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| BALBAL STONE / ALTAY |
Origin of the traditional historical science and its influence on non-Indo-European research.
We call a traditional science the Eurocentric historical science. The Eurocentrism is considered to be a kind of ethnocentrism. "Arisen in close borders of the feudal Europe, it spread when the European peoples, who outstripped the rest of the mankind in the scientific and technical level, came onto a stage of the global progress" [Artanovsky S.N., 1967, 19]. In humanitarian sphere it arose during study the problems of the history and of the modern condition of the European, and, wider, Indo-European peoples. The European scientists study the problems of the European peoples, naturally, had on the foreground their problems, and the problems of other peoples were secondary for them. So, naturally, Eurocentrism grew and gradually reinforced its positions in the historical science.
Eurocentrism is not a science, but an ideology of the Europeans, and wider of the Indo-Europeans, who in the consideration of the historical questions act first of all out of the Europeans" and Indo-Europeans" interests, aiming to prove that Europe from the very beginning belonged only to the Europeans, that in many regions of Asia originally lived only Indo-Europeans, and the other, non-Indo-European peoples come to their modern territories much later. To the Eurocentrism "all the world is only a barbaric periphery of Europe" - ominously said L.N.Gumilev [Gumilev L.N., 1993, 319].
The below classification briefly shows what languages (and hence, peoples) belong to the Indo-European family.
Indian or Indoarian group covers languages and peoples Hindi, Bihari, Bengali, Marathi, Singal, Sindhi, etc.
Iranian group includes Persians, Tadjiks, Pushtu, Beluchi, Tats, Talyshes, Ossetianss and many Pamirian languages.
Romance group includes French, Provencal, Spanish, Catalonian, Galician, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Moldavian peoples and their languages.
Germanic group includes languages and peoples: English, German, Netherland, Luxembourg, Yiddish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, etc.
Baltic group includes Lithuanian, Latvian languages and peoples.
Slavic group includes languages: Bulgarian (Danube), Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, etc.
In addition to these groups, the Indo-European family includes separate languages: Armenian, Albanian and Greek.
Study ancient, unknown yet languages, the Indo-European scientists without justification also attributed them to the Indo-European family. So, for example, to the Tochars living in the Central and Middle Asia in 1st century BC and in the beginning of our era, German scientists artificially assigned an Iranian language. A careful study need the ethnic composition and language of the Hetto-Luvians who lived in the 18th-13th centuries BC in the central and northern parts of the ancient Anatolia, Phrygians who lived in the 2nd and the beginning of the 1st millennium BC in the northwestern part of the Asia Minor, Thracians who lived in the 6th-3rd centuries BC in the northeastern part of the Balkan peninsula and also in the northwestern part of the Asia Minor, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Kushans, Sogdians, Kwarezmians, Parthians, etc. who without sufficient foundation were attributed to the Indo-Europeans.
Between the non-Indo-European peoples of Eurasia then were still few historians and linguists. The history and languages of these peoples remained insufficiently studied, and the scientific criticism of the groundless of these conclusions was almost absent. The young historians and linguists of the Finno-Ugrian and Türkic peoples, naturally, tried to understand and learn the teachings of the Indo-European scientists, moreover, they aspired to enrich these teachings with fresh materials from the history of their peoples. They did not suspect at all that their teachers, Indo-European scientists, can be mistaken.
But later in the 2nd half of the 19th century, as a result of the multifarious study of the sources, non-Indo-European scientists and some Indo-European scientists themselves understood that many of the former conclusions of the Indo-Europeans about ethnogenesis of other peoples do not match the reality. S.N.Artanovsky wrote about the crisis of Eurocentrism of that period: "In 2nd half of the 19th century A.I.Gercen could already note the emerging crisis of the bourgeois Eurocentrism... The crush of the Eurocentric thought, appearing in our century to the full extent, meant a transition to a picture of the world with the basis in the principle of unity of the world history and of the cultural development of mankind" [Artanovsky S.N., 1967, 7.
A negative view of the Eurocentric ideology also gradually penetrated and into a more broad circle of scientists. From the views of the Eurocentrism first started to free the Finno-Ugrian scientists, especially the Hungarian and Finnish. Opposing the definitions of their ancestral home in the regions of Altai, Sayan mountains or in the Central Asia, they proved that the ancestral home of the Finno-Ugrians was in Europe, and namely, in the wooded zone of the Ural-Itil region. Consequently, with their ancestral home they "intruded the Europe" which, in the opinion of the supporters of the Eurocentrism, should have belonged only to the ancient Indo-European peoples.
Türkologists for a long time carried on, and many still continue following some myths of the traditional Eurocentrism. According to one of them, the ancestral home of the Türks was Altai, ostensibly only later they started spreading from there to the other regions of Eurasia, specifically in the 3rd century, during the period of the "Great Movement of Peoples".
Soon the historians of the Türkic peoples had shown the fallacy of another myth, which was advocated by the most politicized partisans of the Eurocentrism, that the Türks were only nomads, and hence, could not properly support themselves, and therefore perpetually attacked the sedentary neighbors, plundered them, did not allow a quiet life. On these grounds came about the next myth about a "progressive" role of some Indo-European peoples in transferring Türkic peoples from nomadic to a settled way of life.
Meanwhile, the first objective research is giving facts proving the presence of the Türks in many regions of Eurasia long before our era, and rich ancient culture created by them.
5. Eurocentrism and a colonial policy. As was said above, the traditional Eurocentric science did not set out specially with a purpose to belittle the role of other peoples in the history. At the same time, among the scientists of this bias were national-patriots serving colonial policy. A part of them really labored to show the greatness of their nations, belittling the historical role of the natives in the colonies. The mentioned above S.N.Artanovsky noted that European capitalism, after developing productive forces and sharply aggravating ethnic confrontations, created a base for a colonial policy and the theories of the "European superiority" [Artanovsky S.N., 1967, 19]. The national-patriotism of some Eurocentrist scientists in some places even developed into chauvinism in relation to others. These politicized Eurocentrists tried to prove that their colonial territories sometimes lived Indo-Europeans, and the peoples who are there now came there as nomads or as former conquerors.
It is known that there are two ways of absorbing the colonial territories. The first way is by keeping the local population and using their material resources, and the second way is by decimation of the local population and resettlement of the colonial territories by representatives of the colonial nation. The politics of the second way was especially inductive for the scientists to explain the ethnogenesis of the local peoples in the colonies by the expedient of the migratory theory.
So, the Türkology that arose and developed under a direct influence of the Eurocentrism, and agrees now also with the tendentious conclusions that the Türks ostensibly came to N.Pontic and Caucasus, Ural-Itil basin, Central Asia, Western Siberia only during or after the so-called "Great Movement of Peoples". In their opinion, prior to that there lived Indo-European, and more exactly Indo-Iranian peoples.
This spirit prevailed, for example, during the work of the October, 1977, Dushanbe international symposium on ethnic problems of the history of the Central Asia in antiquity (2nd millennium BC), under initiative of the Soviet-Indian commission on cooperation in the field of social studies, the International association for study of the cultures of the Central Asia, supported by the Academy of Sciences the USSR and UNESCO. The symposium come to a conclusion: "In 2nd millennium BC Indo-Iranian peoples appeared in the territory from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran and India down to border of China, where laid a basis for further social and economic development of this region and for the formation of peoples known from the historical testimony, belonging to the 1st millennium BC" [Ethnical problems..., 1981, 20]. In many reports of the symposium the talk was that the Central Asia in the 2nd millennium BC belonged entirely to the Indo-Iranians, before the 6th-7th centuries AD there were no trace of the Türkic-speaking peoples. From other works of the Eurocentric branch we learn that in the regions of the Ural-Itil region, Western Siberia, and N.Pontic the Türks appeared as nomads only in 6th-7th centuries and Türkicized the "local" strong, cultured Indo-Iranians. In the Caucasus and Asia Minor the Türks ostensibly appeared only in the 11th century and Türkicized the local Indo-European peoples.
The spread of the migratory theories, according to which many Türkic peoples were declared not aboriginal in their territory, but newcomers, is explainable by different reasons. The Türkologist scientists accepted this theory partially because they followed the line about the existence of the center of civilization in the Indo-European world and its periphery. The politicians of these countries saw in it a justification for the colonial policy.
To create an objective ethnic history of the Türks, the study should not proceed from the theory of Eurocentrism or Indo-Eurocentrizm, but concentrate the attention on the problems of the original ethnic history of the Türkic peoples, comparing the received results with the conclusions of the Indo-European studies.
6. Were Türks "unhistorical"?
At the dawn of philosophical and historical sciences some scientists distinguished peoples ancient, more masterful, and peoples young, inexperienced. Then appeared progressive scientists, who opposed such a division. As a result formulated the doctrines which then received titles of polygenism and monogenism.
Polygenizm (Gr. poly "many", genesis "origin") doctrine considers human races as different type, having independent ancestors. Different races ostensibly correspond to different types of animals and descended from different primates in different places of the globe independently one from another. The polygenizm was used as a basis for various racist views about the biological and intellectual inequality of human races and peoples.
The supporters of the polygenetic thinking in the study of the ethnogenetical problems divided peoples into historical and unhistorical. The historical peoples, in their opinion, were more ancient, formed before the others, and brought their share to the history, they are more experienced also in creation and maintenance of their state, they are talented, competent, capable, great. The unhistorical peoples ostensibly arose and formed later than others, still don't have an experience to produce sufficient material goods, they had not yet brought their contribution to the history. Being flawed, they could not create their states, and lived only in the states created by the historical peoples. In the L.N.Gumilev's opinion, Eurocentrism rated non-European peoples as "unhistorical" or "retarded" [Gumilev L.N., 1993, 23].
The reactionary doctrine of poligenism was opposed by the doctrine of monogenism by the progressive scientists.
Monogenism (Gr. monos "one, uniform", genesis "origin") doctrine about the unity of the origin of the mankind and consanguinity of the human races. "In monogenism, modern mankind represents a uniform species (Homo sapiens), and the human races are the intraspecies divisions formed as a result of settlement by the people of the modern type of different geographical zones of the globe. Monogenism proves to be true... first of all that all human races breed to produce completely fertile descendents" [Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE), 3rd rev., v. 16, 526].
The supporters of the monogenism in the study of the ethnogenetical problems oppose the division of races and peoples into historical and unhistorical.
As unhistorical, deficient peoples usually were considered the steppe peoples including the Türks. Against such statement L.N.Gumilev exclaimed: "There are no defective ethnoses!", he wrote: "... The time has come to dot the "i" also in the question of "inferiority" of the steppe peoples and reject the bias of the Eurocentrism, according to which all the world is only a barbarous periphery of Europe" [Gumilev L.N., 1993, 319]. G.Lessing said: "No people in the world is gifted with any ability better than the others", A.I.Gercen noted: "there is no people in the history which could be considered chattel as there is no people deserving to be called elected elite" [Bowl of Wisdom, 30].
Thus monogenism, based on similarity of races and peoples of modern mankind by a complex of the major attributes, advocates that all peoples and their languages historically go back to a uniform parental language, a pra-source. From that point of view, there are no "only historical", and likewise there are no "only unhistorical" races and peoples. Therefore each people has its own ethnic history going from the time immemorial, the history of emergence and formation which is worthy of a deep and complex study. Are mistaken those who begin the Türkic history from the period of appearance of the ethnonym Türk, i.e. from the 6th century AD, and limit the Bulgaro-Tatar history to the period of the Bulgarian state proper. I.G.Aliev, for example, suggests to begin the history of the Azerbaijan people from Middle Ages, and he subjects to severe criticism those scientists who try to recreate the history of this people from the more ancient period. [Aliev I.G., 1988, 56-76].
Thus, all the peoples in the world, including Türks, belong to the "historical peoples", there are no "unhistorical" peoples. We have a full right to also study the ancient ethnic history of the Türks.
7. Traditional historical science about the ethnic roots of the Türks.
It was said above that the word Türk is applied nowadays mainly with two meanings: in a narrow and a wide, common usage. Narrowly it is used as only the name for those tribes and peoples who had endoethnonym Türk. Having achieved a high social standing, they spread their ethnonym to their unilingual neighbors.
In a broad sense the word Türk designates, first, all modern Türkic-speaking peoples who initially had this name, and secondly, all Türkic-speaking peoples, even those whose ancestors lived long before the appearance and spread in the 6th century of the word Türk and had other ethnonyms.
In the traditional historical science while study the ethnic roots of the Türks this ethnonym is applied usually only in a narrow sense: the ethnic history of the Türks is studied from the time of appearance in the sources of the word Türk and formation in the 6th century of the first Türkic Kaganate.
From the so-called pre-Türkic period of the Türkic-speaking peoples the most studied are considered to be the Huns, the ethnic roots of which date from the 3rd century BC. The Türkic-speaking tribes and peoples of earlier period, and their ethnic roots in the traditional historical science, including also the Türkology, are not studied at all yet.
Even the so-called specifically Türkic period, in the L.N.Gumilev's words, was not studied systematically, and only "in passing and abbreviated, which allowed to bypass the difficulties of the source study, onomastical, ethnonymical and toponymical character" [Gumilev L.N., 1967, 6]. And in other works devoted to Türks was attempted documenting of only their military, political and social history. As to the ethnical history of the Türks, it has not been awarded attention at all. Meanwhile, only such studies could enable finding out the more ancient ethnic roots of the Türks.
By their ethnic ethnoses, the Türks were considered in some degree as descendants of the Huns, their ethnic links with other ancient peoples and tribes was not recognized. For example, in those regions where lived the Türks who created an extensive empire, earlier lived tribes and peoples carrying common ethnonyms Cymmer, Scythian, Sarmatian, Alans or As. In spite of the fact that in the presentation of the ancient historians these words were political and geographical terms for multi-lingual peoples, including the Türkic-speaking peoples, the modern traditional historical science considers them as the names of exclusively Iranian peoples, or even only the Ossetians. In the ancient peoples named by their neighbors by common ethnonyms Scythian, Sarmatian, Alan-As, the presence of the Türkic-speaking tribes is completely denied. The Türks were ostensibly formed in the Central Asia or in Altai, only in the 5th-6th centuries AD out of the remains of the Hunnish tribes, they created two empires, the First Türkic Kaganate, the Second Türkic Kaganate, and in the 8th-9th centuries they disappeared, just managing to transfer their language and ethnonym "into inheritance to many peoples who are not their descendants at all" [Gumilev L.N., 1967, 4].
Mirfatyh Zakiev
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TURKIC HISTORY
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