Archaeologica.org

I would expect the Chinese interest in the Himalayas is the same as the Indians.
It is the source of their major rivers and hence of mystical and practical importance.

Interesting idea, Dig.

Another link between the Indians and the Siberians that we already know about is that there are ritual similarities between the content of the Rig-vedic practises and Siberian shamanic ones, not least the horse sacrifice.

Michael Witzel recently published a paper on it. http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:-T ... ompson.pdf

kbs2244 wrote:I would expect the Chinese interest in the Himalayas is the same as the Indians.
It is the source of their major rivers and hence of mystical and practical importance.

Yes, KB. Also, you mentioned salt earlier, and there is a huge salt basin (dried up lake) somewhere in the south of China (can't remember exactly where) that links with one of the trade routes into India.

Found it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksai_Chin

Aksai Chin (Simplified Chinese: 阿克赛钦, Ākèsàiqīn,Hindi:अकसाई चिन) is a region located at the juncture of China, Pakistan, and India. It represents about one fifth of Jammu and Kashmir.[1] It is administered by China and claimed by India. Aksai Chin is one of the two main border disputes between India and China, the other being the dispute over Arunachal Pradesh. Aksai Chin (the name literally means "Chin's desert of white stones") is a vast high-altitude desert of salt that reaches heights up to 5,000 metres. It covers an area of 16, 481 sq miles or (42, 685 sq km) of the disputed territory. Geographically part of the Tibetan Plateau, Aksai Chin is referred to as the Soda Plain. The region is almost uninhabited, has no permanent settlements, and receives little precipitation as the Himalayan and other mountains block the rains from the Indian monsoon.

Ishtar wrote:That the Indians are related to the Siberians will come as no surprise to Indian historians, who've always said that the composers of the Vedas travelled south from Siberia after the last ice age into India. They claim that they came into India further east, from Nepal, and then made their way north westwards towards where they eventually settled, the Indus valley.

In recent years, archaeological digs along that route have uncovered artefacts that could show a migratory trail of sorts.

Here's a map I did a while back. The blue circle shows their path of migration and how they eventually pushed out the indigenous Anu tribe west and northwest into Afghanistan. The longer, red lozenge shape shows the Indus valley, stretching from India into Pakistan. And the smaller red circles show recent archaeological digs:

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=270163&sid=FTP

Vadodara, Jan 21: Recent excavations in parts of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Pakistan have made the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) believe that a developed civilization possibly existed in the region in the 6th millennium BC, assumed to be older than the Indus valley civilisation.

According to ASI Director Dr B R Mani, the civilisation, believed to be much older than the Indus civilisation of the second and third millennium BC, stretched from Iran in the west to North Bengal in the east.

So could the Sindhi (the Indian race used in the first article's sample) be the modern day descendants of the composers of the Vedas?

When their forefathers settled in what's now known as Pakistan, it was still part of India. But many of the Sindhi had to leave that land in 1947 when it was partitioned off by the British, declared a Moslem-only country and named Pakistan.

But the very name of the Sindhi is what that part of India was originally called before Alexander's Greeks mis-named the river Sindhu 'Hindu'.

The river Sindhu was also known as the river Indhu, thus giving us the Indus Valley.

Ishtar -


The Anu tribe(s), eh.

That's a very suspiciously similar name to a certain

Early Japanese people.

I'd like to learn more about these Anu tribespeople.

Now, safe travel up or down extremely tough rivers is made possible

By two things:

Upriver, humans pulling a hauling line attached to sd. boat,

And downriver acting as a brake on a hauling line.

Also, there is the portage, or

Pulling the boat from the water, emptying it of cargo,

And carrying it around the waterfall or whatever,

Then replacing it in the water, reloading the cargo, etc..

In either case you are hauling a large amount of cargo

With relative efficiency.

The journals of the Lewis & Clark party have an almost

Continuous account of this way of life.

If you want to read a more whimsical,

But equally accurate account,

Refer to the Wind in the Willows; and the account of Toad on the loose,

re:

The episode of the washerwoman and her horse drawn canal boat.


hoka hey


john

Ishtar -

Yeesh.

Just googled "Anu as an ancient tribe descriptor",

And came up with way too much stuff spread

Across several continents over a hell of a lot of time.

Included were the ancient Irish, various (East) Indian tribes, the

Scythians, multiple middle eastern cultures.

Let alone the Tibetan/Nepalese A"i"nu" genetic hookup.



These three letters are showing up in way, way too many places.

Research project for you, if you wish,

As I am not as talented as you are in this sector.


hoka hey


john


ps

And here it shows up freakin' again,

With the Hopi.

http://www.viewzone.com/antpeople.html


j

john wrote:
These three letters are showing up in way, way too many places.

Research project for you, if you wish,

As I am not as talented as you are in this sector

Yes, John. This has been my research project for many years now - more than I care to remember!

In the course of my travels, I also discovered the Ainu, the Scythians, the Celts .... by way of the Gundestrup Cauldron and the Lord of the Animals thereon being a replica of the one on an Indus seal.

And you forgot the Sumerians, who may in fact be the culprits in all of this.

The word for God in Sumerian is An. The Anu wouldn't be the first to name themselves after the god they worship.

Ishtar wrote:

john wrote:
These three letters are showing up in way, way too many places.

Research project for you, if you wish,

As I am not as talented as you are in this sector[/quot


Yes, John. This has been my research project for many years now - more than I care to remember!

In the course of my travels, I also discovered the Ainu, the Scythians, the Celts .... by way of the Gundestrup Cauldron and the Lord of the Animals thereon being a replica of the one on an Indus seal.

And you forgot the Sumerians, who may in fact be the culprits in all of this.

The word for God in Sumerian is An. The Anu wouldn't be the first to name themselves after the god they worship.

First: Minimalist, don't run screaming to the hills...........

As hematite shows up worldwide

Simultaneously

With no particular expletive from Das Klub

So do the three letters

"Anu"


OK. What is going on here?

I have no fear.

One is physical,

Dig it up from the ground.

The other is linguistic,

Ephemeral. Maybe.


After all

What is the Shamanic but the

Ability to translate the insubstantial

Into the insubstantial?

With just as much impact as

A stone dug from the ground.

So - Ishtar -


What is this

"Anu?"



john

Digit wrote:North of the Himalayas is the source of Lapiz Lazuli, which of course was highly prized in Egypt. If the price was right somebody would have carted it over the mountains and frankly I would say that it was the ideal commodity.
Single source, highly desirable and small in bulk.
Like Heroin.

Indeed, Dig. Trade routes & desirable commodities literally made the world go round!

john wrote:
First: Minimalist, don't run screaming to the hills...........
As hematite shows up worldwide
Simultaneously
With no particular expletive from Das Klub
So do the three letters
"Anu"
OK. What is going on here?
So - Ishtar -
What is this
"Anu?"

john

Somehow, I can't imagine Min 'screaming and running for the hills'. It's not really his style.

However, Min, would you tell us what we should do here? In order to explore the first sightings or mentions of the Anu, I have to go first into Vedic mythology ... which I'm more than happy to do, but we may have to move the topic first.

On the other hand, this will probably happen a lot, particularly in the anthropology section where we are quite likely to meander backwards and forwards between mythology and anthropology (e.g. I will need here to be able to move between Indian mythology and known Sumerian racial typing) .... so, over to you for the wisdom of Solomon!

There was no Solomon and reports of his wisdom are greatly exaggerated.

There was no Solomon

Oh?

Digit wrote:

There was no Solomon

Oh?

Arch still reads the board. I enjoy poking him!

OK, in the absence of any wisdom, here goes. This is in answer to John's question about the Anu.

We start off with the Indian flood myth. In the Rig-veda (10.63.1) Manu is the first ancestor. Manu and his family were survivors of the world flood, as mentioned in the Shatapatha Brahmana (1.8.1).

Thus, according to this mythology, we are all descended from Manu. This doesn’t, imo, mean that they're implying we're all Indian. I think that these mythological stories were passed on orally long before the composers of the Vedas ever came into India more than 10,000 years ago.

Manu’s important descendants are the Pauravas, Ayu, Nahusha and the great patriarch, Yayati.

Yayati is the father of the five sons – Anu, Puru, Druhyu, Turvashu and Yadu.

Those five sons are the forefathers of the five main tribes – some of this will be contentious, so please remember (before you let loose on me! ) that I’m just recounting what’s in the mythology and the Indian interpretation of it:

• the Puru tribe, connected with the Yamuna and Ganges region. The Rig-vedic people who developed Vedic culture in north central India and the Punjab along the river Saraswati. They eventually became the Paurava dynasty are thought to be the ancestors of the Egyptian Pharoahs.
• the Anu tribe, related to the north, to Punjab, as well as Bengal and Bihar. Mainly southern Kashmir along the Parushni (modern day Ravi) river (Rig-veda 7.18.13) and spread over western Asia developing the various Iranian cultures. (This is the same river Ravi where Sudas, a Puru, fought the ten Anu kings).
• the Druhyu tribe, related to the west and northwest, such as Ghandara (present day Kandahar) and Afghanistan. They are believed to have spread across Europe as the Druids or the Celts. A first group is said to have travelled north-west and developed the proto-Germanic dialect, and another group migrated further south and developed the proto-Hellenic and Italic-Celtic dialects.
• the Turvashas tribe, related to Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and are the ancestors of the Dravidians and the Yavanas. The Indians believe that the Turks came from the Turvashu tribe and that some of the Yavanas became the Hebrews.
• the Yadu tribe – related to Gujarat and Rajasthan, from Mathura to Dwaraka and Somnath. Became known as the Lunar dynasty (also known as Yadavas, the tribe of Krishna.)

The genealogy following Yayati is in the later Vedantic literature, the Srimad Bhagavathan. The dating of the SB is, as usual, controversial - the latest dates being 9th to 10th centuries CE, and the earliest relying on the fact that the SB (as well as its contemporary Ramayana) mentions four-tusked elephants – these became extinct after the Pliocene.

So on to the SB’s family tree of Anu. This is from Canto 9:

The sons of Yayäti’s fourth son, Anu, were Sabhänara, Caksu and Paresnu. Of these three, the sons and grandsons of Sabhänara were, in succession, Kälanara, Srnjaya, Janamejaya, Mahäsäla and Mahämanä. The sons of Mahämanä were Usinara and Titiksu. Usinara had four sons, namely Sibi, Vara, Krmi and Daksa. Sibi also had four sons—Vrsadarbha, Sudhira, Madra and Kekaya. The son of Titiksu was Rusadratha, who begot a son named Homa. From Homa came Sutapä and from Sutapä, Bali. In this way the dynasty continued.

Begotten by Dirghatamä in the womb of the wife of Bali were Anga, Vanga, Kalinga, Suhma, Pundra and Odra, all of whom became kings. From Anga came Khalapäna, whose dynasty included Diviratha, Dharmaratha and Citraratha, also called Romapäda, one after another.

Mahäräja Dasaratha gave in charity one of his daughters, by the name Säntä, to his friend Romapäda because Romapäda had no sons. Romapäda accepted Säntä as his daughter, and the great sage Rsasrnga married her.

Let me know when you've digested this lot, and I'll continue.

Also, if Seeker's around, he might want to add his Iranian perspective.

Ishtar wrote:Thus, according to this mythology, we are all descended from Manu. This doesn’t, imo, mean that they're implying we're all Indian. I think that these mythological stories were passed on orally long before the composers of the Vedas ever came into India more than 10,000 years ago.

No more wild a concept than we all descended from Noah and his sons. In fact, by some accounts Noah landed on the mountains of Manu and very many early traditions have the name Manu associated with their flood epics. Either a sign of cultural diffusion or perhaps tales of a real event.

Forum Monk wrote: No more wild a concept than we all descended from Noah and his sons. In fact, by some accounts Noah landed on the mountains of Manu and very many early traditions have the name Manu associated with their flood epics. Either a sign of cultural diffusion or perhaps tales of a real event.

I've posted before (and can again, if anyone wants to see them), flood myths from Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, the Quecha, the Choate, Philippines, New Guinea, Thailand, Mayan, the Andes, Lake Victoria, Nigeria, various from Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet, the Hopi, Mexico and Gautemala.

So I should think that there was definitely a flood.

But I'm wondering if the American ones were carried there by the Mongolian types/ Siberians?