Podcasts about indo european

Why modern communication still relies on ancient words and narratives.All communication and connection depend on one thing: language. That's why Laura Spinney says understanding language — where it comes from and how it evolves over time — can help us use it more effectively.“Language is incredibly powerful,” says Spinney, an author and journalist published in the Atlantic, National Geographic, Nature, and New Scientist. As “humanity's oldest tool,” language has evolved as we have, which Spinney explores in her latest book, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. In addition to the words themselves, there are also the stories that humans have carried with them for millennia. “Some stories that we still tell today,” Spinney notes, have remained stable for tens of thousands of years — providing more than just entertainment — shaping how we understand the world, share knowledge, and build community.In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Spinney and host Matt Abrahams discuss why language and storytelling are fundamental to being human, what makes a story compelling, and how our ever-evolving language continues to be our best tool for communication and connection.To listen to the extended Deep Thinks version of this episode, please visit FasterSmarter.io/premium.Episode Reference Links:Laura Spinney Laura's Books: Proto / Pale RiderEp.168 How Story Can Change Everything in Your CareerEp.91 Um, Like, So: How Filler Words Can Create More Connected, Effective Communication Connect:Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart PremiumEmail Questions & Feedback >>> hello@fastersmarter.ioEpisode Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedInChapters:(00:00) - Introduction (02:24) - Power & Limits of Language (02:55) - Detecting Lies (04:46) - Origins of Storytelling (07:42) - What Makes a Great Story (10:31) - Proto-Indo-European Language (12:52) - Language Families & Connections (15:06) - Language Clues in History (17:17) - The Final Three Questions (21:56) - Conclusion  *****Thank you to our sponsors: Stanford Continuing Studies. Enroll today for my course starting September 30thStrawberry.me. Get $50 off coaching today at Strawberry.me/smartSupport Think Fast Talk Smart by joining TFTS Premium.     

Welcome back Czarists!On this episode we're joined by our friend Stijn from the Greyhorn Pagans Podcast. We get deep into pagan history, mythology, culture, and the still very vibrant Indo-European religion that shaped so much of our ancestral worldview.Stijn answers all my questions about paganism with clarity and passion — from ancient practices to modern interpretations. We explore the difference between true, rooted pagan traditions and the often misunderstood or commercialized New Age movements. If you've ever wondered what real paganism looks like in the modern world, this one's for you.  Please go show Stijn some love and support!https://www.greyhornpagans.com/ Official Site & Partners ParanoidAmerican.com – Esoteric comics, art & occult storytelling Reality Czars on Alt Media United – Discover more truth-seeking shows Support Our Projects Bigfoot Comic Kickstarter – Does Bigfoot Exist? – A 40-page comic exploring Bigfoot lore Listen & Watch Latest Episode on YouTube Linktree – All Platforms Get in Touch Email: realityczars@gmail.com Support the Show Patreon – Exclusive Content Buy Us a Coffee on Ko-Fi

A language that was spoken thousands of years ago eventually morphed into nearly all of the languages spoken today in the West. Science writer Laura Spinney joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the proto-Indo-European language, how it connects languages as varied as English and Russian, and how researchers study ancient language with no written texts to guide them. Her book is “Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Most of us speak a descendant of one ancient tongue: Proto-Indo European. Almost all of Europe shares the DNA of its legacy. Acclaimed journalist and author of international bestseller Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World Laura Spinney explores the origins of this ancient language and how it spread far from its cradle near the Black Sea. Reaching the coasts of Scotland and the western reaches of China, traveling across the Mediterranean and deep into South Asia, Indo-European unites Dante's Inferno and the Rig Veda, the knights of Arthurian legend and the early Hittite kings. Now Indo-European languages are spoken by nearly half of humanity. How did this happen? Laura shares the epic journey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Subscribe to Jason Jorjani's Subsack: https://jasonrezajorjani.substack.com/Dr. Jorjani returns at this pivotal moment to discuss the future of Iran, Israel, & the United States.Consider Supporting BTR by:

This week, Nicola Shulman is staggered by Sarah Vine's account of Westminster rivalry; and James Clackson on the irresistible rise of Indo-European.'How not to be a political wife: A memoir', by Sarah Vine'Proto: How one language went global', by Laura Spinney'The Indo-Europeans rediscovered: How a scientific revolution is rewriting their story', by JP MalloryProduced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to season eleven Aramaic Word of the day As an Israeli guide who's spent years walking the dusty roads of ancient Galilee and praying beneath the arches of many monasteries, I often pause when I hear Western believers speak of the "Holy Spirit." They say Spirit, and I nod but my heart whispers: Ruḥa You see, in the Aramaic world of Jesus, Ruḥa isn't just “spirit” the way the Western, Indo-European mind understands it as something abstract, immaterial, or metaphorical. In the West, shaped by Greek dualism and Enlightenment rationalism, “spirit” is often divorced from breath, body, and movement. It becomes a concept something to analyze, categorize, and sometimes, to doubt. But in the Semitic world — in Aramaic — Ruḥa is breath. It is wind. It is life itself. Ruḥa comes from the verb (raḥ) to blow, to exhale, to cause movement. Every time someone in ancient Israel said Ruḥa, they were speaking of something felt  the stirring of a breeze across your skin, the warm exhale of a mother over her newborn child, the final sigh of a man at death, and the first gasp of a baby at birth in the Aramaic mindset, Ruḥa is never separated from action. It's not a distant, ethereal presence it is the invisible that moves the visible. Like the wind over the Sea of Galilee, it cannot be seen, but its power is always known by what it stirs. Now compare this with the Western idea. In Indo-European thought take Latin spiritus, or Greek pneuma we begin to move toward abstraction. Spiritus is elevated, intellectual, something more philosophical than personal. The body is often seen as separate or even lesser. But in Semitic thinking, and especially in Aramaic, there is no separation between the breath of God and the life of a human. The two are intertwined. God's Ruḥa animates us moment by moment. That's why when Yeshua breathed on His disciples in John 20:22 — “And he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit”  the Aramaic understanding is not metaphorical. It is literal. The breath of the risen one is the Spirit. He didn't give them a “doctrine of pneumatology.” He gave them His Ruḥa His presence, power, and nearness in breath. Let me tell you something I've learned from standing in the prayer caves of the Judean desert in Qumran. If you quiet your soul enough, you can feel the Ruḥa there not because it's emotional, but because it's reeal. The Aramaic word doesn't ask, “What is the Spirit?” It asks, “Where is the Spirit blowing?” And that question implies a sacred responsibility: to move with it. Reflect and Breathe My question for you, my friend:Are you walking with the Spirit like an idea, or like a breath? Are you analyzing God or inhaling Him? My hope is that as you learn the language of Jesus, you learn to breathe again with Him. Slowly. Deeply. Without rush. Because Ruha is already within you. All you have to do is listen for the wind. That was the Aramaic word of the Day, for more in depth Aramaic words check our website www.twinsbiblicalacademy.com  

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth's population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehistoric population in one time and place gave rise to a wide variety of peoples and languages is one with a long and troubled past. In this expansive investigation, based on more than forty years of research, archaeologist J. P. Mallory navigates the complex history of our search for the Indo-European homeland, offering fresh insight into the debates surrounding origin, as well as the latest genetic research. In The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story (Thames & Hudson, 2025) Mallory explores ancient migrations, linguistics, and archaeology, applying cutting-edge genetic research to untangle the key arguments with wit and verve. He addresses how the controversial idea of a single, shared homeland has been viewed by scientists, archaeologists, and linguists across the past century and reconsiders how, in the case of the Nazis and more recent nationalist movements, they have been manipulated for political advantage. The author goes on to analyze the linguistic trail linking current populations to the Indo-Europeans, looking at Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and more, as he traces linguistic origins across multiple peoples and cultures, bringing the most up-to-date phylogenetic research to bear on this story. Ultimately this important volume offers the most conclusive and nuanced understanding of an oft-misrepresented and misunderstood topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth's population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehistoric population in one time and place gave rise to a wide variety of peoples and languages is one with a long and troubled past. In this expansive investigation, based on more than forty years of research, archaeologist J. P. Mallory navigates the complex history of our search for the Indo-European homeland, offering fresh insight into the debates surrounding origin, as well as the latest genetic research. In The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story (Thames & Hudson, 2025) Mallory explores ancient migrations, linguistics, and archaeology, applying cutting-edge genetic research to untangle the key arguments with wit and verve. He addresses how the controversial idea of a single, shared homeland has been viewed by scientists, archaeologists, and linguists across the past century and reconsiders how, in the case of the Nazis and more recent nationalist movements, they have been manipulated for political advantage. The author goes on to analyze the linguistic trail linking current populations to the Indo-Europeans, looking at Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and more, as he traces linguistic origins across multiple peoples and cultures, bringing the most up-to-date phylogenetic research to bear on this story. Ultimately this important volume offers the most conclusive and nuanced understanding of an oft-misrepresented and misunderstood topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth's population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehistoric population in one time and place gave rise to a wide variety of peoples and languages is one with a long and troubled past. In this expansive investigation, based on more than forty years of research, archaeologist J. P. Mallory navigates the complex history of our search for the Indo-European homeland, offering fresh insight into the debates surrounding origin, as well as the latest genetic research. In The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story (Thames & Hudson, 2025) Mallory explores ancient migrations, linguistics, and archaeology, applying cutting-edge genetic research to untangle the key arguments with wit and verve. He addresses how the controversial idea of a single, shared homeland has been viewed by scientists, archaeologists, and linguists across the past century and reconsiders how, in the case of the Nazis and more recent nationalist movements, they have been manipulated for political advantage. The author goes on to analyze the linguistic trail linking current populations to the Indo-Europeans, looking at Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and more, as he traces linguistic origins across multiple peoples and cultures, bringing the most up-to-date phylogenetic research to bear on this story. Ultimately this important volume offers the most conclusive and nuanced understanding of an oft-misrepresented and misunderstood topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/archaeology

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth's population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehistoric population in one time and place gave rise to a wide variety of peoples and languages is one with a long and troubled past. In this expansive investigation, based on more than forty years of research, archaeologist J. P. Mallory navigates the complex history of our search for the Indo-European homeland, offering fresh insight into the debates surrounding origin, as well as the latest genetic research. In The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story (Thames & Hudson, 2025) Mallory explores ancient migrations, linguistics, and archaeology, applying cutting-edge genetic research to untangle the key arguments with wit and verve. He addresses how the controversial idea of a single, shared homeland has been viewed by scientists, archaeologists, and linguists across the past century and reconsiders how, in the case of the Nazis and more recent nationalist movements, they have been manipulated for political advantage. The author goes on to analyze the linguistic trail linking current populations to the Indo-Europeans, looking at Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and more, as he traces linguistic origins across multiple peoples and cultures, bringing the most up-to-date phylogenetic research to bear on this story. Ultimately this important volume offers the most conclusive and nuanced understanding of an oft-misrepresented and misunderstood topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth's population. Yet the idea that an ancient, prehistoric population in one time and place gave rise to a wide variety of peoples and languages is one with a long and troubled past. In this expansive investigation, based on more than forty years of research, archaeologist J. P. Mallory navigates the complex history of our search for the Indo-European homeland, offering fresh insight into the debates surrounding origin, as well as the latest genetic research. In The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story (Thames & Hudson, 2025) Mallory explores ancient migrations, linguistics, and archaeology, applying cutting-edge genetic research to untangle the key arguments with wit and verve. He addresses how the controversial idea of a single, shared homeland has been viewed by scientists, archaeologists, and linguists across the past century and reconsiders how, in the case of the Nazis and more recent nationalist movements, they have been manipulated for political advantage. The author goes on to analyze the linguistic trail linking current populations to the Indo-Europeans, looking at Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and more, as he traces linguistic origins across multiple peoples and cultures, bringing the most up-to-date phylogenetic research to bear on this story. Ultimately this important volume offers the most conclusive and nuanced understanding of an oft-misrepresented and misunderstood topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

"One thing that's become abundantly clear from the ancient DNA revolution of the last 10 years is how important migration has been in the history of our species. So, of course, there has been hybridisation, cultural, genetic, linguistic. There is no such thing as a pure people, pure culture, pure language. Genes, culture and language do not map neatly onto each other. This book was a huge amount of work because the only way you can tell the story of Proto Indo European [the ancestor of Latin and Sanskrit and their daughter languages including English, German, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and many, many others] is by combing the fields of linguistics, archeology and genetics. It's very fast moving and the point of writing the story now is that it's had this huge impetus from genetics" - Laura Spinney, author, Proto; How One Ancient Language Went Global talks to Manjula Narayan about the ancestor of the Indo European family of languages, the Yamnayas, the birth and death of languages, the great migrations out of the Steppes, the Harappan script, multiethnolects and why AI might be great for predicting language change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who were the descendants of Japheth—and what role do they play in the formation of modern nations and biblical prophecy?Video Version Available at https://www.lastchristian.net/In this powerful and detailed exploration, The Last Christian Radio Show dives deep into the historical and prophetic legacy of Japheth, one of Noah's three sons. Based on Genesis 10 and supported by historical, biblical, and cultural sources, this study identifies the lineage of Japheth and traces the origins of many Indo-European civilizations—from the Greeks and Scythians to the Armenians, Slavs, Thracians, and beyond.

In Dark Sayings, I explain how Emperor Justinian stands as a striking example of imperial harlotry. Like all rulers, he filtered Scripture through his own agenda—much like what we see in 2025, with elites twisting the biblical text to justify the very actions it condemns. Today's world leaders are effectively reenacting the sins of the Bible's villains.If it weren't a tragedy, it would be a comedy. I'd sit with Jonah beneath the vine—bag of popcorn in hand.What came of Justinian copying the sins condemned in Scripture?A massive stone temple—still longed for today. This longing betrays a rejection of the preaching of the story of the Gerasene demoniac, where God himself, through his anointed Slave, rejects Roman law and silences the Greek intellectual tradition.In defiance of this witness, Justinian—praised even now—translated Roman law into Greek, a move that flatly contradicts the biblical text.O foolish Galatians. You asked for a king, and you got one.Justinian's reign was marked by a bloody attempt to resurrect Rome's former glory: the North African campaign against the Vandals, the prolonged and ruinous Gothic Wars in Italy, and a brief incursion into southern Spain. These campaigns were catastrophically expensive, devastating to local populations, and—like all imperial games—ended in failure. Far worse was the Justinianic Plague, a lethal epidemic that ravaged both the population and the economy.Together, these calamities fractured the region's future. Though the Western Roman Empire had already collapsed in the 5th century, Justinian's ambitions destabilized its successors and hindered the organic development of local societies.Things might have turned out differently. We might have avoided the first Dark Age—or at least the first one we know of—had Justinian not tried to impose a new civilization atop the ruins of the old.Dear friends:There is no God but One.He is the Heavenly Shepherd.He claims no embassy, joins no assembly, and takes no seat at your councils.He casts no vote, answers to no electorate, and has no constituents.He occupies no office, nor does he dwell in any capital.He is beholden to nothing and answers to no one.His throne is in the heavens, far beyond your reach, where maps are not drawn.Be afraid oh nations.Tremble with fear, oh bordermongers, for he is not mocked—Not by you, nor your puny gods, nor your counterfeit leaders.I place all my hope in his Slave who trusted in his command to subdue the Latin-lex and silence the Greco-lego at the Decapolis in Luke.Everything I do, I do for this Slave's Rebellion.This week, I discuss Luke 8:30.Show Notesἐρημόω (erēmoō) / ח־ר־ב (ḥet–resh–bet) / خ–ر–ب (khāʾ–rāʾ–bāʾ)To dry up, to be desolate, or to be destroyed. To be devastated, often referring to lands, cities, or nations. Greek examples in the LXX include: ξηραίνω (xērainō - to dry up), ἐρημόω (erēmoō - to make desolate), ἀφανίζω (aphanizō - to destroy).In Hebrew חָרַב and Arabic خَرِبَ both describe the undoing of cities, structures, or human systems—especially in the wake of divine judgment.In both the Bible and the Qur'an, ruin is not random—it is the consequence of injustice, arrogance, or rejection of divine instruction.Isaiah 51:10 – “Was it not you who dried up (הַמַּחֲרֶבֶת [ha-maḥărébet]) the sea…”Surah Al-Hashr 59:2 - “They destroy (يُخْرِبُونَ [yukh'ribūna]) their houses with their own hands…” يُخْرِبُونَ (yukh'ribūna) comes from خَرَّبَ (khar·ra·ba) — they lay waste / destroy, describing the self-inflicted ruin of the Banu Nadir tribe, continuing on the itinerary of civilizational ruin brought on by pride and resistance to God's covenant.The function ח-ר-ב (ḥ-r-b) appears in Scripture to prescribe the destruction of cities and the downfall of kings—figures aligned with human systems of law and control. This same root functions in the name Mount Horeb, the site where divine law is given. It also functions as “sword,” an agent of God's judgment. In Exodus 32:27, Moses commands the Levites at Horeb to take up their swords ח-ר-ב (ḥ-r-b) and execute judgment within the camp after the sin of the golden calf, connecting the themes of lawgiving and purifying violence. ח-ר-ב (ḥ-r-b) highlights the biblical tension between the collapse of human law and the assertion of divine will through biblical instruction and judgment.In the Septuagint, ἐρημόω (erēmoō) corresponds lexically to ח-ר-ב (ḥ-r-b) in the following passages: Judges 16:24; 2 Kings 19:17; Job 14:11; Isaiah 34:10; Isaiah 37:18, 25; Isaiah 44:27; Isaiah 49:17; Isaiah 51:10; Isaiah 60:12; Jeremiah 28:36; Jeremiah 33:9; Ezekiel 26:2, 19; Ezekiel 29:12; Ezekiel 30:7; Amos 7:9.Λεγιών (legiṓn)(For a detailed discussion, please see Blaise Webster's article, The Crux of Paul and John's Gospel.)From the Latin legio, meaning legion, a Roman military unit (~6,000 soldiers), itself from the Indo-European root legō.From Latin legō, we also get Lex—law (that which is gathered or set in order)Lex, derived from legō, becomes a symbol of civilizational control—a codified system that enforces order, often violently.Roman Legions (from the same root) are the custodians of lex, instruments of imperial coercion and domination.Lex and legion are bound together both linguistically and ideologically—law enforced by gathered violence.In Greek, λόγος (logos) stems from λέγω and is associated in Hellenistic philosophy with reason, logic, and natural law. The Pauline School's co-opting of this term is an attack on Hellenism.For Paul, λόγος is not Greek reason, but shorthand for “the word of the cross” (ὁ λόγος τοῦ σταυροῦ)—foolishness to the world and power to those being saved, who trust in God's victory (1 Corinthians 1:18); Knowing that his work will find its own completion in the Day of the Lord. (Philippians 1:6)Unlike the constructive Greek logos, which seeks order and coherence, the Pauline logos is destructive—an insurgent word embedded within Greco-Roman structures, intended to bring about their co-termination in the execution of Jesus, thereby dismantling the entire system.Lex (law) and lego (rhetoric/philosophy) represent false structures of control and meaning, in opposition to the Pauline gospel.T...

Die deutsche Sprache stammt zusammen mit dem Englischen oder Schwedischen von Germanischen ab. Das Germanische stammt aber selbst wiederum vom Indoeuropäischen (früher: Indogermanischen) ab. Die indoeruopäischen Sprachen zusammen bilden eine riesige Sprachfamilie, die sich über weite Teile der Welt erstreckt (ursprünglich eben von Indien bis Europa). Doch woher stamm das Indoeuropäische ursprünglich? Irgendwo muss das alles ja mal angefangen haben. Neuere Untersuchungen liefern nun weitere Anhaltspunkte, doch des Rätsels Lösung ist noch nicht in Sicht.Ihr erfahrt in dieser Folge, was das Urindoeuropäische mit Grabhügeln und mit DNA-Sequenzen zu tun hat, wie biologische Methoden auch in der Linguistik angewendet werden können und warum Wissenschaft letztlich immer nur auf Annahmen beruht. Ein Podcast von Anton und Jakob. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sprachpfade ___ Literatur: Heggarty, Paul und 32 weitere Autor*innen (2023): „Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages“, in: Science 381, DOI: 10.1126/science.abg0818.(Die Studie, die Jakob ausführlicher vorstellt und in der der rekonstruierte Abstammungbaum der indoeuropäischen Sprachfamilie ist.)Lazaridis, Iosif und 93 weitere Autor*innen (2025): „The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans“, in: Nature 639, S. 132-142, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08531-5.(Die Studie, die Jakob weniger ausführlich vorstellt.) ___ Gegenüber Themenvorschlägen für die kommenden Ausflüge in die Sprachwissenschaft und Anregungen jeder Art sind wir stets offen. Wir freuen uns auf euer Feedback! Schreibt uns dazu einfach an oder in die DMs: anton.sprachpfade@protonmail.com oder jakob.sprachpfade@protonmail.com ___ Titelgrafik und Musik von Elias Kündiger https://on.soundcloud.com/ySNQ6

English. French. Italian. Hindi. Greek. Russian. All these different languages can trace their roots to the same origin: Proto-Indo-European, spoken in 4000 BC in the steppe that crosses from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Whether by migration, diffusion or conquest, the Indo-European languages spread west across Europe, east across Central Asia, and southeast towards India. Laura Spinney writes about Proto-Indo-European—which never existed in a written form—and its many descendants in her latest book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (William Collins / Bloomsbury: 2025). Laura Spinney is the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (PublicAffairs: 2017), which has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and two novels. Her science writing has appeared in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Nature, The Economist, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For centuries, polyglots and the linguistically curious have pointed out the similarities between certain languages of the Eurasian continent. Dante stirred controversy when he first posited that all the Romance languages—Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian—derived from Latin. But by 1786, the British judge and philologist Sir William “Oriental” Jones was applauded when he famously asserted that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek had “sprung from some common source.” Some 450 years later, linguists and archaeologists have filled in many of the gaps in our knowledge of this common source, called Proto-Indo-European, and sketched out its family tree, the branches of which extend from Scotland to China. But over the past two decades, the study of paleogenetics has radically advanced our understanding of this language—and the people who spoke it some 5,000 years ago. In her new book, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, science journalist Laura Spinney tells their story, and that of their linguistic—and in some cases, genetic—offspring, which constitute the world's largest language family.Go beyond the episode:Laura Spinney's Proto: How One Ancient Language Went GlobalOne enduring Indo-European mystery? How Celtic got to IrelandRead the two landmark 2015 studies in Nature identifying the Yamnaya's genetic contributions to EuropePreviously on Smarty Pants: how a language dies, how to live like a NeolithicTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Rosen hears the fascinating story of the origin of all Indo-European languages from Laura Spinney, the author of Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language and Laura has been investigating how that came to be. Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Beth O'Dea, in partnership with the Open University. Subscribe to the Word of Mouth podcast and never miss an episode: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b006qtnz

  Today Razib talks to Laura Spinney, Paris-based British author of the forthcoming Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global. A science journalist, translator and author of both fiction and non-fiction, she has written for Nature, National Geographic, The Economist, New Scientist, and The Guardian. Spinney is the author of two novels, Doctor and The Quick, and a collection of oral history in French from Lausanne entitled Rue Centrale. In 2017, she published Pale Rider, an account of the 1918 flu pandemic. She also translated Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz's novel Derborence into English. Spinney graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Sciences from Durham University and did a journalism residency at Berlin's Planck Institute. First, Razib asks Spinney how difficult it was to integrate archaeology, linguistics and paleogenetics into her narrative in Proto, which traces the rise and proliferation of Indo-European languages from its ancestral proto-Indo-European. She talks about why this was the time to write a book like this for a general audience, as paleogenetics has revolutionized our understanding of recent prehistory, and in particular the questions around the origin of the Indo-Europeans. Razib and Spinney talk about various scenarios that have been bandied about for decades, for example, the arguments between linguistics and archaeologists whether proto-Indo-European was from the steppe or had an Anatolian homeland, and the exact relationship of the Hittites and their language to other Indo-European branches. They also delve into how genetics has helped shed light on deeper connections between some branches, like Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, or Greek and Armenian. Spinney also addresses how writing a book like Proto involves placing fields like historical linguistics and archaeology with charged political associations in their proper historical context

English. French. Italian. Hindi. Greek. Russian. All these different languages can trace their roots to the same origin: Proto-Indo-European, spoken in 4000 BC in the steppe that crosses from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Whether by migration, diffusion or conquest, the Indo-European languages spread west across Europe, east across Central Asia, and southeast towards India. Laura Spinney writes about Proto-Indo-European—which never existed in a written form—and its many descendants in her latest book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (William Collins / Bloomsbury: 2025). Laura Spinney is the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (PublicAffairs: 2017), which has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and two novels. Her science writing has appeared in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Nature, The Economist, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

English. French. Italian. Hindi. Greek. Russian. All these different languages can trace their roots to the same origin: Proto-Indo-European, spoken in 4000 BC in the steppe that crosses from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Whether by migration, diffusion or conquest, the Indo-European languages spread west across Europe, east across Central Asia, and southeast towards India. Laura Spinney writes about Proto-Indo-European—which never existed in a written form—and its many descendants in her latest book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (William Collins / Bloomsbury: 2025). Laura Spinney is the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (PublicAffairs: 2017), which has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and two novels. Her science writing has appeared in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Nature, The Economist, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

In the flow of healing waters and the urgent cry of the Earth, we hear the voice of the Celtic mother goddess Modron, also known as Matrona. A goddess of fertility, abundance and healing, but also of grief and loss and ancestral wisdom, she is still present, although hidden, in today's world. We find her myths in the tales of the Mabinogi, the Welsh Triads and modern tales of Avalon, and her image and veneration in the ancient religions of Celtic Gaul, where she first emerged as a river goddess.We can trace echoes of her in ancient Indo-European texts and possibly even further back to the agricultural myths of the Neolithic. She is even present in the stars. Modron - Meeting the Celtic Mother Goddess takes a deep dive into this often overlooked goddess who has inspired our modern myths, combining solid academic research with suggestions for personal practice and ritual, from a modern day dedicant and scholar of Goddess veneration. Modron is emerging from the depths. Will you answer her Call?Substack: https://kellebandea.substack.comX: https://x.com/DeaKelleFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100050923191257Kelle is a naturalistic pagan and greenwitch of Roma/Traveller heritage. 'Modron' is her first book and she has three more forthcoming all with Moon Books.

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Dr. Hans Bork, a professor of Classics at Stanford, joins Lexie to discuss his formative experiences with Indo-European linguistics before Classics, the siloed nature of language study, which is typically categorized with literature rather than with its scientific and mathematical aspects, and humor in ancient Rome, particularly the works of Plautus and Cicero. So tuck in your togas and hop aboard Trireme Transit for this week's exciting odyssey! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram or visit our website www.theozymandiasproject.com! Learn more about Dr. Bork: https://classics.stanford.edu/people/hans-bork Check out his publications on Academia: https://stanford.academia.edu/HansBork Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheOzymandiasProject Custom music by Brent Arehart of Arehart Sounds and edited by Dan Maday.  Get exclusive bonus content (ad free episodes, early releases, and experimental content) on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Laura Spinney discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Laura Spinney is a writer and science journalist. Her writing on science has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, Nature and National Geographic, among others. She is the author of two novels, The Doctor (2001) and The Quick (2007), and a collection of oral history, Rue Centrale (2013). Her bestselling non-fiction account of the 1918 flu pandemic, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World (2017), was translated into more than 20 languages. Her latest book, Proto: How Once Ancient Language Went Global, the story of the Indo-European languages, appeared in 2025. She lives in Paris. Osmothèque – international perfume archive in Versailles. Conserves 4,000 perfumes, of which 800 have “disappeared” Studs Terkel. Legendary American broadcaster, writer, actor and historian Circus elephants, or rather their owner-handlers. A dying breed, as they should be, but they deserve our compassion and respect Papuan languages. Nearly 900 of them, vast majority of which are undocumented Gloria! 2024 Italian-Swiss film, directorial debut of Margherita Vicario Marija Gimbutas. Lithuanian-born archaeologist who got it right on the word's largest language family, Indo-European This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's face it, most of the popular podcasts out there are dumb. NBN features scholars (like you!), providing an enriching alternative to students. We partner with presses like Oxford, Princeton, and Cambridge to make academic research accessible to all. Please consider sharing the New Books Network with your students. Download this poster here to spread the word. Please share this interview on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Bluesky. Don't forget to subscribe to our Substack here to receive our weekly newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

From the steppes of prehistoric Eurasia to the languages we speak today, the story of Indo-European is one of ancient roots and global impact. But what exactly is Indo-European? Who spoke it? And how did a single language family come to dominate nearly half the world?In this episode, Tristan Hughes is joined by Laura Spinney to uncover the origins of Proto-Indo-European. From Sanskrit to Latin, mythological echoes to linguistic detective work, discover how archaeology, genetics and early literature help trace this lost language and the diverse prehistoric peoples who once spoke it.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight, audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.All music from Epidemic SoundsSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Today, we're taking a deep dive into three of the most powerful forces that shaped the ancient Indo-European world — fate, honor, and the heroic life. From the sagas of the North to the epics of Greece, these weren't just lofty ideals — they were lived truths. In this episode, we'll explore: what fate meant to our warrior ancestorshow honor was earned and defended, and why the heroic life still calls out to us in a world that's tried to forget it. If you've ever felt out of step with the soft, risk-averse modern age, this conversation is for you.So pull up a chair and sit a spell as we discuss what it means to live a heroic life in the modern age.Support the showGet Members Only Content when you upgrade to a premium membership on our Substack page. Click here.Link up with us:Website: Pearl Snap TacticalInstagram: Pearl Snap Tactical X: Pearl Snap TaciticalThe views and opinions expressed by the guests do not necessarily reflect those of the host, this podcast or affiliates. The information provided in these shows are for educational purposes do not constitute legal advice. Those interest in training in the use of firearms or other self-defense applications are advised to seek out a professional, qualified instructor.(Some of the links in the episode show notes are affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase through these links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend products or services we have personally used and believe will add value to our listeners.)

Laura Spinney is the author of two novels and three non-fiction books, including Pale Rider, a historical exploration of the 1918 flu epidemic, which came out in 2017. In this interview, we discuss her latest book, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, which traces the evolution of Proto-Indo-European — the hypothetical, reconstructed common ancestor of all languages in the Indo-European language family — from its purported origins with the Yamnaya people of the Pontic steppe through migrations and metamorphoses into nearly 450 languages spoken by 3.4 billion people worldwide today.

What is the difference between East and West? One helpful line to draw is that between Iranian and Indo-Aryan cultures, as seen in the extremely ancient traditions of the Avesta and the Ṛigveda, respectively. Whereas the common Indo-European heritage of multiple generations of gods (ahuras/asuras vs daēwas/devas, see also titans vs gods—which, as long as we're painting with broad brushes, we might imagine have something to do with memory of past relations of production as “ages”) is ultimately nondual, the Iranian tradition demonizes the gods (Skt. devas, Av. daēwas) and elevates one of the earlier ahuras (cf. Skt. asuras) into an absolute good creator, to whom is opposed an absolute evil which has corrupted the world and from which a series of saviors must be sent to save us, culminating in a final eschaton, a resurrection and final judgment, etc—the whole apparatus of Abrahamism is basically here already. Within this, we explore the Indo-European myth of the first man and the first king, whose Avestan expression features a societal collapse and a post-apocalyptic remnant surviving in some sort of secure underground enclosure called the wara. The new Japanese translation of the entire Avesta by Prof. Noda Keigō (2020), the first into any language in nearly a hundred years, as well as the new English Ṛigveda of Jamison and Brereton (2014), equip us uniquely well for this investigation. Our main takeaway is the sheer age of ruling class myths of the need to hole up in a cult compound to survive the collapse of class society—when in fact (even supposing we will need counter-waras and defensive tunnels of our own to survive climate collapse and extermination campaigns) it was always the ruling class who most needed to hide away, whereas the masses have always found a way out and forward in the struggle for production and human flourishing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode we continue to follow the monk Xuanzang on his path along the silk road.  From Gaochang, he traveled through the Tarim Basin, up over the Tianshan Mountains, to the heart of the Western Gokturk Qaghanate.  From there, he traveled south, through the region of Transoxania to Bactria and the land of Tukhara.  He pushed on into the Hindu Kush, witnessing the stone Buddha statues of Bamiyan, and eventually made his way to the land of Kapisa, near modern Kabul, Afghanistan.  From there he would prepare to enter the Indian subcontinent: the home of the historical Buddha. For more discussion and some photos of the areas along this journey, check out our podcast blog at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-121   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 121: Journey to the West, Part 2   The cold winds blew through the travelers' doubled up clothing and thick furs.  Cold, wet ground meant that even two sets of boots were not necessarily enough after several days.  The frozen mist would often obscure everything except for the path immediately in front, hiding the peaks and making the sky a uniform white. In many places, the path would be blocked by rock, ice, or snow—the remnants of an avalanche, which could easily take an unsuspecting traveler.  And there was the elevation.  Hiking through the mountains, it was easy enough to reach heights of a mile or higher, and for those not accustomed to that elevation the thin air could take a surprising toll, especially if you were pushing yourself.  And the road was no less kind to the animals that would be hauling said travelers and their gear. And yet, this was the path that Xuanzang had agreed to.  He would continue to push through, despite the various deprivations that he would be subjected to.  No doubt he often wondered if it was worth it.  Then again, returning was just as dangerous a trip, so why not push on?   Last episode we introduced the monk Xuanzang, who traveled the Silk Road to India in the 7th century and returned to China.  He brought back numerous sutras to translate, and ended up founding a new school, known as the Faxian school—or the Hossou school in Japan.   As we mentioned last time, Xuanzang during his lifetime met with students from the archipelago when they visited the continent.  The records of his travels—including his biography and travelogue—are some of the best information we have on what life was like on the silk road around this time. In the last episode, we talked about Xuanzang: how he set out on his travels, his illegal departure from the Tang empire, and his perilous journey across the desert, ending up in Gaochang.  There, King Qu Wentai had tried to get him to stay, but he was determined to head out.  This episode we are going to cover his trip to Agni, Kucha, and Baluka—modern Aksu—and up to the Western Gokturk Qaghanate's capital of Suyab.  From there, we'll follow his footsteps through the Turkic controlled regions of Transoxania and into Tukhara, in modern Afghanistan.  Finally, we'll cover the last parts of his journey before he reached the start of his goal:  India. From Gaochang, Xuanzang continued on, through the towns he names as Wuban and Dujin, and into the country of Agni—known today as the area of Yanqi—which may also have been known as Wuqi.  The route was well-enough known, but it wasn't necessarily safe.  At one point, Xuanzang's caravan met with bandits, whom they were fortunately able to pay off.  The following night they encamped on a river bank with some merchants who also happened to be traveling the road.  The merchants, though, got up at midnight and headed out, hoping to get to the city early so that they could be the first ones to the market.  They only made it a few miles down the road, however, before they encountered more bandits, who slaughtered them and took their goods.  The following day, Xuanzang and his retinue came upon the merchants' remains lying in the road and saw the aftermath of the massacre. This was an unforgiving land, and the road was truly dangerous, even for those who traveled it regularly.  And yet Xuanzang was planning to travel its entire length until he reached India. So with little alternative, they carried on to the royal city of Agni. Agni, or Yanqi, sits on the southwestern edge of the basin, west of Bositeng lake, on the border between the Turfan basin and the larger Tarim Basin.  The name is thought to be a Tocharian—or Turfanian—name for the city, which is also known as Karashr. According to the biography by Huili, Xuanzang and his party didn't stay long in Agni.  Apparently Agni and Gaochang were not exactly on friendly terms, and even though the King of Agni and his ministers reportedly came out to greet Xuanzang and welcome him to their city, they refused to provide any horses.  They spent a single night and moved on. That said, Agni still made an impression on Xuanzang.  He noted how the capital was surrounded by hills on four sides, making it naturally defensible.  As for the people, he praises them as honest and straightforward.  They wore clothing of felt and hemp cloth, and cut their hair short, without hats or any kind of headwear.  Even the climate was pleasant, at least for the short time he was there.  He also notes that they used a script based on India—likely referring to the Brahmic script, which we find in the Tarim basin. However, as for the local lord, the King of Agni, he is a little less charitable.  Xuanzang claimed he was brave but “lacked resourcefulness” and he was a bit of a braggart.  Furthermore, the country had “no guiding principles or discipline and government orders are imperfect and not seriously implemented.”  He also mentioned the state of Buddhism in the country, noting that they were followers of Sarvastivada school, a Theravada sect popular along the Silk Road at the time.  Xuanzang was apparently not too pleased with the fact that they were not strict vegetarians, including the “three kinds of pure meat”.  From Agni, Xuanzang continued southwest, heading for the kingdom of Kucha.  He seems to have bypassed the nearby kingdom of Korla, south of Agni, and headed some 60 or 70 miles, climbing over a ridge and crossing two large rivers, and then proceeding another 200 miles or so to the land of Kucha. Kucha was a kingdom with over one hundred monasteries and five thousand monks following a form of Theravada Buddhism.  Here, Xuanzang was welcomed in by the king, Suvarnadeva, described as having red hair and blue eyes.  While Xuanzang was staying in Kucha, it is suspected that he probably visited the nearby Kizil grotto and the Buddhist caves, there, which include a painting of King Suvarnadeva's father, King Suvarnapuspa, and his three sons. You can still visit Kucha and the Kizil grottos today, although getting there is quite a trek, to be sure.  The ancient Kuchean capital is mostly ruins, but in the Kizil caves, protected from the outside elements, you can find vivid paintings ranging from roughly the 4th to the 8th century, when the site was abandoned.  Hundreds of caves were painted, and many still demonstrate vibrant colors.  The arid conditions protect them from mold and mildew, while the cave itself reduces the natural bleaching effect of sunlight.  The paintings are in numerous styles, and were commissioned by various individuals and groups over the years.  They also give us some inkling of how vibrant the city and similar structures must have been, back when the Kuchean kingdom was in its heyday. The people of Kucha are still something of a mystery.  We know that at least some of them spoke an Indo-European language, related to a language found in Agni, and both of these languages are often called Tocharian, which we discussed last episode.  Xuanzang himself noted that they used Indian writing, possibly referring to the Brahmi script, or perhaps the fact that they seem to have used Sanskrit for official purposes, such as the inscription on the cave painting at Kizil giving the name of King Suvarnapuspa.  The Kucheans also were clothed in ornamental garments of silk and embroidery.  They kept their hair cut, wearing a flowing covering over their heads—and we see some of that in the paintings. Xuanzang also notes that though we may think of this area as a desert, it was a place where rice and grains, as well as fruit like grapes, pomegranates, plums, pears, peaches, and almonds were grown.  Even today, modern Xinjiang grows some absolutely fantastic fruit, including grapes, which are often dried into raisins. Another point of interest for Xuanzang may have been that Kucha is known as the hometown of none other than Kumarajiva.  We first mentioned Kumarajiva back in episode 84.  Kumarajiva was one of the first people we know of who translated many of the sutras from India that were then more widely disseminated throughout the Yellow River and Yangzi river basins.  His father was from India and his mother was a Kuchean princess.  In the middle of the 4th century, when he was still quite young, he traveled to India and back with his mother on a Buddhist pilgrimage.  Later he would start a massive translation project in Chang'an.  His translations are credited with revolutionizing Chinese Buddhism. Xuanzang was initially welcomed by the king, his ministers, and the revered monk, Moksagupta.  They were accompanied by several thousand monks who set up tents outside the eastern gate, with portable Buddha images, which they worshipped, and then Xuanzang was taken to monastery after monastery until sunset.  At one of the monasteries, in the southeast of the city, there were several tens of monks who originally came from Gaochang, and since Xuanzang had come from there, they invited him to stay with them. The next day he met and feasted with the King, politely declining any meat, and then went to the monastery in the northwest to meet with the famous monk: Moksagupta.  Moksagupta himself had made the journey to India, and had spent 20 years there himself.  It seems like this would have been the perfect person for Xuanzang to talk to about his plans, but instead, the two butted heads.  Moksagupta seems to have seen Xuanzang's Mahayana faith as heretical.  He saw no reason for Xuanzang to travel all the way to India when he had all the sutras that anyone needed there in Kucha, along with Moksagupta himself.   Xuanzang's response seems to have been the Tang dynasty Buddhist version of “Okay, Boomer”, and then he went ahead and tore apart Moksagupta's understanding of his own sutras—or so Xuanzang relayed to his biographers.  We don't exactly have Moksagupta's side, and, let's face it, Xuanzang and his biographers are not necessarily reliable narrators.  After all, they followed Mahayana teachings, which they considered the “Greater Vehicle”, and they referred to the Theravada teachings as the “Hinayana” or “Lesser Vehicle”.  Meanwhile, Theravada Buddhists likely saw many of the Mahayana texts as extraneous, even heretical, not believing them to actually be the teachings of the Buddha. It must have been winter time, as the passes through the mountains on the road ahead were still closed, and so Xuanzang stayed in Kucha, spending his time sightseeing and meeting with various people.  He even went back to see Moksagupta, but the older monk shunned him, and would get up and exit the room rather than engaging with him, so they had no more conversations. Eventually, Xuanzang continued on his way west, following along the northern rim of the Tarim basin.  Two days out from Kucha, disaster struck.  Some two thousand or so Turkish bandits suddenly appeared—I doubt Xuanzang was counting, so it may have been more or less.  I imagine that memories of what had happened to the merchants near Agni must have gone through Xuanzang's mind.   Fortunately, for him, they were fighting over loot that they had pillaged from various travelers, and since they couldn't share it equally, they fell to fighting each other and eventually dispersed. He travelled for almost 200 miles after that, stopping only for a night at the Kingdom of Baluka, aka Gumo—the modern city of Aksu.  This was another Theravada Buddhist kingdom.  Xuanzang noted tens of Buddhist temples, and over 1000 Buddhist monks.  The country was not large—about 200 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south.  For reference that means it was probably comparable in size with Kyushu, in terms of overall area, or maybe the size of Denmark—excluding Greenland—or maybe the US state of Maryland.  Xuanzang described the country as similar to Kucha in just about every way, including the written language and law, but the spoken language was different, though we don't get many more details. From Baluka, he crossed northward through the Tianshan mountains, which are classified as an extension of the Pamirs known as the Ice Mountains.  Had he continued southwest, he would have hit Kashgar and crossed over between the Pamir and Tian Shan ranges into the Ferghana valley, but instead he turned north. We don't know exactly why he took this perilous option, but the route that may have been popular at the time as it was one of the most direct routes to the seat of the Western Gokturk Empire, which he was currently traveling through. The Tian Shan mountains were a dangerous journey.  Avalanches could block the road—or worse.  Xuanzang describes the permanent ice fields—indeed, it is the ice fields and glaciers of the Tian Shan that melt in the summer and provide the oasis towns of the Tarim Basin with water, even to this day.  In Xuanzang's day, those glaciers were likely even more prevalent than today, especially as they have been recorded as rapidly disappearing since 1961.  And where you weren't on snow and ice, the ground was probably wet and damp from the melt.  To keep warm, you would wear shoes over your shoes, along with heavy fur coats, all designed to reduce exposure. Xuanzang claims that 3 or 4 of every 10 people didn't survive the crossing—and that horses and oxen fared even worse.  Even if these numbers are an exaggeration, the message is clear:  This was a dangerous journey. After about seven days, Xuanzang came out of the mountains to the “Great Pure Lake”, the “Da Qing Hai”, also known as the Hot Sea or the Salt Sea, which likely refers to Issyk Kul.  The salt content, along with the great volume of water it possesses, means that the lake rarely freezes over, which is likely why it is seen as “hot” since it doesn't freeze when the fresh water nearby does.  This lake is the second largest mountain lake in the world, and the second deepest saltwater lake.  Traveling past the lake, he continued to Suyab, near modern Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan, just west of the modern capital of Bishkek.  This was an old Sogdian settlement, and had since become the capital of the Western Gokturks.  Sogdians—like Xuanzang's guide, Vandak—were integral to the Gokturk kingdom. Their language was the lingua franca of the Silk Road, and at the time of the Gokturk Khaganate, it was also the official court language, and so when Xuanzang appeared at the court of the Great Khagan of the Western Gokturks, it was likely the language of diplomacy. When we think of Turkic people, many in the English speaking world think of Turkiye, and perhaps of the mighty Ottoman empire.  Some may think of Turkmenistan, Kazhakstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Uzbekistan, among others.  And of course, there are the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.  All of these people claim roots in the ancestral Turkic homeland in the Altai mountains, which sit largely in western Mongolia, north of China's Xinjiang region.  Much like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, they were pastoral nomads, moving their herds across the steppes, often covering great distances.  They would regularly move through different regions, perhaps returning each season, though sometimes not returning for years at a time.  They were often seen as barbarians by settled people living in cities, and yet their goods and horses were highly prized. Nomad and sedentary lifestyles would often collide.  Farmers would turn pastureland into fields, and when the nomadic people returned on their circuits, they would find walls and fences where there was once open land, and the people there would claim to “own” the land, a concept often foreign to people who were always on the move.  Nomadic people, such as the Gokturks, were not necessarily keeping vast libraries of records about themselves and their histories, and so much of what we get comes from external sources, which do not always have incredibly reliable narrators.  To many of the settled agriculturalists, groups like the Turks were marauders who raided their villages and farms.  They were a great bogeyman of the steppes, which required the firm hand of strong defenses to keep out—or so their opponents would want people to think. While they were known for their warfare, which incorporated their mobility, but they were keenly interested in trade, as well.  They understood the value of the trade routes and the various cities and states that they included in their empire.  Thus, the Sogdians and the Gokturks seem a natural fit: the Sogdians were more settled, but not entirely so, as demonstrated by their vast trade networks.  And the Sogdians also were part of the greater central Eurasian steppe culture, so the two cultures understood each other, to a degree.  They are even depicted similarly in art, with slight differences, such as long hair that was often associated with Turks over the Sogdians.  In some areas of the Gokturk empire, Sogdians would run the cities, while the Gokturks provided military aid and protection. Xuanzang's description of the people of Suyab, or the “City of Suye River”, doesn't pick out anyone in particular, and he even says that it was a place where traders of the Hu, or foreign, tribes from different countries mingle their abodes.  He mentions the people here as being called Suli, which is also the name given to the language—this may refer to “Sogdian” in general.  They write with an alphabet that is written vertically rather than horizontally—this may refer to a few scripts that were written this way, possibly based off Syriac or Aramaic alphabets that were adapted to Sogdian and other Iranian languages, but it isn't clear. We are told that the people dressed in felt and hemp clothing, with fur and “cotton” garments.  Their clothes fit tightly, and they kept their hair cut short, exposing the top of their heads—though sometimes they shaved it completely, tying a colored silk band around the forehead. He goes on to describe these people as greedy liars, possibly a reference to the mercantile nature of many of the people at the time. Something to note: The Turks of this time had not yet encountered Islam, which was just now starting to rise up in the Middle East.  The Prophet Muhammad is said to have been born around the end of the 6th century CE and was preaching in the early 7th century, though his teachings would begin to spread outward soon enough.  But that means that the Gokturks were not an Islamic empire.  Rather, their own traditions seem to have focused on the worship of Tengri, an Altaic personification of the universe, often simplified as a “sky god”.  Tengrism can be found amongst the Xiongnu, Mongols, and others, and it was the national religion of the Gokturks themselves, but there were many who also adopted other religions that they encountered, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Buddhism.  In fact, Xuanzang notes that the Turks he met in Suyab would not sleep or sit on beds made of wood because wood was thought to contain the spirit of fire, which he says they worshipped.  That sounds similar to Zoroastrian beliefs, where fire is associated with Ahura Mazda, who is also worshipped as a sky god.  These may have been beliefs inherited from their Eastern Iranian Sogdian partners. In Xuanzang's biography, we are given more details about his visit to Suyab.  Apparently, as he was headed to the city, he met a hunting party, which we are told was the retinue of Yehu Khan.  Hunting was an important part of life on the steppes, and it continued to be a favorite sport of the Gokturk nobility. Yehu Khan—possibly Yagbhu Khan, though that is up for some debate—is described as being dressed in a green silk robe, with his hair exposed, and wearing  a turban of white silk about ten feet long that wrapped his forehead and hung behind his back.  His “hunting” expedition wasn't just a couple of the guys.  It included about 200 officials, all with plaited hair and dressed in brocade robes—they weren't exactly out there roughing it.  He also had his soldiers, dressed in furs, felt, or fine woolen clothes, and there were so many cavalry that they stretched out of sight.  The Khan seemed pleased to meet Xuanzang, but his hunt was expected to last another couple of days, at least, so he sent an attendant named Dharmaja to take Xuanzang back to wait for the Khan to return. Three days later, Xuanzang was given an audience.  The khan was seated in a large yurt.  Xuanzang noted the seeming incongruity between the khan, sitting there in the tent, decorated with golden flowers, with the officials dressed in magnificent brocade garments sitting in two long rows in front of him and the armed guards behind him, compared to the simple felt walls of the tent. A ”yurt” is a common feature of nomadic life on the steppes.  It wasn't exactly a single person operation to haul them around, but they can be taken down and put up with relative ease.  And while yurts could be relatively simple, there are examples of much more elaborate structures.  There is little reason they couldn't be made larger, perhaps with some extra support.  In later centuries, there are examples of giant yurts that seem like real construction projects.  Use of tents, even in a city, where they had permanent palace buildings, was likely a means of retaining the nomadic steppe traditions, even while enjoying the benefits of city life. Whom exactly Xuanzang met with is a matter of debate.  His records seem to indicate that it was Tong Yabghu Qaghan of the Western Gokturk Khaganate, but other sources say that Tong Yabghu Qaghan died in 628, and the earliest Xuanzang could have been meeting with him was 630, two years later, so if that is the case, he must have met with Tong Yabghu's son, Si Yabghu Qaghan.  It is likely that Xuanzang, who was dictating his accounts years after, mentioned the Qaghan and then, when they looked up who it was, they simply made a mistake.  Remember, Xuanzang would have had everything translated through one or two languages.  He did know what he saw, however, and he recounted what he remembered. Tong Yabghu Qaghan oversaw the height of the Gokturk Qaghanate, and appears to have favored the Buddhist religion, though there were many different religions active in their territories at the time.  They oversaw an extremely cosmopolitan empire covering huge swaths of central Eurasia, including the lucrative silk road.  Xuanzang notes that at the court there were individuals from Gaochang and even a messenger from the Han—which is to say the Tang Empire.  One wonders if Xuanzang—or anyone at that time—realized just how tenuous the Khan'sposition was.  After Tong Yabghu's death, the Qaghanate would decline, and less than a decade later it would fall to the Tang dynasty, who took Suyab and made it their western outpost.  In fact, Suyab is thought to have been the birthplace, over a century later, of a young boy who would find a love of poetry.  That boy's name was Li Bai, or Ri Haku, in Japanese. He would become one of the most famous poets in Chinese history, and his poems were even known and studied in Japan.  And it was largely through Japanese study of Li Bai's poems that his works came to the English speaking world: first through Ernest Fenollosa, who had studied in Japan, and then by the celebrated Ezra Pound, who had used Ernest's notes to help with his own translations of the poems. This was, though, as I said, over a century after Xuanzang's journey.  At the time of our story, the Qaghan was throwing a feast, including Xuanzang and all of the foreign envoys.  Xuanzang comments on the food and drink—his hosts provided grape juice in lieu of wine, and cooked a special vegetarian feast just for him, while the other guests ate a feast of meat, such as veal, lamb, fish, and the like.  There was also the music of various regions along the Silk Road, which Xuanzang found to be catchy, but of course not as refined as the music he was used to, of course.  After dinner Xuanzang was asked to expound upon the Darma, largely about the basic principle that you should be kind to one another—I doubt he was getting into the deep mysteries of Buddhist philosophy. Xuanzang stuck around the court for three more days, during which time the Qaghan tried to get him to stay, but Xuanzang insisted that he had to make it to India.  And so the Qaghan relented.  He found men in his army who could translate for Xuanzang along his journey, and had letters of introduction written to at least as far as the state of Kapisa, in modern Afghanistan. And so, armed with the Qaghan's blessing and a fresh translator, Xuanzang struck out again.  They headed westward for over one hundred miles, eventually reaching Bingyul, aka the Thousand Springs.  This is the area where the Qaghan and his court would spend his summers, and the deer in the area were protected under his orders, so that they were not afraid of humans—which sounds similar to the situation with the deer in Nara.  Continuing on another fifty miles or so—the distances are approximate as Xuanzang's primary duty was not exactly to map all of this out—Xuanzang arrived at the city of Taras, in modern Kazakhstan, another place where the cultures of the Silk Road mixed and mingled.  Xuanzang didn't have much to say about Taraz, apparently, though it is one of the oldest cities in Transoxania, founded near the beginning of the Common Era.  A few miles south of there, Xuanzang reportedly found a village of re-settled ethnic Han that had been captured by the Gokturks and settled here.  They had adopted the dress and customs of the Turkic people, but continued to speak a version of Chinese. Southwest of that he reached the City of White Water, likely referring to Aksukent.  This is the same “Aksu” as the city in Xinjiang, both of which mean “White Water” in Turkic, but this one is in the south of Kazakhstan.  Xuanzang found the climate and products an improvement over what he had experienced in Taras.  Beyond that, he next arrived at the city of Gongyu, and then south again to Nujkend, and then traveling westward to the country of Chach, aka Tashkent.  Both Nujkend and Chach were large cities in nations of smaller, mostly autonomous city-states, which made up a lot of the political geography of Transoxania. I would note that Xuanzang's notes here are much more sparse than previously.  This may be because these were outside of the Tarim basin and therefore of less interest to individuals in the Tang empire.  Or perhaps he was just making his way more quickly and not stopping at every kingdom along the way. From Tashkent, he continued southeast to the Ferghana valley—the country of Feihan.  Oddly, this country doesn't appear in Xuanzang's biography, even though the Ferghana Valley seems to have been fairly well known back in the Tang Empire—it was known as the home of some of the best horses, which were one of its first major exports.  In fact, the Han dynasty even mounted a military expedition to travel to Ferghana just to obtain horses.  Xuanzang is oddly silent on this; however, he does talk about the fertile nature of the land.  He mentions that their language here is different from the lands he had been traveling through up to this point, and also points out that the people of the Ferghana valley were also visibly different from others in the area. From the Ferghana valley, Xuanzang headed west for about 300 miles or more to the land of Sutrushana—perhaps referring to the area of Ushrusana, with its capital of Bunjikat.  This country was also largely Sogdian, and described as similar to Tashkent.  From there, he traveled west through a great desert, passing skeletons, which were the only marker of the trail other than a view of the far off mountains.  Finally, they reached Samarkand, known as the country of “Kang” in Chinese, which was also the term used to mark Sogdians who claimed descent from the people of Samarkand. Samarkand is another of the ancient cities of Central Asia, and even today is the third largest city in modern Uzbekistan.  Human activity in the region goes back to the paleolithic era, and the city was probably founded between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.  Samarkand was conquered by Alexander the Great, and during the Achaemenid Empire it was the capital of Sogdiana.  During Xuanzang's visit, Samarkand was described as an impenetrable fortress with a large population. For all of his travel, Samarkand was the first place Xuanzang notes as specifically not a Buddhist land.  In fact, there were two monasteries, suggesting that there had been Buddhists, but if any monks tried to stay there then the locals would chase them out with fire.  Instead, they worshipped fire—likely meaning Ahura Mazda and Zoroastrianism.  This leads to a story that I have to wonder about, given the reliability of our narrators. It is said that Xuanzang was met by the King with arrogance, but after staying the night Xuanzang was able to tell the King about Buddhism and its merits.  The king was intrigued, and asked to observe the Precepts, and treated Xuanzang with hospitality and respect.  So when two of Xuanzang's attendants went to the monasteries to worship, they were chased out with fire.  When the king heard about this, he had the people arrested and ordered their hands to be cut off.  Xuanzang could not bear to witness such suffering, however, and he intervened to have them spared.  So instead the king had them flogged and banished from the city.  Ever since then, all the people believed in Buddhism. Some parts of this strike true.  It was likely that the king would entertain this strange wanderer who had arrived with letters from the great Qaghan—that may have even explained why Xuanzang had been encouraged to make the dangerous journey to Suyab in the first place, so that he could obtain such permission.  And it would not be strange for the king to listen to his teachings.  If Xuanzang's attendants were attacked, that would have been a huge breach of hospitality, and however the King felt about it, he no doubt had to do something about it.  And so all of that sounds somewhat believable.  Does that mean everyone suddenly converted to Buddhism?  I don't know that I'm quite willing to go that far.  It is also likely that there were Buddhists there already, even if the majority religion was Zoroastrianism. From Samarkand, Xuanzang traveled farther southwest, to the country of Kasanna, which seems to have been the edge of what we might call Sogdiana.   According to his biographers, however, there was a little more to all of this.  Rather, he headed west to Kusanika.  Then he traveled to  Khargan, and further on to the country of Bukhara, and then to Vadi.  All of these were “An” in Chinese, which was the name element used for Sogdians from this region.  He then continued west to the country of Horismika, on the other side of the Amu Darya, aka the Oxus River of Transoxanian fame. From there he traveled further southwest, entering into the mountains.  The path here was often such that they had to travel single-file, and there was no food or water other than what you brought with you.  Eventually they came to a set of doors, known as the Iron Gate.  This was a Turkic fortress.  It was no doubt fortuitous that he had come from his meeting with the Qaghan, and likely had permission to pass through.  From there, they entered the country of Tukhara. As we noted in Episode 119, Tukhara was in the region of Bactria.  It was bordered by the Pamir range in the east, and the Persian empire in the west.  There were also the Great Snow Mountains in the south, likely referencing the Hindu Kush. Tukhara had been conquered by the Gokturks just within the past couple of decades, and Xuanzang notes that the country had been split into largely autonomous city-states as the local royalty had died without an heir many years before.  With the Gokturk conquest, it was now administered by Tardu Shad, the son of Tong Yabghu Qaghan.  “Shad” in this case was a local title. Here, Xuanzang's narrative gets a little dicey, especially between his biography and his records.  The records of the Western Regions denotes various countries in this area.  It is unclear if he traveled to all of them or is just recounting them from records he obtained.  He does give us at least an overview of the people and the region.  I would also note that this is one of the regions he visited, again, on his return trip, and so may have been more familiar with the region than those areas he had passed through from Suyab on down. For one thing, he notes that the language of the region was different from that of the “Suli”, which appears to refer to the Sogdians.  This was the old territory of the Kushan empire, and they largely spoke Bactrian.  Like Sogdian, it was another Eastern Iranian language, and they used an alphabet based largely on Greek, and written horizontally rather than vertically.  They also had their own coins. This region had plenty of Buddhist communities, and Xuanzang describes the cities and how many monasteries they had, though, again, it isn't clear if he actually visited all of them or not.  These are countries that Li Rongji translates as “Tirmidh”, “Sahaaniyan”, “Kharuun”, “Shuumaan”, etc. It does seem that Xuanzang made it to the capital city, the modern city Kunduz, Afghanistan. Xuanzang actually had something specific for the local Gokturk ruler, Tardu Shad.  Tardu Shad's wife was the younger sister of King Qu Wentai of Gaochang, whom we met last episode.  Qu Wentai had provided Xuanzang a letter for his younger sister and her husband.  Unfortunately, Xuanzang arrived to learn that the princess of Gaochang had passed away, and Tardu Shad's health was failing.  It does seem that Tardu Shad was aware of Xuanzang, however—a letter had already come from Qu Wentai to let them know that Xuanzang was on his way.  As I mentioned last episode, letters were an important part of how communities stayed tied together.  Of course, given the perils of the road, one assumes that multiple letters likely had to be sent just in case they didn't make it.  The US Postal Service this was not. Tardu Shad, though not feeling well, granted an interview with Xuanzang.  He suggested that Xuanzang should stick around.  Then, once the Shad had recovered from his illness, he would accompany Xuanzang personally on his trip to India.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.  While Xuanzang was staying there, he was witness to deadly drama.  Tardu Shad was recovering, which was attributed to the recitations by an Indian monk who was also there.  This outcome was not exactly what some in the court had wanted.  One of the Shad's own sons, known as the Tagin prince, plotted with the Shad's current wife, the young Khatun, and she poisoned her husband.  With the Shad dead, the throne might have gone to the son of the Gaochang princess, but he was still too young.  As such, the Tagin Prince was able to usurp the throne himself, and he married his stepmother, the young Khatun.  The funeral services for the late Tardu Shad meant that Xuanzang was obliged to stay at Ghor for over a month. During that time, Xuanzang had a seemingly pleasant interaction with an Indian monk.  And when he finally got ready to go, he asked the new Shad for a guide and horses.  He agreed, but also made the suggestion that Xuanzang should then head to Balkh.  This may have meant a bit of backtracking, but the Shad suggested that it would be worth it, as Balkh had a flourishing Buddhist community. Fortunately, there was a group of Buddhist monks from Balkh who happened to be in Kunduz to express their condolences at the passing of Tardu Shad, and they agreed to accompany Xuanzang back to their hometown, lest he end up getting lost and taking the long way there. The city of Balkh is also known as “Baktra”, as in “Bactria”, another name of this region.  A settlement has been there since at least 500 BCE , and it was already an important city when it was captured by Alexander the Great.  It sits at the confluence of several major trade routes, which no doubt were a big part of its success.  Xuanzang's biography notes that it was a massive city, though it was relatively sparsely populated—probably due to the relatively recent conquest by the Gokturks, which had occurred in the last couple of decades.  That said, there were still thousands of monks residing at a hundred monasteries in and around the city.  They are all characterized as monks of Theravada schools.  Southwest of the city was a monastery known as Navasamgharama, aka Nava Vihara, or “New Monastery”.  Despite its name, the monastery may have actually been much older, going back to the Kushan emperor Kaniska, in the 2nd century CE.  Ruins identified as this “New Monastery” are still visible south of Balkh, today. The monastery is described as being beautifully decorated, and it seems that it had a relic—one of the Buddha's teeth.  There are also various utensils that the Buddha is said to have used, as well.  The objects would be displayed on festival days.  North of the monastery there was a stupa more than 200 feet in height.  South of the monastery was a hermitage.  Each monk who studied there and passed away would have a stupa erected for them, as well.  Xuanzang notes that there were at around 700 memorial stupas, such that they had to be crammed together, base to base. It was here that Xuanzang met a young monk named Prajnaakara, who was already somewhat famous in India, and well-studied.  When questioned about certain aspects of Buddhism, Xuanzang was impressed by the monk's answers, and so stayed there a month studying with the young monk. Eventually, Xuanzang was ready to continue on his journey.  He departed Balkh towards the south, accompanying the teacher Prajnakara, and together they entered the Great Snow Mountains, aka the Hindu Kush.  This path was even more dangerous than the trip through the Tian Shan mountains to Suyab.   They eventually left the territory of Tukhara and arrived at Bamiyan.  Bamiyan was a kingdom in the Hindu Kush, themselves an extension of the Himalayan Mountain range.  It Is largely based around valley, home to the modern city of Bamyan, Afghanistan, which sits along the divide between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.  Today it is a major center for individuals of the Hazara ethnic group, one of the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, which is a multi-ethnic state that includes, today, the Pashtun, Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek people, along with a number of smaller ethnic groups.  Today they largely reside in the mountainous areas of the Hindu Kush. Bamiyan made an impact on our protagonist.   Their language was slightly different from that in Tukhara, but using the same—or similar enough—writing system.  Buddhism was thriving in the capital, and we are told of a rock statue of the standing Buddha, over a hundred feet in height, along with a copper statue of the standing Buddha nearby.    There was also another reclining Buddha a mile or two down the road.  There were multiple monasteries with thousands of monks, and the ruler of that kingdom received Xuanzang well. Xuanzang wasn't the first monk to travel to Bamiyan from the Middle Kingdom—in this he was, perhaps unwittingly, on the trail of the monk Faxian.  Faxian likely did not see these statues, though, as we believe they were built in the 6th and early 7th century—at least the stone Buddha statues.  They were a famous worship site until February 2001, when the Taliban gave an order to destroy all of the statues in Afghanistan.  Despite this, they were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Fortunately, we have images from before their destruction.  These statues were a blend of Greco-Buddhist and Gandharan art styles—appropriate as it stands between the Hellenistic area of Tukhara and the ancient region of Gandhara—including the modern city of Kandahar and into the Indus Valley region of Pakistan. Continuing east through the mountains, Xuanzang eventually came out at the kingdom of Kapisa.  This may have had its capital around modern-day Bagram, north of modern Kabul, but the country seems to have been quite large.  Kapisa over saw some tens of other countries, and it is thought that at one time its influence extended from Bamyan and Kandahar to the area of modern Jalalabad.  Their language was even more different than that of Tukhara, but they were still using the same writing system.  The king of Kapisa is said to have been of Suli ethnicity—which would seem to indicate that he was Sogdian, or at least descended from people of the Transoxanian region.    Xuanzang notes that the ruler, as rough and fiery as he is described—as a true warlord or similar—he nonetheless made a silver image of the Buddha, eighteen feet in height, every year.  He also gave charity to the poor and needy in an assembly that was called every five years.  There were over one hundred monasteries and some 6000 monks, per Xuanzang's recollection, and notably, they were largely following Mahayana teachings. For the most part the monks that Xuanzang had encountered on this journey were Theravada—Xuanzang refers to them as “Hinayana”, referring to the “Lesser Vehicle” in contrast to Xuanzang's own “Mahayana”, or “Greater Vehicle”.  “Theravada” refers to the “way of the elders” and while Mahayana Buddhism largely accepts the sutras of Theravada Buddhism, there are many Mahayana texts that Theravada Buddhists do not believe are canonical.  We discussed this back in Episode 84. There was apparently a story of another individual from the Yellow River being sent as a hostage to Kapisa when it was part of the Kushan Empire, under Kanishka or similar.  Xuanzang recounts various places that the hostage, described as a prince, lived or visited while in the region.  Xuanzang's arrival likely stirred the imagination of people who likely knew that the Tang were out there, but it was such a seemingly impossible distance for most people.  And yet here was someone who had traveled across all of that distance.  One of the monasteries that claimed to have been founded because of that ancient Han prince invited Xuanzang to stay with them.  Although it was a Theravada monastery, Xuanzang took them up on the offer, both because of the connection to someone who may have been his countryman, but also because of his traveling companion, Prajnakara, who was also a Theravada monk, and may not be comfortable staying at a Mahayana monastery. Xuanzang spends a good deal of ink on the stories of how various monasteries and other sites were founded in Kapisa and the surrounding areas.  He must have spent some time there to accumulate all of this information.  It is also one of the places where he seems to have hit at least twice—once on the way to India, and once during his return journey. The King of Kapisa is said to have been a devotee of Mahayana Buddhism.  He invited Xuanzang and Prajnakara to come to a Mahayana monastery to hold a Dharma gathering.  There they met with several leading figures in the monastery, and they discussed different theories.  This gathering lasted five days, and at the end, the king offered Xuanzang and the other monks five bolts of pure brocade and various other gifts.  Soon thereafter, the monk Prajnakara was invited back to Tukhara, and so he and Xuanzang parted ways. And it was about time for Xuanzang to continue onwards as well.  From Kapisa, he would travel across the “Black Range” and into Lampaka.  This may refer to the area of Laghman or Jalalabad.  Today, this is in modern Afghanistan, but for Xuanzang, this would have been the northwestern edge of India.  He was almost there. And so are we, but we'll save his trip into India for next episode. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

There's a lot of interest at the moment in connecting with our ancient past, and reviving the “Old Ways” of our earth-honoring ancestors. And while there's so much we can learn from the past, it can be all too easy to romanticize or misinterpret our ancestral history. In this episode Sam weaves together archeology, animism and academia to demystify Britain's ancient peoples, offering grounded insights into our native spirituality free from romantic projections. She shares beautiful wisdom about the nine elements that were honored in different Indo-European cultures, likely including the Pretanī people of ancient Britain. She also gives clear examples of how our ancestors honored these nine elements, and offers an overview of the Pretanī people as a whole; more commonly, and incorrectly, known as the “Celts”. If you're someone who enjoys learning about archaeology and history from an academic perspective, along with a good dash of spirituality and mysticism, this episode is for you.

News items read by Laura Kennedy include: Roots of Indo-European languages revealed by ancient DNA (details) (details) Arabic manuscript contains lost works of the Greek “Great Geometer” Apollonius (details) Changes in North American Indigenous population outlined by radiocarbon-dated artifacts (details) Interdisciplinary team peers inside Mount Vesuvius-damaged scroll (details)

Was Crete one of the latest Matriarchies to resist infiltration and overthrow by the waves of Indo-European invasion? What evidence is hidden in plain sight to support the presence of Matriarchy on the island?  Joan Cichon talks about her book “Matriarchy in Bronze Age Crete” which she has generously made available to all online.  Joining the discussion are Vicki Noble, Sean Marlon Newcombe and Dawn Sam Alden.

Was Crete one of the latest Matriarchies to resist infiltration and overthrow by the waves of Indo-European invasion? What evidence is hidden in plain sight to support the presence of Matriarchy on the island?  Joan Cichon talks about her book “Matriarchy in Bronze Age Crete” which she has generously made available to all online.  Joining the discussion are Vicki Noble, Sean Marlon Newcombe and Dawn Sam Alden.Buy or download Joan's book here: https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803270449Support the podcast here:  https://www.patreon.com/34Circe

In a social media post earlier today, US President Donald Trump seemed to double down on claims his country would fight to control the territory of Gaza. He had also suggested recently at a press conference that Palestinians should leave the region and be taken in by neighbouring nations. We explore to what extent a US takeover of Gaza would be in violation of international law.Also on the programme: A US immigration lawyer weighs in on whether President Trump can end birth-right citizenship, after the US leader tried to have the constitutional right rescinded; new findings on where Indo-European languages originated; and the launch of lab-grown meat for dogs in a world first.(Photo: Demonstrators attend a protest against US President Donald Trump's plan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, in front of the US consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, 6th February 2025. Credit: Umit Bektas/REUTERS)

This episode we are taking a trip down the Silk Road--or perhaps even the Spice Road--as we investigate references in this reign to individuals from "Tukara" who seem to have arrived in Yamato and stayed for a while. For photos and more, see our podcast webpage:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-119 Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  This is episode 119: The Question of “Tukara”   Traveling upon the ocean was never exactly safe.  Squalls and storms could arise at any time, and there was always a chance that high winds and high waves could capsize a vessel.  Most people who found themselves at the mercy of the ocean could do little but hold on and hope that they could ride out whatever adverse conditions they met with.  Many ships were lost without any explanation or understanding of what happened to them.  They simply left the port and never came back home. And so when the people saw the boat pulling up on the shores of Himuka, on the island of Tsukushi, they no doubt empathized with the voyagers' plight.  The crew looked bedraggled, and their clothing was unfamiliar.  There were both men and women, and this didn't look like your average fishing party.  If anything was clear it was this:  These folk weren't from around here. The locals brought out water and food.  Meanwhile, runners were sent with a message:  foreigners had arrived from a distant place.  They then waited to see what the government was going to do.     We are still in the second reign of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  Last episode we talked about the palaces constructed in Asuka, as well as some of the stone works that have been found from the period, and which appear to be referenced in the Nihon Shoki—at least tangentially.   The episodes before that, we looked at the expeditions the court sent to the far north of Honshu and even past Honshu to Hokkaido. This episode we'll again be looking past the main islands of the archipelago to lands beyond.  Specifically, we are going to focus on particularly intriguing references to people from a place called “Tukara”.  We'll talk about some of the ideas about where that might be, even if they're a bit  far-fetched. That's because Tukara touches on the state of the larger world that Yamato was a part of, given its situation on the far eastern edge of what we know today as the Silk Road.  And is this just an excuse for me to take a detour into some of the more interesting things going on outside the archipelago?  No comment. The first mention of a man from Tukara actually comes at the end of the reign of Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou.  We are told that in the fourth month of 654 two men and two women of “Tukara” and one woman of “Sha'e” were driven by a storm to Hiuga.  Then, three years later, the story apparently picks up again, though possibly referring to a different group of people.  On the 3rd day of the 7th month of 657, so during the second reign of Takara Hime, we now hear about two men and four women of the Land of Tukara—no mention of Sha'e—who drifted to Tsukushi, aka Kyushu.  The Chronicles mention that these wayfarers first drifted to the island of Amami, and we'll talk about that in a bit, but let's get these puzzle pieces on the table, first.  After those six people show up, the court sent for them by post-horse.  They must have arrived by the 15th of that same month, because we are told that a model of Mt. Sumi was erected and they—the people from Tukara—were entertained, although there is another account that says they were from “Tora”. The next mention is the 10th day of the 3rd month of 659, when a Man of Tukara and his wife, again woman of Sha'e, arrived.  Then, on the 16th day of the 7th month of 660, we are told that the man of Tukara, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna, desired to return home and asked for an escort.  He planned to pay his respects at the Great Country, i.e. the Tang court, and so he left his wife behind, taking tens of men with him. All of these entries might refer to people regularly reaching Yamato from the south, from a place called “Tukara”.  Alternately, this is a single event whose story has gotten distributed over several years, as we've seen happen before with the Chronicles.  .  One of the oddities of these entries is that the terms used are not consistent.  “Tukara” is spelled at least two different ways, suggesting that it wasn't a common placename like Silla or Baekje, or even the Mishihase.  That does seem to suggest that the Chronicles were phonetically trying to find kanji, or the Sinitic characters, to match with the name they were hearing.   I would also note that “Tukara” is given the status of a “kuni”—a land, country, or state—while “sha'e”, where some of the women are said to come from, is just that, “Sha'e”. As for the name of at least one person from Tokara, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna, that certainly sounds like someone trying to fit a non-Japanese name into the orthography of the time.  “Tatsuna” seems plausibly Japanese, but “Kenzuhashi” doesn't fit quite as well into the naming structures we've seen to this point. The location of “Tukara” and “Sha'e” are not clear in any way, and as such there has been a lot of speculation about them.  While today there are placenames that fit those characters, whether or not these were the places being referenced at the time is hard to say. I'll actually start with “Sha'e”, which Aston translates as Shravasti, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of Kosala, in modern Uttar Pradesh.  It is also where the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, is said to have lived most of his life after his enlightenment.  In Japanese this is “Sha'e-jou”, and like many Buddhist terms it likely comes through Sanskrit to Middle Chinese to Japanese.  One—or possibly two—women from Shravasti making the journey to Yamato in the company of a man (or men) from Tukara seems quite the feat.  But then, where is “Tukara”? Well, we have at least three possible locations that I've seen bandied about.  I'll address them from the most distant to the closest option.  These three options were Tokharistan, Dvaravati, and the Tokara islands. We'll start with Tokharistan on the far end of the Silk Road.  And to start, let's define what that “Silk Road” means.  We've talked in past episodes about the “Western Regions”, past the Han-controlled territories of the Yellow River.   The ancient Tang capital of Chang'an was built near to the home of the Qin dynasty, and even today you can go and see both the Tang tombs and the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi and his terracotta warriors, all within a short distance of Xi'an, the modern city built on the site of Chang'an.  That city sits on a tributary of the Yellow River, but the main branch turns north around the border of modern Henan and the similarly sounding provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi.  Following it upstream, the river heads north into modern Mongolia, turns west, and then heads south again, creating what is known as the Ordos loop.  Inside is the Ordos plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin.  Continuing to follow the Yellow river south, on the western edge of the Ordos, you travel through Ningxia and Gansu—home of the Hexi, or Gansu, Corridor.  That route eventually takes to Yumenguan, the Jade Gate, and Dunhuang.  From there roads head north or south along the edge of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim basin.  The southern route travels along the edge of the Tibetan plateau, while the northern route traversed various oasis cities through Turpan, Kucha, to the city of Kashgar.  Both routes made their way across the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush into South Asia. We've brought up the Tarim Basin and the Silk Road a few times.  This is the path that Buddhism appears to have taken to get to the Yellow River Basin and eventually to the Korean Peninsula and eastward to the Japanese archipelago.  But I want to go a bit more into detail on things here, as there is an interesting side note about “Tukara” that I personally find rather fascinating, and thought this would be a fun time to share. Back in Episode 79 we talked about how the Tarim basin used to be the home to a vast inland sea, which was fed by the meltwater from the Tianshan and Kunlun mountains.  This sea eventually dwindled, though it was still large enough to be known to the Tang as the Puchang Sea.  Today it has largely dried up, and it is mostly just the salt marshes of Lop Nur that remain.  Evidence for this larger sea, however, can be observed in some of the burials found around the Tarim basin.  These burials include the use of boat-shaped structures—a rather curious feature to be found out in the middle of the desert. And it is the desert that was left behind as the waters receded that is key to much of what we know about life in the Tarim basin, as it has proven to be quite excellent at preserving organic material.  This includes bodies, which dried out and naturally turned into mummies, including not only the wool clothing they were wearing, but also features such as hair and even decoration. These “Tarim mummies”, as they have been collectively called, date from as early as 2100 BCE all the way up through the period of time we're currently talking about, and have been found in several desert sites: Xiaohe, the earliest yet discovered; Loulan, near Lop Nur on the east of the Tarim Basin, dating from around 1800 BCE; Cherchen, on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin, dating from roughly 1000 BCE; and too many others to go into in huge detail. The intriguing thing about these burials is that  many of them don't have features typically associated with people of ethnic Han—which is to say traditional Chinese—ancestry, nor do they necessarily have the features associated with the Xiongnu and other steppe nomads.  In addition they have colorful clothing  made from wool and leather, with vivid designs.  Some bodies near Hami, just east of the basin, were reported to have blonde to light brown hair, and their cloth showed radically different patterns from that found at Cherchen and Loulan, with patterns that could reasonably be compared with the plaids now common in places like Scotland and Ireland, and previously found in the Hallstadt salt mine in Central Europe from around 3500 BCE, from which it is thought the Celtic people may have originated. At the same time that people—largely Westerners— were studying these mummies, another discovery in the Tarim basin was also making waves.  This was the discovery of a brand new language.  Actually, it was two languages—or possibly two dialects of a language—in many manuscripts, preserved in Kucha and Turpan.  Once again, the dry desert conditions proved invaluable to maintain these manuscripts, which date from between the late 4th or early 5th century to the 8th century.  They are written with a Brahmic script, similar to that used for Sanskrit, which appears in the Tarim Basin l by about the 2nd century, and we were able to translate them because many of the texts were copies of Buddhist scripture, which greatly helped scholars in deciphering the languages.  These two languages were fascinating because they represented an as-yet undiscovered branch of the Indo-European language family.  Furthermore, when compared to other Indo-European languages, they did not show nearly as much similarity with their neighbors as with languages on the far western end of the Indo-European language family.  That is to say they were thought to be closer to Celtic and Italic languages than something like Indo-Iranian.  And now for a quick diversion within the diversion:  “Centum” and “Satem” are general divisions of the Indo-European language families that was once thought to indicate a geographic divide in the languages.  At its most basic, as Indo-European words changed over time, a labiovelar sound, something like “kw”,  tended to evolve in one of two ways.  In the Celtic and Italic languages, the “kw” went to a hard “k” sound, as represented in the classical pronunciation of the Latin word for 100:  Centum.  That same word, in the Avestan language—of the Indo-Iranian tree—is pronounced as “Satem”, with an “S” sound.  So, you can look at Indo-European languages and divide them generally into “centum” languages, which preserve the hard “k”, or “Satem” languages that preserve the S. With me so far? Getting back to these two newly-found languages in the Tarim Basin, the weird thing is that they were “Centum” languages. Most Centum languages are from pretty far away, though: they are generally found in western Europe or around the Mediterranean, as opposed to the Satem languages, such as Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Armernian, or even Baltic Slavic languages, which are much closer to the Tarim Basin.  So if the theory were true that the “Centum” family of Indo-European languages developed in the West and “Satem” languages developed in the East, then that would seem to indicate that a group of a “Centum” speaking people must have migrated eastward, through the various Satem speaking people, and settled in the Tarim Basin many thousands of years ago. And what evidence do we have of people who look very different from the modern population, living in the Tarim Basin area long before, and wearing clothing similar to what we associated with the progenitors of the Celts?  For many, it seemed to be somewhat obvious, if still incredible, that the speakers of this language were likely the descendants of the mummies who, in the terminology of the time, had been identified as being of Caucasoid ancestry.  A theory developed that these people were an offshoot of a group called the Yamnaya culture, which may have arisen around modern Ukraine as an admixture between the European Hunter Gatherers and the Caucasian Hunter Gatherers, around 3300-2600 BCE.  This was challenged in 2021 when a genetic study was performed on some of the mummies in the Tarim basin, as well as several from the Dzungarian basin, to the northeast.  That study suggested that the people of the Dzungarian basin had genetic ties to the people of the Afanasievo people, from Southern Siberia.  The Afanasievo people are connected to the Yamnayan culture. It should be noted that there has long been a fascination in Western anthropology and related sciences with racial identification—and often not in a healthy way.  As you may recall, the Ainu were identified as “Caucasoid” by some people largely because of things like the men's beards and lighter colored hair, which differ greatly from a large part of the Japanese population.  However, that claim has been repeatedly refuted and debunked. And similarly, the truth is, none of these Tarim mummy burials were in a period of written anything, so we can't conclusively associated them with these fascinating Indo-European languages.  There are thousands of years between the various burials and the manuscripts. These people  left no notes stashed in pockets that give us their life story.   And Language is not Genetics is not Culture.  Any group may adopt a given language for a variety of reasons.  .  Still, given what we know, it is possible that the ancient people of the Tarim basin spoke some form of “Proto-Kuchean”, but it is just as likely that this language was brought in by people from Dzungaria at some point. So why does all this matter to us?  Well, remember how we were talking about someone from Tukara?  The Kuchean language, at least, is referred to in an ancient Turkic source as belonging to “Twgry”, which led several scholars to draw a link between this and the kingdom and people called Tukara and the Tokharoi.  This leads us on another bit of a chase through history. Now if you recall, back in Episode 79, we talked about Zhang Qian.  In 128 BCE, he attempted to cross the Silk Road through the territory of the Xiongnu on a mission for the Han court.  Some fifty years earlier, the Xiongnu had defeated the Yuezhi.  They held territory in the oasis towns along the north of the Taklamakan dessert, from about the Turpan basin west to the Pamirs. The Xiongnu were causing problems for the Han, who thought that if they could contact the remaining Yuezhi they could make common cause with them and harass the Xiongnu from both sides.  Zhang Qian's story is quite remarkable: he started out with an escort of some 99 men and a translator.  Unfortunately, he was captured and enslaved by the Xiongnu during his journey, and he is even said to have had a wife and fathered a child.  He remained a captive for thirteen years, but nonetheless, he was able to escape with his family and he made it to the Great Yuezhi on the far side of the Pamirs, but apparently the Yuezhi weren't interested in a treaty against the Xiongnu.  The Pamirs were apparently enough of a barrier and they were thriving in their new land.  And so Zhang Qian crossed back again through Xiongnu territory, this time taking the southern route around the Tarim basin.  He was still captured by the Xiongnu, who spared his life.  He escaped, again, two years later, returning to the Han court.  Of the original 100 explorers, only two returned: Zhang Qian and his translator.  While he hadn't obtained an alliance, he was able to detail the cultures of the area of the Yuezhi. Many feel that the Kushan Empire, which is generally said to have existed from about 30 to 375 CE,was formed from the Kushana people who were part of the Yuezhi who fled the Xiongnu. In other words, they were originally from further north, around the Tarim Basin, and had been chased out and settled down in regions that included Bactria (as in the Bactrian camel).  Zhang Qian describes reaching the Dayuan Kingdom in the Ferghana valley, then traveling south to an area that was the home of the Great Yuezhi or Da Yuezhi.  And after the Kushan empire fell, we know there was a state in the upper regions of the Oxus river, centered on the city of Balkh, in the former territory of the Kushan empire. known as “Tokara”.  Geographically, this matches up how Zhang Qian described the home of the Da Yuezhi.  Furthermore, some scholars reconstruct the reading of the Sinic characters used for “Yuezhi” as originally having an optional reading of something like “Togwar”, but that is certainly not the most common reconstructed reading of those characters.  Greek sources describe this area as the home of the Tokharoi, or the Tokaran People.  The term “Tukhara” is also found in Sanskrit, and this kingdom  was also said to have sent ambassadors to the Southern Liang and Tang dynasties. We aren't exactly certain of where these Tokharan people came from, but as we've just described, there's a prevailing theory that they were the remnants of the Yuezhi and Kushana people originally from the Tarim Basin.  We know that in the 6th century they came under the rule of the Gokturk Khaganate, which once spanned from the Liao river basin to the Black Sea.  In the 7th and 8th centuries they came under the rule of the Tang Empire, where they were known by very similar characters as those used to write “Tukara” in the Nihon Shoki.  On top of this, we see Tokharans traveling the Silk Road, all the way to the Tang court.  Furthermore, Tokharans that settled in Chang'an took the surname “Zhi” from the ethnonym “Yuezhi”, seemingly laying claim to and giving validation to the identity used back in the Han dynasty.   So, we have a Turkic record describing the Kuchean people (as in, from Kucha in the Tarim Basin) as “Twgry”, and we have a kingdom in Bactria called Tokara and populated (according to the Greeks) by people called Tokharoi.  You can see how this one term has been a fascinating rabbit hole in the study of the Silk Roads and their history.  And some scholars understandably suggested that perhaps the Indo-European languags found in Kucha and Turpan  were actually related to this “Tokhara” – and therefore  should be called “Tocharian”, specifically Tocharian A (Kuchean) or Tocharian B (Turfanian). The problem is that if the Tokharans were speaking “Tocharian” then you wouldn't expect to just see it at Kucha and Turpan, which are about the middle of the road between Tokhara and the Tang dynasty, and which had long been under Gokturk rule.  You would also expect to see it in the areas of Bactria associated with Tokhara.  However, that isn't what we see.  Instead, we see that Bactria was the home of local Bactrian language—an Eastern Iranian language, which, though it is part of the Indo European language family, it is not closely related to Tocharian as far as we can tell. It is possible that the people of Kucha referred to themselves as something similar to “Twgry”, or “Tochari”, but we should also remember that comes from a Turkic source, and it could have been an exonym not related to what they called themselves.  I should also note that language is not people.  It is also possible that a particular ethnonym was maintained separately by two groups that may have been connected politically but which came to speak different languages for whatever reason.   There could be a connection between the names, or it could even be that the same or similar exonym was used for different groups. So, that was a lot and a bit of a ramble, but a lot of things that I find interesting—even if they aren't as connected as they may appear.  We have the Tarim mummies, which are, today, held at a museum in modern Urumqi.  Whether they had any connection with Europe or not, they remain a fascinating study for the wealth of material items found in and around the Tarim basin and similar locations.  And then there is the saga of the Tocharian languages—or perhaps more appropriately the Kuchean-Turfanian languages: Indo-European languages that seem to be well outside of where we would expect to find them. Finally, just past the Pamirs, we get to the land of Tokhara or Tokharistan.  Even without anything else, we know that they had contact with the court.  Perhaps our castaways were from this land?  The name is certainly similar to what we see in the Nihon Shoki, using some of the same characters. All in all, art and other information suggest that the area of the Tarim basin and the Silk Road in general were quite cosmopolitan, with many different people from different regions of the world.  Bactria retained Hellenic influences ever since the conquests of Alexander of Macedonia, aka Alexander the Great, and Sogdian and Persian traders regularly brought their caravans through the region to trade.  And once the Tang dynasty controlled all of the routes, that just made travel that much easier, and many people traveled back and forth. So from that perspective, it is possible that one or more people from Tukhara may have made the crossing from their home all the way to the Tang court, but if they did so, the question still remains: why would they be in a boat? Utilizing overland routes, they would have hit Chang'an or Louyang, the dual capitals of the Tang empire, well before they hit the ocean.  However, the Nihon Shoki says that these voyagers first came ashore at Amami and then later says that they were trying to get to the Tang court. Now there was another “Silk Road” that isn't as often mentioned: the sea route, following the coast of south Asia, around through the Malacca strait and north along the Asian coast.  This route is sometimes viewed more in terms of the “spice” road If these voyagers set out to get to the Tang court by boat, they would have to have traveled south to the Indian Ocean—possibly traveling through Shravasti or Sha'e, depending on the route they chose to take—and then around the Malacca strait—unless they made it on foot all the way to Southeast Asia.  And then they would have taken a boat up the coast. Why do that instead of taking the overland route?  They could likely have traveled directly to the Tang court over the overland silk road.  Even the from Southeast Asia could have traveled up through Yunnan and made their way to the Tang court that way.  In fact, Zhang Qian had wondered something similar when he made it to the site of the new home of the Yuezhi, in Bactria.  Even then, in the 2nd century, he saw products in the marketplace that he identified as coming from around Szechuan.  That would mean south of the Han dynasty, and he couldn't figure out how those trade routes might exist and they weren't already known to the court.  Merchants would have had to traverse the dangerous mountains if they wanted to avoid being caught by the Xiongnu, who controlled the entire region. After returning to the Han court, Zhang Qian actually went out on another expedition to the south, trying to find the southern trade routes, but apparently was not able to do so.  That said, we do see, in later centuries, the trade routes open up between the area of the Sichuan basin and South Asia.  We also see the migrations of people further south, and there may have even been some Roman merchants who traveled up this route to find their way to the Han court, though those accounts are not without their own controversy. In either case, whether by land or sea, these trade routes were not always open.  In some cases, seasonal weather, such as monsoons, might dictate movement back and forth, while political realities were also a factor.  Still, it is worth remembering that even though most people were largely concerned with affairs in their own backyard, the world was still more connected than people give it credit for.  Tang dynasty pottery made its way to the east coast of Africa, and ostriches were brought all the way to Chang'an. As for the travelers from Tukhara and why they would take this long and very round-about method of travel, it is possible that they were just explorers, seeking new routes, or even on some kind of pilgrimage.  Either way, they would have been way off course. But if they did pass through Southeast Asia, that would match up with another theory about what “Tukara” meant: that it actually refers to the Dvaravati kingdom in what is now modern Thailand.  The Dvaravati Kingdom was a Mon political entity that rose up around the 6th century.  It even sent embassies to the Sui and Tang courts.  This is even before the temple complexes in Siem Reap, such as Preah Ko and the more famous Angkor Wat.  And it was during this time that the ethnic Tai people are thought to have started migrating south from Yunnan, possibly due to pressures from the expanding Sui and Tang empires.  Today, most of what remains of the Dvaravati kingdom are the ruins of ancient stone temples, showing a heavy Indic influence, and even early Buddhist practices as well.  “Dvaravati” may not actually be the name of the kingdom but it comes from an inscription on a coin found from about that time.  The Chinese refer to it as  “To-lo-po-ti” in contemporary records.  It may not even have been a kingdom, but  more of a confederation of city-states—it is hard to piece everything together.  That it was well connected, though, is clear from the archaeological record.  In Dvaravati sites, we see coins from as far as Rome, and we even have a lamp found in modern Pong Tuk that appears to match similar examples from the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.  Note that this doesn't mean it arrived in the 6th century—similarly with the coins—but the Dvaravati state lasted until the 12th century. If that was the case, perhaps there were some women from a place called “Shravasti” or similar, especially given the Indic influence in the region. Now, given the location of the Dvaravati, it wouldn't be so farfetched to think that someone might sail up from the Gulf of Thailand and end up off-course, though it does mean sailing up the entire Ryukyuan chain or really running off course and finding yourself adrift on the East China sea.  And if they were headed to the Tang court, perhaps they did have translators or knew Chinese, since Yamato was unlikely to know the Mon language of Dvaravati and people from Dvaravati probably wouldn't know the Japonic language.  Unless, perhaps, they were communicating through Buddhist priests via Sanskrit. We've now heard two possibilities for Tukara, both pretty far afield: the region of Tokara in Bactria, and the Dvaravati kingdom in Southeast Asia.  That said, the third and simplest explanation—and the one favored by Aston in his translation of the Nihon Shoki—is that Tukara is actually referring to a place in the Ryukyu island chain.  Specifically, there is a “Tokara” archipelago, which spans between Yakushima and Amami-Oshima.  This is part of the Nansei islands, and the closest part of the Ryukyuan island chain to the main Japanese archipelago.  This is the most likely theory, and could account for the entry talking about Amami.  It is easy to see how sailors could end up adrift, too far north, and come to shore in Hyuga, aka Himuka, on the east side of Kyushu.  It certainly would make more sense for them to be from this area of the Ryukyuan archipelago than from anywhere else.  From Yakushima to Amami-Oshima is the closest part of the island chain to Kyushu, and as we see in the entry from the Shoku Nihongi, those three places seem to have been connected as being near to Japan.  So what was going on down there, anyway? Well, first off, let's remember that the Ryukyuan archipelago is not just the island of Okinawa, but a series of islands that go from Kyushu all the way to the island of Taiwan.  Geographically speaking, they are all part of the same volcanic ridge extending southward.  The size of the islands and their distance from each other does vary, however, creating some natural barriers in the form of large stretches of open water, which have shaped how various groups developed on the islands. Humans came to the islands around the same time they were reaching the Japanese mainland.  In fact, some of our only early skeletal remains for early humans in Japan actually come from either the Ryukyuan peninsula in the south or around Hokkaido to the north, and that has to do with the acidity of the soil in much of mainland Japan. Based on genetic studies, we know that at least two groups appear to have inhabited the islands from early times.  One group appears to be related to the Jomon people of Japan, while the other appears to be more related to the indigenous people of Taiwan, who, themselves, appear to have been the ancestors of many Austronesian people.  Just as some groups followed islands to the south of Taiwan, some appear to have headed north.  However, they only made it so far.  As far as I know there is no evidence they made it past Miyakoshima, the northernmost island in the Sakishima islands.  Miyako island is separated from the next large island, Okinawa, by a large strait, known as the Miyako Strait, though sometimes called the Kerama gap in English.  It is a 250km wide stretch of open ocean, which is quite the distance for anyone to travel, even for Austronesian people of Taiwan, who had likely not developed the extraordinary navigational technologies that the people who would become the Pacific Islanders would discover. People on the Ryukyu island chain appear to have been in contact with the people of the Japanese archipelago since at least the Jomon period, and some of the material artifacts demonstrate a cultural connection.  That was likely impacted by the Akahoya eruption, about 3500 years ago, and then re-established at a later date.  We certainly see sea shells and corals trade to the people of the Japanese islands from fairly early on. Unlike the people on the Japanese archipelago, the people of the Ryukyuan archipelago did not really adopt the Yayoi and later Kofun culture.  They weren't building large, mounded tombs, and they retained the character of a hunter-gatherer society, rather than transitioning to a largely agricultural way of life.  The pottery does change in parts of Okinawa, which makes sense given the connections between the regions.  Unfortunately, there is a lot we don't know about life in the islands around this time.  We don't exactly have written records, other than things like the entries in the Nihon Shoki, and those are hardly the most detailed of accounts.  In the reign of Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou, we see people from Yakushima, which is, along with Tanegashima, one of the largest islands at the northern end of the Ryukyu chain, just before you hit Kagoshima and the Osumi peninsula on the southern tip of Kyushu.  The islands past that would be the Tokara islands, until you hit the large island of Amami. So you can see how it would make sense that the people from “Tokara” would make sense to be from the area between Yakushima and Amami, and in many ways this explanation seems too good to be true.  There are a only a few things that make this a bit peculiar. First, this doesn't really explain the woman from “Sha'e” in any compelling way that I can see.  Second, the name, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna doesn't seem to fit with what we generally know about early Japonic names, and the modern Ryukyuan language certainly is a Japonic language, but there are still plenty of possible explanations.  There is also the connection of Tokara with “Tokan”, which is mentioned in an entry in 699 in the Shoku Nihongi, the Chronicle that follows on, quite literally to the Nihon Shoki.  Why would they call it “Tokan” instead of “Tokara” so soon after?  Also, why would these voyagers go back to their country by way of the Tang court?  Unless, of course, that is where they were headed in the first place.  In which case, did the Man from Tukara intentionally leave his wife in Yamato, or was she something of a hostage while they continued on their mission?   And so those are the theories.  The man from “Tukara” could be from Tokhara, or Tokharistan, at the far end of the Silk Road.  Or it could have been referring to the Dvaravati Kingdom, in modern Thailand.  Still, in the end, Occam's razor suggests that the simplest answer is that these were actually individuals from the Tokara islands in the Ryukyuan archipelago.  It is possible that they were from Amami, not that they drifted there.  More likely, a group from Amami drifted ashore in Kyushu as they were trying to find a route to the Tang court, as they claimed.  Instead they found themselves taking a detour to the court of Yamato, instead. And we could have stuck with that story, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, this would be a good time to reflect once again on how connected everything was.  Because even if they weren't from Dvaravati, that Kingdom was still trading with Rome and with the Tang.  And the Tang controlled the majority of the overland silk road through the Tarim basin.  We even know that someone from Tukhara made it to Chang'an, because they were mentioned on a stele that talked about an Asian sect of Christianity, the “Shining Religion”, that was praised and allowed to set up shop in the Tang capital, along with Persian Manicheans and Zoroastrians.  Regardless of where these specific people may have been from, the world was clearly growing only more connected, and prospering, as well. Next episode we'll continue to look at how things were faring between the archipelago and the continent. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

It's Supernatural Romance Month yet again, and we're going back to the tale as old as time with “Beastly.” Cullen relives the dread of the Villaneuve “Beauty and the Beast” tale, Hannah bemoans the movie from her freshly dug grave, and our guest Tori returns to the pod for her annual anti-Vanessa Hudgens rant.   Research for this episode: Beauty and the Beast Beaumont's Version  The ATU  Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales by Sara Graça da Silva and Jamshid J Tehrani  Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World Edited by Maria Tatar  ====================================   Watch Us on YouTube!   Follow Our Adventures on Social Media:   @notmyfantasypod Instagram TikTok   Research & Writing by Cullen Callaghan.  This episode was edited by Hannah Sylvester.   Cover Art by William Callaghan Intro Music: "The Quest" by Scott Little.

⁠Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Unique among the barbarians of ancient Europe, the Celtic tribes of Britain and Gaul were led by a sophisticated priesthood. The druids, who left us no writing of their own, fascinated and frightened their literate neighbors in Greece and Rome. Described as both brilliant philosophers and murderous bloodletters, these ancient sages were fundamental to the classical understanding of the pagan world, and widely discussed even after being suppressed and outlawed as a dangerous cult. But the druids could not be defeated so easily, as scattered references persist until the middle ages, and they continue to captivate the minds of historians and occultists to this day. Pick up your sickle and venture into the sacred grove, and join Gladio Free Europe as we glean the secrets of the druids. Liam and Russian Sam go on a deep dive of virtually all available information on just who the druids were, from the classical texts of Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder to medieval Irish poetry and startling discoveries in modern archaeological. Listen to this episode to learn all about Celtic human sacrifice, Indo-European horse worship, and St. Patrick's epic rap battle of history against his druid slave-masters. Because this is Gladio Free Europe, our episode could not be complete with a quick return to one of our favorite topics, the bog bodies.

  On this episode of Unsuperivsed Learning reviews what we know about Indo-Europeans as 2024 comes to a close. This is prompted by a new preprint Ancient genomics support deep divergence between Eastern and Western Mediterranean Indo-European languages, which finally establishes that populations in Northern and Southwestern Europe derived from a different steppe-origin population than the Greeks and Ilyrians of the Balkans, as well as Armenians. Razib talks about how ancient DNA is resolving long-standing disputes in historical linguistics, and coming down on the side of very particular sets of hypotheses. He discusses Peter Bellwood's First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, and its models about the origins of Indo-European languages, and how they have been falsified by paleogenomics. Razib also steps through the relationship of particular Indo-European groups to ancestral archaeological cultures like the Corded Ware, Bell Beaker and Catacomb Cultures. He also talks about the connections between charioteers and the early Mycenaeans, and looks at Robert Drews' ideas in Coming of the Greeks. Finally, he addresses outliers in the ancient DNA data that indicate connections between locales as disparate as Scandinavia and Cyprus 4,000 years ago.

News items read by Laura Kennedy include: Spectacular shipwreck bearing 10,000 ceramics lay untouched in Aegean for over a millennium (details) Ancient genomes reveal Bronze Age branching of Indo-European language groups (details) (details) Villa double the size of US White House revealed within ancient Assyrian capital (details)(details) 1,500-year-old Peruvian tomb holds teenage human sacrifices to family members (details) (details)

My guest today is my good friend Tad Hargrave.Tad is the founder of Marketing for Hippies with a mission to restore the beauty of the marketplace. He teaches folks who have a desire to do good, but hate marketing, how to articulate their work with elegance and effectiveness.Tad has spent years learning his ancestral language of Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. As well, for over a decade we have both attended the Orphan Wisdom School with Stephen Jenkinson in Ontario, where we have many fond memories in the teaching hall. In recent years, he's turned towards studying ancient history, comparative mythology and Indo-European folklore.In our conversation today, Tad has turned towards the fairy tale Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) and what it might have to stay about the indigenous memory of Europe. Chances are, you've seen the Disney version of the story, though I would highly recommend you pause this episode and read the original Grimm's tale before continuing.Read the Grimm's version hereTad and I focus in on a particular moment, when after a 100 years of enchanted sleep, the prince approaches the briar hedge that encircles the castle and the Beauty lying within. We explore themes of seduction versus courtship and degradation of trust between men and women. We speak about the historical role of the Court and the tragedy of extracting too much from Nature's innate abundance.And finally, we explore how folk tales can hold practical wisdom for modern masculinity and how to sustain the mutual life between humans and the holy.The Mythic Masculine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.DON'T MISS Tad and his collaborator Kakisimow Iskwew have a number of deeper dives into the story of Briar Rose:* Briar Rose - 6 Week Online Program Begins Jan 5th* All details on Briar Rose OfferingsMORE LINKS* Tad's website Marketing for Hippies* Tad's Substack ‘On Culture Making'SHOW NOTES 03:46 Welcoming Tad Hargrave 04:43 The Origin of Marketing for Hippies 05:47 Exploring the Fairy Tale of Briar Rose 06:56 The Symbolism of Briar Rose 11:50 The Dangers of Seduction and Coercion 14:11 The Pickup Artist Experience 25:14 The Concept of Courtship 25:33 The Etymology of Courtship 31:19 The Modern Mimicry of Courtship 39:19 The King's Riddle and Nature's Abundance 40:40 Indigenous Wisdom and Sustainable Harvesting 41:39 The Consequences of Mistrust and Overextraction 43:56 The Art of Courtship in Different Cultures 45:48 The Tale of the Tree of Life 50:22 Mentorship and the Importance of Timing 58:07 The Beauty of Courtship and True Love 01:08:29 The Wisdom in Stories and EldersThe Mythic Masculine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Mythic Masculine at themythicmasculine.substack.com/subscribe

Today, Sean McDowell responds to some TikToks. So I respond to his responses. Will he respond to my responses of his responses? Probably not, that would be ridiculous.Cards:Proof of Not God? An Atheist Claims to Falsify God:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LszC4yJa1X0The Self Debunker Strikes Again!:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfDQjGE1c8oOriginal Video: https://tinyurl.com/2cl2takeSources:Was Resurrection a Zoroastrian Idea?: https://tinyurl.com/2avlw9arThe Divergent Views of Christ in John: https://tinyurl.com/2262mjfaEncyclopedia of Indo-European culture: https://tinyurl.com/24k3hvfzLinguistic Clues as to the Date of the Book of Job: A Mediating Position: https://tinyurl.com/2774zp4bWhen Was Judaism Founded?: https://tinyurl.com/256yd4qlCreation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible: https://tinyurl.com/244e8lfaEhrman, Bart. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife.Lexicon - Strong's G3495 - neaniskos: https://tinyurl.com/2cyk8e4hThe Acts of Peter: https://tinyurl.com/kpxw7r5Minimal Facts on the Resurrection that Even Skeptics Accept: https://tinyurl.com/yatjzvgwActs of Impropriety: The Imbalance of History and Theology in Luke-Acts: https://tinyurl.com/242cjam7Who is generous and to whom? Generosity among Christians, Muslims, and atheists in the USA, Sweden, Egypt, and Lebanon: https://tinyurl.com/249hdal2Eternally Damned, Yet Socially Conscious? The Volunteerism of Canadian Atheists: https://tinyurl.com/26e56zhaNational Study of Congregations' Economic Practices: https://tinyurl.com/2bztuvqrAre Happiness and Life Satisfaction Different Across Religious groups? Exploring Determinants of Happiness and Life Satisfaction: https://tinyurl.com/2cfongc6Pew Religious Landscape Study - Marital Status: https://tinyurl.com/28umzgfvAll my various links can be found here:http://links.vicedrhino.comThis content is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.orgBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/viced-rhino-the-podcast--4623273/support.

My special guest tonight is Dr. Stephen Flowers who's here to discuss the history of Mazdan magic from his book called   Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi   A complete guide to the theory, practice, and history of Mazdan magic, the first organized system of magic   • Provides a complete curriculum of magical study and initiation centered on exercises keyed to the sacred Zoroastrian calendar   • Details advanced magical rituals and practices based on archaic Persian formulas, including fire rituals and divine invocations   • Explores the history and lore of Persian magic, explaining how the author reconstructed the original Mazdan system of magic   Stephen Flowers explores the history, theory, practice, rituals, and initiations of the Mazdan magical system practiced by the Magi of ancient Persia, who were so skilled and famed for their effectiveness that their name came to mean what we today call “magic.” The prestige and reputation of the Magian priests of Mazda is perhaps most iconically recorded in the Christian story of the Three Wise Men who visited newborn Jesus.   The author explains how the religious branch of the Mazdan magical system, founded by the Prophet Zarathustra, is known in the West under the name Zoroastrianism. He reveals how the Zoroastrian religion, which acts as a matrix for the symbols and formulas of the original form of magic, has existed for almost four thousand years with roots going back even deeper into the Indo-European past. The author reveals how all other known systems of magic have borrowed from this tradition, providing the clues that enabled him to reformulate the original Mazdan system. He reviews what the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, Christians, and Chinese said about the Iranian-Persian tradition of the Mazdans and their invention of a magical technology. He explains how the ultimate aim of the original form of magic was not only individual wisdom, self-development, and empowerment, but also the overall betterment of the world.   Outlining the theoretical principles of this method, which can be applied in practical ways to deepen the effectiveness of these magical operations, the author details a complete curriculum of magical study and initiation based on a series of graded exercises keyed to the sacred Zoroastrian calendar. He then offers a series of more advanced magical rituals and practices based on archaic Persian formulas, including fire rituals and divine invocations. Providing a manual for the original magical system used by the members of the Great Fellowship, this book guides you toward the comprehensive practice of the Mazdan philosophy, the ultimate outcome of which is ushta: Happiness.Follow Our Other ShowsFollow UFO WitnessesFollow Crime Watch WeeklyFollow Paranormal FearsFollow Seven: Disturbing Chronicle StoriesJoin our Patreon for ad-free listening and more bonus content.Follow us on Instagram @mysteriousradioFollow us on TikTok mysteriousradioTikTok Follow us on Twitter @mysteriousradio Follow us on Pinterest pinterest.com/mysteriousradio Like us on Facebook Facebook.com/mysteriousradio]