gewing Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 sorry if I missed this already being posted. http://in.news.yahoo.com/071228/139/6oy8j.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Nifty This part of the wiki entry for the lake intrigued me Lake Issyk Kul was a stopover on the Silk Road, a land route for travelers from the Far East to Europe. Many historians believe that the lake was the point of origin for the Black Death that plagued Europe and Asia during the early and mid-14th century.[citation needed] The lake's status as a byway for travelers allowed the plague to spread across these continents via medieval merchants who unknowingly carried infested vermin along with them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spence Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Cool stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmadanNaBriona Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Nifty This part of the wiki entry for the lake intrigued me cool stuff. Your quote there reminded me of the opening of World War Z, where the point of origin of the zombie plague, it is implied, comes from a town drowned beneath a man made lake. Illegal relic hunting divers unearthed an ancient zombie and got bitten, it seems to suggest. This 'un seems to be natural tho... wonder how the civilization got there? nasty vector to pull for an disease apocalypse, I thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Well, according to something else I read, not sure which link off of google, but apparently someone didn't put a lid on a well which held a secret, and that drowned the city. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 9, 2008 Report Share Posted January 9, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... This is way cool and possibly very important, since it may shed light on links between Iraq (isn't it really time we stopped saying "Mesopotamia?") and China at the dawn of equestrian cvilisation. That said, I doubt that there are any historians who believe that Lake Issyk Kul, as distinct from a hypothetical Inner Eurasian disease reservoir, was the source of the Black Death. It would be easier to find a historian who didn't believe in the Black Death. What? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted January 9, 2008 Report Share Posted January 9, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... This is way cool and possibly very important, since it may shed light on links between Iraq (isn't it really time we stopped saying "Mesopotamia?") and China at the dawn of equestrian cvilisation. That said, I doubt that there are any historians who believe that Lake Issyk Kul, as distinct from a hypothetical Inner Eurasian disease reservoir, was the source of the Black Death. It would be easier to find a historian who didn't believe in the Black Death. What? Mesopotamia is a regional term, not a made-up name for a country (such as Cathay), so I have no issue with using it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FenrisUlf Posted January 10, 2008 Report Share Posted January 10, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... sorry if I missed this already being posted. http://in.news.yahoo.com/071228/139/6oy8j.html Something happend to the link. Does anyone have a backup/secondary sight? And myself, I'd love to see someone learn more about the Bactrian civilization. It's still almost completely unknown, isn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 11, 2008 Report Share Posted January 11, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Pierre Briant argues strongly in his history of the Persian Empire that there was no "Bactrian civilisation" as once proposed, that the archaeological remnants date to Persian times. Issyk Kul is far north of Bactria, anyway. That said, there is something called (IIRC) the Bactria-Margiana Oasis Complex that is now attracting attention, and really, six of one, half-dozen of the other. And "Mesopotamia" is the Classical Greek name for a region that the natives have been calling "Iraq" for above a thousand years. Archaeologists are usually careful to distinguish when sites fall into the territories of modern Iran, Syria and Turkey, so why exactly are we saying "Mesopotamia" instead of "Iraq?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FenrisUlf Posted January 11, 2008 Report Share Posted January 11, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... And "Mesopotamia" is the Classical Greek name for a region that the natives have been calling "Iraq" for above a thousand years. Archaeologists are usually careful to distinguish when sites fall into the territories of modern Iran' date=' Syria and Turkey, so why exactly are we saying "Mesopotamia" instead of "Iraq?"[/quote'] Dunno about everyone else, but when I say "Mesopotamia", I usually mean the area as it was in the Bronze Age at the time of the various pre-Persian kingdoms and empires. I.e., Babylon, Assyria, and so on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithcurtis Posted January 11, 2008 Report Share Posted January 11, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Seeing as there is no cultural continuity between modern Iraq and the region of Mesopotamia in ancient times, I have no trouble using both terms. "Ancient Iraq" might be an acceptable term, like "Ancient Greece", which bears no cultural resemblance to Modern Greece. Keith "That which we call a rose..." Curtis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 11, 2008 Report Share Posted January 11, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Seeing as there is no cultural continuity between modern Iraq and the region of Mesopotamia in ancient times, I have no trouble using both terms. "Ancient Iraq" might be an acceptable term, like "Ancient Greece", which bears no cultural resemblance to Modern Greece. Keith "That which we call a rose..." Curtis Now I just anonymously denounce Keith Curtis to the Assyrian-American Anti-Defamation League*, and I get all his neat stuff! Uhm...you do have neat stuff, don't you, Mr. Curtis? *Doesn't actually exist, but nevertheless is fairly active on Wikipedia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midas Posted January 25, 2008 Report Share Posted January 25, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... Nifty This part of the wiki entry for the lake intrigued me ...archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2500-year-old advanced civilization at the bottom of the Lake...In pre-Islamic legend, the king of the Ossounes had donkey's ears. He would hide them, and order each of his barbers killed to hide his secret. One barber yelled the secret into a well... :think:Hey, that story sounds familiar! Phrygia In antiquity, Phrygia (Greek: Φρυγία) was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia. The Phrygian people settled in the area from c. 1200 BC, and established a kingdom in the 8th century BC. It was overwhelmed by Cimmerian invaders c. 690 BC, then briefly conquered by its neighbor Lydia, before it passed successively into the Persian Empire of Cyrus, the empire of Alexander and his successors, was taken by the king of Pergamon, and eventually became part of the Roman Empire. The Phrygian language survived until about the 6th century AD. Though I don't know the actual origin date of the King Midas story: Since Phrygia dates from 1200 to 690 BC, I would speculate that the Cimmerians carried the tale to Issyk_Kul. (muttering about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery) Midas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 26, 2008 Report Share Posted January 26, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... It's pretty clear that the Cimmerians ("sons of Gomer"), or Gimmeru were an Indo-European people of the Zagros region, probably some of the earliest cavalry, c. 800, and that they later turned into "Medes and Persians." Herodotus, our major source on the Phrygians, is telling us seriously distorted stories. For one thing, recent excavations at Kerkenes Dag reveals a "Phrygian" capital that was still a going concern in 585BC. That's not to say that the folk there hadn't changed their ethnonym by that time. But it is pretty clear that the story about the Cimmerians coming from the "steppe" (much less going back there) is a minor error, much magnified since. There have been some really cool books on this general subject recently. Mark Munn,The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyrannies of Asia (2006) exposes some of the subtext, although the story is just coming to light now. Much more accessible is Robert Davies, Early Riders, a review of archaeological evidence coming to the key conclusions about cavalry I just referred to. Connected to the "late emergence of cavalry" thesis is the current argument that the equestrian-nomadic lifestyle emerged in Inner Eurasia with a bang at the beginning of the Iron Age. Nicola di Cosma, Ancient China and its Enemies highlights this thesis, which, going by the Cambridge History of Early China now qualifies as the "received version." Cool of course doesn't necessarily mean readible, so if you want to pursue this I would recommend Cosma's chapter in the Cambridge History and Davies over the longer and denser monographs. Good stories often travel in books. Even in ancient times. There is a reason that Julius Caesar is worshipped as a god in Tibetan/Mongolian Buddhism. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Hiemforth Posted January 26, 2008 Report Share Posted January 26, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... There is a reason that Julius Caesar is worshipped as a god in Tibetan/Mongolian Buddhism.Well' date=' he [b']did[/b] make a mean salad... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FenrisUlf Posted January 26, 2008 Report Share Posted January 26, 2008 There is a reason that Julius Caesar is worshipped as a god in Tibetan/Mongolian Buddhism. Seriously? I know that Alexander the Great was a literary hero* all through Europe and the Middle East for centuries (he showed up in everything from Icelandic Sagas to Arabic legends), but I've never heard that about Caesar. * -- Well, to everyone but the Persians, who referred to him as "that vandal". EDIT: Hmm, if the Cimmerians were the ancestors of the various Iranian peoples, then I guess that blows the whole "Cimmerian = Celts" argument of Bob Howard's out of the water... But now I want to see Conan versus the Spartans! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 27, 2008 Report Share Posted January 27, 2008 Re: Lost cities under Russian lake... "Kasar" is hard to identify as Julius Caesar unless you follow the literary tradition back, but he is a hero of Mongolian epic poetry and has been deified in that crazy way the Tibetans do things. My source here is Pamela Kyle Crossley's Translucent Mirror, but I hesitate to recommend it as either an easy read or the last word on the subject of Manchu imperial ideology. Oh, and if Dr. Crossley googles here and reads this, I have to say that I was favourably impressed. I'm just aware that other experts have criticised it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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