Talk:Arkaim

Old comments

I don't read Russian well enough, but the "Arkaim - Superobservatory of Ancient Aryans?" link looks like capital bullsh*t -- why are we including it (there is the convention to only include non-English links if they are highly relevant). Similarly, the "Sun city" link. "Бог и человек". What is this stuff? Is there some New Age craze about the site in Russia? This article is supposed to deal with an archaeological site, not metaphysics :) dab (ᛏ) 07:45, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

You are right, there is some craze about the site, so the well-grounded information is hard to finds. There are thousands of interpretations. I will add some info today, but you may clean it up. --Ghirlandajo 07:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

swastika

do you have a more precise reference for the 1987 discoverers' statement? I wonder where they thought they could see a 'swastika' (in the floor plan? that needs quite some imagination!). It would be interesting to find a swastika in the Ural steppe, since the symbol is known from Anatolia and Greece, but not from Indo-Iranian territories before ca. the 6th century BC. The site is certainly quite remarkable, and quite possibly Indo-Iranian, but it is a little late for Proto-Indo-Iranian (or "Aryan"), since in the 17th century, the Indo-Aryans were probably already in Afghanistan, if not in the Punjab. I would estimate Proto-Indo-Iranian to 2500-2000, i.e. possibly earliest Sintashta-Petrovka phase dab (ᛏ) 10:55, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

This site claims that Arkaim was built as a Swastica City. Its shape is the swastika proper, i.e., the swastika turned sun-wise (whatever this means). It is also claimed that the pottery found near Arkaim features both kinds of swastikas, symbolising the sun (procreation) and the night sun (destruction), respectively. See also this scheme. --Ghirlandajo 11:31, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's pure Rorschach inkblot test territory; so there is an internet site calling Arkaim "Swastika City". Sorry, but I simply fail to see as swastika. There should be some serious (scholarly) discussion cited before we go around linking to Swastika City as if that wasn't some mystic crackpot's idea. I mean, seriously; what's with the image labelled "Сходства орнаментов свастики в древнерусских и индийских народных мотивах"? that's just kookery, throwing in symbols wildly composed from over two millennia (all of them, I surmise, at least 1000 years younger than Arkaim) for suggestive comparison? What's the point? dab (ᛏ) 12:39, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Swastikas on Arkaim pottery are discussed in this scholarly article. The idea of Arkaim as the Swastika City is expounded at great length here. At this site we find a reconstruction of Arkaim. Arkaim is the first in this series of comparisons. See also the first chapter of this author's book on swastika here. The author, however, concludes that Arkaim is patterned after mandala rather than swastika. --Ghirlandajo 13:31, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I am of course prepared to accept the Archaeology and Language article as a notable source. Do they really discuss 'swastikas on Arkaim pottery'? Is there even any pottery at Arkaim? I can see now how they think the thing looks similar to a swastika. However, a swastika doesn't have a ring at the center. The settlement is *round* and has some C4 symmetry, but there the similarity ends. Swastikas on pottery would be quite a different story, of course. dab (ᛏ) 13:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Not so sure, Arkhaim lies in the urals right across from the Mediterranean which is central russia. This would put the city near or at the exact location of present day greece. Also heard the civilization was so advanced we were like the tibetans are to our civilization, technology wise...oh ok i see now, its posi was in present day iran below or near the med. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.42.105 (talk) 22:45, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Eh, are you kidding? Look at a map and measure the distance between Greece, the Urals, and Iran. Eurasia is BIG. Try a real-life round trip between these three places sometime and you'll start to appreciate the orders of magnitude – we're not talking about tens or hundreds, but THOUSANDS of kilometres/miles here ... --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

observatory

the "Stonehenge" comparison is of course completely kooky. Stonehenge was some sort of temple/monument, but Arkaim is obviously a *settlement*, i.e. it contains *houses*. That doesn't preclude the presence of temples, of course, but the context is already totally different. What is the evidence for the alleged "Sun temple" btw.? dab (ᛏ) 10:59, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I vaguely recall TV footage of Putin's visit to the site back in May. They showed him some primitive drainage system and asserted that every Arkaim dwelling had an oven. Some elderly gentleman pointed out to the mandala-like plan of Arkaim and said that its centre was undoubtedly occupied by the holy flame, because the Aryans worshipped fire, or something to this effect. --Ghirlandajo 13:36, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

wait a minute, are you saying you actually believe in this "Aryan Swastika Observatory Sun-Temple" stuff? This "holy flame" thing is really beneath discussion I would say. I can see now that it must be difficult to have a reasonable discussion about the site in Russia, but surely it must be possible to get information from other sources than these swastika websites. The swastika is a red herring: The swastika does not become associated with Indo-Iranians before the 1st millennium BC, while it is in frequent use all over the Near East. Discovery or non-discovery of swastikas at Arkaim says nothing about whether it was an Indo-Iranian site. dab (ᛏ) 13:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I know too little on the subject to believe or disbelieve any interpretation. It seems like "Zaratustra's birthplace" and "Aryan sun temple" theories were originally disseminated by those who sought to save the site from potential destruction. Later, all this talk started to attract crowds of tourists to the region, and there appeared numerous quacks, supported by regional authorities. There are many tourist sites which promote a visit to Arkaim because only there "you'll have a unique chance to witness paranormal phenomena", to spot UFOs, or to feel the mysterious outbursts of magnetic power "which have baffled the physicists all over the world". The same Loch Ness Monster effect here, I believe. --Ghirlandajo 14:22, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

sure. classical pseudoscience. That's why we should stick to peer-reviewed archaeological journals, like the "Archaeology and Language" article you cited. If they speak about a Sun temple there, that's fine. If not, forget about it, until we find an article that does discuss it. Unfortunately, I can only see the abstract of that article. Do you have the full text, or how do you know that they discuss pottery? dab (ᛏ) 14:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I just tried to google for "arkaim" and "swastika" and spotted a line from that article: "The swastika, which appears on pottery from Arkhaim, is proclaimed a symbol of..." :)) --Ghirlandajo 15:38, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

what is the context of this image, Ghirlandajo? Was the pottery found at Sintashta? that would be rather interesting, since the "swastika" patterns are very similar to those found in the "Vinca script", 2000 years earlier. dab (ᛏ) 07:17, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

This image illustrates Zdanovich's and Gening's article about their excavations in Sintashta and the pottery found therein. The first vessel is found in the burial ground I, the second, third, fourth - in the burial ground II, and the fifth and sixth - in the burial ground III. --Ghirlandajo 07:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Dab IS COMPLETELY WRONG IN THIS AS Swastika symbols are found in IVC excavations dating much before 2000 BC. See Indus Valley Civilization article and photo of swastika from IVC excavations. And, as per Out of India theory IVC was Indo-Aryan. Hindus of India ( who are natively the very same people from IVC area ) rever this symbol as an auspictious one.It was Hitler who used anti-clockwise swastika as symbol of his Nazi party & associated it with utterly non-scientific white Aryan race propoganda. WIN 06:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

In light of current knowledge at least, the "Out of India" hypothesis (interestingly revived and promoted by a notorious right-wing activist) is no more scientific (arguably even less) and even more outdated (already having been abandoned in the 19th century by serious academics) than the Baltic (or Northern European or Ertebølle/Corded Ware) hypothesis which was taught not only by the Nazis but also serious academics at the time. Meanwhile, ironically enough, the Pazyryk and perhaps also Tarim mummies as well as analyses of ancient DNA lend additional credence to the idea that the early Aryans (in the historical sense, i. e., Indo-Iranians) were white (and even "Nordic"!) in the racial sense, and that their origin must lie in (Eastern) Europe – as also suggested by the combination of philology, archeology and genetics –, only more south than was believed by most at the time of the Nazis. Whether the swastika symbol was already used by the early Aryans in the cold north or introduced to them only by the (Mediterranean-looking) BMAC or IVC people is of course a different matter – our article Swastika suggests that the steppe cultures of Central Asia used a similar but more figurative symbol, the Tierwirbel.

Clearly, the historical early Aryans, all "racial superiority" bullshit aside, turn out uncomfortably close to something that is considered heavily politically incorrect nowadays – OK, no flying supermen from outer space, but tall, blond and blue-eyed chariot-driving and sword-wielding fierce steppe barbarians (who just might have been a little bit racist according to modern standards, and not exactly animal rights activists, either), an image that apparently makes a lot of people turn paranoid and feel encircled by brownshirts and death camp guardians ... so they must censor it, because, you know, reading about this stuff makes people turn into fascists. Oh, the irony. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:29, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

More stuff

Here some other pages which I've googled:

"Many interpretations have been suggested in relation to Arkaim - a military fort, proto-city, or a ceremonial and religious center. If we bear in mind that the sets of artifacts excavated were not characteristic of everyday usage, sites such as Arkaim are a combination of administrative and ceremonial centers. Possibly this was a location where about 1,000 to 2,000 people – aristocracy (and craftsmen) gathered periodically to perform rituals." links to an illustrated PDF.

"Finds from these settlements include bronze knives and sickles, arrowheads, and handmade pottery, as well as the famous chariot burials of Sintashta" www.archaeology.com.

"Recent analyses, including radiocarbon, date the culture approximately from 2000 to 1750 BC. And its excavators describe it as Middle Bronze Age. Zdanovich estimates that the ‘Country of Towns’ might only have existed for 150-200 years. The fortified settlements of the Sintashta-Arkaim culture were located approximately 40-70 km apart. Within the territory around each of these settlements and apparently associated with them are small, unfortified, possibly seasonal, settlements and cemeteries. Zdanovich estimates that approximately 1500 to 2500 people could have lived in Arkaim at one time". - much valuable info that may be added to our article --Ghirlandajo 15:38, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, Zdanovich's dissertation cites 4 different types of pottery assigned to Sintashta-Arkaim culture. "Particularly representative is the collection from Arkaim". - there are details which I cannot translate. --Ghirlandajo

you have to differentiate between the "Sintashta-Arkaim" (= Sintashta-Petrovka) culture, and the Arkaim site in particular. The culture is dated to 2000-1750 (we even give 2200-1700, culture's don't usually end abruptly). The Arkaim site from all I've seen dates to the mature or late S-P culture. You cannot just quote dates for the entire culture as if they pertained to the settlement. The culture is roughly co-eval to Indo-Iranian separation. The site most likely post-dates it. dab (ᛏ) 07:02, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Why Indo-Iranian?

First of all: The basic sentence "Arkaim is attributed to the early Proto-Indo-Iranian of the Sintashta culture, which some scholars believe represents the proto-Indo-Iranians before their split into different groups and migration to Central Asia and from there to Persia and India and other parts of Eurasia." is grammarly nonsense, because redundant.95.90.202.96 (talk) 07:43, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Can any Indo-European say why an settlement located in the middle of Magyar Öshaza (Urheimat) must be of Indo-Iranian or Bolghar origin in the area where THEY HAVE NEVER EXISTED. Peharps we hear soon that it was of Slavic origin because IT CAN NOT BE OF FINNO UGRIAN ORIGIN who, in fact, lived by that time 2000-1500 BC in that area with southern neighbours of TURKIC ORIGIN, both originated by latest DNA researches from area IN THE MIDDLE OF ASIA including Sajan and Altai highlands and the surrounding areas and East Turkestan (Sinkiang) c. 15.000 years ago.

Why similar buried horses have been excavated in Piandush valley buried with tattoed "Maiden of Altai" aged between 25-30 years, and the red heared "Caucasian" (white race) Mummies at Tarim basin Turpan oases dating by 1800-1400 BC. Why Ud-murts present even greater per centage of red heared people than even Celtic origin Irish and Bretons. The Indo-European conclusion: They were of Celtic origin via Skif / Scythic people which were of Indo-Iranian origin and had connections with the Celtic peoples in Europe. Or they had links with Indus valley Harappa Culture. Or possible they were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel or descendatnts of Noah´s sons, but not in any case of non Indo-European Finno Ugrian or Turkic origin.

Asks one tall, still 186 cm (6ft) long, long skulled, dark brown heared, grey-green eyed, big straight nosed, O Rh+ blooded, not lactose intolerated, non Indo-European male. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.87.13 (talk) 18:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

because it dates to 1700 BC? And the Indo-Iranian migration took place in 1500 BC, while the Magyar migration took place in 700 AD? Just a guess, feel free to cite scholarly publications in support of your hypothesis. --dab (𒁳) 08:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Because the arkaim archealogical site has the features associated with typical early indo-iranian and indo-aryan people mentioned in Rig Veda. The site has fire worship temples typical of indo-iranian religious mythology.Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.69.21.94 (talk) 21:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

---

There is more to it than that. The Finn-Ugric and the Ural-Altaic races were related (this is currently being debated with the hypothesis that the Finn-Ugric are a branch of the Altaic languages). The Finn (Sami) have been around 6000-8000BC and possible of common stock to the proto-Magyars. Evidence that the Magyar Diaspora extended from the Chinese Hun (as opposed to the Han Chinese culture), to Scythia (Szekely), Mesopotamia (Sumer) has been around for more than a century and is still hotly debated. Zoroastrian (Parsi) fire temple worship origins in time are still not known and can extend from 6000BCE to 1100 AD.Htcs (talk) 12:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

(Unsigned and unsourced sentence cancelled)95.90.202.96 (talk) 07:44, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Dear mammals(because saying ladies and gents and not mentioning other genders can get you in trouble nowadays),

Because Sintasha sites contains R1a-Z93 - y-dna, that is carried by modern Indo-Iranic people - and modern European people carry other defining R1a and R1b clades. Yes, there are some Z93 present even in modern European population and in Siberian populations as well even in nowadays, but % is so small, that it is not seriously discussable as defining feature of those populations. Z93 coexsisted with other R1a clades to the west, that were at core of CWC, which flourished at the same time when Z93 was present in Sintasha. The story here is that some centuries later most of people of Sintashta left and invaded souther Asia and spread there. They also have nothing to do with Slavic people, so let's agree that the direction that they take to move away from their lands and future Urheimat of Magyars and Bolhgars and what not is not pleasing anyone in modern times.

There has been earlier R1a clades found to the north of Sintasha and in Europe, but they have R1a clades that no modern population represents, so yes - R1a was present around Moscow 10 000 years ago, but it died out and has nothing to do with modern R1a, which originated in territory of modern Ukraine, so deal with it, whatever your modern political preferences are, they did not matter in past and won't matter in future as well. For only this reason I have settled with the notion, that my ancestor has evolved from ancestral rat mammal, that probably did not evolve in Africa, so up yours - no one is happy, but me! :)~

Discussing other y-dna clades and other cultures that are based on these clades makes no sense when the topic is about Arkaim and corresponding Sintashta culture. Neither Magyar, Uralic or Altaic cultures has anything to do with Sintashta, so just calm down your ancestral lemur... 92.13.27.115 (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Questionable content

A user is edit-warring keen to include the opinions of Anatole Klyosov, who we identify as having non-mainstream views in this area. There are no reliable independent sources to show that his views are generally considered relevant, important or correct, therefore we must exclude the ocntent until such sources are found, per WP:NPOV and especially WP:WEIGHT. Guy (Help!) 13:47, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• There are parallel discussions on this at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard but all seem to be related to Klyosov, but its talk page is still uninvolved. --ssr (talk) 14:29, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

But this is the important talk page for his specific claim. Please read WP:WEIGHT. How does his opinion meet this part of our policies? Doug Weller (talk) 15:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I am afraid I am a guilty party: I added the paragraph in question without checking the credibility of the source. My bad. I am completely in favor of keeping this piece out. This primary source may be cited only in support of a possible analysis of fringe theories in a secondary reliable source. -M.Altenmann >t 07:01, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

ThanksUser:Altenmann - no problem, I'm sure I've done the same thing myself at some point. Doug Weller (talk) 08:12, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Easy mistake to make, no hard feelings I hope. Guy (Help!) 15:22, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

well, sometimes feeling stupid is a hard one :-) -M.Altenmann >t 06:55, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I've just removed it again. Doug Weller talk 13:12, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Pseudo, Pseudo, Pseudo...

I have never seen the term 'pseudo' as overused on wikipedia. It gets prefixed to the title of just about every branch of learning. I can't imagine it is so often used in Britannica. Can't you find better ways of indicating a subject is not 'mainstream'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.248.72.120 (talk) 15:16, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

If I search Google books for "pseudoscience" I get 77,000 hits. Complain to their authors. Doug Weller talk 15:25, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

'pseudo-' three times in eight lines is over-doing it a bit, even by wiki standards. Do you think that this repetition will help gullible readers the error of their ways? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 9and50swans (talk • contribs) 21:56, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Arkaim-Very LIKELY Etymology

As a linguist & a native Hebrew speaker, I was struck by the apparent non-accidental relation of this site's/place's/location's name to the Hebrew masculine plural noun: Arhkhaim, which means: ancient as well as judges (perhpas denoting the common idea to both-that, of the fact that the elders were those who were also those entitled/allowed to serve as judges, as well. Accident? Personally, I don't think so..! Any idea from any other linguists/archaeologists (local/Russian, or not) as per the possible origin/inspiration/association of the name?). --AK63 (talk) 05:23, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Could you spell that in Hebrew letters? The usual Hebrew word for "judges" is Shoftim שופטים. "Arhkhaim" looks like a strange hybrid, a Hebrew ending added on to a Greek stem (Archon, "archaic" etc.) -- AnonMoos (talk) 04:31, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Note that such similarities mean NOTHING in linguistics, because too often pure chance. Thus, forget it.95.90.202.96 (talk) 07:47, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

As a fellow hobby linguist, I would like to point out, that we have no actual knowledge of the name of that place or what name those people thousands years ago had for that place... Arkhaim is modern name - what are the origins of that name we have no idea. I, however would be sceptical that this place has anything to do with Hebrew name, because couple of hundreds years ago noblemen in Europe had fashion to create settlements and name them according to settlements, mentioned in Bible. So, hardly this is the case, as there is no settlement named Arkhaim in Bible. Also, the actual name belongs to place that is 30-50 miles away from actual archeological site, so...92.13.27.115 (talk) 03:02, 6 January 2022 (UTC)