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'Mummy of a child warrior from 'lost medieval civilisation' unearthed near Arctic'

July 20, 2015, 11:17 am
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Siberian Times by Anna Liesowska
17 July 2015
Wrapped in reindeer hide and fur, the 6-to-7 year old was protected by a child-sized bronze axe and bear's pendant.
The child - seen here in these remarkable pictures for the first time - appears to be from a higher social strata that previous remains unearthed at the site, the mysterious  Zeleny Yar necropolis. Picture: Yamalo-Nenets regional Museum and Exhibition Complex 
Scientists this week opened the mummified child's remains cocooned in birch bark and copper which - combined with the permafrost - produced an accidental mummification.
The child - seen here in these remarkable pictures for the first time - appears to be from a higher social strata that previous remains unearthed at the site, the mysterious  Zeleny Yar necropolis, close to the Siberian Arctic, which had ancient links to Persia. So far only one female - a child - has been found at the burial place. 
The major new find close to Salekhard is seen as exciting by experts who are conducting MRI scans on the remains. 
Alexander Gusev, research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Arctic, told The Siberian Times: 'We did the MRI scan first and yesterday held the first stage of opening the cocoon. We saw that the body was almost fully mummified, thanks to copper - or bronze - plates, except for the right hand and his legs.'
He said: 'The remains belong to a boy, 6-to-7 years old. We suppose it was a boy because we have found small bronze axe with the body, and some sharp tool, which we can not identify yet.
New Yamal mummy
New Yamal mummy
'We saw that the body was almost fully mummified, thanks to copper - or bronze - plates, except for the right hand and his legs.' Pictures: Yamalo-Nenets regional Museum and Exhibition Complex
'The body was wrapped in two layers of fur, one layer is reindeer hide, with long and stiff hair. The other layer is softer, we will be able to say more clearly which animal it was after the analysis in Ekaterinburg.'
Along with the remains - the preservation of which was aided by permafrost - scientists found 'a bronze pendant in the form of a bear'. Additionally, there was a 'small bronze axe, and temple rings made of bronze. 
The body was covered with copper or bronze plates on the face, chest, abdomen, groin - and bonded with leather cords.' The items found with the body - the axe, pendant and rings - suggests 'this was not some poor boy'. The child warrior was 'not from the lower strata of society'.
It is early in their research and the experts say it 'premature' to know if the boy was from the most elite echelons of a society that appears different to others known in northern Siberia. Yet his method of burial also appears different to previous remains unearthed in this remote spot, where no adult females have been located. 
Archeologist Natalia Fyodorova  said: 'We have not completed the works with this find yet, so we hope to find new details and a clearer picture soon. For now I can say that in the basis of this burial is some oval wooden structure, resembling the big oval plate. We will know what is this more exactly after finish our work. 
New Yamal mummy
New Yamal mummy
New Yamal mummy
New Yamal mummy
'The body was covered with copper or bronze plates on the face, chest, abdomen, groin - and bonded with leather cords.' Pictures: Yamalo-Nenets regional Museum and Exhibition Complex
'On this plate lies the body of a boy wrapped in some soft fur....over the fur layer lay the bronze things - axe, pendant, rings and metal plates. Then it was covered in the second layer of fur. Next it was overlain with bast and then all wrapped in the bark.'
Dr Fyodorova, deputy director of the Shemanovsky Science Museum and Exhibition Centre, said: 'If we compare this with previous child burials on this site, we can see some things in common. For example,  all the children were wrapped in fur and had no other clothes. 
'Still, this burial differs. First of all, other children were buried in a wooden sarcophagus, but here we some some oval wooden construction. The other difference is that here we can see many things buried with this child - axe, pendant, bronze rings. It is not typical. 
'At the moment, a second MRI scan is underway to detect more details.'
New Yamal mummy
New Yamal mummy
New Yamal mummy
The items found with the body - the axe, pendant and rings - suggests 'this was not some poor boy'. Pictures: Yamalo-Nenets regional Museum and Exhibition Complex
Scientists say the mummification at this site was 'accidental': it was not intended by this ancient clan, but happened because of the copper and permafrost. The boy's remains were dug up several weeks ago, but only now opened in Salekhard. It is the first mummy from the civilisation found at this intriguing site since 2002. 
'The birch bark 'cocoon' is of 1.28 metres in length and about 30 cm at the widest part', said Dr Gusev.  'It follows the contours of the human body.' Iniitally they suspected a teenagers remains lay inside the birch bark, but when opened it is clear the child is much younger. 
Previously, archeologists found 34 shallow graves at the medieval site, including 11 bodies with shattered or missing skulls, and smashed skeletons. Five mummies were found to be shrouded in copper, while also elaborately covered in reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Among the graves found so far is just one female, a child, her face masked by copper plates. There are no adult women.  
mummified by accident - but who were they? mummies found in Salekhard
mummified by accident, but who were these people?
Child mummy with the facial copper mask
Mummified hand of a child
Five mummies were found to be shrouded in copper, while also elaborately covered in reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Pictures: The SIberian Times, Natalya Fyodorova
Nearby were found three copper masked infant mummies - all males. They were bound in four or five copper hoops, several centimetres wide.
Similarly, a red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating. In his resting place, was an iron hatchet, furs, and a head buckle made of bronze depicting a bear.
The feet of the deceased are all pointing towards the Gorny Poluy River, a fact which is seen as having religious significance. The burial rituals are unknown to experts.
Artifacts included bronze bowls originating in Persia, some 3,700 miles to the south-west, dating from the tenth or eleventh centuries. One of the burials dates to 1282, according to a study of tree rings, while others are believed to be older. 
The researchers found by one of the adult mummies an iron combat knife, silver medallion and a bronze bird figurine. These are understood to date from the seventh to the ninth centuries. 
Unlike other burial sites in Siberia, for example in the permafrost of the Altai Mountains, or those of the Egyptian pharaohs, the purpose did not seem to be to mummify the remains, hence the claim that their preservation until modern times was an accident.
Face of mummified adult man
Mummy of adult man
Similarly, a red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating. In his resting place, was an iron hatchet, furs, and a head buckle made of bronze depicting a bear. Pictures: Kate Baklitskaya, Go East
The soil in this spot is sandy and not permanently frozen. A combination of the use of copper, which prevented oxidation, and a sinking of the temperature in the 14th century, is behind the good condition of the remains today. 
Dr Fyodorova, of the Ural branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said previously: 'Nowhere in the world are there so many mummified remains found outside the permafrost or the marshes. 
'It is a unique archaeological site. We are pioneers in everything from taking away the object of sandy soil (which has not been done previously) and ending with the possibility of further research.'
In 2002, archeologists were forced to halt work at the site due to objections by locals on the Yamal peninsula, a land of reindeer and energy riches known to locals as 'the end of the earth'.
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6th/ 7th Century Glass near Kyoto shrine likely came from ancient Persia

July 20, 2015, 12:42 pm
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The Asahi Shimbun  July 13, 2015
By KAZUTO TSUKAMOTO/ Staff Writer


 A glass fragment found in Kamigamojinja shrine in Kyoto that is believed to have come from ancient Persia (Provided by Yoshinari Abe)
The chemical composition of a glass fragment unearthed 50 years ago at Kamigamojinja shrine in Kyoto, a World Heritage site, is a near match for glass found in the ruins of a royal palace from Persia’s Sasanian Dynasty (226-651).
Testing conducted by a group of researchers that included Yoshinari Abe, an assistant professor of analytical chemistry at the Tokyo University of Science, confirmed the match.
The glass fragment is believed to have been manufactured between the sixth and seventh centuries. It also has characteristics that are similar to those found in the “Hakururinowan” bowl, one of the treasures kept in Nara’s Shosoin Repository at Todaiji temple. Researchers hope the fragment will help them determine where the treasures in Shosoin came from.
The fragment, which is believed to have come from a thick glass bowl with double circular patterns, is six centimeters long, 4.2 cm wide and one cm thick. It was discovered in 1964 by a local historian at a site north of the main hall of the shrine, located in Kita Ward.
It is being kept at the Kyoto City Archaeological Museum. Kamigamojinja enshrines Kamowakeikazuchi no Okami, the ancestral god of the ancient Kamo clan, and is believed to have been a site of rituals in ancient times.
Abe and his fellow researchers analyzed the glass fragment at the SPring-8, the world’s largest synchrotron radiation facility, in Sayo, Hyogo Prefecture. They found that its chemical composition was almost identical to glass found in Veh-Ardashir, a royal palace in the dynasty’s capital Ctesiphon (in central Iraq).
In a previous discovery, the same researchers found similarities in the chemical composition of a glass bowl with circular patterns and a glass dish with items belonging to the Sasanian Dynasty and the Roman Empire (27 B.C.-395 A.D.), respectively. The glass bowl and dish were unearthed in the No. 126 tomb of the Niizawasenzuka group of ancient tombs in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.
“In those days, only super high-grade products made in West Asia may have been brought to Japan,” said Ryuji Shikaku, a researcher at the Okayama Orient Museum who specializes in West Asian archaeology. He jointly analyzed the glass fragment with Abe.
A cut glass bowl manufactured by Persia’s Sasanian Dynasty that is believed to be of the same type as a glass fragment discovered at Kamigamojinja shrine (Provided by Miho Museum)
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DNA Reveals These Red-Haired Chinese Mummies Come From Europe And Asia

July 21, 2015, 12:16 pm
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a) Fourth layer of the Xiaohe cemetery showing a large number of large phallus and vulva posts; b) a well-preserved boat coffin; c) female mummy with European features; d) double-layered coffin excavated from the Xiaohe cemetery. (Figure 2 from Li et al. in BMC Genetics 2015 16:78. Image used under a CC-BY 4.0 license.) 
 Contributor

I write about archaeology, anthropology, and the classical world.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.


Within a nondescript Bronze Age cemetery first discovered by Swedish archaeologists in 1934 and rediscovered by the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute in 2000, researchers have found the oldest and best-preserved mummies in the Tarim Basin area of China. Their skeletal remains, along with unprecedented artifacts, are helping solve the longstanding question of the origins of human settlement in a politically contested area of China.
Contemporary occupants of the Tarim Basin, a geographical area in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region of northwest China, are both biologically and culturally diverse.  The region borders numerous countries and was historically a part of the Silk Road trade route between the West and the East, so people and artifacts have moved through the Tarim Basin for thousands of years. But the origins of the inhabitants of the basin have been questioned.
One hypothesis suggests that the earliest settlers of this part of Asia were nomadic herders from the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan, while the other suggests that people came first from the oases of Bactria, or modern Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. While both hypotheses have support in archaeological findings such as burial customs, clothing styles, and animal bones, previous genetic evidence from human remains, which came from a cemetery called Gumugou on the eastern edge of the Tarim Basin, was inconclusive.
Writing in the journals BMC Genetics and BMC Biology, Chunxiang Li, an ancient DNA specialist at Jilin University, and colleagues report on their analysis of human remains from the Xiaohe tomb complex also on the eastern edge of the basin. Dating to about 4000 years before present, the site boasts notable artifacts like “numerous large phallus and vulva posts made of poplar, striking wooden human figurines and masts, well-preserved boat coffins, leather hides,” as well as grain and other preserved organic material, they write. More importantly, Xiaohe has produced the oldest, best-preserved mummies in the Tarim Basin, ideal for testing hypotheses about the origins of these people, and the site spans a millennium, making it ideal for looking into population interaction after initial settlement.

In a Feb. 18, 2011 photo, the Beauty of Xiaohe, a mummy discovered in the Tarim Basin in far western China, is shown at the “Secrets of the Silk Road” exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. The exhibit is scheduled to run through until March 15. Philadelphia is the final stop before the artifacts return to China. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
From the earliest layer of burials, Li and colleagues tested 20 individuals who produced affinities with 5 different mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, or major branches on the female side of the genetic family tree. “The dominant haplogroup,” they write, “in the Xiaohe people was the East Eurasian lineage C” which corresponds with a likely origin in South Siberia. But there were also “two West Eurasian mtDNA haplogroups H and K.” In looking more closely at the lineages and mutations, however, Li and colleagues noted that several of the samples had mutations that are either rare in modern people or are not found in modern gene banks. They further analyzed Y chromosome haplogroups to attempt to identify major branches of the male line. But all seven males in the study belonged to a haplogroup that is widely distributed throughout Eurasia.
“Considering the presence of haplogroups H and K in the Xiaohe people and the geographical distribution of shared sequences, we conclude that the west Eurasian component observed in the Xiaohe people originated from western Europe, and maternal ancestry of the Xiaohe people might have close relationships with western Europeans,” Li and colleagues note. By the Bronze Age, the people buried at Xiaohe cemetery were already “admixed,” coming together millennia earlier in Siberia and Mongolia.
In order to delve more deeply into population movement along the Silk Road, Li and colleagues examined dozens more samples from three later time periods at Xiaohe. Again, the most common mtDNA haplogroup was C, suggesting origins in southern Siberia. These more recent burial layers “confirmed that the origin of the mitochondrial lineages is more widespread,” the researchers write, including six west Eurasian lineages, five east Eurasian lineages, and one Indian lineage. In particular, the “west Eurasian genetic components in the Xiaohe people corroborate the ‘steppe hypothesis’.”
Map of Eurasia showing the location of the Xiaohe cemetery, the Tarim Basin, the ancient Silk Road routes and the areas occupied by cultures associated with the settlement of the Tarim Basin. This figure is drawn according to literature (Figure 1 from Li et al. BMC Genetics 2015 16:78. Used with a CC-BY 4.0 license.)
Map of Eurasia showing the location of the Xiaohe cemetery, the Tarim Basin, the ancient Silk Road routes and the areas occupied by cultures associated with the settlement of the Tarim Basin. This figure is drawn according to literature (Figure 1 from Li et al. BMC Genetics 2015 16:78. Used with a CC-BY 4.0 license.)
Reconstructing a possible route by which the Tarim Basin was populated, Li and colleagues write that “people bearing the south/west Asian components could have first married into pastoralist populations and reached North Xinjiang through the Kazakh steppe following the movement of pastoralist populations, then spread from North Xinjiang southward into the Tarim Basin across the Tianshan Mountains, and intermarried with the earlier inhabitants of the region, giving rise to the later, admixed Xiaohe community.”
The populations from the Russian steppe seem to have contributed more genetically to this population than did the populations from the oases of Bactria. “The groups reaching the Tarim Basin through the oasis route,” the researchers note, “may have interacted culturally with earlier populations from the steppe, with limited gene flow, resulting in a small genetic signal of the oasis agriculturalists in the Xiaohe community.”
The story of the Tarim mummies is compelling because of their incredible preservation and their striking array of diverse biological features. In unfurling their DNA, researchers like Li and colleagues may finally have solved the mystery of their origins.
For more information on DNA analysis from the Xiaohe cemetery, please see: Li et al. 2015. Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from the Xiaohe cemetery: insights into prehistoric population movements in the Tarim Basin, China. BMC Genetics 16:78. DOI 10.1186/s12863-015-0237-5. Li et al. 2010. Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age. BMC Biology 8:15. DOI 10.1186/1741-7007-8-15.
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Kristina Killgrove is a bioarchaeologist and university professor. For more osteology news, follow her on Twitter (@DrKillgrove) or like her Facebook page Powered by Osteons.
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Mobilisation of the European Periphery against the Mongols

July 26, 2015, 11:18 am
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By John H. Lind
The Reception of Medieval Europe in the Baltic Sea Region: Papers of the XIIth Visby Symposium held at Gotland University, Visby (Gotland University Press, 2009)
Introduction: In an earlier contribution to the Culture Clash or Compromise (CCC) project, entitled ‘Collaboration and Confrontation between East and West on the Baltic Rim as result of the Baltic Crusade’ I related how, according to the Novgorod Chronicles, newly arrived crusaders, together with the Sword Brothers, allied themselves with the Russian-Orthodox Pskovites before they went on to their crushing defeat at the hands of the Lithuanians at Saule in September 1236. I then made the claim that this was the last time where Russians and crusaders collaborated on a larger scale. With the entry of the Teutonic Order on the scene after the battle at Saule the previous potential allies, Novgorod and Pskov, became themselves potential victims of the crusading movement.
The reasons for my claim were twofold. First it has been the almost universally accepted opinion that Aleksandr Nevskii, the Russian prince who was to be the dominating figure in Russia’s affairs, both internal and external, from the 1240s until his death in 1263, was a staunch defender of the Orthodox Church against the papally sponsored crusading movement of the Catholic Church right from the time of his first appearance on the political scene as prince of Novgorod at the tender age of twenty. Secondly, Pope Gregory IX, who was pope from 1227 and died in August 1241, deliberately advocated a policy of confrontation by the newly established Catholic powers in the Baltic region with the Orthodox Russians in the neighbouring Russian principalities. As early as 1232 the Pope had written to the bishop of Semigallia forbidding the Catholic powers in the region to conclude peace or armistice with the pagans and Russians. Then, in November 1234, Pope Gregory laid the ideological foundation for this policy when he summoned the Sword Brothers, the archbishop of Riga and other leading ecclesiastics in Livonia to Rome to answer a number of charges. Among these was precisely the allegation that they had allied themselves with the ‘heretic Russians’ (Rutenos hereticos)? By pinning such a label on the Russians, the Pope singled them out as potential targets of future crusades.
It was a policy in which the Pope sought to involve ail the Scandinavian countries. First of ail he wanted once more to engage the Danish king who, after he had had to ransom himself from his kidnappers in 1223-25, had lost most of his Baltic possessions and, with them, his influence. Having repeatedly attempted to persuade first the Sword Brothers, then the Teutonic Order, to hand over the former Danish possessions in Estonia to the king of Denmark, Pope Gregory finally, through the good offices of his legate, William of Modena, managed to get the Order to relinquish the three northernmost Estonian provinces to the king in the Treaty of Stensby on 7 June 1238. A year before, in a papal bull of December 1237, Pope Gregory had urged the Swedes to continue their expansion towards the East with a crusade in Finland against the Tavastians, probably as a preliminary to their further crusade against the Russians in 1240. In 1241 the Pope even attempted to involve distant Norway in the fight against the Orthodox Russians. At least he permitted King Hâkon to commute the vow he had made to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, provided he instead directed a crusade against his pagan neighbours. For this to make sense, these pagan neighbours can only have been Russian-allied Karelians in the North.
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Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy

July 27, 2015, 7:58 am
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Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy 



  • Hardcover: 704 pages
  • Publisher: Da Capo Press (July 14, 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0306823950

Mongol leader Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East, and Russia. So how did an illiterate nomad rise to such colossal power and subdue most of the known world, eclipsing Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon? Credited by some with paving the way for the Renaissance, condemned by others for being the most heinous murderer in history, who was Genghis Khan?

His actual name was Temujin, and the story of his success is that of the Mongol people: a loose collection of fractious tribes who tended livestock, considered bathing taboo, and possessed an unparalleled genius for horseback warfare. United under Genghis, a strategist of astonishing cunning and versatility, they could dominate any sedentary society they chose.

Combining fast-paced accounts of battles with rich cultural background and the latest scholarship, Frank McLynn brings vividly to life the strange world of the Mongols, describes Temujin's rise from boyhood outcast to becoming Genghis Khan, and provides the most accurate and absorbing account yet of one of the most powerful men ever to have lived.







Five Myths About Genghis Khan

tags: Genghis Khan 

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by Frank McLynn
Frank McLynn is the author of Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy (Da Capo Press, July 2015). 

1. He was a one-dimensional tyrant of a ‘right wing’ kind
A close study of the principal sources (in Mongolian, Arabic and Persian) reveals a personality of the utmost complexity. Depending on mood or context he could be all of the following: shrewd, far-sighted, just, generous, stoical, restrained, iron-willed, multitalented, a man with all the gifts of a great ruler and cowardly, treacherous, devious, ruthless, ungrateful, vengeful and even stupid. 
Usually an uncannily sharp reader of men, he could be naïve, as when he was taken in by a Chinese charlatan called Chung Chan, who became his guru and spiritual adviser. But in this respect he was not so very different from those eminent personalities in modern times who have been taken in by ‘perfect masters’ of every stripe. He was prey to paranoia and jealousy and could fly into terrible rages, but he was also charming and charismatic and attracted a faithful following in the days before he had the power to constrain anyone by fear. As for the popular ‘to the right’ of Genghis Khan’ tag, this is of course anachronistic nonsense, since the terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ did not appear in history until the French Revolution.
2. He was uniquely cruel, perhaps even a psychopath 
The important thing to realize about Genghis was that he may have exceeded in degree, but never in kind, the routine cruelty of the Middle Ages. One could give any number of instances of medieval war crimes: the slaughter of the Song Chinese by their rivals the Jin at Kaifeng in 1127; the massacre of the Albigensians by fellow-Christians at Beziers and Carcassonne in 1209; Edward I’s butchery of 8,000 Scots at Berwick in 1296; the 30,000 Hindus killed at Chittor in 1303 by the troops of Ala al-din Khilji; the Byzantine mass blinding of the Bulgars in 1014; the behavior of the Christians at Antioch and Jerusalem during the First Crusade – one could go on and on. Genghis was no more and no less cruel than other victors in his era. 
He was not perceived by contemporaries as being exceptional in this regard nor did he have the kind of exceptional contemporary reputation that Henry VIII had in the sixteenth century. He could not rival Tamerlane for slaugherous brutality and can be documented as less bloodthirsty than contemporary Chinese, Khitans or Persians. Many tales of Mongol atrocities were exaggerated by their enemies and critics, especially Arab historians. The Mongols themselves were happy to collude in this black propaganda, as the legend made opponents less likely to resist them and more likely to surrender without a fight. Moral judgements made from a twenty-first century standpoint are of no use in helping us to understand history.
3. His ‘surrender or die’ policy was an outrageous crime against humanity
This policy has attracted a lot of attention, and various reasons have been adduced for it: the result of a small-scale steppe mentality transposed onto a world stage; because in terms of Genghis’s conviction that he had been appointed by God to rule the world resistance to him was blasphemy; because the Mongols feared and hated cities and spent their fury on them once taken; because it was the most efficient way to warn already conquered peoples not to attempt ‘stab in the back’ revolts as the Mongols pressed ever onwards. 
But the simplest explanation is that the Mongols, a far from numerous people, were always obsessed with casualties, so that the best-case scenario was a walkover surrender in which none of their troops died. This explains why nearly all the cities that surrendered without even token resistance received relatively good treatment. It was the fear of casualties that triggered the Mongols’s worst excesses. Sustaining large numbers of dead and wounded when besieging a city meant they would take a terrible revenge when the city finally fell, and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the toll of the massacred; sometimes this included every last human being, including women and children and all animals, including cats and dogs. It also explains the policy that so appalled the Arab historians: using prisoners of war in the Mongol front ranks as ‘arrow fodder.’ But an era that has witnessed the egregious atrocities of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ of 1941 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, in a so-called civilized age, not to mention the Holocaust, has no call to single out the Mongols.
4. Genghis and the Mongols were successful because they swamped their enemies with ‘hordes,’ overwhelming them with sheer numbers
This is one of the hoariest of all myths associated with the Mongols and one of the falsest. Until the time of Genghis’s grandson Kubilai Khan, the Mongols always fought from a position of numerical inferiority. Their most famous set-piece victories, against the Russians at the Kalka river in 1222, against the Poles at Liegnitz in 1241 and against the Hungarians at Mohi the same year, all fit into this category. The most famous example of conquest with numerical inferiority came with the defeat by the Mongols (a people of two millions maximum) of the Jin empire of northern China, whose population was probably close to one hundred million. In fact the Mongols achieved their victories because they had achieved a quantum leap in military technology. Other medieval armies simply had no answer to master horsemen firing arrows from powerful bows at distances of three hundred yards; it was probably the first demonstration in history of the primacy of artillery.
5. Genghis is ‘the father of us all’ –we nearly all descend from the Mongols
Here we enter the arcane world of genetics. Geneticists have established that about 0.8 per cent of the population of Asia has an identical Y-chromosome, indicating the likelihood of a common ancestor, possibly some time around 1000 A.D. This would imply that about 0.5% of the world’s population has this common ancestor, and that he has 16-17 million descendants. The easy availability of huge numbers of women to Genghis and his sons, as to no other identifiable Asian personality, makes it likely that Genghis might be this mysterious progenitor. But the theory has not generally been accepted. The difference of a couple of centuries between the dates of Genghis’s life and the timing of this putative ancestor could no doubt be explained away, but there are simply too many imponderables to allow such a neat calculation, and even on the best-case scenario the most we would have, without a tissue sample from Genghis himself, is probability. But Genghis as the undoubted common ancestor makes a headline that sells newspapers, and devotees of ‘good copy’ are not above distorting the argument still further.
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Ghengis Khan exhibit at the Franklin Institute LA

July 29, 2015, 4:03 am
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6abc Loves the Arts: GENGHIS KHAN: BRING THE LEGEND
GENGHIS KHAN: BRING THE LEGEND TO LIFE is on exhibit at the Franklin Institute through January 3rd.

GENGHIS KHAN: BRING THE LEGEND TO LIFE is on exhibit at the Franklin Institute through January 3rd.

A new exhibit at The Franklin Institute takes visitors back to the ancient land of Mongolia. GENGHIS KHAN: BRING THE LEGEND TO LIFE does just that, painting a vivid picture of an ancient land and sharing little known facts about its infamous conqueror.

In the 13th century, Mongolia was huge, spanning 11 million miles across Asia and Eastern Europe. And while history portrays Genghis Kahn as a barbarian, the exhibit's creator is out to show he was also a sophisticated statesman.

"We wouldn't have so many features of Western life if it wasn't for what he imported from the East," says Dom Lessem, the exhibit's creator. Things like the violin, pants, lemons, paper, money and passports, though quite different than the travel documents we use today says Lessem. "He would have all kinds of secret messengers. Sometimes he would shave their heads, write the message on their heads, let the hair grow back, send them off, get to the destination, shave the head and read the message."

Lessem found one very rare passport that is written in a secret language. "There's only one guy in the Western World who could translate it, basically says "I am the emissary of the Khan, if you defy me you die."

It took Lessem 8 years to amass the collectibles that show how Khan built his vast empire in 25 short years with innovations like the whistling arrow. "They'd shoot it over the enemy so before the enemy could even reach with their little bows they hear this whistle and they think "Oh my god these guys can kill me in a minute" and they put down their arms and run away right then."

The exhibit also explores the Mongol's nomadic lifestyle. The so-called yurts they lived in are still used by Mongolian nomads today. "You can see with an accordion like a baby gate it folds up in a few hours a few nomads can relocate somewhere else they want to bring their herd," Lessem admires.

With more than 200 weapons, jewels, documents and monuments, the exhibit brings a vanished world back to life. "So that's what we try to do - tell his life, the society of Mongolia, and illustrate it with these splendid things."

GENGHIS KHAN: BRING THE LEGEND TO LIFE is on exhibit at the Franklin Institute through January 3rd. For tickets, go to www.FI.edu or you can visit www.6abc.com/lovesthearts to learn about other area events.
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Dating famous Shigir Idol from Kirovgrad under criticism

July 30, 2015, 4:56 am
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German scientists 'took samples abroad for analysis' which were 'illegally obtained' from famous Shigir Idol.
'The examination of the idol was conducted without coordination with the relevant ministries and even the director of the Yekaterinburg History Museum Natalia Vetrova was not informed about the methods of the expertise.' Picture: Ekaterina Osintseva
The statue is twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids, and contains arguably the most ancient coded message on the planet, but it is now embroiled in a very modern Russian criminal case. 
The Investigative Committee in Sverdlovesk region has opened a criminal probe on causing damage to the famous Shigir Idol, estimate to be 9,500 years old. Since last year, the Culture Ministry in Moscow has been seeking legal redress over the way samples of the wooden statue were taken, and then exported by eminent German scientists for analysis. 
The latest move overturns an earlier 'illegal and groundless' decision not to take action under a clause in the criminal code prohibiting the destruction or damage of historical and cultural monuments.
A source in the Culture Ministry in Yekaterinburg said: 'The examination of the idol was conducted without coordination with the relevant ministries and even the director of the Yekaterinburg History Museum Natalia Vetrova was not informed about the methods of the expertise.' 
Shigir idol
In June 2014, German scientists Uwe Hoysner and Thomas Terberger arrived in Yekaterinburg and took the samples of Shigir idol to determine the statue's exact age. Picture: Alexander Mamaev/URA.ru
One senior official Tatiana Bondar said: 'We, like everyone else, saw the television programme [about taking the samples by German scientists]. We cannot say how many centimetres of the Idol were taken away. There are also questions about the fragments that were taken to Germany - they could not be sent abroad without a permission. Our management did not give any permit for export.' 
The hunt is now on for offenders who face a maximum penalty of three years in prison. 
In June 2014, German scientists Uwe Hoysner and Thomas Terberger arrived in Yekaterinburg and took the samples of Shigir idol to determine the statue's exact age.
It is unclear if they are under suspicion of unauthorised cutting of the statue,  but meanwhile their expected announcement on dating the Idol is now some months behind schedule for unknown reasons. There is speculation that Natalia Vetrova could become one of the accused on the basis that her museum had no authority to allow samples to be cut from the Idol.
This ancient example of human creativity was recovered in January 1890 near Kirovgrad. It is made of 159 year old larch, and covered with Mesolithic era symbols, which are not yet decoded. 
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
Made of 159 year old larch, it is covered with Mesolithic era symbols which are not yet decoded. Pictures: Ekaterina Osintseva
Originally some 2.8 metres in height, it appears to have seven faces. It was protected down the millennia by a four metre layer of peat bog  - as if in a time capsule - on the site of an open air gold mine.
'There is no such ancient sculpture in the whole of Europe. Studying this Idol is a dream come true', said Professor Terberger, of the Department of Cultural Heritage of Lower Saxony. Hoysner, from Berlin Archaeological Institute said: 'The Idol is carved from larch, which, as we see by the annual rings, was at least 159 years old. 
'The samples we selected contain important information about the isotopes that correspond to the time when the tree grew.' They said they hoped to date the Idol to within five decades. 
Mikhail Zhilin, professor of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: 'This is a unique sculpture, like nowhere else in the world. The Shigir Idol is both very lively, and very complex. The ornaments, which cover the Idol, are the encrypted information of the knowledge which people passed on'.
Expert Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol, believes that the structure's faces carry encoded information from ancient man in the Mesolithic era of the Stone Age concerning their understanding of 'the creation of the world'. She said it was 'obvious' that the symbols on the Idol 'had some meaning', but experts have not managed to understand what this could be. 
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately  9,500 years ago
First reconstructions of the Idol as walking and standing upright, archeologist Vladimir Tolmachev and his drawings of the Idol, and marked faces of the Idol. Pictures: Yekaterinburg History Museum 
Author Petr Zolin, citing scientific work by Savchenko and Professor Mikhail Zhilin, stated: 'The characters of Idol cannot have an unambiguous interpretation. If these are images of spirits that inhabited the human world in ancient times, the vertical position of figures (one above the other) probably relate to their hierarchy.
'Placing images on the front and back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that they belong to different worlds. If there are depicted myths about the origin of humans and the world, the vertical arrangement of the images may reflect the sequence of events. Ornaments can be special signs which mark something as significant.'
One theory is that the Idol could be an ancient 'navigator', a map. Straight lines, wave lines and arrows indicated ways of getting to the destination and the number of days for a journey, with waves meaning water path, straight lines meaning ravines, and arrows meaning hills, according to this version.
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Map Showing Portions of Chinese Turkestan and Kansu to Illustrate the Explorations of Dr. M. Aurel Stein

July 30, 2015, 6:23 am
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From: The MAP HOUSE 

MAP OF THE MONTH

· by · in Map of the Month. ·

The next map featured on our blog records one of the most remarkable archaeological expeditions ever undertaken. Its accomplishments changed the history of the printed word; in fact, these accomplishments are still reverberating throughout the academic world to this day.
“Map Showing Portions of Chinese Turkestan and Kansu to Illustrate the Explorations of Dr. M. Aurel Stein.” Published for the Royal Geographical Society, 1911.


Sir Marc Aurel Stein was born in 1863 in Pest on the opposite side of the Danube to Buda in Hungary. He was named after Marcus Aurelius, the Roman philosopher Emperor. His family was by no means wealthy but his mother came from a privileged background ensuring that the young boy received a superlative education, an opportunity which he seized with both hands. By the age of twenty, he had gained his doctorate from the University of Tubingen. His passion and subject was the convergence between the history, geography and religion of the Indo-Persian region and his particular specialty were the ancient languages of Persia and India.
Stein was a very affable individual and had gathered a useful group of friends and contacts during his student days. This was something at which he excelled throughout his life and he kept a steady stream of communications with this network no matter where in the world he was travelling at that time.
After he graduated in 1883, he managed to put together a small amount of funds which allowed him to travel to London where he studied ancient Indian coins at the British Museum; it was his first taste of British life and he found it greatly to his liking; so much so that he became a British citizen in 1904.
He did have to go back to Hungary in 1885 to perform his national service. Thankfully for both him and us, he joined the Topographical section of the Austrian army and learnt the skills of surveying and mapmaking; these would become incredibly useful in his later career.
He returned to England and – again due to his contacts – secured an academic position in the Punjab. From that moment onwards, his life began a pattern of constant travel, research, writing and publishing his results and interpretations; followed by numerous public lectures. His thirst for this lifestyle never dimmed and the extent of his travels and exploration is quite extraordinary; from surveying the boundaries of the Eastern Roman Empire in Syria to exploring and recording the archaeology of the legendary Kun-Lun mountain range in Western China. His record keeping was exemplary and as well as his academic records, he wrote and published a collection of popular works on his travels, many of which have also become standard works for the history and archaeology of these regions.
Stein passed away in Kabul in 1943 at age 81, typically planning his next expedition, this time to Central Afghanistan.
Although Stein travelled widely throughout the continent, his most famous expedition was his journey to Central Asia between 1906-8, recorded on this map.


The two great heroes of Stein’s life were Alexander the Great and the 7th century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Xuanzang. The latter was a monk who embarked upon a pilgrimage to India both in search of his own enlightenment and to return with documents and records from the country of Buddha’s birth. After seventeen years of travel he returned to China and his account of this extraordinary feat was entitled: “Great Tang Records on the Western Regions.”
Stein was determined to retrace at least some of Xuanzang’s journey and proposed an expedition to study the archaeology of the Silk Road and China’s western border during the Tang Dynasty. He had already reached the legendary city of Ancient Khotan on the Southern Branch of the Silk Road on an earlier journey but this time, the scope of his expedition was far more ambitious and he wanted to travel far further East.
Thankfully, he already had the experience of organizing several important expeditions and had proved he had a prodigious talent for both organization and producing results. This experience, combined with his charm and network of contacts, helped him to secure sponsorship from the British Museum and the Government of India. Once that was in place, the expedition set out in 1906.


As can be seen from the red route on the map, Stein made his way through Leh in Kashmir and then re-visited Ancient Khotan; the map records a mixture of extraordinary geographical detail together with the superimposition of archaeological and ancient sites, again marked in red. This is archetypal Stein, whose topographical accuracy was legendary and remains one of the main reasons why his work is still valid to this day.
Once had had reached Khotan, Stein carried on East to reach his main goal, the Western borders of China which ultimately took him to the site that would change his life.



These old Chinese borders ran close to another ancient Chinese oasis settlement on the Silk Road, Dunhuang. Within a few miles of the oasis, lay a series of caves and temples long associated with Buddhist pilgrims. This complex was known as the Mongao Caves or “The Caves of a Thousand Buddhas.” The complex had long been neglected and housed one self-appointed caretaker, a Daoist monk, Wang Yuanlu, who had recently made a momentous discovery. In 1900, behind a false wall, he had found a cave which housed tens of thousands of ancient documents; these were assumed to be Buddhist, but later study has also found Nestorian Christian, Jewish, Manichean and Daoist texts among the collection. It is not known if Stein was aware of this discovery as he was travelling through the desert but he would certainly have found out about it as soon as he reached Dunhuang.
For an archaeologist, this was the discovery of a lifetime and Stein negotiated the purchase of a part of the collection on behalf of the British Museum and the Government of India.
Stein completed his expedition in 1908 and upon his return the manuscripts were divided between the Indian government offices in Calcutta and the British Museum. Amongst the collection sent to the British Museum was the Diamond Sutra, a printed scroll published in about 860AD, incontrovertible proof that printing was used in China approximately 600 years before its origins in Europe.
As a final note, French, Russian, German and Japanese expeditions reached the Mongao caves soon after Stein and all of them purchased parts of the manuscript collection. In 1914, Stein visited the Caves again and was greeted enthusiastically by Wang Yuanlu, who proudly showed him the improvements he had been able to make with the funds he had raised. These were mainly new and larger facilities to house pilgrims.
Today, the manuscripts purchased by these expeditions are housed in a variety of public libraries and institutions; there is an international co-operative project between all of them which promotes, shares, digitizes and publishes both research and translations of these documents: appropriately, it is named the International Dunhuang Project.
Please visit our website to see other maps made by Sir Marc Aurel Stein.. AS1079 AS1112 AS1113 and do let us know if you have any further questions about these fascinating pieces!
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The Drunken Man's Talk- Tales from Medieval China

July 30, 2015, 6:32 am
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The Drunken Man's Talk                           Tales from Medieval China


COMPILED BY LUO YE
TRANSLATED BY ALISTER D. INGLIS

  •      University of Washington Press
  •      paperback not available
  •     $50.00S HARDCOVER (9780295994734) ADD TO CART
  •     PUBLISHED: July 2015
  •     SUBJECT LISTING: Asian Studies, Literature
  •     BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: 238 pp., 6 x 9 in.
  •     CONTENTS

This collection of short stories, anecdotes, and poems was likely compiled during the 13th century. Tales of romantic love-including courtship, marriage, and illicit affairs-unify the collection and make it an essential primary source for literary and social history, since official Chinese history sources did not usually discuss family conflict or sexual matters.

This volume, the first complete translation of The Drunken Man's Talk (Xinbian zuiweng tanlu) in any language, includes an introduction that explores the literary significance of the work as well as annotations explaining the symbolism and allusions found in the stories.
ALISTER D. INGLIS is Freeman Associate Professor of Chinese languages and literature at Simmons College. He is the author of Hong Mai's Record of the Listener and Its Song Dynasty Context.
"These stories and anecdotes provide valuable information about marriage and sexuality in Song/Yuan society. The translator has done a remarkable job in rendering the text into readable English."
-James M. Hargett, translator of Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea
"An important contribution to the field. There are very few translations of biji xiaoshuo [anecdotal fiction] from the Tang, Song, and Yuan periods.The Drunken Man's Talk stands out because it offers a complete translation of a single collection, which offers insights into the compiler's interests and agendas, in particular, his selection, presentation, and arrangement of stories."
-Manling Luo, author of Literari Storytelling in Late Medieval China
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The ancient silk road city of Taraz in southern Kazakhstan

July 31, 2015, 11:43 am
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The accent is on the past in the ancient silk road city of Taraz in southern Kazakhstan, with a new drive to make sure that historic landmarks can be enjoyed for generations to come.
Meticulous restoration work is bringing numerous local monuments back to their former glory.
The impressive Tekturmas mausoleum is just one example. Located on a hill that overlooks the city, the monument attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year.
Taraz, which is the administrative centre of the Zhambyl region, is one of Kazakhstan’s oldest cities.
It celebrated its 2000th anniversary in 2001, an occasion that was officially recognised by UNESCO.
Given its rich history along the Silk Road, Taraz has also attracted a lot of interest from archaeologists.
Sites where digging has taken place are also earmarked for restoration.
Taraz, which is surrounded by beautiful steppe country, lies beside the Talas River and is close to the border with Kyrgyzstan.
There are numerous sites of interest arond Taraz, but the most popular for many is the elegant Aisha Bibi mausoleum, which dates back to between the 11th and 12th centuries.
Painstaking restoration work that began in 2002 was considered to be a huge success, with the surrounding gardens adding to the overall harmony of the site.
And what makes Aisha Bibi particularly popular is the legend that lies behind its construction. This is a monument dedicated to love.
An ancient ruler built it for a young woman he fell in love with: Aisha Bibi. She was killed by a snake while attempting to go against her parents’ wishes to be with him.
Couples travel from far and wide to visit the monument on their wedding day, hoping to attract the good luck that Aisha Bibi is supposed to radiate.
Many visitors rub their hands down the exquisite terracotta tiles.
An expert is also on hand to explain the significance of the site and to lead people in Muslim prayers.
It is worth taking the time to look at all of the minute detail of the decorative art, which is unique to Aisha Bibi.
There are more than 60 different types of ornaments.
The main mausoleum is 18 metres high, symbolising the age of Aisha Bibi when she died.
Visitors are also encouraged to simply sit in the lush, colourful gardens and listen to the birds and gentle flowing stream.
By Seamus Kearney
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Charles Freer at Longmen

July 31, 2015, 12:16 pm
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Above: detail, Chinese workers at Longmen; Yütai (act. early 20th century); November 12, 1910; Silver gelatin photographic print; Charles L. Freer Papers; Freer|Sackler Archives FSA A.1 12.5.GN.088

Freer at Longmen

In 1910, Charles Lang Freer, founder of the Freer Gallery of Art, made his final journey to China. He usually had stayed in urban centers, where he could meet with dealers and fellow collectors. Yet he was increasingly drawn to China’s interior, where he could directly encounter its ancient capitals and cultural centers, thereby deepening his insight into and emotional connection with these works. 
On this trip, Freer’s goal was to visit the Buddhist cave temple complex at Longmen Gorge in Henan province. One of China’s great cultural monuments, Longmen has more than a thousand man-made caves, many containing masterpieces of stone sculpture dating from the fifth to ninth century. The site is only five miles from the provincial capital of Luoyang, but in 1910, it was remote and largely abandoned; bandits had become a concern. Chinese officials insisted that an armed guard accompany Freer. When he set out from Luoyang, his party had grown to more than twenty people, including porters, a cook, a photographer, and six soldiers.
Over the next two weeks, Freer and his photographer, Yütai, surveyed the caves with delight and awe. Many of the more than 100 large-format photographs produced on this trip—along with dozens of relief rubbings—are the best in situ visual documents of sculptures that were looted over the following decades. Later in his life, Freer frequently recounted the profound impact of his time spent with some of the finest works of early Chinese Buddhist art.



This photo and article is from the Freer I Sackler site and this photo made part of an exhibition, named :


Looking at Asia Through the Traveler’s Eye


For a few  good links:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/travel/gallery/asia-travel-art-silk-road-painting-photography/

http://www.asia.si.edu/travelerseye/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2014/11/26/the-travelers-eye-at-sackler-leads-visitors-on-a-journey-through-asias-past/ver 500 years
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This Tsarist Warlord Became a Modern Genghis Khan

August 1, 2015, 3:02 am
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From: War is Boring  Feb 8, 2014


The crazy story of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg—‘The Mad Baron’ of Mongolia



Imagine Mongolia in the early 1920s.
It’s so remote, nomadic families could spend an entire year without seeing more than a few dozen people. There’s no centralized currency. There’s no army except marauders and occupying Chinese troops.
The lone big city, Urga, is medieval-like but surprisingly cosmopolitan. European emigres and Chinese merchants rub shoulders with Buddhist priests and Mongolian natives. Mexican pesos, a popular trading currency at the time, is used as tender.
The country is also surrounded by war. There are Chinese warlords inside Mongolia and to the south. To the north, there’s a civil war between Russian communists and the counter-revolutionary Whites.
The craziest thing? A mad German noble named Roman von Ungern-Sternberg emerged out of this environment to build a nomadic army that sought to recreate the kingdom of Genghis Khan.
Today, Ungern is a largely forgotten figure from the era, having only partly re-emerged after the publication of James Palmer’s The Bloody White Baron, a 2008 biography of the warlord. Dressed in a yellow silk robe and riding a white horse—or dismounting and then skipping into battle—Ungern was in some respects the Russian civil war’s equivalent to Joseph Kony, the leader of the fanatical Lord’s Resistance Army.
Another comparison could be to the fictional Kurtz of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now.
But he was real.
Like Kony, who fused elements of Christianity and Islam, Ungern combined eastern and western religious traditions into a syncretic, apocalyptic and messianic ideology. Like the fascist leaders that arose over the next two decades in Italy and Germany, Ungern espoused a violent anti-Semitism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism.
He enacted punishments of such cruelty it’s a wonder his men didn't revolt—though many deserted. He ordered whippings for minor infractions. Soldiers caught drinking alcohol would be stripped naked and ordered to spend the night on a frozen river. This left them vulnerable to being attacked and eaten by wolves.
His sadism wasn't unusual for an officer schooled in the Tsarist tradition. Conscripts in the imperial armies were treated no better than slaves and could be killed by their own officers. If captured, Red Army soldiers could expect to be buried alive or crucified.
But Ungern found inspiration in depictions of torture found in Mongolian Buddhist monasteries and popular literature. “All of Ungern’s favorite tortures were prominent in the hell scrolls of the Mongolian monasteries: exposure on the ice, burning alive, rending by wild beasts,” Palmer wrote.
Ungern-Sternberg in 1920. Photo via Wikipedia

The mad baron

Where the Hell did this guy come from?
Ungern was born in 1885 to a Baltic-German noble family. He was born in Austria but moved to Estonia early in life, where his family pledged fealty to the Tsar.
He also came of age during the turn of the century, when traditional feudal systems in Eastern Europe were under increasing threat. Revolutionary movements were growing in support, and his family’s privileges were at risk.
At the same time, there was a budding, faddish attraction among European elites to New Age beliefs, Eastern mysticism and occultist practices. Ungern was enamored with some of these beliefs, and combined them with anti-Semitism and faith in monarchical rule.
Ungern distinguished himself as a cavalry officer during the First World War, fighting against both Germany and Turkey. He also served in Cossack units and had a reputation for being a violent, drunken lunatic. He was thrown in a military prison for two months after slashing a military commandant’s aide across the head with his cavalry sword.
He became something of a shadowy figure during the early years of the Bolshevik revolution. His locations are hard to pin down or merely rumors.
But after the collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917, he re-emerged among the scattered counter-revolutionary White forces based in the far east. Eventually, he became governor of the eastern province of White-ruled Transbaikal.
Ungern’s forces were a bit of an oddity. They operated independently from Adm. Alexander Kolchak, the most prominent White officer in Russia’s far east. Ungern’s troops were instead backed by Japan.
The areas involved in this war were vast. Entire battalions could move through enemy lines without being detected. But strategic locations, particularly railway hubs, were few and bitterly contested.
By August 1920, the White forces were badly losing the war. Kolchak had been defeated and executed. The hope of restoring the Tsar to the throne was dashed after Nicholas II’s execution in 1918. To further drive the nail into the monarchy’s coffin, the Tsar’s youngest son, the Grand Duke Michael, was shot.
Ungern was on the run. But his forces were highly mobile, sustaining themselves by living off the land or through piratical raids. They forcibly conscripted new soldiers into their ranks and wore tattered uniforms made from animal skins.
An opportunity presented itself in Mongolia. The Bogd Khan (the resident monarch) sought an alliance with Ungern to drive out occupying Chinese forces. For Ungern, shifting his forces into Mongolia served both practical and ideological needs.
They could recruit or conscript new soldiers—but also fulfill a new purpose.
Palmer explained:
[Ungern] had striven to save the empire he had been raised in, but it was almost irretrievably corrupted. Russia’s core had been lost to the Bolsheviks. A new empire would have to be created, and he had the model for it in the empire of Genghis Khan, which had once stretched ‘from the Amur Mountains to the Caspian Sea.’ Ungern did not believe himself, as some later claimed, to be the reincarnation of Genghis Khan; instead he saw himself as restoring his legacy.
His army also marched under a diverse set of banners reflecting the hodge-podge of Ungern’s beliefs.
One banner included the symbol of the Grand Duke Michael represented as the new Russian emperor. Another banner included an image of Jesus Christ with a yellow background, symbolizing Buddhism. Another banner featured the swastika.
“This was, of course, an old and valued Buddhist motif, but Ungern would also have been aware of its anti-Semitic interpretation, as would most of the Whites,” Palmer wrote.
Soviet-era Ulaanbaatar sign. aleceast/Flickr photo

The battle for Mongolia’s capital

Until Ungern’s capture and execution in 1921, his troops engaged in scattered battles with numerically larger Chinese forces. At the same time, a bizarre cult emerged among Buddhist lamas loyal to Ungern or his Mongolian allies.
“There was no official Mongolian recognition of Ungern as an incarnate god, despite all the other titles heaped on him,” Palmer cautioned. “The belief probably sprang up spontaneously: a mysterious figure from the north, riding a white horse, ignoring bullets and claiming to fulfill ancient prophecies—it was only logical to think him a god.”
At the peak of his power—which wasn’t much—his forces numbered between 5,000 and 6,000 troops. About half of them were Mongolians, with others from Russia, Japan, China and Central Asia. (Russians made up the largest non-Mongolian contingent.) They used Japanese rifles, Italian machine guns—extending to pikes and lances.
The largest battles fought during this period centered around Urga, today the modern Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar.
The city had been walled by heavily-armed Chinese troops, but the soldiers were demoralized and poorly trained. In October 1920, several attacks by Ungern’s troops were repulsed by Chinese artillery.
The following February, Ungern’s forces were freezing and running out of food. His men reconnoitered an unguarded gate and launched a surprise assault. Tibetan monks serving with Ungern’s force joined the push, “their clothes lightly smeared with butter and their faces painted with soot to strike fear into enemies of the faith.”
The horseback soldiers stormed into the city, which descended into house-to-house fighting.
“Once the gates were breached, the fighting turned into a general killing spree,” Palmer wrote. The Chinese troops abandoned the city. Many were later hunted down and slain in the countryside.
What befell the city’s inhabitants was sickeningly brutal and ugly—including indiscriminate attacks on Jews, Russian emigres and Chinese residents. Victims were strung up along city streets. One Russian soldier serving in Ungern’s forces had a reputation for killing the elderly with his hands.
But Ungern’s terrible reign would only last a few months.
At this point, he was the last prominent White commander still on the loose. The capture of Urga shocked the Kremlin, which proceeded to invade Mongolia. The Red Army splintered Ungern’s forces, and he was captured in August 1921, put on trial and shot by firing squad.
He was 35.
Since his death, his legacy has been largely confined as a footnote to the horrors that would later inflict Europe during the Holocaust and the Second World War. “In the murky world of post-war rightist occultism he was remembered as a precursor figure of the weirder fringes of Nazism,” Palmer wrote.
Accounts of his brief reign would filter back into Germany, which provided inspiration to some extreme nationalists and lurid pulp books. Today, he’s still celebrated on neo-Nazi Websites.
But he was also a precursor to sinister, rebel cults operating today. He moved around in remote, ungoverned spaces and forged a reputation for cruelty. He was highly maneuverable and his forces operated over vast, wild areas.
But once a committed force was tasked with hunting him down, his days were numbered. He wasn’t impossible to stop.
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Prester John: The Legend and its Sources

August 1, 2015, 3:13 am
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Prester John: The Legend and its Sources 

Crusade Texts in Translation


Hardcover – 28 Jul 2015


  • Hardcover: 348 pages
  • Publisher: Ashgate; New edition (28 July 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1409438074

The legend of Prester John has received much scholarly attention over the last hundred years, but never before have the sources been collected and coherently presented to readers. This book now brings together a fully-representative set of texts setting out the many and various sources from which we get our knowledge of the legend. These texts, spanning a time period from the Crusades to the Enlightenment, are presented in their original languages and in English translation (for many it is the first time they have been available in English). The story of the mysterious oriental leader Prester John, ruler of a land teeming with marvels who may come to the aid of Christians in the Levant, held an intense grip on the medieval mind from the first references in twelfth-century Crusader literature and into the early-modern period. But Prester John was a man of shifting identity, being at different times and for different reasons associated with Chingis Khan and the Mongols, with the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, with China, Tibet, South Africa and West Africa. In order to orient the reader, each of these iterations is explained in the comprehensive introduction, and in the introductions to texts and sections. The introduction also raises a thorny question not often considered: whether or not medieval audiences believed in the reality of Prester John and the Prester John Letter. The book is completed with three valuable appendices: a list of all known references to Prester John in medieval and early modern sources, a thorough description of the manuscript traditions of the all-important Prester John Letter, and a brief description of Prester John in the history of cartography.
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Huge hidden ocean under Xinjiang’s Tarim basin larger than all Great Lakes combined

August 1, 2015, 5:47 am
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The ocean acts as a major carbon sink, sucking up CO2 and preventing even greater climate change

The South China Morning Post  Stephen Chen   30 July 2015
Chinese scientists say a huge ocean underneath Xinjiang's Tarim basin acts as a major carbon sink, protecting us from even greater global warming. Photo: Nasa
There could be an “ocean” hidden under one of the driest areas on earth, according to a breakthrough discovery by Chinese scientists.
The amount of salt water beneath the Tarim basin in northwestern Xinjiang province could be equivalent to 10 times the water in all five Great Lakes in North America.
“This is a terrifying amount of water,” said professor Li Yan, who led the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital.
“Never before have people dared to imagine so much water under the sand. Our definition of desert may have to change,” he said.
The Tarim is the world’s largest landlocked basin and home to Taklimakan, the biggest desert in China. The basin is known for its rich oil reserves, but to access them requires large amounts of water.
For a long time scientists had suspected that melt water from high mountains nearby had sipped beneath the basin, but the exact amount of water reserves there remained unknown.
Precise estimates are difficult because surface water in the region, such as seasonal rivers and lakes appear at random times in inconsistent locations, making direct measurement impossible.
Li’s team stumbled on the discovery by accident.
“We were after carbon, not water,” he said.
Greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be absorbed in certain regions known as "carbon sinks", such as forests and oceans. Locating these sinks may help scientists better understand climate change.
Around 10 years ago, Li’s team discovered large amounts of carbon dioxide disappearing in Tarim, with no explanation over where it could be going.
In a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Li’s team reported that there could be a large amount of water under earth's largest deserts which serve as carbon sinks as important as forests and oceans.
Under the Tarim desert, over a depth stretching thousands of metres, exists an enormous amount of saline water fll of carbon dioxide, they found.
The team obtained deep underground water samples from nearly 200 locations across the desert. By measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in these samples, and comparing them to the carbon dioxide in melt water, the scientists were able to calculate how much water had flown into the basin.
“Our estimate is a conservative figure. The actual amount could be larger,” Li said.
Melt water has been used by people in Xinjiang for agricultural irrigation for thousands of years.
The soil of farmland in the region is alkaline, helping the dissolving of carbon dioxide into the water. By dating the age of the carbon Li's team "recorded a jump of 'carbon sinking' after the opening of the ancient Silk Road more than two thousand years ago."
“CCS [carbon capture and storage] is a 21st century idea, but our ancestors may have been doing it unconsciously for thousands of years," he said.
However, Li emphasised that the "ocean" under Tarim would not be much immediate use for Xinjiang's economic development.
The water is not just salty, but contains a large amount of carbon dioxide. “It’s like a can of coke. If it is opened all the greenhouse gas will escape into the atmosphere,” he said.
The biggest question now is whether similar “oceans” can be also be found under other large deserts, such as Sahara. Li said they would work with research teams around the world to find out the answer.
The chance of water under these deserts is high because the amount of carbon these “oceans” carried could reach a trillion tonnes, which matches the amount of “missing carbon” on the planet, according to Li's team's calculations.
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The Mount Mugh Documents and Sogdian Epigraphy

August 3, 2015, 2:51 am
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Sogdian epigraphy of Central Asia and Semirech’e.

by Vladimir A. Livshits,  

Translated from the Russian by Tom Stableford. 

Edited by Nicholas Sims-Williams 

Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum 
Part II Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian Periods and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia 
Vol. III. Sogdian). London: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).




This volume presents the English translations of some very important and major works of  Vladimir Aronovich Livshits on the Sogdian language, culture and sources. The volume is arranged in two parts. The first part is a translation of Sogdian documents from Mount Mug (kuh-e moḡ), site of the 7th-8th-century refuge of the rulers of Penjikent in Sogdiana, located in the upper reaches of the Zeravshan in northern Tajikistan, where an important archive of documents written in Sogdian was discovered by A. A. Freiman’s 1933 expedition. Livshits has taken part  first and foremost, in the deciphering of the Mnt. Mug archive of Sogdian documents from Mount Mug.
The second part of the volume, dedicated to the English translations of some ten important articles of Livshits, concerning the Sogdian epigraphy, in which he examines “not only the purely philological problems but also questions of the history and culture of Sogd, aided by his frequent participation in archaeological excavations and journeys to the lands of historical Sogdiana in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kirgizia”.

Part I. DOCUMENTS FROM MOUNT MUG: LEGAL DOCUMENTS AND LETTERS
  • Legal documents
  • Letters
  • Financial documents
Part II. ARTICLES ON SOGDIAN EPIGRAPHY
  • Kesh (Shahrisabz) in Sogdian texts and coin legends
  • ‘Created by Fire and Good Thought’ in a Sogdian inscription from Penjikent
  • Sogdian documents from the fortress of Chilkhujra
  • A Sogdian alphabet from Penjikent
  • The leader of the people of Chāch in Sogdian inscriptions and coin legends
  • Sogdian and Bactrian wall inscriptions at the site of Afrasiab
  • Sānak, a Manichaean Sogdian bishop of the 5th to early 6th century
  • The Sogdian Buddhist fragment Kr IV/879 no. 4263 from the manuscript collection of the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
  • A Sogdian document from Old Samarkand
  • Sogdian epigraphy of Semirech’e
About the Author:
Vladimir Aronovich Livshits is Chief Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (IOM) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
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Paintings of Afrāsyāb

August 3, 2015, 1:03 pm
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www.biblioiranica.info
by SHERVIN FARRIDNEJAD
2 August 2015 





Details of a copy of mural called The Ambassordors’ Painting, found in the hall of the ruin of an aristocratic house in Afrasiab, commissioned by the king of Samarkand, Varkhuman (ca. 650)

 In antiquity Samarkand was the capital of the Persian province of Sogdiana. Its language, culture, and “Zoroastrian” religion closely approximated those of the Persians. Following its conquest by Alexander, its strategic position and fertile soil made Sogdiana a coveted prize for Late Antique invaders of Central Asia. Around 660 CE — at the dawn of Arab invasion — local king Varkhuman promoted the execution of a unique painted program in one of his private rooms. Each wall was dedicated to a specific population: the north wall, the Chinese; the west, the Sogdians themselves; the east, the Indians and possibly the Turks. The south wall is probably the continuation of the scene on the west wall. In Chinese written sources, some support for this concept of the “division of the world” can be found. Accidentally discovered during Soviet times, the room was named “Hall of the Ambassadors” due to the representations of different peoples. However, many aspects of its painted program remain obscure. This study offers new ideas for better identifications of the rituals celebrated by the people on the different walls during precise moments of the year.
About the Author:
Matteo Compareti (PhD 2005) is adjunct assistant professor in Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California-Berkeley.



From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Afrasiab painting, also called the Ambassadors' Painting, is a rare example of Sogdianart. It was discovered in 1965 when the local authorities decided the construction of a road in the middle of Afrāsiāb mound, the old site of pre-Mongol Samarkand. It is now preserved in a special museum on the Afrāsiāb mound.
The painting dates back to the middle of the 7th century CE. On the four walls of the room of a private house, three or four different countries neighbouring Central Asia are depicted. On the northern wall China (a Chinese festival, with the Empress on a boat, and the Emperor hunting), on the Southern Wall Samarkand (i.e.; the Iranian world: a religious funerary procession in honor of the ancestors during the Nowruz festival), on the eastern wall India (as the land of the astrologers and of the pygmies, but the painting is much destroyed there).
The topic on the main wall, the western wall facing the entrance is debated between specialists. Turkish soldiers are escorting ambassadors coming from various countries of the world (Korea, China, Iranian principalities etc.). There are three main hypotheses. The leading expert on Sogdian painting, the excavator of Panjikent, B. Marshak points out that Sogdian painting, gods are always depicted on the top of the main wall. However, as the Turks are guiding the embassies but are not themselves ambassadors, it has been suggested also that the Turkish Qaghan, then lord of inner and central Asia, might be depicted there. A Chinese text is indeed saying that the idea of the "Four Lords of the World", here China, India, Iran and Turks, is depicted on the walls of palaces near Samarkand precisely during this period, and this would perfectly fit the four walls of this room. The last hypothesis makes use of an inscription mentioning the king of Samarkand to propose the idea that the ambassadors are presenting their gifts to him.
In early 2014, France declared that it would finance the restoration of the Afrasiab painting.[1]


The Great Procession -  La Grande Procession
Description from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/afrasiab-ii-wall-paintings-2 :"The wall painting shows four geese and, more remarkably, an un-mounted horse, accompanied by men wearing the padām, the traditional face mask of Mazdean priests, and two men with sacrificial maces, sitting atop a camel. This scene could be interpreted as a parade of priests and sacrificial animals, which is, moreover, followed by a larger horse with a large rider."

Chinese Boat  Le bateau Chinois
Description from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/afrasiab-ii-wall-paintings-2 : "On a pond crowded with aquatic creatures, musicians and singers sit in a boat with a prow shaped like a bird’s head. A lady, larger than her attendants, is feeding the fish, while a composite winged monster is recognizable beneath the boat. One man is leading two horses to water, and another man, half-naked and carrying a stick, is wading into it. Mode supports the interpretation that this scene is a reference to the negotiation of a marriage alliance. The local king or his overlord is trying to marry a Chinese princess, and the larger lady in the boat is on her way to Samarqand, even though Chinese ladies customarily traveled in carts.".

Envoys- Envoyés des principautés voisines portant des rouleaux de soie et des colliers- Western wall drawing
Description from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/afrasiab-ii-wall-paintings-2 : The western wall is the main wall, and faces the entrance. It shows several groups of ambassadors bearing gifts — Chinese (with plain silk), Iranians (with necklaces and embroidered silk), men from the mountains (with yak tails), as well as Koreans (without gifts and with feathers on their headgear) — between groups of Turkish soldiers, seated or guiding the embassies. The procession is directed toward a central figure, now lost, at the top of the wall.


References[edit]

  1. Jump up ^ http://old.archeo-news.ru/2014/02/blog-post_8042.html
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Afrasiyab museum paintings.
Royal Nawrūz in Samarkand: Acts of the Conference held in Venice on the Pre-Islamic Afrāsyāb Painting, ed. M. Compareti and E. de La Vaissière, Rome, 2006.

External links[edit]










AFRĀSĪĀB i. The Archeological Site

the ruined site of ancient and medieval Samarqand in the northern part of the modern town.
AFRĀSĪĀB
i. The Archeological Site
Afrāsīāb is the ruined site of ancient and medieval Samarqand in the northern part of the modern town. The term Qaḷʿa-ye Afrāsīāb appears in written sources only from the end of the 17th century. The name is popularly connected with that of the epic king of Tūrān, Afrāsīāb, but scholars see in it a distortion of Tajik Parsīāb (Sogdian Paršvāb), “Above the black river,” i.e., the Sīāhāb or Sīāb, which bounds the site on the north. The area of Afrāsīāb covers 219 hectares, and the thickness of the archeological strata reaches 8-12 m. The ruined site has the shape of an irregular triangle, bounded on the east by the irrigation canal Āb-e Mašhad, and on the west by the deep Aṭčapar ravine, which in ancient times played the part of a moat. Inside these limits Afrāsīāb appears as a hillocky waste with several depressions sunk over what had been town squares and reservoirs. In the northern part rises the citadel (90 by 90 m) with a ramp along its eastern facade. The ruined site is surrounded by earth banks, remnants of fortress walls belonging to four successive ages.
Archeological excavations carried on in Afrāsīāb since the end of the 19th century, and very actively in the 1960-70s, have supplied sequences of the site’s material and artistic culture and so have established the basic chronology of its history. The settling of the territory of Afrāsīāb began in the 7th-6th centuries B.C. It was already a city occupying almost the entire area of the present site and surrounded by a powerful fortress wall of rectangular, unbaked bricks on an adobe platform. The supply of water was ensured by a canal and open reservoirs (discovered in the eastern and northern parts of Afrāsīāb). The archeological complex of that time is represented by wheel-turned pottery vessels of cylindrical or conical-cylinder shape with a slanting base, grain crushers, and leaf-shaped (and for the 5th-4th centuries B.C., three-bladed) bronze arrowheads. The city at the end of this period is identified with Marakanda, mentioned in connection with Alexander’s expedition into Soḡd in 329-327 B.C. by Arrian and Quintus Curtius.
The archeological strata of the 4th-1st centuries B.C. have been traced in various zones of Afrāsīāb. In the northern and western parts of the ruined site fortress walls have been uncovered built of square unbaked brick with internal passages, loopholes, and a lower projecting shelf. Dwellings have been excavated. Specific for this archeological complex are high quality wheel-turned ceramics (thin, polished, red angāb goblets, cups, vases, and dishes) showing the influence of the Hellenistic tradition. One of the goblets bears the Greek name Nikis, while among the terracottas there are heads of the helmeted Athena and Arethusia type. Characteristic finds are bronze, three-bladed arrow-heads, ornaments, and gem seals. Coins of Antiochus Soter and of the Greco-Bactrian kings Eutidemus and Eucratides witness to trade relations.
Contrary to the opinion held by some researchers that during the Kushan period (1st century B.C.—first centuries A.D.) the city was passing through a period of decline, a number of scholars regard it as having flourished, a view confirmed by excavations of recent years. These have uncovered monumental residential and religious buildings and workshops, in particular the quarter of ceramicists and metalworkers. During that period the leaden aqueduct Jūy-e Arzīz was conducted from Darḡom. A special defense wall was built around Afrāsīāb in a large district of Samarqand. The archeological complex contains ceramic vessels of high quality, on arrowheads, stone projectiles, bone styluses, intaglio gems, a treasure of silver obols bearing the figure of a bowman (which enjoyed a long circulation), glass vessels and ornaments, blue paste Egyptian objects for cult use. Among modeled artifacts are numerous statuettes of goddesses of aristocratic or popular type, musicians playing lutes and horizontal and vertical flutes, horses, and other figures.
In the 4th-5th centuries A.D., a time of crisis in the slave-holding society and the beginning of the shaping of feudalism, the inhabited area of Afrāsīāb shrank. The fortress walls encircled only part of the territory of the town, and burials took place in the ancient wall. The quality of the pottery sharply deteriorates; the shape of the vessels alters, and many are hand modeled. Horrific figures predominate in terracottas. In the 6th-7th centuries Samarqand was the capital of Soḡd ruled by the local Eḵšīd dynasty. The town on the site of Afrāsīāb is surrounded by a double wall with moats having four gates—of Bokhara, China, Kaš and Nowbahār. In the eastern part of Afrāsīāb were situated metalworkers’ and potters’ workshops with two-storied kilns. The residential quarter of the aristocracy and the palace complex of the Eḵšīds with reception halls, surrounding passages, and out-buildings have been explored in the center of the site. The main hall of the palace was ornamented with monumental wall paintings. There are scenes of a solemn procession, the bringing of gifts in visitations to the ruler of Samarqand Varhuman by envoys from various countries, including Čaḡānīān (indicated by a Sogdian inscription). Apparently to this period belong the wooden sculptures of animals preparing for combat which were set up in the town square; they are recorded by Ebn Ḥawqal in the 4th-10th century. Terracottas attain exceptional variety; there are statuettes of Sogdian and Turk horsemen, youths and young girls in royal headdress with symbolic ornaments, demonic creatures, and a Sogdian paladin accoutered and armed. Remains of bones, preserved according to Zoroastrian custom, were frequently placed in ossuaries with modeled ornamentation; particularly expressive are small, Orphean-type, sorrowing heads.
In the year 93/712 Samarqand was conquered by the Arabs. The walls of Afrāsīāb were partly destroyed by them after a rising of the inhabitants, and the main Sogdian temple was converted into a mosque. The town was largely depopulated, and Arab cemeteries appeared in the waste spaces. The situation changes in the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries, when Samarqand became part of the Samanid possessions. This period is marked by prosperity, and Afrāsīāb then became known as the šahrestān of Samarqand. The entire area was again surrounded by a wall with four gates (of Bokhara, the East, Nowbahārān, and Iron). In the northern part arose the citadel (kohandez) with its two gates, the palace of the ruler, and the prison. A water supply was ensured by the ancient leaden aqueduct, which distributed through three main branches. From the south and west of Afrāsīāb a trade and craft suburb grew up, surrounded (together with gardens and estates) by its own wall, Dīvār-e Qīāmat. In several parts of the ruined site inhabited quarters of the time have been uncovered, showing streets, stone pavements, water conduits, and sewers. Oriental geographers of the 4th/10th century mention in Samarqand (at Afrāsīāb) a Friday mosque, the palace of the Samanids, castles, and caravansaries. The excavation of the palace, with its vast audience hall, large dwelling house with an ayvān, and square, domed reception room, brought to light rich decoration—stucco carved into stylized plant and geometrical designs. A potters’ quarter covering an area of 4,000 square meters has been explored. It contained some fifteen ceramicists’ households yielding highly artistic glazed pottery.
In the middle of the 5th/11th century under the Qarakhanid Tamḡač Khan Ebrāhīm (r. 444-60/1052-68) and at the beginning of the 7th/13th under the Ḵᵛārazmšāh Sultan Moḥammad (r. 596-617/1200-28), attempts were made to transform Afrāsīāb into a new administrative center. Building activity increased in the 5th-6th/11th-12th centuries, but mainly outside the limits of Afrāsīāb in the inhabited šahr-e bīrūn, while Afrāsīāb remained on the whole an enclosed administrative and defensive center. A cathedral mosque was enlarged and to a great extent rebuilt. In the 6th/12th century there developed the cult of Šāh-e Zenda (“the Living King”) around the spurious tomb of Qoṯam b. ʿAbbās; a mausoleum was built over it, and several other buildings (partly preserved) were erected: a madrasa, a minaret, and an ayvān with some carved wooden details. The palace of the Qarakhanid rulers was constructed at Afrāsīāb, as well as the mausoleum of the Qarakhanid Ebrāhīm b. Ḥasan, which is faced with tiles of carved terracotta.
In Moḥarram, 617/March, 1220 Samarqand was seized by the army of Čingiz Khan and destroyed. After that event life in Afrāsīāb never recovered, and the town became a ruined site. In the 9th/15th century Afrāsīāb is mentioned under the name of Bālā Ḥeṣār as a “fortress of former days.” Some of the poor lived in cave dwellings on its sheer loess slopes, while the building of the Šāh-e Zenda complex still proceeded on the southern slope of the weather-beaten medieval wall. Under Tīmūr and Uluḡ Beg there arose along a paved path and steps a group of mausoleums, memorial mosques, and domed passages (čārṭāqs) brightly faced with glazed tiles. Up to the 20th century a cemetery spread out over the waste area around Šāh-e Zenda. Among the few later erections at Afrāsīāb are the madrasa and summer mosque of Šāh-e Zenda, the tomb of Ḵᵛāǰa Dānīāl in the northern area of the ruins, and the mosque of Ḥażrat-e Ḵeżr (second half of the 19th century, rebuilt in 1919 by the architect ʿAbd-al-Qāder b. Bāqī Samarqandī). Since 1923 the ruins of Afrāsīāb have been under state protection, and in 1966 the site was declared a state archeological reserve. The Afrāsīāb Museum was founded there, housing the material of many years’ archeological research.
See also Samarqand.

Bibliography:
Afrasiaba. Sborniki I-IV, Tashkent, 1969-75.
I. Akhrarov and L. Rempel, Reznoĭ shtuk Afrasiaba, Tashkent, 1971.
L. I. Albaum, Zhivopis’ Afrasiaba, Tashkent, 1975.
Yu. F. Buryakov and M. Taguiev, “O kangue-kushanskikh sloyakh Afrasiaba (po materialam arkheologicheskikh raskopok 1968 g.),” Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, 1968, no. 8, pp. 58-60.
M. I. Fedorov, “Afrasiabskiĭ klad zolotykh monet vtoroĭ poloviny XII v.,” Epigrafika vostoka 21, 1972, pp. 32-34.
S. K. Kabanov, “Izuchenie stratigrafii gorodishcha Afrasiab,” Sovetskaya arkheologiya, 1969, no. 1, pp. 183-98.
Idem and G. V. Shishkina, “Drevneĭshie nasloeniya gorodishcha Afrasiab,” Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, 1968, no. 3, pp. 53-55.
M. E. Masson, “K periodizatsii drevneĭ istorii Samarkanda,” VDI, 1950, no. 4, pp. 155-66.
Meshkeris, Terrakotty Samarkandskogo Muzeya, Leningrad, 1962.
N. B. Nemtseva and Yu. Z. Shvab, Ansambl’ Shahi-Zinda, Tashkent, 1979.
V. A. Shishkin, Afrasiab—sokrovishchnitsa drevneĭ kultury, Tashkent, 1966.
G. V. Shishkina, Glazurovannaya keramika Sogda, Tashkent, 1979.
Idem, “O mestonakhozhdenii Marakandy (arkheologicheskie dannye o drevnem Samarkande I tysyacheletiya do n.e.),” Sovetskaya arkheologiya, 1969, no. 1, pp. 62-75.
Idem, “Ellinisticheskaya keramika Afrasiaba,” Sovetskaya arkheologiya, 1972, no. 2, pp. 60-79.
S. S. Tashkhozhaev, Khudozhestvennaya polivnaya keramika Samarkanda IX-nachalo XIII v., Tashkent, 1967.
A. I. Terenozhkin, “Voprosy istorii ob arkheologicheskoĭ periodizatsii drevnego Samarkanda,” VDI, 1947, no. 4, pp. 127-35.
Idem, “Voprosy periodizatsii i khronologii drevneĭshego Samarkanda,” Sovetskaya arkheologiya, 1972, no. 3, pp. 90-99.
V. L. Vyatkin, Afrasiab—gorodishche drevnego Samarkanda, Samarkand and Tahskent, 1927.
(G. A. Pugachenkova and È. V. Rtveladze)
(G. A. Pugachenkova and Ī. V. Rtveladze)
Originally Published: December 15, 1984
Last Updated: July 28, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 6, pp. 576-578
Cite this entry:
G. A. Pugachenkova and Ī. V. Rtveladze, “Afrasiab i. The Archeological Site,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/6, pp. 576-578; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/afrasiab-the-ruined-site (accessed on 14 March 2014).
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Tomb raiders put Chinese history in grave danger

August 4, 2015, 3:06 am
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The Song dynasty tomb in Ziyang, raided by grave robbers. (Internet photo)

Chinese archaeologists are facing an epidemic of professional tomb raiding.
The situation has been highlighted by the recent arrests of 12 grave robbers in southwest China's Sichuan province. They are suspected of stealing artifacts from a tomb dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) in Ziyang, in a case worth about 1 million yuan (US$161,000), local police said.
The stolen pieces include two carved doors of the tomb chamber, as well as some valuable items buried in it, the local Huaxi Metropolis Daily reported on Sunday.
One of the suspects, antique collector Liu, said he kept some of the most valuable items in his shop, while the rest were sold to other dealers.
In a country with thousands of years of history, stories of people stealing from tombs abound.
In June, the tomb of Liu Yongfu, a national hero who fought in the Sino-French War (1884-1885) and died in 1917, was desecrated by criminals who almost emptied it. The site, in the mountains of Qinzhou, in south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was placed under state protection in 2001.
In 2012, three stone sculptures in the mausoleum of the Jingjiang Prince, a member of regional royalty in Guangxi during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE), were spirited away. A warrior sculpture, also in the mausoleum, was beheaded two days later.
"Tomb raiders dig in the hope of finding precious burial objects," Su Dong, curator of Guangxi's Qinzhou Museum, told Xinhua. "The Liu Yongfu tomb, for instance, has been targeted several times since the 1990s."
In addition to greed for money, the national fervor for antique collecting has also contributed to the phenomenon, according to Liang Xiao, a relics protection expert.
"Antique collection has become hugely popular in China," said Liang. "Criminals cater to the fervor by stealing and selling historical artifacts."
Liang believes the popularity of Chinese best-selling novel The Grave Robbers' Chronicles, as well as its spinoffs, exacerbated the problem.
Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to crack down on the crimes, but to no avail.
Mo Zhidong, an official with Guangxi's regional department of cultural relics, pointed out that tombs and ancient ruins are usually situated in the wild, making surveillance very difficult.
"Due to limitations such as the lack of power supply and other bad infrastructure in remote areas, cameras are difficult to install," Mo said. "So when grave robbing happens, it is very hard to track suspects."
In Guangxi alone, 17 of the 66 historical sites protected at a national level are situated in wilderness, while most of the 355 ancient sites under regional protection are also located in remote areas.
Meanwhile, a dearth of supervising personnel makes the situation even worse.
"Cultural relics departments in most Chinese counties have only about four protection staff each," Mo said. "Imagine the difficulty of protecting a vast expanse of ruins with only four people."
Zhou Keda, with the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said the government should raise public awareness of the issue, and provide more funding, especially for dedicated staff and surveillance equipment.
"Law enforcement departments should also improve supervision of the trade in artifacts to prevent rampant illegal trade," he said.
The academic also called for authorities to set up a national database, with each artifact coded.
"In this way, once the artifacts flow into the market, authorities will be able to track their source and penalize criminals."
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Cultura pre-islamica nella Sogdiana

August 5, 2015, 10:20 am
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The murals of the towns of Penjikent , Varakhsha and Afrasiab illuminate a world of extraordinary complexity and intriguing spiritual relationships with the Chinese world, with the Indian and, of course, with that of Persia .



Afrasiab Museum (1)



Afrasiab Museum (2)


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‘An extraordinary survivor’: A rare carpet from the Mongol Empire

August 7, 2015, 10:24 am
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From: Christies.com April 2015


Lucinda Willan discusses an exceptional weaving from the ancient Mongol Empire - thought to be the last of its kind - ahead of Christie’s Oriental Rugs and Carpets sale

In the early 13th century, the Mongols invaded North West China for the first time. Within just fifty years, they had established the largest continuous land empire ever to exist — stretching from Hungary to Korea. 
The invasion left the Mongols with a legacy of ruthless destruction, and their profound influence on the region’s art and trade is often overlooked. Here, Christie’s specialist Lucinda Willan discusses a weaving made at the heart of their ancient empire, thought to be the sole surviving example of a Mongol Empire carpet.  

An Important Mongol Empire Wool Flatwoven Carpet. Central Asia Or China, Late 13th Or First Half 14th Century. Approximately 8ft.1in. x 2ft.8in. (246cm. x 81cm.)
Under Mongol rule, the status of artisans rose considerably. ‘Textile production had such a significant bearing on trade in the area that weavers were given special status,’ Willan explains.
Mongol ruler Gengis Khan resettled weavers along the 4,000 mile-long Silk Route, eventually forming three major centres of textile production — Besh Baliq in the Tarim Basin corridor, Hongzhou and Xunmalin near modern Beijing. 
‘As traders moved across Mongol Empire weaving techniques were exchanged,’ says Willan. Though this movement prompted huge advances in textile design, it makes the exact origin of the carpet very difficult to pinpoint. 
 A silk and metal-thread tapestry (kesi) fragment. Song dynasty (960-1279), China, 11th-12th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2015. Photo Art Resource/SCALA, Florence.

‘As no other carpets appear to have survived from the Mongol Empire, we have to turn to other art forms and textiles to draw stylistic comparisons,’ Willan comments. ‘The carpet is most closely related in techniques and drawing to the flower and bird silk tapestries — or kesi — of Central Asia and China, such as this silk and metal-thread fragment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’
‘These silk tapestries from the period display the influence of nearly every major culture that moved along the Silk Road,’ says Willan. ‘In the same way, this carpet is a fascinating synthesis of ideas and aesthetics — a weaving as mysterious as it is beautiful.’

The Coronation of Ögödei Khan (r.1229-1241) in Jami al-Tawarikh by Rashid al-Din (1247–1318), early 14th century. This miniature depicts the monarch seated on a textile decorated with birds and flowers, similar to those of the Mongol weaving
In the centre of the carpet, birds sit between elegant peonies, their stems curved as though bending in an invisible breeze. 
‘Flower and bird motifs were used across the Empire, and similar designs can be found on Yuan Dynasty pottery and Chinese silks,’ says Willan. ‘Intriguingly, this 14th century miniature of Ögödei Khan’s coronation depicts the Mongol ruler seated on a textile scattered with birds and flowers — remarkably similar to those of this carpet.’
The border of the carpet is composed of a dynamic pattern of alternating trefoils or ‘cloud bands’. ‘The design is one that was ubiquitous in Mongol ornamentation and which can be seen in the depiction of Ögödei Khan's coronation, in both the profile of the throne and collars of the courtier,’ Willan comments. 
Detail: Exceptional care has been taken to produce a weave as strong as it is visually complex.
The reverse of the carpet reveals a complex lattice of stitches: ‘The weaver took exceptional care to reinforce the carpet, taking time to ensure that the fragile gaps that can appear between colours are joined,’ says Willan.
If a strong weave has contributed to the work’s extraordinary survival, so, too, has its provenance: ‘The carpet is thought to have spent many years in a Tibetan monastery — buildings which became incredible storehouses for medieval textiles, providing the perfect conditions for their preservation,’
Whilst the carpet may have been used as a long runner, its remarkable condition suggests that it may have been hung or served as a door flap. ‘The end border has been lost, but the design still appears complete,’ Willan comments. ‘There is a sense of movement from water to sky, with the grasses and lotuses rising from the bottom of the weaving to meet the peonies and birds above.’

An Important Mongol Empire Wool Flatwoven Carpet will be sold on 21 April at Christie's in London
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Genghis and the Great Mongol Khans: The Exhibition

August 8, 2015, 4:59 am
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One of the most comprehensive explorations of the life of Genghis Khan and his successors ever presented internationally to be brought to life in new major touring exhibition. 





“Spanning over 1000 years, GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans digs beneath the plethora of legends surrounding Genghis Khan to unearth the complete story behind the largest continuous land empire in history and some of the most effective leaders and warriors the world has ever seen. This is the history of the Mongols - as it has never been told before.” 

Leading producer of international touring exhibitions, Nomad Exhibitions, have today announced the creation of one of the most comprehensive exhibitions on Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire ever presented internationally. The new touring exhibition unveils the extraordinary story of one of the greatest land empires in history and the powerful Khans that shaped it through over 150 ancient treasures expertly sourced from museums across Inner Mongolia, China. GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans has been developed in collaboration with a consortium of leading Inner Mongolian curators and scholars. It will be launched at the National Military Museum of the Netherlands and is proposed for hire to museums worldwide from 2017.

The Mongol Empire: A Complete Story
GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans reaches beyond the often told tales of the life of Genghis Khan to reveal the lesser-known wider history of the Mongol empire. First unveiling the ancient nomadic roots of the Mongol tribes, the exhibition then explores the rise of Genghis Khan and foundation of the Mongol empire before telling the story of the most prominent Great Khans who succeeded Genghis: Ögödei, Güyüg, Möngke and Kublai. From the Golden Horde to the Persian Il-Khanate, the disparate realms which emerged at the distant corners of the vast Mongol territory and the foundation of the magnificent Yuan dynasty are examined. In its final section, the exhibition reflects on the dissolution of the empire following 1368 and the great legacy of this pivotal period in history for Asia and for the world.
Tim Pethick, Managing Director of Nomad Exhibitions says, “With this exhibition we wanted to move beyond the usual representations of Genghis Khan to explore the extraordinary characters that contributed to his success and followed his rule. It will be a comprehensive insight into the foundation, development and decline of the Mongol empire and the fascinating lives of the Great Mongol Khans who ruled it.” 

Voices of the Past
The story of Genghis and the Mongol empire traverses territorial and cultural boundaries and is told in many languages. By piecing together eyewitness accounts from the far-reaching corners of the empire, displaying extracts from contemporary Mongolian, Chinese, Persian and European sources, the exhibition presents the history of the Mongol empire with an innovative comprehensive and representative approach. Featured primary sources will include The Secret History of the Mongols, the only surviving contemporary account of the life of Genghis Khan and early Mongol empire written by the Mongols themselves. Also featured, The Travels of Marco Polo, the thirteenth-century text by Venetian merchant Marco Polo, which tells of his twenty years of travel throughout the Mongol empire in the service of Kublai Khan.
“For this project we wanted to combine outstanding artefacts with literary treasures of the times”says Manon Delaury, International Partnerships Director at Nomad Exhibitions. “The exhibition will call upon a blend of extracts from different sources which were written during and after the rise of the Great Khans, conveying powerful insights into contemporary perceptions and questioning the distance between real facts and myth” she adds.

1000 Years of Treasures
GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans features some of the rarest exhibits from Inner Mongolian collections. Artefacts selected address every aspect of life in the Mongol empire and cover the 1000 year period from the Liao dynasty to the present day. This wide-ranging collection includes household objects, items of traditional Mongol costume and adornment and eclectic religious artefacts from various regions of the vast empire. Examples of Mongol armour, weaponry and equestrian equipment provide a vivid glimpse into the sophisticated action of the Mongol cavalry. Personal items once belonging to the Mongol ruling family, from the brand of Genghis Khan and the seal of a Mongol princess to a golden cup once used at palace banquets, exude an intimate sense of connection to the Great Khans themselves. Many of the objects featured have never before been exhibited outside of Asia and will be displayed together for the first time.
“Inner Mongolia Museum holds a very large collection of artefacts that encompass the entire period of the Mongol empire, from the nomadic ancestors of Genghis Khan to the fall of the Yuan dynasty” comments Mr Ta La, Director of Inner Mongolia Museum. He continues “With this exhibition, we want to offer visitors the opportunity to see some of the rarest treasures of our collections, including some recently excavated objects that have never been exhibited, and share with them the latest research developed in regards to Genghis and his successors.”
Exhibition Partners 
GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans is the result of a partnership between Nomad Exhibitions and Inner Mongolia Museum. The exhibition content and collection have been developed through close collaboration between Nomad Exhibitions and a curatorial consortium of leading historians and academics including Mr Fu Ning, Vice Director of Inner Mongolia Museum, researcher, research librarian and Executive Director of the Inner Mongolia Institute of Archaeological Museums and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Cultural Relics Identification Committee, Mr Chen Yongzhi, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Mr Buyanhuu, one of the most influential scholars on Mongolian history in the world.

GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans will start touring in Europe in 2017 with a major presentation at the National Military Museum of the Netherlands, a brand new Dutch national museum which recently opened in Soesterberg. For this first showing, the exhibition will dive into the military conquests of the Great Khans, with a particular focus on the warfare of the times.

“We are looking forward to welcoming the premiere of the exhibition at the National Military Museum. This exhibition will be the first military exhibition of this scale, and the first major presentation telling the story of Genghis Khan and his heirs in the Netherlands.” says Hedwig Saam, Director of the National Military Museum of the Netherlands.

After its presentation in the Netherlands GENGHIS: Rise of the Mongol Khans is proposed for hire to museums worldwide from summer 2017.

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