Re: Caucasus Geography.

Nice response. It clarifies a few things.

So. We are left with the reality of the Armenian language being in
Armenia, and the usual mystery about the Cimmerians, both seemingly
impossible, but there they are.

Armenian and Azeri are 'recent' linguistic arrivals to the region, at
least in comparison to the Kartvelian group, which seems to be about
as autochthonous as is possible. Azeri, arrayed in Azerbaijan and
south of the border in Iran (and running up the south side of Armenia)
is easy to explain. Armenian is not so easy.

As for the Cimmerians, I'm still looking for a detailed route, a la
those nice maps you get in bibles showing the possible routes of the
Exodus. With my defective geography, my current thinking is the only
way Armenian got to its home is up the Aras River, from the east,
right thru the middle of historic 'greater Azerbaijan'.

What route did the Assyrians take to Urartu? Via present Kurdistan?

Let's see. Kurdistan is mostly SE Turkey, with a knob running into
Iran (cheek-a-jowl to 'Iranian Azerbaijan', with some bits and pieces
in northern Iran and NE Syria. Old Greater Armenia sprawled westward
to the north of this, I think.

--- In cybalist@..., cas111jd@... wrote:
> If you look at a relief map of the area, you'll see that the west
end
> of the Caucasus is very difficult to traverse. I has about no
coastal
> plain, nor natural passes. For much of the route it is a massif that
> comes directly down to the Black Sea. Image it in the 8th century
bc:
> little more than a disjointed collection of wooded mountain
footpaths
> stretching almost from the Kerch Strait to the Georgian plain.
> Imagine tens of thousands of men on horseback making this trip,
> strung out behind each other mostly in a single column. It would
take
> weeks. They and their horses would starve. The mountain peoples
would
> finish them off. Look at what the Germans did to Varus in the
> Teutoberg forest. How about Hannibal crossing the Alps? Imagine him
> trying to traverse the Alps for hundreds of miles. He went over one
> difficult pass. The Caucasus includes one similar pass in the
middle.
> The east end is not easy, either, but it is also basically one pass
> around the end and your in Azerbaijan. The Cimmerians knew which way
> to go. If they lived on the lower Don or in the Kuban, they would
> have known that there was no road for them to take around the west
> end. They would have known that their horses would starve to death
> before they made it out of the forested mountains. I don't know
about
> you, but I would ride off into Rumania or Poland before I went
south.
>
> I think Herodotus imagined the west end of the Caucasus as being
more
> like Greece and not as mountainous and wooded as it was/is. To him,
> the east end may as well as been on the far side of the moon as far
> as his knowledge of the geography went.
>
> I'm not aware of a single migration or military expedition around
the
> west end, so I doubt the Cimmerians did it.
>
> --- In cybalist@..., markodegard@... wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > >[Herodotus] never visited the eastern Black Sea coast and did
> not
> > know how
> > > >treacherous that could be for any campaign or migration.
> > >
> > > Actually, just an interjection concerning the logic of the above
> > > statement. I know some things about Europe. I've never gone to
> > > Europe and so my knowledge of Europe might be fuzzy... but I
know
> > > some things about Europe. This is because my knowledge is
> > second-hand,
> > > given to me by others who *have* gone to or who live in Europe.
> > > So, clearly Herodotus doesn't have to visit the eastern Black
Sea
> > > coast to know about that area as long as he has contacts that
> > > *have* gone there and know what it's about. How can one prove
> > > that he didn't have contacts?
> >
> > I've been to Europe 4 times, but did not get that much geography
> out
> > of the trip. Most of what I know is from books.
> >
> > As for Caucasian geography, my knowledge is very fuzzy. I can
> locate
> > Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia instantly on a world map, but ask
> me
> > about all those other Caucasian places and I go fuzzy. I gather
> > Chechnya is North Caucasus. Dagestan faces the Caspian north of
> > Azerbaijan. These places, the peoples living there, and all those
> > languages they speak are little known to Americans, and when you
do
> > learn something, you only get confused. It's a jumble.
> >
> > The Caucasus themselves run from the Kerch Strait across from the
> > Crimea essentially to Baku, in Azerbaijan, on the Caspian,
> > approximately on a NW to SE slant. The mountains seem to be quite
> > steep: you don't normally go up the hill to the top and down, but
> > rather, you go around and around. There are nice flat strips along
> the
> > coast of the Black and Caspian Seas but these are easily
controlled
> > from the heights just beyond them. In other words, if locals want
> to
> > obstruct your travel, they can don so very easily, and very
> cheaply.
> > Hostile armies would have a hard and bloody time getting thru
here.
> >
> > The rivers are obscure to us in the West. The Kuban looks like a
> ditch
> > at the base of the North Caucasus, draining straight into the
> Black.
> > Draining to the Caspian in the N. Caucasus are the Kuma and Terek,
> two
> > rivers no one's heard of here in the West. The Rioni is in
Georgia,
> > and presumably this is where Jason met Medea. In Azerbaijan, on
the
> > other side from Georgia, is the Kur. The big river seems to be the
> > Aras/Ara, which flows along the border of Iran and Armenia, into
> the
> > Caspian.
> >
> > This is about all I know. I have no idea of what the exact route
> the
> > Cimmerians would have been; does anyone? As for Armenia, the
> obvious
> > approach is via the Aras, tho' this looks awfully defensible by
> local
> > yokels. I confess to being very vague about exactly what the
> borders
> > of Urartu were, or what those of historic Greater Armenia were.
> >
> > I have no idea of how variable the terrain is. Some of it is
> downright
> > impossible, impassable except to knowledgeable locals on narrow
> > trails. The rest of it seems to be pretty bad, made almost nice in
> > modern times only by the application of lotsa dynamite.
> >
> > Can anyone add anything else that would be useful?