Count Hayahsi, Japanese Minister Of State, 1908 (Ainu)
Count Komuka, Japanese Ambassador To Britian, 1908 (Yayoi, Mongol ancestory)
Posted on 10/10/2002 5:43:05 PM PDT by blam
Sand-covered Huns city unearthed
10/08/2002
XI'AN: Chinese archaeologists recently discovered a unique, ancient city which has lain covered by desert sands for more than 1,000 years.
It is the first ruined city of the Xiongnu (Huns) ever found, said Dai Yingxin, a well-known Chinese archaeologist. The Xiongnu was a nomadic ethnic group, who for 10 centuries were tremendously influential in northern China.
The unearthed city occupies 1 square kilometre in Jingbian County, in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, adjacent to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north of the country.
It is believed that the city was built by more than 100,000 Xiongnu people in AD 419. Named "Tongwancheng," which means "to unify all countries," the city is composed of three parts: the palace walls, the inner city and the outer city. Watchtowers stand at the four corners of the complex.
The 16 to 30 metre thick city walls are made with sand and white-powdered earth, mixed with glutinous rice water. This intriguing concoction made the earthen walls as hard as those made from stone.
From a distance, the white city looks like a giant ship. The southwestern turret, the highest of the four, is 31 metres high and resembles a ship's mast. The ruined city is now fenced with brush-wood, trees and grass.
"It is the most substantial, magnificent and well-preserved city to be built by any ethnic group in the history of China," said Zhu Shiguang, president of the China Ancient City Society.
Tongwancheng used to be a prosperous city on the upper reach of the Wuding River, a major tributary of the Yellow River. It remained the political, economic and military centre of the southern Ordos Plateau for over five centuries. It was as the river continued to dry up, that the ancient city was buried by moving sands, said Xing Fulai, a research fellow at the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology.
Its discovery provides vital information for the study of the Xiongnu tribesmen, who have, to date, remained a mystery to both Chinese and foreign archaeologists because of a lack of adequate historical material and evidence relating to their culture.
Xing said the city ruins will be considered for world heritage status by UNESCO.
Xinhua
Exactly. Because most of us are Eurpoean in origin, we have a pretty good grasp of the history as it involves Europeans in that area.
Most are unaware that there is a equally interesting 'mix' on the other side of the Tarim Basin in China. The Han/Hakka/European mix migrated all the way from that region to southern China, Korea and Japan, where they encountered and mixed with the Ainu. (Some would say that they are the Ainu but, I believe the Ainu came across in an earlier wave.)
Count Hayahsi, Japanese Minister Of State, 1908 (Ainu)
Count Komuka, Japanese Ambassador To Britian, 1908 (Yayoi, Mongol ancestory)
Yayoi
The Jomon culture, in essence a Mesolithic culture (although they display Neolithic traits, such as pottery-making), thrived in Japan from the eleventh century to the third century B.C., when it was displaced by a wave of immigrants from the mainland. These were the Yayoi, and their origins lay in the north of China. Northern China was originally a temperate and lush place full of forests, streams, and rainfall. It began to dry out, however, a few thousand years before the common era. This dessication, which eventually produced one of the largest deserts in the world, the Gobi, drove the original inhabitants south and east. These peoples pushed into Korea and displaced indigenous populations. Eventually, these new settlers were displaced by a new wave of immigrations from northern China and a large number of them crossed over into the Japanese islands. For this reason, the languages of the area north of China, the language of Korea, and Japanese are all in the same family of languages according to most linguists. Because Mongolian (spoken in the area north of China) is also part of this language family and because the Mongolians conquered the world far to the west, this means that the language family to which Japanese belongs is spoken across a geographical region from Japan to Europe. The westernmost language in this family is Magyar, spoken in Hungary, and the easternmost language in this family is Japanese.
The Yayoi brought with them agriculture, the working of bronze and iron, and a new religion which would eventually develop into Shinto (which wasn't given this name until much, much later). While we don't know what these immigrations did to the indigenous peoples, there are several possibilities. According to one theory, which is widely accepted in Japan, the waves of Yayoi immigrants were very small. While they brought new technologies with them, they were nevertheless assimilated into the native Jomon culture. By this account, Japanese culture, particularly as it is represented by the Shinto religion, is very ancient and indigenous Japan. Some Japanese believe that the Jomon spoke an Austronesian language, that is, that the Jomon were more closely related to south Pacific islanders and that Japanese is still largely a Pacific island language. In the West, historians believe that the Yayoi displaced the indigenous Jomon and thus ended their culture permanently. The Yayoi displaced the indigenous language, social patterns, and religion of the original inhabitants. In this view, Japanese culture is a foreign import deriving ultimately from the north of China and ancient Korea, a view that is not popular among the modern Japanese.
I wonder, how common is the souterrain-type construction which may or may not have been Pictish? I am aware of it in the British Isles and in Armenia (where belowground tyoe dwellings existed untill relatively recent times)- I would assume it occured elsewhere in the world.
Ainu Man
Pacific Islanders as in "Maori" or "Samoans",or Pacific Islanders as in "Polynesians" like Hawiians?
Anybody know anything about the origin of the Samoans and those other huge Pacific Islanders? What about the original inhabitants of Easter Island?
This may have been Noah's Flood (Ryan & Pittman).
The whole area around the Black Sea at that time was very arid and the Proto-Celtic fishermen and 'irrigation' farmers would have been terribly stressed when the fresh water 'lake' was converted to salt water. They would have had to flee/migrate. The map illustrates possible migrations that ocurred during that period.
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