The following article was originally published pseudonymously, in large part because this writer was not yet satisfied with its scholarship. The problem was not that the original theses were wrong, but that they were vague and lacked notations. Here, some corrections have been made, and the brief article’s length is more than doubled by citations and notes.
The Real Turan: Confusions and Clarifications
An abundance of archeological evidence shows us that the ancient Indo-Europeans, or Aryans in older writings, originated on the Pontic Steppe, which stretches from eastern Romania to Central Asia, but especially in present-day Ukraine and southwestern Russia. They were the first in human history to domesticate the horse.[i] They vastly expanded from Western Europe to Western China, though their direct and permanent influence in the east may have more or less stopped at India. (The extent of their influence on China remains a bit of a mystery.)[ii] Continue reading