gansu from neighbouring Qinghai. Frequent earthquakes, droughts and famines have tended to slow progress of the province until recently
Gansu
–
Jiayuguan Fort
Gansu
–
Map showing the location of Gansu Province
Gansu
–
The ruins of a
Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) Chinese
watchtower made of
rammed earth at
Dunhuang, Gansu province, the eastern edge of the
Silk Road
Gansu
–
Semi-arid land, suitable for light grazing
10.
Yuezhi
–
After a major defeat by the Xiongnu, during the 2nd century BCE, the Yuezhi split into two groups, the Greater Yuezhi and Lesser Yuezhi. Following their defeat, the Greater Yuezhi initially migrated northwest into the Ili Valley and they were driven from the Ili Valley by the Wusun and migrated southward to Sogdia and later settled in Bactria, where they the defeated the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. The Greater Yuezhi have consequently often been identified with Bactrian peoples mentioned in classical European sources, like the Tókharioi, during the 1st century BCE, one of the five major Greater Yuezhi tribes in Bactria, the Kushanas, began to subsume the other tribes and neighbouring peoples. The subsequent Kushan Empire, at its peak in the 3rd century CE, the Kushanas played an important role in the development of trade on the Silk Road and the introduction of Buddhism to China. Most of the Lesser Yuezhi appear to have migrated southward into Tibet, however, some are reported to have settled among the Qiang people in Qinghai, and to have been involved in the Liangzhou Rebellion. Others are said to have founded the city state of Cumuḍa in the eastern Tarim, a fourth group of Lesser Yuezhi may have become part of the Jie people of Shanxi, who established the 4th Century CE Later Zhao state. The philosophical tract Guanzi is now believed to have been compiled around 26 BCE, based on older texts. In the Guanzi, nomadic pastoralists known as the Yúzhī 禺氏 or Niúzhī 牛氏 and they are described as supplying jade to the Chinese. The export of jade from the Tarim Basin, since at least the late 2nd Millennium BCE, is well-documented archaeologically, for example, hundreds of jade pieces found in the Tomb of Fu Hao originated from the Khotan area, on the southern rim of the Tarim Basin. According to the Guanzi, the Yúzhī/Niúzhī, unlike the neighbouring Xiongnu, in the early 4th Century BCE, the Tale of King Mu, Son of Heaven also mentions the Yúzhī 禺知. The Yi Zhou Shu makes separate references to the Yúzhī 禺氏 and Yuèdī 月氐, trading the jade and horses for Chinese silk, the Wūzhī were then selling these goods to other neighbours. The earliest detailed account of the Yuezhi is found in chapter 123 of the Records of the Great Historian by Sima Qian, essentially the same text appears in chapter 61 of the Book of Han, though Sima Qian has added occasional words and phrases to clarify the meaning. Both texts use the Chinese name Yuezhi, written with the characters yuè moon and shì clan, some scholars have argued that Dunhuang should be Dunhong, a mountain in the Tian Shan, and have placed the original homeland of the Yuezhi 1,000 km further west. The Yuezhi were so powerful that the Xiongnu monarch Touman even sent his eldest son Modu as a hostage to the Yuezhi, the Yuezhi often attacked their neighbour the Wusun to acquire slaves and pasture lands. Wusun originally lived together with the Yuezhi in the region between Dunhuang and Qilian Mountain, the Yuezhi attacked the Wusuns, killed their monarch Nandoumi and took his territory. The son of Nandoumi, Kunmo fled to the Xiongnu and was brought up by the Xiongnu monarch, gradually the Xiongnu grew stronger and war broke out between them and the Yuezhi. There were at least four wars between the Yuezhi and Xiongnu according to the Chinese accounts, the first war broke out during the reign of the Xiongnu monarch Touman who suddenly attacked the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi wanted to kill Modu, the son of the Xiongnu king Touman kept as a hostage to them and he subsequently killed his father and became ruler of the Xiongnu
Yuezhi
–
The migrations of the Yuezhi through Central Asia, from around 176 BCE to 30 CE
Yuezhi
–
The Yuezhi were settled to the northwest of
Qin China in the 3rd century BCE.
Yuezhi
–
A Scythian horseman from the area invaded by the Yuezhi,
Pazyryk, c.300 BCE.
Yuezhi
–
The Chinese mission of
Zhang Qian to the Yuezhi in 126 BCE,
Mogao Caves, 618–712 CE mural painting
11.
Xiongnu
–
The Xiongnu, were a confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Asian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Chinese sources report that Modu Chanyu, the leader after 209 BC. The Xiongnu were also active in areas now part of Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and their relations with adjacent Chinese dynasties to the south east were complex, with repeated periods of conflict and intrigue, alternating with exchanges of tribute, trade, and marriage treaties. Attempts to identify the Xiongnu with later groups of the western Eurasian Steppe remain controversial, Scythians and Sarmatians were concurrently to the west. The identity of the core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses, because only a few words, mainly titles. The name Xiongnu may be cognate with that of the Huns and/or the Huna, other linguistic links – all of them also controversial – proposed by scholars include Iranian, Mongolic, Turkic, Uralic Yeniseian, or multi-ethnic. Ancient China often came in contact with the Xianyun and the Xirong nomadic peoples, in later Chinese historiography, some groups of these peoples were believed to be the possible progenitors of the Xiongnu people. These nomadic people often had repeated confrontations with the Shang and especially the Zhou. During the Warring States period, the armies from the Qin, Zhao, qins campaign against the Xiongnu expanded the Qin dynastys territory at the expense of the Xiongnu. In 215 BCE, Qin Shi Huang sent General Meng Tian to conquer the Xiongnu and drive them from the Ordos Loop, after the catastrophic defeat at the hands of General Meng Tian, the Xiongnu leader Touman was forced to flee far into the Mongolian Plateau. The Qin empire became a threat to the Xiongnu, which led to the reorganization of the many tribes into a confederacy. Chubei Huyan Lan Luandi Qiulin Suibu In 209 BCE, three years before the founding of Han China, the Xiongnu were brought together in a confederation under a new chanyu. This new political unity transformed them into a formidable state by enabling formation of larger armies. The Xiongnu adopted many of the Chinese agriculture techniques such as labor for heavy labor, wore silk like the Chinese. The reason for creating the confederation remains unclear, to the north he conquered a number of nomadic peoples, including the Dingling of southern Siberia. He crushed the power of the Donghu people of eastern Mongolia and Manchuria as well as the Yuezhi in the Hexi Corridor of Gansu, Modu also reoccupied all the lands previously taken by the Qin general Meng Tian. Under Modus leadership, the Xiongnu threatened the Han Dynasty, almost causing Emperor Gaozu, the first Han emperor, to lose his throne in 200 BCE. By the time of Modus death in 174 BCE, the Xiongnu had driven the Yuezhi from the Hexi Corridor, killing the Yuezhi king in the process and asserting their presence in the Western Regions
Xiongnu
–
Xiongnu
Xiongnu
–
Asia in 200 BCE, showing the early Xiongnu state and its neighbors.
Xiongnu
–
Xiongnu among other people in Asia around 1 AD.
Xiongnu
–
Bronze seal says "To Han obedient, friendly and loyal chief of Xiongnu of Han (漢 匈奴歸義親 漢 長)"．Bronze seal conferred by the Eastern Han government on a Xiongnu chief.
12.
Ili River
–
The Ili River is a river in northwestern China and southeastern Kazakhstan. It flows from the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region to the Almaty Province in Kazakhstan and it is 1,439 kilometres long,815 kilometres of which is in Kazakhstan. It takes its beginning in eastern Tian Shan from the Tekes and Kunges rivers, the Ili River drains the basin between the Tian Shan and the Borohoro Mountains to the north. Flowing into Lake Balkhash, the Ili forms a delta with vast wetland regions of lakes, marshes. Earlier mentions of Ili river is in Mahmud al-Kashgaris dictionary of Turkic languages, in the book, author defines, Ili, name of a river. Turkic tribes of Yaghma, Tokhsi and Chiglig live on its banks, turkish countries regard the river as their Jayhoun. The name is originated from Uyghur word Il, means hook in English. The upper Ili Valley is separated from the Dzungarian Basin in the north by the Borohoro Mountains, presently, the region forms part of Xinjiangs Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. The main city of the region, Yining, is located on the side of the river some 100 kilometres upstream from the international border. Until the early 1900s, the city was known under the same name as the river. There are at least two dams on the Ilis right tributary, the Kash River in Nilka County, at 43°51′40″N 82°50′52″E, the region of Kazakhstan partially drained by the Ili and its tributaries is known in Kazakh as Zhetysu and in Russian as Semirechye. Tamgaly-Tas, some 20 kilometres downstream along Ili River is the site of rock drawings, the name Tamgaly in Kazakh means painted or marked place, Tas means stone. The Ili River discharges into the edge of Lake Balkhash. The delta is situated between the Saryesik-Atyrau Desert and the Taukum Desert, until 1948 the delta was a refuge of the extinct Turan tiger. A reintroduction project of the Siberian tiger to the delta has been proposed, since the Siberian tiger has turned out to be the closest relative, it has been proposed to introduce this subspecies instead. Large populations of wild boar, which were a main base of the Turan tiger. There are also some roe deer and in the steppes to the south of Lake Balkhash live saiga antelopes. A reintroduction of the Buchara deer, which was once an important prey item is under consideration, Buchara deer live in the forests at the Kapchagay Reservoir
Ili River
–
Ili River
Ili River
–
Qing bases in the Ili region, ca. 1809. Note that the map is upside down, i.e. the north is at the bottom, and the east is on the left
Ili River
–
On the Kapchagay Reservoir
Ili River
–
Buddhist rock drawings at Ili River
13.
Zhetysu
–
Zhetysu or Semirechye is a historical name of a part of Central Asia, corresponding to the South-Eastern part of modern Kazakhstan. It owes its name, meaning seven rivers in Kazakh and Persian, when the region was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century, it became known in Russian as Semirechye, which is a Russian calque of the Kazakh Zhetysu. The name has also transcribed as Semiryechye, Semireche, Semirechiye, Semirechie. Zhetysu falls into todays Almaty Province, which is part of Kazakhstan, the lands of the 19th-century Semirechye Oblast included the steppes south of Lake Balkhash and parts of the Tian Shan Mountains around Lake Issyk Kul. In the south, the region embraces the intricate systems of the Ala-Tau and the Tian Shan. Two ranges of the former, the Trans-Ili Ala-tau and the Terskey Ala-tau, stretch along the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. Another mountain complex of lower elevation runs north-westwards from the Trans-Ili Ala-tau towards the southern extremity of Lake Balkhash. In the north, where the province bordered Semipalatinsk, it included the parts of the Tarbagatai range. The remainder of the province consisted of a steppe in the north-east. Southwards from these at the foot of the mountains and at the entrance to the valleys, the climate in Zhetysu is thoroughly continental. In the Balkhash steppes the winter is very cold, the lake freezes every year, with temperatures falling to -11 °C. In the Ala-kul steppes the winds blow away the snow, the passage from winter to spring is very abrupt, and the steppes are rapidly clothed with vegetation, which, however, is soon scorched by the sun. The Chu River also rises in the Tian Shan mountains and flows north-westwards through the former Akmolinsk province of the Governor-Generalship of the Steppes, the Naryn River flows south-westwards along a longitudinal valley of the Tian Shan, and enters the Fergana Valley to join the Syr Darya. The population was estimated in 1906 as 1,080,700, Kazakhs formed 76% of the population, Russians 14%, Taranchi 5. 7%. BC. e. the Iranian Sakas established their first state, in the mid 6th century, the Turkic nomads subordinated Zhetysu, Central Kazakhstan, and Khorezm. The area belonged to Dzungar Khanate in the 17th century, when Dzungar Khanate was eliminated by Qing China in 1755 the area formed part of empire and was under the direct rule by General of Ili, headquartered at the fort of Huiyuan,30 km west of Ghulja. Most of Zhetysu was annexed by the Russian Empire from Qing China in 1854, before the outbreak of the Crimean War, which delayed the southern advance. The two major Russian fortresses and garrisons in the region, Verniy and Pishpek, were founded in 1854 on the sites of former Kokandian fortresses on the Steppe frontier, the Semirechye Cossack Host was created in 1867 as a branch of the Siberian Cossack Host
Zhetysu
–
A map of the
Zunghar Khanate by a
Swedish officer in captivity there in 1716-1733, which include the region known today as Zhetysu
Zhetysu
–
In the hills between
Bishkek and
Almaty
Zhetysu
–
Lake Kaindy
Zhetysu
–
A 1903 map in Polish showing both the large Semirechye Oblast (Semirjeczeńsk in Polish) and its neighbors. The map also shows a much smaller historical area labeled Siedmiorzecze (Polish translation for Russian "Semirechye", i.e. Zhetysu proper) southeast of Lake Balkhash
14.
Dzungaria
–
Dzungaria is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang, also known as Beijiang. Bounded by the Tian Shan mountain range to the south and the Altai Mountains to the north, it covers approximately 777,000 km2, extending into western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan. Formerly the term could cover an area, conterminous with the Dzungar Khanate. In comparison to southern Xinjiang, Dzungaria is relatively well-integrated with the rest of China by rail, the name Dzungaria or Zungharia is a corruption of the Mongolian term Zűn Gar or Jüün Gar depending on the dialect of Mongolian used. Zűn/Jüün means left and Gar means hand, the name originates from the notion that the Western Mongols are on the left hand side when the Mongol Empire began its division into East and West Mongols. After this fragmentation, the western Mongolian nation was called Zuun Gar, however, Qing people began to think of both areas as part of one distinct region called Xinjiang. It is bounded by the Tian Shan to the south, the Altai Mountains to the northeast, the three corners are relatively open. The northern corner is the valley of the upper Irtysh River, the eastern corner of the basin leads to Gansu and the rest of China. In the south an easy pass leads from Ürümqi to the Turfan Depression, in the southwest the tall Borohoro Mountains branch of the Tian Shan separates the basin from the upper Ili River. The basin is similar to the larger Tarim Basin on the side of the Tian Shan Range. This is enough to sustain populations of wild camels, jerboas, the Dzungarian Basin is a structural basin with thick sequences of Paleozoic-Pleistocene rocks with large estimated oil reserves. The Gurbantunggut Desert, China’s second largest, is in the center of the basin, the Dzungarian basin does not have a single catchment center. The northernmost section of Dzungaria is part of the basin of the Irtysh River, the rest of the region is split into a number of endorheic basins. In particular, south of the Irtysh, the Ulungur River ends up in the endorheic Lake Ulungur, the Southwestern part of the Dzungarian basin drains into the Aibi Lake. In the west-central part of the region, streams flow into a group of lakes that include Lake Manas. Runoff from the mountains into the basin supplies several lakes. The ecologically rich habitats traditionally included meadows, marshlands, and rivers, however most of the land is now used for agriculture. It is a steppe and semi-desert basin surrounded by high mountains, the Tian Shan in the south
Dzungaria
–
Ili River
Dzungaria
–
Dzungaria
Dzungaria
–
Heaven Lake of Tian Shan
Dzungaria
–
Kanas Lake
15.
Tian Shan
–
The Tian Shan, meaning the Mountain of Heaven or the Heavenly Mountain, is a large system of mountain ranges located in Central Asia. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish Chokusu,7,439 metres, the Chinese name for Tian Shan may have been derived from the Xiongnu word Qilian – according to Tang commentator Yan Shigu, Qilian is the Xiongnu word for sky or heaven. The Tannu-Ola mountains in Tuva has the meaning in its name. Tian Shan is sacred in Tengrism, and its second-highest peak is known as Khan Tengri which may be translated as Lord of the Spirits. Tian Shan is north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north, Chinese cartography from the Han Dynasty to the present agrees, with the Tian Shan including the Bogda Shan and Barkol ranges. The Tian Shan are a part of the Himalayan orogenic belt and they are one of the longest mountain ranges in Central Asia and stretch some 2,800 kilometres eastward from Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is the Victory Peak which, the Tian Shans second highest peak, Khan Tengri, straddles the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border and at 7,010 metres is the highest point of Kazakhstan. Mountaineers class these as the two most northerly peaks over 7,000 metres in the world, the Torugart Pass, at 3,752 metres, is located at the border between Kyrgyzstan and Chinas Xinjiang province. The forested Alatau ranges, which are at an altitude in the northern part of the Tian Shan, are inhabited by pastoral tribes that speak Turkic languages. The Tian Shan are separated from the Tibetan Plateau by the Taklimakan Desert, the major rivers rising in the Tian Shan are the Syr Darya, the Ili River and the Tarim River. The Aksu Canyon is a feature in the northwestern Tian Shan. Continuous permafrost is found in the Tian Shan starting at the elevation of about 3. One of the first Europeans to visit and the first to describe the Tian Shan in detail was the Russian explorer Peter Semenov, who did so in the 1850s. Glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains have been shrinking and have lost 27%, or 5.4 billion tons annually. It is estimated that by 2050 half of the glaciers will have melted. The Tian Shan have a number of named ranges which are mentioned separately. In China the Tian Shan starts north of Kumul City with the U-shaped Barkol Mountains, then the Bogda Shan run from 350 to 40 kilometres east of Ürümqi
Tian Shan
–
The Tian Shan range on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan with
Khan Tengri (7,010 m) visible at center.
Tian Shan
–
Tian Shan Mountains from space, October 1997, with
Issyk-Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan at the northern end
Tian Shan
–
This article is about the mountain. For district of Ürümqi, see
Tianshan District.
Tian Shan
–
Snow-capped peaks of
Kyungey Ala-Too seen from an
Issyk Kul Lake beach
16.
Saka
–
The Saka or Saca was the term used in Persian and Sanskrit sources for the Scythians, a large group of Eastern Iranian nomadic tribes on the Eurasian Steppe. Modern scholars usually use the term Saka to refer to Iranians of the Eastern Steppe, rené Grousset wrote that they formed a particular branch of the Scytho-Sarmatian family originating from nomadic Iranian peoples of the northwestern steppe in Eurasia. They migrated into Sogdiana and Bactria in Central Asia and then to the northwest of the Indian subcontinent where they were known as the Indo-Scythians, modern debate about the identity of the Saka is partly from ambiguous usage of the word by ancient, non-Saka authorities. According to Herodotus, the Persians gave the name Saka to all Scythians, however, Pliny the Elder claims that the Persians gave the name Sakai only to the Scythian tribes nearest to them. The Scythians to the far north of Assyria were also called the Saka suni by the Persians, the Assyrians, of the time of Esarhaddon, record campaigning against a people they called in the Akkadian the Ashkuza or Ishhuza. However, modern consensus is that the Saka language, ancestor to the Pamir languages in northern India and Khotanese in Xinjiang. Another people, the Gimirrai, who were known to the ancient Greeks as the Cimmerians, were associated with the Sakas. In ancient Hebrew texts, the Ashkuz are considered to be an offshoot from the Gimirri. The Saka were regarded by the Babylonians as synonymous with the Gimirrai, the Sakā paradraya were the western Scythians or Sarmatians. Both the Sakā tigraxaudā and Sakā haumavargā are thought to be located in Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, Sakā haumavargā is considered to be the same as Amyrgians, the Saka tribe in closest proximity to Bactria and Sogdiana. In the modern era, the archaeologist Hugo Winckler was the first to associate the Sakas with the Scyths, J. M. Sakā and Skuthai evidently constituted a generic name for the nomads on the northern frontiers. Persian sources often treat them as a tribe called the Saka. Modern scholars usually use the term Saka to refer to Iranian-speaking tribes who inhabited the Eastern Steppe, the Saka people were an Iranian people who spoke a language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. They are known to the ancient Greeks as Scythians and are attested in historical and archaeological records dating to around the 8th century BC. In the Achaemenid-era Old Persian inscriptions found at Persepolis, dated to the reign of Darius I, likewise an inscription dated to the reign of Xerxes I has them coupled with the Dahae people of Central Asia. The contemporary Greek historian Herodotus noted that the Achaemenid Persians called all of the Iranian Scythian peoples as the Saka. According to Herodotus, Cyrus the Great confronted the Massagetae, a related to the Saka. Darius the Great also waged wars against the eastern Sakas, who fought him with three armies led by three kings according to Polyaenus, in 520–519 BC, Darius I defeated the Sakā tigraxaudā tribe and captured their king Skunkha
Saka
–
Gold artifacts of the Saka in Bactria, at the site of
Tillia tepe.
Saka
–
Approximate extent of
Eastern Iranian languages in the 1st century BC is shown in orange.
Saka
–
A
cataphract -style parade armour of a Saka royal, also know as " The Golden Warrior ", from the
Issyk kurgan, an historic burial near ex-capital city of
Almaty,
Kazakhstan
Saka
–
Artifacts found the tombs 2 and 4 of Tillia Tepe and reconstitution of their use on the man and woman found in these tombs
17.
Scythians
–
The Scythian languages belonged to the Eastern branch of the Iranian languages. Ancient Greek historians spoke of Scythians who lived north of the Black Sea, Persians used the term Saka, for approximately the same people who lived further east. Although the ancients did not clearly distinguish the two terms, modern scholars usually use Saka to refer to Iranian-speaking tribes who inhabited the central steppe, the Chinese used the term Sai, for Sakas who had moved into the Tarim Basin. Assyrian sources speak of Iskuzai or Askuzai south of the Caucasus who were probably Scythians, the relationships between the peoples living in these widely separated regions remains unclear. Their westernmost territories during the Iron Age were known to classical Greek sources as Scythia, the Scythians were among the earliest peoples to master mounted warfare. In the 8th century BC they possibly raided Zhou China, soon after they expanded westwards and dislodged the Cimmerians from power on the Pontic Steppe. Based in what is modern-day Ukraine, Southern European Russia, and Crimea, the Scythians established and controlled a vast trade network connecting Greece, Persia, India and China, perhaps contributing to the contemporary flourishing of those civilizations. Settled metalworkers made portable decorative objects for the Scythians and these objects survive mainly in metal, forming a distinctive Scythian art. In the 7th century BC the Scythians crossed the Caucasus and frequently raided the Middle East along with the Cimmerians, around 650–630 BC, Scythians briefly dominated the Medes of the western Iranian Plateau, stretching their power all the way to the borders of Egypt. After losing control over Media the Scythians continued intervening in Middle Eastern affairs, the Scythians subsequently engaged in frequent conflicts with the Achaemenid Empire. The western Scythians suffered a defeat against Macedonia in the 4th century BC, and were subsequently gradually conquered by the Sarmatians. In Eastern Europe, by the early Medieval Ages, the Scythians, Scythians kept herds of horses, cattle, and sheep, lived in tent-covered wagons, and fought with bows and arrows on horseback. They developed a culture characterized by opulent tombs, fine metalwork. Sulimirski views the Histories of Herodotus as the most important literary source relating to ancient Scyths, Herodotus provides a depiction that can be related to the results of archaeological research, but apparently knew little of the eastern part of Scythia. He did say that the ancient Persians called all the Scyths Σάκαι and their principal tribe, the Royal Scyths, ruled the vast lands occupied by the nation as a whole, calling themselves Σκώλοτοι. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda, which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, in which the d has been regularly replaced by an l. Saka, on the hand, Szemerényi relates to an Iranian verbal root, sak-, go, roam. The name does appear somewhat further east than the Achaemenid Empire, whether they adopted the Achaemenid name, or Saka came to be an endonym, it is not clear
Scythians
–
Scythians shooting with the
Scythian bow,
Kerch (ancient
Panticapeum),
Crimea, 4th century BC
Scythians
–
Gold Scythian pectoral, or neckpiece, from a royal
kurgan in Tolstaya Mogila,
Ordzhonikidze, Ukraine, dated to the second half of the 4th century BC. The central lower tier shows three horses, each being torn apart by two
griffins.
Scythians
–
Gold Scythian belt title,
Mingachevir (ancient Scythian kingdom),
Azerbaijan, 7th century BC.
Scythians
–
Skunkha, king of the Sakā tigraxaudā ("wearing pointed caps Sakae", a group of Scythian tribes). Detail of
Behistun Inscription.
18.
Han dynasty
–
The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a commander, Liu Bang defeated him at Battle of Gaixia. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han
Han dynasty
–
History of China
Han dynasty
–
Han dynasty in 1 AD.
Han dynasty
–
A
silk banner from
Mawangdui,
Changsha,
Hunan province. It was draped over the coffin of
Lady Dai (d. 168 BC), wife of the Marquess Li Cang (利蒼) (d. 186 BC), chancellor for the Kingdom of Changsha.
Han dynasty
–
A
gilded bronze
oil lamp in the shape of a kneeling female servant, dated 2nd century BC, found in the tomb of
Dou Wan, wife of the Han prince
Liu Sheng; its sliding shutter allows for adjustments in the direction and brightness in light while it also traps smoke within the body.
19.
Rouran
–
The Rouran Khaganate, Ruru, or Tantan was the name of a state established by proto-Mongols, from the late 4th century until the middle 6th century. Rouran is a Classical Chinese transcription of the endonym of the confederacy, ruanruan and Ruru remained in usage despite being derogatory. They derived from orders given by the Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei, according to René Grousset, Ju-juan – an alternate Chinese name for the Rouran – was a disparaging pun derived from Juan-Juan, unpleasantly wriggling insects. The power of the Rouran was broken in 555 by an alliance of Göktürks, the states of Northern Qi and Northern Zhou, and tribes in Central Asia. The Rouran were a confederation led by Xianbei people who remained in the Mongolian steppes after most Xianbei migrated south to Northern China and they considered the Tuoba and Rourans to be descended from common ancestors. Also some contemporary historians studying the history of Northern Wei, like Kwok Kin Poon and they were first noted as having defeated the Tiele and establishing an empire extending all the way to the Hulun, an alliance in eastern Inner Mongolia. During the reign of Yujiulü Shelun, Rouran became a powerful empire, to the west of the Rouran Khaganate was the Hephthalite Empire, which was a vassal of the Rouran until the beginning of the 5th century. The Hephthalites and Rouran had close contact, although they had different languages and cultures, in particular, the title “Khan“, which according to McGovern was original to the Rouran, was borrowed by the Hephthalite rulers. The reason for the migration of the Hephthalites southeast was to pressure from the Rouran. Further, the Hephthalites defeated the Yuezhi in Bactria and their leader Kidara led the Yuezhi to the south. The Rouran controlled the area of Mongolia from the Manchurian border to Turpan and, perhaps, the east coast of Lake Balkhash and their ancestor Mugulu is said to have been originally a slave of the Tuoba tribes, situated at the north banks of Yellow River Bend. Mugulus descendant Yujiulü Shelun is said to be the first chieftain who was able to unify the Rouran tribes and to found the power of the Rouran by defeating the Tiele and Xianbei. Shelun was also the first of the peoples to adopt the title of khagan in 402. The Rouran Khaganate arranged for one of their princesses, Khagan Yujiulü Anaguis daughter Princess Ruru, the Rouran and the Hephthalites had a falling out and problems within their confederation were encouraged by Chinese agents. In 508, the Tiele defeated the Rouran in battle, in 516, the Rouran defeated the Tiele. Within the Rouran confederation was a Turkic tribe noted in Chinese annals as the Göktürks, after a marriage proposal to the Rouran was rebuffed, the Göktürks joined the Western Wei, successor state of the Northern Wei, and revolted against the Rouran. In 555, they beheaded 3,000 Rouran, a better date for their defeat may be 552. Some scholars claim that the Rouran then fled west across the steppes and became the Avars, the remainder of the Rouran fled into China, were absorbed into the border guards, and disappeared forever as an entity
Rouran
Rouran
–
Asia in 400, showing the Rouran Khaganate, the
Northern Wei, the
Tuyuhun,
Southern Liang,
Later Yan,
Yueban and
Northern Liang
20.
Pamir Mountains
–
The Pamir Mountains, or the Pamirs, are a mountain range in Central Asia at the junction of the Himalayas with the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and Hindu Raj ranges. They are among the world’s highest mountains, the precise extent of the Pamir Mountains is debatable. They lie mostly in Gorno-Badakhshan province of Tajikistan, to the north they join the Tian Shan mountains along the Alay Valley of Kyrgyzstan. To the south border the Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistans Wakhan Corridor. Since Victorian times, they have known as the Roof of the World. The name Pamir is used commonly in Modern Chinese and loaned as simplified Chinese, 帕米尔, traditional Chinese, 帕米爾, pinyin. The three highest mountains in the Pamirs core are Ismoil Somoni Peak,7,495 m, Ibn Sina Peak,7,134 m, in the Eastern Pamirs, Chinas Kongur Tagh is the highest at 7,649 m. There are many glaciers in the Pamir Mountains, including the 77 km long Fedchenko Glacier, the longest in the former USSR, covered in snow throughout the year, the Pamirs have long and bitterly cold winters, and short, cool summers. Annual precipitation is about 130 mm, which supports grasslands but few trees, the East-Pamir, in the centre of which the massifs of Mustagh Ata and Kongur Tagh are situated, shows from the W-margin of the Tarim Basin an East-West extension of c.200 km. Its North-South extension from King Ata Tagh up to the North-West Kunlun foothills amounts to c.170 km. From this glacier area an outlet glacier has flowed down to the north-east through the Gez valley up to c.1850 m asl and this outlet glacier received inflow from the Kaiayayilak glacier from the Kongur-north-flank. From the north-adjacent Kara Bak Tor -massif the Oytag valley glacier in the same exposition flowed also down up to c.1850 m asl. At glacial times the glacier snowline as altitude limit between glacier nourishing area and ablation zone, was lowered about 820 to 1250 altitude metres against today. Under the condition of comparable proportions of precipitation there results from this a depression of temperature of at least 5 to 7.5 °C. Coal is mined in the west, though sheep herding in upper meadowlands are the source of income for the region. This section is based on the book by R. Middleton, about 138 BC Zhang Qian reached the Fergana Valley northwest of the Pamirs. Ptolemy vaguely describes a route through the area. From about 600 AD, Buddhist pilgrims travelled on both sides of the Pamirs to reach India from China, in 747 a Tang army was on the Wakhan River
Pamir Mountains
–
Pamir Mountains from an airplane, June 2008
Pamir Mountains
Pamir Mountains
–
Pamir Mountains on map showing
Sakastan about 100BC
Pamir Mountains
–
Part of the Pamir Mountain range in springtime.
21.
Hephthalites
–
Hephthalites was the Latinised exonym for a people commonly known in Chinese sources by names such as Yada. They were a confederation of peoples in Central Asia who expanded their domain westward and southward during the 5th century and they included both nomadic and urban, settled communities. It is not clear whether the Hephthalites or a related people, the modern Abdali or Durrani, a Pashtun tribal confederation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are widely believed to descend from the Hephthalites. The stronghold of the Hephthalites was Tokharistan on the slopes of the Hindu Kush. By 479, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdia and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 they had captured parts of present-day Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin in what is now Northwest China. India was invaded during the 5th century by a known in South Asia as the Hunas – possibly an alliance broader than the Hephthalites and/or Xionites. The Hunas were initially defeated by Emperor Skandagupta of the Gupta Empire, by the end of the 5th century, however, the Hunas had overrun the part of the Gupta Empire that was to their southeast and had conquered Central and North India. Gupta Emperor Bhanugupta defeated the Hunas under Toramana in 510, the Hunas were driven out of India by the kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta, during the early 6th century. The name Hephthalites originated with Ancient Greek sources, which referred to them as Ephthalite. In Ancient India, names such as Hephthalite were unknown, the Hephthalites were apparently part of, or offshoots of, people known in India as Hunas or Turushkas, although these names may have referred to broader groups or neighbouring peoples. To the Armenians the Hephthalites were Haital, to the Persians and Arabs they were Haytal or Hayatila, in Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are usually called Ye-ta-i-li-to, or the more usual modern and abbreviated form Yada. The latter name is given various Latinised renderings, including Yeda, Ye-ta, Ye-Tha, Ye-dā. The corresponding Cantonese and Korean names Yipdaat and Yeoptal are more consistent with the Greek Hephthalite, older Chinese sources refer to them as Hua or Hudun, and describe the Hephthalites as a tribe living beyond the Great Wall, in Dzungaria. Some Chinese chroniclers suggest that the root Hephtha- was technically a title equivalent to emperor, beckwith, referring to Étienne de la Vaissière, say that the Hephthalites were not necessarily one and the same as the White Huns. According to de la Vaissiere, the Hephthalites are not directly identified in classical sources alongside that of the White Huns, there are several theories regarding the origins of the White Huns, with the Turkic and Iranian theories being the most prominent. According to B. A. Litvinsky, the names of the Hephthalite rulers used in the Shahnameh are Iranian. According to Xavier Tremblay, one of the Hephthalite rulers was named Khingila, which has the root as the Sogdian word xnγr. The name Mihirakula is thought to be derived from mithra-kula which is Iranian for the Sun family, with kula having the root as Pashto kul
Hephthalites
–
Hephthalite coin of King Khingila, 5th century, legend: "Khiggilo Alchono".
Hephthalites
–
The Hephthalites (green), c. 500.
Hephthalites
–
Asia in 500, showing the Hephthalite Khanate at its greatest extent.
Hephthalites
–
History of Afghanistan
22.
Chinese Character
–
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
Chinese Character
–
Chinese characters
Chinese Character
–
"Chinese character" in
traditional (left) and
simplified form (right)
Chinese Character
–
Ox scapula with oracle bone inscription
Chinese Character
23.
Sanskrit
–
Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
Sanskrit
–
Rigveda (
padapatha) manuscript in
Devanagari, early 19th century
Sanskrit
–
Devi Mahatmya palm-leaf manuscript in an early
Bhujimol script,
Bihar or
Nepal, 11th century
Sanskrit
–
A poem by the ancient Indian poet Vallana (ca. 900 – 1100 CE) on the side wall of a building at the Haagweg 14 in Leiden, Netherlands
Sanskrit
–
Kashmir Shaiva manuscript in the
Śāradā script (c. 17th century)
24.
Lithuanian language
–
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.9 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania, Lithuanian is a Baltic language, related to Latvian. It is written in a Latin alphabet, Lithuanian is often said to be the most conservative living Indo-European language, retaining many features of Proto-Indo-European now lost in other Indo-European languages. Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant, among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is extraordinarily conservative, retaining many archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. For this reason, it is one of the most important sources in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation, the Proto-Balto-Slavic languages branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Proto-Baltic branched off into Proto-West Baltic and Proto-East Baltic, according to some glottochronological speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between AD400 and AD600. The Greek geographer Ptolemy had already written of two Baltic tribe/nations by name, the Galindai and Sudinoi in the 2nd century AD, the differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after AD800, for a long period, they could be considered dialects of a single language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th or 15th century, also, the 13th- and 14th-century occupation of the western part of the Daugava basin by the German Sword Brethren had a significant influence on the languages independent development. The earliest surviving written Lithuanian text is a translation dating from about 1503–1525 of the Lords Prayer, the Hail Mary, printed books existed after 1547, but the level of literacy among Lithuanians was low through the 18th century, and books were not commonly available. Brought into the country by book smugglers despite the threat of prison sentences. Jonas Jablonskis made significant contributions to the formation of the standard Lithuanian language and his proposal for Standard Lithuanian was based on his native Western Aukštaitijan dialect with some features of the eastern Prussian Lithuanians dialect spoken in Lithuania Minor. These dialects had preserved archaic phonetics mostly intact due to the influence of the neighbouring Old Prussian language, Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet era, it was used in official discourse along with Russian, Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages, along with Latvian. An earlier Baltic language, Old Prussian, was extinct by the 18th century, such an opinion was first represented by the likes of August Schleicher, and to a certain extent, Antoine Meillet. Endzelīns thought that the similarity between Baltic and Slavic was explicable through language contact while Schleicher, Meillet and others argued for a kinship between the two families. An attempt to reconcile the opposing stances was made by Jan Michał Rozwadowski and he proposed that the two language groups were indeed a unity after the division of Indo-European, but also suggested that after the two had divided into separate entities, they had posterior contact. The genetic kinship view is augmented by the fact that Proto-Balto-Slavic is easily reconstructible with important proofs in historic prosody, vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov believed in the unity of Balto-Slavic, but not in the unity of Baltic. In the 1960s, they proposed a new division, that into East-Baltic, West-Baltic, the Ivanov–Toporov theory is gaining ground among students of comparative-historic grammar of Indo-European language, and seems to be replacing the previous two stances in most PIE textbooks
Lithuanian language
–
The oldest surviving
manuscript in Lithuanian (around 1503), rewritten from 15th century original text
Lithuanian language
–
Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
–
A map of European languages (1741) with the first verse of the
Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
–
The Grand Dictionary of the Lithuanian language consists of 20 volumes and contains more than half a million
headwords
25.
Centum-satem isogloss
–
Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language developed. An example of the different developments is provided by the words for hundred found in the early attested Indo-European languages, in centum languages, they typically began with a /k/ sound, but in satem languages, they often began with /s/. In centum languages, the palatovelars, which included the initial consonant of the hundred root, in satem languages, they remained distinct, and the labiovelars merged with the plain velars. The centum–satem division forms an isogloss in synchronic descriptions of Indo-European languages and it is not thought that the Proto-Indo-European language split first into centum and satem branches from which all the centum and all the satem languages, respectively, would have derived. Each of the ten branches of the Indo-European family independently developed its status as a centum or satem language, the canonical centum languages of the Indo-European family are the western branches, Hellenic, Celtic, Italic and Germanic. They merged Proto-Indo-European palatovelars and plain velars, yielding plain velars only, the Anatolian branch likely falls outside the centum–satem dichotomy, for instance, Luwian indicates that all three dorsal consonant rows survived separately in Proto-Anatolian. The centumisation observed in Hittite is therefore assumed to have occurred only after the breakup of Proto-Anatolian, while Tocharian is generally regarded as a centum language, it is a special case, as it has merged all three of the PIE dorsal series into a single phoneme, *k. According to some scholars, that complicates the classification of Tocharian within the centum–satem model, in the centum languages, PIE roots reconstructed with palatovelars developed into forms with plain velars. For example, in the PIE root *ḱm̥tóm, hundred, the initial palatovelar *ḱ became a plain velar /k/, as in Latin centum, Greek katon, Welsh cant, Tocharian B kante. In the Germanic languages, the /k/ developed regularly by Grimms law to become /h/, centum languages also retained the distinction between the PIE labiovelar row and the plain velars. Labiovelars as single phonemes as opposed to biphonemes are attested in Greek, the boukólos rule, however, states that a labiovelar reduces to a plain velar when it occurs next to *u or *w. The centum–satem division refers to the development of the series at the time of the earliest separation of Proto-Indo-European into the proto-languages of its individual daughter branches. It does not apply to any later analogous developments within any individual branch, the satem languages belong to the eastern sub-families, especially Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic. It lost the element of Proto-Indo-European labiovelars and merged them with plain velars. That set of developments, particularly the assibilation of palatovelars, is referred to as satemisation and it is also asserted that in Sanskrit and Balto-Slavic, in some environments, resonant consonants become /iR/ after plain velars but /uR/ after labiovelars. In the satem languages, the reflexes of the presumed PIE palatovelars are typically fricative or affricate consonants, another example is the Slavic prefix sъ-, which appears in Latin, a centum language, as co-, conjoin is cognate with Russian soyuz. An is found for PIE *ḱ in such languages as Latvian, Avestan, Russian and Armenian, for more reflexes, see the phonetic correspondences section below, note also the effect of the ruki sound law. Assibilation of velars in certain phonetic environments is a phenomenon in language development
Centum-satem isogloss
–
Diachronic map showing the approximate extent of the centum (blue) and satem (red)
areals. The origin of satemization according to von Bradke's hypothesis is shown in darker red (marked as the range of the
Sintashta /
Abashevo /
Srubna archaeological cultures).
26.
Indo-European languages
–
The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
Indo-European languages
–
Franz Bopp, pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies.
Indo-European languages
27.
Old Chinese
–
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including works such as the Analects, the Mencius. These works served as models for Literary Chinese, which remained the standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary. Old Chinese was written with a form of Chinese characters. Although the script is not alphabetic, most characters were created by adapting a character for a similar-sounding word. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding, several derivational affixes have also been identified. However the language lacked inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order, the earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to due to the limited subject matter. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty, little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, a greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, there are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius, the Classical Chinese of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word, most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables
Old Chinese
–
Zhou dynasty bronze inscription
Old Chinese
–
Seal script on bamboo strips from the
Warring States period
28.
Old Indic
–
The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family, Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers, and more than half of all Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue. While the languages are spoken in South Asia, pockets of Indo-Aryan languages are found to be spoken in Europe. The largest in terms of speakers are Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi. Proto-Indo-Aryan, or sometimes Proto-Indic, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages and it is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan which is attested as Vedic. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a number of archaic features lost in Vedic. Vedic has been used in the ancient preserved religious hymns, the canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. Mitanni-Aryan is of age to the language of the Rigveda. The language of the Vedas – commonly referred to as Vedic Sanskrit by modern scholars – is only marginally different from Proto-Indo-Aryan the proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. From the Vedic, Sanskrit developed as the language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre. Sanskrit is, by convention, referred to by scholars as Classical Sanskrit in contra-distinction to the so-called Vedic Sanskrit. Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects continued to evolve, the oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardha Magadhi, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, Apabhramsa is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production, the Sravakachar of Devasena is now considered to be the first Hindi book, the next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Turco-Mongol Mughal empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoptation of the language by the Mughal emperors. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani and this Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian, Arabic, and Turkic elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects. The two largest languages that formed from Apabhramsa were Bengali and Hindustani, others include Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, the Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum
Old Indic
–
Dogri–Kangri region
Old Indic
–
1978 map showing Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages. (
Urdu is included under Hindi.
Romani,
Domari, and
Lomavren are outside the scope of the map.)
29.
Indo-Aryan peoples
–
Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse Indo-European ethnolinguistic group of speakers of Indo-Aryan languages. There are over one billion native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, most of them native to South Asia and these migrations started approximately 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia. 1800–1400 BCE in the steppes around the Aral sea, present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the proto-Indo-Iranians were influenced by the Bactria-Margiana Culture, south of the Andronovo culture, from which they borrowed their distinctive religious beliefs and practices. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800-1600 BCE from the Iranians, whereafter the Indo-Aryans migrated into the Levant, horseplay at Harappa - People Fas Harvard - Harvard University A tale of two horses - Frontline
Indo-Aryan peoples
–
Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages.
30.
Iranian peoples
–
The Iranian peoples or Iranic peoples are a diverse Indo-European ethno-linguistic group that comprise the speakers of the Iranian languages. Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia in the mid 2nd millennium BC. In the 1st millennium AD, their area of settlement was reduced as a result of Slavic, Germanic, Turkic and Mongol expansions and many being subjected to Slavicisation. The Iranian peoples include Balochs, Kurds, Gilaks, Lurs, Mazanderanis, Ossetians, Pashtuns, Pamiris, Persians, Tajiks, Talysh people, the term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Ērān and Parthian Aryān. The Middle Iranian terms ērān and aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic ēr- and ary-, there have been many attempts to qualify the verbal root of ar- in Old Iranian arya-. The following are according to 1957 and later linguists, Emmanuel Laroche, Old Iranian arya- being descended from Proto-Indo-European ar-yo-, meaning assembler. Harold Walter Bailey, ar- to beget, unlike the Sanskrit ā́rya-, the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning. Today, the Old Iranian arya- remains in ethno-linguistic names such as Iran, Alan, Ir, in the Iranian languages, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of Avesta. The earliest epigraphically attested reference to the word occurs in the Bistun Inscription of the 6th century BC. The inscription of Bistun describes itself to have composed in Arya. As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage, in royal Old Persian inscriptions, the term arya- appears in three different contexts, As the name of the language of the Old Persian version of the inscription of Darius I in the Bistun Inscription. As the ethnic background of Darius the Great in inscriptions at Rustam Relief and Susa, as the definition of the God of Iranians, Ohrmazd, in the Elamite version of the Bistun Inscription. In the Dna and Dse, Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, although Darius the Great called his language arya-, modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language. The trilingual inscription erected by the command of Shapur I gives a clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek, tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi, which translates to I am the king of the kingdom of the Iranians. In Middle Persian, Shapur says ērānšahr xwadāy hēm and in Parthian he says aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm, the Avesta clearly uses airiia- as an ethnic name, where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi daiŋˊhāvō, airyō šayanəm, and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi dāityayāfi. In the late part of the Avesta, one of the homelands was referred to as Airyanəm Vaējah which approximately means expanse of the Iranians. The homeland varied in its range, the area around Herat
Iranian peoples
–
Achaemenid empire at its greatest extent
Iranian peoples
–
The
Andronovo,
BMAC and
Yaz cultures have been associated with Indo-Iranians.
Iranian peoples
–
Persepolis -Persian guards
Iranian peoples
–
Geographic distribution of modern Iranian languages
31.
Modu Chanyu
–
Modu Chanyu was the fourth known Xiongnu ruler and the founder of the Xiongnu Empire. He became the Xiongnu ruler after he ordered the execution of his father Touman in 209 BC, Modu ruled from 209 BC to 174 BC. He was a leader under his father Touman, and later the Chanyu and king of the Xiongnu. Once he had secured the throne, he established a powerful Xiongnu Empire by successfully unifying the tribes of the Mongolian steppes and he was succeeded by his son Laoshang Chanyu. Several scholars have suggested the reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciation of Mòdùn is IPA and his name is also written as Motun in some sources. Ultimately, the Old Chinese pronunciation might have represented the pronunciation of the foreign word *baγtur, a relative of the later attested Central Eurasian culture word baγatur ‘hero’. The etymology of word is uncertain, although the first syllable is very likely the Iranian word *baγ ‘god, lord’. Clauson claims the word to be an original Xiongnu name/title, according to Sima Qian, Modu was a gifted child but his father Touman wanted the son of another of his wives to succeed him. To eliminate Modu as a competitor to his heir, Touman sent the young Modu to the Yuezhi people as a hostage. Modu was able to escape this fate by stealing a fast horse and returned to the Xiongnu, in reward for this show of bravery, his father appointed him the commander of 10,000 horsemen. Due to his reputation for bravery, Modu began to gather a group of loyal warriors. To be sure of their loyalty, Modu ordered each of the warriors to shoot his favorite horse and he later repeated this test of loyalty, but with one of his favorite wives, and once again executed those who hesitated to obey his order. After he was sure of the loyalty of his warriors, he ordered them to shoot at his father. With none of his followers failing to shoot at his command, after his self-proclaimed ascension to the title of Chanyu, Modu began to eliminate those who would prove a threat to his newly acquired power. Thus, he proceeded to execute his rival half-brother, his step-mother, first he marched on the Donghu, the Xiongnu’s eastern neighbours, and brought them under his rule in 208 BC. After his Donghu campaign, he defeated the Dingling and other living in Northern Mongolia. After these conquests, all Xiongnu lords submitted to him, with these victories, he was able to gain control of the important trade routes, which later supplied the Xiongnu with a large income. The emperor was cut off supplies and reinforcements
Modu Chanyu
–
Domain and influence of the Xiongnu under Modu at the start of his rule.
32.
Hittites
–
The Hittites were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC the Hittite Empire came into conflict with the Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, the Assyrians eventually emerged as the dominant power and annexed much of the Hittite empire, while the remainder was sacked by Phrygian newcomers to the region. They referred to their land as Hatti. The conventional name Hittites is due to their identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology. Before the discoveries, the source of information about Hittites had been the Old Testament. Francis William Newman expressed the view, common in the early 19th century. Uriah was a captain in King Davids army and counted among one of his mighty men in 1 Chronicles 11, french scholar Félix Marie Charles Texier discovered the first Hittite ruins in 1834, but did not identify them as Hittite. The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyrian colony of Kültepe, some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European. The script on a monument at Boğazköy by a People of Hattusas discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo, in 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. Shortly after this, Archibald Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the kingdom of Kheta mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller, agreed that Khatti was probably Kheta, sayces identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century, and the name Hittite has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy. He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of an empire that, at one point, under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute, excavations at Hattusa have been under way since 1907, with interruptions during the world wars. Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005, the Hittites used Mesopotamian Cuneiform script. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey houses the richest collection of Hittite, the Hittite kingdom was centred on the lands surrounding Hattusa and Neša, known as the land Hatti. For example, the reward for the capture of a slave after he managed to flee beyond the Halys is higher than that for a slave caught before he could reach the river. To the west and south of the core territory lay the region known as Luwiya in the earliest Hittite texts and this terminology was replaced by the names Arzawa and Kizzuwatna with the rise of those kingdoms. Nevertheless, the Hittites continued to refer to the language originated in these areas as Luwian. Prior to the rise of Kizzuwatna, the heart of territory in Cilicia was first referred to by the Hittites as Adaniya
Hittites
–
Bronze religious standard from a pre-Hittite tomb at
Alacahöyük, dating to the third millennium B.C., from the
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations,
Ankara.
Hittites
–
The Hittite Empire, ca. 1300 BC (shown in Blue).
Hittites
–
Jewelry from
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
Hittites
–
Hittite chariot, from an Egyptian relief
33.
Zhou Dynasty
–
The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god, the term Hòujì was probably an hereditary title attached to a lineage. Jus son Liu, however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin, tai later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly fled to the Yangtze delta. Jilis son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng, the Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song, which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences, according to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language not basically different in vocabulary and syntax from that of the Shang. A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion, the Zhou emulated extensively Shang cultural practices, perhaps to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have connected to the Xirong, a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang. According to the historian Li Feng, the term Rong during the Western Zhou period was used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural. The proto-Zhou were first located in the Shaanxi-Shanxi highland, where they absorbed elements from the Guangshe culture, King Liu moved his people to the lower Fen Valley and to the western bank of the Yellow River, where they resumed agriculture. His son Qing Jie, led the Zhou to the valley of the Jing River. They stayed there until Dan Fu moved again to the Wei Valley in order to avoid incursion by the Rongdi nomads. During this period, the Zhou mingled with the Qiang people, in all these stages, the advanced Shang bronze culture constantly imparted its influence on the Zhou. The Qi area was the region in all these influences would come to fruition. The contact among the proto-Zhou, the native Shaanxi Longshan, the Qiang, King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed a new one for his palace and administration nearby at Hao. Although Wus early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhous increasing power, the Three Guards, Zhou princes stationed on the eastern plain, to maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system
Zhou Dynasty
–
History of China
Zhou Dynasty
–
Population concentration and boundaries of the Western Zhou dynasty (1050–771 BC) in China
Zhou Dynasty
–
States of the Western Zhou dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
–
A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel, c. 1000 BC
34.
Ancient Rome
–
In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
Ancient Rome
–
Senātus Populus que Rōmānus
Ancient Rome
–
Roman Republic
Ancient Rome
–
According to legend,
Rome was founded in 753 BC by
Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf.
Ancient Rome
–
This bust from the
Capitoline Museums is traditionally identified as a portrait of
Lucius Junius Brutus.
35.
Koguryo
–
Goguryeo was an active participant in the power struggle for control of the Korean peninsula and was also associated with the foreign affairs of neighboring polities in China and Japan. The Samguk Sagi, a 12th-century text from Goryeo, indicates that Goguryeo was founded in 37 BCE by Jumong, a prince from Buyeo, after its fall, its territory was divided among the states of Later Silla, Balhae and Tang China. The name Goryeo, a form of Goguryeo, was adopted as the official name in the 5th century. In the geographic monographs of the Book of Han, the word Goguryeo was first mentioned in 113 BCE as a region under the jurisdiction of the Xuantu Commandery, page 33. In the Old Book of Tang, it is recorded that Emperor Taizong refers to Goguryeos history as being some 900 years old, in 75 BCE, a group of Yemaek who may have originated from Goguryeo made an incursion into Chinas Xuantu Commandery west of the Yalu. At its founding, the Goguryeo people are believed to be a blend of people from Buyeo and Yemaek, as leadership from Buyeo may have fled their kingdom and integrated with existing Yemaek chiefdoms. The Records of the Three Kingdoms, in the section titled Accounts of the Eastern Barbarians, implied that Buyeo, the earliest mention of Jumong is in the 4th century Gwanggaeto Stele. Jumong is the modern Korean transcription of the hanja 朱蒙 Jumong, 鄒牟 Chumo, the Stele states that Jumong was the first king and ancestor of Goguryeo and that he was the son of the prince of Buyeo and daughter of the Yellow River deity Habaek. The Samguk Sagi and Samgungnyusa paint additional detail and names Jumongs mother as Yuhwa, Jumongs biological father was said to be a man named Haemosu who is described as a strong man and a heavenly prince. The river god chased Yuhwa away to the Ubal River due to her pregnancy, Jumong was well known for his exceptional archery skills. Eventually, Geumwas sons became jealous of him, and Jumong was forced to leave Eastern Buyeo, the Stele and later Korean sources disagree as to which Buyeo Jumong came from. The Stele says he came from Buyeo and the Samgungnyusa and Samguk Sagi say he came from Eastern Buyeo, Jumong eventually made it to Jolbon, where he married Soseono, daughter of its ruler. He subsequently became king himself, founding Goguryeo with a group of his followers from his native country. A traditional account from the Annals of Baekje section in the Samguk Sagi says that Soseono was the daughter of Yeon Tabal, a wealthy influential figure in Jolbon and married to Jumong. However, the same source states that the king of Jolbon gave his daughter to Jumong. She gave her husband, Jumong, financial support in founding the new statelet, Jumongs given surname was Hae, the name of the Buyeo rulers. According to the Samgungnyusa, Jumong changed his surname to Go in conscious reflection of his divine parentage, Jumong is recorded to have conquered the tribal states of Biryu in 36 BCE, Haeng-in in 33 BCE, and Northern Okjeo in 28 BCE. Goguryeo developed from a league of various Yemaek tribes to an early state, in the time of Taejodae in 53 CE, five local tribes were reorganized into five centrally ruled districts
Koguryo
–
Goguryeo at its height in 476.
Koguryo
–
Image of the mythical figure from the Goguryeo-era Ohoe Tomb 4.
Koguryo
–
Seated
buddhas and
bodhisattvas from Wono-ri, Goguryeo.
36.
Turkish people
–
Turkish people, or the Turks, also known as Anatolian Turks, are a Turkic ethnic group and nation living mainly in Turkey and speaking Turkish, the most widely spoken Turkic language. They are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, as well as by far the largest ethnic group among the speakers of Turkic languages, ethnic Turkish minorities exist in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, a Turkish diaspora has been established with modern migration, the ethnonym Turk may be first discerned in Herodotus reference to Targitas, first king of the Scythians, furthermore, during the first century AD. Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century, in these sources, Turk appears as Tujue, which referred to the Göktürks. Although Turk refers to Turkish people, it may sometimes refer to the wider language group of Turkic peoples. In the 19th century, the word Türk only referred to Anatolian villagers, the Ottoman ruling class identified themselves as Ottomans, not usually as Turks. In the late 19th century, as the Ottoman upper classes adopted European ideas of nationalism the term Türk took on a more positive connotation. The Turkish-speakers of Anatolia were the most loyal supporters of Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews, Christians, or even Alevis may be considered non-Turks. On the other hand, Kurdish Arab followers of the Sunni branch of Islam who live in eastern Anatolia are sometimes considered Turks, article 66 of the Turkish Constitution defines a Turk as anyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship. Anatolia was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Paleolithic era, most of the Turkic peoples were followers of Tengriism, sharing the cult of the sky god Tengri, although there were also adherents of Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. However, during the Muslim conquests, the Turks entered the Muslim world proper as servants, during the booty of Arab raids, the Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian, under the Umayyads, most were domestic servants, whilst under the Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, as the Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power taking over or establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century the Seljuk Turks who were admirers of the Persian civilization grew in number and were able to occupy the province of the Abbasid Empire. By 1055, the Seljuk Empire captured Baghdad and began to make their first incursions into the edges of Anatolia, when the Seljuk Turks won the Battle of Manzikert against the Byzantine Empire in 1071, it opened the gates of Anatolia to them. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became the purveyors of the Persian culture rather than the Turkish culture, in dire straits, the Byzantine Empire turned to the West for help setting in motion the pleas that led to the First Crusade. Once the Crusaders took Iznik, the Seljuk Turks established the Sultanate of Rum from their new capital, Konya, by the 12th century the Europeans had begun to call the Anatolian region Turchia or Turkey, meaning the land of the Turks
Turkish people
–
The loss of almost all
Ottoman territories during the late 19th and early 20th century, and then the establishment of the
Republic of Turkey, in 1923, resulted in Turkish refugees, known as "
Muhacirs ", from hostile regions of the
Balkans, the
Black Sea, the
Aegean islands, the island of
Cyprus, the
Sanjak of Alexandretta, the
Middle East, and the
Soviet Union to migrate to
Anatolia and
Eastern Thrace.
Turkish people
–
The
Öksökö, symbol of the
Seljuk Turks.
Turkish people
–
Turkish woman in Ottoman costume
Turkish people
–
Taksim Square.
37.
Mongols
–
The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and Chinas Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China, as well as in Russia, Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia. The Mongols are bound together by a heritage and ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are known as the Mongolian language. The ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols, broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper, Buryats, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols. The latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohans, Baarins, Gorlos Mongols, Jalaids, Jaruud, Khishigten, Khuuchid, Muumyangan, the designation Mongol briefly appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei. It resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty, after the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau. However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them, in the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan. In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. The identity of the Xiongnu is still debated today, although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more likely a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes. It has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü, the Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu and the Classic of Mountains, the Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people, the Zhukaigou Xianbei had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian wrote in his commentary Jixie that Shanrong, againm in Inner Mongolia another closely connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture where the Donghu confederation was centered. After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei, tadun Khan of the Wuhuan was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi. The Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the New Book of Tang says that in 209 BCE, the Xianbei, however, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, the Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state. Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories, the Rouran, the Khitan people, besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong, Duan and Tuoba
Mongols
–
The
Xianbei state under Tanshihuai (141–181)
Mongols
–
Asia in 500, showing the
Rouran Khaganate and its neighbors, including the Northern Wei and the Tuyuhun Khanate, all of them were established by Proto-Mongols
Mongols
–
Mongols using
Chinese gunpowder bombs during the
Mongol Invasions of Japan, 1281
Mongols
–
The Battle of Oroi-Jalatu in 1755 between the Qing and Oirat armies. The fall of the
Dzungar Khanate.
38.
Dzungar people
–
The name Dzungar people, also written as Zunghar, referred to the several Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically they were one of major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation and they were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word Dzungar, and also called Kalmyks. In 2010,15,520 people claimed Ööled ancestry in Mongolia, an unknown number also live in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. This confederation rose to power in what known as Dzungaria between the Altai Mountains and the Ili River Valley. Initially, the confederation consisted of the Oöled, Dorbet and Khoit tribes, later on, elements of the Khoshut and Torghut tribes were forcibly incorporated into the Dzungar military, thus completing the re-unification of the West Mongolian tribes. According to oral history, the Oöled and Dörbed tribes are the tribes to the Naiman. The Oöled shared the clan name Choros with the Dörvöd, zuun gar and Baruun gar formed the Oirats military and administrative organization. The Dzungar Olots and Choros became the ruling clans in the 17th century, in 1697, two relatives of Galdan Boshugtu Khan, Danjila and Rabdan, surrendered to the Qing Kangxi Emperor. Their people were organized into two Oolod banners and resettled in modern Bayankhongor Province, Mongolia. In 1731, five hundred households fled back to Dzungar territory while the remaining Oolods were deported to Hulun Buir, after 1761 some of them were resettled in Arkhangai Province. After a series of military conflicts that started in the 1680s. Clarke argued that the Qing campaign in 1757–58 amounted to the destruction of not only the Dzungar state. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Dzungar nation, Qing scholar Wei Yuan estimated the total population of Dzungars before the fall at 600,000 people, or 200,000 households. Oirat officer Saaral betrayed and battled against the Oirats, during this war Kazakhs attacked dispersed Oirats and Altays. Historian Peter Perdue attributed the decimation of the Dzungars to an policy of extermination launched by Qianlong. Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence. The Dzungar genocide was completed by a combination of a smallpox epidemic, anti-Dzungar Uyghur rebels from the Turfan and Hami oases had submitted to Qing rule as vassals and requested Qing help for overthrowing Dzungar rule. Uyghur leaders like Emin Khoja were granted titles within the Qing nobility, and it was not until generations later that Dzungaria rebounded from the destruction and near liquidation of the Dzungars after the mass slayings of nearly a million Dzungars
Dzungar people
–
Clear script on rocks near
Almaty
39.
Turkic peoples
–
The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethnic groups that live in central, eastern, northern, and western Asia as well as parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family and they share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The first known mention of the term Turk applied to a Turkic group was in reference to the Göktürks in the 6th century, a letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as the Great Turk Khan. The Orhun inscriptions use the terms Turk and Turuk and this includes Chinese records Spring and Autumn Annals referring to a neighbouring people as Beidi. During the first century CE, Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae in the north of the Sea of Azov. There are references to certain groups in antiquity whose names could be the form of Türk/Türük such as Togarma, Turukha/Turuška, Turukku. But the information gap is so substantial that we cannot firmly connect these ancient people to the modern Turks, turkologist András Róna-Tas posits that the term Turk could be rooted in the East Iranian Saka language or in Turkic. This etymological concept is related to Old Turkic word stems tür, türi-, törü. The earliest Turkic-speaking peoples identifiable in Chinese sources are the Dingling, Gekun, the Chinese Book of Zhou presents an etymology of the name Turk as derived from helmet, explaining that taken this name refers to the shape of the Altai Mountains. During the Middle Ages, various Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe were subsumed under the identity of the Scythians, between 400 CE and the 16th century, Byzantine sources use the name Σκύθαι in reference to twelve different Turkic peoples. However, the usage of the term is based on the linguistic classification in order to avoid any political sense. In short, the term Türki can be used for Türk or vice versa and it is generally agreed that the first Turkic people lived in a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia, with the majority of them living in China historically. Historically they were established after the 6th century BCE, the earliest separate Turkic peoples appeared on the peripheries of the late Xiongnu confederation about 200 BCE. Turkic people may be related to the Xiongnu, Dingling and Tiele people, according to the Book of Wei, the Tiele people were the remnants of the Chidi, the red Di people competing with the Jin in the Spring and Autumn period. Turkic tribes such as the Khazars and Pechenegs probably lived as nomads for many years before establishing the Turkic Khaganate or Göktürk Empire in the 6th century and these were herdsmen and nobles who were searching for new pastures and wealth. The first mention of Turks was in a Chinese text that mentioned trade between Turk tribes and the Sogdians along the Silk Road, the first recorded use of Turk as a political name appears as a 6th-century reference to the word pronounced in Modern Chinese as Tujue. The Ashina clan migrated from Li-jien to the Juan Juan seeking inclusion in their confederacy, the tribe were famed metalsmiths and were granted land near a mountain quarry which looked like a helmet, from which they were said to have gotten their name 突厥. A century later their power had increased such that they conquered the Juan Juan, Turkic peoples originally used their own alphabets, like Orkhon and Yenisey runiforms, and later the Uyghur alphabet
Turkic peoples
–
Map from Kashgari's Diwan, showing the distribution of Turkic tribes.
Turkic peoples
–
Turkic states shown in red
Turkic peoples
–
History of the Turkic peoples Pre-14th century
Turkic peoples
–
The top of Belukha in the
Altay Mountains in Mongolia is shown here. The mountain range is thought to be the birthplace of the Turkic people.
40.
Denis Sinor
–
Under his directorship, the Central Asian Studies at Indiana University became one of the worlds foremost centers for Central Asian history, languages and linguistics. He grew up in Hungary and Switzerland and went to university in Budapest, during the Second World War, he was a member of the French resistance, served in the French army, and became a French citizen. Sinor wrote eight books and edited an additional thirteen, Sinor also served as editor of the Journal of Asian History starting with the publications inception in 1967. Inner Asia and its Contacts with Medieval Europe, the Uralic Languages, description, history, and foreign influences. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, denis Sinor Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University
Denis Sinor
–
Denis Sinor in
Bloomington, Indiana.
41.
Sogdians
–
Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. In the Avesta, Sogdiana is listed as the second best land that the supreme deity Ahura Mazda had created and it comes second, after Airyanem Vaejah, homeland of the Aryans, in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana was conquered by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC and later formed part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centred on the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, embracing the valley of the Zeravshan. Sogdian territory corresponds to the provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan. During the High Middle Ages, Sogdian cities included sites stretching towards Issyk Kul such as that at the site of Suyab. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer a spoken language and it was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and even served as one of the Turkic Khaganates court languages for writing documents. Sogdians also lived in Imperial China and rose to prominence in the military. Sogdian merchants and diplomats traveled as far west as the Byzantine Empire and they played an important part as middlemen in the trade route of the Silk Road. The Sogdian conversion to Islam was virtually complete by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999, coinciding with the decline of the Sogdian language, as it was largely supplanted by Persian. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda, which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, according to Szemerényi, Sogdiana was named from the Skuda form. This large-scale migration included Eastern Iranian speaking peoples such as the Sogdians, Achaemenid ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana while campaigning in Central Asia in 546–539 BC, a fact mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories. Darius I introduced the Aramaic writing system and coin currency to Central Asia, in addition to incorporating Sogdians into his army as regular soldiers. A contingent of Sogdian soldiers fought in the army of Xerxes I during his ultimately failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. A Persian inscription from Susa claims that the palace there was adorned with lapis lazuli, given the absence of any named satraps for Sogdiana in historical records, modern scholarship has concluded that Sogdiana was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria. The satraps were often relatives of the ruling Persian kings, especially sons who were not designated as the heir apparent, Sogdiana likely remained under Persian control until roughly 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II. Rebellious states of the Persian Empire took advantage of the weak Artaxerxes II, persias massive loss of Central Asian territory is widely attributed to the rulers lack of control. However, unlike Egypt, which was recaptured by the Persian Empire
Sogdians
–
Sogdians, depicted on a Chinese Sogdian sarcophagus of the
Northern Qi era.
Sogdians
–
Sogdiana, c. 300 BC.
Sogdians
–
Gold coin of
Diodotus c. 250 BC.
Sogdians
–
Barbaric copy of a coin of
Euthydemus I, from the region of Sogdiana. The legend on the reverse is in
Aramaic script.
42.
Ashina (clan)
–
The Ashina, also known as Asen, Asena, or Açina, was a tribe and the ruling dynasty of the ancient Turkic peoples. It rose to prominence in the century when the leader, Bumin Qaghan. The two main branches of the family, one descended from Bumin and the other from his brother Istemi, ruled over the eastern and western parts of the Göktürk confederation, researchers such as H. W. Haussig, S. G. Kljyashtorny, A. N. Bernstamm, C. V. Findley, B. A. Muratov, R. R. Suyunov, Savinov, S. P. Guschin, Rona-Tas and R. N. Frye have pointed out that the origin of the Ashina is from Saka-Wusun, subclade of clan Ashina, R1a-Z93, Z94+, Z2123-, Y2632-. Findley assumes that the name Ashina comes from one of the Saka languages of central Asia, the color is identified with the east, so that Göktürk, another name for the Turk empire, meant the Turks of the East. This idea is seconded by the Hungarian researcher András Róna-Tas, who finds it plausible that we are dealing with a royal family and clan of Saka origin. The term bori, used to identify the rulers retinue as wolves, probably derived from one of the Iranian languages. H. W. Haussig and S. G. Kljyashtorny suggest an association between the name and the kindred of Ashin ahşaẽna - Old Persian, which can get quite satisfactory etymological development. The Saka etymology ashina with the blue is phonetically and semantically flawless. There is a support for this version in the ancient runic inscriptions of the Turks. In the large Orkhon inscriptions, in the story of the first Kagan, without touching the numerous interpretations kök may have in this combination, note its perfect semantic match with the reconstructed value of the name Ashina. Bazin, as was the political and cultural environment of the Otyuken regime of the era of Bilge Kagan, the name Ashina was recorded in Ancient Arab chronicles in the form, Sha-ne. The Ashina writing system was taken from Sogdian language, the letters used in the construction of the memorial stele describing the heroic exploits of the members of the ruling Kagan kind, were Sogdian. Thus the main inscription on the stele Bugutskoy set up in honour of one of the rulers of the First Turkic khanate, is a written Sogdian letter. A Sogdian inscription is found on a broadsword discovered in the burial of an ancient Turkic warrior at the monument at Jolene in the Altai Mountains, during the period of the Second Eastern Turk, ancient Turkic runic writing spread, which was also influenced by Sogdian. Runes are widespread among the nomadic Turkic peoples in the early Middle Ages, tanshu describes the funeral rites of the Ashina as follows, The body of the deceased lived in a tent. They do so seven times, and it is over, on the day of the funeral, as well as on the day of his death, the family offers a sacrifice, rides horses and slit their face
Ashina (clan)
–
Tamga of Ashina - The Raven
43.
Zhang Qian
–
Zhang Qian was a Chinese official and diplomat who served as an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the 2nd century BC, during the time of the Han dynasty. Today Zhang Qians travels are associated with the route of transcontinental trade. In essence, his missions opened up to China the many kingdoms, Zhang Qians accounts of his explorations of Central Asia are detailed in the Early Han historical chronicles, Records of the Grand Historian, compiled by Sima Qian in the 1st century BC. The Central Asian sections of the Silk Road routes were expanded around 114 BC largely through the missions and explorations of Zhang Qian, today Zhang Qian is considered a national hero and revered for the key role he played in opening China to the world of commercial trade. Zhang Qian was born in Chenggu district just east of Hanzhong in the central province of Shaanxi. He entered the capital, Changan, todays Xian, between 140 BC and 134 BC as a Gentleman, serving Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. At the time the nomadic Xiongnu tribes controlled what is now Inner Mongolia and dominated the Western Regions, Xiyu, the Han emperor was interested in establishing commercial ties with distant lands but outside contact was prevented by the hostile Xiongnu. He was accompanied by a guide named Ganfu, a Xiongnu who had captured in war. The objective of Zhang Qians first mission was to seek an alliance with the Yuezhi. However to get to the territory of the Yuezhi he was forced to pass through land controlled by the Xiongnu who captured him, during this time he married a Xiongnu wife, who bore him a son, and gained the trust of the Xiongnu leader. The Yuezhi were agricultural people who produced strong horses and many unknown crops including alfalfa for animal fodder, however, the Yuezhi were too settled to desire war against the Xiongnu. On his return trip he was captured by the Xiongnu who again spared his life because they valued his sense of duty. Two years later the Xiongnu leader died and in the midst of chaos, of the original mission of just over a hundred men, only Zhang Qian and Ganfu managed to return to China. Zhang Qian returned in 125 BC with detailed news for the Emperor, showing that sophisticated civilizations existed to the West, all these states, he was told, were militarily weak and prized Han goods and wealth. Upon Zhang Qians return to China he was honoured with a position of palace counselor, on his mission Zhang Qian had noticed products from an area now known as northern India. However, the task remained to find a route not obstructed by the Xiongnu to India. Zhang Qian set out on a mission to forge a route from China to India via Sichuan. In 119–115 BC Zhang Qian was sent on a mission by the emperor
Zhang Qian
–
Zhang Qian taking leave from emperor
Han Wudi, for his expedition to
Central Asia from 138 to 126 BC,
Mogao Caves mural, 618 - 712.
Zhang Qian
–
Statue of Zhang Qian in
Shaanxi History Museum,
Xi'an
Zhang Qian
–
Countries described in Zhang Qian's report. Visited countries are highlighted in
blue.
Zhang Qian
–
Mogao Caves 8th-century mural depicting the
pseudohistorical legend of
Emperor Wu of Han worshipping "golden man" Buddha statues captured in 121 BC.
44.
South Asia
–
Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as Nepal and northern parts of India situated south of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. South Asia is bounded on the south by the Indian Ocean and on land by West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985, South Asia covers about 5.1 million km², which is 11. 51% of the Asian continent or 3. 4% of the worlds land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.749 billion or about one fourth of the worlds population, overall, it accounts for about 39. 49% of Asias population and is home to a vast array of peoples. The area of South Asia and its extent is not clear cut as systemic. Aside from the region of South Asia, formerly part of the British Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar is included by some scholars in South Asia, but in Southeast Asia by others. Some do not include Afghanistan, others question whether Afghanistan should be considered a part of South Asia or the Middle East, the mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included as well. Myanmar is often added, and by various deviating definitions based on often substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the common concept of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the Raj, have not been proposed as any part of South Asia. Additionally Burma was administered as part of the Raj until 1937, the 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining Union of India or Dominion of Pakistan. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of members of SAARC. This bloc of countries include two independent countries that were not part of the British Raj – Nepal, and Bhutan, Afghanistan was a British protectorate from 1878 until 1919, after the Afghans lost to the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The United Nations Statistics Divisions scheme of sub-regions include all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia, population Information Network includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as part of South Asia. Maldives, in view of its characteristics, was admitted as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network only in principle, the Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region includes only the original seven signatories of SAARC. The British Indian Ocean Territory is connected to the region by a publication of Janes for security considerations, the inclusion of Myanmar in South Asia is without consensus, with many considering it a part of southeast Asia and others including it within South Asia. Afghanistan was of importance to the British colonial empire, especially after the Second Anglo-Afghan War over 1878–1880, Afghanistan remained a British protectorate until 1919, when a treaty with Vladimir Lenin included the granting of independence to Afghanistan. Following Indias partition, Afghanistan has generally included in South Asia
South Asia
–
While South Asia had never been a coherent
geopolitical region, it has a distinct geographical identity
South Asia
–
South Asia
South Asia
–
Ethno-linguistic families of South Asia.
45.
Indo-Scythians
–
Indo-Scythians is a term used to refer to Scythians, who migrated into parts of central, northern and western South Asia from the middle of the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD. The first Saka king in south Asia was Maues who established Saka power in Gandhara, Indo-Scythian rule in northwestern India ended with the last Western Satrap Rudrasimha III in 395 CE who was defeated by the Indian Emperor Chandragupta II of the Gupta Empire. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Indo-Scythians were defeated by the south Indian Emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Satavahana dynasty, later the Saka kingdom was completely destroyed by Chandragupta II of the Gupta Empire in the 4th century. The invasion of India by Scythian tribes from Central Asia, often referred to as the Indo-Scythian invasion, ancient Roman historians including Arrian and Claudius Ptolemy have mentioned that the ancient Sakas were basically nomads. However, Italo Ronca, in his study of Ptolemys chapter vi, marks the statement, The land of the Sakai belongs to nomads, they have no towns but dwell in forests. The ancestors of the Indo-Scythians are thought to be Sakas tribes, one group of Indo-European speakers that makes an early appearance on the Xinjiang stage is the Saka. According to these ancient sources Modu Shanyu of the Xiongnu tribe of Mongolia attacked the Yuezhi, leaving behind a remnant of their number, most of the population moved westwards. Around 175 BC, the Yuezhi tribes, were defeated by the Xiongnu tribes, there, they displaced the Sakas, who migrated south into Ferghana and Sogdiana. According to the Chinese historical chronicles, The Yuezhi attacked the king of the Sai who moved a distance to the south. The Sakas seem to have entered the territory of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom around 145 BC, the Sakas called home, an area of Southern Afghanistan, called after them Sistan. From there, they expanded into present day Iran as well as northern India, where they established various kingdoms. The region is known as Seistan. The presence of the Sakas in Sakastan in the 1st century BC is mentioned by Isidore of Charax in his Parthian stations, the first Indo-Scythian kingdom in south western Asia was located in Pakistan in the areas from Abiria to Surastrene, from around 110 to 80 BC. They progressively further moved north into Indo-Greek territory until the conquests of Maues, before it there lies a small island, and inland behind it is the metropolis of Scythia, Minnagara. The Indo-Scythians ultimately established a kingdom in the northwest, based in Taxila, in the southeast, the Indo-Scythians invaded the area of Ujjain, but were subsequently repelled in 57 BC by the Malwa king Vikramaditya. To commemorate the event Vikramaditya established the Vikrama era, a specific Indian calendar starting in 57 BC, more than a century later, in AD78 the Sakas would again invade Ujjain and establish the Saka era, marking the beginning of the long-lived Saka Western Satraps kingdom. Maues first conquered Gandhara and Taxila around 80 BCE, but his kingdom disintegrated after his death, in the east, the Indian king Vikrama retook Ujjain from the Indo-Scythians, celebrating his victory by the creation of the Vikrama Era. Indo-Greek kings again ruled after Maues, and prospered, as indicated by the profusion of coins from Kings Apollodotus II, not until Azes I, in 55 BC, did the Indo-Scythians take final control of northwestern India, with his victory over Hippostratos
Indo-Scythians
–
A Scythian horseman from the general area of the
Ili river,
Pazyryk, c 300 BC.
Indo-Scythians
–
Territories (full line) and expansion (dotted line) of the Indo-Scythians Kingdom at its greatest extent.
Indo-Scythians
–
The treasure of the royal burial
Tillia tepe is attributed to 1st century BC Sakas in
Bactria.
Indo-Scythians
–
Bearded man with cap, probably Scythian,
Bamiyan, 3rd–4th centuries.
46.
Sogdia
–
Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. In the Avesta, Sogdiana is listed as the second best land that the supreme deity Ahura Mazda had created and it comes second, after Airyanem Vaejah, homeland of the Aryans, in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana was conquered by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC and later formed part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centred on the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, embracing the valley of the Zeravshan. Sogdian territory corresponds to the provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan. During the High Middle Ages, Sogdian cities included sites stretching towards Issyk Kul such as that at the site of Suyab. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer a spoken language and it was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and even served as one of the Turkic Khaganates court languages for writing documents. Sogdians also lived in Imperial China and rose to prominence in the military. Sogdian merchants and diplomats traveled as far west as the Byzantine Empire and they played an important part as middlemen in the trade route of the Silk Road. The Sogdian conversion to Islam was virtually complete by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999, coinciding with the decline of the Sogdian language, as it was largely supplanted by Persian. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda, which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, according to Szemerényi, Sogdiana was named from the Skuda form. This large-scale migration included Eastern Iranian speaking peoples such as the Sogdians, Achaemenid ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana while campaigning in Central Asia in 546–539 BC, a fact mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories. Darius I introduced the Aramaic writing system and coin currency to Central Asia, in addition to incorporating Sogdians into his army as regular soldiers. A contingent of Sogdian soldiers fought in the army of Xerxes I during his ultimately failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. A Persian inscription from Susa claims that the palace there was adorned with lapis lazuli, given the absence of any named satraps for Sogdiana in historical records, modern scholarship has concluded that Sogdiana was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria. The satraps were often relatives of the ruling Persian kings, especially sons who were not designated as the heir apparent, Sogdiana likely remained under Persian control until roughly 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II. Rebellious states of the Persian Empire took advantage of the weak Artaxerxes II, persias massive loss of Central Asian territory is widely attributed to the rulers lack of control. However, unlike Egypt, which was recaptured by the Persian Empire
Sogdia
–
Sogdians, depicted on a Chinese Sogdian sarcophagus of the
Northern Qi era.
Sogdia
–
Sogdiana, c. 300 BC.
Sogdia
–
Gold coin of
Diodotus c. 250 BC.
Sogdia
–
Barbaric copy of a coin of
Euthydemus I, from the region of Sogdiana. The legend on the reverse is in
Aramaic script.
47.
Bactria
–
Bactria or Bactriana was the name of a historical region in Central Asia. Bactria was located between the Hindu Kush mountain range and the Amu Darya river, covering the region that straddles modern-day Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The English name Bactria is derived from the Ancient Greek, Βακτριανή, analogous names include the Pashto and Persian, باختر, translit. Bākhtar, Uzbek, Балх, Tajik, Бохтар, Chinese, 大夏, pinyin, Dàxià and this region played a major role in Central Asian history. At certain times the political limits of Bactria stretched far beyond the frame of the Bactrian plain. The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex is the modern designation for a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia. 2200–1700 BC, located in present-day eastern Turkmenistan, northern Afghanistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centred on the upper Amu Darya and its sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi. The early Greek historian Ctesias, c.400 BC, alleged that the legendary Assyrian king Ninus had defeated a Bactrian king named Oxyartes in ca.2140 BC, or some 1000 years before the Trojan War. Since the decipherment of cuneiform in the 19th century, however, according to some writers, Bactria was the homeland of Indo-Iranian tribes who moved south-west into Iran and into north-western India around 2500–2000 BC. Later, it became the province of the Persian Empire in Central Asia. It was in these regions, where the soil of the mountainous country is surrounded by the Turanian desert. After Darius III had been defeated by Alexander the Great, the satrap of Bactria, Bessus attempted to organise a resistance but was captured by other warlords. He was then tortured and killed, however, in the south, beyond the Oxus, he met strong resistance. After two years of war and an insurgency campaign, Alexander managed to establish little control over Bactria. After Alexanders death, Diodorus Siculus tells us that Philip received dominion over Bactria, at the Treaty of Triparadisus, both Diodorus Siculus and Arrian agree that the satrap Stasanor gained control over Bactria. Eventually, Alexanders empire was divided up among the generals in Alexanders army, Bactria became a part of the Seleucid Empire, named after its founder, Seleucus I. The Macedonians, especially Seleucus I and his son Antiochus I, established the Seleucid Empire, the Greek language became dominant for some time there. The paradox that Greek presence was more prominent in Bactria than in areas far closer to Greece can possibly be explained by past deportations of Greeks to Bactria
Bactria
–
Ancient cities of Bactria
Bactria
–
Goddesses, Bactria, Afghanistan, 2000–1800 BC.
Bactria
–
Kafirnigan from Tajikistan (traditional Bactrian male clothing).
Bactria
–
Kafirnigan from Tajikistan (traditional Bactrian female clothing).
48.
Kujula Kadphises
–
Kujula Kadphises was a Kushan prince who united the Yuezhi confederation during the 1st century CE, and became the first Kushan emperor. According to the Rabatak inscription, he was the grandfather of the great Kushan king Kanishka I. He is considered as the founder of the Kushan Empire, the origins of Kujula Kadphises are quite obscure, and it is usually considered he was a descendant of the Kushan ruler Heraios, or possibly identical with him. Interestingly however, Kujula shares his name some of the last Indo-Scythian rulers, such as Liaka Kusulaka, or his son Patika Kusulaka. He established himself as king, and his dynasty was called that of the Guishuang King and he invaded Anxi, and took the Gaofu region. He also defeated the whole of the kingdoms of Puda and Jibin, qiujiuque was more than eighty years old when he died. He defeated Tianzhu and installed Generals to supervise and lead it, the Yuezhi then became extremely rich. All the kingdoms call the Guishuang king, but the Han call them by their original name and this invasion of Kujula Kadphises is thought to have occurred during the reign of Abdagases and Sases, the successors of Gondophares, after 45 CE. The connection of Kujula with other Kushan rulers is described in the Rabatak inscription, discovered in Rbatak, Afghanistan some years ago, most of Kujulas coins were Hellenic or Roman in inspiration. Some coins used the portrait, name and title of the Indo-Greek king Hermaeus on the obverse, indicating Kujulas wish to relate himself to the Indo-Greek king. These coins bear the name of Kujula Kadphises in Kharoṣṭhī, with representations of the Greek demi-god Heracles on the back, and titles presenting Kujula as a ruler, Later coins, possibly posthumous, did describe Kujula as Maharajasa, or Great King. The Greek script on the coins of Kujula is barbarized, for example, ΣΤΗΡΟΣΣΥ on his Hermaeus coins is thought to be a deformation of ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ, the traditional title of Hermaeus on his coins. The Greek word for king is written ΒΑϹΙΛΕΩΣ, with both a lunate sigma and a normal sigma in the same word, the Kushans also added one character to the Greek script, it is the letter Ϸ, corresponding to the sound Sh, as in Kushan. Some coins of Kujula also represent a seated figure, formerly said to be one of the first known representations of the Buddha on a coin. Unfortunately, Whiteheads attribution of this coin to Kujula, and the claim that the figure on the obverse represents the Buddha, is now known to be incorrect. The correct attribution of this coin is to the Kushan king Huvishka, the obverse shows Huvishka seated on a couch. The first known coins carrying a representation of the Buddha were issued by Kujulas Great-grandson Kanishka I, some fewer coins of Kujula Kadphises also adopted a Roman style, with effigies closely resembling Caesar Augustus, although all the legends were then associated with Kujula himself. Such influences are linked to exchanges with the Roman Empire around that date, catalogue of coins in the Panjab Museum, Lahore
Kujula Kadphises
–
Coin of Kujula Kadphises, in the style of the Roman emperor
Augustus. Legend in Kushan language, corrupted Greek script: ΚΟΖΟΛΑ ΚΑΔΑΦΕΣ ΧΟϷΑΝΟΥ ΖΑΟΟΥ ("Kozola Kadaphes Koshanou Zaoou"): "Kudjula Kadphises, ruler of the Kushans".
British Museum.
Kujula Kadphises
Kujula Kadphises
–
Silver denarius of
Tiberius (14-37 CE) found in India. Indian copy of the same, 1st century CE. Coin of Kushan king Kujula Kadphises copying a coin of
Augustus.
Kujula Kadphises
–
Kujula seated cross legged facing, Kharoshti legend: Kuyula Kadaphasa Kushanasa. Zeus on the reverse, Greek legend: KOZOΛA XOPANOY ZAOOY.
49.
Kushan Empire
–
The Kushan Empire was a syncretic empire, formed by Yuezhi, in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. Emperor Kanishka was a patron of Buddhism, however, as Kushans expanded southward. The Kushans were one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, the Kushans possibly used the Greek language initially for administrative purposes, but soon began to use Bactrian language. Kanishka sent his armies north of the Karakoram mountains, capturing territories as far as Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkant, in the Tarim Basin of modern-day Xinjiang, China. A direct road from Gandhara to China remained under Kushan control for more than a century, encouraging travel across the Karakoram, the Kushan dynasty had diplomatic contacts with the Roman Empire, Sasanian Persia, Aksumite Empire and Han China. The Kushan empire fragmented into semi-independent kingdoms in the 3rd century AD, in the 4th century, the Guptas, an Indian dynasty also pressed from the east. The last of the Kushan and Sasanian kingdoms were overwhelmed by invaders from the north. Historian H. G. Rawlinson states that the Kushana Period is a prelude to the age of Guptas. Chinese sources describe the Guishuang, i. e, as the historian John E. Hill has put it, For well over a century. There have been arguments about the ethnic and linguistic origins of the Da Yuezhi, Kushans, and the Tochari. The five tribes constituting the Yuezhi are known in Chinese history as Xiūmì, Guìshuāng, Shuāngmǐ, Xìdùn, the Yuezhi reached the Hellenic kingdom of Greco-Bactria around 135 BC. The displaced Greek dynasties resettled to the southeast in areas of the Hindu Kush, some traces remain of the presence of the Kushans in the area of Bactria and Sogdiana. Archaeological structures are known in Takht-I-Sangin, Surkh Kotal, and in the palace of Khalchayan, various sculptures and friezes are known, representing horse-riding archers, and significantly men with artificially deformed skulls, such as the Kushan prince of Khalchayan. The Chinese first referred to people as the Yuezhi and said they established the Kushan Empire. On the ruins of ancient Hellenistic cities such as Ai-Khanoum, the Kushans are known to have built fortresses, the earliest documented ruler, and the first one to proclaim himself as a Kushan ruler, was Heraios. He calls himself a tyrant on his coins, and also exhibits skull deformation and he may have been an ally of the Greeks, and he shared the same style of coinage. Heraios may have been the father of the first Kushan emperor Kujula Kadphises, Ban Gus Book of Han tells us the Kushans divided up Bactria in 128 BC. He invaded Anxi, and took the Gaofu region and he also defeated the whole of the kingdoms of Puda and Jibin
Kushan Empire
–
Kushan territories (full line) and maximum extent of Kushan dominions under
Kanishka the Great (dotted line), according to the
Rabatak inscription.
Kushan Empire
–
History of Afghanistan
Kushan Empire
–
Head of a Kushan prince (Khalchayan palace,
Uzbekistan).
Kushan Empire
–
A Buddhist devotee in Kushan dress, Mathura, 2nd century. The Kushan dress is generally depicted as quite stiff, and it is thought it was often made of leather (Francine Tissot, "Gandhara").
50.
Kanishka
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Kanishka I, or Kanishka the Great, was the emperor of the Kushan dynasty in the second century. He is famous for his military, political, and spiritual achievements, a descendant of Kushan empire founder Kujula Kadphises, Kanishka came to rule an empire in Bactria extending from Turfan in the Tarim Basin to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain. The main capital of his empire was located at Puruṣapura in Gandhara and his conquests and patronage of Buddhism played an important role in the development of the Silk Road, and the transmission of Mahayana Buddhism from Gandhara across the Karakoram range to China. Earlier scholars believed that Kanishka ascended the throne in 78 CE, however, this date is not now regarded as the historical date of Kanishkas accession. Kanishka is estimated to have accessed to the throne in AD127 by Falk, Kanishka was a Kushan of probable Yuezhi ethnicity. However, this was adopted by the Kushans to facilitate communication with local subjects. It is not certain, what language the Kushan elite spoke among themselves, Kanishka was the successor of Vima Kadphises, as demonstrated by an impressive genealogy of the Kushan kings, known as the Rabatak inscription. Knowledge of his hold over Central Asia is less well established. The Book of the Later Han, Hou Hanshu, states that general Ban Chao fought battles near Khotan with a Kushan army of 70,000 men led by an otherwise unknown Kushan viceroy named Xie in 90 AD. Though Ban Chao claimed to be victorious, forcing the Kushans to retreat by use of a scorched-earth policy, the region fell to Kushan forces in the early 2nd century. As a result, for a period the territory of the Kushans extended for a period as far as Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand. Several coins of Kanishka have been found in the Tarim Basin, controlling both the land and sea trade routes between South Asia and Rome seems to have been one of Kanishkas chief imperial goals. Kanishkas coins portray images of Indian, Greek, Iranian and even Sumero-Elamite divinities, Kanishkas coins from the beginning of his reign bear legends in Greek language and script and depict Greek divinities. Later coins bear legends in Bactrian, the Iranian language that the Kushans evidently spoke, and Greek divinities were replaced by corresponding Iranian ones. All of Kanishkas coins – even ones with a legend in the Bactrian language – were written in a modified Greek script that had one additional glyph to represent /š/, as in the word Kushan and Kanishka. On his coins, the king is depicted as a bearded man in a long coat and trousers gathered at the ankle. He wears large rounded boots, and is armed with a sword similar to a scimitar as well as a lance. He is frequently seen to be making a sacrifice on a small altar, a few coins at the beginning of his reign have a legend in the Greek language and script, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ ΚΑΝΗϷΚΟΥ, basileus basileon kaneshkou of Kanishka, king of kings
Kanishka
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Gold coin of Kanishka.
British Museum.
Kanishka
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Statue of Kanishka I, 1st century,
Mathura Museum. Has four
Fleur-de-lis symbols in a square emblem repeated twice on the bottom end of his smaller sword.
Kanishka
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Vima Kadphises was Kanishka's father.
British Museum.
Kanishka
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Kushan territories (full line) and maximum extent of Kushan dominions under Kanishka (dotted line), according to the
Rabatak inscription.
51.
Han Dynasty
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The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a commander, Liu Bang defeated him at Battle of Gaixia. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han
Han Dynasty
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History of China
Han Dynasty
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Han dynasty in 1 AD.
Han Dynasty
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A
silk banner from
Mawangdui,
Changsha,
Hunan province. It was draped over the coffin of
Lady Dai (d. 168 BC), wife of the Marquess Li Cang (利蒼) (d. 186 BC), chancellor for the Kingdom of Changsha.
Han Dynasty
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A
gilded bronze
oil lamp in the shape of a kneeling female servant, dated 2nd century BC, found in the tomb of
Dou Wan, wife of the Han prince
Liu Sheng; its sliding shutter allows for adjustments in the direction and brightness in light while it also traps smoke within the body.
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