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Hunor és Magyar: Brothers or Fantasy?
- Thread starter Vrylakas
- Start date
Part I: (Some editing involved, for reasons of space.)
Written by Vrylakas:
The Huns did not develop in the Black Sea area; they enter history in the 3rd century B.C. as the Hsiong-nu who harassed the nascent Qin Dynasty of China, living just north of modern Beijing.
No, they didn't originate there. I am relucant to mention the White Stag (which led them into Crimea), as it is so heatedly debated, but I am sure that the Huns and Hungarians had Mesopotamian roots, as evidenced by the similarities in the languages, both in the alphabet used (the Rovás writing. I can scan in the alphabet in case you're interested.) and the vocabulary shared between the Hungarians and Sumerians (as discovered by Sir Leonard Wooley). At any rate, the Huns did become a power in Asia third century, but only later entered Europe, which is the topic at hand.
A few notes:
1. Mesopotamian/Sumerian origins: Ive tried to find credible evidence emphasis on credible - to back your claims that Hungarians and Huns derive from the Sumerians, and I can find none. I did find a few websites, all Hungarian in origin, touting this view but none provided direct professional citations and none were written by historians, linguists or archaeologists. Checking in my own books, I find a possible link between the so-called Ural-Altaic language family (more on that later) and ancient Elamite and Sumerian, but the professional linguists are still not convinced enough evidence exists to support this. A couple relevant points:
A.
B. As several paleo-linguists point out, we know desperately little about Sumerian. We have museums full of Sumerian cuneiform tablets, but few are complete and even the very first examples of Sumerian writing we have, from 2600 B.C., are signed by non-Sumerians, which means they were not writing in their native language. I know there is a huge growth industry today in learning Sumerian, but professional linguists know we have too little information about the spoken language and much of what we do know has been bled through our approximate understandings and biases about (what we understand to be) the cultural environment Sumerian developed. The linguist and specialist in Sumerology, Piotr Michalowski, dissects our critically distorted understanding of ancient Sumerian in the following way:
There is also the following quote by the linguist Peter T. Daniels, which is his response to a question posed on the UCLA website section Ask a Linguist:
I dont want to belabor the point but it is nonetheless important, for if the professional Sumerologists are saying that our understanding of the Sumerian language is tenuous at best, what should I think of those Hungarian poets and journalists who claim to have found decisive proof of a link between Hungarian, Hunnic and ancient Sumerian? I have more in this vein but I think Ive made my point. We simply do not know enough about Sumerian to be making such wild claims.
2. but I am sure that the Huns and Hungarians had Mesopotamian roots, as evidenced by the similarities in the languages, [ ] and the vocabulary shared between the Hungarians and Sumerians (as discovered by Sir Leonard Wooley).
Ive already addressed the similarities to Sumerian aspect of your argument, but now to turn to the supposed similarities between Hungarian (or lets rather say Magyar, to distinguish between the pre-Conquest Hungarian and the post-, which imbibed a huge lexical influence from its European neighbors). As I mentioned earlier, we have only snippets of the Hunnic language, and most of that from the Huns neighbors (i.e., from non-native Hun-speakers). This has given us some confidence in pegging Hunnic as an eastern Turkic language, but little else. I will repeat the already-mentioned phrase that I read once concerning the Hunnic languages: We do not know how Attila pronounced his name, because we have no Hunnic sources describing it; only foreign, non-Hun sources. How can a detailed linguistic comparison be made between Magyar and Hunnic if Hunnic is a virtually unknown commodity? Which brings us to the next step in your argument, the Rovás script:
3. A. Rovás was not an alphabet, it was a runic script. Ancient Magyar and Hunnic were not written languages, despite the Rovás script. The ancient world was brimming with runic scripts. The difference between a runic script and an alphabet is that while an alphabet is merely a symbolic representation of any given languages phonetic tool kit, a runic script is a set of symbols, loosely tied to language but imbued with magical and ritualistic purposes. Runes were not used to convey written messages at least not to fellow humans but to bridge a mystical communication gap between the physical and the spirit realms. This means that runes were not used for things like purchase receipts, law codes or contracts. Also, since their use was heavily ritualized, so too was the language applied in their use, so that often runic scripts did not even have all the sounds their connected language could make simply because certain sounds just werent needed. This means that whats written in a runic script message may not reflect the actual spoken language. Theres been much written about runic scripts but most of course concentrates on the popular Nordic and Celtic runes.
B. Rovás was indeed used by the Magyars and the Huns but by many other groups in the Caucasus and Black Sea areas as well. There was a highly culturally intense area of action in the Steppe area throughout the 1st millennium A.D. and to try to claim ethnic or cultural exclusivity among any given group in this area and era is quite academically dangerous, if not outright doubtful. The common use of Rovás runic script by the Magyars and Huns is no more proof the two peoples are related than the common use of the Latin alphabet today between modern Hungarians and Basques.
4. (as discovered by Sir Leonard Wooley) ; Sir Leonard Wooley, whom I mentioned before, an ENGLISHMAN, said Hungary was a "direct derivation" of Sumerian culture.
I have one of C. Leonard Woolleys books, The Sumerians, and have read two others of his; Ur of the Chaldees and A Forgotten Kingdom and have never read any such wild statement from him. In fact, given his very careful approach to his subject, as the existence of Sumer as the oldest human civilization was not a popularly accepted reality in his day, I would find it very out of character for him to be speculating about Sumerian connections to modern peoples especially since he was just beginning to scratch the surface of the study of Sumeria. Also, I did several Google searches on his name and Hungarian and Magyar and came up completely empty. I checked out a couple online bios and while some listed several of the languages he is known to have spoken, none listed Hungarian among them. Again, Sir L. Woolley was walking an academic tightrope with his theory of a Sumerian civilization, and I find it difficult to believe that he would be willing to potentially undermine his own credibility and reputation by making outlandish connections between Sumerians and peoples (Hungarians) he knew almost nothing about. I may indeed be wrong, but please provide a reference with the page of the given book where I can read Woolley in his own words make these statements.
In any event, part of the Huns split off and moved northwestward in the late 1st century A.D... these Huns exploded into the western Steppe by attacking the Alans, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. This is the time we begin to see Huns along the Black Sea shore, many centuries after their inception along the northern Chinese cultural periphery.
Written by Vrylakas:
The Huns did not develop in the Black Sea area; they enter history in the 3rd century B.C. as the Hsiong-nu who harassed the nascent Qin Dynasty of China, living just north of modern Beijing.
No, they didn't originate there. I am relucant to mention the White Stag (which led them into Crimea), as it is so heatedly debated, but I am sure that the Huns and Hungarians had Mesopotamian roots, as evidenced by the similarities in the languages, both in the alphabet used (the Rovás writing. I can scan in the alphabet in case you're interested.) and the vocabulary shared between the Hungarians and Sumerians (as discovered by Sir Leonard Wooley). At any rate, the Huns did become a power in Asia third century, but only later entered Europe, which is the topic at hand.
A few notes:
1. Mesopotamian/Sumerian origins: Ive tried to find credible evidence emphasis on credible - to back your claims that Hungarians and Huns derive from the Sumerians, and I can find none. I did find a few websites, all Hungarian in origin, touting this view but none provided direct professional citations and none were written by historians, linguists or archaeologists. Checking in my own books, I find a possible link between the so-called Ural-Altaic language family (more on that later) and ancient Elamite and Sumerian, but the professional linguists are still not convinced enough evidence exists to support this. A couple relevant points:
A.
- from the website http://ragz-international.com/sumerian_language.htm, which includes a decent bibliography of Sumerian linguistic works on the bottom
B. As several paleo-linguists point out, we know desperately little about Sumerian. We have museums full of Sumerian cuneiform tablets, but few are complete and even the very first examples of Sumerian writing we have, from 2600 B.C., are signed by non-Sumerians, which means they were not writing in their native language. I know there is a huge growth industry today in learning Sumerian, but professional linguists know we have too little information about the spoken language and much of what we do know has been bled through our approximate understandings and biases about (what we understand to be) the cultural environment Sumerian developed. The linguist and specialist in Sumerology, Piotr Michalowski, dissects our critically distorted understanding of ancient Sumerian in the following way:
- Published in Acta Sumerologica, but available online at the University of Michigan (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~piotrm/DIGLOS~1.htm) website. (The italics in the quote are mine.)
There is also the following quote by the linguist Peter T. Daniels, which is his response to a question posed on the UCLA website section Ask a Linguist:
- http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1998.1/msg00407.html (Again, my italics added.)
I dont want to belabor the point but it is nonetheless important, for if the professional Sumerologists are saying that our understanding of the Sumerian language is tenuous at best, what should I think of those Hungarian poets and journalists who claim to have found decisive proof of a link between Hungarian, Hunnic and ancient Sumerian? I have more in this vein but I think Ive made my point. We simply do not know enough about Sumerian to be making such wild claims.
2. but I am sure that the Huns and Hungarians had Mesopotamian roots, as evidenced by the similarities in the languages, [ ] and the vocabulary shared between the Hungarians and Sumerians (as discovered by Sir Leonard Wooley).
Ive already addressed the similarities to Sumerian aspect of your argument, but now to turn to the supposed similarities between Hungarian (or lets rather say Magyar, to distinguish between the pre-Conquest Hungarian and the post-, which imbibed a huge lexical influence from its European neighbors). As I mentioned earlier, we have only snippets of the Hunnic language, and most of that from the Huns neighbors (i.e., from non-native Hun-speakers). This has given us some confidence in pegging Hunnic as an eastern Turkic language, but little else. I will repeat the already-mentioned phrase that I read once concerning the Hunnic languages: We do not know how Attila pronounced his name, because we have no Hunnic sources describing it; only foreign, non-Hun sources. How can a detailed linguistic comparison be made between Magyar and Hunnic if Hunnic is a virtually unknown commodity? Which brings us to the next step in your argument, the Rovás script:
3. A. Rovás was not an alphabet, it was a runic script. Ancient Magyar and Hunnic were not written languages, despite the Rovás script. The ancient world was brimming with runic scripts. The difference between a runic script and an alphabet is that while an alphabet is merely a symbolic representation of any given languages phonetic tool kit, a runic script is a set of symbols, loosely tied to language but imbued with magical and ritualistic purposes. Runes were not used to convey written messages at least not to fellow humans but to bridge a mystical communication gap between the physical and the spirit realms. This means that runes were not used for things like purchase receipts, law codes or contracts. Also, since their use was heavily ritualized, so too was the language applied in their use, so that often runic scripts did not even have all the sounds their connected language could make simply because certain sounds just werent needed. This means that whats written in a runic script message may not reflect the actual spoken language. Theres been much written about runic scripts but most of course concentrates on the popular Nordic and Celtic runes.
B. Rovás was indeed used by the Magyars and the Huns but by many other groups in the Caucasus and Black Sea areas as well. There was a highly culturally intense area of action in the Steppe area throughout the 1st millennium A.D. and to try to claim ethnic or cultural exclusivity among any given group in this area and era is quite academically dangerous, if not outright doubtful. The common use of Rovás runic script by the Magyars and Huns is no more proof the two peoples are related than the common use of the Latin alphabet today between modern Hungarians and Basques.
4. (as discovered by Sir Leonard Wooley) ; Sir Leonard Wooley, whom I mentioned before, an ENGLISHMAN, said Hungary was a "direct derivation" of Sumerian culture.
I have one of C. Leonard Woolleys books, The Sumerians, and have read two others of his; Ur of the Chaldees and A Forgotten Kingdom and have never read any such wild statement from him. In fact, given his very careful approach to his subject, as the existence of Sumer as the oldest human civilization was not a popularly accepted reality in his day, I would find it very out of character for him to be speculating about Sumerian connections to modern peoples especially since he was just beginning to scratch the surface of the study of Sumeria. Also, I did several Google searches on his name and Hungarian and Magyar and came up completely empty. I checked out a couple online bios and while some listed several of the languages he is known to have spoken, none listed Hungarian among them. Again, Sir L. Woolley was walking an academic tightrope with his theory of a Sumerian civilization, and I find it difficult to believe that he would be willing to potentially undermine his own credibility and reputation by making outlandish connections between Sumerians and peoples (Hungarians) he knew almost nothing about. I may indeed be wrong, but please provide a reference with the page of the given book where I can read Woolley in his own words make these statements.
In any event, part of the Huns split off and moved northwestward in the late 1st century A.D... these Huns exploded into the western Steppe by attacking the Alans, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. This is the time we begin to see Huns along the Black Sea shore, many centuries after their inception along the northern Chinese cultural periphery.
Part II:
I am led to believe, based on Pekár Gyula's research in the 1920's, that the Huns and Hungarians, upon leaving Mesopotamia (White Stag or not) and wandered for a bit before settling in Crimea. During this time, they were a wandering tribe, not a real nation or the fearsome army that they became. They, according to almost all our sources, did go to China, and inspired the wall, then went back the way they came, "exploding into the Steppes."
The only possible and the word possible is a great stretch indeed here between the Magyars and Huns, and Sumerian Mesopotamia is based on he theory that links Ural-Altaic language group with Sumerian. This theory has some serious flaws and is accepted by only a narrow group of linguists, almost all of them Hungarians or Turks both groups trying desperately to connect their histories with ancient (perceived) glories.
As the linguist Robert Austerlitz points out (below), were not even able to conclusively establish that there is an Altaic side to the Ural-Altaic language group, or whether there is a real relationship between the Uralic and Altaic sides of this supposed language family:
This brings up the larger question of whether Hungarian is at all related to Turkish, and Ill let Joseph F Foster, Ph D of the University of Cincinnati answer, as he replied to the Ask a Linguist section of the website www.linguisticlist.org. BTW, he supplies a nice little sobriquet at the end that nicely sums up my own approach
There is a partial truth here, but not completely. The Huns after Attila's death did indeed split up with some accepting Byzantine hospitality and settling in what is today Bulgaria (Moesia) but the group that moved eastward did not maintain unity. Quite the opposite in fact; it split into two main groups, the Kutrigur Huns and the Uturgur Huns. The Kutrigur settled around the Sea of Azov, while the Uturgur established themselves at the mouth of the Don River. These groups fought each other incessantly, until both were destroyed by the Avars in the late 6th century. Note that neither were anywhere near the Urals. The survivors of the Avar onslaught were absorbed into the new Avar empire which was marching steadily westward, towards of course the Danube Basin where it would hold sway until being destroyed by Charlemagne in the late 8th century.
I have no knowledge of this, or any record. May I ask where you got this from?
Certainly. The source in particular I was using was the René Grousset book The Empire of the Steppes, a History of Central Asia (Translated from the French by Naomi Walford), Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ) 1970, ISBN:-8135-1304-9. The pages 19-79 deal primarily with the Huns, with the last few (78-80) being the first to mention the Kutrigur and Uturgur Huns, but if you look in the index youll find that both (listed separately from Huns) have another 8 entries mentioning them. I also recommend a simple Google search on these names; you should be able to pull up a reputable pages. I found some detailing their destruction by the Avars this way.
History does not record anything more of the so-called "western Huns" (i.e., those who fled westward to the Aral Sea in the 1st century).
Hungarian history dictates that they settled down in Erdély, Transylvania. More on this later.
Correction: Székely tradition dictates that the Huns settled in Transylvania. BIG difference. It is indeed well-established that some Huns did settle down in the Balkans (guests of the Byzantines) but the theory that the Székely may be the remnants of the Huns is not widely accepted. Your where theres smoke theres fire analogy for mythology does not hold academic water, Im afraid. There are many early Polish myths and traditions, many quite contradictory, about the origins of Poles, but to put stock in them simply because at some time many Poles believed in them is absurd. One tradition, BTW, that gained much political steam at the end of the 19th century claimed that Poles were actually lightly-Slavicized Sarmatians, proud Steppe warriors who conquered the local Slavs and were eventually assimilated like the Bulgarians this despite the fact that linguists have found no greater Iranian linguistic influence in Polish or the early Lechitic languages than in any of the other Slavic languages. The belief in this Sarmatian theory has more to do with Polish political and social circumstances in the 19th century than ancient history
I am led to believe, based on Pekár Gyula's research in the 1920's, that the Huns and Hungarians, upon leaving Mesopotamia (White Stag or not) and wandered for a bit before settling in Crimea. During this time, they were a wandering tribe, not a real nation or the fearsome army that they became. They, according to almost all our sources, did go to China, and inspired the wall, then went back the way they came, "exploding into the Steppes."
The only possible and the word possible is a great stretch indeed here between the Magyars and Huns, and Sumerian Mesopotamia is based on he theory that links Ural-Altaic language group with Sumerian. This theory has some serious flaws and is accepted by only a narrow group of linguists, almost all of them Hungarians or Turks both groups trying desperately to connect their histories with ancient (perceived) glories.
As the linguist Robert Austerlitz points out (below), were not even able to conclusively establish that there is an Altaic side to the Ural-Altaic language group, or whether there is a real relationship between the Uralic and Altaic sides of this supposed language family:
- http://members.tripod.com/~Yukon_2/language2.html
This brings up the larger question of whether Hungarian is at all related to Turkish, and Ill let Joseph F Foster, Ph D of the University of Cincinnati answer, as he replied to the Ask a Linguist section of the website www.linguisticlist.org. BTW, he supplies a nice little sobriquet at the end that nicely sums up my own approach
(Italics added, as usual.)
There is a partial truth here, but not completely. The Huns after Attila's death did indeed split up with some accepting Byzantine hospitality and settling in what is today Bulgaria (Moesia) but the group that moved eastward did not maintain unity. Quite the opposite in fact; it split into two main groups, the Kutrigur Huns and the Uturgur Huns. The Kutrigur settled around the Sea of Azov, while the Uturgur established themselves at the mouth of the Don River. These groups fought each other incessantly, until both were destroyed by the Avars in the late 6th century. Note that neither were anywhere near the Urals. The survivors of the Avar onslaught were absorbed into the new Avar empire which was marching steadily westward, towards of course the Danube Basin where it would hold sway until being destroyed by Charlemagne in the late 8th century.
I have no knowledge of this, or any record. May I ask where you got this from?
Certainly. The source in particular I was using was the René Grousset book The Empire of the Steppes, a History of Central Asia (Translated from the French by Naomi Walford), Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ) 1970, ISBN:-8135-1304-9. The pages 19-79 deal primarily with the Huns, with the last few (78-80) being the first to mention the Kutrigur and Uturgur Huns, but if you look in the index youll find that both (listed separately from Huns) have another 8 entries mentioning them. I also recommend a simple Google search on these names; you should be able to pull up a reputable pages. I found some detailing their destruction by the Avars this way.
History does not record anything more of the so-called "western Huns" (i.e., those who fled westward to the Aral Sea in the 1st century).
Hungarian history dictates that they settled down in Erdély, Transylvania. More on this later.
Correction: Székely tradition dictates that the Huns settled in Transylvania. BIG difference. It is indeed well-established that some Huns did settle down in the Balkans (guests of the Byzantines) but the theory that the Székely may be the remnants of the Huns is not widely accepted. Your where theres smoke theres fire analogy for mythology does not hold academic water, Im afraid. There are many early Polish myths and traditions, many quite contradictory, about the origins of Poles, but to put stock in them simply because at some time many Poles believed in them is absurd. One tradition, BTW, that gained much political steam at the end of the 19th century claimed that Poles were actually lightly-Slavicized Sarmatians, proud Steppe warriors who conquered the local Slavs and were eventually assimilated like the Bulgarians this despite the fact that linguists have found no greater Iranian linguistic influence in Polish or the early Lechitic languages than in any of the other Slavic languages. The belief in this Sarmatian theory has more to do with Polish political and social circumstances in the 19th century than ancient history
Part III:
Hun records and legends"? Problem: The Huns were an illiterate people who left no records. Linguists today argue over the early splits in the Altaic languages largely because they - the Huns among them - left no written evidence of their languages.
I was actually referring to the oral records and legends, as passed down through the -- yup, Székely people. Again, more on these later.
Been there, done that. Mythology is just that, mythology. However, now would be a good time to bring up the Hungarian historian Gyula Kristó and his 1996 book Hungarian History in the Ninth Century (published in both English and Hungarian, by the Szegedi Középkorász Mühely but through the MTA and with input from the Hungarian departments of Rutgers University in NJ and the University of Minnesota). Kristó devotes an entire chapter, Chapter VI (pages 71-84), to The Hun Tradition of the Hungarians. In short, he doesnt buy it and he laboriously re-creates the arguments of those who have touted this theory, and shows how weak their arguments are academically. Some he shows to be quite random. He shoots down the Csaba myth (the Onogur Bulgar Kuvrats 4th son, Kuber being cited as the Csaba by Dezsô Dümmerth), the myth of the Arpads being related to Attila directly (some very creative family trees being drawn there), the so-called Sword of Attila, the turul, the issue of why the Byzantines referred to the Magyars as Turkoi or Sabiri (Turks) but Slavs, Goths and other Turkic groups who all had greater contact with the Magyars - did not. He also mentions that a Hun tradition cannot be found in Hungary prior to the 12th century, that in fact its origins came not initially from Hungary but from various sources in Western Europe and Byzantium, gathering steam in the 12 and 13th centuries to the crowning fabrications by Simon Kézai and Anonymous. On the Székely, Prof. Kristó says (after hashing out some linguistic evidence) that they are probably wayward Onogurs or Turkics who lived among the eastern Black Sea communities (whose culture was common to many Steppe communities including the Huns) and brought those traditions to the Balkans where they were Magyarized. Thats as close to a Hun as the modern Hungarians are gonna get.
(Hungarian historical information, up to establishment of nation)
Nice. Didn't know all the detalis of that. Can I have your source?
Thats a compendium of about a decades worth of study.
But I highly recommend Kristós book (listed above), as well as the Fodor István (my favorite!) book and for references sake the MTAs two volume Magyarország Története, Elôzmények és Magyar Történet 1242-ig. For a more peripheral view, take a look at Jean W. Sedlars Vol. III of the series A History of East Central Europe, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, which describes the conquest. For a Slavic view of the conquest (as the Magyars destroyed the Slavic Moravian empire), see John V.A. Fine, Jr.s first volume, the Early Balkans, a Critical Survey from the Sixth to the late Twelfth Century. For a view of how the Honfoglaló has been distorted by modern political and social needs, see John Lukács great book, Budapest 1900.
Well, the Magyars did not follow the Huns as there were no Huns to follow by the late 9th century.
Well, the legends say there were, the Huns returning to the Hungarians in the Urals and the Székelys remaining behind. According to legend.
Yes, according to legend
This is a highly controversial theory, that the Székely were descended from the Huns who fled southward, and by no means accepted widely by modern Hungarian historians. There are many other theories as well, ranging from the Székely being fellow Ugric travellers to being simply Hungarians displaced by medieval land redistribution and re-settled in the frontier regions as border guards (i.e., "szék-ely"), in typical medieval fashion.
True, today this theory is being more and more rejected. But I have an innate suspicion of all modern historians, now that everyone is so politically charged. I try to check them aginst earlier sources whenever possible. Come to think of it, I try to check all sources against other sources from differant time periods. Point is, this was the accepted and "common sense" history for at least 700 years, first mentioned in the most complete an oldest text of ancient Hungarian history, the Képes Krónika of Anonymus*. Also, I hold it especially interesting that the Székely Himnusz refers to Csaba, Atilla's son, within the context of a Hun legend prophecying his return. In addition, the Hungarian anthem refers to Bendeguz, Atilla's father.
Note: Csaba, Bendeguz and even Atilla are still common Hungarian names today.
*Anonymus is actually a real person, a monk perhaps who did not want recognition. It is known from contemporary sources that he was a chronicler in the king's court. There are even a few statues of him in Hungary, a monk's hood covering his face! =)
Of course I know of Anonymous. Attila and Csaba are indeed popular names in Hungary today (never heard Bendeguz though ), but according to Kristó this is not the case prior to the 13th century. In other words, the popularity of the name Attila is due to the popular spread of the Hun-Hungarian legend.
A critical clue to their originds is the fact that while Székely Hungarian is a dialect, it nonetheless bares according to Hungarian linguists traits of having developed steadily along with pre-"Conquest" as well as medieval Hungarian. In other words, Székely Hungarian has a historical relationship with mainstream Hungarian much earlier than A.D. 896.
This would fit into my theory, would it not? The Huns and Hungarians were closely related pre-896, with just a 400 year partial separation.
No, if the Székely spoke Hunnic but became Magyarized by the medieval Hungarian kingdom, then there would be an identifiable disconnect between Székely Hungarian and Magyar Hungarian, even if the two languages were related. For instance, southern Poland has a strong historic relationship with Bohemia and the Czechs. (Kraków was captured by the Poles only in 1038.) Modern linguists however are able to tell the difference between the impact of the Bohemian Slavic spoken in sothern Poland prior to its Polonization and the huge infusion of medieval Czech loanwords Polish imbibed after its Christianization.
Julián (Iulianus), who twice ventured to find the ancient Hungarians of "Magna Hungaria" did indeed find them in 1236 (interesting article here that begins with Julián's journeys) but I'm afraid there were no Huns there. He reports that the bashkir Magyars live among the Volga Bulgars, but no Huns.
Well, you yourself mention the Onogurs, a Bulgar tribe... anyhow, this is all mostly speculation.
Dont confuse Bulgar tribes; theyre not all the same.
For this I relied heavily on one of my favorites from my student days, Fodor István's Verecke híres útján, a wonderful summation of Hungarian prehistory and all the known archaeological evidence stretching from the ancient Ugric peoples to the "Honfoglaló" Magyars. I also trotted out however Volume One of the MTA's Magyarország Története, Elôzmények és Magyar Történet 1242-ig. I relied a bit on Gyula László's Östörténetünk for some back-up and for Székely I reached for the MTA's English-language version of History of Transylvania.
Nice! I'll have to check these out. Do you know when these books were written? Sources from 1944-1991 are not completely reliable, as the Soviets launched a massive propaganda campaign to show how the Hungarians actually came from Russia and thus should be communists.
Fodors book (or at least the edition I have) came out in 1975, the MTA volumes came out in a series in 1984, Gyula Lászlós book came out in 1987, and the History of Transylvania came out in 1994.
A note: There is in these forums no greater and more strident anti-communist than myself. Use CFCs search function to pull up all the various Communism-vs.-Capitalism/Democracy threads and youll see me in there slogging it out, denouncing the idiocy of communism and its many manifestations. However, with that said, if you were familiar with Hungarian academic life since, say, the mid-1960s, you would know that there was relatively little political interference in academia in Hungary, so long as one stayed away from dealing directly with Soviet topics like the Revolution of 1956. In the 1980s and 90s I worked with, studied under and befriended many Hungarian historians and ethnographers who are true professionals dedicated to their specialties and with the greatest integrity. To simply write off generations of historians because of an ideological belief is to commit the same grievous error that so many communists did. Many great advances were made in the fields we are talking about in these periods, with no input or influence from the government in Budapest. Those of us who grew up in communist societies and studied in them learned keenly to be able to discriminate between what, for lack of a better term, Ill call bullsh*t and real professional academic work. By ignoring everything between arbitrary dates you are cutting yourself off from a lot of important academic achievements, and doing a great disservice to those who made them under the conditions they worked.
Kézai Simon's appropriation of the ancient Scythian/Sarmatian/northern Iranian myth of the White Stag or the Magical Stag to fabricate a Hunnic-Hungarian connection in his 13th century chronicle. Fodor István also describes this dismissively.
Legends are never completely accurate, but I believe that they usually stem form a true origin. "Where there's smoke, there's fire." This is also why I lend a certain amount of credence to the White Stag, Hunor and Magor tales, and the legends concerning the Hungarians following the Huns into the Carpathian Basin.
That makes me an ancient Persian
In summation: The Huns were long gone by the time the Magyars made their appearance on the Black Sea scene in the 8th century, and while the two peoples followed vaguely a similar lifestyle on the Steppes that so many other Turkic, Ugric, Iranian and etc, peoples also followed, the connection between them is ultimately null.
I find it incrediblly hard to believe that what both the Hungarians and Székelys knew for 1000 years could be completely wrong and null. This is a pervasive belief that every man, woman and child learns in school as common knowledge. But based on historical evidence, as well as archaelogical finds and records dating back to the 1200s, I believe that the Hungarians and Huns are related, if not even by blood, then by close cultural ties.
The Hungarians and Székely knew, or believed for a long time they had a relationship with the Mythic Huns? BIG difference. There are some American Indian tribes who truly believe their ancestors descended from the stars. Do you now subscribe to UFOs? Hungarians at the same time Kézai was writing the Hun-Hungarian myth into Hungarian history (and historiography) also believed in a lot of other things about the nature of their world that turned out to be simply untrue, like the concept of a fixed sky and stars. The Huns and Hungarians do have a cultural bond through their common lifestyles on the Steppe, but they share that same bond with Iranian groups like the Scythians, Alans and Sarmatians, a vast sea of Turkic peoples stretching from the modern Korean border to Vienna, Germanic peoples like the Goths and Vandals, and etc. There is no particular connection between the Huns and Hungarians that isnt also shared by Bulgars, Khazars and even come adventurous Slavic groups like the Antae.
Sources:
"Our Hungarian Heritage," Wass Albert (a famous poet!).
"Az ezeréves Magyarország" (No author listed)
"A Magyar Történelem Nagyai," Benedek Elek (a famous historical biographer).
"Magyarok Története," also by Benedek Elek.
"The Hungarians," Dr. Paul Lendvai (I had the opportunity to meet Lendvai in person!).
And finally, the Uj Magyar Lexicon, published 1960 Akadémiai Kiadó.
Notes on sources:
1. I rather wish youd stuck to more professional sources like those of linguists, historians and archaeologists rather than poets and biographers; someone who spends their entire professional career dealing directly with the matter at hand.
Hun records and legends"? Problem: The Huns were an illiterate people who left no records. Linguists today argue over the early splits in the Altaic languages largely because they - the Huns among them - left no written evidence of their languages.
I was actually referring to the oral records and legends, as passed down through the -- yup, Székely people. Again, more on these later.
Been there, done that. Mythology is just that, mythology. However, now would be a good time to bring up the Hungarian historian Gyula Kristó and his 1996 book Hungarian History in the Ninth Century (published in both English and Hungarian, by the Szegedi Középkorász Mühely but through the MTA and with input from the Hungarian departments of Rutgers University in NJ and the University of Minnesota). Kristó devotes an entire chapter, Chapter VI (pages 71-84), to The Hun Tradition of the Hungarians. In short, he doesnt buy it and he laboriously re-creates the arguments of those who have touted this theory, and shows how weak their arguments are academically. Some he shows to be quite random. He shoots down the Csaba myth (the Onogur Bulgar Kuvrats 4th son, Kuber being cited as the Csaba by Dezsô Dümmerth), the myth of the Arpads being related to Attila directly (some very creative family trees being drawn there), the so-called Sword of Attila, the turul, the issue of why the Byzantines referred to the Magyars as Turkoi or Sabiri (Turks) but Slavs, Goths and other Turkic groups who all had greater contact with the Magyars - did not. He also mentions that a Hun tradition cannot be found in Hungary prior to the 12th century, that in fact its origins came not initially from Hungary but from various sources in Western Europe and Byzantium, gathering steam in the 12 and 13th centuries to the crowning fabrications by Simon Kézai and Anonymous. On the Székely, Prof. Kristó says (after hashing out some linguistic evidence) that they are probably wayward Onogurs or Turkics who lived among the eastern Black Sea communities (whose culture was common to many Steppe communities including the Huns) and brought those traditions to the Balkans where they were Magyarized. Thats as close to a Hun as the modern Hungarians are gonna get.
(Hungarian historical information, up to establishment of nation)
Nice. Didn't know all the detalis of that. Can I have your source?
Thats a compendium of about a decades worth of study.
But I highly recommend Kristós book (listed above), as well as the Fodor István (my favorite!) book and for references sake the MTAs two volume Magyarország Története, Elôzmények és Magyar Történet 1242-ig. For a more peripheral view, take a look at Jean W. Sedlars Vol. III of the series A History of East Central Europe, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, which describes the conquest. For a Slavic view of the conquest (as the Magyars destroyed the Slavic Moravian empire), see John V.A. Fine, Jr.s first volume, the Early Balkans, a Critical Survey from the Sixth to the late Twelfth Century. For a view of how the Honfoglaló has been distorted by modern political and social needs, see John Lukács great book, Budapest 1900. Well, the Magyars did not follow the Huns as there were no Huns to follow by the late 9th century.
Well, the legends say there were, the Huns returning to the Hungarians in the Urals and the Székelys remaining behind. According to legend.
Yes, according to legend
This is a highly controversial theory, that the Székely were descended from the Huns who fled southward, and by no means accepted widely by modern Hungarian historians. There are many other theories as well, ranging from the Székely being fellow Ugric travellers to being simply Hungarians displaced by medieval land redistribution and re-settled in the frontier regions as border guards (i.e., "szék-ely"), in typical medieval fashion.
True, today this theory is being more and more rejected. But I have an innate suspicion of all modern historians, now that everyone is so politically charged. I try to check them aginst earlier sources whenever possible. Come to think of it, I try to check all sources against other sources from differant time periods. Point is, this was the accepted and "common sense" history for at least 700 years, first mentioned in the most complete an oldest text of ancient Hungarian history, the Képes Krónika of Anonymus*. Also, I hold it especially interesting that the Székely Himnusz refers to Csaba, Atilla's son, within the context of a Hun legend prophecying his return. In addition, the Hungarian anthem refers to Bendeguz, Atilla's father.
Note: Csaba, Bendeguz and even Atilla are still common Hungarian names today.
*Anonymus is actually a real person, a monk perhaps who did not want recognition. It is known from contemporary sources that he was a chronicler in the king's court. There are even a few statues of him in Hungary, a monk's hood covering his face! =)
Of course I know of Anonymous. Attila and Csaba are indeed popular names in Hungary today (never heard Bendeguz though ), but according to Kristó this is not the case prior to the 13th century. In other words, the popularity of the name Attila is due to the popular spread of the Hun-Hungarian legend.
A critical clue to their originds is the fact that while Székely Hungarian is a dialect, it nonetheless bares according to Hungarian linguists traits of having developed steadily along with pre-"Conquest" as well as medieval Hungarian. In other words, Székely Hungarian has a historical relationship with mainstream Hungarian much earlier than A.D. 896.
This would fit into my theory, would it not? The Huns and Hungarians were closely related pre-896, with just a 400 year partial separation.
No, if the Székely spoke Hunnic but became Magyarized by the medieval Hungarian kingdom, then there would be an identifiable disconnect between Székely Hungarian and Magyar Hungarian, even if the two languages were related. For instance, southern Poland has a strong historic relationship with Bohemia and the Czechs. (Kraków was captured by the Poles only in 1038.) Modern linguists however are able to tell the difference between the impact of the Bohemian Slavic spoken in sothern Poland prior to its Polonization and the huge infusion of medieval Czech loanwords Polish imbibed after its Christianization.
Julián (Iulianus), who twice ventured to find the ancient Hungarians of "Magna Hungaria" did indeed find them in 1236 (interesting article here that begins with Julián's journeys) but I'm afraid there were no Huns there. He reports that the bashkir Magyars live among the Volga Bulgars, but no Huns.
Well, you yourself mention the Onogurs, a Bulgar tribe... anyhow, this is all mostly speculation.
Dont confuse Bulgar tribes; theyre not all the same.
For this I relied heavily on one of my favorites from my student days, Fodor István's Verecke híres útján, a wonderful summation of Hungarian prehistory and all the known archaeological evidence stretching from the ancient Ugric peoples to the "Honfoglaló" Magyars. I also trotted out however Volume One of the MTA's Magyarország Története, Elôzmények és Magyar Történet 1242-ig. I relied a bit on Gyula László's Östörténetünk for some back-up and for Székely I reached for the MTA's English-language version of History of Transylvania.
Nice! I'll have to check these out. Do you know when these books were written? Sources from 1944-1991 are not completely reliable, as the Soviets launched a massive propaganda campaign to show how the Hungarians actually came from Russia and thus should be communists.
Fodors book (or at least the edition I have) came out in 1975, the MTA volumes came out in a series in 1984, Gyula Lászlós book came out in 1987, and the History of Transylvania came out in 1994.
A note: There is in these forums no greater and more strident anti-communist than myself. Use CFCs search function to pull up all the various Communism-vs.-Capitalism/Democracy threads and youll see me in there slogging it out, denouncing the idiocy of communism and its many manifestations. However, with that said, if you were familiar with Hungarian academic life since, say, the mid-1960s, you would know that there was relatively little political interference in academia in Hungary, so long as one stayed away from dealing directly with Soviet topics like the Revolution of 1956. In the 1980s and 90s I worked with, studied under and befriended many Hungarian historians and ethnographers who are true professionals dedicated to their specialties and with the greatest integrity. To simply write off generations of historians because of an ideological belief is to commit the same grievous error that so many communists did. Many great advances were made in the fields we are talking about in these periods, with no input or influence from the government in Budapest. Those of us who grew up in communist societies and studied in them learned keenly to be able to discriminate between what, for lack of a better term, Ill call bullsh*t and real professional academic work. By ignoring everything between arbitrary dates you are cutting yourself off from a lot of important academic achievements, and doing a great disservice to those who made them under the conditions they worked.
Kézai Simon's appropriation of the ancient Scythian/Sarmatian/northern Iranian myth of the White Stag or the Magical Stag to fabricate a Hunnic-Hungarian connection in his 13th century chronicle. Fodor István also describes this dismissively.
Legends are never completely accurate, but I believe that they usually stem form a true origin. "Where there's smoke, there's fire." This is also why I lend a certain amount of credence to the White Stag, Hunor and Magor tales, and the legends concerning the Hungarians following the Huns into the Carpathian Basin.
That makes me an ancient Persian
In summation: The Huns were long gone by the time the Magyars made their appearance on the Black Sea scene in the 8th century, and while the two peoples followed vaguely a similar lifestyle on the Steppes that so many other Turkic, Ugric, Iranian and etc, peoples also followed, the connection between them is ultimately null.
I find it incrediblly hard to believe that what both the Hungarians and Székelys knew for 1000 years could be completely wrong and null. This is a pervasive belief that every man, woman and child learns in school as common knowledge. But based on historical evidence, as well as archaelogical finds and records dating back to the 1200s, I believe that the Hungarians and Huns are related, if not even by blood, then by close cultural ties.
The Hungarians and Székely knew, or believed for a long time they had a relationship with the Mythic Huns? BIG difference. There are some American Indian tribes who truly believe their ancestors descended from the stars. Do you now subscribe to UFOs? Hungarians at the same time Kézai was writing the Hun-Hungarian myth into Hungarian history (and historiography) also believed in a lot of other things about the nature of their world that turned out to be simply untrue, like the concept of a fixed sky and stars. The Huns and Hungarians do have a cultural bond through their common lifestyles on the Steppe, but they share that same bond with Iranian groups like the Scythians, Alans and Sarmatians, a vast sea of Turkic peoples stretching from the modern Korean border to Vienna, Germanic peoples like the Goths and Vandals, and etc. There is no particular connection between the Huns and Hungarians that isnt also shared by Bulgars, Khazars and even come adventurous Slavic groups like the Antae.
Sources:
"Our Hungarian Heritage," Wass Albert (a famous poet!).
"Az ezeréves Magyarország" (No author listed)
"A Magyar Történelem Nagyai," Benedek Elek (a famous historical biographer).
"Magyarok Története," also by Benedek Elek.
"The Hungarians," Dr. Paul Lendvai (I had the opportunity to meet Lendvai in person!).
And finally, the Uj Magyar Lexicon, published 1960 Akadémiai Kiadó.
Notes on sources:
1. I rather wish youd stuck to more professional sources like those of linguists, historians and archaeologists rather than poets and biographers; someone who spends their entire professional career dealing directly with the matter at hand.
Part IV:
2. Paul (Pál) Lendvai: This is curious. I have a copy of Paul Lendvais 1999 book The Hungarians (only recently translated into English), and indeed I got my copy earlier than most people because I have a friend who works for Princeton University Press (a Hungarian friend, actually) and I can get my hands on stuff they publish a little earlier sometimes. In any event, I checked out my copy of Lendvais history, a general history to be sure, and heres what I found:
Koniec - Vége - Finito - Ende...
2. Paul (Pál) Lendvai: This is curious. I have a copy of Paul Lendvais 1999 book The Hungarians (only recently translated into English), and indeed I got my copy earlier than most people because I have a friend who works for Princeton University Press (a Hungarian friend, actually) and I can get my hands on stuff they publish a little earlier sometimes. In any event, I checked out my copy of Lendvais history, a general history to be sure, and heres what I found:
- Lendvai, 2003: pp. 60-61.
Koniec - Vége - Finito - Ende...
korossyl
Vajda
...as said before, ouch. I'll have to read this tomorow when I'm actually awake...
wow...
wow...
schmiddi
Prussian
Damn, what a thread.
Never knew about it, gimmi more.
Never knew about it, gimmi more.
Mîtiu Ioan
Deity
He he ... I may confirm this ...
Anyway - I'm not 100% sure - but there aren't some proves that this traditions was "misinterpreted" to suggest to a political purpose ?
I know, I know - some romanian tradition was also "adjusted" in the end of the XVIIIth - begining of the XIXth century by "Scoala Ardeleana" writers ...
Janos Kadar a comunist ? o.k.
But anyway he just accepted to return to the previous situation before the Viena Diktat in 1940 ...
Vrylakas - congratulations anyway - a lot of interesting information !!
Regards
korossyl
Vajda
Well...!
You certainly win the book war, with more referances than I can count, even if most of them are non-Hungarian. Though I put myself out to the risk of you thinking less of me, I won't go for the paragraph-by-paragraph scientific rebuttal; I'll try for the "impassioned closing arguement." I'll only touch on two points you mentioned.
The first is a clarification: Knowing that you grew up in Europe before communism fell, and that you seem reasonable, I already figured that you'd be one of the most anti-communist people here (which would also include me). I didn't mean that I think that you're a commie, just that most of the "accepted sources" today are or have been influenced heavily by it.
The second is a reiteration: I don't trust most of these sources. I know it's not proper form to just say "you're wrong" to top linguists and anthropologists, but as I said before, I am deeply suspicious of modern historians. It seems that in the last 50 years, everything we thought about history has turned out to
be lies or propaganda perpetuated by the elite or the result of faulty histories written before the modern age. This may coincide with the left-shift of the world (advent of global communism and the liberalization of America). I just don't buy it. In the last thousand years, sources have dried up, ruins destroyed, and the ancient past has grown foggier with time. Today we have modern scientific methods; yesterday, we had more sources of information. I have especial problems with people like Kristó, who sets out to destroy every single legend of his people and calls our greatest chronicler a "fabricator." I will look into his books, but I have the nagging suspicion that he is just another controversialist who wants to get his name published. In most of your refutations of my arguements, you said that I hold theories which have been rejected by most historians or linguists, but usually there is a minority who believes them. If they all Hungarian, so be it; when studying Polish history, I would trust a Polish historian of little repute many times more than a world-reknowned Englishman, simply because the Pole would have a much deeper "feeling" of his own nation's history.
I suppose it all comes down to who do you trust more: modern historians or those of the past. I personally stand by those of the past, regardless of how many of today's say they're wrong.
Well, I hope I'm not too much of a disappointment. I've really found this discussion enlightening and very interesting, and I'm looking forwad to anything else you might have to say.
You certainly win the book war, with more referances than I can count, even if most of them are non-Hungarian. Though I put myself out to the risk of you thinking less of me, I won't go for the paragraph-by-paragraph scientific rebuttal; I'll try for the "impassioned closing arguement." I'll only touch on two points you mentioned.
The first is a clarification: Knowing that you grew up in Europe before communism fell, and that you seem reasonable, I already figured that you'd be one of the most anti-communist people here (which would also include me). I didn't mean that I think that you're a commie, just that most of the "accepted sources" today are or have been influenced heavily by it.
The second is a reiteration: I don't trust most of these sources. I know it's not proper form to just say "you're wrong" to top linguists and anthropologists, but as I said before, I am deeply suspicious of modern historians. It seems that in the last 50 years, everything we thought about history has turned out to
be lies or propaganda perpetuated by the elite or the result of faulty histories written before the modern age. This may coincide with the left-shift of the world (advent of global communism and the liberalization of America). I just don't buy it. In the last thousand years, sources have dried up, ruins destroyed, and the ancient past has grown foggier with time. Today we have modern scientific methods; yesterday, we had more sources of information. I have especial problems with people like Kristó, who sets out to destroy every single legend of his people and calls our greatest chronicler a "fabricator." I will look into his books, but I have the nagging suspicion that he is just another controversialist who wants to get his name published. In most of your refutations of my arguements, you said that I hold theories which have been rejected by most historians or linguists, but usually there is a minority who believes them. If they all Hungarian, so be it; when studying Polish history, I would trust a Polish historian of little repute many times more than a world-reknowned Englishman, simply because the Pole would have a much deeper "feeling" of his own nation's history.
I suppose it all comes down to who do you trust more: modern historians or those of the past. I personally stand by those of the past, regardless of how many of today's say they're wrong.
Well, I hope I'm not too much of a disappointment. I've really found this discussion enlightening and very interesting, and I'm looking forwad to anything else you might have to say.
klazlo
Avatarless Sociologist
Okay, I think some things need to be clarified. I did not want to hijack this thread (and I'm willing to argue about this in another thread), but now it seems that the world has turned upside down since 1990.
Sorry, but this "anything, which comes from communism is bad" argument is just nuts and totally ignorant about the Eastern European history and development as well.
I believe that even if communism "brainwashed" entire generations, the world is never black and white. Neither the pre-WWII period of Hungary, nor the post-socialist era was an enlightened liberal democracy either. On the other hand, many important contributions to social science were made in every period. Trashing anything made during the Communist period is just as stupid as praising everything made then. See my point?
I was a senior high school student in 1987-88. I do believe that modern history education in Hungary was the best at that time. Why? Because until about 1985 everybody had to believe in certain interpretations of the Hungarian history. After 1991 this was the same from the opposite viewpoint. But at the end of the 1980s there was no central direction in history education, so we had to look for different sources, debate different ideas and arguments. And that's how you learn, I can tell you.
Let me put here one (probably the most controversial) example: 1956. Until about 1987 it was strictly an ultimately nasty counter-revolution, when the street mob killed honest communists. From 1991 it is an ultimately glorious and brave revolution, when the communist mob killed honest young protesters. Both views are just crap, but the point is that the system in neither case allows any alternative views.
To see the world of Eastern Europe in more than two colors, I suggets to read George Schopflin, a British scholar (who was born in Hungary btw) who wrote an excellent book in 1992 (Politics in Eastern Europe), in which he describes many components of the Eastern European social development, and putting the communist period into its place. Also there are many other theories like the development of the Eastern European periphery by Ivan Berend or the path dependency by D. Stark.
And don't take it personal at all. We all learn if our mind is open enough for alternatives, but closed for extremities.
klazlo
Avatarless Sociologist
Originally posted by Mîtiu Ioan
Janos Kadar a comunist ? o.k.
But anyway he just accepted to return to the previous situation before the Viena Diktat in 1940 ...
Right, except about Kadar...
Kadar was not in the position to do anything about it as he had the absolute power only from 1956. The communist rule did not start before 1949, and actually the first postwar government of Hungary made this step - obviously no other outcome could have been expected, whoever is in power.
korossyl
Vajda
Well, I don't quite agree, but I was mostly just talking about histories, historians, findings and textbooks made during the communist era, a very small minority of which was made between 1987-1991, before this "academic freedom" period.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Korossyl - modern historians have access to tools older ones did not have, and our access to sources isn't half as worsening as you imply. While we have lost certain texts and such, we are also *gaining* access to the collected records of many other nations and cultures which may hold information on use in the topic that concern us (such as, here, Chinesse records which have become far more available to us)
Archaeological digging has provided us with more sources in understanding the past as well, and continues to do so.
Also, older historians were just as liable to spew politicaly motivated BS as the modern one - political bias in science is sadly hardly a new thing. Nor is it a thing of the left-wing in particular (albeit the left is far form immune to using it), the right-wing is just as good at it.
In addition, rewriting commonly accepted history is an important part of historical work - after all, up to even now some humans are convinced the most accurate account of early history was that found in the Christian bible. If not challenging revious "historical" work was a set part of historical work, we wouldn't even have realized that mankind's history extend beyond around 6000 BC or so (the literal reading date of the creation of the world in the bible).
So, to say that modern historians and such are less trustworthy is simply not a valid argument. Revising history is a necessary part of work.
Archaeological digging has provided us with more sources in understanding the past as well, and continues to do so.
Also, older historians were just as liable to spew politicaly motivated BS as the modern one - political bias in science is sadly hardly a new thing. Nor is it a thing of the left-wing in particular (albeit the left is far form immune to using it), the right-wing is just as good at it.
In addition, rewriting commonly accepted history is an important part of historical work - after all, up to even now some humans are convinced the most accurate account of early history was that found in the Christian bible. If not challenging revious "historical" work was a set part of historical work, we wouldn't even have realized that mankind's history extend beyond around 6000 BC or so (the literal reading date of the creation of the world in the bible).
So, to say that modern historians and such are less trustworthy is simply not a valid argument. Revising history is a necessary part of work.
korossyl
Vajda
Nobunaga: We don't even know what sources we have lost. We can make no accurate guess at what possible insights historians had 700 years ago that we do not today.
Point 2: Politically-motivated history could have cropped up fairly often -- but the views I am defending were present for hundreds of years (during which there were quite a few political shifts). They would have been constantly undermined, revised and rewritten, and this is not the case. By calling historians propagandists we are just labelling people of an earlier era with the troubles that plague our own. My comment about the left wing is a referance to the terms "liberal" and "conservative;" the liberals are "progressive" and espouse change, and thus would support modern historians, while the conservatives are "traditionalist" and like to maintain the status quo, supporting earlier sources. But this is not a political debate.
Finally, I am one of those "humans" who is so naive as to believe the Bible's account of early history; to set that up as something that all normal people have "realized" is false is an affront to Christianity. Please don't turn this into a religious debate.
Point 2: Politically-motivated history could have cropped up fairly often -- but the views I am defending were present for hundreds of years (during which there were quite a few political shifts). They would have been constantly undermined, revised and rewritten, and this is not the case. By calling historians propagandists we are just labelling people of an earlier era with the troubles that plague our own. My comment about the left wing is a referance to the terms "liberal" and "conservative;" the liberals are "progressive" and espouse change, and thus would support modern historians, while the conservatives are "traditionalist" and like to maintain the status quo, supporting earlier sources. But this is not a political debate.
Finally, I am one of those "humans" who is so naive as to believe the Bible's account of early history; to set that up as something that all normal people have "realized" is false is an affront to Christianity. Please don't turn this into a religious debate.
korossyl, you're going to have to do better than this.
I entered into this debate because I thought you would have an intelligent response and be able to address the issues point by point. It's not a matter of what work I put into my response, it's a matter of my raising some very serious issues and evidence that contradicts the theories you believe in, and this evidence comes from professionals who deal, unlike you and I, with these matters their entire professional lives. The theory you are espousing is quite extraordinary and requires the re-writing of much history, linguistics and archaeological evidence. To quote Carl Sagan (again, for the 2nd time in a month I believe), extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I am keeping an open mind and hoping you can provide some evidence to support your claims, but this evidence must come from professionals (historians, linguists, archaeologists) who can convince their peers to radically alter what is today known about Sumeria, the Huns and ancient Magyars.
You certainly win the book war, with more referances than I can count, even if most of them are non-Hungarian.
1. The point wasn't quantity of sources, but quality. I listed several quotes by professionals who study ancient Sumerian, the Ural-Altaic languages, the Finno-Ugric languages, and Hungarian prehistory. The sources weren't arbitrary; they directly addressed aspects of your argument that quite frankly do not make sense. The ball is now in your court to provide credible evidence to back up your claims. If numbers was the game, I have far more but I spent the whole 2nd night editing my response down, trimming for readability's sake.
2. Not sure what your point is about using some non-Hungarian sources; Do you believe that only Hungarians have some mystical ability to understand Hungarian historical issues? If that's the case, then it's no wonder you have such a distorted understanding of Hungarian history. To fully understand Polish history I need to spend lots of time reading Czech, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Jewish, Belarussian, Hungarian, Slovak, Swedish, Italian, French, American, etc. accounts of Polish history because they've all played a role in the long Polish story. They all have their views of Polish events and developments, and yes they their own biases and historical myths but Polish history didn't develop in a vaccuum, it developed through its relationship with these peoples at different periods. Do you know one of the foremost experts on the history and grammatical structural development of the English language was a Dane, Otto Jespersen? Oxford and Columbia University linguistics students still read his works. T.S. Elliott once wrote something to the effect that one cannot claim to know England if one has never left England; sometimes the outside perspective is as important as the native one. If you're truly interested in history, my advice would be to never let personal prejudices cut you off from historical sources.
Politically-motivated history could have cropped up fairly often -- but the views I am defending were present for hundreds of years (during which there were quite a few political shifts). They would have been constantly undermined, revised and rewritten, and this is not the case. By calling historians propagandists we are just labelling people of an earlier era with the troubles that plague our own. My comment about the left wing is a referance to the terms "liberal" and "conservative;" the liberals are "progressive" and espouse change, and thus would support modern historians, while the conservatives are "traditionalist" and like to maintain the status quo, supporting earlier sources. But this is not a political debate.
But the study of history has not been around for centuries; it's barely 200 years old now. You're confusing medieval chroniclers with professional historians, and that's like comparing an ox cart to a BMW. Chroniclers like Simon Kézai were not professional historians trying to understand an aspect of the human condition and its development through time (as a professional does), they were simply listing ("chronicling"; get it?) trivia and highly selective facts (or "enhanced facts"; i.e., propaganda) about the monarch they worked for. Chroniclers were political hacks who had a goal to support. They weren't interested in the study of history as a phenomenon of human civilization, they were interested in supporting their monarch's reign and points of view associated with that reign. They were notorious for only using sources that supported their own position and ignoring contradictory evidence. Accuracy was optional. The true study of history begins in the very late 18th century (some say the late 17th) with the professionalization of the study of history, when an actual discipline developed and professional standards were set about historical research and writing. Within Hungarian historiography, for instance, there's been a radical re-evaluation over the past ten years of Anonymous' writings, as it has become clear that he was even less accurate and reliable than previously believed. (And that has been since the fall of the communists...)
Laci's (Klazlo) right that scholarship in the communist years, certainly since the mid-1960s, was no more compromised than the pre-communist years. Have you ever seen any paper products from the 1920s and 30s in Hungary (i.e., maps, notebooks, etc.)? They're bordered in the corner almost always with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! Never!"), referring to Trianon. There was an intense nationalist pressure and quite a lot of Hungarian academic work reflected that pressure. To pretend that scholarship in 1945-1990 Hungary was any more political than what existed befoe, or conversely to simply ignore what any Hungarian professional wrote in those years because you disagree with the government of the time, is something of a cop-out quite frankly.
Finally, I am one of those "humans" who is so naive as to believe the Bible's account of early history; to set that up as something that all normal people have "realized" is false is an affront to Christianity. Please don't turn this into a religious debate.[/b
This indeed is not a religious debate and for you to suggest that some religious beliefs of your might be offended by the debate not going in your direction is absolutely absurd. Please keep your religious beliefs out of this debate and stick to the matter at hand. Debating strategies based on emotional responses imply you have no real answer or response to your opponent's posits. It means the debate is over.
And about the "Arpad" reference; this shows you are not doing your homework. The Biblical town of Arpad, in modern western Syria, was actually pronounced "Arphad" and derives from the Semitic root 'raphad meaning "spread-out", as in a place one could relax and rest ("spread out") for the night. Are you going to claim the ancient Magyars are now also derived from the various Semitic peoples as well? (Reference .here).
If you want to continue a standard point-by-point debate, I'm interested but if you're going to answer my posts with cop-outs ("I can't believe any communist era authors") and emotional blackmail ("Don't threaten my religious beliefs"), then let's just wrap it up and go our separate ways
I entered into this debate because I thought you would have an intelligent response and be able to address the issues point by point. It's not a matter of what work I put into my response, it's a matter of my raising some very serious issues and evidence that contradicts the theories you believe in, and this evidence comes from professionals who deal, unlike you and I, with these matters their entire professional lives. The theory you are espousing is quite extraordinary and requires the re-writing of much history, linguistics and archaeological evidence. To quote Carl Sagan (again, for the 2nd time in a month I believe), extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I am keeping an open mind and hoping you can provide some evidence to support your claims, but this evidence must come from professionals (historians, linguists, archaeologists) who can convince their peers to radically alter what is today known about Sumeria, the Huns and ancient Magyars.
You certainly win the book war, with more referances than I can count, even if most of them are non-Hungarian.
1. The point wasn't quantity of sources, but quality. I listed several quotes by professionals who study ancient Sumerian, the Ural-Altaic languages, the Finno-Ugric languages, and Hungarian prehistory. The sources weren't arbitrary; they directly addressed aspects of your argument that quite frankly do not make sense. The ball is now in your court to provide credible evidence to back up your claims. If numbers was the game, I have far more but I spent the whole 2nd night editing my response down, trimming for readability's sake.
2. Not sure what your point is about using some non-Hungarian sources; Do you believe that only Hungarians have some mystical ability to understand Hungarian historical issues? If that's the case, then it's no wonder you have such a distorted understanding of Hungarian history. To fully understand Polish history I need to spend lots of time reading Czech, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Jewish, Belarussian, Hungarian, Slovak, Swedish, Italian, French, American, etc. accounts of Polish history because they've all played a role in the long Polish story. They all have their views of Polish events and developments, and yes they their own biases and historical myths but Polish history didn't develop in a vaccuum, it developed through its relationship with these peoples at different periods. Do you know one of the foremost experts on the history and grammatical structural development of the English language was a Dane, Otto Jespersen? Oxford and Columbia University linguistics students still read his works. T.S. Elliott once wrote something to the effect that one cannot claim to know England if one has never left England; sometimes the outside perspective is as important as the native one. If you're truly interested in history, my advice would be to never let personal prejudices cut you off from historical sources.
Politically-motivated history could have cropped up fairly often -- but the views I am defending were present for hundreds of years (during which there were quite a few political shifts). They would have been constantly undermined, revised and rewritten, and this is not the case. By calling historians propagandists we are just labelling people of an earlier era with the troubles that plague our own. My comment about the left wing is a referance to the terms "liberal" and "conservative;" the liberals are "progressive" and espouse change, and thus would support modern historians, while the conservatives are "traditionalist" and like to maintain the status quo, supporting earlier sources. But this is not a political debate.
But the study of history has not been around for centuries; it's barely 200 years old now. You're confusing medieval chroniclers with professional historians, and that's like comparing an ox cart to a BMW. Chroniclers like Simon Kézai were not professional historians trying to understand an aspect of the human condition and its development through time (as a professional does), they were simply listing ("chronicling"; get it?) trivia and highly selective facts (or "enhanced facts"; i.e., propaganda) about the monarch they worked for. Chroniclers were political hacks who had a goal to support. They weren't interested in the study of history as a phenomenon of human civilization, they were interested in supporting their monarch's reign and points of view associated with that reign. They were notorious for only using sources that supported their own position and ignoring contradictory evidence. Accuracy was optional. The true study of history begins in the very late 18th century (some say the late 17th) with the professionalization of the study of history, when an actual discipline developed and professional standards were set about historical research and writing. Within Hungarian historiography, for instance, there's been a radical re-evaluation over the past ten years of Anonymous' writings, as it has become clear that he was even less accurate and reliable than previously believed. (And that has been since the fall of the communists...)
Laci's (Klazlo) right that scholarship in the communist years, certainly since the mid-1960s, was no more compromised than the pre-communist years. Have you ever seen any paper products from the 1920s and 30s in Hungary (i.e., maps, notebooks, etc.)? They're bordered in the corner almost always with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! Never!"), referring to Trianon. There was an intense nationalist pressure and quite a lot of Hungarian academic work reflected that pressure. To pretend that scholarship in 1945-1990 Hungary was any more political than what existed befoe, or conversely to simply ignore what any Hungarian professional wrote in those years because you disagree with the government of the time, is something of a cop-out quite frankly.
Finally, I am one of those "humans" who is so naive as to believe the Bible's account of early history; to set that up as something that all normal people have "realized" is false is an affront to Christianity. Please don't turn this into a religious debate.[/b
This indeed is not a religious debate and for you to suggest that some religious beliefs of your might be offended by the debate not going in your direction is absolutely absurd. Please keep your religious beliefs out of this debate and stick to the matter at hand. Debating strategies based on emotional responses imply you have no real answer or response to your opponent's posits. It means the debate is over.
And about the "Arpad" reference; this shows you are not doing your homework. The Biblical town of Arpad, in modern western Syria, was actually pronounced "Arphad" and derives from the Semitic root 'raphad meaning "spread-out", as in a place one could relax and rest ("spread out") for the night. Are you going to claim the ancient Magyars are now also derived from the various Semitic peoples as well? (Reference .here).
If you want to continue a standard point-by-point debate, I'm interested but if you're going to answer my posts with cop-outs ("I can't believe any communist era authors") and emotional blackmail ("Don't threaten my religious beliefs"), then let's just wrap it up and go our separate ways
korossyl
Vajda
korossyl, you're going to have to do better than this. I entered into this debate because I thought you would have an intelligent response and be able to address the issues point by point.
I am deeply sorry for apparently offending or disappointing you. It was not my intention to make an enemy or provoke disgust, which, judging from your response, it appears I did.
This indeed is not a religious debate and for you to suggest that some religious beliefs of your might be offended by the debate not going in your direction is absolutely absurd. Please keep your religious beliefs out of this debate and stick to the matter at hand. Debating strategies based on emotional responses imply you have no real answer or response to your opponent's posits. It means the debate is over.
I was the one attempting NOT to turn this into a religious debate. To argue that the Bible is incorrect is acceptable, but the language he used, "up to EVEN NOW some humans are convinced" and "we wouldn't even have REALIZED that mankind's history extend beyond around 6000 BC or so (the literal reading date of the creation of the world in the bible)" (emphasis mine), is inappropriate for a debate. The Bible is a document believed by many, many millions of people worldwide as the absolute truth, many of them scholars, scientists and historians. To simply blow it off as something we have realized is an obvious falsehood is an affront. To use the Bible's supposed inaccuracy as an example supporting why we need to be revising history is bad form; it is not an accepted fact whatsoever and to phrase it as he did WAS an insult.
The theory you are espousing is quite extraordinary and requires the re-writing of much history, linguistics and archaeological evidence. To quote Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...
...this evidence must come from professionals (historians, linguists, archaeologists) who can convince their peers to radically alter what is today known about Sumeria, the Huns and ancient Magyars. Not sure what your point is about using some non-Hungarian sources; Do you believe that only Hungarians have some mystical ability to understand Hungarian historical issues?
No, I am saying that history is not an exact science. You cannot read all the history texts in a library on and say you are an expert. At a certain level, you have to do more than sift through professionals interpretations and archaelogical reports and look at the primary sources. Someone living in Hungary would be able to reach higher understanding of his own history than an outside observer; same in Poland, Egypt, Japan or anywhwere in the wordl. I myself do not and have never lived in Hungary, but the overwhelming majority of those who do believe in the point I am defending. That, combined with the findings of scientists, minority though they may be, makes for a case that should not really be considered an "extraordinary claim."
Do you know one of the foremost experts on the history and grammatical structural development of the English language was a Dane, Otto Jespersen?
This is a slightly differant case. The English have been native to England for thousands of years; their language today is almost completely unrelated to English of one thousand years ago. Point is, there is very little serious speculation to be done here; to know the grammatical structure is a matter of facts, and to know the history is to look back a few hundred years. There would be nothing to make it difficult for a foreigner to be a foremost expert.
T.S. Elliott once wrote something to the effect that one cannot claim to know England if one has never left England; sometimes the outside perspective is as important as the native one. If you're truly interested in history, my advice would be to never let personal prejudices cut you off from historical sources.
They have not. The sources I have brought up have either not been addressed or declared null by you because of their age ("it's barely 200 years old now. You're confusing medieval chroniclers with professional historians, and that's like comparing an ox cart to a BMW"), yet you rebuke me for not accepting communist sources.
Chroniclers like Simon Kézai were not professional historians trying to understand an aspect of the human condition and its development through time (as a professional does), they were simply listing ("chronicling"; get it?) trivia and highly selective facts (or "enhanced facts"; i.e., propaganda) about the monarch they worked for. Chroniclers were political hacks who had a goal to support. They weren't interested in the study of history as a phenomenon of human civilization, they were interested in supporting their monarch's reign and points of view associated with that reign. They were notorious for only using sources that supported their own position and ignoring contradictory evidence. Accuracy was optional.
Those are some harsh words. Again, where do you get this? What makes scientists today qualified to make judgements about scientists of centuries ago? We don't know where they got their information; we don't know what circumstances were present then that are not today or vice-versa. You assume the absolute worst when you say that the only recorders of history since before the 18th century (below) are worthless.
The true study of history begins in the very late 18th century (some say the late 17th) with the professionalization of the study of history, when an actual discipline developed and professional standards were set about historical research and writing.
...and even then, for another 200 years, this "myth" persisted.
Within Hungarian historiography, for instance, there's been a radical re-evaluation over the past ten years of Anonymous' writings, as it has become clear that he was even less accurate and reliable than previously believed. (And that has been since the fall of the communists...)
And what makes these scientists, 750 years later, so much more reliable that they can judge Anonymus "wrong" so completely and easily?
Laci's (Klazlo) right that scholarship in the communist years, certainly since the mid-1960s, was no more compromised than the pre-communist years. Have you ever seen any paper products from the 1920s and 30s in Hungary (i.e., maps, notebooks, etc.)? They're bordered in the corner almost always with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! Never!"), referring to Trianon. There was an intense nationalist pressure and quite a lot of Hungarian academic work reflected that pressure. To pretend that scholarship in 1945-1990 Hungary was any more political than what existed befoe, or conversely to simply ignore what any Hungarian professional wrote in those years because you disagree with the government of the time, is something of a cop-out quite frankly.
You will notice I did not cite any sources from between the two world wars except for Pekar Gyula, and that in agreement to one of your points. As for distrusting communism, you yourself know it was much more than merely a government. My mother's (who grew up under it) textbooks are heavily slanted, little more than propaganda. As much as the sources in the fifty years before communism are unreliable, under comm. they were at least as bad.
The Biblical town of Arpad, in modern western Syria, was actually pronounced "Arphad" and derives from the Semitic root 'raphad meaning "spread-out", as in a place one could relax and rest ("spread out") for the night. Are you going to claim the ancient Magyars are now also derived from the various Semitic peoples as well?
No, simply that they were affected by them, being in the same general vicinity.
If you want to continue a standard point-by-point debate, I'm interested but if you're going to answer my posts with cop-outs ("I can't believe any communist era authors") and emotional blackmail ("Don't threaten my religious beliefs"), then let's just wrap it up and go our separate ways.
This is disappointing. I never employed "emotional blackmail," don't misquote me. In fact, your response was much more emotionally charged then the one I sent to Nobunaga, wherein I NEVER said "don't threaten my religious beliefs." They are not so easily threatened. I had no problem with a challenge, but took issue with his wording and style, and assumption of established truth.
If we cannot agree on the validity of the majority of each other's sources, then perhaps you are right, and this debate should be over.
-L. Korossy
I am deeply sorry for apparently offending or disappointing you. It was not my intention to make an enemy or provoke disgust, which, judging from your response, it appears I did.
This indeed is not a religious debate and for you to suggest that some religious beliefs of your might be offended by the debate not going in your direction is absolutely absurd. Please keep your religious beliefs out of this debate and stick to the matter at hand. Debating strategies based on emotional responses imply you have no real answer or response to your opponent's posits. It means the debate is over.
I was the one attempting NOT to turn this into a religious debate. To argue that the Bible is incorrect is acceptable, but the language he used, "up to EVEN NOW some humans are convinced" and "we wouldn't even have REALIZED that mankind's history extend beyond around 6000 BC or so (the literal reading date of the creation of the world in the bible)" (emphasis mine), is inappropriate for a debate. The Bible is a document believed by many, many millions of people worldwide as the absolute truth, many of them scholars, scientists and historians. To simply blow it off as something we have realized is an obvious falsehood is an affront. To use the Bible's supposed inaccuracy as an example supporting why we need to be revising history is bad form; it is not an accepted fact whatsoever and to phrase it as he did WAS an insult.
The theory you are espousing is quite extraordinary and requires the re-writing of much history, linguistics and archaeological evidence. To quote Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...
...this evidence must come from professionals (historians, linguists, archaeologists) who can convince their peers to radically alter what is today known about Sumeria, the Huns and ancient Magyars. Not sure what your point is about using some non-Hungarian sources; Do you believe that only Hungarians have some mystical ability to understand Hungarian historical issues?
No, I am saying that history is not an exact science. You cannot read all the history texts in a library on and say you are an expert. At a certain level, you have to do more than sift through professionals interpretations and archaelogical reports and look at the primary sources. Someone living in Hungary would be able to reach higher understanding of his own history than an outside observer; same in Poland, Egypt, Japan or anywhwere in the wordl. I myself do not and have never lived in Hungary, but the overwhelming majority of those who do believe in the point I am defending. That, combined with the findings of scientists, minority though they may be, makes for a case that should not really be considered an "extraordinary claim."
Do you know one of the foremost experts on the history and grammatical structural development of the English language was a Dane, Otto Jespersen?
This is a slightly differant case. The English have been native to England for thousands of years; their language today is almost completely unrelated to English of one thousand years ago. Point is, there is very little serious speculation to be done here; to know the grammatical structure is a matter of facts, and to know the history is to look back a few hundred years. There would be nothing to make it difficult for a foreigner to be a foremost expert.
T.S. Elliott once wrote something to the effect that one cannot claim to know England if one has never left England; sometimes the outside perspective is as important as the native one. If you're truly interested in history, my advice would be to never let personal prejudices cut you off from historical sources.
They have not. The sources I have brought up have either not been addressed or declared null by you because of their age ("it's barely 200 years old now. You're confusing medieval chroniclers with professional historians, and that's like comparing an ox cart to a BMW"), yet you rebuke me for not accepting communist sources.
Chroniclers like Simon Kézai were not professional historians trying to understand an aspect of the human condition and its development through time (as a professional does), they were simply listing ("chronicling"; get it?) trivia and highly selective facts (or "enhanced facts"; i.e., propaganda) about the monarch they worked for. Chroniclers were political hacks who had a goal to support. They weren't interested in the study of history as a phenomenon of human civilization, they were interested in supporting their monarch's reign and points of view associated with that reign. They were notorious for only using sources that supported their own position and ignoring contradictory evidence. Accuracy was optional.
Those are some harsh words. Again, where do you get this? What makes scientists today qualified to make judgements about scientists of centuries ago? We don't know where they got their information; we don't know what circumstances were present then that are not today or vice-versa. You assume the absolute worst when you say that the only recorders of history since before the 18th century (below) are worthless.
The true study of history begins in the very late 18th century (some say the late 17th) with the professionalization of the study of history, when an actual discipline developed and professional standards were set about historical research and writing.
...and even then, for another 200 years, this "myth" persisted.
Within Hungarian historiography, for instance, there's been a radical re-evaluation over the past ten years of Anonymous' writings, as it has become clear that he was even less accurate and reliable than previously believed. (And that has been since the fall of the communists...)
And what makes these scientists, 750 years later, so much more reliable that they can judge Anonymus "wrong" so completely and easily?
Laci's (Klazlo) right that scholarship in the communist years, certainly since the mid-1960s, was no more compromised than the pre-communist years. Have you ever seen any paper products from the 1920s and 30s in Hungary (i.e., maps, notebooks, etc.)? They're bordered in the corner almost always with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! Never!"), referring to Trianon. There was an intense nationalist pressure and quite a lot of Hungarian academic work reflected that pressure. To pretend that scholarship in 1945-1990 Hungary was any more political than what existed befoe, or conversely to simply ignore what any Hungarian professional wrote in those years because you disagree with the government of the time, is something of a cop-out quite frankly.
You will notice I did not cite any sources from between the two world wars except for Pekar Gyula, and that in agreement to one of your points. As for distrusting communism, you yourself know it was much more than merely a government. My mother's (who grew up under it) textbooks are heavily slanted, little more than propaganda. As much as the sources in the fifty years before communism are unreliable, under comm. they were at least as bad.
The Biblical town of Arpad, in modern western Syria, was actually pronounced "Arphad" and derives from the Semitic root 'raphad meaning "spread-out", as in a place one could relax and rest ("spread out") for the night. Are you going to claim the ancient Magyars are now also derived from the various Semitic peoples as well?
No, simply that they were affected by them, being in the same general vicinity.
If you want to continue a standard point-by-point debate, I'm interested but if you're going to answer my posts with cop-outs ("I can't believe any communist era authors") and emotional blackmail ("Don't threaten my religious beliefs"), then let's just wrap it up and go our separate ways.
This is disappointing. I never employed "emotional blackmail," don't misquote me. In fact, your response was much more emotionally charged then the one I sent to Nobunaga, wherein I NEVER said "don't threaten my religious beliefs." They are not so easily threatened. I had no problem with a challenge, but took issue with his wording and style, and assumption of established truth.
If we cannot agree on the validity of the majority of each other's sources, then perhaps you are right, and this debate should be over.
-L. Korossy
korossyl, you're going to have to do better than this. I entered into this debate because I thought you would have an intelligent response and be able to address the issues point by point.
I am deeply sorry for apparently offending or disappointing you. It was not my intention to make an enemy or provoke disgust, which, judging from your response, it appears I did.
I'm not offended; I'm annoyed. I entered into a debate with someone, something I enjoy but for which I have limited time, and the other party won't debate. Instead of addressing the issues I've raised - for whatever their merit - he's retreated into sweeping blanket generalizations without touching on a single issue I've raised. Wouldn't that annoy you?
This indeed is not a religious debate and for you to suggest that some religious beliefs of your might be offended by the debate not going in your direction is absolutely absurd. Please keep your religious beliefs out of this debate and stick to the matter at hand. Debating strategies based on emotional responses imply you have no real answer or response to your opponent's posits. It means the debate is over.
I was the one attempting NOT to turn this into a religious debate. To argue that the Bible is incorrect is acceptable, but the language he used, "up to EVEN NOW some humans are convinced" and "we wouldn't even have REALIZED that mankind's history extend beyond around 6000 BC or so (the literal reading date of the creation of the world in the bible)" (emphasis mine), is inappropriate for a debate. The Bible is a document believed by many, many millions of people worldwide as the absolute truth, many of them scholars, scientists and historians. To simply blow it off as something we have realized is an obvious falsehood is an affront. To use the Bible's supposed inaccuracy as an example supporting why we need to be revising history is bad form; it is not an accepted fact whatsoever and to phrase it as he did WAS an insult.
1. The Earth's age is not clearly delineated in the Bible; several throughout Judeo-Christian history have tried to reconstruct the planet's age by counting backwards through the described human family generations but there are holes and improbabilities that have plagued the results. Because of this, there have been many widely different results, ranging from 10,000 to 4000 years old. Modern American creationists seemed to have latched onto the Anglo-Irish Archbishop James Usher (sometimes written "Ussher") who in 1654 came up with the year 4004 as "Year One", though I'm not sure why they've chosen him. In any event, there is no literal way to read the Bible to find the Earth's age, as many true Believers have tried and have each come up with very different results. No point in being offended by anyone's beliefs in this regard.
2. The Bible is ultimately thoroughly irrelevant to what you and I were discussing. That's why I said your religious beliefs had no place here. It was not an attack on you or your religious beliefs, merely that the matter is of whether the Huns and Magyars share a common ethnic-linguistic heritage.
The theory you are espousing is quite extraordinary and requires the re-writing of much history, linguistics and archaeological evidence. To quote Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence [...] this evidence must come from professionals (historians, linguists, archaeologists) who can convince their peers to radically alter what is today known about Sumeria, the Huns and ancient Magyars. Not sure what your point is about using some non-Hungarian sources; Do you believe that only Hungarians have some mystical ability to understand Hungarian historical issues?
No, I am saying that history is not an exact science. You cannot read all the history texts in a library on and say you are an expert. At a certain level, you have to do more than sift through professionals interpretations and archaelogical reports and look at the primary sources.
What have you done?
Someone living in Hungary would be able to reach higher understanding of his own history than an outside observer; same in Poland, Egypt, Japan or anywhere in the world.
Why? The Hungarians of today are worlds away from the Steppe Magyars of a thousand years ago. Modern Hungarians are even physically different than the Magyars who first crossed the Verecke Pass, the result of a thousand years of ethnic mixing as medieval Hungary relied heavily (as all medieval kingdoms did) on foreign immigrants to fill the "Nagy Puszta" after wars, droughts and famines. I lived and studied in Hungary for almost five years, but the modern identity of Hungarians is the result of a accummulated thousand years of Christianization, Westernization, modernization, industrialization, etc. etc. etc. Modern Hungarian retains only about a core vocabulary of a thousand words actually derived from the old Finno-Ugric; the rest are derived from Iranian, Turkic, Slavic, Germanic and Latin loanwords. And that of course is quite normal for a language of Hungarian's age. The average Hungarian today can no more ride a horse (without a saddle!) and shoot a bow accurately than the average Swede can sail a drakkar to Iceland or for that matter than the average American could successfully defend themselves with a flintlock a la 1776. Highly romanticized nationalist ideology likes to pretend that we modern peoples have some innate, mystic connection to the fierce and rough ancestors we read about in our somewhat contrived high school/gimnázium/lyceum history books, but the reality is we have little in common with the folks in those books other than biology. I'm afraid the only place you can come close to understanding how your ancestors live is through archaeology, or at best comparitive anthropology - i.e., living for a time among peoples who today live a similar economic and social lifestyle to what your ancestors did, but of course the mass Steppe culture that produced the ancient Magyars is gone forever. A trip to Mongolia might still be quite informative though. A trip to Budapest will simply get you some nice souvenirs though...
I myself do not and have never lived in Hungary, but the overwhelming majority of those who do believe in the point I am defending. That, combined with the findings of scientists, minority though they may be, makes for a case that should not really be considered an "extraordinary claim."
It is an extraordinary claim if it goes against the commonly-accepted conventions of history, archaeology and linguistics. It's rather like claiming your ancewstors could fly; that's just not possible according to what we know today of the laws of physics. I'm not saying a Hunnic-Magyar connection is impossible, just highly improbable given what we know today about several of the fields I've outlined. Let's take Woolley as an example; he had an extraordinary claim, namely that there was a civilization even older than Egypt. This went against the accumulated knowledge of history and archaeology of the day (early 20th century) so Woolley had to produce extraordinary evidence to prove his point. He had some hunches based on circumstantial evidence, but nothing strong enough to stand up to scientific review - until he spent three summers excavating the magnificent city of Ur, revealing beyond all reasonable doubt that there really was a Sumerian civilization. Since then we've uncovered much more about Sumer and its history, though as I pointed out there are still big holes.
The idea that Hungarians and Huns are ethnically or linguistically related is an extraordinary claim because there is much evidence today that goes against it. (That is exactly what I'm trying to get you to address.) Even among Hungarian professionals - in fact, especially among Hungarian professionals in the fields I've been mentioning - there are few who believe this connection. In fact, I only know of maybe three, and they are regarded as quite questionable by their colleagues.
Do you know one of the foremost experts on the history and grammatical structural development of the English language was a Dane, Otto Jespersen?
This is a slightly differant case. The English have been native to England for thousands of years; their language today is almost completely unrelated to English of one thousand years ago. Point is, there is very little serious speculation to be done here; to know the grammatical structure is a matter of facts, and to know the history is to look back a few hundred years. There would be nothing to make it difficult for a foreigner to be a foremost expert.
??? English has not existed for "thousands of years". And English's very convoluted and twisted development between Celtic, Latinonic, and Germanic languages has made it a bloody mess to unravel. You are a native speaker of English, no? Let me let you in on a secret; English is murder to learn as a second language because of its complex temporal structure (24 tenses when the average Europe language has 5-6; Hungarian has 5), its almost completely non-phonetic spelling and a sea of exceptions to every grammar rule. I hope you don't subscribe to that myth many Hungarians hold that Hungarian is a difficult langauge; it's not, or at least not anymore so than others. Many non-Hungarians are intimidated because Hungarian looks so different from the surrounding Indo-European languages but once you get started it's fairly consistent and mechanical, easy to pick up. You want a hard language? Try Polish....
T.S. Elliott once wrote something to the effect that one cannot claim to know England if one has never left England; sometimes the outside perspective is as important as the native one. If you're truly interested in history, my advice would be to never let personal prejudices cut you off from historical sources.
They have not. The sources I have brought up have either not been addressed or declared null by you because of their age ("it's barely 200 years old now. You're confusing medieval chroniclers with professional historians, and that's like comparing an ox cart to a BMW"), yet you rebuke me for not accepting communist sources.
But two of the sources you wrote were by non-professionals (i.e., historians, linguists, archaeologists), all of them were general and none (that you listed) specifically addressed anything relative to the topic, and the last source you listed - Paul Lendvai - actually was against your position, which throws some heavy doubt on the credibility of all your sources. I still don't know why you listed Lendvai. I listed sources who do nothing but deal, in their respective professional capacities, with certain aspects of the question you and I are debating, but you listed a few very general sources and a couple written by people who aren't even professionals in the relevant fields. John Elway was a great football player but would you believe a book he wrote about physics, especially if he was pushing some wild theory that goes against some of the known laws of physics? I'd rather hear it from Steven Hawking...
Chroniclers are not historians, that was my point. They did not undergo years of training in research methodology, in source evaluation, in proper citations, etc. This is not my opinion; it is the common opinion of modern historians - including Hungarian ones. Herodotus, Thucidydes, Anonymous, etc. - all wonderful reading and wonderful gateways to their portrayed eras, but all also shredded to pieces by modern archaeology, linguistics and history. They're just not reliable on much of what they say, and therefore are not accepted as valid historical sources by professionals. Sometimes they are accurate and accounts are often quoted, but only when they can be independently verified by other sources as well.
Chroniclers like Simon Kézai were not professional historians trying to understand an aspect of the human condition and its development through time (as a professional does), they were simply listing ("chronicling"; get it?) trivia and highly selective facts (or "enhanced facts"; i.e., propaganda) about the monarch they worked for. Chroniclers were political hacks who had a goal to support. They weren't interested in the study of history as a phenomenon of human civilization, they were interested in supporting their monarch's reign and points of view associated with that reign. They were notorious for only using sources that supported their own position and ignoring contradictory evidence. Accuracy was optional.
Those are some harsh words. Again, where do you get this? What makes scientists today qualified to make judgements about scientists of centuries ago? We don't know where they got their information; we don't know what circumstances were present then that are not today or vice-versa. You assume the absolute worst when you say that the only recorders of history since before the 18th century (below) are worthless.
Let me suggest a book for you. You say you're going to start studying history in university soon; nearly every history student around the world - and that includes me in a Hungarian "commie university" in the late 1980s and early 1990s - read E.H. Carr's book, What is History?. It's a nice little overview of what makes history, what the whole study of history is about. He talks about things lime sources and accuracy. What I wrote above about chroniclers should not be new to you if you've been reading history; it is not (only) my private view but the generally accepted view by professional historians the world over, from the U.S. to Hungary to Japan. I love historical theory and have many, many more to offer if you're interested - Eric Hobsbawm's On History is my favorite - but Carr's book is seen as the standard and you'll probably have to read it at some point in your BA anyway.
Part II a comin'
I am deeply sorry for apparently offending or disappointing you. It was not my intention to make an enemy or provoke disgust, which, judging from your response, it appears I did.
I'm not offended; I'm annoyed. I entered into a debate with someone, something I enjoy but for which I have limited time, and the other party won't debate. Instead of addressing the issues I've raised - for whatever their merit - he's retreated into sweeping blanket generalizations without touching on a single issue I've raised. Wouldn't that annoy you?
This indeed is not a religious debate and for you to suggest that some religious beliefs of your might be offended by the debate not going in your direction is absolutely absurd. Please keep your religious beliefs out of this debate and stick to the matter at hand. Debating strategies based on emotional responses imply you have no real answer or response to your opponent's posits. It means the debate is over.
I was the one attempting NOT to turn this into a religious debate. To argue that the Bible is incorrect is acceptable, but the language he used, "up to EVEN NOW some humans are convinced" and "we wouldn't even have REALIZED that mankind's history extend beyond around 6000 BC or so (the literal reading date of the creation of the world in the bible)" (emphasis mine), is inappropriate for a debate. The Bible is a document believed by many, many millions of people worldwide as the absolute truth, many of them scholars, scientists and historians. To simply blow it off as something we have realized is an obvious falsehood is an affront. To use the Bible's supposed inaccuracy as an example supporting why we need to be revising history is bad form; it is not an accepted fact whatsoever and to phrase it as he did WAS an insult.
1. The Earth's age is not clearly delineated in the Bible; several throughout Judeo-Christian history have tried to reconstruct the planet's age by counting backwards through the described human family generations but there are holes and improbabilities that have plagued the results. Because of this, there have been many widely different results, ranging from 10,000 to 4000 years old. Modern American creationists seemed to have latched onto the Anglo-Irish Archbishop James Usher (sometimes written "Ussher") who in 1654 came up with the year 4004 as "Year One", though I'm not sure why they've chosen him. In any event, there is no literal way to read the Bible to find the Earth's age, as many true Believers have tried and have each come up with very different results. No point in being offended by anyone's beliefs in this regard.
2. The Bible is ultimately thoroughly irrelevant to what you and I were discussing. That's why I said your religious beliefs had no place here. It was not an attack on you or your religious beliefs, merely that the matter is of whether the Huns and Magyars share a common ethnic-linguistic heritage.
The theory you are espousing is quite extraordinary and requires the re-writing of much history, linguistics and archaeological evidence. To quote Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence [...] this evidence must come from professionals (historians, linguists, archaeologists) who can convince their peers to radically alter what is today known about Sumeria, the Huns and ancient Magyars. Not sure what your point is about using some non-Hungarian sources; Do you believe that only Hungarians have some mystical ability to understand Hungarian historical issues?
No, I am saying that history is not an exact science. You cannot read all the history texts in a library on and say you are an expert. At a certain level, you have to do more than sift through professionals interpretations and archaelogical reports and look at the primary sources.
What have you done?
Someone living in Hungary would be able to reach higher understanding of his own history than an outside observer; same in Poland, Egypt, Japan or anywhere in the world.
Why? The Hungarians of today are worlds away from the Steppe Magyars of a thousand years ago. Modern Hungarians are even physically different than the Magyars who first crossed the Verecke Pass, the result of a thousand years of ethnic mixing as medieval Hungary relied heavily (as all medieval kingdoms did) on foreign immigrants to fill the "Nagy Puszta" after wars, droughts and famines. I lived and studied in Hungary for almost five years, but the modern identity of Hungarians is the result of a accummulated thousand years of Christianization, Westernization, modernization, industrialization, etc. etc. etc. Modern Hungarian retains only about a core vocabulary of a thousand words actually derived from the old Finno-Ugric; the rest are derived from Iranian, Turkic, Slavic, Germanic and Latin loanwords. And that of course is quite normal for a language of Hungarian's age. The average Hungarian today can no more ride a horse (without a saddle!) and shoot a bow accurately than the average Swede can sail a drakkar to Iceland or for that matter than the average American could successfully defend themselves with a flintlock a la 1776. Highly romanticized nationalist ideology likes to pretend that we modern peoples have some innate, mystic connection to the fierce and rough ancestors we read about in our somewhat contrived high school/gimnázium/lyceum history books, but the reality is we have little in common with the folks in those books other than biology. I'm afraid the only place you can come close to understanding how your ancestors live is through archaeology, or at best comparitive anthropology - i.e., living for a time among peoples who today live a similar economic and social lifestyle to what your ancestors did, but of course the mass Steppe culture that produced the ancient Magyars is gone forever. A trip to Mongolia might still be quite informative though. A trip to Budapest will simply get you some nice souvenirs though...
I myself do not and have never lived in Hungary, but the overwhelming majority of those who do believe in the point I am defending. That, combined with the findings of scientists, minority though they may be, makes for a case that should not really be considered an "extraordinary claim."
It is an extraordinary claim if it goes against the commonly-accepted conventions of history, archaeology and linguistics. It's rather like claiming your ancewstors could fly; that's just not possible according to what we know today of the laws of physics. I'm not saying a Hunnic-Magyar connection is impossible, just highly improbable given what we know today about several of the fields I've outlined. Let's take Woolley as an example; he had an extraordinary claim, namely that there was a civilization even older than Egypt. This went against the accumulated knowledge of history and archaeology of the day (early 20th century) so Woolley had to produce extraordinary evidence to prove his point. He had some hunches based on circumstantial evidence, but nothing strong enough to stand up to scientific review - until he spent three summers excavating the magnificent city of Ur, revealing beyond all reasonable doubt that there really was a Sumerian civilization. Since then we've uncovered much more about Sumer and its history, though as I pointed out there are still big holes.
The idea that Hungarians and Huns are ethnically or linguistically related is an extraordinary claim because there is much evidence today that goes against it. (That is exactly what I'm trying to get you to address.) Even among Hungarian professionals - in fact, especially among Hungarian professionals in the fields I've been mentioning - there are few who believe this connection. In fact, I only know of maybe three, and they are regarded as quite questionable by their colleagues.
Do you know one of the foremost experts on the history and grammatical structural development of the English language was a Dane, Otto Jespersen?
This is a slightly differant case. The English have been native to England for thousands of years; their language today is almost completely unrelated to English of one thousand years ago. Point is, there is very little serious speculation to be done here; to know the grammatical structure is a matter of facts, and to know the history is to look back a few hundred years. There would be nothing to make it difficult for a foreigner to be a foremost expert.
??? English has not existed for "thousands of years". And English's very convoluted and twisted development between Celtic, Latinonic, and Germanic languages has made it a bloody mess to unravel. You are a native speaker of English, no? Let me let you in on a secret; English is murder to learn as a second language because of its complex temporal structure (24 tenses when the average Europe language has 5-6; Hungarian has 5), its almost completely non-phonetic spelling and a sea of exceptions to every grammar rule. I hope you don't subscribe to that myth many Hungarians hold that Hungarian is a difficult langauge; it's not, or at least not anymore so than others. Many non-Hungarians are intimidated because Hungarian looks so different from the surrounding Indo-European languages but once you get started it's fairly consistent and mechanical, easy to pick up. You want a hard language? Try Polish....
T.S. Elliott once wrote something to the effect that one cannot claim to know England if one has never left England; sometimes the outside perspective is as important as the native one. If you're truly interested in history, my advice would be to never let personal prejudices cut you off from historical sources.
They have not. The sources I have brought up have either not been addressed or declared null by you because of their age ("it's barely 200 years old now. You're confusing medieval chroniclers with professional historians, and that's like comparing an ox cart to a BMW"), yet you rebuke me for not accepting communist sources.
But two of the sources you wrote were by non-professionals (i.e., historians, linguists, archaeologists), all of them were general and none (that you listed) specifically addressed anything relative to the topic, and the last source you listed - Paul Lendvai - actually was against your position, which throws some heavy doubt on the credibility of all your sources. I still don't know why you listed Lendvai. I listed sources who do nothing but deal, in their respective professional capacities, with certain aspects of the question you and I are debating, but you listed a few very general sources and a couple written by people who aren't even professionals in the relevant fields. John Elway was a great football player but would you believe a book he wrote about physics, especially if he was pushing some wild theory that goes against some of the known laws of physics? I'd rather hear it from Steven Hawking...
Chroniclers are not historians, that was my point. They did not undergo years of training in research methodology, in source evaluation, in proper citations, etc. This is not my opinion; it is the common opinion of modern historians - including Hungarian ones. Herodotus, Thucidydes, Anonymous, etc. - all wonderful reading and wonderful gateways to their portrayed eras, but all also shredded to pieces by modern archaeology, linguistics and history. They're just not reliable on much of what they say, and therefore are not accepted as valid historical sources by professionals. Sometimes they are accurate and accounts are often quoted, but only when they can be independently verified by other sources as well.
Chroniclers like Simon Kézai were not professional historians trying to understand an aspect of the human condition and its development through time (as a professional does), they were simply listing ("chronicling"; get it?) trivia and highly selective facts (or "enhanced facts"; i.e., propaganda) about the monarch they worked for. Chroniclers were political hacks who had a goal to support. They weren't interested in the study of history as a phenomenon of human civilization, they were interested in supporting their monarch's reign and points of view associated with that reign. They were notorious for only using sources that supported their own position and ignoring contradictory evidence. Accuracy was optional.
Those are some harsh words. Again, where do you get this? What makes scientists today qualified to make judgements about scientists of centuries ago? We don't know where they got their information; we don't know what circumstances were present then that are not today or vice-versa. You assume the absolute worst when you say that the only recorders of history since before the 18th century (below) are worthless.
Let me suggest a book for you. You say you're going to start studying history in university soon; nearly every history student around the world - and that includes me in a Hungarian "commie university" in the late 1980s and early 1990s - read E.H. Carr's book, What is History?. It's a nice little overview of what makes history, what the whole study of history is about. He talks about things lime sources and accuracy. What I wrote above about chroniclers should not be new to you if you've been reading history; it is not (only) my private view but the generally accepted view by professional historians the world over, from the U.S. to Hungary to Japan. I love historical theory and have many, many more to offer if you're interested - Eric Hobsbawm's On History is my favorite - but Carr's book is seen as the standard and you'll probably have to read it at some point in your BA anyway.
Part II a comin'
The true study of history begins in the very late 18th century (some say the late 17th) with the professionalization of the study of history, when an actual discipline developed and professional standards were set about historical research and writing.
...and even then, for another 200 years, this "myth" persisted.
I didn't say the study of history formalized in Hungary 200 hundred years ago. In Europe and the West. However, as the formalized social science studies developed in 19th century Hungary, some did begi to question the Hun myth, as Kristó noted:
The Hungarian historian that Paul Lendvai cites in the quote of his I used in my last post, Jenô Szücs, was one of the most well-known Hungarian historians internationally and his works are still cited by historians in and outside Hungary. The Hungarian historian and Seth Low Professor Emeritus at Columbia University in NYC, István Déák, also rejects the Hun-connection theory.
Within Hungarian historiography, for instance, there's been a radical re-evaluation over the past ten years of Anonymous' writings, as it has become clear that he was even less accurate and reliable than previously believed. (And that has been since the fall of the communists...)
And what makes these scientists, 750 years later, so much more reliable that they can judge Anonymus "wrong" so completely and easily?
Contrary evidence. The study of archaeology did not exist at all in Anonymous' time, but we over the past two centuries have learned to cull amazing amounts of information through careful excavations. As well, through modern communications we today have access to vastly far more sources and historical materials than someone like Anonymous had. Think of it, that in Anonymous' day he was, if extremely well informed, only personally familiar with a maximum few hundred books but we today know of far many more from his own time. Add to that receipts, ledgers, tax scrolls, personal diaries, public and church records - all things he had little or no access to but that we today have - and you get a far wider picture of what was going on. Simply put, Anonymous and other chroniclers have been proven wrong on too many occasions by the wealth of evidence we have today to be considered reliable.
Laci's (Klazlo) right that scholarship in the communist years, certainly since the mid-1960s, was no more compromised than the pre-communist years. Have you ever seen any paper products from the 1920s and 30s in Hungary (i.e., maps, notebooks, etc.)? They're bordered in the corner almost always with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! Never!"), referring to Trianon. There was an intense nationalist pressure and quite a lot of Hungarian academic work reflected that pressure. To pretend that scholarship in 1945-1990 Hungary was any more political than what existed befoe, or conversely to simply ignore what any Hungarian professional wrote in those years because you disagree with the government of the time, is something of a cop-out quite frankly.
You will notice I did not cite any sources from between the two world wars except for Pekar Gyula, and that in agreement to one of your points. As for distrusting communism, you yourself know it was much more than merely a government. My mother's (who grew up under it) textbooks are heavily slanted, little more than propaganda. As much as the sources in the fifty years before communism are unreliable, under comm. they were at least as bad.
High school text books are quite different from professional journals. Every government, today included, maintains an interest in strictly regulating how history is taught to children. Yes, you are right - the communist textbooks were quite bad. But we're talking professional journals here, and as I mentioned after the dust settled from 1956 (in the early-to-mid 1960s, depending on the field) the Hungarian communists largely left history unmolested, especially non-modern history. They were interested in having the products of their universities seen as professionals to be taken seriously abroad. By the mid-1970s the Hungarian communists were actually paying students to study abroad in Western universities to pick up the "sercets" of the West's economic success; this is where most of the 1988 communists (Grosz, Pozsgay et al) got their education in fact. The famous Hungarian anti-socialist economist, Kornai János, is a product of this program. In the 1950s I would agree with you as the Stalinists interfered incessantly with academia but after Kádár quietly introduced the reforms of the 1960s, historians and the like were largely left alone. This is what Laci and I are trying to say, that you can't just dismiss them out of hand because they lived and worked in a time of dictatorship - many produced good work and you have to judge the merits of their work.
The Biblical town of Arpad, in modern western Syria, was actually pronounced "Arphad" and derives from the Semitic root 'raphad meaning "spread-out", as in a place one could relax and rest ("spread out") for the night. Are you going to claim the ancient Magyars are now also derived from the various Semitic peoples as well?
No, simply that they were affected by them, being in the same general vicinity.
So now they were in Syria too?
If you want to continue a standard point-by-point debate, I'm interested but if you're going to answer my posts with cop-outs ("I can't believe any communist era authors") and emotional blackmail ("Don't threaten my religious beliefs"), then let's just wrap it up and go our separate ways.
This is disappointing. I never employed "emotional blackmail," don't misquote me. In fact, your response was much more emotionally charged then the one I sent to Nobunaga, wherein I NEVER said "don't threaten my religious beliefs." They are not so easily threatened. I had no problem with a challenge, but took issue with his wording and style, and assumption of established truth.
Emotional blackmail is when you threaten an emotional response to a non-emotional problem. By invoking your religious beliefs, you were drawing a line in the sand so to speak that you implied shouldn't be crossed. My point was your religious beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with the Hunnic-Magyar debate and should not be here at all.
If we cannot agree on the validity of the majority of each other's sources, then perhaps you are right, and this debate should be over.
Actually, most of my sources were either A. non-Hungarian (i.e., not compromised by your fairly random standards of the evil era) or B. post-communist (like Kristó's 1996 book). The non-Hungarian sources I used addressed issues very relevant to the problem - i.e., they were experts on either Sumeria or the Ural-Altaic/Finno-Ugric linguistic questions. These you have not addressed at all yet, though they raise serious questions about your argument.
...and even then, for another 200 years, this "myth" persisted.
I didn't say the study of history formalized in Hungary 200 hundred years ago. In Europe and the West. However, as the formalized social science studies developed in 19th century Hungary, some did begi to question the Hun myth, as Kristó noted:
- Kristó, 1996: pg. 72
The Hungarian historian that Paul Lendvai cites in the quote of his I used in my last post, Jenô Szücs, was one of the most well-known Hungarian historians internationally and his works are still cited by historians in and outside Hungary. The Hungarian historian and Seth Low Professor Emeritus at Columbia University in NYC, István Déák, also rejects the Hun-connection theory.
Within Hungarian historiography, for instance, there's been a radical re-evaluation over the past ten years of Anonymous' writings, as it has become clear that he was even less accurate and reliable than previously believed. (And that has been since the fall of the communists...)
And what makes these scientists, 750 years later, so much more reliable that they can judge Anonymus "wrong" so completely and easily?
Contrary evidence. The study of archaeology did not exist at all in Anonymous' time, but we over the past two centuries have learned to cull amazing amounts of information through careful excavations. As well, through modern communications we today have access to vastly far more sources and historical materials than someone like Anonymous had. Think of it, that in Anonymous' day he was, if extremely well informed, only personally familiar with a maximum few hundred books but we today know of far many more from his own time. Add to that receipts, ledgers, tax scrolls, personal diaries, public and church records - all things he had little or no access to but that we today have - and you get a far wider picture of what was going on. Simply put, Anonymous and other chroniclers have been proven wrong on too many occasions by the wealth of evidence we have today to be considered reliable.
Laci's (Klazlo) right that scholarship in the communist years, certainly since the mid-1960s, was no more compromised than the pre-communist years. Have you ever seen any paper products from the 1920s and 30s in Hungary (i.e., maps, notebooks, etc.)? They're bordered in the corner almost always with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! Never!"), referring to Trianon. There was an intense nationalist pressure and quite a lot of Hungarian academic work reflected that pressure. To pretend that scholarship in 1945-1990 Hungary was any more political than what existed befoe, or conversely to simply ignore what any Hungarian professional wrote in those years because you disagree with the government of the time, is something of a cop-out quite frankly.
You will notice I did not cite any sources from between the two world wars except for Pekar Gyula, and that in agreement to one of your points. As for distrusting communism, you yourself know it was much more than merely a government. My mother's (who grew up under it) textbooks are heavily slanted, little more than propaganda. As much as the sources in the fifty years before communism are unreliable, under comm. they were at least as bad.
High school text books are quite different from professional journals. Every government, today included, maintains an interest in strictly regulating how history is taught to children. Yes, you are right - the communist textbooks were quite bad. But we're talking professional journals here, and as I mentioned after the dust settled from 1956 (in the early-to-mid 1960s, depending on the field) the Hungarian communists largely left history unmolested, especially non-modern history. They were interested in having the products of their universities seen as professionals to be taken seriously abroad. By the mid-1970s the Hungarian communists were actually paying students to study abroad in Western universities to pick up the "sercets" of the West's economic success; this is where most of the 1988 communists (Grosz, Pozsgay et al) got their education in fact. The famous Hungarian anti-socialist economist, Kornai János, is a product of this program. In the 1950s I would agree with you as the Stalinists interfered incessantly with academia but after Kádár quietly introduced the reforms of the 1960s, historians and the like were largely left alone. This is what Laci and I are trying to say, that you can't just dismiss them out of hand because they lived and worked in a time of dictatorship - many produced good work and you have to judge the merits of their work.
The Biblical town of Arpad, in modern western Syria, was actually pronounced "Arphad" and derives from the Semitic root 'raphad meaning "spread-out", as in a place one could relax and rest ("spread out") for the night. Are you going to claim the ancient Magyars are now also derived from the various Semitic peoples as well?
No, simply that they were affected by them, being in the same general vicinity.
So now they were in Syria too?
If you want to continue a standard point-by-point debate, I'm interested but if you're going to answer my posts with cop-outs ("I can't believe any communist era authors") and emotional blackmail ("Don't threaten my religious beliefs"), then let's just wrap it up and go our separate ways.
This is disappointing. I never employed "emotional blackmail," don't misquote me. In fact, your response was much more emotionally charged then the one I sent to Nobunaga, wherein I NEVER said "don't threaten my religious beliefs." They are not so easily threatened. I had no problem with a challenge, but took issue with his wording and style, and assumption of established truth.
Emotional blackmail is when you threaten an emotional response to a non-emotional problem. By invoking your religious beliefs, you were drawing a line in the sand so to speak that you implied shouldn't be crossed. My point was your religious beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with the Hunnic-Magyar debate and should not be here at all.
If we cannot agree on the validity of the majority of each other's sources, then perhaps you are right, and this debate should be over.
Actually, most of my sources were either A. non-Hungarian (i.e., not compromised by your fairly random standards of the evil era) or B. post-communist (like Kristó's 1996 book). The non-Hungarian sources I used addressed issues very relevant to the problem - i.e., they were experts on either Sumeria or the Ural-Altaic/Finno-Ugric linguistic questions. These you have not addressed at all yet, though they raise serious questions about your argument.
"Mesopotamian/Sumerian origins: Ive tried to find credible evidence emphasis on credible - to back your claims that Hungarians and Huns derive from the Sumerians, and I can find none." - Vrylakas
I have no stake in this topic of Huns and Hungarians, except in the most general regard to new information, but I am good at searching the net. I make zero claim regarding the credibility of what I have found, but perhaps it does move things forward. Regarding the above quote from Vrylakas, and some others which piqued my interest, I rooted out this:
http://www.imninalu.net/Huns.htm
Paragraph 3 + 4 of that page states that the Huns had pretty strong (though also mixed) Sumerian heritage. Then I looked further at this site and thought it was perhaps not the most credible source to throw before all of you.
So, I got a bit more interested and involved in the question of 'Huns, Hungarians and Sumerians' and I found a Hungarian chronology subtitled 'History Begins In Sumer', which contains the following:
"Independently from the various political regimes which have ruled over Hungary and which have imposed the current official version of the origins and history of the Hungarians, modern scientific and scholarly research has confirmed the Sumerian-Scythian-Hun-Avar-Magyar ethno-linguistic relationship and continuity." The chronology and this quote are taken from:
http://www.hunmagyar.org/hungary/history/chron.htm
More from this site on the controversy:
http://www.hunmagyar.org/hungary/history/controve.htm
On the Finno-Ugrian theory which Vrylakas seems to espouse, (I'm tentative saying this since I am sure Vrylakas is not bound by dogma, but he is following the Finno-Ugrian line) I must say that the very little research I have done shows the Finno-Ugrian theory in a bad light. For instance one Dr Sandor Nagy, who it is claimed has researched things like this for fifty years, says that:
"...while there are only two hundred Magyar words related to the Finno-Ugric language, there are over two thousand words related to the Sumerian language."
http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/natidentity/ee/hungary/magyars2.htm
I am not so blind however that I cannot see that there ARE these Finno-Ugrian words in the Magyar language...
But is it true Vrylakas, that the Finno-Ugrian reasoning is based purely on linguistics? Is it also possible that the Finno-Ugrian theory went in reverse? I.e. that the Magyars bestowed these words, rather than took these words with them?
A further glance of the last URL reveals the following:
"Part of Nagy's proof that the Sumerian were the people that became known as the Turanians is a word study of the current names of the rivers to the north and west which flow in to the Black Sea. These rivers lie in the direct path the Sumerians supposedly took out of the Fertile Crescent, and the area from which the conquering Magyars came. In Sumerian, the first river, the Don, means 'loud, rumbling sound'. The Donec or Donetz flows into the Don and it means to 'give or make sound'. The Dnieper comes from the Sumerian Don-aper - 'the father of the Don', and the river Dniester or Don-Ister meaning the 'divine Don'. And the Danube, from Don-aba which means 'the great Don'. Ister is also the name of one of the Sumerians' favorite deities, the goddess of Nature."
This seems fairly reasonable to me, linguistically speaking. Based only on this, I would say that Magyars could well have had Sumerian origin. But it says nothing of Huns, only Magyars, derived from Turanians, derived from Sumerians. And the evidence is not anywhere near cast-iron.
So what of Huns from Sumerians? Actually, sorry, I have some work to do, but I will come back to this question - the reading I have done so far only leads me all over the place. Much like the above did.
It is all very interesting though.
I have no stake in this topic of Huns and Hungarians, except in the most general regard to new information, but I am good at searching the net. I make zero claim regarding the credibility of what I have found, but perhaps it does move things forward. Regarding the above quote from Vrylakas, and some others which piqued my interest, I rooted out this:
http://www.imninalu.net/Huns.htm
Paragraph 3 + 4 of that page states that the Huns had pretty strong (though also mixed) Sumerian heritage. Then I looked further at this site and thought it was perhaps not the most credible source to throw before all of you.
So, I got a bit more interested and involved in the question of 'Huns, Hungarians and Sumerians' and I found a Hungarian chronology subtitled 'History Begins In Sumer', which contains the following:
"Independently from the various political regimes which have ruled over Hungary and which have imposed the current official version of the origins and history of the Hungarians, modern scientific and scholarly research has confirmed the Sumerian-Scythian-Hun-Avar-Magyar ethno-linguistic relationship and continuity." The chronology and this quote are taken from:
http://www.hunmagyar.org/hungary/history/chron.htm
More from this site on the controversy:
http://www.hunmagyar.org/hungary/history/controve.htm
On the Finno-Ugrian theory which Vrylakas seems to espouse, (I'm tentative saying this since I am sure Vrylakas is not bound by dogma, but he is following the Finno-Ugrian line) I must say that the very little research I have done shows the Finno-Ugrian theory in a bad light. For instance one Dr Sandor Nagy, who it is claimed has researched things like this for fifty years, says that:
"...while there are only two hundred Magyar words related to the Finno-Ugric language, there are over two thousand words related to the Sumerian language."
http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/natidentity/ee/hungary/magyars2.htm
I am not so blind however that I cannot see that there ARE these Finno-Ugrian words in the Magyar language...
But is it true Vrylakas, that the Finno-Ugrian reasoning is based purely on linguistics? Is it also possible that the Finno-Ugrian theory went in reverse? I.e. that the Magyars bestowed these words, rather than took these words with them?
A further glance of the last URL reveals the following:
"Part of Nagy's proof that the Sumerian were the people that became known as the Turanians is a word study of the current names of the rivers to the north and west which flow in to the Black Sea. These rivers lie in the direct path the Sumerians supposedly took out of the Fertile Crescent, and the area from which the conquering Magyars came. In Sumerian, the first river, the Don, means 'loud, rumbling sound'. The Donec or Donetz flows into the Don and it means to 'give or make sound'. The Dnieper comes from the Sumerian Don-aper - 'the father of the Don', and the river Dniester or Don-Ister meaning the 'divine Don'. And the Danube, from Don-aba which means 'the great Don'. Ister is also the name of one of the Sumerians' favorite deities, the goddess of Nature."
This seems fairly reasonable to me, linguistically speaking. Based only on this, I would say that Magyars could well have had Sumerian origin. But it says nothing of Huns, only Magyars, derived from Turanians, derived from Sumerians. And the evidence is not anywhere near cast-iron.
So what of Huns from Sumerians? Actually, sorry, I have some work to do, but I will come back to this question - the reading I have done so far only leads me all over the place. Much like the above did.
It is all very interesting though.
klazlo
Avatarless Sociologist
I would say that living in Hungary (or being a Hungarian in Hungary) allows certain advantages in understanding the country, its history or society, especially because the language skills to read old materials.
But being an "outsider" can contribute to this understanding also. The point is that you have to be clear about what biases can occur in the work produced in Hungary at certain times, and what other type of biases can occur in the work produced by an outsider.
This is a very intersting phenomenon, and in fact the study of early history was not even hindered from above from the late 1970s in Hungary. Hungarian communist leaders realized that this field can serve as a safety valve (just like political comedy at that time) to ease the tension in the society. Obviously school textbooks were not rewritten, but journals like the "História" was allowed to publish and make a space for academic debates about Hungarian history.
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