"The influence of ancient peoples and civilizations including the Sumerians and Elamites came to a crossroads in the territory of Azerbaijan.... In the 8th century BCE, the semi-nomadic Cimmerians and Scythians settled in the territory.... The Assyrians also had a civilization that flourished to the west of Lake Urmia in the centuries prior to creation of Media and Albania."
Today's "History of" country is Azerbaijan.
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21 comments:
One thing that puzzles me is whether Azeris would qualify for affirmative action if there were a meaningful number of them in the United States. They are physically indistinguishable from the next-door Armenians, and except perhaps in Los Angeles, we regard Armenians as a sort of exotic type of white person and as such not eligible for AA privileges. On the other hand, Azeris are Muslim, and most Americans consider Muslims nonwhite.*
For their part, the people of Azerbaijan consider their country to be part of Europe, and themselves to be as fully European as, say, Germans or Norwegians. They are insulted when others claim that Azerbaijan is part of Asia or, even worse, the Middle East. Which, of course, does not mean that any of them who are in America would turn down affirmative action if offered. Money is money.
* = Albanians and Bosnians are "honorary people of color"
Peter
If it's east of the Urals (and it looks that way), it's part of Europe.
Loved how Mr Fake But Accurate Dan Blather always called it Azzerberjohn.
If it's east of the Urals (and it looks that way), it's part of Europe.
Some geographers regard the ridge of the Caucasus Mountains as the southern border between Europe and Asia. That's a controversial position, as it would make Georgia and Armenia part of Asia even though both are Christian countries and culturally much closer to Europe than Asia.
Using the Urals as Europe's eastern border is a consensus view but creates a problem of its own. A small portion of Kazakhstan is west of the range and therefore geographically in Europe. There are some parallels between Kazakhstan and Turkey, in that both countries are Islamic, a small percentage of each country's land area (though a much larger percentage of Turkey's population) is European, and based on this both countries claim to be part of Europe. That may not be too extreme in Turkey's case, as most Turks look more or less European, enough so that they probably would be considered white in the United States if they weren't Muslim. Kazakhs, in contrast, are Asiatic in appearance, not white by any stretch of the imagination.
Peter
Re:ironrailsironweights
* = Albanians and Bosnians are "honorary people of color"
Wait, when did that happen?
Anyhow, Azerbaijan is pretty much entirely unfamiliar to me. The only thing I can associate with them is war with Armenia, and I learned about that from an Armenian so . . .
Friggin' Scythians - they'd kill their own grandmother for a quarter!
We had a company of Azerbaijani soldiers serving alongside our battalion in Iraq in 2005. Very good people.
They had a barber shop and invited me to get a haircut regularly there. They always refused payment. I suggested to the captain that they should offer $3 haircuts to the Marines and they'd raise a lot of money. He demurred and I prodded, saying its a great bit of capitalism. He looked at me funny and said, "But sir, we are socialists."
ironrailsironweights said...
If it's east of the Urals (and it looks that way), it's part of Europe.
Some geographers regard the ridge of the Caucasus Mountains as the southern border between Europe and Asia. That's a controversial position, as it would make Georgia and Armenia part of Asia even though both are Christian countries and culturally much closer to Europe than Asia.
First, s/b west, not east, but this is the first time I ever heard of the Caucasus as the border of Europe.
Regardless, I'll bet the women are all full-flavored.
Somehow it never occurred to me consider my physician as "white" or "non-white", but just as "that guy with the diploma from the U. of Damascus on the wall".
this is the first time I ever heard of the Caucasus as the border of Europe
It's a concept that's been poking around for a while. Since the dissolution of the USSR in particular, as before that it didn't matter so much whether Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan were European or Asian because they weren't independent countries. All three are members of the Council of Europe, though none have expressed much interest in joining the European Union.
Regardless, I'll bet the women are all full-flavored.
While women from that part of the world do tend to be rather hirsute, there is no reason to believe that they are any more resistant to the false allure of the razor than are women anywhere else :(
Come to think of it, just about the only part of the world where a majority of women don't shave (though that's changing, alas) is East Asia, which also happens to be the part of the world where body hair is the sparsest. Coincidence?
Peter
Somehow it never occurred to me consider my physician as "white" or "non-white", but just as "that guy with the diploma from the U. of Damascus on the wall".
If he were applying to an American medical school he would be very concerned about his racial classification.
Albanians and Bosnians are "honorary people of color"
Wait, when did that happen?
Classifying them racially is difficult, but it can't be avoided because of the extreme importance of race given affirmative action and political correctness (and there are quite a few from both groups living in America). In a biological sense they can't be called nonwhite because they are of completely European origin, but they don't "feel" white to us because they are Islamic, albeit often quite secularized. As a result, Albanians and Bosnians are in a neither-here-nor-there sort of limbo.
Brazilians who appear to be fully white are another tough group to classify. They don't fall under the legal definition of Hispanic because Brazil is Portuguese-speaking, but they are from Latin America.
Peter
Ah! They have oil. I bet it all goes to one family.
Google Earth is a splendid thing if your little laptop can handle it. I find I keep it open and spend untold ... minutes there, and that's a lot.
I have now seen everything there is to see in Azerbaijan. Tru fax.
I looked at every photo pinned even out into the lake and it looks like a very nice place.
But now I am off to Odessa, I see that's at the top of the Black Sea. Bye.
I have now seen everything there is to see in Azerbaijan.
Isn't Harry Potter's school located there?
OT: Sorry but could not find a way to email you Ann. This story has me fuming, hope you can get it out to your subscribers.
http://v2cnsnews.cloud.clearpathhosting.com/node/625194
"Proto-humans." After all the dissecting, slicing, dicing, and reconstituting (reanimating?) the relationships, meaning, and subtlety of Fitzgerald sentences, this hyphenated word struck me as odd. I have learned to pay more attention to itty bitty words. "Proto-humans," as in "early humans," and presumably on the path to modern day humans, which are supposedly pretty static for around 60,000 years. So here is my contribution to the history discussion, by way of making the prefix clearer, or muddier, as the case may be:
Azykhantrop [1] – is a name given to a fossil representative of hominiade, a lower jaw of which was found out in Azykh Cave, in the territory of Hadrut Rayon of the Azerbaijan SSR, in 1968, by Azerbaijani scientists led by Mammadali Huseynov. It belongs to so called pre-Neanderthal man (precisely to pre-Neanderthal man of Heidelberg type). But it should be known that these excavations don’t belong to ancestor of modern human [2], because, at present, scientists don’t consider Neanderthal men as ancestors of modern people.
Althouse doesn't want to jinx the Packers?
The Packers are on and they are winning...
So far I'd summarize the thread as follows:
The cave is from the crack of the dawn of civilization; the cave is verdantly full-flavored.
What is this tattooed rookie doing to the Packers?
Scythians had blue or green eyes and light or red hair.
Believed by some to be the ancestors of the Celts, Scots, Irish and Franks. Also thought to be descendants of Finnish tribes.
They rode horses that were bigger and faster than Alexander's, and used saddles with stirrups - this gave them a decisive advantage over Alexander's infantry and cavalry.
Very interesting people.
Cheers
The cave is from the crack of the dawn of civilization; the cave is verdantly full-flavored.
Well, it is vulva shaped.
Hammond, that is an extraordinarily vulvic cave, glad I'm not the only one who noticed. Not surprising that the Azeri civilization was so fertile.
When I was a kid, I would randomly pick up a volume from our encyclopedia collection and read whatever caught my eye. Wikipedia is an improvement over that, because the ability to link from any article can take you far afield.
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