|
|
The Racial and
Dialectal Types of the Caucasus and Pontus
The racial category of Caucasoids has become one of
the most popular catchwords for European white races although it conceals
very vague and controversial content. The core of Caucasia is filled by the Caucasus Mountains, whose hilly and mountainous relief has become a
conservation reserve for ancient archaic nationalities. If human populations
in the plains, lowlands and plateaus are usually overridden by uncountable
migratory invasions and exhibit the least possible ethnic diversity, the
steep valleys of the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Caucasus, Pamir and Himalayas are a live asylum of ethnic fossils that have
survived millennia in unimpaired isolation and virginity. In opposition to
mountainous enclaves of Eurasia, among aborigines of Australia or New Guinea such ‘splendid isolation’ and racial diversity is
associated with technological retardation. Areas of high cultural diversity
are comparable to museums of archaeological finds as they provide a valuable
source of knowledge for excavating the human past.
The decisive dominant among Caucasian tribes
were undoubtedly the Abkhaz kurgan-builders, who shared most features with
Scythian megalith-builders but differed from their stock by the degree of
cultural purity. Their ethnic stock represented pure Ugrids, while Scythians
were impure Ugrids mixed with IE Persians, and so classified as
Indo-Europeans. Aligning the Abkhaz among the Siberian Ugric tribes seems
allowable seeing that old folktales described Basque megalith-builders as
‘ogres’. Comparing small burial mounds of Siberian tribes to large Maeotian
kurgans excavated in Maikop sites looks like a bold devilry only if we
neglect their dependence on political power. Kurgans were large funeral abodes
reserved only for the dead atamans, ordinary commoners had to content with
small piles of stones similar to the portable yurt tent for the
living. What all Ugro-Scythians had in common were dome-shaped beehive huts
that herders built out of straw, hide or felt on summer grazing tours. In
winter they resorted with their families to hillforts and more permanent
constructions out of stones. The same formal isomorphism and structural
variability was manifested in funeral architecture, whose grandeur and splendour
depended on social standing.
The anthropogenesis of
Basco-Scytho-Ugrids was a long evolutionary process that started with Homo
heidelbergensis and Homo rhodesiensis in South
Africa and
continued with the triumphal campaign of Mousterian mammoth-hunters
throughout Eurasia as
far as Siberia.
Their descendants did not remain childless, their diffusion in quest of the
megafauna of big mammals is recorded in surviving populations of Khoids,
Nilotids, Aterian and Berber Orientalids in North
Africa and Dinarids in Europe. In
the Middle East they
fused with local flake-tool cultures to form a special breed of
Levalloiso-Mousterians.
The
latter transmuted into three varieties of tall brachycephalous Orientalids,
the Armenian race, the Assyrian race and Semitic Race. Their occurrence
indicates a great predominance of Ugroid and Scythoid phenotypes in the Near
East, the Levant, Syria, Armenia and Caucasus. In Siberia the
prehistoric flake-tool cultures found new asylums and secondary isolated
domains as Uralids, Ugrids and Tungids. However, the rarefied droves of big
mammals led their step to Siberia and
the New World but
Neolithic pastoralism turned their hopes to new horizons. In Eurasian
toponymy their ethnonyms in place names crisscrossed earlier settlements
because after the extinction of mammoths they returned to the southern
fertile plains and attacked the villages of agriculturalists tilling the
soil.
1.
Greek straight nose sloping directly downward, 2. Roman convex nose, also the
eagle’s aquiline nose curved backward (Assyrian nose), 3. Lappish and Pygmoid
concave upturned nose bending onwards (Lapps), 4. a hook nose
(common among Egyptian pharaohs), 5. Jewish broken crooked nose, 6. round
nose typical of Mongoloid yellow-skinned races, 7. short flat and broad nose
typical of the Bantu and Negrids, 8. the short flat and broad nose of
Australids and Melanesids.
Table 27. The
nasal morphology of principal races (after J. Deniker)
Sumerids
The category of Assyrian race
appears to be a convenient label as it refers to a clear ethnic content
with transparent historical dating but calls for substituting by a more
fitting term of Sumerids. They separated from Ugrids in the Palaeolithic and
developed their own independent autonomy as the Uralids of northeast Europe. Their racial
description agrees with that of Ugrids but evolved into several independent
local varieties such as Sarmatids, Hallstattians, Sumerids, Maurids, Arabids
and Tibetids.
The typical features of wide crania,
rounded occiput, long face, narrow aquiline and high-bridged nose, thin lips
and narrow eye opening are ascribed also to the Semitic Jewish race. Its
theories were developed especially by the official Nazi anthropologist Hans F. K.
Günther, who classified Jews as a subtype of Armenian racial variety and
aligned them also with Assyrian types. In fact, Jewish people represent very
brainy and intelligent ethnic variety uniting several heterogeneous genetic
traditions: (a) the Microlithic tradition with the Y-haplogroups R1a, R1b
associates the Abrahamic iconoclastic Hebrews and Canaanites closely with
Germans, (b) Macrolithic cultures predefine the idololatric lineage of
Judeans and Jews, while (c) Leptolithic industry separates a special breed of
Palestinians.
|
Abkhazoids
The terms such as Caucasoids, Armenian
race, Assyrian race and Semitic breed are all misleading owing to
heterogeneous reference. The term of Caucasoids is suitable only to the minority
of robust long-headed Georgian peasants but does not comply with the majority
of Abkhaz kurgan-builders. The category of Armenian race properly suits the
Abkhaz people prevailing in the western half of Caucasia. By
Armenoid types anthropologists mean populations with ‘opaque-white
skin, brunet hair and eyes, abundant pilosity, medium stature (166 cm),
sturdy body build, wide head with rounded occiput (cranial index 87), very
long face, straight and narrow nose (nasal index 57) with high bridge, thin
lips, narrow eye opening.’ They
ought to be called ‘Abkhazoids’ because Armenians are an indiscriminate
mixture of Europids and Turcoids with a weak enclave of Abkhaz kinsmen.
The chief
problem of linguistic taxonomy is that the Abkhaz have preserved the Ugric
heritage in a more accomplished form than Uralo-Hungarian languages. Their
phonology is based on series of ejective, series of labialised (and
palatalised) stops, fortis plosives, fricatives, approximants and the mixed
vowel (schwa). These features are no more well-preserved in the
Ugro-Mansi groups and Palaeo-Siberian tongues. On the other hand, Caucasian
languages have preserved absolutive and ergative constructions, agglutinative
morphology and Uralic locative cases (essive, adessive, inessive).
Southwest Asia is an
ethnic domain of Orientalids descending from Uralo-Ugric big-game hunters
assimilated as
‘Semitic’ and ‘Hamitic’ pastoralists. Their characteristic features are
convex aquiline noses, thick lower lips and united eyebrows. They are common to all mummifiers, megalith
builders and beehive-dwellers. The best representatives are the Abkhaz,
Armenians and the Assyroid and
Jewish race. The Assyroid race
is demonstrated on ancient Assyrian monuments and few surviving populations such
as the Ayssores, the Jadjemi-Persians, Kurds and the Todas in south India.
The most common varieties of convex noses are depicted on Deniker’s ‘nasal
morphology’ in Table 1. Its scheme shows differences between broad Negroid
noses, Lappic concave upturned noses and convex types peculiar to Southwest
and Central Asia. The Roman type proves that the
Italic tribes of Marsi, Volsci and Oscans derived from the
Hallstattian culture of chariot burials and the latter from Sintashta chariot
burials. Members of this racial stock included Sarmatians, Uralids, Sumerians
as well as Assyrians. The genuine Uralids rarely display hooked and aquiline
noses, the long-term impact of Nordics promulgating the Corded Ware cultures,
their nasal profile is straight and combined with a high bridge. Their utter
antipodes were people with the Greek, Gallic and Lappish nose typical of
short-sized races cultures practicing cremation burials. It ranged from
straight types to concave noses with a low bridge.
The Languages and
Dialects of Caucasia
People of Caucasia are
predominantly Abkhazoids but their settlements were crisscrossed by several
alien races of Altaic, Negroid and Elamitoid origin. The most important
autochthons were remains of Dmanisi
Negrids, who preserved prenasalised stops mb-, nd-, ng-
and prefixing classifiers. Their followers were Acheulean plant-gatherers and
Neolithic agriculturalists with b-plurals. The Middle Palaeolithic
newcomers consisted of Levalloisian and Aurignacian ancestors of Tungids, who
united the Awaro-Andi family, Swan, Balkar and Karachay languages. They
belong to the group Volga Bulgar languages (Polovets, Kipchak, Kuman) that
fused with Turcoids and so their lineage is erroneously identified with the
Turanid stocks. The true Turanids are only tribes descending from the Imereti
Microlitic culture (10,000 BC). A tenable taxonomy of Caucasian races and
languages is outlined below. It proposes to classify ethnic groups according
the seemingly ephemeral criterion of plurals endings, where an x-language
defines a type of languages with x-plurals. Their dominant is the
western group k-Caucasian (Ugro-Caucasian) languages that have spread
in the Chalcolithic with the epoch-breaking expansion of the Bronze Age
industry.
|
Proto-Caucasian (Negro-Caucasian, mb-Caucasian): Bats, Godoberi, Tindi, Bagwalal, Dargwa,
Tsakhur,
Bezhta, Rutul; languages
with prenasalised stops and classifiers; its
ancestors probably
arrived in Caucasia with the advent of Dmanisi
man (Homo georgicus) about 1.2 mya
b-Caucasian
(Elamo-Caucasian, Tsezian family): Georgian, Mingrelian, Lazi, Svan, Godoberi, Tsez,
Hinux,
Hunza, Khwarshi, Tsakhur; ergative tongues with b-plurals, they may
belong to the stock of
Kura-Arax Gigantolithic axes
(8,000 BC) and remote descendants of Acheulean
cultures (500,000 BP)
k-Caucasian (Scytho-Caucasian): Abkhaz, Adyghe, Abaza, Kabardian, Cherkessian, Circassian;
ergative languages with k-plurals,
their group unites Maeotian kurgan-builders affiliated
to
Scythians,
the Maykop culture (3700 BC) and the Uruk period (4000 BC) in Mesopotamia
i-Colchians
(Caucaso-Lappic): Colchian, Albanian, Gilyaki; their family flourished in the period of
Caucasian Albania (600 BC), Trialetti
culture in Georgia (3000 BC) and Colchian culture (3000 BC)
s-Caucasian: Ingush, Chechen, Bats;
associated with the Koban culture (1100 BC) and LBK
elements
r-Caucasian (Turco-Caucasian): Iberian, Nohai,
Kumykh, Agul, Rutul, Tsakhur, Lak, Archi, Budux,
Xinalug, Kryts, Chamalal, Udi; probable
descendants of the Imeretian Microlithic
culture (16,000 BP)
l-Caucasian (Tunguso-Caucasian, Awaro-Andian
group): Svan, Balkar, Karachay-Balkar, Awar,
Andi,
Botlikh, Tindi, Bagwalal, Dido, Karata, Akhwakh, Bezhta; descent from Aurignacian
colonisations and the Baradostian
culture (38,000 BC) centred in the Zagros Mountains
|
Table 2. The classification of Caucasian languages by
plural endings
Extract from P. Bělíček: The Differential Analysis of the Wordwide Human Varieties. Prague 2018, p. 94-98
|
|
