From: george knysh
Message: 64854
Date: 2009-08-19
--- On Wed, 8/19/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
1)You just can't stay away from the internet café, can you?
2) George keeps raising the bar
3)That must have been the beginning after that beginning where you asked me to provide proof that the Przeworsk burials were inhumation?
4)I do what? Did you get that old metaphor at all?
5)Couple of months ago, it meant the world.
6)Oh, that was your nice side?
7)Much.
GK: One interesting feature that he doesn't mention in your
> quotes is that earlier Sarmatian graves were almost always "dug-in
> add-ons" to more ancient kurgans (some of them thousands of years
> older!), which is an interesting testimony as to their religious
> beliefs and "ancestor reverence".
8)To the kurgans of the ancestors of those people they just exterminated. Very endearing touch. They did the same in Denmark.
****GK: This one, unlike the preceding (usual) Torsteinian idiocies and irrelevancies deserves elucidation.
You may be unaware of the fact that there is a great deal of revisionism going on in the last ten years or so concerning this notion that Scythians were "exterminated" by Sarmatians. It (the notion) is based, as everyone who has studied the matter knows, on a famous passage in Diodorus Siculus. It turns out that whoever (and whatever) old Diodorus was quoting, he misquoted or misunderstood. Archaeologists have now conclusively demonstrated that the steppes of Ukraine were "emptied" of nomads between ca. 300 BCE and ca. 175 BCE, and that this was not the result of "extermination". I am actually working on a paper on this issue so let me just say this, for the time being. In the post-Alexandrian (or early hellenistic) epoch, the Royal Scythians moved the center of their realm away from the Ukrainian steppes and back to central Asia. Pliny, who had read the now lost account of the Seleucan general Demodamas (fl. 280/260) recorded a couple of things
associated with this withdrawal. (1) The definitive annihilation of the Napi Scythians (Herodotus had mentioned them briefly in his account of the Scythian trading routes to the east) by the Royals, in the steppes north of the Iaxartes, and (2) the relocation to Central Asia of the Aukhata and Cotieri. The old "Royal" haunts in Ukraine however remained "sacred" territory, and were not occupied by Sarmatians throughout the 3rd c. and into the 2nd c. BCE. There is evidence of a concerted "closing of the border" vis a vis Olbia, Chersonesos, Bosporus by nomad armies ca. 275/270 BCE and no visible occupation of the classical Scythian territory. The Sarmats remained east of the Don, and a Scythian contingent ruled by a king crossed the Danube ca, 275 BCE (in connection with the Celtic assault on Thracia) and conquered "Scythia Minor" (the Dobrudja) which they ruled until the mid-2nd c. BCE Archaeology now knows that the Royal Scythians returned to Ukraine
sometime ca. 170 BCE (they began to build fortresses along the Dnipro at that time). This return is to be linked with the great changes in the configuration of steppe power which began with the defeat of the Yuezhi by the Hiongnu in the Gansu corridor in 177 BCE. The Iazigi and Roxolani were their associates (and from time to time simply (vassals) hardly their "exterminators".*****
9)Bunch of cheapskates, apparently.
10)Not that I recall.
11)I didn't cite inhumation by itself but as part of a list. How did you miss that?
****GK: Inhumation "by itself" can be no part of a Sarmatian list. It must be a Sarmatian type inhumation.****
12)George raises the bar.
13)Yup. Now suddenly the grave goods isn't interesting anymore. George raises the bar.
14)Yes, several places, I even quoted him here.
>(GK) The authority here is Yatsenko. He has clearly explained that the
> mere presence of gakks (like "inhumations" GK) is not proof that
> you are dealing with a Sarmatian object, esp. if these gakks are
> accompanied by Germanic runes or symbols...
15)No, he didn't. He presented some half-baked idea that gakk'ed spears and phalerae in graves in Germanic territory belong not to the deceased, but to his wife, a proposal so hopeless that you yourself emendated it to make them the property of single migrants.
****GK: The Snorrist "intellect" is dissolving into primeval protoplasm. Yatsenko claimed that the spearheads with runes and gakks were made generations after the marriage in question, by Germanic descendants.... But it doesn't really matter does it? It doesn't "fit" the Snorrist scenario so we'll yuk yuk it away with sillinesses.*****
16) You realize of course what the consequences would have been to a single migrant who decided to migrate alone from Sarmatia to Norway with spear and phalerae?
****GK: Torsten's idiocy. Munch on it poor boy.****
17)Hahaha. Nice try.
18)Of course. No longer relevant.
***GK: Never was for your Snorrist scenario dear boy.****
19)Oh, they did? Some weeks back the position was extremely important. George raises the bar again.
20)Yawn.
21)Do.
22)Let me see... On the cover of the book I read it says
Das ger-ma-ni-sche Kö-nigs-grab von Mu-s^ov in Mäh-ren
Yes it seems you're right, Brian, erh, excuse me, George, I mean.
23)Why? Because otherwise George begins to cry?
24)I think you should concentrate on your vacation. You certainly need it.
25)No, 'lame' here was intended, as you can tell from the context, to mean "argumentum e silentio expertorum". I mostly don't do that.
26)Why do you always have to mix religion into it?
****GK: I didn't realize Snorrism was your religion. I just though it was an ineradicable ideological obsession. My mistake. Sorry.****
27)So when I find gakks/tamgas and phalerae in the grave I don't understand what I'm doing, but when the professionals don't they do?
28)Especially not if George puts quotation marks around "Sarmatian".
29)Of course. Those are only found in Germanic areas where we know there have never been any Sarmatians (except for migrant wives and errant knights) and since that is the case we know that there have never been any Sarmatians there (except for migrant wives and errant knights).
30)That is very interesting.
Would you care to inform me why this is relevant?
31)George raises the bar again.
32)Of course you do. Tell me, back in Soviet time, did you work in some ministry? Visa work? Motor office? I did a lot of reading when my car was broken down in Yugoslavia.
Goodbye Mr. Pedersen. I should have heeded our old Ukrainian saying "Ne zachipaj hivno shchoby ne smerdilo".
Have a good time in cloud kookooland!