#kyrgyz people

[divinum-pacis]

March 2024: Kyrgyz women pose during the Nowruz celebration in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. [Igor Kovalenko/EPA]

[postcard-from-the-past]

Kyrgyz people from Russia

Russian vintage postcard, mailed in 1902 to Rybnik, Poland

[juregim]

my favourite silly thing is watching native americans discovering central asians because the reaction is always “…huh?…..are we cousins or what….”

[tomirida]

A nomadic Qazaq family in the Mirzacho'l Steppe by Prokudin-Gorsky.

[thyinum]

Please, when you see something written in Cyrillic, don't assume right away that it's russian. Russian is not the only language that uses Cyrillic. There are also Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Serbian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Mongolian.

It's a sensitive topic especially for us Ukrainians because russian language is a weapon. It's a colonial language, it's presented like one and only true slavic language, it erases and replaces other languages. Belarusian is literally on the verge of extinction because of russian. Ukrainian has been banned 134 times throughout history, it is still called a "village language", a dialect of russian. Russian colonialism is literally the reason why there are so many russian speaking people in Ukraine (I was one of them btw). Ukrainian is banned on russian occupied territories and people are getting in trouble or even killed for using it there, Ukrainian POWs in russian captivity are getting brutally beaten for speaking Ukrainian.

Like okay, I can get why there's this confusion, so here's a clue to understand that the language you're looking at definitely is not russian — the letter і. If you see ї (like i but with two dots) it's 100% Ukrainian. If you see j it's Serbian. Russian alphabet also doesn't have such letters as Ђ, Љ, Њ, Ў, Џ (dont confuse with Ц ). Yes, it's not always gonna be easy to detect that the language in front of you is not russian, but when you have trouble with it just ask or run it through any translation app and it'll probably tell you the language.

Hope this will be helpful.

[buried-in-stardust]

In Akqi County, Xinjiang.

The Kyrgyz people mainly live in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and China, and are one of the official ethnic groups of China. Within China, they are mostly distributed in the southwest of Xinjiang. The practice of eagle falconry among the Kyrgyz can be traced back to 4000 years ago, and is now considered a national-level intangible cultural heritage in China.

The eagles (or sometimes northern goshawk/other birds of prey), are captured from the wild, tamed, then released back into the wild after five years. With the help of the eagles, hunters on horseback are able to hunt pheasant, rabbits, and foxes more easily.

Because of their nomadic lifestyle, eagle falconry played an important role in the past, but in recent years, increasing settlement of the Kyrgyz, environmental destruction, and other factors has meant eagle falconry has become more of a pastime. However, Akqi County is invested in keeping the tradition alive and holds seasonal tourist events where they showcase their falconry as well as promote other cultural traditions through events and exhibitions.

[edited two videos together]

[the-falling-star]

A Quick Reminder

Palestine is going through a genocide/ethnic cleansing/colonization

Sudan is going through Genocide/Famine/War

In Congo the Children are being sold / the woman are getting sexually assaulted along with minors and impregnated/ Man are being slaved

Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic Muslims are facing: possible genocide, forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced birth control, forced labor, torture in the north-western region of Xinjiang by china.

the Syrian Civil War is primarily rooted in a feud between Russia and the United States and their allies in the region over natural gas pipelines passing through Syria on their way to European markets, Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military intervention in Syria to prevent the fall of their ally Bashar al-Assad and stop Syria from joining the Western sphere of influence = Syrian are dying everyday because of other people greed.

In Yemen 18.2 million people are facing famine/poverty/health diseases(cholera).

[vintagegeekculture]

there was Chinese interest in the Out Of Asia theory, in both the Republic, Chiang Republic and People’s Republic periods before the Out Of Africa theory became commonly accepted. Was the 1954 Yeti expedition done just from the Nepalese-Indian side or were the American agents and “anthropologists” given access on the Sino-Tibetan side of the Himalayan border?

During the early part of this century, it was absolutely believed for a long time that the deserts of Western China were the most likely place of human origins, as seen in this migration map from 1944, made from the best available knowledge of the time:

Remember, the oldest fossil remains at this point were in China, where Homo erectus was discovered (originally known by his initial place of discovery in Chungkotien Cave, nicknamed "Peking Man"). The discovery of Australopithecus and Homo habilis in Olduvai Gorge and South Africa, which place human origins in Africa, were not until the 50s and 60s, so it seemed entirely reasonable that Homo sapiens evolved in Western China.

The idea that China's desert regions were the origin of modern humans and culture is seen a lot in pop culture from 1900-1950, mainly because there were tremendous explorations in the region, especially Aurel Stein's expedition of 1908, who ventured into the Taklamakan Desert to find the Dunhuang Caves and Khara-Khoto, a city destroyed completely by Genghis Khan and vanished in the desert.

If you've ever heard of Roy Chapman Andrews and his famous expeditions in the 1920s, it's worth noting that he ventured into the Gobi Desert looking for human remains....not dinosaurs, and the discovery of dinosaur eggs was an unexpected surprise.

For that reason, there was a short lived Silk Road Mania that seemed to be a smaller scale predecessor to the pop culture dominating Egyptomania of the 1920s. It's bizarre to read adventure and fantasy fiction of the 1910s-1920s that features mentions of Silk Road peoples like the Kyrgyz, Sogdians, Tajik, Uigurians, and Tuvans. The best example I can think of would be the Khlit the Kossack stories of Harold Lamb (who also wrote a biography of Tamerlane), which together with Tarzan and Tros of Samothrace, formed the core inspiration for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian.

The most interesting example of this would be A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage, which featured a lost city in Xinjiang that was the home of the Nordic race, who worshipped their original religion, the kraken-like squid devil god Khalkru. It was widely believed in this era that Nordics emerged from Central Asia originally, and while it's easy to write this off as turn of the century racialist claptrap pseudohistory (along with Hyperborea legends), in this case, it is actually true: a branch of the Indo-European family lived in West China, and 5,000 year old redheaded mummies have been found in the region. As usual, A. Merritt was right on the money with his archeology, more so than other 1920s authors. After all, his "Moon Pool" was set around the just discovered ruins of Nan Madol, the Venice of Micronesia.

Jack Williamson's still chilling Darker Than You Think in 1948 was also set in the Silk Road/Central Asian region, as the place the race of shapeshifters emerged from, Homo magi, who await the coming of their evil messiah, the Night King, who will give them power over the human race.

H. Rider Haggard set "Ayesha: the Return of She" (1905) in Xinjiang, among a lost Greek colony in Central Asia (no doubt based on Alexandria on the Indus, a Greek colony in modern Pakistan that was the furthest bastion of Greek Culture). This was also two years after the Younghusband Thibetan Expedition of 1903, where the British invaded Tibet. At the time, the Qing Dynasty was completely declining and lost control of the frontier regions, and the power vacuum was filled by religious authority by default (this is something you also saw in Xinjiang, where for example, the leader of the city was the Imam of Kashgar).

This is one of the many British invasions they have attempted to cram down the memory hole, but if you ever see a Himalayan art piece that was "obtained in 1903-1904" ....well, you know where it came from.

Incidentally, there's one really funny recent conspiracy theory about paleontology, fossils, and China that I find incredibly interesting: the idea that dinosaurs having feathers is a lie and a sinister plot spread by the Communist Chinese (who else?) to make American youth into sissy fancylads, like Jessie "the Body" Ventura. How? By lying to us and making up that the manly and vigorous Tyrannosaurus, a beast with off the charts heterosexuality and a model for boys everywhere, might have been feathered like a debutante's dress. What next - lipstick on a Great White Shark? The long term goal is to make Americans effeminate C. Nelson Reilly types unable to defend against invasion. This is a theory that is getting steam among the kind of people who used to read Soldier of Fortune magazine, and among abusive stepfathers the world over.

...okay, are you done laughing? Yeah, this is obvious crackpottery and transparent sexual pathology, on the level of the John Birch Society in the 60s saying the Beatles were a Communist mind control plot. Mostly because animals just look how they look, and if it turned out that the ferocious Tyrannosaurus had feathers and looked like a fancylad Jessie Ventura to you, well, that's your problem and mental baggage, really.

I was left scratching my head over this one. But there is (kind of) something to this, and that is that a huge chunk of recent dinosaur discoveries have been in China. I don't think it has anything to do with a Communist plot to turn American boys into fancylads, but more to do with a major push in internal public investment in sciences in that country, and an explosion of Chinese dinosaur discoveries. If you want to see a great undervisited dinosaur museum, go to the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in Sichuan.

Pop quiz: what living scientist has named more dinosaur discoveries? It's not Bakker or Horner. The greatest living paleontologist, Xu Xing, which is why a lot of recently found dinosaurs are named things like Shangtungasaurus.

[vexillology-for-brains]

Kyrgyzstan Flag Change Updates

With a new Olympics upon us, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for interesting flag events and accidents. But I also get to talk more about the Kyrgyzstan flag change!

THERE IT IS! For the first time, I and probably most of the world, have seen the new Kyrgyz Republic flag in the wild, on a flagpole, actually flying.

From what I've seen, all of the Olympic uniforms that carry the Kyrgyz flag also use the updated version of the national flag with the straightened sun rays.

Wikipedia has also updated the Kyrgyzstan page and related pages with the new design, so this design really is going forward at full force.

While the nature of the flag change was not the most democratic event in recent flag-design changes, many Kyrgyz citizens were strongly against the change and related expenses, I'm happy to see the Kyrgyz athletes and their enthusiasm while they wave this new flag of their nation and represent their people in the Olympic Games.

I'll probably end up making a long post of flag related trivia and goofs that the French commit because they've already screwed up with hoisting the Olympic banner upside down in the opening ceremony.

See y'all soon!

[whencyclopedia]

Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires

Chaffetz deftly illustrates the vast history of Asia and its great empires -- Chinese, Persian, Indian, and Mongol -- through a history of horsepower. The cultures of the people of the steppe, their religions, technology, and migrations also come into play. Expertly, Chaffetz shows that horse breeding and trading, not the fabled Silk Road, linked these historical forces together over time and distance.

The Silk Road may have carried the world’s most luxurious fabrics for trade, but it was paved with horses’ hooves. From the Bronze Age to the 20th century, the empires of China, Persia, India, and Mongolia conquered astride the backs of horses. By focusing on the history of the horse in Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, David Chaffetz provides fascinating insights into conquests in history, from the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great to the Russian Empire of Alexander II.

Chaffetz traces the evolution of the horse from a wild animal of the Eurasian steppe to its place at the center of war and commerce over almost 3,000 years of human history. The earliest horses weren’t much larger than donkeys. He shows that the first domesticated horses pulled carts and chariots — as it took centuries of breeding until they were strong enough to carry humans. The breeds of horses reflected the cultures that adopted them: the sleek, speedy raiders of Arabia; the huge, powerful Persian steeds; and the sturdy Mongol breeds whose endurance and ability to thrive in harsh conditions were key to Ghengis Khan’s continent-spanning conquests. Maps of the Eurasian Steppe in every chapter help readers to keep track of the disparate locations, and illustrations show the artifacts that these cultures created to celebrate horsemanship.

Of the empires covered in the book, China gets a special focus. The Great Wall was built by the Qin Dynasty in the 2nd century BCE to protect the northern frontier from horse-mounted raiders. Yet China needed horses for its own armies, and large-scale horse breeding was difficult in the hills and fertile valleys south of the wall. A sophisticated trading network grew along the frontier in which trade goods like silk and tea were traded were exchanged for animals.

The Silk Road grew in the wake of a 1st-century BCE military expedition led by the Hun general, Li Guan Li, to find the “blood-sweating” Ferghana horses that nomads had described to Chinese horse traders. Braving high mountain passes and arid wastes in a journey that presaged those of Coronado and Lewis & Clark in North America, Li laid siege to a citadel near the present-day Kyrgyz city of Aravan. His reward was 300 of these “celestial horses” along with a promise of 2 horses every year thereafter. These yearly journeys, and the return of payments of silk and other commodities, established the Silk Road.

Indian emperors also relied on imported horses from central Asia. In a region whose jungles and deserts were unsuitable for breeding horses, huge trade fairs arose across India, where rajas met Afghani horse breeders to do business. Like China, India faced waves of horse-borne invaders from Afghanistan and Persia. As the sea trade with Arabia and, later, Europe developed, southern Indian rulers gained key means to defend their lands.

Horsepower remained the key to empires into the dawn of the 20th century, during which gasoline-powered vehicles arose. In later chapters Chaffetz covers Britain’s strained efforts to breed horses in India – and strike deals with Afthani traders – as well as the Russian Empire’s use of cossack cavalries to conquer the steppe.

In appendices, Chaffetz details the prices of horses in China and India in both historic and present-day terms. A timeline connects concurrent developments in the Western Steppe (Persia) the Indian Subcontinent and the Eastern Steppe.

Chaffetz writes frequently for publications like Asian Review of Books and is a member of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. Raiders, Rulers, and Traders is a broad history that will augment readers’ knowledge of the great empires of Asia. Its focus on horse husbandry is a useful gateway into history for reluctant learners.

Continue reading...

[suzumori521]

i noticed that your banner is art of a (kazakh or kyrgyz?) falconer with a golden eagle. do you have a interest in falconry or have you ever practiced it?

Yes! I love cultures from various countries around the world, but among them, I have a special appreciation for Mongolian and Central Asian cultures. The traditional falconry culture of the Kazakh people, using majestic Golden Eagles, has left a profound impact on me. I'm truly fascinated by them.

Although I haven't had the opportunity yet, it's my dream to one day visit and experience the nomadic life of Mongolia and learn from the Kazakh falconers.

By the way, the ethnic groups featured in my creations are fictional and are a blend of various real-world cultures, incorporating elements that don't actually exist. So, please keep that in mind.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Thank you to the Red Army and the 34 million Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Belarussians, Estonians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Latvians, Lithuanians, Moldovans, Russians, Tajiks, Turkmen, Ukrainians, and Uzbeks who saved the world from fascism. Fuck reactionary nationalism and fuck what became of the Soviet people's sacrifice. We won't let the future they fought for die out.

[moonkattinator]

recently i have been seeing people posting videos of traditional uyghur/kazakh/kyrgyz music and dances but then the caption will say “traditional music of chinese province xinjiang” and i just think it’s so dark sided like if you’re going to celebrate the culture of these people you HAVE to say what their ethnicity is, because they are NOT chinese and so much of uyghur culture and language especially is being erased right now.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[SCMP is Private Hong Kong Media]

Critics, including the US, crammed more than half a dozen condemnations and recommendations into 45-second speaking slots; 163 countries took the floor, in some cases abandoning formal niceties to squeeze in as many points as possible.

“We condemn the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and transnational repression to silence individuals abroad,” said US envoy Michèle Taylor, in a breathless intervention that also called for China to repeal “vague national security counter-espionage, counterterrorism and sedition laws, including the national security law in Hong Kong”.

Britain called on Beijing to “cease prosecutions” related to the national security law, “including Jimmy Lai”, founder of the Apple Daily newspaper.[...]

The European Union’s united front on China’s human rights record was breached by Hungary, Beijing’s closest partner within the bloc, which said the review “shouldn’t be used for instrumentalisation of human rights issues”.[...]

By comparison, Germany remained “highly concerned about serious human rights violations, especially Xinjiang and Tibet”.

Austria urged China to “cease destruction of Uygur cultural heritage” and to catalogue what “demolition or damaging of religious sites” or “Uygur, Kazakh or Kyrgyz Unesco-listed cultural items” had already taken place.[...]

India’s envoy took note of “the progress made by China” since its last review and made only soft recommendations, including for Beijing to “continue to play a constructive role in the realisation of aspirations of developing countries”.

Indonesia asked Beijing to “strengthen the protection of freedom of religion or belief for all people”, without elaborating. Mexico and Argentina urged China to be more open with UN inspectors and eliminate “repressive restrictions” on NGOs.[...]

Israel condemned China for its treatment of ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang while the Palestinian envoy, along with other majority Muslim countries in the Middle East, did not.[...]

“We commend China’s commitment to the promotion of humanity’s common values which embrace universal and inalienable human rights,” the Ukrainian envoy said, recommending that Beijing “strengthen democracy” and “expand people’s participation in political affairs”.

Russia praised China’s “impressive progress in the field of social economic development”, which helps it “effectively uphold human rights”.

24 Jan 24

[countriesgame]

Please reblog for a bigger sample size!

If you have any fun fact about Kyrgyzstan, please tell us and I'll reblog it!

Be respectful in your comments. You can criticize a government without offending its people.