#“go back to our lands” which are..... the caucasus central asia the near east the middle east or africa

[magnoliamyrrh]

by this point when i see balkan ppl who think the solution to things is as ethnically pure as possible ethnostates whichever way this is spun i just want to hit them square in the head with a pan. the most effective way to deal with this? yea probably not. is this what i want to do? yes.

[dwellordream]

“...“Scythia” was a fluid term in antiquity. For the Greeks, “Scythia” stood for an extensive cultural zone of a great many loosely connected nomadic and seminomadic ethnic and language groups that ranged over the great swath of territory extending from Thrace (another fluid geographic term in antiquity), the Black Sea, and northern Anatolia across the Caucasus Mountains to the Caspian Sea and eastward to Central and Inner Asia (it is more than four thousand miles from Thrace to the Great Wall of China).

“The Greeks call them Scythians,” wrote Herodotus; the Persians called them Saka (Chinese names included Xiongnu, Yuezhi, Xianbei, and Sai). “Although each people has a separate name of its own,” remarked the geographer Strabo, the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, and other nomadic tribes “are given the general name of Scythians.” Pliny named twenty of the “countless tribes of Scythia.” As Gocha Tsetskhladze, a historian of Scythia, points out, “We call them Scythians because the Greeks did.” There are more restrictive modern descriptions for “Scythians” based on ethnographic, geographic, and linguistic parameters, but the terms Scythia and Scythians, the names used by the ancient Greeks, are convenient catchall terms to refer to the diverse yet culturally similar nomadic and seminomadic groups of Eurasia to western China. 

Modern historians and archaeologists use “Scythian” to refer to the vast territory characterized in antiquity by the horse-centered nomad warrior lifestyle marked by similar warfare and weapons, artistic motifs, gender relations, burial practices, and other cultural features. Scythia’s forests, grassy steppes, desert oases, and mountains were home to a multitude of individual tribes with their own names, histories, customs, and dialects but sharing a migratory life centered on horses, archery, hunting, herding, trading, raiding, and guerrilla-style warfare. Endless journeys over waterless prairies, invasions, plunder, wars, alliances, agreements, quarrels, more wars: “such is the life of nomads,” commented Strabo.

Lucian of Samosata (Syria) concurred: “Scythians live in a state of perpetual warfare, now invading, now receding, now contending for pasturage or booty.” Going by myriad names, waxing and waning in population over the centuries, continually on the move, the Scythian nomads, as described in ancient texts, had a history “inseparable from that of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppes.” Their common material culture, the “Scythian Triad” of distinctive weapons, horses, and artistic “animal-style” motifs, is evident in archaeological artifacts in burials from the Carpathian Mountains to northern China. Grave goods demonstrate far-reaching trade among these groups.

Not all of these peoples wandered the ocean of grass under infinite skies, however. By the fifth century BC, seminomadic clans known as the “Royal Scythians” had come to reside in wagons or settlements clustered around the northeastern Black Sea–Don area, taking up agriculture and trade, facilitating exchange between Greece and points along the Silk Routes to Asia. It was mainly through the coastal trading colonies that the Greeks first came to hear of the many different tribes of greater Scythia. No aspect of Scythian culture unsettled the Greeks more than the status of women. Hellenes expected strict division of male and female roles. But among nomadic people, girls and boys wore the same practical clothing and learned to ride and shoot together. In small hunting and raiding groups where everyone was a stakeholder and each was expected to contribute to survival in an unforgiving environment, this way of life made good sense. 

It meant that a girl could challenge a boy in a race or archery contest, and a woman could ride her horse to hunt or care for herds alone, with other women, or with men. Women were as able as men to skirmish with enemies and defend their tribe from attackers. Self-sufficient women were valued and could achieve high status and renown. It is easy to see how these commonsense, routine features of nomad life could lead outsiders like the Greeks—who kept females dependent on males—to glamorize steppe women as mythic Amazons. The opportunity for an especially strong, ambitious woman to head women-only or mixed-sex raiding parties or even armies was exaggerated in Greek myths into a kind of war of the sexes, pitting powerful Amazon queens against great Greek heroes.

…Despite their rich culture (which flourished from the seventh century BC to about AD 500), the Saka-Scythians, Thracians, Sarmatians, and kindred groups left no written histories. What we know about them must be gleaned from other oral, written, or artistic materials, chiefly from Greece and Rome but also non-Greek sources from what is now Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, India, China. The lifestyles of Eurasian nomads in later times can also contribute to our understanding of ancient life on the steppes. 

Excavations of grave mounds (kurgans) began in the 1870s, and every year since then numerous archaeological teams are uncovering more and more evidence, much of it confirming ancient Greek reports and also revealing that Scythian culture was more sophisticated and complex than previously realized. By the seventh century BC, powerful Scythian forces were attacking, plundering, and exacting tribute in Thrace, the Caucasus, and Anatolia, penetrating south as far as Syria and Media, even advancing toward Egypt and moving eastward toward China. 

The Scythians’ reach contracted again after defeats in the Near and Far East in the sixth century BC, but Scythians continued to dominate the Caucasus and Central Asian steppes. Scythians were horse people. They traveled extremely long distances by land, much of it harsh going. To reach Thrace or the mouth of the Danube or northern Greece, for example, they would follow a long southwestern arc down from the steppes. To reach Colchis, Armenia, Anatolia, and Persia from the north, they took one of two major migration routes used by nomads, traders, and invaders from time immemorial. These routes, first described by Herodotus, involved arduous journeys over or around the snow-clad Caucasus range. The Scythian Gates (or Keyhole) was a precipitous, winding mountain trail over the central Caucasus: the journey from the Sea of Azov to the Phasis River in Colchis took about thirty days. The ancient Persians called this narrow defile Dar-e Alan, “Gate of the Alans” (Daryal Pass), after one of the nomadic tribes of Scythia. 

The other difficult and longer passage, sometimes called the “Caspian Gates” or the Marpesian Rock, was between the steep eastern end of the mountains and the Caspian Sea (Persian, Darband, “Closed Gates,” modern Derbent, Dagestan). From Pontus (northeastern Turkey) Scythians could cross west into Europe (Thrace) in wintertime over the frozen Bosporus Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. In about 1000–700 BC, Greeks began establishing colonies along the Aegean coast of Anatolia, where they became aware of local histories and legends about Amazons. Many towns in Anatolia claimed Amazons as their founders; grave mounds and other shrines were local landmarks linked with Amazons. By the eighth and seventh centuries BC, Greek adventurers began exploring the rim of the Black Sea, which they called the Euxine or simply Pontus (“the Sea”). At some later point “Pontus” came to specify the wedge of land between the Phasis River of Colchis and the Thermodon River of northeastern Anatolia. 

By the sixth century, Greek colonies were sprinkled around the Black Sea, and by 450 BC more than a dozen Greek colonies were established on the northern Black Sea, from Tyras on the Dniester River to Gorgippia (ancient Sinda), south of the Taman Peninsula, and Tanais, a Scythian trading post at the mouth of the Don River on the Sea of Azov. Descriptions of barbarian societies of the north and east, many distinguished by a degree of gender role blurring unknown in Hellenic society, began to filter back to Greece as a few traders and travelers journeyed beyond the colonies on the Black Sea, venturing deeper into the lands of nomadic groups, on the steppes, the Caucasus Mountains, around the Caspian Sea, and eastward along the trade routes to the distant Altai Mountains, India, and China. As travelers pushed farther, the stories got stranger, but meanwhile the Royal Scythians who had settled near the Black Sea colonies were becoming more familiar to the Greeks.

Literary and archaeological evidence points to an uneasy relationship between Greeks and Scythians in the Black Sea region in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, followed by a period of lively trade and mutual integration in the fourth century BC. Many slaves in Athens came from Thracian and Scythian tribes, purchased at Black Sea emporiums such as Tanais on the Don (see chapter 6 on Thrace-Scythia links). Meanwhile Greek merchants and travelers carried out commerce and made marriage alliances with Scythian clans. 

In the fifth century BC, Scythian soldiers and policemen were employed in Athens, but numerous vase paintings and inscriptions about Scythians and Thracians attest to Greek familiarity with their clothing, tattoos, and weapons by the midsixth century BC. Male archers and Amazons wearing Scythian-style costumes became favorite subjects on Athenian vases by 575 BC. Some archaic black-figure paintings (575–550 BC) show men fighting on the Amazons’ side against Greeks; scholars suggest that these could be either Scythians or Trojans. 

Around 490 BC, the time of the Persian Wars, the popularity of male Scythian archers in art faded, perhaps because of their association with Persians (although Scythians were also enemies of the Persians). But female Scythian archers—“Amazons”—never lost their popular appeal in Greek vase paintings and other art forms. Archaeologists now know that “legends about Amazons are reflected in the grave goods of excavated Scythian tombs.” The accumulating evidence of female warriors buried with their weapons is leading classical scholars to acknowledge that some Greek beliefs about Amazons were influenced by women who shared the same activities as men in the nomadic cultures of Eurasia. But this “novel” insight from modern archaeology—that Amazons were Scythian women—was already obvious to the Greeks in classical times. Whatever psychological meanings the Amazon myths may have held in antiquity, a wealth of little studied literary evidence shows that Greco-Roman authors clearly associated the Amazons with historical, nomadic Scythians at an early date.

Greek writings about Amazons indicated several different Amazon “habitats” and zones of activity in Scythia. Some sources located Amazons in Thrace and western Anatolia; some placed them in Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea; still others put them in the northern Black Sea–Sea of Azov–Caucasus regions; and many writers mentioned more than one locale. Modern scholars have taken this apparent inconsistency as proof that the Greeks were simply making up ecological niches for imaginary beings. 

In fact, however, this mobile “sphere of influence” for Amazons makes sense. Whether or not the ancient mythographers and historians realized it, the depiction of shifting environments around the Black Sea for the Amazons’ home bases, strongholds, migrations, and battle campaigns accurately captured the realities of nomadic life. There is no doubt that at various times in historical antiquity groups of Scythians were present in the various regions designated in classical texts as occupied by Amazons .

In Homer’s Iliad, for example, King Priam of Troy recalls seeing Amazons in northern Anatolia as a youth. At the beginning of the war with the Greeks, Priam musters his army at a man-made mound near Troy said to be the grave of the Amazon queen Myrina. Mound tumuli are scattered across Phrygia, Mysia, and Thrace, and Scythian tomb mounds (kurgans) of the seventh–sixth centuries BC exist near Sinope, Pontus. Priam’s ally Queen Penthesilea was a Thracian, but she led a band of Amazons from Pontus. The mythic quest of Jason and Argonauts for the Golden Fleece is at least as ancient in its origins as the Trojan War cycle. According to the Argonautica (the version of the myth composed by Apollonius of Rhodes, ca. 280 BC), Pontus and Colchis were occupied by three different tribes famed for women warriors (chapter 10).

In the mid-seventh century BC, the adventurer Aristeas (from an island in the Sea of Marmara) wrote about his journey east across Scythia to Issedonia and the Altai Mountains. His epic, Arimaspea (a Scythian word meaning something like “people rich in horses”), preserved only in fragments, was very influential in forming the early Greek picture of Scythia and Amazons. Aristeas said that Amazons wandered the ironrich territory around the Maeotis (Sea of Azov) and the River Tanais (Don). 

Another lost work, by Skylax of Caryanda (sixth century BC), described the Maeotians, the Sinti (Sinds), and the Sarmatians as “people ruled by women.” Several authors referred to Amazons as Maeotides, “people of the Maeotis.” (Scythian tribes around the Sea of Azov included the Sinds, Dandarii, Doschi, Ixomatae, and many others.) Other ancient historians placed Amazons and their allied forces among the nomads beyond the Borysthenes (Dnieper) River on the steppes north of the Black Sea.

Pontus was the Amazon headquarters in another lost epic, the Theseis, about the Athenian hero Theseus, probably composed in the sixth century BC. In the fifth century BC the playwright Euripides located the Amazons in Pontus; so did the poet Pindar, who described Amazons “armed with spears with broad iron points.” The play Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus, ca. 480 BC) speaks of the “fearless maidens” of Colchis and the Caucasus and the “Scythian multitudes” to the north; it foretells that this Amazon host will “one day settle at Themiscyra by the Thermodon” in Pontus. 

The fourth-century BC Greek historian Ephorus (from Cyme, named for an Amazon) reported that a faction of Scythians had once left the northern Black Sea and settled in Pontus, becoming the Amazons. The geographer Strabo (first century BC) located various Amazon tribes in the valleys and mountains of Pontus, Colchis, the Don region, and the Caucasus. Instead of evidence for Greek confusion about where to locate imaginary Amazons, these examples represented Amazons as people who roved around the Black Sea. Scythian culture was consistently recognized as the wellspring of the women warriors known as Amazons.”

- Adrienne Mayor, “Scythia, Amazon Homeland.” in The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World

[sofiatopchishvili-blog]

 “Sak’ar’tvelo”

Before starting a blog about an inspiration for my future book, which would be the continuation of my first published book about Georgia, I want to talk about ““Sak’ar’tvelo”. This book rediscovers Georgia, investigating into the silence of terror that covers the Kartvelian land. Focusing on people, on their peace, tradition, rich culture and war. This book explores places and people, which experienced conflicts around Akhaltsikhe Samskhe-Javakheti region that borders with Turkey and Armenia. Finding and hearing stories of the survivors. 

On my journey of publishing this book, I have done a big journey of photographing and collecting data for it. Ever since I have started visiting my country - Georgia, it was from the age of 12 I was fascinated by my culture, tradition, nature, food, dancing, music but mainly people of Georgia. I used to photograph without a cause, just anything that I thought would be eye-catching and unforgettable. However, two years when I had an assignment to make an exhibition, book or a video - I have chosen to make a book and it was the best decision I have made. Then, I knew that I would be going to Georgia for one month and a half and I have set the target to not just photograph whatever I see, but to show fully as many aspects as I can of Georgia - the most unexpected lifestyles, themes and details. In Georgia, I have too many relatives and they all helped me on this journey, and it all started really not from my project but a little project or idea that we had in our family - to write a family tree book. Therefore, when we arrived in Georgia, the first thing we did we visited my grand granddad who is 96 now! And he said we have our whole written family tree from Topchishvili surname back in our ancestor town called Gori - where by the way Stalin was born and raised. When we have visited the place we have found out the relative who had the book died and before death gave it to his daughter who is now living in Paris. That is where it all began we decided to go even further to travel to Akhaltsikhe Region in Vardzia to our other relatives - a place which is suited near Armenian and Turkish border - which is well known for its history and Alpine mountains. On the way to Vardzia, I have suggested stopping at the South Ossetian border, where war conflict happened in 2008, where thousands of people died. On the way to the border and Vardzia, I have visited refugee camps for South Osetian and Abkhazian refugees and conducted interviews. 

When the time came and we have arrived in Vardzia, we travelled around beautiful Alpine villages and female monasteries - it was the most beautiful experience! There when the main story happened when I was passing one village and one of my uncle’s said - there are a lot of Muslims who live here. I started to ask him questions why? You see, because I was born in Russia, I did not learn a lot about the Georgian history - and Georgian history is very rich. 

The Caucasus Region has been in a war every 50 years since it was all established because it is situated in Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe it is the centre for all. And back in time especially Georgia was invaded a lot by Persian and Ottoman Empires, and they were forcing Islam on people or otherwise they would kill the prisoners. Sad as it is, it is the history of my Georgia, a history that not a lot people know about. And now in those villages close to borders, a lot of Muslim Georgian people live. and when I have visited those villages I conducted the interviews, and found out that back in the Soviet Union after Second World War in that region one night KGB agents and their forces - stole and placed 120,000 people to wagons to ship to central Asia for slavery and labour just because they had the other religion (never mind back in the Soviet Union - any religion was NOT permitted). 

And, that was the story for me because the files were burned (some of them) and because it was undercover operation my relative Besso who works in archives helped to get the information about this horrific event and find the survivors- and I have found ONE survivor, I have spoken to him and realised that nobody is helping him not even UNHCR or UNICEF! That when I realised I want to take on this project and raise money and awareness and open charity or fond of this horrific event.