|
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 point of
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 else and 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 of
Sumer 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
of civilization for a very long span of time.
It is therefore important to start from Asia and to
investigate the proto-language spoken many thousand years ago.
The result of the forthcoming 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 architectural evidences. 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 southern
boundary 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 this region 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 the offspring 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 is because a name is immediately linked
to a certain time period and subjective feelings of possession
trigger unending controversies. The approximate starting date
of the Ancient Uighur Empire, or more 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 the sea due to some cataclysmic disaster,
people of this culture migrated to distant locations of the
world. Their largest and most important colonial empire was
the Ancient Uygur Empire, the Empire of the Sun. Churchwald
claims: “Next to Mu herself, the Uighur Empire was the
largest empire the world has ever known”(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 all over 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 and northeastern Asia and destroyed several Uighur
cities and settlements, drowning most of the inhabitants, and
burying or destroying almost all architectural structures. The
main reason of that flood was the melting of the glaciers,
extending over almost all of northern regions of Asia and
Europe.
The flood
brought some alkaline deposits that resulted in transforming
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
publication of
Philip L. Kohl
et. al.
(3)
it is said:
“A striking example of changes in Central Asian topography is
provided 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 alluvium in natural depressions.
Physically they form smooth, bare, thin and hard 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 was a 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-right side of the map. Although, not indicated on this
map a vast internal lake –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 the people
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. This
people is said to be descended from the ancient Uighur nation
that was 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, and Hun.
(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 by James Churchwald
was another
name given to the imperial nomads of Asia. Some of the above
names are different pronunciations or adaptations belonging to
different neighboring nations. It is a well known 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 many
cases, were twisted almost beyond recognition. In his book
Luc
Kwanten
says:
“The
Hsiung-nu was not the first organized state on the steppe, for
it appears to have built upon a pre-existing, but unknown,
tradition. Only archeological evidence attests to the
historical existence of earlier 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
linguistically connected people. The history of these people
is the history of humanity, the history of the
Forgotten
Past. |