THE MORNING LAND OF THE CAUCASUS

THE first announcement, made in a paper presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1899, of the writer's discovery and proofs that the so-called myths and myth lands of the Greeks and Semites were quite accurate histories of events which took place in a little known distrio, the Caucasus Isthmus, was made at a time when there was not much general interest in the subject. It was thought best to complete the work before publishing further.

The material had been collected and put in shape and in part written in final form in 1922 when the announcement of the proposed re-opening of tile Manytsch Lake route and of proposed colonizations both north and south of the Caucasus mountains indicated a possible loss of valuable archeological material and it was decided to publish at once the part which had been written. It appeared in 1923, " The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus." Other notes, on the location of the pre-deluge records referred to by Eusebius, Berossus and Josephus, and on the language in which the original Book of the Dead was written were published in Nature, March 1st, and July 26th, 1924; and a description of the route of the Book of the Dead in the Christian Science Monitor, March 24th, 1924.

RECEPTION OF LATER ARTICLES

These later articles and the book have met with a reception for which the writer is grateful and the authorities in the fields concerned have accepted the conclusions substantially without dissent. E.g. Dr. Albert T. Clay the great Semitic and Babylonian authority in his " Origin of Biblical Traditions" and personal correspondence written shortly before his death, to which I have his permission to refer; Sir Flinders Petrie the most eminent authority on Egyptian archeology and its allied and associated problems, in " Ancient Egypt, " Per: 1924; and many others.

ARCHEOLOGICAL WORK VS. PLACE NAMES AND TRADITIONS

Acceptance of a theorem is and must be conditioned upon corroboration by all possible sources of evidence and the reviewer in Nature and some of those referred to above have emphasized the importance of confirmatory archeological field work in the Caucasus districts. This is true, the spade alone lays bare those sound foundations on which history must be built. But there are other, and within their limits equally accurate and scientific instruments which may be used for locating the structure.

The triple place-name system disclosed and explained in the " Deluged Civilization" is one of these instruments and as shewn, its results are very sure. As an illustration geologists are divided in their opinions as to the extent of the vast inland ocean which they call the " Asiatic Mediterranean". It was originally held to extend eastwards from the Caspian to include Lake Balkasch and to the Altai range. Of late, and influenced by later geological evidence, it has been believed not to have stretched so far east.

But aside from geological difficulties, inspection of the map shews a string of purely old Caucasian names round the eastern and southern borders of Lake Balkash and in the Altai, e.g. Kok-su; Tau-Kum; Bakanash; Ili; Sungaris; Astchibulak; Ach-Irek; Kent; Tschimi-Kent; Olon-Bulak; Ach-su; Urta-Saryk; Sary Bulak; Alan-Kuduk; Terek; scores of others. And these are only found round the level of the " Seven Stream Land" where the old shore would have been. And Rostovtzeff has pointed out as a curious and unexplained fact, that tombs have been found in the Altai resembling those on the Kuban in the Caucasus, (the reason for this we shall see later).

We may therefore be sure that the Caucasus and the Altai and Lake Balkasch regions were in water communication. And further when we remember that the original name of the so called " Asiatic Mediterranean was (see " Deluged; Civilization" ) the " Ocean of Selentchuk" (the original " Atlantic Ocean" ), and note that the small sea to the east of Lake Balkasch is still named the " Dschalantaschash Sea" we may be fairly sure that it was an all sea route.

And in this connection we may think of the Chinese tradition that it was " Se-ling-tsche" who brought silk into China; as we now know from Gadira in modern Daghestan, where the pre-historic silk culture, the " golden fleece" of the Argonauts was, and which was exported west to Cos by the Tel-Kaini. And how Alexander built a great fleet in the Caspian, shortly before his death and told his soldiers that he had reason to believe that the Caspian was connected by water with the ocean east of India. And how the land caravan routes from the Caucasus were initiated by the Seres about 250 B.C. as stated by Strabo and confirmed by the Chinese histories, and how up to that time the goods were brought from the east by water from Faizabad to the south Caucasus valley, Faizabad being less than 200 miles from India, via Khyber Pass and Chitral Valley. The ocean of Selentschuk dried up slowly, even as late as the 16th century the Caspian and the Aral (then called the Sea of Kithay i.e. Kathay) were believed to be parts of the same body of water. (The rate of drying of this old ocean bed is given in the Russian government reports, and various considerably as the seasons are wet or dry.)

Place names in long settled lands may, as we know from our excavations in Egypt and Mesopotamia, be more permanent that geological features. And even in comparatively modern lands; Osla, the capital of Norway was founded 1058 A.D., its name was changed to Christiana in 1624, and in 1924 the old name Osla was restored. Norway is one of the most advanced states in the world, but the Norwegian post office commission which had charge of the notification work discovered that in quite a few of the more remote districts the capital had never been known as Christiana but always and continuously as Osla.

THE OLD PLACE NAMES OF THE CAUCASUS ISTHMUS

During many thousands of years the inroads into the Caucasus isthmus were without permanent effect; the inhabitants merely retreated into the mountains and when the strength of the invaders decayed came down again. There are some slight traces of the Alexandrian rule of Hyrcania and of the Turkish conquest in the neighbourhood of Derbent, but that appears to be all. In 1829 Turkey ceded the isthmus to Russia which for some years tried to conquer the Circassians or Adighi. Military spies with a knowledge of surveying were sent throughout the isthmus and a military staff map was published in 1848, of which the writer has a copy through the kindness of the British War Office. This gives all the old place names as they were before the Russian occupation of the territory, which was not complete even in 1875. Taken in conjunction with the map of Ptolemy, the description by Strabo, and other and later important maps, of which the Royal Geographical Society of England has a most complete and extremely valuable set, and the geological map of Felix Oswald of Nottingham, Eng., we are well equipped for the application of the triple place name method.

PLACE NAMES AND MYTH-HISTORY

When the writer's observation of the curious gap in myth geography between Sicily and the coast of the present Atlantic Ocean, and his realization of its importance, had led to his discovery that the far west block of myths had been misplaced and rightly belonged to the old original Atlantic Ocean or Ocean of Selentchuk, or Aet-Olontchok, to the east of the Caucasus Isthmus, it was evident that there should be references to the occurrences related in the Greek myths in the literatures of the other lands in the neighbourhood of the isthmus, and that the best, and in the end the shortest, way would be to collect and tabulate all such references.

October 1, 1925.

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