The cradles of the Central European identity

The cradles of the Central European identity1 dr. Miklós Banai2 Co-author: Dr. Béla Lukács3 A dinner talk at Foundation Kálmán Széll 2014. november 28. 1 A talk held on the 28th of November, 2014 at Foundation Kálmán Széll. Ex London ambassador János Csák was the debate moderator. 2 Physicist, an owner and CEO of MultiRáció Ltd. 3 Physicist , a polyhistor, a retired professor at the Wigner Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, an owner of MultiRáció Ltd. 1 Introduction Ladies and Gentlemen! Let me thank the foundation and Mr. János Csák for the opportunity to hold this talk about this topic which I believe to be definitive for our future in Central Europe. The talk is based on decades long research we performed with my friend Prof. Béla Lukács. As physicists, theoretical physics and mathematical modelling were our fields of research. As far as I'm concerned, after quantum field theory, now I am the CEO of a company which we established together with Prof. Lukács. The company employs about 30 people and it specializes in consulting for information technology, micro- and macroeconomics. Still, both of us have been very interested in history and the evolution and structures of human groups, societies since we were kids. Béla's first very remarkable publication was not in fact in the field of his speciality, general relativity, but in history, the chronology of Sumerian kings [1]. I myself considered to be a historian at school but I realized in the 1970's that there is no opportunity to conduct objective research in a Warsaw Pact country. That was why I chose the physics faculty at Eötvös University instead of the arts faculty. Nevertheless I attended history lectures for several semesters. Our research results were published in a monograph in 2010 by publishing house Helikon [2]. János Csák was the CEO of the publisher at the time. He strived for the cooperation of Central European nations in practice as well since it was him who made the Hungarian oil company into a Central European company. He has realized Hungarians may become successful in our globalized world only cooperation with peoples living together with us. To consider our common past without being influenced by ideologies serving the interests of various powers is a precondition for this cooperation. We must learn about the roots of our identity. We must adjust and harmonize concepts and scientific views born in during the Enlightenment 200 years ago with recent results from scientific research. My lecture is focused on the former. It builds both on the 2010 monograph and research performed since then. We are going to see that the identity of Central European peoples has dual roots. The first one, thanks to Homer, the Mycenaean civilization is well known but the other one is less so. That is the Androvo civilization which flourished at the same time. The lecture consists of two parts. First I am going to review the last 700 years of Central Europe. Then we'll visit the Bronze Age and we'll proceed to the Middle Ages in Central Europe. For the sake of clarity, I am going to illustrate everything with maps which have been made, using my old grammar school atlas and “Történelmi Világatlas” (Hungarian Historical World Atlas), with the help of my colleague PhD László Szente to whom I want to express my gratitude here.4 4 The maps themselves have not been translated into English but they should be self-explanatory with the captions. I also express my gratitude to my colleague Miklós Prisznyák for helping me to translate my lecture in English. 2 Part One. Central Europe in the last 700 years Map 1 depicts Europe's present political map. Central Europe, which lies between Russia and France, is shown in details on Map 2. If you add up the population of this area then you will find that it's home to about 310 million people. That is how many people live in the United States of America and it is twice as many the population of Russia. It goes without saying what a political and economic power Central European peoples would wield if they cooperated as allies instead of being divided as it was the case in the last 200 years. We can clearly see this is possible within the framework of the European Union and NATO only partially because significant areas don't belong to either. It's questionable if the Eastern geographical border of Europe coincides with the historic, consequently cultural and ethnic borders. Deciding on this issue requires clarifying the issue of peoples' identities. Then one needs to dig at the origins. Before we would attempt that, let's have a look at the history of Central Europe from a political point of view. Map 3 shows the situation 100 years ago. More exactly let's examine the borders as established in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed on the 3 rd of March, 1917. As it's well know, Moscow capitulated to the alliance of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, that is they won on the Eastern front in WWI. Map 1: Europe 3 Map 2: Central Europe Map 3: The border line in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 4 As we can see the Brest-Litovsk treaty drew Russia's borders where they lie now. The victorious alliance drew the political border of Central Europe along geographical lines. Unfortunately the two members of the alliance had different ideas about the political solution. Austria-Hungary based its solution on the many century status quo but Germany opposed to this and it wanted small states which they could dominate easily. The most clarified version of the Austro-Hungarian concept was presented by Jun. Gyula Andrássy, the son of Sen. Gyula Andrássy who fathered the German-Austrian-Hungarian defence alliance. The whole Hungarian political elite backed the concept in unison [3]. The restoration of the historic Polish state was the gist of the plan, of course as a monarchy. They suggested the Hungarian king for the Polish throne in accordance with the Treaty of Visegrád in 1335. This would have established a personal union of Austria, Hungary and Poland. Map 4 shows the territory of the Austrian-Hungarian-Polish monarchy according to this plan, and Map 5 shows it if Ukraine would have been part of the Polish kingdom as it was the case in the past. One can see this trialist state would have been the largest European state. Having restored their historic state, the Polish would have become a major stabilizing force in the Monarchy and consequently in Central Europe, because this would have guaranteed them their statehood and independence between Germany and Russia. Map 4: Austro-Hungarian-Polish monarchy However Wilhelm II. objected to the plan narrow-mindedly because he was concerned about the hegemony of the German state. One can say World War One was not won by the Entente but it was lost by the Axis powers because of the baseless superiority ideology which overwhelmed the Germans. These days, 100 years later, it's easy to summarize the consequences: • • • World War Two the fall of Europa USA and the Soviet Union becoming global nuclear powers 5 Map 5: Austrian-Polish-Hungarian monarchy Now let's examine Central European history. Let's start with the 15 th century as shown by Map 6. There were three big political entities in the region. The Holy Roman Empire of the Germans (plus Venice) in the West and the Polish-Lithuanian and the Hungarian-Croatian kingdoms in the East. The latter two kingdoms formed a united state as a personal union and the Czech kingdom also belonged to this as shown by Map 7 Map 8 and 9. depict the region in the 16 th and 17th centuries. Central Europe was dealt a heavy blow by the Ottoman Empire, which was attacking it under Islam banners for 150 years, from the South during this time. It invaded both the Hungarian-Croatian and the PolishLithuanian kingdoms and it also occupied parts of them. They could be pushed back only by the end of the 17th century and then the political situation stabilized for a century as Map 10 shows. However another attack occurred from the East in the last quarter of the 18 th century and that was the first Trianon of Central Europe. The Polish-Lithuanian kingdom was eliminated by the Russians and the Prussians. At Polish request, Galicia and Ladomeria were annexed to the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom by the right of the Hungarian Árpád-dinasty kings. Later these were annexed by the Austrian Empire without any legal basis. Moscow's intrusion in Central Europe continued in the 19 th century (Map 11) and a century later, in 1949, it has reached the Hamburg-Vienna line (Map 12) and two-thirds of Central Europe were under its rule for four decades. 6 Map 6: Central Europe, 15th century Map 7: Jagiellonian dynasty 7 Map 8: Central Europe, 16th century 8 Map 9: Central Europe, 17th century 9 Map 10 : Central Europe, 18th century 10 Map 11: Central Europe, 19th century 11 Map 12: Central Europe, 1949 The two major factors shaping the fate of Central Europe in the last 500 years, that is, • • the expansion of the Ottoman Turks from 1300 and the ongoing expansion of Moscow, established by Nordic German Varegs, also from 1300, is illustrated in the Appendix by a chronological sequence of maps. We have now arrived at the second part of the lecture. 12 Part Two: Ancient times: the origins of Central European peoples Let us start off with a chronology as current scientific facts tell us about: • • • • the birth of Europid humans about 40,000-45,000 years BC, South of Aral Lake (? ) Mongolic humans form in the area of the Gobi Desert about 35,000-40,000 years ago (?) the separation of the Uralic and Indo-European language groups about 6,000-10,000 years ago in the region of Ural, Volga, Caucasus Mountains, Caspi Sea and Aral Lake the beginning of the Bronze Age in the third millenium BC The first fact is a relatively recent result of genetics. The question marks before the next two indicate uncertainty. What is known is that linguists consider the Uralic language group as the closest relative of the Indo-European language group. Consequently European peoples spoke a common ancestor of these two language families in the region of the Caspian Sea about four to eight thousand years ago. We know the Europid race dispatched migrants from time to time from its cradle 40,000 years ago and they populated Europe, too. Certainly they continued to live in the cradle area and its surroundings, too. The languages of our ancestors in this enormous 35,000 year period diverged a lot. Data indicate that the ancestral language developed in an organic way in the vicinity of the cradle and it divided into the Indo-European and the Uralic branches after the invention of the wheel and the domestication of horses. So, the ancestors of the speakers in those two language groups constituted a single population in the Caspian Sea and Ural Mountains regions until their separation. The time period relevant to this talk begins in the Bronze Age. I have chosen Map 13 from the Historical World Atlas depicting the aforementioned region and era. We'll see later that, as it stems from the current mainstream European body of knowledge, there's a missing area in the upper right hand corner of the map, actually a part of that area which was a place for particularly important Bronze Age developments and inventions for Europeans and for Central Europeans in particular. Namely the two insets cover an important part of the Andronovo culture [2]. Map 14 shows the spheres of influence for the two contemporary Bronze Age civilizations, that is the Mycenaean and the Andronovean ones. The Mycenaean civilization, which covers Mesopotamia, Egypt and Asia Minor is called this way because the area and time period chiefly evoke Homer's works in modern Europe. However, as Borbála Obrusánszky remarked on a conference, people of the Ancient Age regarded Meotis, today's Azovian Sea coast as the middle of the world. “Why was that so?”, we could ask since that area was far from being in the centre, it was peripheral to the civilized, high culture world as today's history concepts suggest. Were people under-informed in the ancient times or are today's people underinformed about this time period? This part of my talk points at that maybe today's people are ignorant about this time period and ancient world people were very well informed about their own age. Having a look at the map, one can see Meotis is situated nearly half way between the two contemporary Bronze Age civilizations. 13 Map 13: Bronze Age 14 Map 14: Mycenaean and Andronovean cultures in the Bronze Age Map 15 shows the location of the Andronovean culture [4]. It also shows the geographical features of the area well. There are river valleys both in the North and in the South and there is an enormous grassland, the steppe, in between. These geographical features determined the livelihood of people living here: agriculture in the river valleys and herding livestock in the huge grassland. The Bronze Age relics were excavated in the middle of the last century in the Soviet Union. Among the archaeologists involved, one should mention Chernechov. Archaeologist István Fodor, an ex-director of Hungary's National Museum, reported on these findings [5] but, oddly enough, this didn't make an impact in our knowledge about ancient history of Hungarians. Still this millennia long culture and civilization produced essential innovations, originating in its geographical circumstances, for mankind. Adapting to the huge steppe, this is where the equestrian way of life, equestrian nomadism was born. The NorthSouth duality characterized ethnicity in the area, too. Archaeological findings prove that the Northerners, people living East of the Ural Mountains, in the valleys of the South Siberian rivers, and Southerners, people living the Southern fertile valleys of rivers flowing into the Aral Lake and the Caspian Sea, cultivated continuous cultural relations. Both populations belonged to the Europid race but the Northerners adapted to the colder, the Southerners to the warmer climate. Tall people with high foreheads prevailed in the South and short people with low foreheads became dominant in the North. Not incidentally, as expected, the Northerners became speakers of the Uralic language group and the Southerners become speakers of Indo-European languages, specifically the Indo-Iranian languages. The Finnish branch separated by the Bronze Age, i.e. the middle of the third millennia BC, and they lived on the Western side of the Ural Mountains. People speaking Ugorian languages stayed in the region and expanded further East in the river valleys. I am going to call the Southerners as “Sarmatians” from now on and the Northerners as “Ugors” because these concepts are consistent with data from later times, too. 15 Map 15: Andronovo High quality bronze tools, together with their casting moulds, were excavated near the town of Omsk in the valley of the river Irtis and of Tomsk along the river Ob, in the last century. These archaeological findings demonstrate that bronze technology has penetrated this area and people living here intensively used bronze. There was a bronze smith in almost all villages, even two in some. Bronze usage was more common in this region than in the contemporary Mycenaean civilization. The explanation is simple: the essential ingredient of bronze, that is tin, was readily available in the Altai Mountains and in the Eastern regions of Andronovo, while tin was a scarce resource in the Mycenaean world by the second millennia BC and it was traded from long distances. In contrast Ugors living in the region of Tomsk and Omsk could easily transport tin via the rivers Ob and Irtis by boats from the Altai Mountains and actually they could transport it by horse as well. The use of high quality metal tools increased their economic efficiency. Newer and newer inventions improved their means. Not only larger horses, resulting from horse-breeding, but bridle-bits and stirrups, which were probably made of leather first, made horseriding common. They may have invented backward horseback archery together with stirrups, so there could be major improvements in defence and battle tactics. Guided horseback riding made crossing the huge steppe possible, it revolutionized transport and therefore human relations. Clan-based social structures evolved into tribal organizations with stable relations and then tribes organized themselves into tribal alliances. The huge area of Andronovo became accessible to travel for the Southern Sarmatians and the Northern Ugors and a place for a network of intensive human relations by BC 1500. Felt-making developed so much by BC 1300 that constructing yurts, circular wooden frame tents carrying a felt cover, made horse-riding nomadic way of life possible, that is wandering on the enormous steppe and shepherding huge herds. Agile horse-riding nomadic tribes arose which had large flocks of animals and high-quality, efficient weapons. Their fast cavalry made the chariot unnecessary. Their mounted military units could traverse four or fives times longer distances without roads than Roman legions could on built roads. The Sarmatian-Ugor culture revolutionized land transport for the next three millennia by creating preconditions for means of efficient, widely accessible horseback riding. It's no exaggeration to call these developments as a kind of “industrial revolution”. There was an “industrial revolution” in the Bronze Age world of Andronovo in the second millennia BC. As historical experience shows, such an “industrial revolution” must be accompanied by a leap-bound expansion of knowledge, a revolution of human thought as well. Research seems to support this. Béla Lukács and others concluded that Zarathustra lived in the territory of Andronovo around BC 1400 and 16 he definitely stayed in the region of Kara-Boghaz bay on the Caspian Sea [2, 6]. His teachings reformed the religions of the Sarmatian-Ugorian cultures. He created the abstraction of monotheism and he portrayed human life as a struggle between Good and Evil, that is he established the foundations for the theological abstractions for heaven and hell. The Hungarian word “ármány” (machination, intrigue, cabal, guile) derives probably from Zarathustra's Ariman who manifested devilish Evil. Since Zarathustra's hymns and sacred texts were passed on verbally and they were recorded in writing only about 1700 years after he was born, the original texts and language can be hardly reconstructed. Béla Lukács concluded that the original language was substantially richer in vowels than the language which recorded them [6]. We may not exclude the possibility that the Andronovo priests (shamans and “táltos”, that is figures known in Hungarian mythology as being similar to shamans) used a “sacred language” already extinct in their times. This language could have even derived from the common ancestor of the Indo-European and Uralic language families. This sacred language might have been the “official language” of the Ugors and Sarmatians, a bridge (mediating) language. The Andronovo artifacts show that the Sarmatians and Ugorians were the primeaval nomads and latter nomads (e.g. Turks, Mongols) learnt the skills from them. There appears to be a swarming out of the blossoming Sarmatian-Ugorian civilization at around 1000 BC. Partly overpopulation, partly a change of climate may explain this. Persians, Medes, Parthus wandered in Elan, in today's Iran, in the South and probably the ancestors of Huns and Avars migrated in China's direction while Scythians and people, knows as Sarmata to ancient historians, migrated to Europe. Consequently, in the sense of the collective name “Sarmatian” we used for the Southeners, the Persians, Medes and Parthus were also Sarmatian tribes. Regarding the ancestors of Huns and Avars, who migrated eastwards, it still requires more research to decide if they were Ugorian, Sarmatian or perhaps a mix of these. 5 It may well be that, besides the Sarmatian tribes and clans, Ugorian tribes or clans also took part in the Scythian migration into Europe. In the case of people referred to as “Sarmatians” in written sources, the Ugorian component was probably small. To our current knowledge, the Northern Ugorians, especially the ones in the West, were not involved substantially in this exodus yet. They mostly stayed in place in the first few centuries of the Iron Age. Antique authors outline the map of Scythia in the first millenia BC, that is already in the Iron Age, as shown by Map 16 (taken from the monography by Gábor Hosszú [7]). If we draw the Andronovo on this map, as in Map 17, one can clearly see that Scythia was created as a result of this exodus, expansion, that is Scythia was a successor to Andronovo. We might even say that Andronovo was Old Scythia. As one can see in Map 16, the European region north of the Black Sea, Sarmatia, was inhabited by Sarmatians from at least the second century BC. The Greek-founded Bosporan Kingdom, which existed for six centuries for sure, also had a Sarmatian royal dynasty. Sarmatia dominated this vast region at least for a millenia, at least from BC 200 until AC 800. 5 Anthropological researches in Hungary have shown that the Northern type dominated in the Avar's ruling class archaeological findings excavated in the Carpathian Basis and the Southern type prevailed among the Hungarian conquerors' ruling class. 17 Map 16: Scythia Map 17: Scythia as a successor to Andronovo Now let's review the names of Sarmatian tribes known from the works of antique authors: Iazyges, Roxolani, Antes (Ukrainians), Serboi (Serbians), Hoorate (Croatians), Alans (Jassy), Wends (Slovenians), Lechs (Polish), Scirii, … These authors are: Claudius Ptolemaeus in the 2 nd century AD, Strabon at around AD, Tacitus in the first century AD, Jordanes in the 6 th century [2]. The works of the first three authors show that the Sarmatian-German border situated along the river Vistula in the North (Wends) in the 2 nd century, the Sarmatian-Roman border in the Hungarian Great Plains in the South (Iazyges), and along the Danube in Walachia (Roxolani). Therefore Sarmatia extended further to the West in the subsequent four centuries. 18 Let's see how the historic atlas presents these centuries. Map 18 shows Rome, the Germanic tribes, the Sarmatians and the Finnish peoples in the 2 nd and 1st centuries BC. Map 19 shows the Roman Empire, the territories of the Sarmatians, the Germanic, Baltic and Finnish tribes. The Germanic tribes reached the Vistula river but “Slavic tribes” have been placed between the Baltic people and the Sarmatians, essentially without any antecedents, contradicting antique authors. Map 20 shows the third century, the century when the Germanic tribes scattered. They breached the Roman limes at several points and they penetrated Sarmatia too, as far as the Black Sea. The next map, Map 21, shows the 4th and 5th century, the era of the Huns. The Huns, together with the Alans, squeezed the Germanic tribes (Eastern Goths) from Sarmatia. By occupying Pannonia, they pushed the former Danubian border to the Alps in the Carpathian Basin. The Germanic tribes leave the Vistula region in the North, that is the former Sarmatian border shifts to the river Elbe in the West. One may interpret these processes as that the Huns came to help the Sarmatians and they pushed the Germanic tribes, which invaded the Sarmatian territories in the previous century, as far as the Elbe. The Germanic tribes which didn't leave submitted themselves to the Huns. It is worth noting the distinguished role of Sarmatians, especially the Alans and Scirii, in the Hunnic Empire. Shortly after the fall of Attila's empire, the Antes founded the city of Kyev in 482. Map 18: Europe, Centuries II and I BC 19 Map 19: Europe, Centuries I-II AD Map 20: Europe, Century III AD 20 Map 21: Europe, Centuries IV and V AD Now we have arrived to a point in this talk when we are going to address the origins of the “Slavs”. Since this is a complicated question whose discussion would require several talks like this, and it is also loaded with ideological axioms of political powers, we may present only the main statements. We should look for the findings of historians who investigate facts objectively, free from ideological and existential pressure. We found two historians: Deceased Ukrainian historian Omelyan Pritsak and active Romanian historian Florin Curta. Both did their research at universities in the USA, of course, not in their homelands. Omelyan Pritsak worked at Harvard University and Florin Curta works at Gainesville University in Florida. Both are highly regarded universities and the works of their professors should be regarded authoritative. We think these two professors uncovered the mystery and origins of the “Slavs” in the most understandable way [8, 9]. It is vital for us, Central Europeans, too, to learn about their results which shed light on the foundations of our national identity. Their results may be summarized in two bullet points: • • The (primordeal) Slavic language was formed from the many century co-existence of Sarmatians and East Baltic people. The Slavs, recruited in Sarmatia, constituted the military middle class of the Avars and Bulgars. The word “Sklav, Slav” originates from Arabic “sakaliba” meaning “bought soldier”. The statements appear to be shocking at first. Let's see the known events in the sixth century. The Turks rebelled in the Altai in 551 AD and they overthrew the Avar empire in Central Asia. Some of the Avars fled to China but others migrated westwards under Bayan's leadership. Having reached Eastern Europe, following the example of Lower-Danube Bulgars, they replenished their troops in the region of the rivers Volga and Don with soldiers from East Baltic peoples and ruling class Sarmatian peoples 21 who had lived there for centuries. The recruited military middle class was called “sklavenus” (bought warriors) . The etymology of the word may be traced back to Arabic “sakaliba” and this is where the word “Sklav, Slav” comes from. The Sarmatian ruled “Slav” military middle class spoke a dialect formed from East Baltic and Indo-Iranian languages in a few hundred years. That's the nemesis of the “Slavic language family”, which may be placed between the East Baltic and Indo-Iranian branches of the Indo-European language family, under the Avar Khaganate and after its fall. These are the conclusions of the two aforementioned historians. Let's note the Polish political nation regarded their Sarmata origins as a fact until the Enlightenment but the ordeals of the last two centuries have clouded this in our Polish friends and the Slavic origintheory prevailed in their minds. We think the main reason for forgetting this Sarmatian descent is that there is not a single state, and its scientific body, which protects the historic role the Sarmatians played. Three more remarks follow: 1) János Makkay concluded that Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages have strong and multi-faceted relations [10]. So it is no surprise that we regard Slavic languages derived from Indo-Iranian language speaking Sarmatians. 2) According to Paul Joseph Schafarik's Slavic ethnogenesis, Slavic people emerged in the swamplands at Pripyat (in Northern Ukraine today), approximately in the geographical focal point of Slavic people christianed so in the 19 th century [9]. It's easy to draw a parallel for this ethnogenesis with Hungarians' legend of the “miraculous hind” where forefathers Hunor and Magor settled in the Meotis swamplands (the coast of the Azovian Sea) where they multiplied and from where their people emigrated. This is not much of a surprise if you know Schafarik/Sáfár Pál was born in Upper Hungary as a son of an Evangelist pastor at the end of the 18th century and he started from Herder's and Hegel' remarks. It is not only him but his wife and spiritual companion Júlia Ambrózy de Séden from Southern Hungary who were our compatriots. Both of them became defenders of the freshly-born Indo-German language theory and the superiority ideology which stemmed from it. So two of our compatriots became parents to the Slavic ideology which claimed “Asian Hungarians” nestled among “Slavs” who are kins to the superior Indo-Europeans therefore Indo-Germans. This approach became an excellent ideological weapon for Moscow later. 3) The 30,000 eagle-winged hussars of Polish king John Sobieski stormed into the Battle of Kahlenberg (Vienna) in 1683 and they almost slay the huge army of Grand Vezier Kara Mustafa. It is hard to believe any of these hussars thought of themselves as “Slavic”. Let's move on. I think Omelyan Pritsak was a great historian. Besides his findings about the origins of the Slavic people, he made another observation of great importance: it is important to distinguish between the “empires” of horse-riding nomads and the Greek-Roman type, traditionally “agricultural”, empires. He called the former ones, using the Latin word for “peace”, as PAX and the latter ones as Imperium. PAX is a loosely organized alliance of tribes where one-level, horizontal relations dominate. The boundaries of the PAX are flexible, they did not build border defences (“limes”). The Imperium consists of highly centralized, hierarchically organized realms with fixed boundaries where vertical relations dominate. In modern political terms, PAX is more “democratic” than Imperium. Using these concepts, let us see how history unfolded in the second half of the first millennium. Having destroyed the East Germanic Gepid Kingdom in the Carpathian Basin, Khagan Bayan reorganized Attila's PAX in AD 567 after his victory at the Elbe. The Sarmatians, or peoples with Sarmatian ruling class, had important defensive roles in the PAX. First the Serboi/Serbians, later a part of the Hoorat/Croatians moved into Roman province of Illyricum in the West Balkan with Avar involvement. The Eastern part of the Balkans were settled by the Bulgarians as Sarmatian “Slavs”. According to Hungarian historian Gyula László, the Avar PAX was reinforced by another migration in AD 680, by the first wave of the Ugorian Magyars (Hungarians) emigrating from Andronovo last. However Charlemagne destroyed the PAX in AD 799 by making use of internal strifes there. 22 Hungarian leader Árpád restored the PAX again 100 years later and the PAX led about 40 “punitive expedition” against the descendants of Charlemagne. The “Slavs” at the Elbe were always fighting on the side of the PAX in these wars. What about the Czech? The word “Bohem” originates from the Celtic tribe name “boius” but the Czechs seemed to be organized by a Sarmatian ruling class, too, under the Avar and Magyar PAX-es. Contemporary historian Flodoard described Boleslav, the leader of the 1000 “beautifully armed” Czech mounted warriors, who constituted Otto's rearguard in the Battle of Augsburg in AD 955, as “Burislaus Sarmatarum princeps”. That is the Czech were also organized by a Sarmatian ruling class in the 10th century, too [11]. Boleslav and his horsemen had a crucial role in the defeat of the Hungarian army led by Lél and Bulcsu when they stopped the flanking Hungarian cavalry charge. Incidentally Boleslav, who presumably deserted to Otto's side from the PAX because of some earlier conflict, defeated the White Croatians in that year and he captured Cracow. Hungarian prince Taksony settled the White Croatians in Kárpátalja (today's Trancarpathia in Ukraine) and the Rusyn people are their descendants. The Lechs (Polish) led by Piasts drove Boleslav out from Cracow ten years later and they united Little Poland and Greater Poland. These data also support the existence of Sarmatia for at least 1000 years and its role in Europe's history. Pritsak's PAX concept is suitable to describe the chronology and spheres of influence of the Andronovean civilization. I'll demonstrate that with a basic map showing the 19 th century Russian Empire and Latin Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, similarly to the Appendix. Map 22 shows the Old Scythian PAX (Andronovo) between 2000 and 1000 BC. Map 23 depicts the Scythian PAX between 1000 BC and AD 1. Then Map 24 shows the Hunnic PAX in the fourth and fifth centuries. The whereabouts of its Eastern boundary is supported by historic records telling us Attila led a campaign in Baktria in AD 452, one year after the Battle of Catalaunian Plains. Map 22: Old Scythian Pax 23 Map 23: Scythian Pax Map 24: Hunnic Pax 24 Now we should summarize how the cradle of the common Sarmata-Ugor culture disintegrated as of the 5th century AD. The Turk invasion in the area must have started at the beginning of the first century after the Huns left China. They also became (secondary) horse-riding nomads, learning the skills from the primeaval nomads. As we could see earlier, they pushed the Avars partly to China and partly to Europe. They forced the Eastern Ugorians (Khanty, Mansi) further in the North, in the taiga (boreal forest). The last large part of Western Ugors/Magyars left Andronovo for Europe, following the Sarmatians at the same time. Map 25 shows the probable influence zone of the Avar Pax in the 6 th and 7th centuries. The Eastern, Turk dominated part, doesn't belong to it anymore. Map 26 shows the “Magyar Pax” restored by Árpád in the 9th and 10th centuries. According to historical data, there was peace in this territory for decades, and for a whole century in its majority. Map 25: Avar Pax 25 Map 26: „Magyar” (Hungarian) Pax Map 27 illustrates the events determining the history of Eastern Europe later, namely founding the Nothern Germanic Vareg Rus in the 9 th century. The Varegs established commercial settlements, “rus”-es, along the large Eastern European rivers. Holmgard, later known as Novgorod, was founded this way. Later, at the end of the century, they occupied Kiev, which was founded by the Sarmata Antes four centuries earlier, and they called “Koenugard” (King's Castle, King's City). They started forming the Kiev Rus on a part of Sarmatia's territory from here. The “rus”-es changed language gradually, to the Sarmata dialect which is known as “Slavic”, spoken by the majority of the population in the area. This facilitates spreading Byzantine Christianity as well. Map 28 demonstrates that the majority of the PAX restored by Árpád in the 10 th and 11th centuries reformed itself as Christian kingdoms. First the Croatians chose this path and then the centre of the PAX and its Northern part did the same at about the same time. The Northern part was reorganized by the descendants of Piasts and the centre was reorganized by the successors to Árpád, Géza and István, entered it into the list of Christian kingdoms. However the county system of these Imperium-style organized kingdoms preserved the one-level, that is “more democratic” relations, significantly from a territorial and administrative point of view. The Hungarian Parliament (“country assembly”) and the Polish Sejm are both heirs to the Pax style political structures. The Hungarian word “ország” (country), as even 16th century letters testify, meant a political decision-making body, not a territory [2]. One must also note the Czech Kingdom was founded at this time, too. However that became a vassal to the Germans' Holy Roman Empire soon after. 26 Map 27: Europe, Centuries IX – X AD Map 28: Europe, Century XI AD 27 Now we have returned to the Middle Ages, the era first discussed in the talk. . Let's summarize the heritage of Andronovo, the joint Sarmata – Ugor culture: • • • innovation/technology/production (stirrups, bridle-bits): horseback-riding (revolutionizing transport for 3000 years!) community of values/religion/education: Zarathustran monotheism 200 years before Moses, protoChristianity defence/state organization: Pax The name “proto-Christianity” may be justified because the Zarathustran teaching constituted the state religion of the Persian and later the Parthus empires for a long time. They also made a big impact on early Christianity and several teachings were incorporated in the New Testament. Let us only recall Apostle Paul! We should also note that, in contrast with Charlemagne's two decade brutal fight with the Saxons, the Croatians, Hungarians and Polish, preserving Andronovo traditions, converted to Christianity almost without major resistance because they recognized similar principles to their ancient traditions. Thus we may conclude: Peoples of Sarmatian and Ugorian origin are “kins” at least since the Bronze Age, that is the Polish, Croats, Serbians, Slovenians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Hungarians are “kins” from the Andronovo ancient homeland. In contrast with the 140 million Western “Germanic” population of Central Europe rooted in the “Mycenian” culture, there is an about 140-150 million half rooted in the “Scythian/Andronovo” culture. Map 29 shows the two halves of Central Europe. We draw the territory of the 15 th-16th century Jagellonian dynasty on Map 30 which may be interpreted as a restoration of the Pax in some way. 28 Map 29: The two halves of Central Europe Map 30: The Jagiellonian dynasty 29 Chief Judge Sir William Jones from Begal delivered only half of the story with his discovery of the Indo-European languages in 1786. As we can see, if the other half, that is knowledge about the Bronze Age Andronovo civilization, is added then an entirely different picture emerges about us, peoples surrounding us, Wendes Slovenians, Croatians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Polish and Czechs. No doubt that a part of these people with political nations of Sarmata descent ended up in the camp of Orthodox Christianity and the other half in Western Christianity but they are not each others' enemies concerning their ethnogenesis. Quite on the contrary, our ancestors were allied in a way as the dominant people of the antique Roman-Greek world in the Bronze Age civilization recorded in Homer's works. Though the Germanic people are not direct descendants of the Mycenean world but they raised the banner of the fallen Roman civilization and they enriched it by introducing widespread private land ownership. Placing the Sarmatians back on the historical stage sheds light on the cradles of our Central-Eastern European identity. It offers an opportunity to deepen the alliance of antagonized Central European peoples, even a restoration of the Pax in some way. If the two halves of Central Europe made a compromise on equal terms, similarly to the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, then this may put this alliance on an equal footing with either the USA or Russia. This alliance may stop Europe's decline and it may become a main engine of our civilization again. Thank your for your attention. 30 Bibliography 1. B. Lukács, L. Végső: The Chronology of the "Sumerian King List". Altorientalische Forsch. 2, 25 (1975) 2. Banai M. - Lukács B.: A Kárpát-medence egysége, Helikon Kiadó 2010. Budapest. 3. Ifj. Andrássy Gyula parlamenti beszédei, 1914-1918. Bp. 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andronovo_culture, http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andronov %C3%B3i_kult%C3%BAra 5. Fodor I.: Verecke híres útján..., Gondolat Kiadó 1975, Bp. 6. Banai M. – Lukács B.: „Az andronovói bronzkori civilizáció és a rovásírás keletkezése”, előadás, I. Alkalmazott Számítógépes Paleográfiai Konferencia, 2012. december 1., Bp. Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem. 7. G. Hosszú: Heritage of Scribes, Rovas Foundation, Budapest, 2012. 8. O. Pritsak: “The Slavs and the Avars” in Gli Slavi occidentali e meridionali nell' alto Medioevo, Presso de sede del Centro, Spoleto, 1983, 9. F. Curta: The Making of Slavs, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001 10.Makkay J.: Az indoeurópai népek őstörténete, Gondolat, Budapest, 1991 11.Szabó K.: Magyar vezérek kora, Kiadja Ráth Mór, Pest, 1869. 275. ol. 31 Appendix Ottoman and Moscovite expansionism from AD 1300 We present the expansionist time-line of the Ottoman Empire which greatly influenced Central Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. We also present the expansionism by Moscow from 1300 whose effects became decisive from 1772 up until 1990. We use historic maps in the atlas used in Hungarian secondary education, an edition published in 1970. Europe's Latin Christian parts, which belong to the Western civilization, are marked in blue. The Ottoman areas are marked green and the influence zone of the Muscovite/Russian/Soviet Empire is marked red. The years for the territorial expansion are also shown on the maps, respectively. The Ottoman Empire, expanding through Islamic ideology, invaded Central Europe from the South East permanently. Moscow, which was founded by Nordic German Varegs, occupied two thirds of Central-Europe by 1949 first on the banner of The Third Roman Empire, later Pan-Slavism and eventually Slavo-Marxism. In essence, Russia's Eastern European border was reduced in 1991 to the border drawn in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty signed after its capitulation to the German-AustrianHungarian alliance on the 15th of December, 1917. This practically coincides with its border in 1689. Ottoman Turkish Empire 32 33 34 Moscovite/Russian/Soviet Empire, AD 1300-1990, Russia, 1991 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46