Forgotten Past
A look on ancient History, Language and Architecture (Doç. Dr. Haluk Berkmen)

All articles and pictures published under the title of Forgotten Past
are the exclusive property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be
copied and reproduced without his permission.

The Ancient Uighur (Uygur) Empire
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN Introduction
The present work is an investigation into the forgotten past. Its goal
is to bring into light the ancient civilization that existed many
thousand years ago and which is not mentioned in any history book.
Where and when did that civilization exist? What language did it
speak? How and why did it spread all around the world? What proof
and indications of its existence do we still have today?
All these fascinating questions will be addressed from a global pointof view here. The present work is based on three main topics:
Cultural history, language and architecture.
There is no clear evidence about the whereabouts of the original
root culture. It has been accepted, in general, that Mesopotamia
has been the cradle of civilization, where the first organized
religion, the first scriptures and many other "firsts" started. It is
more likely that people came to these regions from somewhere elseand had already a developed language and a rudimentary writing
system.
Recent research on the culture of Mesopotamia and especially on
the Sumer language gives strong evidence that the language ofSumer belonged to the Ural-Altaic language group of Asia. One
cannot, anymore, claim that isolated languages evolved within
isolated geographical pockets. Linguists worldwide are now more
inclined to accept that Central-Asia has been the cradle ofcivilization for a very long span of time.
It is therefore important to start from Asia and to investigate theproto-language spoken many thousand years ago. The result of theforthcoming investigation gives strong support to the theory that

Central-Asiatic people lay the foundations of the present day world
civilization. This theory is supported by linguistic and architecturalevidences. These evidences will be elaborated with the help of many
pictures, tables and graphs.
The Ancient Uighur (Uygur) Empire
The region defined as the central-Asiatic plateau includes a vast
continent whose western borders include the whole of Europe,
eastern borders include eastern Asia and Japan. The southernboundary of this vast region cut through what is now Northern
Persia, India, Mesopotamia and present day North Vietnam. We now
define this vast continent as Eurasia. And the language group of thisregion as Eurasiatic.
The large Eurasiatic language family includes the Altaic, Uralic,
Dravidian, Indo-European and even the Afro-Asiatic languages.
The ancient population of Eurasia speaking the proto-language was
the people known as The Uygur (Uighur) whom we know are of
Turkic ancestry. The Uighur population formed chains of settlements
across central Asia and Central Europe many thousand years ago.
Although the historical records claim that the Uighur people are theoffspring of the Huns and starts from 300 BCE, the exact beginning
date of this culture is much more ancient and very much unclear.
One should be very careful in naming ancient cultures. This isbecause a name is immediately linked to a certain time period andsubjective feelings of possession trigger unending controversies.
The approximate starting date of the Ancient Uighur Empire, ormore correctly loose federation of independent tribes, could
tentatively be located around 20,000 years BP.
It was first James Churchwald (1852-1936), a British officer who
served in India during the 1880’ies who brought the Ancient Uighur
Empire to the attention of the world. He claimed that a lost
continent named Mu existed once upon a time. As the continent
located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean disappeared under thesea due to some cataclysmic disaster, people of this culture
migrated to distant locations of the world. Their largest and mostimportant colonial empire was the Ancient Uygur Empire, theEmpire of the Sun. Churchwald claims: “Next to Mu herself, theUighur Empire was the largest empire the world has everknown”(1).
Churchwald wrote several books on Mu (2), but as of today (2009)
the sunken Mu continent has not been discovered. Nevertheless,the Ancient Uighur federation of tribes is a fact and can bedemonstrated to have existed for a rather long period of time. This
culture did not totally disappear from the face of the world, but has
mutated and evolved into several different nations speaking several
interrelated languages. Let us ponder on the main climatic changes
which forced these tribes to move out of Central Asia and spread allover the world.
Present day central-Asia is inhospitable and patched with vast
deserts. It has been demonstrated that a major climatic change has
occurred in these regions. A great flood swept up over eastern andnortheastern Asia and destroyed several Uighur cities andsettlements, drowning most of the inhabitants, and burying or
destroying almost all architectural structures. The main reason ofthat flood was the melting of the glaciers, extending over almost allof northern regions of Asia and Europe.
The flood brought some alkaline deposits that resulted intransforming the Gobi and Taklamakan of central Asia into a sandy,
rocky, inhospitable desert. There have been extensive studies on
the geological structure of Central Asia. In such a joint publicationof Philip L. Kohl et. al. (3) it is said:“A striking example of changes in Central Asian topography isprovided by the `Takyr` formations of the Central Asians deserts.
Takyr’s are alkaline soil formations, generally containing only algae
and lichens, which are formed by the accumulation of dry alluviumin natural depressions. Physically they form smooth, bare, thin andhard parquet-like or cracked structures, which are the result of
rapid drying of stilt suspensions and the cementing of surface layers
by carbonate crusts of Calcium. They are distributed over large
waterless tracts throughout Central Asia, providing convincing
evidence of the retraction or shift in water courses.”
These words tell us that at a certain period of time Central Asia wasa region containing many waterways, rivers and large lakes. The
mentioned flood came not only from the melting of the northern
glaciers, but also from the west as claimed by W. Ryan and W.
Pitman (4).

The above map was drawn by J. Churchwald in 1925. He clearly
indicated the vast regions of Asia occupied by the Ancient Uighur
Empire. The hypothetical Mu continent is shown on the lower-rightside of the map. Although, not indicated on this map a vast internallake –or even sea- existed at the central-western region of Asia,
extending from the Aral lake up to and including the Balkhash lake.
Many cities were located at the edge of this huge internal sea,
which gave the opportunity to learn and practice seafaring to thepeople living around this area.
Present day Uighurs of interior Asia live for the most part in western
China; in the Sinkiang (Sinjan) Uighur Autonomous Region. Thispeople is said to be descended from the ancient Uighur nation thatwas sovereign from the 10th to the 12th century AD. But in fact
their origin is totally forgotten. They have been known under many
names throughout the ages, such as: Turani, Kashgari, Turki,
Tangut, Tarkhut, Khitan-Liao, Jurchen, Xia (Hsia), Hui-Ho, Minyag,Topa, Hsiung-Nu, Tu-er-ke, Chang-Di, Tou-Kiou, Mi, Mu, Hu, andHun. (5)It would be an error to consider these nations as being all different

from each other. They all belonged to the same Turkic stock and all
spoke approximately the same Altaic language, which developed
from the proto-language. Note that the Turks were also known
under the name Mu. Therefore, the lost Mu Empire claimed byJames Churchwald was another name given to the imperial nomadsof Asia. Some of the above names are different pronunciations or
adaptations belonging to different neighboring nations. It is a wellknown fact that most of our present knowledge about the Central
Asiatic ancient history comes from the Chinese chronicles. The
foreign words were always adapted to suit the Chinese monosyllabic
pronunciation. Therefore, the original pronunciations, in manycases, were twisted almost beyond recognition. In his book Luc
Kwanten says:“The Hsiung-nu was not the first organized state on the steppe, forit appears to have built upon a pre-existing, but unknown, tradition.
Only archeological evidence attests to the historical existence ofearlier steppe civilizations, but there were at least three such
centers of civilization, and the evidence suggests a presence on the
steppe several centuries before the Hsiung-nu.”(5)Recognizing this situation we will adopt the name Uighur as a
generic name for these genetically, culturally and linguisticallyconnected people. The history of these people is the history ofhumanity, the history of the Forgotten Past.
References:(1) Understanding Mu, Hans Stefan Santesson, Paperback Library
Edition, 1970 (2) Lost Continen of Mu and The Childeren of Mu byJames Churchwald. (3) Central Asia, P. L. Kohl, ISBN: 2-86538071-8, Page 26. (4) Noah’s Flood: New Scientific Discoveries about
the Event That Changed History, by William Ryan and Walter
Pitman, Simon & Schuster, 2000. (5) Imperial Nomads, Luc
Kwanten, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979.
http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a1.htm All
articles and pictures published under the title of Forgotten
Past are the exclusive property of Haluk Berkmen. They
cannot be copied and reproduced without his permission.
Diversification of languages
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENThe Asiatic proto-language has been named as Nostratic by Russian
linguists. This name immediately links the proto-language to Indo-European and especially to Latin, since Nostratic means “ourstratum, our group” in Latin. I am of the opinion that the protolanguage first became the common language of the large Eurasiancontinent and then diversified into several subgroups. This
diversification into subgroups is shown in the Table below.

At the top of the Table we place the Proto-language of Central Asia
which was once the single language of the whole Eurasiancontinent. During this period, groups of people (tribes) were mostly
nomads and moved their herds from pastures to pastures
depending on the weather conditions. The Proto-language of Central
Asia evolved into Eurasian as time went by and as people started toform independent rural stable settlements. Eurasian should not be
considered as a specific language spoken by real people, but rather
as a definition linked to a new era of fixed settlements. One canloosely define Eurasian as the common language of the Neolithic
period.
On the left side of the Table we see the language groups which
evolved on the central, eastern, western and south-western parts ofEurasia. On the right side of the Table we find language groups
which evolved on the north-eastern and south-eastern parts ofEurasia. These groups eventually left the mainland and spread overnew continents. The language groups which still have a clear link to
the original Proto-language are placed at the top of the list. As thelink weakens and becomes murky the language groups move to thebottom of the list.
The vision supported by this Table is that presently there are two
language groups that still have the strongest link to the originalProto-language. These are the Altaic group on the main Asiaticcontinent and the Eskimo-Aleut group extending from the northeastern parts of Asia to the northern regions of America, up to theisland of Greenland. It will be, therefore, most logical to startconsidering the Altaic language group in somewhat more detail.

The above Table shows the three main branches of the Altaic
languages. In the center we have the extinct languages. These
were, most probably, languages that split from Eurasian before theclear distinction of Uralic from Altaic. Therefore, one can still findmany linguistic clues connecting these extinct languages to both
Altaic as well as to Uralic languages. Research has been done on the
linguistic connection of Sumerian to both Turkish as well as tomodern Hungarian. The validity of these links can be demonstratedby showing their origin stemming from the forgotten realm of theProto-language.
The Proto-language of Central Asia The words of the Protolanguage were all monosyllabic. These monosyllabic words weremade out of strong velar and dental consonants joined to 8 different
vowels. The vowels were grouped into two groups of 4, according toan internal sound harmony. The 4 thick vowels are a (as a in abut),ugh (as a strong velar i or y), o (as o in go) and u (as u in you).
The 4 thin vowels are e (as e in bet), i (as in i in hit), ö/eu (as u inburn) and ü (as u in burette).
The vowels in one group were interchangeable and an “a” in amonosyllabic word could very well be replaced by a “u” as time
went by. The same replacement could also take place within thevowels of the thin group. But no vowel belonging to one group couldreplace another vowel from a different group.
Regarding the consonants, the labials (produced with the lips) such
as p, b, m, f and v as well as pair of velars (produced with the
tongue) such as t with d, k with g, kh with q, l with r and z could
also replace each other as a result of normal linguistictransformation. A clear example of such a transformation happened
within the generic name “Uighur”. This generic tribal name waspronounced in a much stronger version as “Okhuz” in the ancient
Proto-language. As a result of labialization the thick O became “Ui”,
the thick “k” became “g” and the “z” became “r”. A further change
happened with the softening of the “gh” into a “g”, ending up as
Ugor, Ungar, Hungar, and Hungarian. This transformation tells usthat the Ural language group including Hungarian, Finnish andSamoyed are offspring of the ancient Proto-language, closely
related to the Altaic languages.
A similar change happened within Turkish which has a “z” and an“r” version. The more archaic z version is still alive in the Anatolian
Oghuz Turkish. While the r version is found in the Chuvash Turkish.
Chuvashia is an autonomous republic within present day Russia. In
that Turkish dialect Oguz is pronounced as Ogur. “Kyz” (girl) is
pronounced as “hyr”. The Chuvash language contains several
similar cases.
Okhuz is formed of a root “Okh” and a suffix –uz, which is a clear
indication that the Proto-language was agglutinative. Words could
be formed by concatenating root words and suffixes. The root word
“Okh” lost its strong h and became Ok to mean “arrow” in modern
Turkish. With the suffix –uz “Okhuz” means “we are the arrow”. In
this word we find several hidden meanings. First: “we are the arrowpeople and move as fast as an arrow”, second: “we are the warriors
carrying arrows” and third: “we are the lucky superior ones”, since
Ogur and Ugur mean both lucky and also superior. The word “ugur”
changed a bit and became “augure” in French and “augury” in
English to mean “good omen”.
The name Okh or Ogh did not represent a single tribe, but rather
was the common generic name used during the early period of the
Root-language. Being a hunter carrying a bow and an arrow was theprerogative of any adult male. This is why the word for “boy” inTurkish is Oghlan, meaning “acquire an arrow” or equivalently“become an adult”. Similarly, “Oksuz” or “Oeksuez” means a young
person who lost his parent. In other words, having no adult personfor protection. In this case the adult person is generally the mother,since the father is most of the time away from home.

A further transformation of Okh is found in the ancient tribal name
Akh. There was a nation living in Mesopotamia named as Acadians
and another one next to the Helens known as the Akha people.
Another Akha tribe is found in southern China extending into
Thailand.
The generic name Okh changed into Oc all over the southern cost ofEurope. There is a rather large territory known as Occitania which is
not anymore a legal or political entity. This cultural area, in which alanguage called “Lenga D’Oc” (Oc language or Occitan) was spoken,
is located between Spain and northern Italy, comprising the totalityof southern France.
The worldwide accepted OK (Okay) as an affirmation meaning “yes”
has its roots in the Oc language. It was used to affirm thesuperiority of the Oc leader carrying a bow and an arrow and later
on a spear. The large Oc territory is shown in the map below.

http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a2.htm All
articles and pictures published under the title of Forgotten
Past are the exclusive property of Haluk Berkmen. They
cannot be copied and reproduced without his permission.
The hidden meaning of Petroglyphs
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENPetroglyphs are images created by removing part of a rock bycarving or engraving. This term is made out two Greek words,“petros” (stone) and “gliphein” (to carve). The oldest petroglyphs
are believed to be at least 10,000 years old but as they are carved
on rocks the exact date cannot be determined by carbon-14 dating.
Petroglyphs are also defined as “rock art” but the message thatthey convey is totally disregarded. This is because the meaning inthese carvings is closely related to the beliefs of that forgotten
period. Without knowing the belief system of these ancient people itis quite impossible to decipher the hidden meaning of thepetroglyphs. In this chapter I will try to unravel the hidden meaningof petroglyphs.
Petroglyphs are found worldwide, but the maximum concentrationof these carvings still exists in the high regions of the Altai
Mountains of Central Asia. The number of these carvings surviving
in Central Asia is estimated to be around 50,000. This huge numberof carvings cannot be simply explained as being love of art or
addiction to carving. There must be another important reason forsuch a continuous and consistent effort.
The most common figure found worldwide is the wild goat (ibex)
with long curved horns. Why were they carved on rocks by ancientpeople? Was it because they were the main prey of these people?
Were the petroglyphs related to some magic wish for an abundant
hunt? I do not think so. This is because we can find the same figureof the ibex in regions where they were very scarce, such as the hot
plateau of Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico in the south and central
parts of North America. The pictures below show an ibex of the Altai
Mountains.

The ibex was venerated as being the symbol of agility and power.
Its agility and capacity to climb the highest peaks was considered tobe related to some super-power not existing in humans. Because as
one climbs the high mountainous regions the air becomes thinnerand oxygen concentration reduces. It becomes more and moredifficult to breathe on these high mountains. But the ibex has nosuch problem. It can jump from rock to rock without any difficulty
and climb the highest peaks. This special power was probably one
main reason for venerating the ibex as a sacred animal. Anotherimportant reason for venerating the ibex was its capacity toapproach the sun.

Ancient people considered the sun as their main deity. The sun was
the holy power residing beyond the horizon. It gave heat and lightduring the daytime and was the symbol of the life-giving creator
deity. When it moved beyond the horizon darkness settled and wild
animal came out for hunting. Therefore, the sun was the symbol oflife, protection and goodness. Its presence gave comfort and its lackgave fear to the early humans. Any creature that could approach
the sun was venerated as having mystical powers. The ibex andmost birds, especially the eagle, were such sacred animals. Also
mountains were accepted as being special places. This is because
mountains were natural formations rising towards the sun.
Early people believed that the power of the ibex resided in its horns.
The horns of an ibex are much longer than an ordinary goat andtherefore contain more power. The male ibex had longer horns
compared to its female. This was also considered as a sign of force
and special energy. So, not only the ibex but also all horned
animals were considered to be sacred and their horn was the sitewhere their power resided. Since the horn, by itself, was accepted
to be the site where that mystical power resided, leaders of theancient tribes started to wear horned helmets and horned headornaments in order to show that they too were special andpowerful. The leaders were incarnations of the sun deity on earth
and therefore could rise towards the sun and perform mysticalflights. This is how shamanism and mystical dances and rituals
started among early humans speaking the proto-language. During
these sacred gathering songs were chanted around bonfires. Fire
became holy because it had the same power and characteristic as
the sun.
I have mentioned in Chapter 1 that the Turkic Mu (Uighur) Empire
was named as Empire of the Sun. Their symbols wererepresentations of the sun and their leader was the shaman. The
pictures below are clear indications of this connection. On the left
side we see a person wearing horns and holding a spiral (1). There
are several animals turned towards that person. The person on that
petroglyph is the shaman incarnating the sun deity. He is the leaderof the tribe. This is why all horned animals are looking in his
direction. The same situation can be seen in the petroglyph at thecenter.

The central image is a petrogylph from a high peak in the Altai
region of Central Asia (2). A long horned ibex and a horned deer are
the main figures of this image. The length of the horn of the ibex is
exaggerated on purpose to tell that this is not a regular ibex, but a
special sacred one. The petroglyph on the right hand side is again
an ibex from eastern Turkey, from the Tirishin plateau near the cityof Van(3). If we find the same symbols in such distant regions of
the world, we can conclude that these cultures were once connected
and their source was common.
The early culture of the proto-world venerated a common Sun god.
Since the sun resides in the sky, all creatures as well as naturalformations rising towards the sun had also to be venerated. This
cultural belief started in Eurasia and spread into the world as thesepeople moved towards new, unexplored regions and territories.
In the pictures below we see petroglyghs from the new world.
Concentric circles are representation of the sun deity. A rope ladderand a hand is rising toward the sun. There are ibexes and a person
wearing horns in the lower left side.

These petroglyhs are the precursors of the early ideograms.
Ideograms are symbolic signs that convey an idea in a more

sophisticated, rationalized and refined manner. They are the earlyforms of symbolic writing. They were not drawn by chance or bypurposeless imagination. Their origin was rooted in the early forms
and pictures existing in petroglyphs drawn by their ancestors. Let
us not forget that several thousand years elapsed between the
pictographic rock carvings and the symbolic ideograms.
There is a special term used to define the ideograms in Turkish.
This word is “Tamga”, which means “an ideogram containing acomplete message”. Therefore, the early ideograms were notphonetic letters but visual images conveying a sacred message.
Early ideograms were not carved on rock or on the interior of caves
just for fun or for counting herd animals, as many believe. They
were carved for sending messages to the sun god. They were theearly forms of written prayers. I will ponder and convey more detailon early ideograms in the future chapters.

In the picture above we see three different but similar carvings ofthe sun deity. The one on the left is from Central Asia. The one in
the center is from the southern side of the Alp, in the mountainous
region of north Italy. The one in the right is a petroglyph from
Canada. One interesting common feature is that the sun and thehuman are merged in a single image. This is because the shaman
who is also the leader of the tribe incarnates the power of the sundeity.
References(1) Geister, Götter und Symbole, Felix R. Paturi, Frederking &Thaler, page 121 (2) Sibirya’nın Bilinçaltı, Servet Somuncuoğlu,Atlas magazine 178, page 95 (3) Anadolu’da Kayaüstü resimleri.
Ersin Alok, 1988, İstanbul, page 40"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced

without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a3.htm
The Asiatic ScythiansDoç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENOne of the Central-Asiatic ancient cultural centers is located in the
Altai autonomous republic within Russia. The Altai republic is theterritory of highlands situated in the very center of Asia at thejunction of Siberian taiga, steppes of Kazakhstan and semi-desertsof Mongolia. This region is populated presently by several groups ofpeople known under the names, the Tubalars, the Teleuts, theShors, the Telengits, the Uryanhaits and the Oirots. They all speaka Turkish dialect which stems from the early proto-language.
It is claimed, in general, that the Saka (Scythian) tribes inhabitedthese regions throughout Classical Antiquity (1), but it is almost
never mentioned that the Saka people belonged to the ancient
Uighur federation. The name Saka comes from the proto-language
and is formed out of two monosyllabic words; As and Ok. We canguess that there were two neighboring group of tribes named as the
As and the Ok who merged into a loose federation, to form the AsOk; which in time became to be known as the Saka people. In early
Altaic vowels belonging to the same group, such as “a” and “o”
could replace each other and even change place within a word. This
fact has been mentioned in The Proto-language of Central Asia.
The As people were, most probably, one of the prominent tribes in
the region since the continent of Asia is named after them. Even
today we have a country named Azerbaijan, whose name is madeout 4 monosyllabic Turkish words. Az or As is the tribe name, Erstands for male or human, Bay is a title meaning leader and Jan
meaning spirit. So the name stands for “The spiritual leadership of
the As people”.
Herodotus described the Saka as people wearing trousers andpointed hats. They carried bows, arrows and daggers. Their battle
ax was called the “sagar”(2). They worshiped the sun god andburied their dead at the top of high peaks, as mentioned by A.
Siliotti (1):Archeological research has shown that the plains in the southern
and western regions of Kazakhstan were densely populated fromthe eight century BC; it was here that concentrations of immensetumulus type necropolises contained grave goods of such splendor
that archeologists call the tumuli “royal kurgan”. (page 203)

The word “kurgan” is made out of Ok-Ur-gan, which means “Thelocation where the Ok resides”. Ur is a Turkic word meaning toreside or to settle. There were two ancient Sumer cities in
Mesopotamian named Ur and Uruk. When the suffix -gan is added
to any verb, the new word becomes a noun; therefore kurgan is theplace of final residence for the Ok leaders. The art objects found inthese kurgans are generally made out of gold and convey symbolsof the early Altaic culture.
Above we see an elk with huge horns joined together with agryphon. The special symbolism of joining several animals in one
peace of art was a common practice employed among ancient
Asiatic cultures. The artifact above is made out of pure gold andwas found in a kurgan near Issık göl, a lake in Kazakhstan. The
exaggerated horns are typical and symbolize power, as mentionedin The Hidden Meaning of Petroglyphs.
The symbolism hidden in these artifacts and images can beconsidered as being part of a semiotic writing system. This semiotic
system of conveying ideas has been the precursor of several writing
systems employed today all over the world. Below we see ibexes
carved in rock with excessively exaggerated long horns. Comparing
these carvings to the refined art of the Scythians one can conclude
that the Scythians were the offspring of the ancient Central-Asiatic
people.

A further proof of this connection is found in an article published by
Natalya Polosmak. She starts her article with the following
words(3):Under capricious skies in southern Siberia a rare unlooted tomb lies
ready to illuminate the culture of the ancient Pazyryk people. Thesesemi nomadic herders laid their well-appointed dead here in thehigh steppes, the Pastures of Heaven, as close as their world cameto the great beyond.

Pazyryk is a special site where more than 150 kurgans have beenfound and investigated by Russian archeologists. It is located on topof the high Ukok plateau which is at the junction of Russia,
Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia (map above). Frozen deep inside akurgan the well preserved body of a lady, probably a shaman
woman, was discovered. She had the tattoo of an elk on her
shoulder (central image above). On the right side we see anotherelk statue from the same Pazyryk site. The common feature ofthese elks was the overgrown horns, clear indication of mystical oreven physical power.
The name of this plateau is formed out of two monosyllabic words;
Uk and Ok. Uk (spelled as ook). Uk is an ancient proto-word
meaning “up”. Actually “up” come into English from the Viking

language which is a Ural-Altaic language. Up is pronounced as ‘oop’
in Swedish. The “U”, which is pronounced as “yoo” has acquired a“y” in English. The same addition happened also in Turkish. “Up” is“yuka-ry” in Turkish where the first syllable is pronounced as “yoo”.
There is also another clue in the name Ukraine, which is the nameof the country above the Black sea. The similarity between Ukary inTurkish and the country name Ukraine is worth noticing. The suffix–ru/ry/gy stands for “towards” in Turkish. So Ukraine means“towards the north”.
A further indication is found in the common tribal name ofindigenous people living in the North-Eastern parts of Asia. These
are the Yukagir who occupied a huge territory from Lake Baikal to
the Arctic Ocean. If we split the name ‘Yukagir’ as Yuka-gir themeaning “enter up” appears, where ‘yuka’ is “up” and ‘gir’ means“enter” in Turkish. This name fits perfectly to the tribes that moved
up north of Central Asia.
With these correlations we can deduce that the Ukok region was thehigh plateau of the Ok people.
References(1) Dwellings of Eternity, Alberto Siliotti, Barnes and Noble books,
2000, (page 202) (2) Histories, Book 4, Translated by Rawlingson,
Wordsworth Editions, 1996 (3) Pastures of Heaven, National
Geographic, Vol. 186, No.4, page 80.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a4.htm
Climatic changes
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
Several tribes of the ancient Uighur people, living in Central Asia,
had to leave the region due to drastic climatic changes. The climateof the northern hemisphere has been alternating periodically during
the last 20,000 years. The graph below shows this periodical
alteration (1).

We see that the average fluctuation of 6 degrees Centigrade canresult in major climatic changes. The red line indicates the end of
the ice age, which can be estimated to be around 16,000 years BP.
Another cold period happened about 11,000 years ago. Nowadays
we are in the global warming period. The present melting of thepolar ice sheet may be partly related to this raise in global
temperature.
There has been a warming period between 16,000 to 14,000 years
BP. During this period large lakes and internal sees formed in thecentral-west parts of Asia. But another cold spell swept theseregions around 11,000 years BP. As a result of such climaticchanges, rivers and lakes retreated to leave their place to semidesert taiga, swamp and tundra. This situation was mentioned in
the first chapter, The Uighur Empire. As a result of these drastic
climatic changes several waves of migrations happened out ofCentral Asia. The new geological epoch, which started about 10,000
years BP, is defined as The Holocene.

The ancient topography of west-central Asia is shown in the left sideof the map above (2). There were many lakes and even hugeinternal sees in this region. The Black Sea had a connection to theseinternal lakes. This map is also supporting William Ryan and Walter
Pitman (Chapter 1, Ref: 4) who claim that a flood came from thewest into these regions.
Most of the internal lakes and rivers are dried-up nowadays andonly the Aral and the Balkash lakes as well as some large rivers areleft behind. The name of this region was Oq-Uruq (shown on themap) in the early times and today it is Okruk. Present day Okruk
region is shown in red in the small map of Russia. The adjacentregion is shown in yellow, where the Ob River flows. The Aral Lakeis shown on the lower-left side of the map on the right hand side.
Oq-uruq (Okh-urugu) means “the Ok settlement” (see The Asiatic
Scythians) and the Ob River was probably called Ok. The present
name “Ob” is the result of a linguistic shift from a velar “k” to alabial “b”. The people living in these regions speak the Ob-Ugric
languages, which belong to the Finno-Ugric and Ural-Altaic language
groups. The name Ural stems from the Ural Mountains, which areconsidered to form the natural boundary between Asia and Europe.
We see that the name of these mountains is formed of Ur, being theancient word for “settle” and Al, meaning “take” in Turkish.
The ancient vast Ok-Uruk region is split into small autonomous
Oblasts and Okrugs. Oblast is the Russian word standing for “area”,“district” or “region”. The people in the Okruk region callthemselves the Khant and the Mans. The name Khant is probably
related to Khang, which is the title given to all Eurasian rulers. We
find the following titles in Eurasian:
KHANG: Early title for “ruler” in the proto-language.
KAM: Central-Asiatic spiritual leader and Shaman person.
KAGAN: Ancient Turkish and Mongol ruler.
HAKAN: Turkish ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
HUANG: Title of the Chinese emperor.
WANG: King of the Chinese kingdom.
TARKAN: Central-Asiatic and ancient Bulgarian ruler. Also found in
Hittite.

KUNG: King in Swedish.
KÖNİG: King in German
And finally KİNG in English.
Other forms are Kaiser, from prehistoric Germanic and Caesar in
Latin, both coming from Ok-As-Er in the proto-language. We alsofind the word “Kami” in Japanese meaning “god”. This word is, mostprobably, related to Kam, since the Kam could perform spiritualflights and talk to the gods. A further indication exists in theJapanese word “ookami” meaning “wolf” but also “sacred deity”,
since “oo” means “sacred” and the wolf was also considered to besacred by Central-Asiatic people.
It is interesting to note that “oo”, which is an exclamation sound ofveneration uttered in front of superior and important persons orsituations, found its way as “awe” in English, “haut” in French(meaning “high”) and “haupt” in German. The “h” in French is
aspirated and is not pronounced. There may or may not be a direct
link between the Japanese “oo” and the French “haut”, but thesimilarity in the sound and in the meaning has its origins in the
proto-language (see Chapter 2, Diversification of Languages).
The wolf was a holy symbol not only for the Japanese people but
also for the Turkic and Germanic people too. Some Turkic nations
adopted the wolf as their holy totem animal because of its
independent character -refusing to be tamed- and its ability to huntin packs. On a stone inscription found in central Asia the following
sentence can be read in ancient Turkish (3):“Because God gave power to my father the Kagan his army
was like hunting wolves”
There is here a clear respect for the wolf as being an animal ofpower but also as an animal having a social organization andknowing how to hunt as a group. This aspect of the wolf was somuch venerated that the wolf-head symbol has been selected toappear on certain Turkic flags. We see the Göktürk flag below.

According to ancient Teutonic beliefs the Germanic people were led
by a wolf named Wolfgang, which in German means "The walking
wolf". "gang" stands for "going", an indication for the Shaman
showing the way and leading the tribe. The same figure is found in
the Turkish mythology where a female wolf named “Asena” (As-ana
meaning “mother of the As people”) leads the tribe out of amountainous region named Oetueken. Such cultural correlations areindications of common ancestral links.
References(1) Foraminiferal Evidence of Younger Dryas Age Cooling on the
British Colombia Shelf. Geographie et Quaternaire, Patterson et al.
1995, Volume 49, No: 3, page 409 (2) The map of ancient Okruk isdrawn by Kâzım Mirşan, an independent researcher of the ancient
proto-language. (Courtesy of Turgay Tüfekçioğlu). (3) Inscribed on
the east side of the Bilge Kagan stele found in the Orhun valley.
These inscriptions, written in an ancient Turkish alphabet were firstread by Wilhelm Thomsen, a Danish scholar.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Universal Symbols
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
We have seen in Chapter 2, Diversification of Languages, how thepeople speaking the proto-language diversified and became thesource of a multitude of cultures. In spite of these changes theoriginal root culture kept its symbols in the form of an esoteric,semiotic hidden knowledge. These symbols were representations ofmonosyllabic root words. Each symbolic sign can be considered as abeing a seal (a tamga) conveying a cultural message.
The Central-Asiatic Uighur who venerated the Sun deity, selected
the + sign to represent their tribal leader. The cross has been asacred symbol, adopted worldwide, long before the Christian era.
The word “cross”, which was “kross” in Old Norse and “crux” inLatin, has its origin in the proto-language. Kross can be separated
into three parts as Ok-Or-Os. I discussed the meaning of Ok in theprevious chapters. The second syllable stands for venerable,
important and universal. This root word has been pronounced as
Oo, Or and On, depending on the culture. The last suffix “os” means“us / we” and has transformed into “iz” (Turkish), “is” (English),“ist” (German) and “est” (French). So, Ok-Or-Os (Kross) means “weare the venerable (universal) Ok leader”. The concept ofuniversality has been represented as a circle, which is the symbol ofboth the sun and also the whole region, since the wholesurrounding region can be described with a circular movement of
the hand. Below (left) we see how the cross “Okh” and the circle“On” joined to form new symbols, pronounced as Onkh, Khno,
Onk and Ankh. The same symbols evolved into more artistic andcomplicated forms, mostly in Asia, drawn by the Uighur people asseen on the right hand side.

The cross inside a circle does not only mean “we are the venerable
Ok”, but also “we are the ones that worship the sun” or “the Ok
leader has the powers of the Sun god”. So, the above signs are also
telling us that the people speaking the proto-language worshipped
the sun. The sun cult was the main religion of ancient people andthe person performing spiritual rituals toward the sun during the
day and around a fire during the night was the shaman, themedicine man and the witch doctor.

Above left we see pictographs from Valcamonica engraved on thesouth side of the Alp Mountains. The person extending his/her arms
(left) under the sun is the Okh leader and the one holding a bow
and an arrow (right) is the Ok / Oc / Osc leader. This pictograph is
the typical seal or signature of these people (in this case theEtruscans) who came to Italy from the north, (See Chapter 1, The
Proto-language of Central Asia).

On the right side above we see the Onk or Kno found in different
parts of the world; from Cornwall in south-west England to Peru inSouth America. In ancient Egypt it became the Ankh, as the symbolof power and long life. Below we see different versions of the Onkh.

At first glance one may think that the pictures above do not
represent the same concept. But, in fact they are the semiotic
symbols of a forgotten culture; a culture that spread from Asia andformed the base of civilization.
References
Geister, Götter und Symbole, Felix R. Paturi, Frederking & Thaler,
1992, Germany. ATLAS Magazine, January 2000, Shaman Turks,
Istanbul, Turkey. A Journey into China’s Antiquity, Morning Glory
Publishers, 1997, Beijing, China. Hitit Gunesi, Sedat Alp, TUBITAK
publishing, 2002, Ankara, Turkey"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a6.htm
The Minoan culture
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
The islands on the Mediterranean Sea, such as Cyprus, Crete andMalta, have been settled from the very early times by the Okhtribes, expanding from Central Asia (see Chapter 2, The Protolanguage of Central Asia). We can attest this fact from the seals andearly ideograms found in several locations. The “Onk” or “Kno” seal
mentioned in the previous Chapter is an important indicator of thisroot culture. Below we see several Onk / Kno seals found indifferent places of the world.

The coins found on the island of Crete are the only ones having
inscriptions. One can read this three-letter word from left to right as“KNO” or from right to left as “ONK”. Since the most importantancient city in Crete was Knossos, it is very probable that KNO
stands for Knossos (see map below).

If “KNO” is the concatenation of OK-ON, the original form ofKnossos could very well be OK-ON-AS-US. This 4-monosyllabic
word means “We are the universal OC and AS”, which is a clear
indication that the Ok (Oc) people originating from Asia. The name
Crete (Krit / Girit) itself can be expanded as OK-UR-ET “make it an
Oc settlement”, where UR means “settle” and ET means “do” in the
Altaic languages.
Crete abounds with Minoan remains, mostly found around Knossos,
Arkanes and Phaistos. Several different inscriptions on clay
documents have been unearthed by Arthur Evans (1). Some of theearly seals are in the form of arrow, sun and double-edged ax. Allthree symbols (seals) are important indicators of the early CentralAsiatic culture. A. Evans found also a script which he named LinearA. As of today Linear-A is still not deciphered (2). Below we seesome examples of the Linear-A ideograms. The ONK seal can clearly
be seen on the first line of the third box.

The name Minoan is not the original name of the early Cretan
culture. It has been coined by Arthur Evans, from the name Minos;
the ruler of Knossos. According to Arthur Bernard Cook (3), Minosand Minotaur are only different forms of the same personage,
representing the sun-god of the Cretans, who depicted the sun as abull. As mentioned before, the bull and some horned animals suchas the ibex and the elk were all representations of the Okh shamanleader, having the power of the bull, the wings of an eagle andworshipping the sun-god. He was accepted as being the incarnationof the sun-god on earth.
We see this symbolism in Mesopotamia, in Anatolia and on the
Mediterranean islands. Below, (on the left) the golden bullhead andthe double-edged ax of Minos are shown (4). On the right side awinged Sumerian deity having a human head with triple horns anda bull body is shown. Similar statues called Lamassu are found at
the entrance gates of palaces in Hattusas (Turkey), in Babylon andNimrud (Irak) and in Persopolis (Iran). They tell the visitor that thepalace they are about to enter belongs to a powerful “Okh” kingwho is strong as a bull and has supernatural powers. The doubleedged ax will be discussed in a further chapter.

References(1) Arthur Evans (1851-1941) traveled to Crete in the early 1890’s
and informed the world about an Aegean writing system with
unfamiliar characters of a hieroglyphic appearance. (2)Decipherment, Maurice Pope, Thames and Hudson, 1975, London,
England. (3) A. B. Cook (1868-1952) was scholar of archeology who
also wrote on history of religions. (4) Wonders of the AncientWorlds, National Geographic Atlas of Archeology, page 79.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a7.htm
THE DOUBLE-EDGED AX
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
The double-edged ax, mentioned in the previous chapter, had avery special meaning for the Okh people originating from Central
Asia. It was the symbol of the leader and represented strength andpower. The symbolism embedded in the double-edged ax is notfound only in Crete, but in several cultures all around the world. The
similar symbols found in these remote areas can be interpreted as
the common denominator of these cultures.
Below we see some examples of these transformed forms. On theleft, certain Turkish rug designs can be considered as stylized
representations of the double-edged ax (1). These symbols are verysimilar to the symbols of the Ainu people presently living in
northern Japan (2). The Ainu tribes formerly inhabited the Kuril
Islands, southern Sakhalin and the Kamchatka peninsula. Today
Hokkaido remains the only homeland of these people. The Ainu
symbols drawn on wood and textiles are clear indications of their
Uighur origin.

At the center, the stylized cross design belongs to the Khirgiz
people of Central Asia. Next are the symbols known as the Odin
Cross of the Vikings and the Celtic cross from Ireland? There is a
striking similarity between these symbols and the Uighur seals
shown in Universal Symbols. Odin was the main deity of the Viking
Mythology and Thor was his son (3). The double-edged hammer ofThor seen below is another version of the double-edged ax (seeChapter 7), making part of the Okh symbolism.

Odin known also as Wotan was the primordial deity of the Norse
Mythology. He resided in a celestial region called Asgård (As-gord orgarden of the As tribes). In Asgard we find the connection to the As
people who were belonging to the early Asiatic Uighur Empire (seeChapter 1). It is very probable that the Vikings, who werevenerating their ancestors, promoted some of their ancient leaders
to the level of sacred deity. This is how a complicated Norse
pantheon came into being. The meaning of Odin came probably
from Ot-in, as a concatenation of two monosyllabic root words of
the Proto-language. “Ot” meant “fire” and “in” means “descend” inTurkish. Therefore, Otin or Odin means “descending fire”. Thisetymology agrees well with the belief that the spear of Odin always
found its target. Since Odin resided in the unseen celestial realm,
the lightning (fire) descending from the sky was accepted to be noother than his punishing spear.
Odin had many sons but the most venerated one was Thor, the godof thunder. Since thunder always follows lightning, the logicalconclusion requires that Thor is the son of Odin. But the name Thor
may also have ancient connections to the Tur (pronounced as Toor)
tribes of Asia. The Tur tribes united with the Okh tribes to form aloose federation of tribes called the Tur-Okh or the Turok, whichwere the ancestors of the present Turkish people. Notice that Turks
are known as the Török –in Hungarian- and also as the Turani and
Türki (Ref. 5 of Chapter 1) in many historical sources.
The map in Chapter 1 shows a vast territory named Occitania which
covers, among other regions, north Italy. The ancient settlers of
this region are known to be the Etruscans. This name is theconcatenated form of E-Tur-Oscan, meaning “the Tur and the Osc
federation of tribes”. The E in “Etruscan” stands for “Est” meaning“is /are” in Latin. One can find many linguistic and culturalsimilarities between the Ural-Altaic languages and Etruscan. Thereis a region in Italy called Toscana, whose origin is most probably
Tur-Osc-Ana, meaning “mother of the Tur and Osc”. There is also
the city called Tarquinia, in the province of Lazio, Italy. Tarquinia
was an important city in ancient Etruria, home of two Etruscankings, Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus. The similarity
between Tarquin and Tarkan (see Chapter 5) points to the title of
the Eurasian ruler Tur-Khan. Considering the clear correlation
between these titles, it is difficult to accept these similarities as
being pure coincidence.

The ancient languages spoken during the iron age of Italy can beapproximately distributed as shown in the map. But these regions
were not separated by clear-cut country borders, as we knowborders are today. They were rather locations where written
inscriptions of certain local dialects have been densely found. The
Oscan language had much in common with Latin but contained
many striking differences. Many common word-groups in Latin wereabsent and were represented by entirely different forms in Oscan.
Dialects of Oscan include Samnite, Marrucine, Paelignan, Vestnian,
Sabine and Marsian. These tribes all belonged to the Tur-Osc
confederacy. The Oscan speakers adopted the Etruscan alphabet towrite in their own dialect. Since Etruscan is still not deciphered, theoriginal meanings of the letters in the Etruscan alphabet needdetailed explanations.
This will be done in further chapters. Below we see the 21 letters of
the Oscan alphabet. The red letters in bracket are the accepted
pronunciations, which is debatable, of the Oscan alphabet.

References(1) Anadolu Kilimlerinden Örnekler, Yusuf Durul, Akbank kültür,Istanbul ,1987. (2) AINU, W. W. Fitzhugh and C. O. Dubreuil,University of Washington Press, 1999. (3) An Introduction to Viking
Mythology, John Grant, Grange Books, London, 1995.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The Etruscan Dice
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
The origin of the Etruscan population is still unclear and is being
constantly investigated by scholars on cultural, linguistic andgenetic grounds. Several major authors of the Roman Empire, suchas Livy, Cicero and Horace called them as Tusci or Tursci (1). These
names are in good agreement with Tur-Osc, discussed in theprevious chapter. There are several indicators pointing to the Asiatic
origin of the Etruscan population. Their language is known to be
non-Indo-European and many similarities have been found withboth the Altaic –especially with Turkish- as well as the Uraliclanguages (2).
Recently a serious genetic research has been published by a groupof Italian scientists. They have investigated several bone samples
from the Etruscan remains and came up with the following
conclusions (3):Etruscan sites appear to have rather homogeneous genetic
characteristics. Their mitochondrial haplotypes are very similar, butrarely identical, to those commonly observed in contemporary Italy
and suggest that the links between the Etruscans and eastern
Mediterranean region were in part associated with genetic, and not
only cultural, exchanges. The Etruscans show closer relationships
both to North Africans and to Turks than any contemporary
population. In particular, the Turkish component in their gene poolappears three times as large as in the other populations.
Since the Turkish population originated –to a large extent- fromCentral Asia, it can be claimed that the Etruscans too came to Italy
from Asia, through the Alp Mountains in the north of Italy. Their
early settlements were on a high plateau named Valcamonica,
where they left many marks in the form of petroglyphs (see Chapter
6 and 7). A further sign for their Uighur origin is the name of the
Alp Mountains. Alp means “tall and formidable” in Turkish. There
are several proper names starting with Alp; such as Alpaslan,Alpagut, Alperen, Alper and Alp-Er-Tunga.

There are also some interesting Etruscan artifacts which have been
the focus of interest and have created a lot of controversy amongscholars (4). One of them is the Etruscan dice (left) found in
Tuscany. There are no numbers on the dice but short inscriptions in
Etruscan letters. Scholars have tried to decipher these inscriptions
and came up with different names for the numbers from 1 to 6. J.
Friedrich says (4).

The inscriptions on the dice -being without any doubt
numbers from one to six- gave rise to a large literature on
this issue. But the order of these numbers is still unclear.
Below we see three different interpretations of the Etruscan dice.
The one at the left is the interpretation of L. Bonfante (5). The
central one is the interpretation of Selahi Diker (6) and the one on
the right is my interpretation.
I did not interpret the letters as words standing for numbers, butinstead words standing for actions to be performed. This is because
carving letters is much more tedious and difficult than carving
numbers, logically. One would not choose to carve the name of anumber in place of the number itself. The assumption that thesewords stand for numbers is a modern preconception based on

modern dices.
The first observation which I made was to identify the word “Gi”
written from right to left. This monosyllabic word is the ancient formof “Giy”, which means “dress up” in Turkish. The second two-letter
word is read from right to left as “Ça” by L. Bonfante and S. Diker. I
read it from left to right as “Aç” meaning “open” or “undress”. There
are Etruscan inscriptions which have been written in both directions.
Such a system of writing is called boustrophedon, meaning “as theox ploughs”. In this system the hand of the writer goes back andforth like an ox drawing a plow across a field and turning at the endof each row to return in the opposite direction.
Once these commends have been deciphered the remaining
monosyllabic words could be easily identified as “Kal”, Kaç”, “Hült”
and “Alt”. These words are all words used still in modern Turkish,with the exception of Hült. Kal means “stay”, Kaç means “run away,
escape” and Alt means “under, below”. Since we find opposite
meanings on opposite faces of the dice, it is obvious that Hült
stands for “over, above”, which is “Üst” in modern Turkish.

The H was probably aspirated and disappeared in modern Turkish.
We can see on the left how the six words are inscribed on the dice.
Since these words are certain commands to be performed, it isquite possible that they had to be performed during a wrestlingcontest. My guess is that at the start or during the contest the dicewas cast by one wrestler and he had to perform the commandappearing at the top side of the dice. These are: Kal: “stay erect”,
Kaç: “run away”, Alt: “stay below”, Hült “stay above”, Aç: “undress”
and Gi: “dress”.
The Etruscan wrestlers could also wrestle totally undressed as theEtruscan wall painting below shows (7).

References(1) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin Français, Félix Gaffiot, Librairie
Hachette, 1934. (2) Les Étrusques Étaient-ils des Turcs?, Adile
Ayda, Paris, 1971. (3) The Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study,
Am. Journal of Genetic Studies, March, 2004. (4) Extinct
Languages, Johannes Friedrich, Barnes & Noble, USA, 1993. (5)Etruscan, Larissa Bonfante, University of California Press , 1990. (6)The Whole Earth Was Of One Language, Selahi Diker, page 209,
Izmir, 1996 (7) Ref. 1 of Chapter 4, Page 45.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a9.htm
Etruscan Inscriptions
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
It was mentioned before, in Chaper 6 Universal Symbols, that agroup of tribes entered north Italy as early as 4,000 BP and settled
in the region of Valcamonica. These were the early Asiatic (Uighur)
Tur-Ok tribes that came to be later known as the Etruscans. The
whole region has been occupied by these people and many artifacts,some containing inscriptions, have been found and identified as
being Etruscan. One such interesting article, which gave rise to
many speculations, is the Piacenza inscribed piece of bronze.

The Piacenza bronze artifact (below) has the form of a liver andbecause of this shape it has been defined as a divinatory article. But
the protuberances on the bronze artifact were done on purpose andthere is no sheep liver that has such protuberances. Divination was
the main activity performed by the Etruscan shaman in ancient
times. But, in my opinion, the artifact is a map of the region with
the names of different tribes written in the Etruscan alphabet (1).

The protuberances, done on purpose, are the mountains and hills of
the region. This is quite logical when we consider that Piacenza is acity located on the south side of the Alp Mountains, surrounded byhills. At the center above we see the Etruscan inscriptions which arestill not deciphered. There is a borderline at the edge of the bronze
artifact and several words are carved around a small circle. Eachword is clearly separated by borderlines, clear indications of local
regions where different Ok tribes have settled. I have selected three
short words as examples to substantiate my claim. These words areread from right to left according to a spelling method developed by
Kazim Mirşan (2).
K. Mirşan claimed that each letter in the Etruscan alphabet is amonosyllabic root word, originating from the Proto-language (seeChapter 1). Therefore, an Etruscan “word” is made out of several
concatenated monosyllabic meaningful root syllables / words. They
are written (carved) from right to left, as on the ancient Turkishstone inscriptions of Central Asia. The top word above can be read

as Ok-Utch-On-Us and means “We are the universal leader Oktribe”. The first sign on the right of the word is an arrow on the top
word and a cross on the middle word. This is because the Ok tribes
represented their names as both arrows and daggers. Utch is a
Turkish word meaning “tip” and is pronounced as “udj”. The ancient
form of this root word is an inverted E. Notice the form of this word
having three extensions and the word for the number three in
Turkish, which is ütch. The three protuberances on the bronze
artifact may also be a symbolic indication of these leader tribes. A
further clue to support this claim is the name of the Turkish tribes
known as Üç Oğuz or Uçokuz, meaning “we are the three Ok tribes”
or equivalently “we are the leader Ok tribes”.
The second word above Ok-Ul-Us-Un can be read either as Ok
ulusun, which means “(region) belonging to the Ok nation” orequivalently as Ok Ulu-sun “you are the sacred Ok” in Turkish.
There are two words on the third line. These can be read as Uç-Us
Sa-Ka, meaning “we are the leader Saka (Scythian) tribe” (seeChapter 4, The Asiatic Scythians).
This early form of writing has later on evolved to represent words
as we understand today. But, when this method of reading is notapplied it is quite impossible to decipher the Etruscan language.
Being an agglutinative language, Etruscan with these special
characteristics should be compared to the Ural-Altaic languages andespecially to Turkish.

Another Etruscan inscribed artifact is the rear side of a mirror
shown on the left. We see a winged man examining the internalorgans of a sacrificed animal (3). His name is read from left to rightas Chalcas, but almost all Etruscan inscriptions and names are
written from right to left. So, this name also should be read fromright to left. In that case we find a meaningful Altaic word, which is:
Saclach. In Turkish saklı means “hidden” and aç (ach) means“open”. When these two words come together we find saklı-ach or
saklach meaning “open what is hidden”. The winged person in thatcase becomes a soothsayer or a shaman performing divinations. His
wings indicate that he can perform mystical flights into theunknown.
If Chalkas is a proper name it should have a meaning becausenames without any meaning were never used. Nobody knows themeaning of Chalkas but the meaning of Saklach is perfectly fitted to
the visual picture. Below we see in the boxes the word read ineither direction. We see that the phoneme “tche” was written inthree different forms in both Etruscan as well as in the ancient
Turkish inscriptions of the Orhun valley. The interesting point tonote is that all forms contain three extremities. These characters
could be read as “utch”, “itch”, “eutch” or “ytch” according to vowel
harmony.

The correlation between the Orhun characters and the Etruscanalphabet goes far beyond this single example. Every letter being aseal contains a concept that needs to be explained in detail. This
will be done in the future chapters.
References(1) Voices in Stone, Ernst Doblhofer, Granada Publishing, 1973,
London. (2) Kâzım Mirşan is an independent investigator of theancient Proto-language. (3) Les Etrusques, Jean-Paul Thuillier,
Gallimard, 1990, Paris.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The Eastern expansion
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
The expansion of Asiatic tribes through North-Eastern Asia into
North-America is a well attested fact, supported both linguisticallyand genetically. We saw that the Saka people were and are still
known as the Scythians (see Chapter 4, The Asiatic Scythians).
These people are also known under the name of Yakut. Although
the origin of “Yakut” is not clear, most probably Yaku is atransposition of Yuka, where “a” and “u” have changed place. The
suffix –t is found in many Turkish words. For example: kanıt, boyut,
soyut, gömüt,….etc. Another group of people next to the Yukagir
are the Koryak. This name is made of the “kor” root word and thesuffix “-yak”. Kor means ‘ember’ and yak means ‘burn’ in Turkish,so the name Koryak can be understood as “glowing ember”.

A recent research done on the Ainu people showed that theymigrated to the eastern parts of Asia from the Central Asian regionof Lake Baikal, following the banks of the Amur River (1). When the
toponymy of the region is investigated, one can find many clues tothe ancient proto-language. On the above map we find Sakhalin,
which can be split as Saka-ilin: “the land of the Saka”, Kurile as
Kuru-il “The dry territory”, where kuru means “dry” and il means“location” or “territory”. So, Kuril becomes a meaningful description
for an island in Turkish.
The Sea of Okhotsk can be split into its constituent phonemes as:
Okh-Ot-sk, from which the meaning “Belonging to the fiery Okh”
emerges. In that name “Ot” represents the fire or rather the fiery
human spirit as well as the sun (see Chapter 6, Universal Symbols).
A similar form of Okh is found in the name Hokkaido, where Hokk
could very well be a transformed form of Okh and Aido could be atransformed form of Ainu. Other monosyllabic root word meaning“shaman” or “spiritual leader” is Kam, which is found in the firstsyllable of Kamchatka.
All these interesting relationships couldn’t be pure coincidence.
Moreover, the languages of the whole region, including Japanese,have clear connections to the Altaic language group and especiallyto Turkish. On the Table below 4 root words belonging to theEastern and Northeastern Asian languages have been compared toTurkish.

“Ata”, meaning grandfather or ancestor is found in almost all Altaic
languages. It is a root word originating from the Proto-language.
“Ata” is found in atavism, whose original meaning is “connection toand respect for the ancestors”. Its present etymology is accepted tobe linked to atavus from Latin and atavisme from French. But, fromthe above Table we clearly see its Eurasian origin. Although “Oka”
stands alone among several “Ana”, it clearly indicates that theshaman Ok leader was a female in ancient times. There are several
clues supporting this claim. The above Table supports the taxonomy
of languages submitted in Chapter 1; in which the Eskimo-Aleut
language group has been classified as being at the same level andin close relationship with the Altaic group of languages.
The last word, which is “is” on the above Table, is worth consideringin somewhat more detail. “Is” stands for “here it is” or “it exists”
and represents a fundamental concept without which one cannot
talk about the physical world. I already discussed the origin of “is”
in Chapter 6, Universal Symbols. The root word var is found in
Swedish as varande “existing” and varet “matter”. In both German
and English ware stands for articles of merchandise. Other forms
are warehouse, stoneware, glassware etc.., but the original form isvar, which has originated from the Asiatic Proto-language.

Recently a research has shown that a distinctive sequence in the
DNA of East-Asiatic people is widespread among the so called‘Native Americans’ (2). The study examined 1500 people in total
and lends strong support to the idea that Native Americans cantrace their ancestry to a common founding population in Asia. The
map above shows these correlations.
A major Native American group of languages is known under thename of Atapascan or more preferred Atabaskan (see map at the
top of the page). Nowadays this name has been replaced by NaDene to include some non-Atabascan languages. But the term NaDene is a recent creation by linguists while Atabaskan is the originalname. Atabaskan can be split into Ata-Bashkan to mean “AncestorLeader” or “The language of our leader ancestors”.
References(1) AINU Spirit of a Northern People, University of Washington
Press, 1999, page 56. (2) Native American populations share genesignature, Roxanne Khamsi, New Scientist Magazine, 14 February
2007.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The Anatolian expansion
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
Anatolia (present Turkey) has been a center of civilization
throughout the ages. Recently an important Neolithic site has been
discovered at Göbeklitepe (see map below). This is the oldest site
discovered so far in Anatolia. Until recent times Jerico in Palestineand Çatalhöyük in Turkey were thought to be the places wherecivilization flourished. But at Göbeklitepe, which has been dated toabout 11,000 years BP, several circular and concentric walls within
which T-shaped monolithic pillars that are up to 3 meters high havebeen unearthed.

Below left we see the excavation going on at Göbeklitepe. The
central drawing has been executed by the German archeologist
Klaus Schmidt who is presently conducting the digs. We find astriking similarity between these cult temples and the Onkh / Khnosign found allover the world (see Chapter 6, Universal Symbols).
The drawing is a top view of the cult temple. On some of the Tshaped pillars there are carvings of sacred animals in relief.

Another important antique region in the center of Turkey is known
as Cappadocia, where many dwellings have been carved into thesoft natural formations (picture below left). The shelters have not
only been carved above the earth but also several undergroundcities, made out of several stages and many rooms, have been
discovered in the region. One important underground city is foundat Derinkuyu, whose vertical-cut drawing can be seen at the center
image below. On the right we see the On-Okh symbols painted on
the walls of the rock-cut shelters of Cappadocia. They are assumed
to be drawn by the early Christian settlers. But in fact they were
there long before the arrival of the Christians. We now can see thecorrelation and similarity of these wall-paintings to the symbols of
the sun worshippers.

When Christians arrived at Cappadocia the dwellings were not
empty. They were occupied by people worshiping the sun-god. The
early Christians painted frescoes and icons on the walls of rock-cut
rooms which became to be used as primitive churches. Thisapproach to religion did no suit the sun worshippers and a clash
among these opposing beliefs influenced the iconoclast period,
which was a period where the icons were erased from the walls of
the early churches. In spite of the iconoclast period many frescoes
still remain to be seen on the walls of Cappadocia.

The similarity between the On-Okh symbols of Cappadocia (right)
and the remains of the temple at Göbeklitepe is worth pondering.
We see that both are circular -as a symbol of the sun- with an
opening to be used as an entrance inside which a + sign or a T
shaped pillar represent the shaman leader Okh person (see Chapter
6, Universal symbols).
The name of the region is also worth investigating. Cappadocia canbe dissected as Cappa-d-oc-ia. Cappa, written as “kapa”, means“close” in Turkish. The Etruscans named their dwellings “capua” and“cabanne” means a small hut, in French. There is an ancient
Etruscan city in Italy whose name is Capua. The word standing forhead covering in Latin was “cappa” and it changed to “capelli” in
Italian, “chapeau” in French and “cap” in English. The same word isfound as “kap” (container), “kapı” (door), “kapak” (cover) and“kalpak” (hat) in Turkish. From these correlations we can now
elucidate Cappadocia meaning: “The covered (closed) dwellings of
the Oc people”. This explanation is in good accordance with theunderground cities found in the region.
Another interesting region of Anatolia is the settlements of the early
Hattians followed by the Hittites. These civilizations flourished in thevicinity of Alacahöyük (see map at the top). The Hatti civilization
lasted from 2500 BC to 1700 BC and the Hittites lasted from 1700
BC to 1190 BC. Regarding the Hattian language Ekrem Akurgalsays:
It has been established that Hattian was a language peculiar
to itself, completely different from Indo-European and
Semitic languages. (1)The Hittites were greatly influenced by the Hattians in religion,
mythology, ceremonies and customs. Of Hattian origin was the Sun
Goddess of the Hittites. Many artifacts representing the sun havebeen found in the region. There are cult symbols belonging to the
Hattians that strongly support their Asiatic origin. The bronze stagseen below is about half a meter high and was found in Alacahöyük.
It is presently exhibited at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in
Ankara. The Hattian stag has been dated to be minimum 4,000
years old. The overgrown long horns of the stag are anotherindication of their Asiatic origin (see Chapter 4, The Asiatic
Scythians).
Next to the stag we see a religious standard of the Hattians, again
dated from 2100-2000 BC (2). Regarding this artifact E. Akurgal
gives the following explanation: The circles here and in manyother examples symbolize the heavens. The pair of horns
symbolizes those of “the ox who carries the world upon hishorns”.
In fact, the horns are symbols of the Okh person and the circle
represents the sun. Three Onkh symbols can clearly be seen
hanging on the cult standard. The striking similarity between Okh
and Ox –being no other than Ochs- cannot be pure coincidence. The
corresponding word in Turkish for ox is: Oekuez, where the O, k
and z are relics still remaining from the root word Okhs. We find
Ukhsa in Sanskrit and Ohso in Old High German, both words
meaning Ox. The origin of all these words is most probably theProto-language of Asia.
There is also a river in central Asia originating from the Pamir
Mountains and ending at the Aral Lake, whose ancient name wasOxus. Its present name is Amu Derya. With the interchange of –us
to “su” we obtain a meaningful Turkish word in the form of Ok-su,
which means “the Ok waterway”. There are similar named rivers in
Turkey, Aksu and Göksu being two such examples.

From these cultural and linguistic relations we can deduce that theOc tribes coming from Central Asia were the early settlers ofAnatolia.
References(1) The Hattian and Hittite Civilizations, ISBN 075-17-2756-1, page5, 2001, Ankara. (2) İdem, page20 and 21.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Evolution of writing systems
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
There is a lot of research done on the evolution of writing systems.
It is in general accepted that the Chinese and Sumerian scripts
developed independently as the first writing systems. But thesesystems are only the end product of thousands of years of human
evolution. By evolution, I do not mean the physical, Darwinian typeevolution, but rather the evolution of the social life as a result of thediversification of goods and tools. Below the interrelationship ofwriting systems can be seen. The first synthetic writing system wasthe early cave paintings and petroglyphs seen allover the world. The
messages in these figures can be understood only if the beliefs andexpectations of these cultures are known. Several examples of
petroglyphs have been given in the previous chapters.

Early writing systems were semiotic and synthetic. As time went byanalytic writing started. By analytic I mean that a word or part of aword (a syllable) is represented by a well defined sign.

Synthetic writing developed into analytic writing when the picturestransformed into simplified seals. The above Table cannot be foundin any standard textbook. This is because the seal-based form of
expression and communication, specific to nomadic Uighur tribes,
has not been considered as a writing system by linguistic scholars.
The picture-based writing system is known as “Pictographic”, but noname exists for the seal-based writing system. The seal-based
system started in Asia, with the need to mark the herd animals ofnomadic tribes. This was a way for identifying animals when two
herds occupied a common pasture. The seals were stylized andsimplified forms of the petroglyphs and in time started to representmonosyllabic root words. This is how the Uighur (Turkic) runicsyllabary came into being.

The Sumerian people, who came to Mesopotamia from Asia, started
to make marks on soft clay, which came to be known as theCuneiform writing system. The early cuneiforms wererepresentations of root words. Since each form was a full word thescript was recognized as being “logographic. Below some examples
are shown. We can see how the simple Sumerian pictographic
writing system transformed into the complicated system ofAssyrians and Babylonians. On the right we see an originalSumerian clay tablet.

The same transformation from simple to complicated forms
happened within the Chinese script. Three examples can be seen
below.

It can happen that several different styles of writing have or evenare still being used by some cultures. In the ancient times theHittites used both the cuneiform Sumerian system and also theirown pictographic (hieroglyphic) system in parallel. The cuneiform
influence came through the Ugaritic script. The pictographic script
system is known as the Hittite hieroglyphs. An example will be
discussed in the next chapter.
Today the Japanese people write in four different scripts. These are
Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, and Romanji. Kanji is the logographic
Chinese script which has more than 50,000 characters. There are46 Hiragana and 46 Katakana characters which are phonetic innature. They are symbols representing syllables. The Katakana
script is used to write loan words that cannot be represented in
Kanji. The Romanji script is what Japanese call the Latin alphabet.
In modern Japanese texts one can find a mixture of all these four
writing systems.
In the Table at the top we can see that the Egyptian hieroglyphic
system became simplified to first Hieratic and then to Demotic
writing system. These scripts had their influence on severalalphabetical scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew. The Latin alphabet
is the offspring of both Greek and Etruscan but it is also influenced,
through Phoenician, by the Sumerian cuneiforms. All theseinterrelationships will be discussed and explained in the future
chapters.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a13.htm
Hittite symbolism
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
During the second millennium B.C. Anatolia has been the focal pointof cultural transformation. During this period several city states
were founded and different writing systems were usedsimultaneously. In Alacahöyük and in the central regions of Anatolia
the Hittites raised several cities (see map at Chapter 12, The
Anatolian expansion). Many statues, wall relief, amulets, written
tablets and seals have been found dated from this period. They arepresently displayed in many different museums of the world. Hittite
language is claimed to belong to the Indo-European language
group. This is because Bedrich F. Hrozny, a Czech linguist who lived
from 1879 to 1952, found two words in Hittite; wadar meaning“water” and ezzan meaning “to eat”, similar to German wasser andessen, that the language has been classified as the first IndoEuropean language. But in fact Hittite is an intermediate languagein transition. We find several forms and features from both Altaic aswell as Germanic languages. This characteristic will be explained infuture chapters.
The wall relief below left is a synthetic message, comparable to a
written text when properly interpreted. The pointed hat with curved

horns and the trousers worn by the person on top of an elk are
typical Scythian symbols mentioned by Herodotus (see Chapter 4,
The Asiatic Scythians). He holds an eagle on his gloved right hand.
Hunting with eagles and hawks is a tradition that is still being usedby Asiatic people. He holds a curved staff in his left hand (akalmush or lituus), an instrument used by shepherd for catching
runaway sheep. The elk is the symbol representing the leader of
Asiatic people. This symbolism has been mentioned and explained
in detail in the previous chapters. His position on the elk is a sign ofsuperiority and leadership. Therefore, the message embedded on
this stele is “I am the shepherd and the hunter leading the people”.

Above right we see a seal whose original size is about half anorange. Archibald. H. Sayce (1846-1933) who worked on thedecipherment of Hittite Hieroglyphs read these inscriptions as: “Tarrik-tim-me Sar-mat Er-me-e”, which he interpreted as
Tarkondimos, King of the land of Erme” (1). This is how the seal
became known as the Tarkondimos seal.
I am of the opinion that the inscription on the seal can be differently
interpreted. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BC – 425 BC) was thefirst historian who wrote a comprehensive account of antique
Anatolian and surrounding cultures. He said that the Scythians, theAmazons and the Sarmatians spoke a common language (2). The
Sarmatians occupied the regions above the Black Sea and in myopinion the second word of the seal “Sar-mat” stand for Sarmat, thepeople mentioned by Heredotus.

The first word Tar-rik-tim-me can be read as: “Tur-ruk-tum ma“,
which can be transliterated as “I was a Tur from the north but”. The
first root word is no other than the Asiatic Tur and the second root
word “ruk” means “from the north” (see Chapter 4). “Ruk” can beread as “uruk”, which means “the north settlement”. There is a
Sumerian city called Uruk which is situated at the north of Ur. The
suffix “-tum” means “I was” and “ma” stands for “but” (ama being“but”) in Turkish.
The last word on the seal “Er-me-e” is a transposed form of “Er-iem”, which means “I am the man, the soldier”. Therefore, the threewords can now be understood as: “I was a Tur from the north but I
belong to the Sarmat”. We see that this interpretation does not leadto Tarkondemos but rather to a meaningful sentence. But even if
my interpretation is wrong, Tarkan, Tur-Khan or Tarkon is to befound in the first part of Tarkon-dimos (see Chapter 5, Climatic
Changes).

A further clue for the Asiatic origin of the Hittite can be found in the
picture above (3). This picture is part of a Hittite silver rython (adrinking vessel used only on special occasions). The rhyton shown
below (dated from 14th century BC) is 18cm high and is exhibitedat the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. In the detail above we see aseated god holding a hawk on his left hand and a small cup on his
right hand. The small cup is extended as a sign of celebration. We
can assume that the seated figure is a god since the sitting position
has always been considered as being superior to standing. The
seated god is behind the person standing on the stag who is theHittite king. The seated god looks in the same direction as theHittite king as a sign of support and ownership. The other person
pouring water to the feet of the stag is the visiting king. He lifts hisleft hand as a sign of salutation and goodwill. He is pouring water tothe ground, which has always been considered as a sign of wish for
growth among Asiatic cultures.

There are two symbols between the head of the kings, which havebeen enlarged on the right hand side of the above picture. The top
one can be interpreted as UTCH meaning “top, leader and also thenumber three” (see Chapter 10, Etruscan inscriptions). The signunder the utch can be interpreted as being a Rho (ρ) which is thearchaic form of R. These two seals (characters) are root words
originating from the Asiatic Proto-language. Together they can beinterpreted as: “The kings” or “the ones at the top”, where thesecond sign stands for the plural suffix “-ar” in Etruscan and “-lar”
in Turkish. There is a similar R sign on the top left part of picture
above. The R sign stands under the name of the god. This may be
an indication for respect, since respectful people have always beenaddressed in plural.

References(1) Decipherment, Maurice Pope, Ref. 2 of Chapter 7, page 139. (2)Histories Book IV, Herodotus, The inhabitants of Scythia:
Sauromatae, Budini, Thyssagetae. (3) The Hattian and Hittite
Civilizations, Ekrem Akurgal, Ref. 1 Chap. 12, page 161.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The sacred horn
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENThe Asiatic Uighur tribes who spread to the four corners of theworld considered the ibex as their sacred totem animal (see Chapter
3). The culture of these ancient nomadic tribes was based on oral
traditions and their method of communication was essentiallysynthetic and pictographic. They prayed and made offerings to thesun-god, which was their most important deity. During these rituals
the hollow horn of the ibex was used as a cup for solemn promises.
It was also used to make an oath. The etymology of “oath” isknown to be ǎth in old English but, most probably, its original form
was Octh, a promise of solidarity to the Okh leader.

The naked woman above is holding a curved ibex horn in her righthand. The wall relief is in the south-west part of France, known as
Aquitaine. This region was part of the Occitania and is known as
Aquitania in Occitan and Akitania in Basque (see Chapter 2, The
Proto-language of Central Asia). The initial phonemes of thesenames (Aq and Ak) are possible relics of the ancient Oc nation. On
the right we see a bronze rhyton in the form of an ibex from Persia(1).
An interesting point to note is that there are no facial details on thewall relief above. This was done on purpose, the reason being that
she was the human representation of the sun deity. The sun rays
were imagined to come out from small holes on the surface of thesun. This is why ancient cultures made small holes on the head ofsun-goddess figurines without showing the facial details. Some
examples are shown below.
All of them are about 10cm tall or less, an indication that they aresacred amulets of the sun-goddess. As mentioned above none ofthem have facial details. The exact date of these amulets is notprecisely determined but they are estimated to be minimum 5,000
years or more ancient. Since most of these mother goddesses were
found in the north of the Black Sea (within present Russia andUkraine) and Central Europe, we can safely guess that the sun cultoriginated from central Asia where ibexes and shaman woman wereconsidered as representation of the sun deity (2).

1. Gagarino (Ukraine), 2. Lespuges (France), 3. Kostenki (Russia),
4. Willendorf (Austria), 5. Kostenki (Russia)
Another strong indication about the origin of the sacred horn is
obtained when the ancient rhytons are investigated. Some
examples of rhytons are shown below. We see that not only thehorned animals but also lions and horses were considered to besacred. (3)Horses had a special place in the culture of Asiatic nomadic tribes.
Horses were the main vehicle of transport and a person without ahorse was not considered to be important. An ancient Turkishsaying can be translated as: “The one without a horse cannot havea name”. The original form of this sentence has the rhyming words“at” (horse) and “ad” (name). I have already mentioned that “ata”
means ancestor in Turkish (see chapter 11, The Eastern expansion).
It is due to the horse that during the Neolithic period (about 10,000
years BP) people migrated very rapidly towards the west and southwest of Central Asia, spreading their culture and language, which isthe common mother tongue from which all European languages
derived.
References(1) 7000 Jahre persische Kunst, Kunsthistorishes Museum, page
206, Vienna, Austria.
(2) The Language of the Goddess, Marija Gimbutas, ISBN-13-9780500282496.
(3) MIHO Museum publication, 1997 Japan.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".

http://www.astroset.com/bireysel_gelisim/ancient/a15.htm
The South-West expansion
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
Archeologists long assumed that the cradle of civilization was
southern Mesopotamia where 5,000 years old Sumerian texts andobjects were found. But the origin of the Sumerian civilization is toa large extent unknown. We are now in the position to demonstratethat the Sumerian script owes its origin to the Central Asiatic
pictographic seals.
A Science Magazine article entitled Middle Asia Takes Center Stage(1) claims the following:
Long dismissed as a backwater, the vast area between
Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley is now revealing a tapestry ofwealthy urban centers that shaped humanity’s first concerted
attempt at city life.
The article claims that instead of retelling the traditional story thatcivilization sprouted in Mesopotamia, archeologists began toassemble a far more complex picture in which dozens of urban
centers thrived between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley,
adopting each others architecture and ideas. This was possible
because all these urban centers could communicate in a common
language which can be defined as the Proto-language.
Below we see a map of the region defined as Middle Asia. The
common culture of this region starts from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
and Kazakhstan in the north and includes Afghanistan, Iran andPakistan ending in southern Mesopotamia. The arrows indicate theexpansion route along rivers and sea coasts adopted by the early
settlers some 6,000 years B.P.

In an article entitled: Neglected Civilisation Grabs Limelight, Andrew
Lawler says (2):Four thousand years ago along the banks of the ancient Oxus River,which now separates Afghanistan from Uzbekistan, there werepeople who lived in vast compounds protected by high wall,
produced their own bronzes, and stone seals, and traded theirwares as far as the Persian Gulf and Palestine. Although thesepeople would have been key players in Bronze Age Central Asia,
their civilization remains an enigma because of 20th century
politics.
The vast territories in which this Central Asian civilization flourishedhave been defined as the Bactrian-Margiana Archeological Complex(BMAC) by Fredrik Hiebert and Victor Sarianidi who lead
excavations in the region. “We are redefining the boundary ofCentral Asia” says Hiebert and claims that a single culture thrived inthese regions. The original name of Bactria is Belh and the original
name of Margiana is Merv. Both cities are ancient cultural centers of
Turkic as well as Persian people. The correct definition of this vast
region should be Belh-Merv Archeological Complex, but as A. Lawler
says; politics was and is still influencing Archeology. Below we see
the extent of the region defined as BMAC.

One of the important cultural sites discovered in BMAC is Altyn
Depe, which means “golden hill” in Turkish (see map at the top of
the page). When archeologists excavated this site they found a mudbrick altar, built 3,200 years ago as a temple for worship of fire (3).
The fire altar and several golden artifacts found in this site givestrong support to the claim that the sun-worshiping people came tothese regions from the north. The golden ibex found in Altyn Depe
(below) is more than a simple piece of ornament, but is rather an
important clue for the Central Asiatic origins of this culture (seeChapter 3, The Hidden Meaning of Pertoglyphs).

The Uighur people of the ancient times followed the shallow riverbanks and pushed forward into the southern regions of BMAC inorder to build new settlements. One such important cultural centeris the city of Jiroft located in the south of present Iran. In the
picture below we see a pot excavated in Jiroft on which a horned
man with the feet of a bull is carved. We will find this same
symbolism in different parts of the world, forming a strong support
for a common Asiatic origin.

Below we see an inscribed brick from Jiroft. This script is totally
unknown to the scholars and is waiting decipherment. The
inscriptions on three mud bricks found until now could well be the
Asiatic seal-based writing system predating the Sumerian
cuneiforms as well as Linear Elamite, another script from Susa (seemap above and also Chapter 13, Evolution of Writing Systems).

References(1) Science Magazine, Volume 317, page 586, 3 August 2007. (2)Science Magazine, Volume 302, page 979, 7 November 2003. (3)National Geographic Magazine, Volume 177, page 58, March 1990.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The Indus Valley script

Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
Dating ancient cultures has been one of the most demanding tasksof the archeologists. The Indus Valley culture is estimated to haveflourished between 2500 to 1500 BC (1) but its origin is unknown.
The two most important cities of the Indus Valley are Harappa and
Mahenjo-Daro shown on the map of Chapter 16, The South-West
Expansion. This region is presently within Pakistan but was once
part of India. The root word “in” forming both India and Indus
means descend in Turkish, an appropriate selection for the name ofa region where central Asiatic Uighur tribes descended. In Latin, Old
German and in English “in” implies a similar meaning indicating
location or position within limits. Such root words have their origin
in the Proto-language of Central Asia and should not be labeled as
resulting from pure coincidence.
The Indus civilization left behind a multitude of seal molds andtokens made chiefly of steatite whose size are one to two inches
square. More than 60 sites have yielded seals and tokens of stone,
copper, silver, bone, terra-cotta, or ivory (2). The inscriptions on
the tokens contain about 400 different symbols, but scholars havefew clues to their meaning. The script on the tokens is still notdeciphered, in spite of claimed decipherments. The tokens containseveral signs similar to the ones found on the Jiroft brick. If thesettlers of the Indus Valley came from the north the logicalconclusion would be that the Jiroft script predates the Indus Valley
script, hence Jiroft script should be older and less complicated thanthe Indus Valley script as well as the Sumerian cuneiform script.
Archeologists have found Indus carnelian cylinders in Mesopotamian
tombs. The earliest textual evidence for direct contact between the
Indus Valley and the Sumerian culture of Mesopotamia dates from2100 BC and continues down to 1700 BC (3).
Below left a handful of Indus Valley tokens and two interesting moldexamples are shown. The person on the central mold is seatedcross-legged in a typical oriental pose. His horned headdress stands
among some unknown signs. On the right we see a mythical threeheaded bull or zebu, a clear indication that the Indus Valley culture
worshiped horned animals (see Chapter 15, The Sacred Horn). Even
today the cow is considered to be holy in India.

The large number of symbols on the tokens implies that the Indus
Valley script is most probably logographic. In order to certify thatthe signs on the tokens display a linguistic structure a statisticalanalysis has been recently carried out on the frequency ofoccurrence of these signs (4). The result clearly demonstrated that
the Indus Valley script is in good correlation with several existing
human languages. But the script is not only seal based andlogographic, but is also pictographic. It can be considered to follow
the same logic as the Egyptian hieroglyphs. On the left token below
we see a zebu, above which a stylish human form and an arrow arecarved. The message of this seal can be interpreted as being “theOkh leader” since both horned animals and arrows are symbols of
the Okh leader (see Chapter 12, The Anatolian Expansion).

The second and third seal molds below are similar symbolic
representations of the Asiatic Uighur leadership, as discussed in
Chapter 6, Universal symbols. The four dots around the + sign
stand for the four corners of the world, implying that the leader
controls a vast region. It is interesting to notice that a similar
symbolism (four dots around a central dot) is marked in brown on
the thigh of the bull-man of the Jiroft vase (see Chapter 16 theSouth-West expansion).
The interaction between the Indus Valley and Southern
Mesopotamia can be noticed from different perspectives. An
unexplored perspective is the similarity between dressing styles.
Below, on the left we see the statue of an Indus Valley king and onright the Sumerian king Gudea (2141 – 2080 BC). Both rulers havetheir right arm uncovered and the manner they wear their garment
is quite similar. The same style of leaving the right arm uncovered
has been adopted by many Central Asiatic religious leaders. Even
today the spiritual leader of Tibet is dressing in a similar manner.

A further aspect to be noticed on the garment of the Indus Valley“Shaman” King is the trefoils design. As mentioned in the previous
Chapters 10 and 14, there is a close relationship between üç (thenumber three) and uc (leader) as well as uç (fly) in most Altaic
languages. The sculpture of the Indus Valley King may also haveoriginally worn a horned headdress (now missing) judging from theshape of the back of the head. When such correlations arecomplemented by the form of the eyes of the Indus Valley king, theAsiatic origin of these people becomes most probable.
References(1) Wonders of the Ancient World, Nat. Geo. Atlas of Archeology,
page 156, 1994. (2) Indus Civilization, National Geographic, Vol.
197, No. 6, page 113, 1990. (3) Indus Civilization, Publication ofTokyo Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2000. (4) Entropic Evidence for
Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script, Rajech P. N. Rao et al.
Science Magazine, page 2, 23 April 2009.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Towards Sümer and Elam

The south-west expansion of the Uighur people did not stop at
Harrapa and Mahenjo-Daro. From this region they went further west
to Mesopotamia and Egypt. Another wave came from the norththrough the Caucasus to Eastern Anatolia and continued further
south to meet the southern people on the east coast of theMediterranean Sea. In this region where two groups met a new
vision developed. This new vision, based mainly on trade, required
a new system of writing. The reason being, that the Babylonian and
Assyrian cuneiforms were too cumbersome to be used by theaverage trader. This is how the Ugaritic alphabet developed (seeChapter 13, Evolution of writing systems). The eastern Anatolianbranch dispersed further west to build new cities along the Aegean
coast and also on the nearby Aegean and Mediterranean islands.

The symbolism of the sacred ibex can be followed in almost all ofthese regions, as a cultural indicator to the Central Asiatic origins.
On several pots and broken pottery pieces from the Indus Valley
and surrounding regions typical motifs of ibexes, gazelles andantelopes are found (1).

1. A barrel-shaped pot decorated with a row of ibexes painted inbrown. 2. Pottery fragment from the early period (circa 3,000 BC)
with a gazelle among birds. 3. A stylish ibex is found on a pottery
fragment dated to the early second millennium BC. 4. An antelope
is seen on a polished plate from burial site that developed in andaround Punjab following the peak of the Indus Civilization.
The sacred ibex has also found its place on the steles of Hakkari(see map of Chapter 12, The Anatolian expansion). These stone
carvings, dated several thousand years old, suggest a very early
connection between upper Mesopotamia and Central Asia (2). Twoof the 12 carved steles found in Hakkari are shown below. The malefigures hold drinking vessels and carry weapons, such as spears anddaggers. The ibex figures (one of them enlarged) can clearly beseen above the left shoulder.

Below we see a cylindrical stamp
found in Susa, the main city of the Elamite culture. There are twointertwined ibexes next to an arrow (Ok). The script on each side is
Elamite and has a precursor known as Proto-Elamite, still notdeciphered (3). H. C. Rawlinson, who worked on the Elamite script
thought that it belonged unquestionably to the Ural-Altaic language
group. Maurice Pope says in this regard (3):The Elamite language had a long history behind it. Its existence is
attested in cuneiform inscriptions of the second millennium BC, theso-called Middle Elamite, and probably extended back at least afurther thousand years; for it is probably the language of
inscriptions found at Susa in a quite different script, which aresometimes accompanied by a text, presumably a translation, in
Akkadian cuneiform.

On thepicture above (right) we see Anu, the main Sumerian deity. Anu is
the sky-god, father and king of the Mesopotamian gods. His first
consort was Antu; from them were the Anunnaki created- theunderworld gods. When the name Anunnaki is split as Anu-nınki weobtain a Turkish word meaning “belonging to Anu” which is anappropriate name for the children of Anu. Anu wears, as almost all
Sumerian gods, a headdress formed out of several superimposed
horns (see Chapter 15, The sacred horn).
References(1) Ref. 3 of Chapter 17, The Indus Valley script. (2) Great Stone
Faces, National Geographic, October 2000 (3) Ref. 1 of Chapter 14,
The Hittite symbolism, page 117
The Bull and the Letter B
There have been several waves of migration from Central Asia
towards the north-west of Europe. During the last 2 millennia Altaic
and Uralic tribes were the first inhabitants of the Baltic region. Lateron Indo-European tribes moved in to northern Europe, but their
original homeland was the west-central Asiatic territories. The
Finno-Ugric language group, which belongs to the Uralic languages,
includes Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian and Samoyedic. There areclaims linking Finnish to a Proto-Finnic language of Asia, which is noother then the Central Asiatic Proto-language (see Chapter 2,
Diversification of Languages).
Uralic languages share many common features with Altaic
languages. For example, both language group are agglutinative andform new words with the help of suffixes. Furthermore, bothlanguage group lack grammatical gender and use one pronoun forboth “he” and “she”. Examples are: In Finnish haen, in Estonian
tema, in Hungarian oo and in Turkish o. In the Indo-European
Swedish language the Finnish haen has changed to han for maleand hon for female (pronounced as hoon). The grammatical genderdifferentiation did not exist in the Proto-language but started muchlater, with the Indo-European languages. We can substantiate thisclaim from the fact that both man as well as women could be theleaders of ancient societies.
It has been mentioned in Chapter 5, Climatic changes that the early
title of the Eurasian ruler was Khang. On the other hand we saw in
Chapter 15, The sacred horn, that most ancient societies werematriarchal. The ancient Khang title became vulgarized in time andchanged gradually to “haen” in Finnish and “han” in Swedish.

As the leadership passed from women to men, the bull symbolism
replaced the ibex symbolism to a very large extent (see Chapter 7,
The Minoan Culture). Although the ibex figure did not disappear
altogether, we see that the bull has been the favorite symbol of themale-dominated societies. On the left above, a bull head is on aSumerian harp found at Ur. On the next picture we see two bullmen lifting a winged Onkh symbol (1) (see Chapter 6, Universal
Symbols). The winged disk is clearly the symbol of the sun-god andthe + sign in the center of the disk is the central Asiatic Okh. The
tree between the two bull-men is the symbol of longevity, known as“the tree of life”. The standard on the right with a deer and twobulls is the symbol of the Hittite nation. We have already seen thatthe symbolism hidden in the number three is an indication ofleadership (see Chapters 12 and 17).
The Vikings and the Celts on the north-west as well as the Japaneseon the east of Asia used helmets with bull horns as a sign of powerand strength. Below we see three such helmets symbolizing thepowerful bull. The Japanese helmet is called kabuto, and reminds usof “kab / kap”, mentioned in Chapter 12.

It is generally accepted that “Taurus” literally meaning bull, has its
origin in Latin. Generally linguists stop investigating the etymology
of a word once they reach the Latin origin. In my opinion theoriginal form of “Taurus” was Tur-uz, which changed in time to Turus and Taurus, meaning “we are the Tur people” as mentioned in
Chapter 8, The double-edged ax. Taurus entered, most probably,
into Latin from Etruscan which is a Ural-Altaic language. But even if
it came from Anatolia with the Greek influence, its origin is stillconnected to the Asiatic Tur people.
Not only taurus but also the origin of the word bull can be traced
back to the Asiatic root culture. We find bufalus in Latin, buffalo in
Italian, buffle in French, bucca (stag, he-goat) in Old English, bukk
in Old German, bock in Swedish, bouc and bouqetin in French andbuck in modern English. But, we have also boğa (adult bull), buzağı
(young bull) and buğra (male camel) in Turkish, which did not
originate from Latin. Arabic bukra, bakara and Mongolian buha also
cannot be traced back to Latin. Furthermore, in the Asiatic Kirghiz
language which is a Turkish dialect buka means bull and bukacharmeans calf.
Therefore, we have to conclude that all these words originated fromthe monosyllabic root word bu (pronounced as boo). “Bu” was thename of the mountain goat, the ibex, in the ancient Asiatic Protolanguage. This word has been one of the earliest pictographic seals
drawn by the Central Asiatic Uighur culture. Below left we see someversions of the early bu seal. On the right side the two forms of B in
the Turkish Orhun script are shown. The Orhun script is a syllaberyand therefore each sign stands for certain syllables containing
phonetic harmony. The b1 sign can be read as: bu, ba, bo, bı or ub,
ab, ob, yb. These syllables have the thick-sounds harmony, while
the b2 sign has the thin-sounds harmony and can be read as: bü,be, bö, bi or üb, eb, öb, ib.

The ancient BU seals shown above are found carved on rocks, next
to petroglyphs in the Yenisei and Orhun valleys of Central Asia. The
first and second seals are stylized front-view appearances of themountain goat and the bull. Several different but similar forms of
the “Bu” seal has been found in Asia. This is because during theearly period in the evolution of writing the ideograms were notstandardized and different versions of the same seal could exist
simultaneously (2). We will see that the Orhun alphabet is notborrowed or transformed from the Phoenician script, as many
believe, but followed its own development within the early Central
Asiatic Turkic culture. This claim needs further proof and therefore
will be elaborated extensively in the future chapters.
When the nomadic tribes from the north met the southern tribes
from the Indus Valley on the eastern coasts of the MediterraneanSea, the “bu” seal became more or less a standard consonant in the
Old Semitic syllabic writing system (see the map in Chapter 18,
Towards Sumer and Elam). The BU seal underwent furthertransformations as the seafaring Phoenicians carried it far north.
The third sign looking like an 8 (below) is accepted by mostscholars to represent the F sound. This is because it stands for the F
sound in the Lydian alphabet (3). But since Etruscan is still
unintelligible and cannot be read correctly, the sound connected to
the figure 8 is debatable. It seems that the two legs of the b2 seal
were joined to form the rounded Etruscan as well as the early Greek
B. This is how the capital B came into being, while the miniscule “b”
in the Latin alphabet evolved from the b1 seal of the Orhun script.

(1) Hitit Güneşi, Sedat Alp, TUBITAK publication 179, page 27,
2002, Ankara - Turkey. (2) Ref. 1 of Chapter 10, page 287. (3) The
Story of Writing, Andrew Robinson, Thames & Hudson, page 170,
1995, London.

The Ugaritic Script
The kingdom of Ugarit, on the northern coast of present Syria has
been an important center of culture and trade some 4,000 years
ago. Located between northern Anatolian and southern
Mesopotamian cultures no less than ten languages and five different
scripts were in use at Ugarit. It is here that the first alphabeticalscript based on simplified cuneiforms was invented. The 30
cuneiform signs (below) bore no resemblance to the signs of
Akkadian or Babylonian cuneiform. Over 1,000 tablets of the
Ugaritic script has been discovered consisting of both commercial
accounts as well as religious texts bearing striking similarities to thestories written many centuries later in the Old Testament. The
reason being that the people coming from the north still had thememory, through verbal accounts passed from generation to
generation, of the flood that devastated their ancient country inCentral Asia (see the maps in Chapter 5, Climatic Changes and in
Chapter 18, Towards Sümer and Elam). These memories about anancient flood have also found their place in the epic of Gilgamish, a
Sumerian half god half human personality. But, the flood did not
happen in Mesopotamia, as many believe, it happened in Central
Asia.
A further clue for the Anatolian influence on Ugarit is the tablets
found in Ugarit written in Hurrian, a language which precedes Hittite
and is of non-Semitic origin (1). The Ugaritic alphabet was first
deciphered in 1930 by Hans Bauer and Edouard Dhorme. The 30
cuneiform sings of this alphabet are shown below.

E. Dhorme deciphered the name of the Ugaritic main deity as “B ‘L”. This form came to be known erroneously as Baal (2). This isbecause the velar g -shown as g-dot in the last row (second fromleft) of the above table- does not exist in Indo-European languages,
but does exist in Turkish (ğ) as well as in most Semitic languages.
Therefore, one way of pronouncing B-Ğ-L could be BUĞULU orBOĞULU. Since the A exists in the alphabet but does not take partin the name, one can insert the U or the O which are not part of theconsonantal alphabet. In that case we obtain a meaningful nameas: Buğ-Ulu or Boğ-Ulu meaning “the holy bull” in the Protolanguage as well as in the actual Turkish (see Chapter 19, The Bull
and the Letter B). A further understanding could arise if we read B’L
as Bu-Oğulu, meaning “the son of the bull”, a distinctive way ofdefining the Ugaritic leader shown in the picture below.
Here is an extract from the myth of Mot and Alijan, the two sons ofBaal (Buğulu), as a short example of Ugaritic literature (3):The days sped by, The love of Anat overwhelmed her, as the heartof an antelope for her fawn, As the heart of an ewe for her lamb, So
was the heart of Anat for Boğulu.
The reason for selecting this extract is because Anat feels amotherly love for her brother Buğulu. Anat could also be read as
Ana-Ot, meaning “the fire-mother” or equivalently “the sun-mother”(see Chapter 8, The Double-edged ax). This way of reading Anat is
acceptable since the letter “o” does not take part in the Ugariticalphabet. Notice that letters in Anat (above) are all horizontal andconstitute the simplest cuneiforms of the Ugaritic alphabet. Fromthese simple cuneiforms we can guess that the words “Ana” and“Ot” were the most frequently used words in the Ugaritic language.

We see above the stele of Buğulu (Baal) discovered in 1929,
identified as the “storm-god of Ugarit”. One can see the horns on
his helmet and a spear that he plants to the earth. The spear hastaken root since leaves have emerged from its top end. He also lifts
a specter as a sign of power and threat. The symbolism in thisimage tells us the following: “I am here to stay and am ready to
defend this territory”. The spear, the horns on his helmet tell usthat he is an Okh leader and the waves under his feet indicate that
he is or has a storming power. I am of the opinion that Buğulu wasa ruling king who was elevated to level of god height by his
entourage.
The Phoenician alphabet is generally accepted as being a variant of
the Semitic alphabet, but their origin is different. The Semiticalphabet is a variant of the Egyptian Hieratic and Demotic scripts,
while the Phoenician alphabet is based on Asiatic seals (see Chapter
13, Evolution of writing systems)
References(1) Ref. 1 of Chapter 10, page 217. (2) Ref. 2 of Chapter 7, page120. (3) Ref. 1 of Chapter 10, page 218.
The Orhun Valley script

The Orhun Valley script is found on several inscribed steles ofCentral Asia. Below we see the stele of Bilge Kagan (The wise ruler)
inscribed with Turkish “runic” characters. It is claimed that thissyllabary dates from the 8th century AD. But such a sophisticatedscript, fully adapted to transmit the ancient Turkish language,cannot start on the 8th century AD. There are several otherexamples found in the region belonging to earlier dates. As we
examine this script in detail we see that it contains many clues
indicating its close relationship to the ancient Proto-language ofCentral Asia.

It was Vilhelm Thomsen (1842 – 1927) a Danish linguist, who first
identified this script as being ancient Turkish (1). He published his
decipherment in 1896 under the title Inscriptions of Orchon
Deciphered. I am of the opinion that the correct name of the valley
in which these inscriptions were found is Orhun and not Orchon orOrhon. This is because “Or” means high and “Hun” is a well known
Central Asiatic nation that migrated towards the west. The Orhun
syllabary (below) has some special features which are not found inany other script. Scholars call it the Turkish runic script because of
its similarity to the Scandinavian runes. This relationship, which isthe consequence of the Hun expansion, will be discussed in the
future chapters. For the moment let us concentrate on the Orhun
syllabary (2).
This script contains 8 vowels separated in two groups, indicatedwith 1 and 2 in the Table below (see previous Chapters 20 and 2).
These groups were formed according to the sound harmony
inherent in the Turkish language. Because of the 38 characters of
the script we call it a syllabary and not an alphabet. The syllabarycontains special characters, such as ç (tchea), ş (shea), yng, ynch
and ynd that are specific to Turkish. These characters are not later
additions to the script, as some scholars believe, but make part ofthe syllabary from the very early start, which may be several
millennia BP.
The characters of this syllabary are specifically designed to transmit
the monosyllabic words of the Central Asiatic Proto-language.
Therefore, each character is a word and most of these charactershave a visual correspondence with the meaning it represents, as
shown below.

When the T1 seal is read as at (horse) a symbolic representation ofa rider on a horse appears. We have already seen that the Okhleader is an adult person carrying an arrow and riding a horse. Thissymbolism of uniting rider and horse has also a special meaning. It
conveys the message that the rider and his horse are fused
together and should not be separated at any cost, even after death.
The word standing for “arrow” in Turkish is ok, as mentioned on
several occasions before. As soon as humans started hunting they
developed first the spear and then the bow and arrow. Considering
this fact we can safely assume that the T1 and the OKH character
were among the earliest signs of the pictographic writing system.
They appeared first on the seals of the Proto-language and later ontransgressed into several scripts, from the Central Asiatic early
Uighur script to several alphabets, to finally end up in the Latinalphabet. The modern K as well as the O and the T are transformedforms of the T1 seal. Below we see how the arrow seal gave rise to
the Latin K.

The T1 seal can be pronounced not only as “At” but also as “Ot”
(sun or fire) and “On” (venerable, important). We have seen in
Chapter 6 several examples of the Onkh seal. Considering that thewords for horse (at) and ancestor (ata) stem from the same origin,
it is not difficult to see that the fusion of ata with on give Ata-On orAton the sun-god of the Egyptians during the reign of Akhenaton(3). This pharaoh name seems to be made out of syllables
originating from the Central Asiatic Proto-language: Okh-Han-AtaOn “The universal Okh ancestor and leader”. More details on thisname will be elaborated in the next chapter. Below we see that
there were two versions of the T1 seal in the ancient script. These
forms have a close relationship to the Onkh / Ankh seal which
eventually gave rise to the letters O and T (see Chapter 6, The
universal symbols).

References(1) Ref. Of Chapter 10, page 285. (2) Orhon Yazıtları, Talat Tekin,ISBN 975-16-0065-0, Ankara, 1988. (3) Ancient Egypitian Myths
and Legends, Lewis Spence, page 329, General Publishing
Company, 1990, Toronto, Canada.

Egyptian deities
When the ancient Egyptian religion is considered, one can see thatthe entire belief system revolved around the cult of sunworshipping. Several different names were given to the early sungods of ancient Egypt. Horned animals as well as birds were
physical representations of these deities on earth. Below left we see
a mythical bull-bird carved on the wall of a temple. The central
image is the well known Apis bull or ox. The disc with a cobra in the
middle is a typical representation of the sun. On the right a row of
ram-lions are protecting different pharaohs.

The symbolism in mixing animals is also found in the Sumerianculture and can be traced back to the Central Asiatic root culture.
We can follow this symbolism throughout the ages as consecutive
historical periods. In ancient Egypt this symbolism is very clear andhas been transmitted in the form of statues and wall paintings.
Below we see some such examples.

The female Sumerian deity Ishtar is stepping on two mountaingoats. She has wings and a headdress with horns similar to the one
Anu wears (see Chapter 19, The Bull and the Letter B). The same
symbolism is found in the Egyptian goddess Isis who has wings, bullhorns and the solar disc above her head. The wall painting is
depicting Horus holding the Ankh in his right hand and the solar discencircled by the cobra named Khut stands above his head. On theright we see the half man half goat deity named Ptah.
In Chapter 6, Universal Symbols, the connection of the Ankh to thesolar disc and to the + sign was discussed. The hawk-headed Horus
as well as Ra, Amun and Atun are all different names andrepresentations of the same sun-god. Lewis Spence says (1):Ra, the great god of the sun, appears to have occupied a prominent
position in the Egyptian pantheon at a very early period. The
Egyptians of later days appear to have thought that the name wasin some way associated with creation. Sun-worship in Egypt wasvery ancient, and it is probable that a number of sun-cults became
fused in that of Ra.
Although almost all of the Egyptian deities had a half human half
animal form, only Ra was an exception and was represented by thesolar disc –a circle with a point in the center-. This representation
has its roots in the early ON symbol of the Proto-language (seeChapter 7, The Minoan culture). I am of the opinion that Ra wasimported from the Sumerian culture and his name came from
Dingir, the main Sumerian deity.
In the Sumerian pictographic writing system the sky was
represented by a six-pointed star and the sun by a circle with a dot
at the center. When the Sumerians wanted to write “dingir” they
drew the two symbols next to each other, as shown below. Dingir
was the sun-god residing in the sky. This way of writing Dingir was
logical because the Sumerian language was agglutinative and words
could be created by adding suffixes.

In fact Dingir comes from the Central Asiatic Ting-ri or Tengri, still
existing as Tanrı in Turkish. Words similar to Tengri (meaning God)can be found in many remote parts of the world. Examples are:Tengeri for the Central Asiatic Buryat Turks, Tıngır for the Tartars ofCrimea, Tanka for the North-American Indians, Tangaroa for the
Pacific islanders, Tian for the Chinese and Tin for the Etruscans. The
ancient Egyptians adopted the solar disc standing for the suffix –ri
as the name of the sun-god and called it Ra, as shown below.
Actually, not only Ra but also Horus is known to be related to thesun. Hor-us (Hor is) was adopted as the sun-god by the Romans
during the Ptolemaic era. In time Hor became part of the Latin
language and found its place in words such as “horizon”,“horizontal”, “horoscope” and even “hour” in English and “heure” inFrench.
Another deity related to the sun is Ptah. He personified the risingsun, or, rather the early morning sun, immediately after it has risen(2). Aton, one of the most prominent sun-gods of Ancient Egypt
came in time to signify both the sun-god and the actual solar disk.
It was during the reign of Akhanaton “Ak-Han-Ata-On” which lasted
only 17 years -from 1379 BC to 1362 BC- that Aton “Ata-on”
became the main deity of the entire Egyptian kingdom. Aton was
regarded as the creator of the earth, self-existent and measurer ofthe lives of men.
Below we see Ak-han-ata-on making offerings to the sun with his
wives Nefertiti and Kiya standing behind (3). They are receiving
ankhs form the sun, the symbol of power and longevity. During his
reign artists routinely portrayed the pharaoh in informal situations –being affectionate with Nefertiti or playing with his children.
Akhanaton unleashed a creative furor that gave rise to perhaps thefinest era of Egyptian art (4). He even founded a new city
Akhataton near the present city of Amarna.
After the death of Akhanaton, his son Tutankhamon “Tutan-OkhAma-On” (the one protecting Amon) assumed power. He was under
the influence of the Amon priests and reinstated Amon as the main
god of Egypt. Within two years the religious capital was moved from
Akhataton to Thebes. Soon the temples were demolished and
Akhetaton was turned into rubbles. The ancient religion of the Amon
priests came back to power, even stronger than before.

References(1) Ref. 3 of Chapter 21, page 130. (2) Idem, page 144. (3)National Geographic, April 2001, Pharaohs of the Sun, Rick Gore,
page 47. (4) Idem, page 54.
The Issık KurganCentral Asia was inhabited by many Saka tribes who spoke acommon language closely related to the Proto-Language (seeChapter 4, The Asiatic Scythians). These people of Uighur originburied their leaders in specially designed wooden chambers some 8
to 10 ms under the earth. Such a kurgan was excavated in
Kazakhstan, not far from the city of Almaty. The dig revealed ayoung man buried in full clothing decorated with gold plaques andgolden ornaments. On his pointed hat a couple of golden ibexes,
several golden arrows and a golden Okh symbol could be seen. He
was wearing a golden ring shown below. A sword and a dagger
were in their sheath decorated with gold. Two silver vases wereplaced along the wall of the room, one of which had 26 incised
signs, whose meaning is still debated (1).

According to Carbon-14 dating done on the remains, the Golden
Man lived during 5th or 6th centuries BC. Since the characters of
the scripture on the vase are very similar to the ones belonging to
the Orhun syllabary, shown in Chapter 21, it is quite logical to try
deciphering the short text with the help of the ancient Turkic
language. This task has been carried out by Kazım Mirşan who
deciphered the scripture as follows (2):We request that the ancestors take in the rising soul of this horned
Okh leader.
These words tell us that the Saka people venerated their ancestors
and considered their leader as an incarnation of the solar deity. We
reach such a conclusion from the figure on his ring, which isrepresenting the sun, the couple of ibexes as well as the arrows on
his hat. The reason for these symbolic objects being made out ofgold is that gold, with its yellow color has been the preferred metalof sun-worshiping cultures.
It was believed by the ancient Asiatic cultures that their ancestors
as well as the sky-god Tengri resided in a mystical or mythicalrealm of the sky. This belief is found in many cultures that spreadfrom Asia (see Chapter 8, The double-edged ax). The shaman was
responsible for making a mystic contact with the sky-god and inorder to perform a spiritual flight towards the sky he clad in birdlike
clothes and wear a headdress made out of bird feathers. Pictures ofCentral Asiatic shamans as well as a shaman dress can be seen
below. The strings and ropes hanging from the dress represent thefeathers of the bird.

The drum is the main instrument of the shaman whose vibrating
sound helps the shaman to enter a state of heightened awareness,
which is a kind of ecstatic trance. A shaman is able to perceive
spirits and gain special knowledge of the supernatural realm. Nevill
Drury who wrote a book on Shamanism says (3):A shaman is ever alert to the intrinsic perils of human existence, ofthe magical forces which lie waiting to trap the unwary, or whichgive rise to disease, famine or misfortune. But the shaman also
takes the role of an active intermediary – a negotiator in both
directions.
Shamanism was the ancient religion of the Okh people. Theirsymbols can still be found on different objects. On the third picturefrom the left above we see the Okh symbol which ornate thecushions on the floor (see Chapter 8).
Asiatic tribes who migrated to North, Central and South America
carried their shamanistic culture and used it for venturing among
spirits and obtaining information necessary to the benefit of theirsociety. This is why the leader of the tribe, who is responsible forthe future existence and wellbeing of the tribe, wears a shamanic
headdress made out of bird feathers. Observe the clear similarity
between the dress of the shaman (above) and the drawing madesome 500 years ago by a North-American so called ‘Indian’ on theobject shown below (4). Washakie (1808-1900) the Shoshone tribe
leader in his official attire is on the right.

The circular object with a dot at its center seen on the breast ofboth figures (above) symbolizes the sun. This symbolism uniting the
Okh leader and the sun has been discussed in several previous
chapters. Examples of the Onkh seals (below) found in northern,
central and southern American cultures are clear indications of theirAsiatic origin.

References(1) Ref. 1 of Chapter 4, page 204. (2) Ref. 2 of Chapter 5. (3)Shamanism, Nevill Drury, Element books, page 11, 1996, USA. (4)Geheimnisvolle Indianer Kulturen, ISBN 3 934519 75 X, 1993,
Germany.
Horses for eternity
Horses played an important role in the life of the nomadic ancient
tribes. Groups of people could travel easily to long distances andcarry their goods with the help of their horses. The horse was oneof the earliest domesticated animals by humans. There are several
observations made to support the claim that the modern horse“Equus caballus” originated from Central Asia and spread to theworld. Entire horse remains have been found next to the burial
chamber of Asiatic rulers. There is first-hand information thatancient shamans were leading the ceremony called The Sacrifice ofthe Horse. The person holding the head of the horse to be sacrificed
was called Baş tutkan kişi meaning “The person holding the head” inTurkic.
It was mentioned in Chapter 21, The Orhun Script that the word forhorse in Turkish is “At” and has a semantic relationship to “Ata”
meaning ancestor. The word “At” can also be used as a verb
meaning “to throw”. The reason for such a second use is notcoincidental and can be understood when the forgotten ancientbeliefs are stirred back to the surface.
The ancient Central Asiatic people believed that the soul of a person
continued to exist after death and had to traverse a dangerous
underworld region populated by demons and griffins before
reaching its final destination in the sky. These mythical animals(griffins and chimera) had lion claws, eagle wings and beaks andwere ready to tear apart any soul that journeyed through theunderworld. In order to secure a safe journey for their dead leader
through the underworld the Asiatic nomadic tribes sacrificed horses
as a lure for the gryphon. While the gryphon attacked and devoured
the soul of the horse, the soul of the dead leader could escape andfly towards the sky. The number of horses sacrificed depended on
the importance of the dead person. The more powerful the person
was the more horses followed him in the grave. This is why thehorse and the rider could not be separated even after death (seeChapter 21).
The horse is thrown to the gryphon as an offering and this is why“At” is both a noun and a verb. Recent archeological research hasbrought new insight in this direction. In a kurgan at Kostromskaya(north-western Russia), 22 horses were found next to the chieftain(1). At another kurgan in the Caucasus, remains of 360 horses were
found.

1. Gold pectoral found at a kurgan (in Ukraine) illustrates inextraordinary detail the Asiatic lifestyle and afterlife beliefs of thenomads. The top row of the pectoral depicts scenes from the daily

life, while the bottom row illustrates the underworld where wild
animals reside. Several griffins are seen attacking the “soul” ofsacrificed horses. 2. On a superb carved wooden standard, a griffin
slays a stag. Stags as well as horses were accepted to be
distinguished enough to follow the dead leader in his journey
through the underworld. 3. Remains of horses, found in a kurgan,
are being examined by an archeologist.
One has difficulty in understanding why so many horses weresacrificed after a dead person. But the following words of Luc
Kwanten help us understand this ancient tradition (2):The strength of the nomad lay not in numbers but in his
unsurpassed skills as a horseman and a warrior. Horses, thesteppe’s staple product, were available to the nomad in nearly
unlimited numbers, whereas for the sedentary states they were
frequently in short supply. The nomad thus possessed theadvantage of mobility.
It was due to this mobility that nomadic tribes of Asia could crosslarge distances and form new settlements. This is why we find thesymbolism of the “flying horse” in many cultures. In the Greek
Mythology Pegasus is the winged white horse that flew to Mt.
Olympus, where he took place in the stable of Zeus / Jupiter. One of
his wing feathers fell to earth close to Tarsus giving the city its
name. It is said that Pegasus bears for Jupiter the lightning andthunder.

This myth contains several clues related to our present subject. The
winged horse flies high up toward the mythical Mt. Olympus werethe main deity (Zeus / Jupiter) resides. The meaning of Pegasus is
not known but when we spilt it into its constituent syllables we findPek-As-us “we are the strong As”, where “pek” means “strong /solid”. The city of Tarsus, located on the Mediterranean coast of
Anatolia could also be unfolded as Tur-As-us meaning “we are Tur
and As”. Not far from Tarsus are the Taurus Mountains. Both Tarsus
and Taurus contain the root-word “Tur” discussed already in
Chapter 14. Below we see some examples of flying horses found indifferent parts of the world.

1. A drawing of Pegasus, the flying horse of Geek Mythology. 2. A
couple of terracotta winged horses perched on the roof of an
Etruscan tomb-house. 3. The statue of a winged horse found at theentrance of a burial mound in China. 4. An ancient Chinese dishwith the figure of the flying horse. Below we see an Etruscan
Chimera.

We can conclude that the tradition of mixing animals and creating
mythical creatures such as griffins or chimera is of Asiatic origin.
Therefore, cultures where such symbolism is found are clearly of
Asiatic origin.
References(1) Ref. 4 of Chapter 7, page 202. (2) Ref. 5 of Chapter 1, page 11.
From Kurgans to Pyramids
The cult of sacrificing horses after a dead leader is of Asiatic origin
practiced by the early Uighur tribes, as discussed in several
previous chapters. In order to differentiate a regular live-horse froma sacrificed one, the Asiatic cultures depicted the hind part of thesacrificed animal being contorted upside down. This symbolism
meant that the horse –or any sacrificed animal- lost its physicalnormal shape and became a spirit, ready to run in the underworld.
Actually the sacrificed animals were killed with a single blow on theforehead, which resulted in sudden painless death. Figures ofcontorted horses and elks have been found in several Altaic
kurgans. The elk tattoo shown in Chapter 4 exhibits this symbolismof contorting hind legs. The golden plaque (Picture 1 below) showsa contorted horse that adorned the knob of the dagger of the“Golden man” discussed in Chapter 22, The Issık kurgan. It is clearthat such zoomorphic contorted figures were not intended forsimple decorative effect, but were to symbolize the soul of sacrificed
animals, sent to the underworld for allowing a safe passage to thesoul of the dead person.

Picture 2 below is a drawing of the Ukok kurgan mentioned in Ref. 3
of Chapter 4. Horse remains were found on the top as well as on
the external sides of the wooden burial room.

Protecting the soul from being devoured by griffins was such astrong belief in Central Asia that the first emperor who united
China, Qin Shi Huang Di (259 – 210 BC) ordered a special
mausoleum to be built and horses to be sacrificed after his death.
The title “Huang” is a transformed form of the Turkic “Khang” asmentioned in Chapter 5, Climatic changes, a clear indication of the
Asiatic influence on Chinese culture. Qin troops overran the Han(Khan) state in 236 BC and then proceeded to defeat the Çao (Çay),Wei (Uy), Çu (Uç), Yan (Yan) and Qi (Kıyı) states, all of thembelonging to the early Uighur confederation of loose independent
tribes. The names of these neighboring states are all of Turkic
origin, as transcribed in brackets.
Construction of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang Di started in 247
BC and lasted until his death. As many as 720,000 workers fromacross the country helped construct the tomb. A sacrificial stable
was unearthed some 20 ms from the Qin Mausoleum. This stablecontained 99 sacrificed horses (1). Picture 3 above shows a row ofterracotta horses from the Qin Mausoleum. Three trenches, which
cover over 20,000 square ms, hold about 7,000 life-size terracotta
horses and armored warriors.
The original burial site was 115 ms high and was covered withearth, forming a medium size pyramidal mound. There are still
many untouched pyramids in China. These pyramidal structures are
man-made hills replacing –or mimicking- the kurgans located at thehigh regions of the Altai Mountains. They are all built on the flat
plains of China and are burial sites of previous local Uighur Kings or
early Chinese Emperors, another indication of the Central Asiatic
influence on China. Below we see some examples of Uighur and / or

Chinese pyramids.

The tradition of knotting the tail of horses is another typical Central
Asiatic influence on the Chinese culture. This tradition of knotting
the tail of horses, kept in the Chinese army, can be seen in the
picture below, showing terracotta soldiers and horses (2).

The tradition of burying kings and important leaders of the society
in man-made pyramidal structures, together with sacrificed horses,
went wherever the Asiatic Uighur tribes migrated.
When ancient Egyptians pressed south, some 2500 years BC, theyfound a culture devoted to the sun-cult which was called Kush(“bird” in Turkish). The main cities of this culture were Jebel Barkal,
Napata and Meröe, all of them located between present Egypt andSudan on the banks of the upper-Nile river. In Jebel Barkal and
Meröe the tombs of five Kushite kings and their 70 successors werediscovered.
In an article on Kush, Timothy Kendall says (3):Nearby the burial site, the excavators discovered an amazing horse
cemetery. Twenty-five steeds, draped with nets decorated withcowrie shells and faience and bronze beads had been interredstanding. Horses were introduced to Egypt from the east and theKushites raised fine animals coveted even by the distant Assyrians.
These words give us some hints on the extent of the south-east
expansion of the Uighur tribes discussed in Chapter 18, Towards
Sümer and Elam (see the map in Chapter 18).
References(1) Terra Cotta Warriors, PRC Publishing, page 11, Beijing,
China. (2) Idem, page 42. (3) National Geographic, Vol. 178, No. 5,
November 1990, page 114.
African expansion
In the previous Chapter 25, From Kurgans to Pyramids, I mentionedthat Kush meant “bird” in Turkish and that this ancient nation was
located in the south of Egypt (see map below). I am of the opinion
that the Kushites did not originate from Africa, but came to theseregions from the north. Here are some indications supporting thisopinion.

Birds, as mentioned in Chapter 3, The Hidden Meaning ofPetroglyphs, were accepted to be sacred animals due to theircapacity of being able to fly in the sky; the region where the sun
resides. The Kushites also venerated the sun and createdanthropomorphic images of winged gods and goddesses, as shown
above.
One of the most renowned king of the Kushite empire was Taharka,
but his original name was Tır- Haka or Tur- Hakan meaning “theking of the Tur people” (see Chapters 8 and 24). The word “Tur”(pronounced as “toor”) has been modified to “Moor” by the Romans
who came to North-Africa around second century AD. Moor became
a generic name for brown people of North-Africa and later on of
Iberian Arabs as well as of the Berber and Tuareg (Toor-Oc) peopleof North-West Africa.
The countries Mauritania and Morocco both contain the root-word“Toor / Moor”. How did the country name “Morocco” appear? It is
most probable that it suffered the following transformations: ToorOk => Moor-Oc => Morocco, a clear relation to the Oc people. We
also have “Maurus” in Latin, “Mavro” in Greek, “Mauve” in French,“Mohr” in German, “Mor” in Turkish, all meaning “purple”,
identifying the North-Africans (moor) with their suntanned skincolor.
Meröe, the main city of the Kushites and the plains of Moab, where
the Moabites once lived are also names related to Moor. The plainsof Moab are in the low valleys of the Jordan River neighboring
Ugarit (see map above).

These names are all connected to the Asiatic “Toor” and “Oc” people
who migrated towards the south-west. A further clue in thisdirection is the similarity of the facial appearances shown above.
Olmec people lived in Central America and carved huge stone headsof their leader. The sphinx head in front of the Khafra pyramid in
Egypt has the same features as the ones of the Mongolian ruler
Chengiz Han and the Kushite leader Taharka (Turhakan). Adding
these clues to the detailed elaborations of the previous chapters wecan conclude that ancient North African tribes came to theseregions from Central Asia.
This African expansion happened maybe 7,000 years BP and its
remaining traces are rather fuzzy, therefore not clearly stated inany history book. The purpose of the present investigation is, asmentioned in the introduction, to remember the forgotten past.
The languages spoken by North-African and Eastern-Mediterranean
people has been designated by linguists as being Afro-Asiatic; aclear indication of their Asiatic connection. The branches of AfroAsiatic are Berber (Tuareg), Chadic, Kuschitic, Egyptian, Omotic and
Semitic. The map below shows the language groups of Africa andthe extent of the Afro-Asiatic languages (1). The Afro-Asiatic
language group extends up to Sudan and Ethiopia, supporting theview that the Kushites did not originate from Central or Southern
Africa.

Regarding the Olmec faces shown above, we know that thesepeople lived along the Gulf Coast in what is now southern Mexicoand Guatemala. Together with the Toltecs they were the early
settlers of the region and had a distinctive cultural style including a
special pictographic script. Their culture flourished from 1800 BC to400 BC and during this period they carved many stone monuments,
including colossal carved basalt heads that have characteristic
Asiatic features. Until now 16 basalt heads measuring up to threeand-a-half meters have been found (2). Another clue for theirAsiatic origin is the pyramid-like mounds built by the Olmec in La
Venta, an important ceremonial center of this culture. More details
will be given in the next chapter.
References(1) The Origin of Language, Merritt Ruhlen, John Wiley & Sons,

1994, USA. (2) National Geographic, Vol. 184, No. 5, November
1993, page 88.
Olmec, Toltec and Maya
Few years ago in Cascajal, a Southern Mexican archeological site, aserpentine bloc has been found with a hitherto unknown
pictographic script (1). The article reports:
Previously, no script has been associated unambiguously with theOlmec civilization, in many respects the progenitor of all later
complex societies in adjacent Central-America (2).

The location of the ancient Olmec, Toltec and Maya civilizations isshown in the map below. The Cascajal site consisted of two parallelmounds, dating from late first millennium BC. The inscribed blockweighs about 12 kg and measures 36X21X13 cm. On the flat side a
script consisting of 62 signs has been carved. The picture belowright shows the photograph of the stele and on the left we see signs
that appeared four times, three times, two times and once on theblock. We can therefore conclude that the script contains at least 28
characters and can be classified as an alphabet whose letters areboth pictures and seals.

This alphabet is as old as the cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet (seeChapter 20, The Ugaritic Script). This can be ascertained fromseveral artifacts found in the Cascajal site dated from 1200 BC up
to 900 BC. The script had certainly a prior period of development
and did not pop up suddenly. The Olmec alphabet contains somevegetal signs as well as some signs reminding the Central Asiatic
seals, such as the ones numbered 10 and 26. The text is horizontal
and contains groupings of long and short glyphs conforming to all
expectations of writing. With such characteristics it can take its
place among the world’s first alphabets. But more specimens areneeded for its decipherment (3).
The nearby city Tula is accepted as the ancient site of the Toltec
culture (see map above). Statues with feather headdresses found in
Tula remind us the Central Asiatic shamans of Tuva. The similarity
of Tula with Tuva and the pyramids built by the Toltecs areindications of their Asiatic origin (4).

No written tablet has been found in the Toltec land, but the Maya
people living in Yucatan developed a complicated pictographic
writing system. It is most probable that the Maya glyphs originatedfrom the simpler Olmec writing system. The Maya writing system ismuch more complex and gave a lot of headache to the Mayanscholars. This transformation from simple to complicated signs
reminds us what happened to the Sumerian script and to the early
Chinese script (see Chapter 13, Evolution of Writing Systems).
The Maya system contains several glyphs that stand for syllables
and also many glyphs representing words. Therefore, this system isboth syllabic as well as logographic. There are more than 1000
different glyphs in the Maya writing system. The Maya also
mastered astronomy, mathematics, art and architecture, and had arather complicated calendar. They wrote on stone, ceramics, andbark paper. Unfortunately most of the Maya books were destroyedby the Spanish Bishop Diego de Landa.
It is believed that the Maya language developed from Proto-Mayan
dating from minimum 2,000 BC. It then diffused into several
branches known as Yucatecan, Huastecan, Cholan, Qhanjobalan,
Mamean and Quechuan. All these Mayan dialects are agglutinative
languages and can be shown to pertain to the Asiatic, Altaic
language group. Here are some Maya words which are very similar
to Turkish. The Maya word is given in bold and the corresponding
Turkish word is in red within brackets (5).
Leader: Ahau (Agha), Ax: Baat (Balta), Servant, Low: Ashac (Uşak,Aşağı), A lot, Strong: Tchac (Çok), Pine tree: Tcha (Çam), Difficult:Tchetun (Çetin), Augment, Climb: Tchich (Çık), Left handed: Tchol(Çolak, Solak), Boulder: Kaa (Kaya), Bird: Kutz (Kuş), Inside: İçil(İçinde), Female: İş (Dişi), Belt: Kaşnak (Kasnak), Day: Kin (Gün),
Sun: Kiniş (Güneş), Person: Kişe (Kişi), Old man: Koça (Koca),
Slave: Kul (Kul), Mother: Naa (Ana), Be: Ol (Ol), Stay clean:Tamazkal (Temiz-kal), Inundation: Tosh (Taşkın), Hill: Tepek(Tepe), Stone: Tetl (Taş), Gather: Top (Topla), Dust: Toz (Toz),
Full: Tul (Tolu, Dolu), Filled: Tulan (Dolgun), Deep: Tup (Dip),
Pebble: Tzekel (Çakıl), Scabies: Ueez (Uyuz), Urinate: Uiş (İşe),Reach: Ul (Ulaş), Bore: Uy (Oy), Humid: Yash (Yaş), Green: Yashil(Yeşil). Summer: Yashkin (Yaz-günü).
These 37 words form a small sample indicating the relationship ofthe main Maya Yucatec language with Turkish. Since there havebeen no physical interaction in the last two millennia between
Asiatic Turks and Central American Maya, these words cannot beloanwords. They have to stem from a common root language, which
I have labeled as the Proto-language.
References

(1) The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization, R. A. Diehl,Thames &Hudson, London, 2005. (2) Oldest Writing in the New World,
Science Magazine, 15 September 2006, page 1610. (3) National
Geographic News, Mason Inman, 14 September 2006. (4) Ref. 4 ofChapter 7, page 268. (5) Geolinguistics (in Turkish), Saim Ali
Dilemre,Maya Cities and Pyramids
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
Several waves of migrations crossed the land-bridge between Asia
and America many thousand years ago and populated gradually the
new continent. An article published in Nature claims that this fact
has now been scientifically proven. Calculations of sea levels
between 18,000 to 9,000 years ago attest the possibility of such aland-crossing. The article starts with the following words (1):America’s first inhabitants were people from Asia who migrated overa now submerged land bridge between the two continents.
Another recent archeological research has established that a groupof people were living at a site called Monte Verde in southern Chile
12,500 years BP (2). The article in Nature Magazine states:
If people had migrated almost to the tip of South America by
12,500 years ago, experts agree they must have begun trekking
south from Alaska before the glaciers retreated from the Americaninterior.
The periodic temperature-variations in the north hemisphere during
the last 20,000 years have been discussed in Chapter 5, Climatic
Changes. From the graph (below) we can tell that around 18,000
years BP the northern regions were cold enough to allow such acrossing. Even after having crossed the land-bridge people had tomove further south, because ice sheets did not retreat until the endof the ice-age.

They entered from point A shown on the map below-left andreached Monte Verde (blue point B) within the next 6,000 years.
But not all of them went all the way to the south. By 4,600 BP the
Olmec people of Mesoamerica attained an advanced level ofcivilization exhibiting city life, refined art and architectural design,and even developed a writing system (see previous Chapter 27).
The languages of the Americas have been classified in three maingroups. Joseph Greenberg and colleagues have proposed that thethree Native American language families –Amerind, Na-Dene andEskimo-Aleut- derive from three separate migrations from Asia (3).
The earliest migrants spoke many different, but interrelated Asiatic(Altaic) languages, which have been labeled as “Amerind” a namederived from American-Indian shown in yellow on the map. The
green region has been the area where tribes speaking Na-Dene orequivalently Atapascan settled and the light blue region extending
from Alaska to Greenland is the area of Eskimo-Aleut speakers (seeChapter 2, Diversification of Languages).
Instead of trying to read the complex Maya scriptures, which needs
a special expertise, a simpler approach would be to try to decipher
the toponymy of the Yucatan cities and sites. City names certainly
do have a meaning, but nobody until today ever tried to give an
etymological explanation of the city-names, or at least I have notcome across of such an approach. On the map below-right we see
the names and locations of the major Maya cities and sites.

Here is my own understanding of some Maya city names:
Chichen Itza: In the previous chapter: The Maya word Tchich was
found to be equivalent in meaning and sound to the Turkish word“Çık” (pronounced as tchyck) meaning Augment, Climb. The
equivalent of “ckichen” is “chykan” in Turkish, therefore Chichen
Itza means “The elevated or superior Itza”.
Tikal: “Tik” is one of the earliest root-words originating from theProto-language, meaning “single, unique” which evolved to mean“finger” and “hand” (4). In all Altaic languages (Turkish, Uighur,
Chuvash, Chagatai) “tek” means single. In the Eskimo-Aleut
languages “tik” means the index finger. In Chinese “tiek” means
one. In Atapascan languages “tek” and “tikhi” mean again one. In
Amerind languages the Mixe say “tuk” and the Quiche Maya say“tik” for one. Therefore, Tikal means “The single one“, or “Be
unique” since the suffix –al exists in Turkish in the form of –il. Thus
Tikal is the equivalent of “tekil” and means “singular” or “one of akind”.
Copan: In Turkish the same word exists as “Kopan”, meaning “thebreakaway one”. This is a valid name for this city, which is far fromthe main Maya cities as shown on the map above.
Tulum: The word “tul”, already mentioned in the last chapter,means “full” and is found as “dolu” or “tolu” in Turkish. Therefore,“Tulum” means “filled up” or “crowded”, a perfect name for a city
located by the seashore. A further meaning for “tulum” is “a filledup animal skin”, which is also used for “bagpipe”, an animal skinfilled-up with air.
Uxmal: This name pronounced as “Ushmal” or “Uchmal” contains

the root-word “uch” meaning both “tip” and also “leader”, alreadymentioned in Chapter 10, Etruscan Inscriptions. “Uchmak” meant“heaven” or “high above” in ancient Turkish. For sure Uxmal was
one of the most important Maya cities. The so called governor’spalace or the residence of the Maya king is described in thefollowing words by Lewis Spence (5).
The palace occupies three successive colossal terraces, and its
frieze runs in a line of 100 ms, and is divided into panels, each ofwhich frames a gigantic head of priest or deity.
Therefore, Uxmal means “the leader city” or “the capital city”.
Without going into more detail on the city names let us turn ourattention to the Maya architecture. The inhabitants of Yucatan built
stepped pyramids in every Maya city and used them for burying
their king, worshiping the sun-god and making blood rituals andsacrifices.
The Maya had also a very intricate calendar system. The Maya timekeeping involved several interlocking cycles, some of which tracked
astronomical events while others seemingly followed abstract timeintervals. Maya priests, who conducted the sacred rituals, were also
fervent stargazers and decided on the timing of important eventsbasing themselves on both their complicated calendar as well as on
the position of the stars. A solar day in Mayan is “kin” and is “gün”
in Turkish, while the sun in Mayan is “kinish” and is “günesh” inTurkish. Such similarities can certainly not be coincidental.
Below we see some Maya pyramids. They are all built on flat land
and are fulfilling the role of mountains, lacking in the region. In the
new world as well as in China and Egypt the need for pyramidbuilding stemmed from the same desire of approaching the sun.
This wish for worshiping the sun-god evolved from simple earthmounds to advanced architectural stone structures and is found also
in the Biblical story “Tower of Babel”.

The Maya culture and history is part of our forgotten past and needs
to be rediscovered.
References

(1) Nature Magazine, Vol. 422, 6 March 2003, page 10. (2) Monte
Verde, T. D. Dillehey, Scientific American, No. 251, page 106,
1984. (3) Ref. 1 of Chapter 26, page 100. (4) Idem, page 115. (5)The Myths of Mexico and Peru, Lewis Spence, page 191, Dover
Publications, USA.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The bird symbolism
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
We saw in Chapter 26, African Expansion and in Chapter 27 Olmec,
Toltec and Maya, that the sun-worshipping cultures considered thebirds in general as being special animals because of their capacity
to fly towards the sky, the realm of the sun. Such a capacity was
also accepted to be a feat belonging to the shamans. Therefore, thebird symbolism has been extensively used in all shamanic cultures.
The original cradle of shamanism has been Central Asia and has
spread to the ancient world from this region.
Below we see some totem poles of the North American so called“native people”. Bird figures standing at the top of the totem poles
represent the spirit of the ancestors as well as the sun-deity. For
the northern tribes of America totem poles were the symbols of
shamanic guardian-spirit experiences. The shaman or the medicine
man would dress up like a bird and perform ecstatic, spiritual flights
towards the sky in order to communicate with the deities andancestors (see Chapter 23, The Issık Kurgan). Trudy Griffin-Pierce
says (1):The figures on the pole were not actually totems because there wasno sense of avoidance of the depicted animals or prohibitions
against killing or eating them. Instead, they were special helping
spirits from the animal world which had become heraldic crests.

The pictures below are examples of the birds symbolism foundallover the world.
1. Small amulets excavated from a kurgan in Central Asia (2).
These are symbolic figures of female shamans and were carried on
the body or hanged from the neck in order to be protected fromharmful spirits. They also indicate that shamanism was essentially afemale activity. 2. The winged Sumerian sun-god Utu is clearly
depicting the connection between the bird and the sun. His helmet
has ram horns and he is holding a torque in his left hand. The
torque had a special meaning for ancient sun-worshiping societies.
The word “torque” is believed to have originated from the Latin
word “torquere”, but what was its original form? It is quite possiblethat “torque” was originally a solar symbol of the Etruscans. It
suffered the following transformations:Tur-Osc (Etrusc) => Torosc=> Torque. We find here the connection to the Tur (Toor) and Osc
people that came to the Italian peninsula before the Romans. The
torque, which has the form of a circle also means “the surrounding”
or “the circle” and stands for the land or region under control by the
Tur (see Chapter 8, The double-edged ax). The torque was either
held in the hand or surrounded the neck of the Och leader and isfound in many different cultures that originated from Asia. Moredetail will be given in the following chapters. 3. A Hittite deity from
Karatepe – Anatolia (3). The winged deity takes its place among aseries of wall relief at the entrance wall of a late Hittite castle. The
anthropomorphic figure has a bird beak and is holding a winged
solar disk above its head, indicating the clear connection between
the bird and the sun. 4. Winged female amulets from Ikiztepe –Anatolia. These small idols are from the Bronze Age that lasted from3300 BC until 1200 BC. The interesting point to notice is the slim

bodies and flat shapes of these idols. The reason for such flat
shapes is most probably related to the need of carrying theseamulets on the breast, attached by strings and hanging from theneck. The small holes on each side of the face were probably madefor the purpose of passing a string through them (4). 5. The winged
sun-disk on a chain is a pectoral made out of gold, carnelian agate,
turquoise and metaphoric stone (5). It was made by Phrygian or
Lydian artists of western Anatolia about the 8th century BC. A linkhas been claimed by Herodotus between the western Anatolian
Lydians and the Etruscans of Italy. The original name of Lydia was
Luddu, which became Ludia in ancient Greek. This name was mostprobably ULU-OD-ÖYÜ (the land of the sacred fire) transforming
into Ulu-ud-ia => Luddu => Ludia => Lydia, indicating a sunworshipping culture whose language originated from the AsiaticProto-language. By the 8th century BC the whole region of western
Anatolia came under Hellenistic influence and the languages of mostcity states became part of the Indo-European language group.
The origin of the Phrygians and the date of their appearance in
Anatolia is an issue still debated among scholars. The technique ofthe sun-disk is found to be similar to the objects found in thegraves of Susa, the capital of the ancient Elamite culture (seeChapter 18, Towards Sumer and Elam). Therefore, similar sun-god
symbols shared among eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamian andAnatolian cultures are clear indicators of their common Asiatic
origin.

References(1) Native Americans, Trudy Griffin-Pierce, Metro Books, page 111,
1996, NY - USA. (2) Ref. 3 of Chapter 1. (3) National geographic,

Turkish edition, January 2009, page 52. (4) Mysterious Women of
the Bronze Age, Yapı Kredi Cultural Activities, page 31, 2006,
Istanbul. (5) The Lydian Treasure, Republic of Turkey Ministry of
Culture publication, page 174, 1996, Istanbul.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Celts, Gaul and GalatiansDoç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENOn May 1891, peat cutters found a silver cauldron near the hamletof Gundestrup-Northern Denmark. The cauldron is presently
exhibited in the National Museum of Copenhagen (1). There are twoscenes on the cauldron which are of special interest to the subject
discussed in the previous chapter, The bird symbolism. One of themis the second picture from the left (below) in which a man is holding
a torque (torc) in his right hand and a snake in his left. A stag is
standing on his right side, a lion and a wild boar on his left. He issitting cross-legged and is wearing a torc around his neck, stag
antlers on his head. All these small but important details arepointing to the Asiatic Scythian (Saka) culture (see Chapter 4, The
Asiatic Scythians).
There is a clear similarity between the Indus Valley seal shown on
the right picture and the man of the Gundestrup cauldron. Both are
sitting cross-legged and both wear horns. The horn symbolism istypical for Central Asiatic ancient cultures and was transported to
the west and to the south by the As and Ok tribes (see map below).

The symbolism of the Gundestrup cauldron divulges another hidden
superstition of these ancient people. This is the belief that the rightside represents “the good and the positive” and the left side
represents “the evil and the negative”. We reach to such a
conclusion by noticing the position of the stag and the torc being on
his right side and the snake, the boar and the lion being on his left
side. Therefore, the torc was a positive binding symbol.

The woman on the third picture from the left is also wearing a torc.
She is holding a bird in her right hand and there are birds on eachside of her head, reminding the bird symbolism mentioned in theprevious chapter. The stag, the horns and the birds are symbols
used extensively by the Asiatic shaman cultures. The torc held in
the right hand of the man on the Gundestrup cauldron must have arather special and important meaning. Although we can not tell for
sure, we can guess that it represents a connection to the loose
federation of the Asiatic Tur-Oc tribes (see previous chapter 29). A
collar has always been and still is an object symbolizing ownership.
Below, we see some interesting objects such as collars, torques,
pectorals and bracelets from different parts of the world, pointing to
a common but forgotten shamanic culture.

1. Silver torc from Trichtingen South Germany. 2. Torc from Norfolk– England, mid first century BC. 3. A Celtic torc. The name “Celt” or“Kelt”, is transformed from “Kalat / Galat”. This name belonged toan ancient tribe residing in Galatia (Kalat-öyü), a region in Central
Anatolia. “Kalat” is formed from the root kal, meaning “stay” inTurkish. Therefore, the Kalat were people who came to Central
Anatolia and decided to stay. Present Istanbul has still a ward
named Galata. The Galatians migrated towards the west and foundthemselves speaking the same language with the north-western
tribes of Europe (2)We find a similar comment in ref. (1), strengthening the above
claim:
Ferdinand Drexel of the University of Frankfurt argued in 1915 thatthe cauldron had originated in southeast Europe, the nearest sourceof the requisite silverwork skills. This technological constraint was
the mainstay of Drexel’s contention that the cauldron was Thracianin origin.
Thracia, by the way, is a name transformed from Tur-Oc-öyü =>Turoc-ya => Thrakia and finally Thracia. The Turkish name of thisregion is still Trakya. 4. A vulture pectoral found on the head of amummy and wrongly interpreted as a crown (3). It is a rareexample of the “collar of the vulture” known from the coffin picturesof the Middle Kingdom (1565 BC to 1310 BC). The bird symbolism
had an important place in the belief system of ancient Egypt
representing the soul flying towards the realm of the sun-god (seeChapter 26, The African Expansion). Gold, with its yellow color has
been the preferred material of sun-worshiping cultures. 5. Goldbracelet from western-Iran dated 8th century BC. 6. Gold bracelet
from western Black Sea region (present Bulgaria). 7. A pair ofantelope bracelets with turquoise ears and hoofs from Altyn Tepe

(4). 8. The statue commissioned by Attalos around 230 BC tocelebrate his victory over the Kalat (Celtic Galatians) of Anatolia.
The statue is known as the “dying Gaul” with a mustache and a torc
around his neck (5), indicating that the Kalats (Galatians), the Kelts(Celts) and the Kol (Gaul, (6)) were all of Asiatic (Uighur) origin andwere speaking approximately the same language.
References(1) Scientific American, Timothy Taylor, March 1992, page 66. (2)Comentarii in Epistolam ad Galatos (Epistle to the Galatians), St.
Jerome (347-420 AD). It is mentioned that the Galatians of Anatolia
and the Celts of north-western Europe spoke the samelanguage. (3) Egyptian Civilization, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
publication, page 156, 2001. Japan. (4) Ref. 3 of Chapter 16, page72. (5) The statue is presently in Capitoline Museum, Rome –Italy. (6) Kol means “arm” in Turkish and defines a group of people
descending from a common ancestor, similar to the arm
extending from the main body.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Forgotten Past more
Forgotten Past more
A look on ancient History, Language and Architecture (Doç. Dr.
Haluk Berkmen)
All articles and pictures published under the title of Forgotten Past
are the exclusive property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be
copied and reproduced without his permission.
Hittite and SumerianDoç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENThe Hittites who lived in central Anatolia during the second
millennium BC spoke a language which is accepted as the first IndoEuropean language. However, the greater part of the Hittite
vocabulary is of non-Indo-European origin (1). In Hittite thelaryngeal (guttural) sounds originated from the Asiatic Protolanguage. For example, the “kh” sound is found in many words andshould be pronounced as “Okh”. The name Hittite was given to thislanguage by modern scholars as being the official language of theLand of Hatti; but it should be pronounced as Okh-At-ili. Since theHittite language was a monosyllabic language connected to theProto-language and to all Altaic languages, one should split thewords into its constituent phonemes. Okh means “arrow”, At means“horse” (2) and “il” means “The Land”, while “illi” means “from theland” or “belonging to the land”, therefore Okh-At-illi or Okh-At-ly
became Khattili => Hattili and finally Hittite. The suffix “-ly” is still
existing in Turkish meaning “mixed together”, giving a further
meaning to Okhatly “a mixture of Okh and At people”. It is mostprobable that “At” and “As” were names given to the same people
originating from western Asia. We find “At” and the suffix “-illi” inthe name of the Hun leader Atilla or Atilli.
The Hittites used two different scripts simultaneously. These were
the hieroglyphic and the cuneiform scripts. The cuneiform script was
adopted by the Hittites from the Accadians. This means that there
was a close relationship in both language and culture between the
Hittites and the Accadians. The name Accad becomes meaningfulwhen split into its constituents Acc (Okh) and Ad meaning “name”.
We get from Och-At = Okh-Ad => Akhad => Accad the meaningful
word “Okh name” a clear indication to the Och people. The
laryngeal “kh” changed in time and softened to a double-c.
The hieroglyphic script was mostly used to write in the Luwi
language and was the preferred script on monuments and seals.
The Luwi language is closely related to Hittite and is mentioned as
Luwili in Hittite texts. Luwili later on transformed into Lycian, whichbecame the language used by the south-Anatolian Lycians of theclassical epoch. Below left we see a stele inscribed with the Hittite
cuneiform script and on the right a portion of a wall inscribed withhieroglyphic script from Hattusas, Central Turkey (3).

In order to show the connection between Hittite and the Altaic
languages we need concrete examples obtained from written
original texts. There is a book published in 1980 by Ahmet Unal
discussing some Hittite phrases (4). We find many Sumerian words
in these sentences, which could either be borrowed from the ancient
Sumerian language of Mesopotamia or could also be independently
related to the Asiatic Proto-language. Here is one example:
Dingir-lim : My God. “Dingir” meaning “God” in Sumerian, alreadydiscussed in chapter 22, Egyptian Deities. “-lim” is a suffix still usedin Turkish as a possessive pronoun.
Kililu = Gilim : Wreath or Headdress. “Kyl” means “hair” or rather asingle thread of hair in Turkish. But “kylly” means “mixed withthreads of hair” (-ly is already mentioned above) and therefore theHittite word Kililu or Gilim is an appropriate definition for a wreathworn on the head.
Lu-Sang-a: To the holy priest. The first syllable stands for “holy”
and is found in Turkish as “ulu”, already mentioned in Chapter 29,
The bird symbolism. Sang means “respectful, important person”
and is found in Japanese as “san” and in Turkish as “sayın”. The
same meaning is found in “saint”. The suffix “-a” meaning “to the”
is still used in Turkish. Therefore, Lusanga means “to the saint”.
We see that Hittite is an agglutinant language similar to Altaic
languages containing several suffixes still existing in modern
Turkish. Such a sentence formation is not found in most IndoEuropean languages. These three words above are enough to
explain an original sentence obtained from a Hittite text:
DINGIR-LIM GILIM-an-zi LU-SANGA-ya GILIM-an-zi, which can betranslated as: “They adorn the god with a wreath and also thepriest (saint) with a wreath”. The “-zi” suffix makes the word
definite, similar to the English “is” or the German “ist”. In Turkish“iz” stands for the definite plural similar to “we are”.
Without going into further detail we can conclude that the Hittite
language forms a bridge between Altaic and western Indo-European
languages. The original connection between Hittite and Sumerian
can be traced back to the Proto-language of Asia from which
Turkish is the closest descendent. In order to be convinced of suchan ancient connection between Turkish and Sumerian here is a
short list of Sumerian words. The Turkish equivalent is given in red
and in brackets.
Father: Adda (ata, baba), Mother: Ama (anne, ana), Lord: Aga

(agha), Horizon: An (tan), Male: Ar(er), First: As (as), God: Dingir(Tengri), House: E (ev), Shore: Kıya (kıyı), Blow: Es (es), Fat:
Gisko (shishko), Upright: Dim (dik), Arm: Kol (kol), Sleep: Uiku
(Uyku), Bird: Kus (kush), Right side: Sag (sağ), Oak: Mesu
(meshe), Sheepfold: Ag (agıl), Large: En (en, engin), Come: Ge(gel), Blood: Ka (kan), Canal/Blood vessel: Kanal (kan damar),
Say: De (de, demek), Stop: Duru (dur), Settle: Kur (kur, kurgan),
Run: Kusu (kosh), Smile: Güles (gülech), Bore: Bur (burgu), Ax:
Bal (balta), Shine: Bar (barla/parla), String/Rope: İb (ip), Pretty:
Alım (alımlı), Holy: Ulu (ulu), Separate: Kup (kop), Who: Gim(kim), Soldier: Ir (er), Wood: Odun (odun/ot-un)
These 37 words form a small but important sample showing thateven after almost 5,000 years we can still find common words
between Turkish and Sumerian, containing the same sound and thesame meaning (5).
Turning our attention to the Sumerian architecture, we see thatpeople living on the flat prairies of Mesopotamia built stepped
pyramids called ziggurats. They built these high structures as
symbols replacing the mountains which lacked in their region. We
saw that this wish for high-rise architecture existed also among the
Maya and the Egyptians. The common architectural designs areanother sign of their common origin. Not only the Sumerians, butalso the Elamites who lived in south-western Iran built ziggurats(see Chapter 18, Towards Sumer and Elam).
Below-left we see the Sumerian ziggurat near Ur and the Elamite
ziggurat presently in Khuzestan, Choghazanbil - Western Iran.
Khuzestan is the region of Iran bordering Mesopotamia. This nameis clearly Ghuz-istan originally being Oghuz-istan or Oghuz-land,
clearly indicating that the ziggurat structures were built by the Ochpeople. Oguz means “we are the Och” (see Chapter 2,
Diversification of languages).
References(1) The Hittites, O. R. Gurney, Pinguin Books, page 119, 1976,
England. (2) See Chapter 12, The Anatolian expansion. (3) Atlas
Magazine (in Turkish), Jurgen Seeher, May 1999, page 88. (4) Hitit
Sarayindaki Entrikalar Hakkinda Bir Fal Metni, A. Unal, Ankara
University Publication, No: 343, page 82, 1983, Ankara, Turkey. (5)Sumer ve Turk Dillerinin Tarihi Ilgisi, Osman Nedim Tuna, TDK
Yayinlari, No: 561, 1990, Ankara, Turkey.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced

without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
From Orhun to CanaanDoç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
After the disappearance of the Hittite empire by 1,000 BC theCentral Anatolian city-states lost their important position. Insteadthe cities by the sea shores of western and southern Anatolia
became important and dominant. The two main reasons for thischange were the flourishing sea trade and the milder climaticconditions of the Mediterranean and Aegean costs.
There is a period of 500 years, from 1,000 BC to 500 BC, which isomitted in the history of Anatolia. This period of half a millennium ispart of the forgotten past. It is a period of transition during which
the Indo-European languages replaced almost all Altaic languagesof the region. By 500 BC the Greek language was the dominantlanguage of western and southern Anatolia, but few traces of theancient culture and language continued to exist as proper city
names and locations.
I have already mentioned in the previous chapter (Hittite andSumerian), that the Luwili language of Central Anatolia transformed
in time to Lycian of the southern coast. The ancient Egyptians referto the Lycians as the Lukka and mention them among the Sea
People.
Luwili is a name referring to Ulu-illi meaning “belonging to the holycity” in Altaic and Lukka is similarly the name of the Ulu-Ok “theholy Ok” people. Lukkia, can therefore be understood as meaning
Ulu-Ok-Öyü (the region of the holy Ok), which became Lycia or
Likia as time went by. On the map of Chapter 12, The Anatolian
expansion, we can see the region called Likia, located on thesouthern cost of present Turkey. The Lycian alphabet is accepted to
be a modified form of the Greek alphabet, but it is quite theopposite that actually happened. The Lycians, who were seafarers
were trading with the Phoenicians and brought the Pheonicianalphabet to southern Anatolia. The Phoenician alphabet wasadapted for writing an Afro-Asiatic language and did not fit Greek,
which is an Indio-European language. It was therefore modified firstby Lycians and then by the Greek speakers. But Poenician waspreceded by a script known as Proto-Phoenician. Below we see an
inscription in Proto-Phoenician, which is still a language not yet
deciphered (1).

There are certain letters in this script (encircled in blue) that arealmost identical to some of the characters of the Orhun Valley script(above right). The Orhun syllabary has been discussed in Chapter
21, The Orhun Valley Script. The general belief exists that the
Orhun script is an offshoot of the Phoenician alphabet. But, as
mentioned before, the Orhun script is not an alphabet it is asyllabary, furthermore, the evolution of writing systems started
from symbolic seals and after many trials finally reached the level ofphonetic letters. We already saw that the original location ofsymbolic seals has been Central Asia, from which the concept ofrecording thoughts dissipated in all directions.
Since all Afro-Asiatic languages are well known and thoroughly
investigated, how come that the Proto-Phoenician script still
remains as a non-deciphered enigma? The reason being that, mostprobably, the Proto-Phoenician script was designed for recording an
Altaic language that came to the region from the north (see Chapter
18, Towards Sümer and Elam). Trying to decipher the ProtoPhoenician with the help of the Semitic languages will be, to a large
extent, unsuccessful.
The Phoenician letters were originally Proto-Sinaitic pictographic
signs. They became letters after the concept of seal-writing came to
the region. Below we see the transformation of the letter A. It was
initially the picture of an ox-head (2). We already saw that the ox
was a symbol representing the Ok leader (see chapter 7, The
Minoan Culture). The bull symbolism came to the Eastern
Mediterranean region from both the south-east and also from thenorth. This is why the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet became
aleph, meaning ox, which is a stylized form of an ox head.

The ancient Hungarians had also a script very similar to the Orhun
Valley script. This script was not borrowed from the Greek script, asmany still believe, but originated from the Ural region. The Uraliclanguages developed from the bordering Altaic languages asmentioned in Chapter 2, Diversification of Languages.
Early Greek letter A was similar to both the Hungarian as well as to
the Phoenician aleph. This is because the ancient north-western
Anatolian region, where Asiatic Thracians settled, was a melting pot
of northern and southern cultures speaking languages thatoriginated from a common source. The Semitic people who
remained in the vicinity of Canaan did not adopt the Phoenician
aleph but selected to keep the Orhun character for “a” and “e”,
changing it as shown below.

Canaan was known as Kana’n or more understandably Khan’yn
meaning “belonging to the Khan” in Altaic. Languages spoken in
Canaan became extinct around the first millennium BC. They
included Phoenician, Punic, Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite andHebrew. Hebrew has been revived during the last century and ispresently the official language of Israel. Although the residents ofancient Ugaritic did not consider themselves as Canaanites, they
were the first to develop an alphabetical script and had a strong
influence on Canaanites, and especially on Phoenicians (see Chapter
20, The Ugaritic script). The reason for the disappearance of all
Canaanite languages, except Hebrew, needs to be investigated;because they make part of our forgotten past.
References(1) Ref. 3 of Chapter 19, page 164. (2) Idem, page 161.

"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Western AnatoliaDoç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
The cities on the coast of the Aegean Sea have been important
cultural centers during the Bronze Age which started around 3300
BC and lasted until the fall of Troia. There is a big misunderstanding
about Troia. Let mi immediately mention that this name is of Turkic
origin and means Tur-öyü “the region of the Tur people”. Tur-öyü
became Troia because the sound “u” did not exist in the Greek
language. Helmut Uhlig says (1):In the region of western Anatolia, or anywhere else, a city called
Troia never existed. This city was known as Ilion or Ilias in Greek
and therefore the epic was named Iliada by Homeros. Troia was thename of the region given by the inhabitants who definedthemselves as ‘living in Troia’. Heroes like Hektor and Priamos werethe leaders of this city.
It was mentioned before in Chapter 31, Hittite and Sumerian, that“il” means “city / land” in modern Turkish and is a root word in the
Proto-language. Therefore, Ilias becomes meaningful when split as
Ili-As “the city of the As”. The Turkish version would rather be “Asili” instead of Ili-As but this transposition does not affect its
meaning. We already saw that “As” refers to the Asiatic tribes and“on” means the universe (region) in the Proto-language (2). The
two hero names are also meaningful when split into theirconstituent phonemes. Hektor is no other than Okh-Tur, “the OkhTur”; again we find a transposition from Tuk-Okh (turk) andPriamos becomes meaningful when split as Bir-im-iz “one of us”,
where the original “b” sound changed to “p” and the suffix –iz
became –os. “Bir” became “Pri” and “Pro” in the Greek
pronunciation. It is interesting to note that these names have no
meaning in the Greek language. But ancient original names werealways meaningful. If we find a name without any meaning we canimmediately conclude that it is a borrowed name whose real
meaning is forgotten.
Troia (Ilion) was conquered on 1180 BC but archeological research
has uncovered several underlying layers of settlement dating backto 3,000 BC. The city was known as Willion by the Hittites. The
initial W is no other than an extended U (double-u), which comesfrom “ulu” (holy or sacred) (3). Therefore, Ulu-ili-on “the sacred
universal city” became Willion and later on changed to Filion andIlion.

The north-western Anatolian Troia region with its main ancient cities
is shown on the map above. Not far from Ilias / Ilion is the ancient
city of Assos, meaning As-is “belongs to the As”. Aristotle (384 BC –322 BC) lived in Assos for a certain time, but Assos existed long
before the 4th century BC.
On the island of Lemnos (above-right) an inscription was foundwhich is still not deciphered until today (4). This is because scholars
tried to decipher it with the help of Greek and Latin without any
success. As they could not find any meaning using these languages
they decided that it must be Etruscan; a language still notdeciphered. We saw that Etruscan can be understood with the help
Turkish (see Chapters 9 and 10).
The Lemnos script does not follow a given direction but is written in
the Boustrophedon style, where the first line is written from right toleft, the next line from left to right going in the opposite direction,
crisscrossing the page. Below is my own interpretation which starts
from the upper-right word and moves downwards in the opposite
direction, from left to right.
The first three words are shown below and their decipherment has
been carried out using the Orhun characters (see Chapter 21, The
Orhun script). Starting from the top-right end we can read the firstword As-ı Atası “the ancestor of the As”. We would say “As’ın atası”
in today’s modern Turkish. This word stands by its own as aheading, addressing the person whose figure is engraved.
Next line should be read from left to right as Kam As Abam “Theshaman father of the As”. The word for “my father” is “babam” inTurkish, but could also be pronounced as “aba” or “apa” depending
on different cultures. It became “papa” or “pater” in Greek andLatin. We could decipher the whole text in this manner but without
going in further detail, we conclude that this inscription from theLemnos Island becomes meaningful when tackled with the help of
the ancient Orhun alphabet and the Turkish language.

Another ancient city of Troia is a settlement known as Lysimakheia,
shown with the letter U on the map above (5). This name can be
expanded as Ulu-As-im-Okh-öyü, meaning “the region of my holy
As and Och”. A coin found in this site shows a man wearing ram
horns on the recto and a shaman woman on the verso.

The woman is most probably Athena, Asena or As-Ana “the As
mother”. The winged figurine in her right hand is a clear indicationof her shamanic powers. There is also an arrow pointing upwards
indicating mystical flights towards the sky (enlarged picture). The
word “Basileos” seen on the coin means “our ruler” or “our father /ancestor” since “Gios Basilis” means “father Christmas” in Greek.
Basili is also meaningful in Turkish when split as Bas-ili “thecontroller (ruler) of the region” (ili basan). This word changed to“Vassal”, a subordinate leader indicating that the ruler of the region
was under the protection of a powerful king.
The Lesbos island (Mitilini) was the location of the Amazon female
warriors. Herodotus claimed that they were speaking the samelanguage as the Scythians. The etymology of Amazon is clearly
Ama-As-On “the universal As mother”. It is known that they

founded many towns on the coasts of Anatolia. Amongst them are
Smyrna, Ephesus, Sinope and Paphos. The original name of Smyrna
was Hır-Ana meaning “virgin mother”. “Hır” is the Chuvash form of“kız” meaning “virgin girl”. This name suffered the following
transformations: Hır-Ana => Zmırana => Smyrna => İzmir.
In order to prevent their race from dying out, the Amazons raided
the neighboring tribes once a year in order to have sexual
relationship with men. The rest of the time they remained on
Lesbos and enjoyed each others company. This is how the female
homosexuality became to be known as lesbianism. Amazons weregreat fighters and expert horse riders. Below we see a vase with an
Amazon rider in Scythian costume.

References(1) Die Mutter Europas, Translated as: Avrupa’nın Anası Anadolu,
Helmut Uhlig, Telos publication, page 123. (2) See Chapter 6,
Universal Symbols and Chapter 12, The Anatolian Expansion. (3)See Chapter 10, Etruscan Inscriptions and Chapter 20, The Ugaritic
script. (4) The inscribed stele was found in a warrior’s tomb withweapons and pottery, which are similar to early Etruscan
designs. (5) Toplumsal Tarih dergisi (in Turkish), August 2007, No:
164, page 22.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
The Tangut Empire
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMEN
The western and northwestern regions of what is now China wasinhabited as early as the third millennium BC. These people wereknown under the name of ‘Qiang’ (1), a name clearly related to“Khang” meaning emperor or ruler (see Chapter 5, Climaticchanges). The Central Asiatic region where the ancient Qiang or
equivalently the ancient Uighur empire once resided became thesource of several subsequent states, such as the Tanguts, theTartars, the Tibetans, the Tuguhuns, the Xia, the Kushan, the Huns,
the Gökturks and many other names already mentioned in Chapter
1. These names are not listed chronologically because our maininterest is geared on cultural relationships than on historical events
based on linear time. They all belonged to a common Uighur
ancestry and spoke different but connected Altaic languages.
Below we see this vast region located in the center of Asia andKara-Khoto, the capital city of the Tangut empire, is presently
surrounded by deserts. The Tangut, before adopting Buddhism were
worshippers of the sky-god Tengri and shamanism was the main
spiritual belief system which served all ranks of their society, fromthe court to the common people.

Tangut is a name formed out of two syllables which can be split aseither Tang-kut meaning “sacred sunrise”, which became in time
Tangut or Ot-tang-ut meaning “originating from the fire”. Bothforms have the same meaning and point to a sun-worshipping
culture. The Tangut capital Kara-Khoto is also a meaningful Altaic
name since Kara means “land” but is actually formed with Ok-Ara
meaning “among the Ok”, while Khoto or Khutu means “thesacred”, therefore Kara-Khoto becomes “the sacred Ok land”. Even
today we find cities called Kara Su, Kara-Vartak, Kara-Teke, KaraŞahr and Kara-Hoca. There is also a mountain called Kara-Tagh inthe region.
The region where Kara-Khoto presently resides was oncesurrounded by rivers and lakes. It was located at the mouth of theriver Heishui and the Lake Juyan (see map below). The ancientneighboring towns were on the west Shazhou, Guazhou, Suzhou, on
the south Ganzhou and Gingha hui Lake, on the west the yellow
river. All these city names contain the phoneme “zhou” or “su”
which means “water” in Turkish. They are clear indications of a
fertile region with many waterways and lakes. Furthermore, thesedried-up lakes and rivers are vestiges of an ancient inland see
mentioned in Chapter 5, Climatic changes.
Below we see the dried-up lakes of the region surrounding KaraKhoto (underlined) on the left and the present situation of KaraKhoto on the right.

The Tangut state occupied a vast region in Central Asia, fromwestern China up to and including Tibet. Scholars in general believethat the culture of the Tangut was under the influence of theChinese and Tibetian Buddhism. But the Tangut, besides believing
in Buddhism did not forget their ancient sky and sun shamanic
religion. The Kara-Khoto collection of wall paintings (tankas)
contains no less than 26 images of the gods of planets andconstellations. If we consider that the Uighur tribes due to climaticchanges were forced to disperse in all directions many thousand
years ago, we can safely conclude that the cultural influences
originated from Central Asia and affected neighboring nations.
In Chapter 17, The Indus Valley script, it has been shown that there
is a clear correlation in the dressing style of the ancient Sumeriankings, the Indus Valley kings and the spiritual leader of present
Tibet, where the right arm is left uncovered. The same dressing
style is found among Buddhist monks of Kara-Khoto as shown in thetwo examples below (2).

References(1) Lost Empire of the Silk Road, Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation
publication, Edited by M. Piotrovsky, page 49, 1993, Milano,
Italy. (2) Idem, pages 107 and 117.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Kushan Empire
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENIn Chapter 25, From Kurgans to Pyramids the Kushite Empire wasmentioned and its name meaning “bird” in Turkish was questioned.
The reason being that, this word is found in languages that havebeen separated for very long periods of time. This word meaning“bird” is found as kus in the Sumerian language and as kutz in theMaya language (1). As no words could have been borrowed from
Sumerian to Mayan or vice-versa, the only logical explanation isthat Sumerian, Mayan and Turkish stem from a common root
language, which is the Asiatic Proto-language.
But there is one more clue supporting the Central Asiatic origin of
this word. This clue is found in the name of an Empire known as the
Kushan Empire, which lasted from the first to the third centuries
AD, but has a much ancient beginning. The Kushan name is clearlymade out two words Kush and Han meaning “bird” and “king”,
where “Han” is a late version of the “Khan” title used also forOttoman emperors.
The bird has been an important animal for ancient cultures,symbolizing the solar deity (see Chapter 29, The bird symbolism).
Below we see the territories controlled by the Kushan Empire. It
extended from western China on the east, to Bactria on the west
and included the Indus Valley as well as most of northern India.

In the name of the Hindu-Kush Mountains (shown on the map) we
can still find the connection between Hind (ancient India) and Kush(the Kushan Empire). The Kushan Empire included important
cultural centers such as Belh (Bactra), Kashgar, Kucha, Turfan andthe capital city Ghandara. The northern region of the ancient
Kushan Empire is defined nowadays as BMAC (see Chapter 16, The
south-west expansion). This vast region has been the land of the
Saka (As-Okh / Scythians), the Sarmatians, the Kushans and theAlans.
The people forming the Kushan Empire were descendents of theCentral Asiatic Yueh-chi or Yuezhi tribes who were nomads travelinglong distances. They even went up to the north-eastern regions ofAsia for fur trading. There are numerous theories about thederivation of the name Yuezhi. My own interpretation is that these
Asiatic people defined themselves as “superior”, a word pronounced
as Yuedje in Turkish. This meaning is quite possible considering thatthe difficult phoneme “dje” -not found in Chinese- has been
replaced, most probably, by the “zhi” sound, which is quite common
in Chinese.
There are several statues found in Ghandara indicating the dressing

style of the Kushan rulers. In the pictures below we see two such
examples where the right arm has been left uncovered. Luc
Kwanten says the following about this dressing habit (2):Uighur representations of Buddhist saints, like the Chinese, arealways clothed, whereas in the Gandhara style, at least one of theshoulders is naked.
This dressing style has already been identified among theSumerian, the Indus Valley kings and the spiritual leader of present
Tibet (see Chapter 17, The Indus Valley script).

An important Kushan ruler is known under the name Mahasena
Huvishka (circa 155 to 187 AD). The coin shown below belongs tothis king, but the letters stamped on the coin do not agree witheither Mahasena or Huvishka. I tried to read the stamped namewith the help of the ancient Turkish (Orhun) letters, as shown
below-right.

Except the two first letters H and a, which also are of Asiatic origin(3), the remaining letters on the coin perfectly agree with the
Orhun letters shown in red. The transcription then becomes“Hakantekin”, where Tekin or Tigin is a Turkish title given to minor
regional kings or princes.
At the Orhun Valley in Central Asia we have the Kül Tigin stele,
which is 3.35 m high and contains several lines of Turkish
inscriptions written with the Orhun characters. The scribe has added
his name at the end of the inscriptions as: Yollugh Tigin (4).
The coin above has two more interesting clues which are worth
mentioning. The first one is the bird held in the right hand of theking, a possible indication to “Kush-Han” (bird-king) and the nextclue is the pelerine wore by the king. We find a similar pelerine on
the young Saka (Scythian) prince (see Chapter 23, The Issık
kurgan).
References(1) For Sumerian see Chapter 31, Hittite and Sumerian, and forMayan see Chapter 27, Olmec, Toltec and Maya. (2) Chapter 1, Ref
5, page 57. (3) See Chapter 32, From Orhun to Canaan. (4)Chapter 21, Ref. 2, page XII.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
Dunghuang Manuscripts
Doç. Dr. Haluk BERKMENPaul Pelliot (1878 – 1945) was a French Sinologist who traveled to
the Inner Asian side of China during the early years of 1900. His
expedition started from Kucha where he found documents written in
the Kushan language (see Chapter 35, Kushan Empire). After
Kucha, Pelliot went to Urumqi (Urumchi), the present capital of the
Uighur Autonomous region. He finally reached Dunhuang on the 12of February 1908. The north-western part of China shown on themap below is the Uighur Autonomous Region, written as Xinjiang
but pronounced as Sincan. The ancient city of Dunhuang,
Dunghuang or Tung-Han shown below-right stands on the west of
Kara-Khoto and is within Sincan.

The name of Dunhuang is made out of Tung and Han, where Tungis, most probably, a twisted form of Tur-ung meaning “belonging to
the Tur” and Han is found in Chinese as Huang (see Chapter 5,
Climatic Changes). There is also an ethnic group in north-western
Asia known as the Tunguz. The Chinese call these people the Dong
Hu. The transformation from Tunguz to Dong Hu strengthens theregular relation between Tung-Han and Dunhuang.
In Dunhuang, Pelliot convinced the abbot Wang Yuanlu to let him
examine a room full of ancient manuscripts. The room containedsome 50,000 rolls written in a language which was unknown to theChinese. The abbot, who wanted to renovate the monastery sold6,000 of these rolls to Pelliot who carried them to France. Presently
these manuscripts can be found in 29 different museums of theworld. Below we see Paul Pelliot examining some manuscript in theroom where the rolls were stored on the left and a portion of an
original manuscript on the right.

The characters of these manuscripts are almost identical to the
Orhun syllabary mentioned in Chapter 21, The Orhun Script. Below
we see a short text transcribed from an original manuscript known
as Irk Bitig on the left and a portion of the Bilge Kagan stele on theright. Not only do the letters match each other, but also the words
are separated by two superimposed dots in both scripts, pointing to
a common style of writing (1). We can therefore conclude that themanuscripts were written by a Turkic speaking cultureIrk Bitig is a small book whose dimensions are 13X8 cm. It contains
104 pages and 65 paragraphs. The book is a narrative of the epics
of Asiatic people and also contains portions of fables andsoothsaying. It is presently exhibited in the British Museum.
The above portion of the book is telling about a gathering,celebrating the leadership of Ata-Utuk. Such celebrations werealways followed by a round of mare drink known as “Kimiz”. Each
person drank a sip from the same container specially designed forsuch occasions (see Chapter 15, The Sacred horn) and promised
solidarity to their leader.
Drinking in ancient times, when written documents were not so
widespread as today, was a way of sealing a promise. It meant: “Iinternalize and unite with these words agreeing to never break mypromise”. We find many statues in Central Asia of a person holding
a drinking vessel. Similar statues and relief have been found inremote places, wherever these people migrated. Several such
examples will be discussed in the next chapter.
References(1) Left: Eski Türk Yazıtları, Hüseyin Namık Orkun, page 289, Türk
tarih Kurumu, No: 529, 1986, Ankara, Turkey. Right: Ref. 2 ofChapter 21, The Orhun script.
"All articles and pictures published in this page are the exclusive
property of Haluk Berkmen. They cannot be copied and reproduced
without his permission. If you want to get his permission, pleasecontact us".
	  http://www.uyghurpen.org