Talk:Turan/Archive 1

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The verifiability disclaimer displayed at the top of this article page is not justified: all the stated facts are based on documented research which has been cited (authors, titles, link). Those who demonstrate such overeagerness to question the evidence referred to here should also place similar disclaimers in those articles which claim that the Scythians were Indo-Europeans, and that the Uralic and Altaic groups have no connection to the Sumerians, otherwise the impartiality and objectivity of Wikipedia may be in question as well.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

History is clear

Please provide historical resources indicating the Turanians were the protogenerators of the Turks. There is only ONE primary source regarding the Turanians, and that is the Zoroastrian Gathas. All other sources are myths, written hundreds of years after the historical events described in the Gathas occurred. While the Gathas is a religious holy book it still holds valuable information on who the Turanians were. The Turanians are noted as being of Aryan (meaning Indo-Iranian, not the 19th century definition), meaning they spoke an Aryan language, and shared the same customs as the other Aryans. Until the prophet Zoroaster converted the Iranians the Gathas mentions the Iranians and Turanians had the SAME religious beliefs (probably closely related to Vedic Hinduism, as the Iranians and Indians shared the same ancient language). What does that tell us? The Turanians were an Indo-European ethnic group, like the Iranians. They were NOT a Ural-Altaic group. The Gathas also state the Turanians were converted to Zoroastrianism, and we never hear of them again as a distinct historicl group (only in myths). Can anyone provide evidence that ANY of the Turko Mongol tribes were Zoroastrian? If anything, it would seem more advantageous to the Zoroastrians if the Turanians were non-iranic (just as it was advantageous for Ferdowsi to mention the Turanians as being Turkic). Clearly the ancient Iranians had NO KNOWLEDGE of the ancient Turks (who I seriously doubt were even an ethnic group at the time). All religious citations are provided below.

Reply to "History is clear"

How far back in time do the Zoroastrian Gathas go? Do they cover the period from 5000-3000 BC? Archeological and anthropological evidence from this period indicates that Sumerian cultural influence and ethnic presence spread to Iran and Central Asia (refer to sources mentioned in my other postings below). The cited evidence also indicates that the Scythians originated at least in part from these Sumerian-related settlers, and the Scythian-type cultures spread to Mongolia where they merged with proto-Altaic peoples. The conclusion is that non-Indo-Europeans inhabited Central Asia (including Turan) before the Indo-Europeans, and the Ural-Altaic peoples are related to Sumerians and Scythians.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 29-01-06

Reply to hunmagyar.org

The Avestan language spoken by the prophet Zoroaster is nearly identical to the Vedic Sanskrit spoken by the Indo Aryans in the Indian Subcontinent. That, coupled w/geographic descriptions provided in the Gathas, indicate that the Gathas were first written approx 3600-4000 years ago; well within you ascribed time frame. Regardless of what you say regarding Scythians, Sumerians, and proto-Altaic peoples, it doesn't change the fact that the only primary source regarding the Turanians describe them as being clearly Indo-Iranian. It also doesn't change the fact that the Turanians disappear from history due to being converted to Zoroastrianism and assimilating into Iranian culture; and only reappear as a mythos created by some Turks.

68.4.210.29 is basically right except that the Gathas were probably not written down but transmitted orally until they were submitted to writing in the Sassanid era; there is a Zoroastrian tradition about the existence of an original proto-text that disappeared in the destructions of Alexander the Great, but that is probably a myth invented in a period when writing was more respected than the spoken word.

Furthermore, the date given by 68.4.210.29 is probably a little too high. Our only points of reference is the fact that the Avestan language is more archaic than Old Persian of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenid era (6th-4th cent. BC) and therefore probably also older; and the fact that Avestan is pretty much as archaic as the language of the oldest parts of the Rigveda (ca. 1,500-1,200 BC). On that ground, most specialists assume that the Gathas were composed around the begining of the first millennium BC. Enkyklios 07:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

My source regarding the dating of Zoroaster is from Mary Boyce.

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This article is blatant propaganda for a minority opinion based on ethic and nationalist concerns and not on solid evidence from the social sciences. The article fails to mention that there is a minority opinion being presented and, instead, presents its viewpoint as undisputed fact.

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Interesting logic (?) in the previous comment (above): because this article supposedly represents a 'minority' opinion (where is the survey?), that is it contradicts the 'majority' opinion (name of the beast?), it can only be 'propaganda' without 'solid evidence'. Without any logical argumentation, and without presenting counter-evidence, the above comment will not advance the debate. The article presents both sides of the debate and argues for the Turanian side based on cited documented evidence. If this evidence is dismissed without scholarly debate, then the discussion will leave the realm of scientific fact, and the neutrality of the individual who posted the propaganda accusation is what is in question.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

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lots works to do for reality

could you correct this one too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythia

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Questionable neutrality and objectivity of Sumerian, Scythian, Sarmatian, Saka articles

I recently added comments to the Sumerian, Scythian, Sarmatian, and Saka articles, to the effect that some of the claims made in those articles were in dispute (namely that the Sumerians were an isolated group with no relationship to any other group, and that the Scythians/Sarmatians/Sakas were Iranians/Indo-Europeans). However, it appears that these comments have been removed without any explanation, leaving the readers with the false impression that those claims are unanimously accepted facts.

Here is a partial list of the researchers who recognized, studied and documented the relationship between the Sumerian and Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages:

Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert, Francois C. Lenormant, Archibald H. Sayce, Edouard Sayous, Yrjo Sakari Yrjo-Koskinen, K. A. Hermann, Otto Donner, H. Gelzer, Friedrich Delitzsch, Eberhard Schrader, H. H. Howorth, Fritz Hommel, Sophus Ruge, Oscar Peschel, Richard Gosche.

The work of these researchers is documented in Miklos Érdy's The Sumerian, Ural-Altaic, Magyar Relationship: A History of Research, Gilgamesh, New York, 1974.

The history of the research on the Sumerians has some bizarre twists. It must be understood that politics and ideology have interfered with scientific research. To understand this fact, one must realize the ideological climate in which this research took place during the 19th and 20th centuries. These centuries saw the rise of nationalism and of various racist supremacist ideologies, such as the Aryan superiority myth - no, the Nazis didn't invent this one, they just re-used it - and although the term "Aryan" has been replaced by the more scientifically-sounding "Indo-European", many still adhere to the belief of this group's cultural superiority. One of the strangest episodes in the history of Sumerian research took place at the end of the 19th century, when Joseph Halévy began to preach the idea that the Sumerians had never existed and that the Sumerian language was just a secret language invented by the Semitic priests of ancient Babylonia...

Thus, it seems that the problem with the Sumerians is that they were neither Semitic, nor Indo-European. Had they been, they would most certainly have received a different treatment. As such, since neither Semitic nor Indo-European peoples could claim the Sumerians as their own, the Sumerians had to be quarantined to make sure that nobody else could claim them, hence the assertion that the Sumerians were an isolated group with no links to any other ethnolinguistic group. However, this claim appears to be in contradiction to the evidence uncovered so far.

The problem with the claims that the Sumerians were an isolated group and that the Scythians were Indo-Europeans is that these claims are based on questionable linguistic speculation which fails to take into consideration significant archeological, anthropological, and ethnological evidence. One of the most comprehensive studies examining this complex question is László Götz's 5-volume 1100-page research work entitled "Keleten Kél a Nap" (The Sun rises in the East), for which the author consulted over 500 bibliographical sources from among the most authoritative experts in the fields of ancient history, archeology, and linguistics. In his wide-ranging study, László Götz examined the development of the Sumerian civilization, the determining cultural and ethno-linguistic influence of the Near-Eastern Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Age civilizations upon the cultural development of Western Eurasia, and the linguistic parallels between the Indo-European, Semitic and Sumerian languages indicating that the Sumerian language had a considerable impact on the development of the Indo-European and Semitic languages which, as a result, have numerous words of Sumerian origin. László Götz also examined the fundamental methodological shortcomings of Indo-European linguistic research. His conclusion is that most Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups are related to one another in varying degrees, and that these groups, such as the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic groups, were formed in a complex process of multiple ethno-linguistic hybridization in which Sumerian-related peoples played a fundamental role.

Götz also pointed out that according to the anthropological evidence, the Sumerians and other related Near Eastern peoples were of the Brachycephalic Caucasoid type, just like the Turanians, and that thousands of years ago this type of population spread out accross Eurasia, where it can still be seen from Central Europe to Central Asia, even though significant intermingling with other groups, such as with the Mongoloid type, has occurred since.

All this to say that the currently dominant views about the Sumerians being an isolated group and the Scythians being Indo-Europeans need to be re-examined and revised.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

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this article is not accurate and POV

This article is being messed up by Pan-Turkist 'pseudo-scientists' with absolutely no validity. The article does not even mention the origin of the name "Turan", and instead, tries to make a point by quoting non-verified and already disproven claims of Turkish nationalists. That's really sad ... -213.39.200.218 22:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

...

What is really sad is individuals like the one who made the comment above ('this article is not accurate and POV'), abusing such a forum to make unfounded accusations, without any rational argumentation or reference to any evidence, and they don't even have the decency or courage to identify themselves. Such rants have no credibility and have no place in a forum for scholarly debate. -Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

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OMG this article is so messed up!

You people might not know this, but this article is not about Turanism (= nationalist Turkish blah blah), but about the region called Turan. This article should be about the name, history, peoples, and geography of Turan, which is more or less the southern parts of Central Asia.

The name Turan is Old Persian and means land of darkness. It is taken from the word tur (sometimes târ) which means dark (compare to Persian: târik, Pashto: tora, English: dark). According to Zoroastrian mythology, Turan is the enemy of Irân (which means land of the light, land of the nobles).

The original meaning of the word had nothing to do with Turks or Sumerians or whatever. It is clearly mentioned in the Avesta (Gathas: 11-12, Yasht XIII: 88, Vidêvdat III: 23;30-31) that "Turanians" were "Aryans", that they were from the same stock as Iranians, and they even had similar languages. The only difference was their religion: they were not followers of Zarathustra's good religion, and thus were called Tuiranians (people of the dark nation), unlike Iranians (noble peoples) who were followers of Zarathustra.

For those who know German: Iran and Turan

This article needs to be moved to the Pan-Turkist claims ... it has nothing to do with modern and serious science! And, most important, it has nothing to do with the region called Turan.

Besides that, most of the peoples claimed by this article to have been Turks were actually Indo-Europeans, mostly from the Indo-Iranian branch. Just check out the following articles: Scythians, Saka, Cimmerians, Parthians (who spoke a northwestern Iranian language, very similar to Proto-Kurdish), etc etc etc. Even the Chinese distinguished between Turks and Indo-Europeans:

... There are numerous debates about Hephthalite language. Most scholars believe it is Iranian for the Pei Shih states that the

language of the Hephthalites differs from those of the Juan-juan (Mongoloid) and of the "various Hu" (Turkic) ...

http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/artl/heph.shtml

More sources:

... Scythians and Sarmatians were of Iranian origin ...

[John Channon & Robert Hudson, Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia, 1995, p.18]

... Indo-European in appearance and spoke an Iranian tongue which bought them more closely to the Medes and Persians ...

[Tim Newark, Barbarians, 1998, p.6]

... The Sarmatians…spoke an Iranian language similar to that of the Scythians and closely related to Persian ...

[Richard Mariusz & Richard Mielczarek, The Sarmatians: 600 BC-450 AD, 2002, p.3]

... of Indo-European stock belonging to…the Iranian group, often called the Scythian group of peoples…they were akin to the ancient Medes, Parthians and Persians. Their language was related to that of the Avesta ...

[Tadesuz Sulimirski, The Sarmatians, London: Thames & Hudson, 1970, p.22]

... The river names, “Don”, “Donets”, “Dnieper” and “Dniester” are all of Iranian origin ...

[P.J. Mallory, Mallory’s map on p. 78]

And Sumerians were deffinitly NOT Turks or Proto-Turks. The Turks were a Mongoloid people, related to Mongols and other smaller tribes of West Asia. This is even confirmed by Roman sources who discribed Attila the Hun (Huns were Proto-Turks) as Mongolid:

... Atilla had a flat nose, swarthy dark complexion, broad chest, short stature and small eyes, but full of confidence ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila

... incoming minorities (...) conquer other populations and (...) impose their languages on them. The Altaic family spread in this fashion ...

- [Colin Renfrew, World linguistic diversity, Scientific American, 270(1), 1994, p.118]

... Around the third century B.C., groups speaking Turkish languages (...) threatened empires in China, Tibet, India, Central Asia, before eventually arriving in Turkey ... genetic traces of their movement can sometimes be found, but they are often diluted, since the numbers of conquerors were always much smaller than the populations they conquered (p.125)

... Turks ... conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453. ... Replacement of Greek with Turkish ... Genetic effects of invasion were modest in Turkey. Their armies had few soldiers (...) invading Turkish populations would be small relative to the subject populations that had a long civilization and history ...

- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi (2000). Genes, Peoples and Languages. New York: North Point Press. P.125, 152]

This article needs to be cleaned up by REAL experts. Right now, it is being messed up by some uneducated Pan-Turkist with EXTREME minority-complexes.

-Tajik 19:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

You can thank 'Indo-European-centrism' for messing things up

When referring to ancient written sources about the Scythians and the Huns, one should keep in mind that many of these sources were biased: the Scythians and the Huns were seen as barbarian enemies. One should therefore be very careful when trying to interpret these sources and to draw ethnolinguistic and historical conclusions from them.

Another problem arising from these sources is that they often distorted the few words or names attributed to these 'barbarians', and these were the only fragments of their language that were preserved. This led many Indo-Europeanists to the mistaken conclusion that the Scyhtians, Sarmatians, Medes, and Parthians were Indo-European, based on erroneous etymological interpretations of the few personal Scythian names which have been preserved (possibly in a distorted form) in ancient texts. Since then, even more Western historians have made the mistake of accepting without question this erroneous conclusion, thus giving the impression that this was a widely accepted fact. However, a number of researchers examined more carefully the assertions that the Scythians were Indo-European and came to the conclusion that the Indo-European etymological interpretations were doubtful and possibly incorrect:

According to K. Jettmar (Die fruhen Steppenvolker), the only supposed 'proof' that the Scythians were Iranians were some 'Iranian-sounding' names, and the Sarmatians were assumed to be also Iranians because, according to Herodotos, their language resembled that of the Scythians.

F. Altheim (Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter) explains that although the language of the Parthians is not known, it was presumed to be Iranian because, according to Appolodoros, it was somewhere between that of the Scyhtians and that of the Medes.

H. W. Haussig (Theophylakt's Exkurs uber die skythischen Volker) points out that the population of the Kushan Empire, which was thought to be Iranian, was in fact considerably mixed, and had a significant Altaic component.

O. Franke (Beitrage aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Turkvolker und Skythen Zentralasiens) determined that, based on Chinese sources, the place of origin of the Turks was in today's Turkmenistan. He also comes to the conclusion that the supposed existence of Indo-European peoples in Central Asia in those ancient times was not supported by any conclusive evidence, and that the Sakas and Kushans were Altaic peoples.

W. Eberhard (Die Kultur der alten zentral- und westasiatischen Volker nach chinesischen Quellen) also comes to similar conclusions about the origins of the Altaic peoples being in Turkmenistan, pointing out that from the most ancient times, this region had close contacts with the ancient Near East, and this also meant ethnolinguistic affinity. According to him, the anthropological evidence also supports the presence of Altaic peoples in Turkmenistan since the most ancient times.

G. Husing (Die Urbevolkerung Irans) states that the 'Indo-European-centric' historiography is a falsification, and that according to ancient sources, the population of Iran in Persian times was not purely Aryan, but highly heterogenous, and that therefore, before the appearance of the Aryans, the Iranian population was non-Indo-European and had an advanced culture.

Thus, thousands of years before the formation of the Indo-European peoples, peoples belonging to an ancient ethnolinguistic group spread out from the Near East and settled in the Mediterranean Basin (the pre-Hellenic Aegean peoples, the Etruscans, the Iberians), in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Iran and Central Asia. These peoples were neither Semitic nor 'Aryan', they were related to the Mesopotamian Sumerians. (G. Childe: Vorgeschichte der europaischen Kultur; L. Gotz: Keleten Kel a Nap)

The formation of the Western Eurasian ethnolinguistic groups - the Semitic, Indo-European, Caucasian, Uralic, and Altaic groups, was significantly influenced by the ancient Sumerian-related peoples originating from the Near East. This is clearly illustrated by the numerous words of Sumerian origin which can be found in those languages. The Western Eurasian languages can thus to a large extent be seen as the results of a process of pidginization (hybridization) in which the language of the Sumerian group played a determining role:

'The Indo-Europeanization of Europe did not mean total destruction of the previous cultural achievement but consisted in an amalgamation (hybridization) of racial and cultural phenomena. Linguistically, the process may (and must) be regarded in a similar way: the Indo-Europeans imposed an idiom which itself then adopted certain elements from the autochtonous languages spoken previously. These non-Indo-European (pre-I-E) elements are numerous in Greek, Latin, and arguably, Thracian... the Thracians were highly conservative in their idea of urbanism; their language reflects this reality in terms (words, place-names) the origin of which can be traced back to the idioms spoken in the Neolithic (pre-I-E) times... The Romanian name for Transylvania, Ardeal, is one of the clearest pre-I-E relics... place-names are of great importance in the reconstruction of vanished civilizations and it is almost inevitable that the identifiable pre-I-E elements come down from the Neolithic times: the dawn of the European civilization... the terms implying complex societies are of pre-Indo-European origin.' (Paliga, S., 'Thracian terms for 'township' and 'fortress', and related place-names', in: World Archeology, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1986, pp. 26-29.)

Based on the above-mentioned sources, it is most likely that a similar process of ethnolinguistic hybridization also took place in Iran. Thus, the ancient Turanians were not Indo-Europeans and they were in Turan long before the Persians called it Turan. It is only later that the original Caucasoid Turanians intermingled with Mongoloid peoples (creating the Altaic group), and it is therefore inaccurate to claim that the Turanians were always Mongoloid. This also means that not all 'Iranians' were 'Aryan' or Indo-European. In fact, the close scrutiny of the formation of the Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups reveals that they are to a considerable extent the result of the intermingling of the ancient Sumerian-related peoples with various 'proto-I-E' peoples. Thus the classical family-tree model of the origins and development of the I-E peoples is fundamentaly flawed: the I-E peoples did not originate from a single ancestral people, or from a single ancestral homeland, and there was no single ancestral I-E language either. The I-E peoples and languages are the result of a complex process of ethnolinguistic hybridization in which the Sumerian-Turanian peoples played an important role.

In conclusion, based on the significant linguistic (both lexical and grammatical), archeological, anthropological, and ethno-cultural evidence, the similarities between the Sumerians, Scythians, and Ural-Altaic peoples cannot be attributed to chance, but suggest the need for the re-definition of the ethnolinguistic term 'Turanian' to include the Sumerian-related peoples of the Near East, the Scythian-related peoples of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Iran, as well as the Uralic and Altaic groups.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

Drastic Surgery

This article was almost completely filled with nonsense. I tried to revise it to reflect more or less the scholarly consensus. AnonMoos 03:27, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Surgery? More like drastic vandalism in the name of Indo-European-centric dogma

Below is the text which has been cut from the article because some 'experts' declared it to be 'nonsense', dismissing it without proper scholarly debate, in a manner reminiscent of an inquisition.

In order to address the issue of Turanian origins and identity, several major fundamental misconceptions must be examined:

1. The first misconception is that the Sumerians were an isolated ethnolinguistic group with no known relationship to any other ethnolinguistic groups. The historical, archeological, anthropological, and linguistic evidence which has been uncovered to date indicates that the Sumerians were not an isolated group and that they do in fact have wide-ranging ethnolingistic links with other groups. The Sumerians of Southern Mesopotamia, who were the creators of the first known civilization, the inventors of agriculture, metallurgy, the wheel, writing, and astronomy, among others (S.N. Kramer: History begins at Sumer), came from Northern Mesopotamia, and they were part of a larger ethnolinguistic group which included the Hatti (not to be confused with the later Hittites) of Central and Eastern Anatolia, the Hurrians and Subareans of Northern Mesopotamia, and the Kassites and Elamites of Western Iran, among others, and which inhabited these regions before the appearance of the Semitic and Indo-European peoples. It is therefore a fact that the Northern and Western regions of what is today Iran were originally inhabited by Sumerian-related ethnic groups such as the Medes and the Parthians, and not by Indo-Europeans.

The 19th century researchers who discovered and studied the ancient Mesopotamian Sumerian language determined that it was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and that it was related to the Turanian (Ural-Altaic) languages (M. Érdy: The Sumerian Ural-Altaic Magyar Relationship). Comparative linguistic analysis has indicated that of all known ethno-linguistic groups, the Hungarian, Turkic, Caucasian and Finnic languages are by far the closest to Sumerian (K. Gosztony: Dictionnaire d'étymologie sumérienne et grammaire comparée). This is also confirmed by archeological and anthropological evidence which shows that thousands of years ago, the Sumerians and other related Near Eastern peoples settled in the vast region of Central Eurasia from the Carpathian basin to the Altai mountains, from the Urals and Siberia to Iran and India (L. Götz: Keleten Kel a Nap (The Sun Rises in the East)).

The historical evidence thus shows that Turan (Central Eurasia) saw the development of a highly evolved civilization of Sumerian (Mesopotamian) origin (S.P. Tolstov: Ancient Chorasmia). The descendants of these Sumerian-related peoples were known as the Scythians, Sakas, Sarmatians, Medes, Parthians, Chorasmians, Kushans, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Magyars, among others, and gave rise to the Uralic and Altaic ethnolinguistic groups. These Turanian peoples created flourishing cultures and states which exerted a determining influence on the peripheral Eurasian cultures of Europe, the Middle East, Persia, India, and China, as well as on the formation of the various Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups.

2. The second fundamental misconception is that the Scythians, and other related peoples such as the Sakas, Sarmatians, Medes, Parthians, Chorasmians, Kushans were "Aryans", or Indo-Europeans. This mistaken assumption derives from the first one stated above, and is not based on any scientific evidence, but merely on dubious linguistic theory which fails to take into account the fact that the Semitic and Indo-European languages have borrowed heavily from the Sumerian language. Thus, many words considered to be Indo-European are in fact of Sumerian origin, and this has led to the erroneous conclusion that the Scythians and the other above-mentioned ancient peoples of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Northern Iran were Indo-European.

3. The third fundamental misconception, itself deriving from the first two previously stated ones, is that there are no links between the Uralic and Altaic groups. As stated above, there is a substantial body of research which shows that Sumerian-related peoples migrated to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and that the Scythians and other related peoples (Sakas, Sarmatians, Medes, Parthians, Chorasmians, Kushans) evolved from these Sumerian-related peoples. This research also shows that the Scythians, besides having inhabited Eastern Europe, also reached present-day Siberia and Mongolia, and that both the Uralic and Altaic groups evolved to a considerable extent from the Scythian peoples, through a process of ethnolinguistic hybridization and convergence.

In conclusion, the evidence indicates that the Uralic and Altaic ethnolinguistic groups have evolved at least in part from the Scythian group, which itself originates from the Sumerians and the Sumerian-related peoples of the Near East, and that therefore there is a Sumerian-Scythian-Ural-Altaic Turanian continuity. This also suggests that there is a need to re-examine the above-stated misconceptions which still seem to be widespread about the Turanians. For further reference see http://www.hunmagyar.org/turan/magyar/tor/chron.htm

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

Reply

1) Please sign your comments by real name or Wikipedia User name, because "Webmaster - hunmagyar.org" serves no particular relevant identifying purpose, and does not give your remarks any greater authority.

> I would suggest that you nag on those who don't even sign their comments. You don't think my signature is authoritative enough? Then how about Dr. Who (Webmaster - hunmagyar.org)?

2) You didn't present any direct argument as such above -- instead you merely cut-and-pasted your whole pre-canned spiel boilerplate text.

> As a matter of fact, I did present arguments with source references in my previous comments, including the text you cut out of the article. - Dr. Who

3) There's no particular accepted evidence connecting Sumerians with the Central Asia region in any direct or obvious way. From the technical linguistic point of view, there's only a TYPOLOGICAL relationship between Sumerian and so-called "Altaic" languages, not a scientifically-ascertainable relationship of common linguistic origin. (Of course, many would say that there's only a typological relationship within the "Altaic" languages, not a scientifically-ascertainable relationship of common linguistic origin.)

> There is evidence, and not only linguistic, but also archeological, anthropological, and ethnographic (see source references in my previous comments). - Dr. Who

4) We have a fair amount of surviving written text in the Sogdian language, and in the Saka language, and they're both revealed to be Iranian.

> Source? How can I verify this? - Dr. Who

5) This article will not serve its purpose very well if it flagrantly condradicts all the other relevant articles on Wikipedia. For example, the articles on Sumerian language and Scythians don't endorse any Altaic hypothesis.

> What purpose are you referring to? - Dr. Who

6) Your version of the article didn't even mention the Shah-nameh (the work which in some ways popularized the word "Turanian" in the post-Islamic period), and didn't mention that the word Turan is first attested as a Persian word, expressing geography as seen from a Persian point of view.

> The point is that non-Indo-European peoples inhabited Turan and parts of Iran long before any Aryan set foot there. The problem is that the various Indo-European theories fail to take this into consideration or to explain it satisfactorily, due to their inherent methodological shortcomings and ideological bias. - Dr. Who

AnonMoos 18:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

> Comments added by Dr. Who (Webmaster - hunmagyar.org)

After having similiar POV pushing on de:, I'd like to thank AnonMoos for the rewrite. --Pjacobi 01:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

What does Sumeria have to do with Turan?

Why is Sumeria, and it's culture, included in the article regarding Turan? They have nothing to do with each other and developed in isolation from one another. This is clearly pan-Turkish propaganda, intending to show that the Turks are the genesis of humanity. The Turks even try to claim George Washington was a Turk, as were the native americans. This is ridiculous.

Focus, please!

All evidence suggests that the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and Parthians were Iranian tribes. The Turkic hypothesis has no support in the authoritative scholarly milieu, but it is cultivated primarily by amateur historians with a clear nationalist agenda. Yet, if the war is going to be fought in wikipedia, we better not do it here also. It should be in the discussion pages of "Scythian language", "Parthian language", etc.

There is no evidence that the Turan of the Avesta were Turks. On the contrary, they seem to have been some kind of Iranians who stuck to the pre-Zoroastrian religion. Therefore, the article should not be about Turks (let alone Sumerians), but about Turan as the people and the area were described in the Avesta and in the Shahmaneh.

The modern ideological concept of Turan should be put in a separate article to avoid confusion. After all, Turan as a collective name of Turks, Mongols and Finno-Ugrians is no more satisfying than Aryan as a collective name of the Indo-European people. These words were constructed in opposition to each other, both in the Middle Iranian discourse and in the nationalist historical scholarship of the 19th century. Enkyklios 16:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Check this text out: http://www.compmore.net/~tntr/tur1.html. I am speechless! The Turkomanic author, Polat Kaya, derives all languages from "Turanic" through the process of "anagrammatizing". It is mad science at its best. Enkyklios 16:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Focus [on] this

Not all evidence supports the claim that the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Parthians were Indo-Europeans: see references in my previous postings - they are not Pan-Turkist sources, nor have they been used by Pan-Turkists.

The Indo-Europeanist claims are based on the 19th century ideological dogma of Aryan superiority which has fabricated a flawed linguistic theory and falsified history. Naturally, any questioning of the Indo-European dogmas is met with a medieval inquisition-witch hunt like reaction as demonstrated in this discussion.

There are examples of absurdities and mad science on the other side as well: the 19th century claim that the Sumerians did not exist and that their language was a secret language invented by the Semitic priests of Babylon, or the claim that the Sumerians were related to the Iranians (see discussion page of Turanism article).

Trying to discredit the entire field of Turanist research by using selected examples such as the Polat Kaya one is also nonsense and unscientific.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 29-01-06

The claim that the Scythians, Sarmatians and Parthians were Indo-Europeans is not based on any ideological dogma of Aryan superiority. First, this dangerous idea has only played a minor role in the field of Indo-European linguistics itself even though it enjoyed extreme popularity outside of the scientific world. Furthermore, I fail to see why Indo-Europeanists should have any interest in Indo-Europeanising the Scythians if they did in fact belong to another language family. It is not that the Scythian tribe is some kind of precious treasure without which the Indo-European language family would seem poor and trivial.

Admittedly, the linguistic evidence is sparse and equivocal, and one has to examine evaluate it with the uttermost diligence. The key argument in favour of the prevailing Iranian hypothesis is the vast amount of Scythian-Sarmatian personak names found in the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast. Most of them can be explained readily with Iranian etymologies assuming that the Scythian-Sarmatian language continuum was close to Ossetic and Sogdian. The keywork is Ladislav Zgusta, Die Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste. Die ethnischen Verhältnisse, namentlich das Verhältnis der Skythen und Sarmaten, im Lichte der Namenforschung (Praha 1955). Zgusta works within the framework of the method of historical linguistics, in so far as his etymologies follow certain regular phonetic developments and patterns of word formation.

The Turkic hypothesis, which plays no role in the scholarly literature on the subject, is based on two kinds of evidence: 1) The so-called runiform inscriptions found in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. 2) Etymologies of toponyms, ethnonyms and theonyms found in Greek authors (primarily Herodotus). The first source is all but unambiguous given that we have no idea what these texts are saying. The second source is not less problematic because the etymologies presented by the advocates of the Turkic hypothesis do not live up to the standard of historical linguistic as far as they do not pose regular phonetic developments or regular patterns of word formation. This criticism is not pedantic; it means that the proposed etymologies have no value at all since the similarity of the words in question may just as well be due to accidental similarity.

In other words, if one wants to prove that the Iranian hypothesis is wrong and the Turkic hypothesis is right, one has to argue that the very method of historical linguistics is erroneous; one has to claim that immediate (surface) similarity is in fact more important than the (depth) similarity consisting in regular sound developments. Good luck! I'm looking forward to hearing your arguments in favour of such a revisionist approach which would indeed revolutionise the way linguistics is taught and practised in all universities of the world. Enkyklios 08:11, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, L. Götz: Keleten Kel a Nap (The Sun Rises in the East), Puski, 1994, Budapest, already did just that: he demonstrated the flaws of the Grimm sound-change theory which claimed that the observable phonetic variations of words are the result of a regular and predictable evolution over time which is applicable to all Indo-European languages, and that based on these patterns, a hypothetical Indo-European language could be reconstructed.

Furthermore, this Indo-European linguistic theory is also flawed because it ignores the evidence that the Indo-European languages have numerous words of Sumerian origin. Götz provides many lists and tables showing the high probability of Sumerian origin of a large number of words in the Semitic and Indo-European languages, which render the statistical probability of coincidence highly unlikely. That the Semitic languages have many words of Sumerian origin should not come as a surprise given that they were in direct contact with the Mesopotamian Sumerians. In the case of the Indo-Europeans, this can be explained by the transmission of Sumerian words by other non- and pre-Indo-Europeans originating from the Near East and who settled in Europe before the arrival of the proto-Indo-Europeans with whom they later mingled to form the various Indo-European groups.

Götz's study of over 1100 pages also contains an impressive bibliography of over 500 sources (mostly Western), upon which he based his conclusions which can be summed up thus: the Sumerians were not an isolated group, but had in fact a tremendous ethno-linguistic and cultural influence on the development of the various Eurasian ethno-linguistic groups - the Semitic, Indo-European, Caucasian, Uralic, and Altaic groups, citing linguistic, archeological, anthropological, and other evidence. It would be advisable for all those who claim to be Indo-European scholars to take a good look at such research instead of dismissing it as some pan-Turkist propaganda.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 5-02-06

I take hunmagyar's words as a confession of my assumption that the Turanist hypothesis is incompatible with the principles of conventional historical linguistics. I have not read Götz' voluminous work, but I suspect that he is not a professional linguist. The problem is that, if one does not work within the stringent framework of comparative linguistics, the results one gets are useless. It can be proven mathematically. Without regular soundlaws and derivation patterns, the risk of identifying non-related words will increase virtually infinitely, and the probabilly does not increase by accumulating the evidence. If anything is valid, nothing is valid. I know that the philological approah is painstakingly boring and slow, but it has the great advantage that its results are trustworthy and probable (which is, of course, not the same as true). It is without doubt more fun to make long-distance comparison relying on one's immediate impressions, but the problem is that you have no method for distinguishing the probable and the improbable.

It is not controversial that the Indo-European languages have loan-words from the Middle Eastern languages, and some of them have been proven to be of proto-Indo-European age, since they have gone through all the regular sound-laws from PIE upwards! A popular example is Gk. πέλεκυς "axe" ~ Sanskrit paraśu- < *pelek̂u- <- Akkadian pilakku. However, most of the oriental loans are limited to the single Indo-European langauges and therefore probably borrowed only during the development of the particular language, e.g. Gk. χρυσός "gold" <- Akkadian hurāšu.

By the way, you have not put forward any evidence supporting your allegation that sound-laws are without any importance and the Indo-European language family relies on a methodological flaw. You have only quoted a Hungarian book claiming that, written by a person which is, to the best of my knowledge, unknown in the scholarly milieu and therefore probably no part of it. Enkyklios 12:08, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

All scientific theories must go through a process of questioning, re-evaluation and revision. The so-called conventional Indo-European historical linguistic theory is no exception. Based on the statements of those who claim allegiance to this theory, one would believe that this is some sort of infallible dogma which cannot be questioned, and if one dares to do so, then it is heresy punishable by excommunication.

The problem with the so-called conventional Indo-European historical linguistic theory is that the historical conclusions drawn from it are contradicted by archeological and anthropological evidence which supports the Turanist hypothesis (references in my previous postings).

This debate is still far from settled, the question being will it be a scientific debate or an ideological one?

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 6-02-06

I agree that "all scientific theories must go through a process of questioning, re-evaluation and revision". However, I do not think that you can discard a linguistic method with reference to the archaeological material - or, for that sake, an archaeological theory with reference to the linguistic material. The validity of the method of historical linguistics is independent of the historical conclusions which one may draw from the linguistic reconstruction that are made within the framework of that method.

As you probably know, there is no unanimity among Indo-Europeanists as to the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European culture or the location of the proto-home; the disagreement is not an indication of the falsity of the linguistic theory. The fact is that language and material culture are incompatible kinds of evidence, the latter being distributed rapidly and readily far beyond the borders of the single ethnos, the former being transmitted only slowly during long-term contact. Of course words can travel far if they are attached to prestigious objects and behaviours, but I am not speaking about single words but large linguistic structures.

Therefore, I am very sceptic of your attempt to reconstruct a large Turanic ethnos with a unified linguistic, material and racial character. It is simply improbable, unmethodological and potentially racist. Enkyklios 09:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Basis for Turanian hypothesis

The Turanian hypothesis

Thousands of years ago, peoples originating from the ancient Near-Eastern ethno-linguistic group consisting of the Mesopotamian Sumerians, the Hurrians, Subareans, Elamites, Kassites, among others, settled in the Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Central Asia. The pre-Indo-European populations of Europe, and the Scythian, Uralic and Altaic peoples and languages originate at least in part from the Sumerian-related group.

Arguments supporting the Turanian hypothesis

Comparative linguistic analysis indicates the correspondence of hundreds of words (possibly more) with related phonetic structure and meaning between Sumerian and the Ural-Altaic languages, as well as similarities in grammatical structure (Érdy, Götz, Gosztony). In his Sumerian Etymological Dictionary and Comparative Grammar, Kálmán Gosztony, professor of Sumerian philology at the Sorbonne, demonstrated that the grammatical structure of the Hungarian language is the closest to that of the Sumerian language: out of the 53 characteristics of Sumerian grammar, there are 51 matching characteristics in the Hungarian language, 29 in the Turkic languages, 24 in the Caucasian languages, 21 in the Uralic languages, compared to only 5 in the Semitic languages, and 4 in the Indo-European languages.

Furthermore, the linguistic evidence is confirmed by archeological and anthropological evidence which traces the spread of culture across Eurasia back to its Mesopotamian origins (Götz).

So far, the opponents of the Turanian hypothesis have dismissed it in ignorance of the evidence presented by the sources mentioned above and in my previous postings. Dismissing evidence without proper analysis on the grounds that it contradicts certain IE theories or that the sources are not recognized in IE circles do not constitute rational arguments.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 7-02-06

(Would you please sign your contributions like anybody else in wikipedia, i.e. logging in with your username and signing your commentaries with 4x ~, thereby generating automatically the proper name and date. Anybody could sign a commentary with the name "Webmaster - hunmagyar.org" and claim anything in your "name". Furthermore, it is misleading to use "Webmaster" as part of one's name; it may give the impression that you speak in this room with some kind of authority, which you do not.)

I am afraid, you cannot use Kálmán Gosztony = Colman-Gabriel Gostony's Dictionnaire d'étymologie sumérienne et grammaire comparée (1975) as a reliable source. First, it is obviously biased by an ethnocentric approach which must make one sceptical and critical, and as I pointed out above, the reconstruction of "a large Turanic ethnos with a unified linguistic, material and racial character" is "improbable, unmethodological and potentially racist". Furthermore, typological similarity is not the same as genetic affinity (it is like sharks and dolphins or birds and bats). Even if Gosztony is right in drawing our attention to grammatical similarities between Sumerian and Hungarian and the Turk languages, it proves only little.

Indo-Europeanists do not dismiss evidence without proper analysis. The problem is that so-called evidence presented by the Turanists is not evidence that can be analysed within the framework of linguistics because it is not collected systematically, but intuitively and arbitrarily. It remains a postulate. And you cannot expect Indo-Europeanists to do the work for the Turanists and collect the material in a proper scientific way. The burden of proof lies on the shoulders of those who want to revise linguistics as it is taught in the universities all over the world. Enkyklios 10:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I certainly do not expect, nor would I trust "Indo-Europeanists to do the work for the Turanists and collect the material in a proper scientific way". This being said, the fact is that this work is still far from over, but it is important to realize that there are major obstacles in the way of accomplishing this scientific work: political and ideological obstacles. Serious scholarly and scientific Turanist research started in Hungary in the early 20th c., but it has been suppressed under the Soviet occupation by the puppet communist regime and the politically and ideologically motivated censorship continues today as the former communist-era elites are still in power, including in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (for more on this, see: THE CONTROVERSY ON THE ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE HUNGARIANS at [1]).

Among other factors which hamper the development of scientific Turanist research are the vested interests of states such as Russia, China and Iran which occupy territories with large Turanian populations, and these states have obvious reasons to discourage any research which might promote a Turanian national identity. In the West, it is also clear that the dominant Indo-Europeanist view would not encourage research which holds out the prospect of establishing a Sumerian-Scythian-Ural-Altaic ethnolinguistic relationship. Such misleading statements as "the reconstruction of a large Turanic ethnos with a unified linguistic, material and racial character is improbable, unmethodological and potentially racist" illustrate this biased attitude. The Turanist sources I have referred to do not make any such claims of a "unified racial character". They make it clear that the evidence indicates that all ethnic groups are the result of complex processes of racial and linguistic intermingling, which implies that the members of a hypothetical Turanian ethnolinguistic group would be just as racially diverse as any other, and that the fundamental link is linguistic and cultural.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org 8-02-06 (I see no need to login and change my signature as I don't intend to spend much more time here. I have a website to maintain and research to do!)

The Opinion Of An Observer

I am an avid student of Ural-Altaic languages, and Indo-Iranian religious beliefs. I am not a native speaker however, of a language in the above mentioned family, nor a national of any country whose mother toungue is one.

I have the following points to make:

- Early and Proto-Altaic peoples (Xiong-nu, Xien-pe, Tü-qüe, early Mongols etc.) were not Zoroastrians exactly, they were however followers of a Sun and Sky worshipping animistic religion that maintained a devotion to a deity similar to Ahura Mazda (who is often shown as or in a winged sun disk) and also showed an adoration for fire. These ancient Turco-Mongol beliefs can be seen as elements in common with Zoroastrianism. This is one fact in favor of the Magyar fellow's article.

- The language of the people of ancient Sumer is considered by many linguists to be a language isolate. It is also considered by some as a product of the Caucasus region. Caucasian languages are not considered to be of the Ural-Altaic family, but rather a distinct family divided into Southern, North-E astern, and North-Western branches. These languages are Agglutinative like Ural-Altaic languages, but possess a vastly different vocabulary with no visable relation to Ural-Altaic words. It has been ventured by some scholars that certain Proto-Altaic peoples in Ancient Europe such as Huns and Avars, shared a common ancestry with Caucasian peoples (In particular the people of Daghestan who call themselves the Avars raise some questions.) but this is incredibly difficult to prove seeing as very few words remain of these languages exist, let alone traces grammar. Furthermore Sumerians were a totally sedentary race, whereas historically Altaic and Uralic peoples were largely nomadic. This argument favors the opinion that this article is faulty.

- It is largely believed that Schythians and/or Saka were Indo-Iranian or Indo-European. This too is difficult to say seeing as this language/s is also quite dead. The basis for the belief that the Schythians were of Indo-European stock is purely baced on anthropological evidence, which abounds.

- Finally it must be said that there is some contemporary pollution to the Magyar's argument, by this I mean Pan-Turkist, Turanist, and Magyar nationalism. It is obvious that such an influence is present in the article. However, I believe that much of the argument against the article is also greatly unfounded. This subject is fundamentally and terminally obscured. No one may say weather such a link exists, nor may they say the opposite, it is simply something that either awaits more proof, or must simply be let go. I find that this article should be treated as fact because some believe it to be, I also believe that this article should feature certain aspects of the argument against it, so as to be well balaced.

The Information I used here is readily available to anyone, and commonly known to most linguists versed on the subject. Wikipedia itself feature most of this information within itself. Please E-Mail me with any further questions or critcisms azjilk@yahoo.com, Thank You.

I agree with most of your remarks. I shall only add that there are also important (if not 100% unequivocal) linguistic evidence for the belief that the Scythians were of Indo-European stock. The whole matter is discussed on Scythian languages, and it would be wise to keep it there. Enkyklios 11:34, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The oppinion of another observer

The article seems to have been corrected, thankfully, and the NPOV tag could be removed, I think. The links to Pan-Turanian sites should also be removed, however. As far as the views of master Hunmagyar above, being half-Magyar myself, I am aggrieved to see that such views have had even temporary representation here. I am in a position to be aware of Hungarian extreme nationalism. Hunmagyar would likely have us believe that Jesus was also a Parthian (which for him means Hungarian) Prince, and that Celts were a first wave of Hungarian colonists, as the name Celt is clearly, according to them, related to the Hungarian word Kelet (East). And yes, I have been presented with such books by my Hungarian relations, that also incidentally spoke of the Magyar-Sumerian link. Books that presented Sumerian as Proto-Magyar, and 'proved' how all languages were of Magyar origin. And incidentally read the Mycenian Linear B inscriptions as Magyar. The propagation of such views via respectable portals such as this one must necessarily be stoped. On a quite different note, as for the Huns' and/or Avars' relation to the Caucasian peoples, it seems quite probable at least as far as the Avars are concerned, but then, they would presumably be concidered Caucasian, not Altaic. Druworos 13:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the NPOV tag ought to be removed, since it is rather neutral in its present form. There should perhaps be an elaboration on the Turan concept and its development in the Avesta and the Shahnameh. Enkyklios 11:40, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

References to Turks in Shahnameh

I added the reference to Shahnameh translation, which shows several references to Turanians as Turks. Particularly, in the story of Rustam and Sohrab:

• From Rustam: "How can I stand against the Turks, and how can I traverse the desert alone?"
• From Sohrab: "will go forth with an army of brave Turks and lead them unto Iran, I will cast Kai Kaous from off his throne, I will give to Rustem the crown of the Kaianides, and together we will subdue the land of Turan, and Afrasiyab shall be slain by my hands"

In the story of "Defeat of Afrasiyab" quote from Rehnam:

• "My soul thirsteth after the combat, yet since my father hath commanded that the army advance not, it beseemeth me not to forget his behests. And remember, O valiant Turk, that he who ventureth first upon the battlefield hath no need to seek the pathway to return."

I added a short sentence to the page indicating that the association of Turan vs Turkic cultures is based on these Shahnameh accounts. Atabek 21:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

That is true. Although the actual association probably dates to the later Sassanid era, but the Shahnameh was the one that popularized it the most. About the name Turan being popular name in Turkey, it is popular name in middle eastern countries including Iran. That is shahnameh names are popular. Although I think in terms of Turkey, the name became popular during the last century or so. I think that added information should be referenced somewhat more. (that is when it became popular in turkey? I do not think it is from the Ottoman era?). But I moved it to the name section which had turandokht (under trivia which I changed to names). It seems that lots of Shahnameh names became popular in the Islamic world. [2]. One of Salladin's family member was called "Turanshah" (King of Turan). [3]. --alidoostzadeh 19:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The rise of this name in Turkey probably happened in the late 19th and early 20th century, although we cannot totally exclude the existence of this name in Turkey before. The objective here is not to prove whether the name is Iranian, Turkish or Shahnameh-based, but to clarify the association and belonging of the title to Turks. Whether it came from Shahnameh or originated by itself, it's irrelevant at least from my perspective. Same as calling Germany in English or Alemagna in Spanish means the same object. Btw, about the same time, as early as 1900-1910s, prominent Azerbaijani satirist poet M. A. Sabir, wrote in one of his poems "Turanliyiz biz". Atabek 04:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Right I agree that it was a recent rise although here and there we do see such names pop out in the middle east (Salah-din). Lots of Seljuqs and Ilkhanid adopted Shanmahe names also and I would not be suprised if I see turaj (very popular name) or turan there. But I put it in the name section because it is more relavent to the article there, then the introduction. --alidoostzadeh 11:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Anon

Anon, I reinserted the sourced information you took out. Please do not remove sourced information again. Thanks.Hajji Piruz 03:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Zaparojdik looks like an old Persian (Parsi) loan from Proto Finno Ugric

Haa, have someone ever here heard from word Saparo / Saparot which is also base word for Saparoiset = Zapadrojdik. Saparo (sa-pa-ro) means tied long hair to saparoiksi (saparos). Usual habit along the ancient men and women. Other word to describe the same in Finnish is Letti / Letit. This type of hair ties were also common among Tibetan nobility. Han people (Chinese) tied their long hair to palmikko (pal-mik-ko), not like their western neighbours to saparos. Here you have direct link to Finno Ugrian languages, including Proto Magyar of Ugric branch with Hanti Hui and Mansi. Alternative name for Turan in linguistical bases could be Turugsu (Turk-Ugri-Sum). In addition to the latest DNA researchs there is a direct link provided from Turkic language group, including Altaic languages, via Nenetsi (Samojeedi) branch and Ugrian branch to Sum (Finno) Ugrian language family including Permic, Volgaic, and Baltic branches in addition to Sam (Saame) language. The Estonian researchers Professors Ago Kunnap and Ott Kurs of University of Tartto have recently (2005) made a comprehensive research which directly links Turkic languages with Finno Ugrian languages showing how the languages are merged with each other. (Uraali - Altai Keelkond; Keskkörgaasia = Middle High Asia).

One must understand the real possibility that nowadays East Turkistan (Sinkiang) is the "alkukoto / alkukoti" (original home), Deutsche Urheimat, for the Finno Ugrians (appeared there accorcing to latest DNA researchs 15.000 years ago) and Turks, both who seems to have lived there side by side (when it was fertile country of maito and mesi = milk and honey) c. 8000-4000 BC with mild and nice annual rains providing good climate for ancient peoples. By the way, all Finno Ugrian names for different Sum Ugri peoples meant originally man. (Sum-imi, Komi-mort, Ud-murt, Mir-de, Mari-el, Madi-ar etc). Something to think for the people of Per-si-a or Par-si (Far-si) which spoked Ar-ja (also ancient Finnish woman fore name, still widely in use) languages. One (who believe on it) can read from Bible of Profet (Prophet) Magican = Saman Da-ni-el (Ta-ni-el) who was able to explaine "the writing on the wall", said to be Turanian language; Mene, mene, tekel(e) Peres uvarsi(i)n. In modern Finnish language I can read it "Go, go badly (man) made Peres (Marras = Death) to Uvarsi = Farsi (Parsi). Easier than transliteration the language of ancient Heettis (Hittite).

But when the climate become warmer and the ice begun to melt and withdraw back to the north the climate become drier and living conditions become harder in Turanian Plain (depression). This prosess eventually changed the ones fertile area to semi-desert (Gobi) and sand desert (Takla-Makan). Only some oasis (Turpan, Kaskar, Aksu etc. where ground water existed become populated centers which carried on the agriculture, but the rest of the Turanians had to change their life style to nomandic. The last attemp to preserve their old high culture was building the extensive under ground watering tunnel canal system ( total over 5.500 km) to bring water from the mountain chains were still rained annually enough. But the high culture of Turan stage by stage declined to the nomandic level.

Majority of Finno Ugrains moved northward of Altai (Alla taivaan = Under Sky) highlands to the forested zone toward Si-pe-ri taika (magic) forests and Ural and beyond c.4000-2600 BC, finally to settle on the areas where they live even today. They declined to hunters and fishermen in new living conditions in forest zone. Some peoples like Hanti Hui and Mansi did not in general pass Urals but settled along the Obi River. Their fate is a sad one. During the last 300 years Indo-European Slavs (Russians) decimated them with barter trade vodka against furs into most primitive level just as in the case of American native Indians with Whiskey against Furs policy by immigrated Anglo-Saxons. But with them they brought names which linked them in their ancient past. They named places as Turja, Turjanranta, T(o)urila, Tursas, Turjala, Tuuri, etc. Except Magyars who finally ended, after wandering here and there between Urals and northern slopes of Kaukas(us) = kaukaiset vuoret = far distant mountains, on the Great East European Plain, to Pannonian Plain in Central Europe only about 1.000 years ago (895-896). Among the seven tribes came also some Bö´s (Tibetans) with their (ancient) dogs. Also the Finns brought dogs with them and one race is of interest; The Karelian bear dog. Similar dog race appeared in Near East and become known as Philistean guard dog, later Palestinian shepard dog. Thus, either the Finno Ugrians (under name Sea People) which attacked to Egypt and Filistea (Kaanan) c. 2.600 BC, brought it there or the dog wandered with its masters from Near East (Sumeri) to the pohjolan perille (to the bottom of North). The ancient link to the sons of heaven which married the daughters of (low)earth ie. Bö (Tibetan) people whose habits also were shared remained in the burial way. Bö (Tibetan) Sky burial linked to nearly similar Finno Ugrian kalmisto (kalma / kolmo) burial, later changed to burning burial and earth (kumpu / kurgan) burial.

But some stubborn refused to move. Hakassis (later mixed with Turks), Sahas (Sakas), Komassis, Kets stayed at Altai-Sajan area. Sahas were mixed with Turks and Mongols and wandered to great Lena river.

The southern branch of Turan peoples crossed great mountain chain Hindikush (Hindu killer) and settled to Indus (In-tus) valley and built (Harappa) Ha-rap-pa and other settlements. The eastern branch of Turan peoples wandered to an peninsula on the shores of Val-ta-me-ri (Great / Power Ocean) and named it Ko-re-a (beautifully handsome). Some (Ai-nus) went to the nearby islands Hok-kai-to and Sa-ha-li(n).

In Finnish language Turkki (Turkey) means Fur. The people which used furs against cold climate. Thus, the name of Turkey could also be Furiland / Furlandia = Furistan (Turistan). Does this sound familiar name for great warriors in later Arja language version of Turks "furious warriors" (Finno Ugric; hurjat urhot).

It is interesting to note that the Finnish researchers Professors Sjögren, Castren, and Ramstedt, versions of linking Finno Ugric and Altaic languages were vigorously rejected (and still are) by the Indo-European scholars, because it did not suit for their purposes of the creation of high culture Indo-Iranian and Indo-European superior race which brought with them high civilization and high developed languages to the man kind which eventually led to herrakansat / herrenfolk (lordfolk) and ali-ihmiset / untermenchen (sub human) thinking which culminated in Imperialism (Lord has given us divine right to rule) and National Socialism race theories. The research of ancient Turanian civilizations have never been made but (I hope so) in the near future there will be some researches made to correct the too much weighted Indo-Iranian and Indo-European perspective in Eurasian history. Curiously, if the Indo-Iranian high culture existed all over the Eastern European Plain why did it not leave behind place names except than those in Caucasus area? But for strong contrast, there are thousands of Finno Ugrian and Turkic place, river, lake names still in use in the area now mainly populated by Indo-European Slavs.

I hope than Indo Iranians can provide similar explanation to the origins for name Turan. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.81.159 (talk) 19:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Turan

Turan means Land of Tur.Hajji Piruz 21:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Do not advertise on Wikipedia. I am removing the link to the forum.Hajji Piruz 22:46, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Some suggested that it's more like "outside Iran" - prop. t/d Iran. --Sahib-qiron (talk) 08:23, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Zaparojdik

This article is about the word Turan. The word is Persian, its not Turkish, its not Hungarina, nor is it whatever else. The word is not Turan, and it was not a word that described Turks. It was a Persian word used to describe the tribes of Central Asia. No one knows who the Turanians were exactly.Khosrow II 22:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I dont claim that It's Turkic, it's a Persian word of course and first used by Persians but the article about the ideology of Turan. The term Turan in Persian literature and mythology is exist in the article beacuse of origin of the word. I'm not removing something in Persian stuff, just about the ideolgy it will be correct to add in Turkic languages, Hungarian and Finnish... Zaparojdik (talk · contribs) 21:44, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no relevance for the Turkish, Hungarian, or Finnish versions of the word. This is about the Persian word Turan. Turan is a Persian word, simple as that, its not Turkish nor Hungarian, nor Finnish. What you are trying to add is irrelevant. How about we add the Chinese, French, and Swahili versions too? This is ridiculous. Who cares if some pan Turkists or Turkish nationalists decided to use the word Turan for their means, that does not give them any rights to the word, not even ideologically. As far as anyone is concerned, the word Turan and the Turan that pan Turkists use are two different things. Turan is simple a word describing Central Asian nomads in the Shahnameh, what does that have to do with Turkish or Hungarian? Nothing.Khosrow II 19:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The ideology is about to uniting of Turanians. If you don't know learn that those peoples are Turks, Hungarians and Finns. Not Swahili or French and the article is not about just the word. Zaparojdik (talk · contribs) 22:03 22 November 2006 (UTC)

For the last time, this article is about the word Turan, NOT ANY TYPE OF IDEOLOGY. Also, the word Turan has nothing to do with Turks or Hungarians, or Finns, it is a term used to describe north eastern nomads in the Shahnameh, and was later adopted by the west to describe Central Asia. It has nothing to do with Turks, Hungarians, or Finns. I dont understand why this is so hard for you to comprehend. This article is about the WORD Turan, simple as that. Its funny, all this time you denied being a pan Turkists, but atleast now your coming out about it.Khosrow II 20:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The answer is so simple Khosrow; the nomadic tribes that you mentioned about in your explanation were Turkic nations. If you look at the era that Shahnameh was written you can easily see that it is the period when Turks were holding the control of Middle Asia stepps. And it is actually true that the word is originated from Persian, but is used in geographical and idelogical manner in recent Turkish; meaning the oldes Father Lands of Turks in Middle Asia and the term to unite all the Turkic tribes under one flag and provide the unity. I do not know much about Finnish language but do know that there are connections which are brought up by linguistics between Turkish and Hungarian and shows the Uro-Altaic language origins, also which is used to claim the ethnic origins of the Hungarians and Turks. Also in Turkish schools as the the branches of the Turkic tribes are told, it is being tought that Hungarians are the countinuation of Huns who were one of the biggest part of the Turkish tribes in the western part of Middle Asia; as the Chinese-Turkish wars took place and the Gokhturk Empire collapsed most of the western branches migrated to so far west, into the lands of Persia, Arabia, Anatolia, inner Russia, Caucasia, Crimea, east Europe ... and repelled the tribes as Germans, Franks into the inner sites of the Europe and the Roman Empire was broken down etc etc... If you are to look it up from the Turk or Turkic titles in Wiki you can also see the connection. Thanks for reading all.. Drsecancan —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Drsecancan (talk • contribs) 17:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC).

Ok, so I see the point for both sides. So why don't we put a direct link "Turanism" article in italics as the first sentence of the article. Thus disputes will be resolved and whoever typed in "Turan" the reach "Turanism" (Which was exactly what happened to me) can be directed right in the first sentence?Ombudsee 21:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually I will make a correcttion. Today it is clear that the Turanians were an Iranian nation. The only place that Turanians are mentioned is the Avesta everything else like shahnameh is derived from there. All the names of Turanians in Avesta are Iranian etymologically. Professor. Manfred Mayrhofer has etymologically analyzed all Turanian names of Avesta here [4]. He is the foremost prominent scholar on Sanskrit and Avesta and all the names of Turanians in Avesta are etymologically Iranian. If you need more scholarly references I can provide it.--alidoostzadeh 02:58, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I renew my offer since it remained ignored. We can make the first sentence of the article; "For other the idiology of uniting Turans, see Turanism", thus the both sides can be satisfied. Ombudsee 06:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I propose: "For the ideology of pan-turanism see pan-Turanism" --alidoostzadeh 20:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The word TURAN IS an ENGLISH word. Yes it is derived from persian, but there are many words in the English language that derive from latin, greek, and many other languages! Turan IS an English word in the English dictionary and it means the same as Ural-Altaic! WillMall (talk) 21:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Aryan propaganda and misinformation

This Article is completely propagandist in tone. According to the Chambers English dictionary 1988, the term Turan and Turanian apply to ‘ Asiatic languages and ethnic groups neither Iranian or Semitic: latterly almost the same as Ural-Altaic’ . The Persion word ‘Turan’ means ‘Not Iran’. This is yet another article that has been vandalized by Aryan racists. WillMall (talk) 19:15, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I wouldwatch the tone and I had to report you for violating WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND and WP:NPA. What you stated is a obselete and otudated 19th century linguistic and even racial definition which is now obsolete. There is not even a concept of Ural-Altaic anymore as Uralic is seen by most linguistics as an independent branch from Altaic. Remember Wikipedia is not a battle ground and I am afraid I will have to report you for making Wikipedia a battle ground. Tur/Turan occurs at least up to the 10th century only in Iranian literature and everything is referenced. the Avesta age, it is strictly an Iranian concept and the hypothesis (now obsolete) ural-Altaic classification came many milleniums later than the Avesta, when the concept of Turiya (tribe) and Turan (in Pahlavi literature) had already been defined. So later on it came to designate inhabitants of Central Asia and thuse its association with Altaic groups in post-Islamic times and in 19th century European writings. This is in the article as well as the 19th century linguistic definition which you refer to. Note the Encyclopedia of Islam is a top source and so are the authors mentioned, and should not be compared with a teriatary source like an English dictionary(less than even a Tertiary source) with no author. The most comprehensive article on Turan is given in Gnoli's book which is referenced in the main body of the article.--Nepaheshgar (talk) 21:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Nepaheshgar, Firstly there is an article on Ural-Altaic. If it is an historical term then the article should say so. Secondly, this article is in the English Wikipedia and should be about the English use of the word TURAN. The word TURAN is an ENGLISH word. Yes it is derived from Persian, but there are many words in the English language that derive from Latin, Greek, and many other languages. Turan IS an English word in the English dictionary and it means the same as Ural-Altaic. Your entire argument rests on the assumption that this article should be about the Iranian/Persian word. You have made it clear that the word Turan has an entirely different meaning in Persian. Finally, it is you that is starting an edit war. I simply want the article to be true and accurate. Can you understand that this article should be about the English word and not the Persian word? WillMall (talk) 21:30, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ural-Altaic is an obsolete hypothesis. Check the links or Britannica. So is the 19th century definition of Turan. The article covers Turan based upon encyclopedias like Encyclopedia of Islam which is much more of higher quality than Wikipedia and is in English. Finally it covers the term as it appears in scholarly literature in English about Zoroastrianism, your 19th century definition and etc. So it does not exclude your viewpoint, but the term is much wider and has been used in publications in a much wider sense. Read the article, it mentions the Ural-Altaic and other language hypothesis of the 19th century. So it covers the term throughout its history as it appears in English scholarly sources (like Gnoli). I would read WP:OR and differentiate between primary, secondary and Tertiary sources (like a dictionary). So the article is not limited to just one obsolete definition. And no you violated WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND by message. Finally WP:Weight wheresources like Encyclopedia of Islam take primacy. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, it is an Encyclopedia and the article covers this term from its Avesta state till now and there is many English language references about this term in the Avesta and Old Iranian period. Its association with Turks comes later and that is also covered. It also covers the term as it was used in the 19th century linguistic community, but its root and historical definition is the Avesta age. --Nepaheshgar (talk) 22:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

See where it says: "In 19th century and early 20th century discourse, now obsolete, Turan was primarily an ideological term designating Turkic, Ugric languages, Uralic languages, and even Dravidian people(Southern Turanian Group)[9] and people more or less indiscriminately, implying a common ancestry and common culture of the various ethnicities in question.". So yes an English dictionary will have this definiton as well. See Altaic. "While the Ural-Altaic hypothesis can still be found in encyclopedias, atlases, and similar general reference works, it has not had any adherents in the linguistics community for decades. It has been characterized by Sergei Starostin as "an idea now completely discarded" (Starostin et al. 2003:8).". So it is obsolete idea from scholarly point of view. --Nepaheshgar (talk) 22:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• According to Encyclopaedia Iranica (under Iran, iii. THE TRADITIONAL HISTORY OF PERSIA): in Islamic times because of the penetration of the Turkic people into Central Asia, where the Turanians were supposed to have lived, Turan (Turān) became erroneously identified with the Turks, and “Iran and Turan” often came to mean Persians and Turks, whereas in the original traditional history they are two Iranian tribes, both descending from Faridun but occupying different domains and often at war with each other.. This shows that the historical term Turan should not be associated to non-historical terms "Turkic".
• According to (K. H. Menges): In a series of relatively minor movements, Turkic groups began to occupy territories in western Central Asia and eastern Europe which had previously been held by Iranians (i.e., Turan). This shows that even from linguistic point of view the term "Turan" should not be associated to "Altaic people".
• page 83 of the book "Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce", Published by Brill Archive, 1985. ISBN 906831002X : states: Turanian are north-eastern Iranian in nature.
• page 409 of the book "The Cambridge History of Iran: 3(1)" Published by Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 052120092X, states: Turanian are also Aryan people.
• page 528 of the book "The History of Herodotus" sates: Turanian=Scythian. Hence Iranian speaking people.--Xashaiar (talk) 05:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Since the word "Turan" is used with different meanings at different stages, it makes sense that the article reflects that ambiguity, i.e. roughly 1) Avesta = "neighbouring nomads opposing the Zoroastrian religion", 2) Shahnama = "any inhabitants of Central Asia", 3) 19th/20th-century discourse = "speakers of Altaic and, sometimes, Uralic languages allegedly sharing certain phenotypical characteristics".

It is true that Turan is defined as Non-Aryan (Anarya) - as a matter of fact in all three stages. Yet, the meaning of "Aryan" also varies: 1) = "the righteous tribes", 2) = "inhabitants of south-western Asia", 3) = "speakers of Indo-European languages allegedly sharing certain phenotypical characteristics".

In both cases, the first two definitions are obviously historical, but worth quoting at length since they play a role in the modern discussion. The third defition would also be considered unscientific today by mainstream scholarship; no serious scholars would speak about Aryan, Semitic and Turanian races today. Enkyklios (talk) 08:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

But the discussion is about language and the traditional history. I could not understand you.--Xashaiar (talk) 20:47, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Removed

I removed the section on Anthropology. "Modern DNA research has given a new insight into the concept of the Turan idea, at least insofar as it relates to Northern Eurasian populations, especially Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Altaic, and Northeast Siberian peoples. According to the DNA research of Tambets, Willems and Karaferet at least 70% of Finnish, 49% of Sami, 53% of Udmurt, 35% of Latvian, 41% of Lithuanian, 20% of Eastern Evenk, 80% of Yakut, 47% of Buryat, 40% of Chukchi and some 60% of western Inuit a.k.a Eskimo males carry the so-called N3 haploid in their Y-chromosome DNA."

Reasoning: There is no such thing as DNA analysis on "Turanian people" since there is no Turanian people. Plus Latvian and Lithuanian and Baltic languages are IE languages. Thus the comment above does not hold any linguistic significance. --alidoostzadeh (talk) 06:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Turanian people are based on ancestral lineage, not race since the descendants of Turanians like "Aryans" and "Africans" can be of any color, and it is not limited to language grouping. American Indians, Malayo-Polynesians (Malayans or Southeast Asians and Polynesians), Australoid peoples and even Caucasians are thought to have inherited a trace of "Turanian" ancestry when it comes to discoveries of similar languages (the Teutons' runes are closely identical to early Turkic tribal alphabets) and the hypothetical origins of Sami people of northern Scandinavia whom have a Finnic/Uralic (or proto-Altaic) language includes the reportedly few who have "African" ethnoracial traits. Are the Turanian people of an earlier but diminishing race of early humans to have mixed and evolved into/with other hypothetical modern races or ethnicities over eons of time? + 71.102.3.86 (talk) 23:07, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Fake as a hell

the article is written by ultra aryan groups. Turan has nothing to do with Iranians. Turan is an ancient name for the land of Ural-Altaic people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.54.249.168 (talk) 16:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Not even wrong. Xashaiar (talk) 09:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Turan was not even in use before the Iranians. So it is defined exactly how the Iranians defined it: The people beyond oxus.

Turan actually might have something to do with Iranians. Now if you look at the world map today, where all the turkic peoples are located, it is the same place where Scythia was located. Scythian is an Iranian language and Turkic peoples are actually not that different from Iranian ethnically or by language. They are located in such a large geography that they are very open for influence from others like the Mongols, Chinese or Uralic etc. The possibility that Turan was Iranian to begin with is actually bigger than many may think.

Please sign your comment. Although your conclusion is at the end fine, but please note that Turan refers to a place at a time when/where Turkic people were not present. Turan is just an Iranian historical-mythical name. You do not say Maya has much to do with Spanish speaking Mexican, do you? Xashaiar (talk) 21:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Turan is what the southern Iranians called for the central asian area. The peoples coming from this area to south got their name from this. What I am saying is that the reason we call the Turkic poeples Turkic today is most probably because the geograpy they came from was called Turan. And my other point is that the geograpy the Turkic peoples live today and the Scythians lived are almost the same. Having some influence from their neighbors could make them more different from the southern Iranians over time, which therefore make people think that they have nothing to do with Iranians. So when it is sayd that the Mongols invaded Central Asia, to think that all these iranians living there suddenly dissapears or becomes assimilated is not realistic. And my observations are that the Turkic are not that mongolic ethnically or by language or by culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.102.227.95 (talk) 00:02, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

No, you can not observe anything useful because you are 1. ignoring the historical truth, 2. you are making up a story in order to make "a compromise", 3. you are confusing the time when the term Turan made sense, and the new era. Let the truth be as it is. By the way look up etymology of "Turan" and your problem should go away. Finally "culture" has nothing to do with the discussion here. Xashaiar (talk)

1. I am not ignoring history, 2. I am not making up anything and 3. i am not confusing the time when it has been used. If you don't get my point, that is your problem, because I will not waste my time on repaeting myself. And if you think the that scientists has proved everything and I if you think that the "facts" are all ready and that we know everything and if you think culture doesn't have anything to do with this discussions, I don't see why I should discuss this matter with you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.102.203.213 (talk) 21:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Genetics

Quote: "Y-chromosome mtDNA" This seems like a typo. Either "Y-chromosome DNA" or "mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)" should be here. Since a "forefather" is mentioned, it probably is the first possibility, but let the others check it.

Please, do not attempt to make Turan a Part of Iran. Turan is NOT Iran and it never was that is why it has a different name. Firdawsi's tale Shakhname is a myth only. Iran never ruled the World for 500 years and Turan was not named after that myth and that is very obvious. Please, do not use mythical desires to put step on Turan! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samdilya (talk • contribs) 14:20, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

What a disgusting article

Totally wrong and missrepresenting article trying to use obvious myth to make some sort of a claim to a geographic region. Even "The Shahnameh" itself makes it clear that the words Turan and Tirkestan were used interchangeably and these words indicated to territories predominantly polulated by Turkic people:

"Turan and Turkestan did he give unto Tur, and made him master of the Turks and of China..." (Chapter 2, Feridoun)

The article posted here is totally missrepresenting and disqusting lie. Ewww.... --Samdilya (talk) 15:28, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The IE linguistic theory can be compared to the geocentric (Sun going around the Earth) flat Earth belief held during the Middle Ages. It's really a matter of perspective: of course, if one is standing anywhere on the Earth, it does seem like the Sun is going around the Earth, and the Earth does seem relatively flat. However, more thorough observations have revealed that in fact the Earth revolves around the Sun, and that the Earth is really a globe. So we see that depending on one's point of view, the interpretation of reality may be completely misleading with respect to the nature of reality. Similarly, although it appears that the IE linguistic theory is correct in some cases and under certain conditions, but if one expands the observation paramaters, we see that the IE theory or theories fail to provide rational explanations for certain phenomena, thereby generating nonsense like the unsubstantiated postulate that the Sumerians were an isolated group, and the illogical assumption that even a significantly high number of phonetically and semantically related lexical cognates between and among various IE and non-IE languages are merely the product of coincidence because they do not conform to the IE linguistic theory. In other words, if the facts don't fit the theory, throw out the facts.

If we are going to compare the Indo-European theory and Turanian theory with scientific paradigms, they are rather like evolutionism and creationism respectively. This comparison is not accidental and superficial since the Indo-European theory and the theory of evolution arose in the same intellectual environment and inspired one another (cf. August Schleicher). Both theories realised that the existing species evolved gradually from common ancestors that had a different appearance and specialisation in comparison with their descendants. Creationism and Turanism, on the other hand, project the species of today back on a distant past. Creationists promote their so-called theory as a change of paradigm, but it is in fact a regression to an earlier state in the history of science. Similarly, Turanism is not a renewal, but a regression to an early pre-19th-century state of scholarship characterised by unmethodological arbitrariness and a belief in long-range continuity. Enkyklios 07:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

The Turanist research I referred to clearly postulates the thesis of convergence and hybridization as the process by which all Eurasian ethnolinguistic groups evolved, with the Sumerian and related Near Eastern peoples playing a significant role: they were the catalysts which generated the process of ethnolinguistic convergence and hybridization which led to the formation of the IE, Uralic, and Altaic groups. This Turanian theory does go far back in time, much further that IE theory, and granted, it still requires a lot of research, but it is most certainly not a regression, in fact, it seeks to go beyond the constraints of IE theory. There isn't anything remotely like creationism involved in this Turanian theory --Hunmagyar 02:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

First, I do not understand why you need to use the word "Turan" for your purpose. It is so loaded by ethnocentrism and racist prejudices that it does not fit into a scholarly discourse. It is like saying "Aryan" instead of "Indo-European" (this comparison is not accidental either, since Turan and Aryan have been formed in reciprocal opposition both in Iranian and European ethnic ideology). I am confident that you do not share any such prejudices yourself, but the word presupposes a certain continuity between Proto-Turan and its alleged descendants, which is potentially racist.

I guess the use of the terms Turan and Turanian in the context of the research I am referring to is just a convenience, for lack of a better term. Of course, if a more suitable one is found, we could do away with these somewhat misinterpreted terms, although they don't carry the same racist connotation as the term Aryan. The term Ural-Altaic is another possibility, although this one is also questioned, however, the aim of Turanist research is to demonstrate the possible linkages between the Uralic and Altaic groups, as well as the possible relationship between the Ural-Altaic and Sumerian languages. --Hunmagyar 17:50, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

However, what is really problematic about the Turanian theory is that it tries to explain too much with a too simple model. In that aspect it is similar to creationism, according to which one single force has made everything in one instance (overlooking the fact that it thereby reduces the infinite omnipotence of God). However, I think you are right in introducing the important concepts of convergence and hybridisation into the prehistory of the Indo-European and Ural language families and the Altaic sprachbund. Yet, I do not think that we can unearth one single, unilineary force behind all these various ethnolinguistic constructions. One shall not underestimate the linguistic multiplicity of the prehistoric era and the variety of situations in which the advance of the large language families may have taken place. Enkyklios 10:16, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

The Turanian theory is still in an early stage of development (as I previously mentioned, it's more a case of scientific research being held back by ideological and political factors). It proposes a model of the ethnogenesis of the Eurasian language groups based on a multidisciplinary approach integrating comparative linguistics, archeology, anthropology, ethnology, and other fields which can shed light on the ancient history of the regions and peoples concerned. Based on the correlation of the various evidence obtained so far, the model postulates that the ancient Near Eastern ethnolinguistic group to which the Sumerians belonged, and which may have evolved at least in part through a process of convergence generated by Sumerian influence, has also exerted a significant influence on the development of the other Eurasian ethnolinguistic groups, over a period from approximately 5000 BC to about 2000 BC. In the opinion of many researchers, some of which I have referred to, there is sufficient evidence to justify further research in this direction. Of course, any scientific research can be misused for ideological or political purposes, but that is not a valid reason to dismiss such research. --Hunmagyar 17:50, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

There is evidence indicating that the Sumerians were not an isolated ethnolinguistic group and there are several reasons which explain their demographic expansion and migrations. The Sumerians were part of an ethnolinguistic group which included the Hatti of Eastern Anatolia, the Hurrians and Subareans of Northern Mesopotamia, and the Kassites and Elamites of Western Iran, among others (Götz, p. 881-2). The Sumerians themselves are thought to have come from Northern Mesopotamia (Götz, p. 701). The development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent led to an unprecedented demographic and economic growth which generated several migratory and colonizing waves originating from the Near Eastern, starting around 6000 BC and continuing for several millennia (Götz, p.815). Artifacts (3000 BC) with Sumerian pictographs were found in the Carpathian Basin (Götz, p.739), Sumerian groups also reached Turkmenistan by 5000 BC (Götz, p.819). After the Akkadian take-over of Mesopotamia in 2455 BC, many Sumerians were forced to flee to neighbouring regions (Götz, p.786).

I do not know if Sumerian is an isolated language or not. Given that logically the number of isolated languages was greater in the Neolithic before the great empires of both sedentary agriculturalists and mounted nomads led to a linguistic convergence ousting the languages of the subject ethnicities. In the Mesolithic era, man lived in small crowds communicating over short distances with a limited range of people; Europe may have had hundred language families at that time (now it has only four: Baskic, IE, Uralic and Turkic). Of course, one cannot exclude that Sumerian did in fact belong to a larger language family. It is simply outside the range of scholarship. At any rate, you cannot use material culture as a testimony of ethnic and linguistic identity. The possible presence of Mesopotamian artefacts in Europe and Central Asia (please cite another source than your idol Götz who seems to be very biased in favour of Turanism!) would not prove that Sumerian-speaking people migrated into those areas. Enkyklios 07:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It is therefore incorrect to assume that all the ancient peoples inhabiting Iran were Indo-European. Indo-Europeanists have a tendency to ignore that a large number of words claimed to be of IE origin are in fact of non-IE origin, and this has lead to the incorrect identification of ancient peoples as IE based on incorrect linguistic theory. One such example is the word meaning man or lord in various IE languages - vir (latin), wer (Anglo-Saxon), ir- (as in Iran), ar- (as in Aryan) which is itself of non-IE origin: its roots are in the Sumerian word ur meaning man (Götz, p.556) from which the Hungarian word ur (lord) is also derived. The example of the Medes is also noteworthy: according to the Wikipedia article on the Medes, "An Assyrian military report from 800 BC lists 28 names of Mede chiefs, but only one of these is positively identified as Iranian. A second report from c. 700 BC lists 26 names; of these, 5 seem to be Iranian, the others are not". Most of the claims regarding the IE identity of the Scythians and Parthians are also based on the supposed IE etymology of personal names. Based on such evidence, the claims that the Medes, Parthians, Sakas, Scythians and Sarmatians were originally IE are therefore highly questionable.

Webmaster - hunmagyar.org

I will not claim that all people inhabiting ancient Iran were necessarily Indo-European. They were probably not at first, but now most of them are, even though almost a third of the population speak a Turkic language (Azeri and Turkmen) if one is going to believe the figures given in the wikipedia article on Iran. As a matter of fact, I would say that the linguistic multiplicity of prehistoric Iran was the very reason of the success of Iranian in establishing itself as the natural means of communication in Iran, leading to an increasing Iranisation of the area between the Indus and the Tigris (which the figures given in the wikipedia article on the Medes would indicate very clearly, if one is allowed to infer that people carrying non-Iranian names spoke a non-Iranian language as well). A similar situation probably played a role in the Indo-Europeanisation of Bronze Age Europe.[5]

Götz's derivation of Latin vir / OEng. wer "man" and Indo-Iranian ārya- "noble, Aryan" from Sumerian ur "man" is a good example of the arbitrariness of the Turanic theory. Indo-Iranian has a noun which is more readily compared with vir, namely vīra- "hero". In other words, ur gives both vīra- and ārya- in Indo-Iranian. It is of course conceivable (Latin cadentia gives both cadence and chance in English), but makes the burden of proof even higher on behalf of Turanists. Why is u replaced by wi or wī in some IE languages? Why is it replaced by a or ā in other languages? Are these replacements conditioned or arbitrary? And if they are arbitrary, why not derive Greek anthrōpos or even English man from Sumerian ur? As soon as you give up the fundamental principles of comparative linguistics, anything goes and nothing matters. Enkyklios 07:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Götz did follow the fundamental principles of phonetic and semantic correlation, so he did not try to derive Greek anthrōpos or even English man from Sumerian ur. He proposes several possible explanations for the linguistic phenomena which the rigidity of the IE sound-change theory cannot account for: since many words in IE languages are of non-IE origin, they may not necessarily follow the prescribed IE sound-change patterns. Also, phonetic variants from a common root may not only reflect variations in time, but be a result of the need to produce and differentiate nuanced meanings of a basic concept (man, lord, noble, etc). Therefore far from being unmethodological, Götz seeks to improve on the methodological shortcomings of the IE linguistic theory. --Hunmagyar 03:13, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

My point is that if you want to compare two words from two different languages, you have to establish very carefully first that the sounds of the two do in fact correlate. Even if the two words are completely identical in form and meaning, it doesn't follow necessarily that they are also related genetically if the sounds in question do not correspond. I know it sounds rigid, but that's how scholarly linguistics works. Without this rigour, the risk of comparing superficially similar forms increases infinitely, and logically, the explanatory force of the comparison decreases not less infinitely.

You see, an r is not just an r even if it is pronounced more or less identically in two languages (which it is often not). It is part of a larger structure. It is the great achievement of 19th-century comparativ philology to realise this important fact, which made it possible to make solid comparison instead of intuitive and chaotic juxtapositions of similar words.

Exactly because the superficial similarity is insignificant and the structural identity is crucial, it is often so that related words are not similar at all. I know it may sound like an odd paradox for the layman. Eeven between closely languages like the Germanic languages, the relationship of which is readily felt by native speakers learning the different languages, cognates have often become very different indeed both in form and meaning: e.g. Dan. ['ønsg̊ə] "wish" = Eng. ['wɪʃ] or Dan. ['kʰø:ʊ] "buy" = Eng. ['tʃi:p] "cheap". Accordingly, the gap between English and Greek, which is something like 5,000 years deep, has made most cognates irrecognisable by most native speakers: e.g. Gk ['tɛsarɛs] "four" = Eng. ['fɔ:] or Gk ['çina] "goose" = Eng. ['gu:s]). One must admit that the unconcerned comparison of Ancient Sumerian and Modern Hungarian words, separated by four millennia, looks rather bold in that light. Enkyklios 10:16, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Studies of the Hungarian language have shown that it has changed relatively little over the past 1000 years in comparison to the IE languages. A Hungarian text from approx. 1000 AD written in latin characters shows an earlier form of the language which is still easily understandable today. Studies of the Sumerian language have also revealed that this language seemed to change relatively little over the millennia from which Sumerian cuneiform tablets have been deciphered. Therefore, it does not seem too bold or unconcerned to compare Sumerian and Hungarian, particularly if one takes into account their respective evolution. --Hunmagyar 17:50, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

In all fairness, it doesn't seem impossible that vir and ur could have a common origin. According to a recent theory (I wish i could recall the reference) the IE urrheimat (or however you spell that anyway :) ) could have been in the Middle East, in the wider area of the Caucasus range. That article seemed fairly convincing too, especially in that it was very succesfull in explaining similarities between IE, Sumerian and FinoUgric languages. Early interaction could well explain that similarity as a loan from one language to the other. What I utterly fail to see is the link between Sumerian and Hungarian. If Hungarian ur is of the same origin as Sumerian ur, it is more likely than not that Hungarian acquired the word indirectly, through IE intervention. The fact is, that contact between proto-FinoUgric tribes and Sumerians, while possible, is not too likely. Even if it occured, however, it hardly means that there exists some sort of a continuum between Sumerian and Hungarian, as some would have us believe. Note, btw, two striking examples of utterly unrelated lexical similarities. English 'so', Japanese 'so'. Same form, exact same meaning. *gasp* The Japanese built the Stonehenge!! Or maybe Shogun Tokugawa was born in Derbyshire. Nahuatl 'teo', Greek 'theos'. Both mean 'god'. *gasp* The Greeks colonised all of America!! Note that the second view (Greeks colonising America) has been seriously proposed by some people. I can see, of course, that there are more similarities than that between Sumerian and Uralic languages. However, lexical similarities can be explained through indirect, or maybe even direct, borrowing, and systemic similarities need be nothing more than a coincidence. Not all aglutinating languages are related. Swahili is also aglutinating, for instance. 'Turanist' views are over-simplifications. It is fine and well to point out the shortcomings of IE theories. They are indeed numerous. But you cannot base assumptions involving languages spanning 7000 years of history and two continents worth of territory on simple observations like 'so' means the same thing in Japanese and English. (or 'ur' means *almost* the same thing in Hungarian and Sumerian) (and that is, of course, presuming that our assumptions about Sumerian pronunciation are correct). Lastly, please do note that Sumerian ur was used 7000 years ago, Hungarian ur is used today. It is quite possible that 7000 years ago, the notion of 'lord' was expressed quite differently by the speakers of what later became the Magyar tongue. And dont even think of claiming that Hungarian hasnt changed, because it has, and it has changed a lot. And I'm talking since 1000 AD, let alone 5000 BC. Druworos 17:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Druworos's comments are grossly misleading. This individual is falsifying and distorting my statements, and also attributes opinions to me which I have neither expressed nor do I have:

Example No. 1:
- Druworos states that I am attempting to claim that the Hungarian language hasn't changed at all during the past 1000 years: 'dont even think of claiming that Hungarian hasnt changed, because it has, and it has changed a lot.' This is false. I stated: 'Studies of the Hungarian language have shown that it has changed relatively little over the past 1000 years in comparison to the IE languages.' The two statements are different. If Druworos thinks that they mean the same thing, he is mistaken.

Example No. 2:
- Druworos claims that 'Hunmagyar would likely have us believe that Jesus was also a Parthian (which for him means Hungarian) Prince, and that Celts were a first wave of Hungarian colonists, as the name Celt is clearly, according to them, related to the Hungarian word Kelet (East).' I haven't made any such claims. Druworos has a vivid imagination.

Druworos also makes the mistake of lumping all Hungarian research which does not agree with his point of view under the same label of 'Hungarian extreme nationalism'. This is sheer nonsense because there is a wide range, from the lunatic fringe (origin theories involving lost continents) all the way to the most thorough objective and scientific research, such as that of Götz which I have referred to in earlier comments. I strongly urge him to read some of this more serious stuff before jumping to erroneous conclusions.

As I have stated previously, the Turanian theory is not merely based on a few linguistic parallels which might be due to chance, but on a correlation of a multitude of factors: thousands of potential lexical cognates, significant grammatical similarities, as well as on archeological, anthropological and ethnological evidence, and on historical written sources. Götz clearly explains this in his theory which is based on the facts established by hundreds of researchers he cites in his book. Götz's theory of the formation of the various Eurasian ethnolinguistic groups (Semitic, IE, Uralic, Altaic) through a process of convergence and hybridization in which the Sumerian group played a key role is certainly much more advanced, objective, comprehensive, and scientific than the dominant IE single origin and family-tree evolutionary theory, or the official Hungarian Finno-Ugrian origin theory which is based on the IE model. --Hunmagyar 01:08, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Turanians are NOT Iranian

Turan does mean - the land of the Tur. Attributing origins of the word "Tur" to a son of mythical king from Ferdowsi's Shakhname epic is not only provocative, it is outright incorrect. 1. The Shakhname epic is a myth about Persian King that ruled the World for 500 years. Sounds like a fact? 2. Even from the epic it is obvious that the Turan had its name before the king even gave it to his mythical son. The epic reads:

"Turan and Turkestan did he give unto Tur, and made him master of the Turks and of China, but unto Irij he gave Iran, with the throne of might and the crown of supremacy."

Please, just read the above sentence again, even the Shakhnameh itself makes it clear that Turan was the land of Turks. Why do you have to stick up your Iranian map and flag over this page? Do you want to feel great about yourselves? You do not do it by stepping on your neighbors territory though. That does not make honor to Iran.

Turan is just a Persian way of saying Turkestan.

Please, stay on your own territory guys.

Turan means hostile and non-Iranian. This article is a typical Persian made Propaganda platform. --Greczia (talk) 15:26, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Who did write this article? Some idiot? or a hater?

Who cares the the word's origin. It is the unification of all Turkish lands. Turanism is the ideology of unification of the Turks. That is it. No need to blubber more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.245.139.77 (talk) 07:40, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

This article is about what Turan originally means, not what Turks like to think. Hitler also abused the historical term "Aryan" but it does not mean that it is originally defined in the way Hitler liked it. Turan is an Iranian historical and mythological term and regardless of pan-turkist abuses, it's original meaning will never change. Anyway. if you can find any source which shows turks used the term Turan before iranians, then we can talk.213.233.170.106 (talk) 09:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The Iranian myth Shahname, which you refer to, reads: "Turan and Turkestan did he give unto Tur, and made him master of the Turks and of China, but unto Irij he gave Iran, with the throne of might and the crown of supremacy." So even your Firdawsi clearly states that Turan was the land of Turks. It is just the word Turan was Persian way of saying Turkestan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samdilya (talk • contribs) 19:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

shahname isn't academic recurse.as you tell it is myth and can be not true.Iroony (talk) 20:39, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

turan vs aniran

He says " turan" means "not-Iran" !!! actually turan means land of tur while "aniran" means not-Iran. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.166.197.66 (talk) 16:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Iran means - Aria On - the land of Arians, Tuan - Land of the Tur, not the Ari.

Turan does mean - the land of the Tur. Attributing origins of the word "Tur" to a son of mythical king from Ferdowsi's Shakhname epic is not only provocative, it is outright incorrect. 1. The Shakhname epic is a myth about Persian King that ruled the World for 500 years. Sounds like a fact? 2. Even from the epic it is obvious that the Turan had its name before the king even gave it to his mythical son. The epic reads:

"Turan and Turkestan did he give unto Tur, and made him master of the Turks and of China, but unto Irij he gave Iran, with the throne of might and the crown of supremacy."

Please, just read the above sentence again, even the Shakhnameh itself makes it clear that Turan was the land of Turks. Why do you have to stick up your Iranian map and flag over this page? Do you want to feel great about yourselves? You do not do it by stepping on your neighbors territory though. That does not make you an honor!

Turan is just a Persian way of saying Turkestan.

Please, stay on your own territory guys.

Turkestan is also a Persian word...Pouyakhani (talk) 14:22, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Tooran, Toran, Touran or Turan?

According to a discussion with some guys at the Persian Academy, it is better to write the word as "Tooran". When the word is written as Turan or Toran, a non-Persian speaker will pronounce it different from what it is pronounced in Persian. In Scandinavian countries, "Tor" is a well-known male name. However, they pronounce "o" as "oo". A university is called Tooran in Iran (tooran.ac.ir).

Writing it as Tur would suggest an English speaker to pronounce it like turn, turban, turbid, turbine, turbo, turf, etc! Writing this word as "Tur" is definitely incorrect!

Writing it as Tor is incorrect. Consider how English speakers pronounce the Tor project!

Writing it as Tour is incorrect because "tour" is an English word and it is pronounced in a similar but in a different way for American English.

The only spelling which is exactly according to the Persian pronunciation of this word is "Tooran". All the other spellings are incorrect.

I strongly recommend that someone rephrases all the words "Tur" to "Toor", "Turan" to "Tooran", "Turani" to "Toorani". Tyu900 (talk)

Do not change anything before you provide a reliable sources. Provide your sources here. Other editors should review them and decide about it. Also, we use common transliterations/words/names in English. Turan is the common word in English sources, not Tooran. --Zyma (talk) 12:45, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, anecdotes about a discussion with some guys at the Persian Academy is not a reliable source. Provide some verifiable sources and perhaps there may be something to discuss or perhaps some edits to describe varieties of transliterations. older ≠ wiser 12:51, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Zyma and Bkonrad: The word was sometimes written as Turan to emphasize that it is related to Turk or Turkey! However, it has a different meaning when it comes to Shahnameh and Persian language. When you refer to Shahnameh, the word must be written as Tooran because they were Iranian and they were not Turk. Furthermore, Turan must be pronounced like Turkey and Turn which is not the word meant by Shahnameh and Persian language. Tyu900 (talk)

First, DO NOT write trollish comments on my talk page again. If you repeat that, you'll be blocked. Write about your concerns on here, not on my talk page. Second, read my above comment again. You NEED to provide enough reliable sources for your claim. We can't change an article by personal opinions. And finally, any rename/move needs consensus. --Zyma (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

To Zyma: First do not write those stuff on my talk page again to do not get the answer in response! A solution is simply mentioning other spellings in the article. I added other spellings but you and another vandal removed it from the article! Tyu900 (talk)

Be careful about accusing other editors of vandalism. You might experience a boomerang effect. You have yet to provide any verifiable sources for your claims. older ≠ wiser 13:59, 13 March 2015 (UTC)