View Single Post
Old January 16th, 2012 #31
Steven L. Akins
Banned
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: The Heart of Dixie
Posts: 13,170
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas de Aynesworth View Post
The theory that the Iberians of the Caucasus and the Iberians of the Peninsula is highly dubious to anyone but Caucasian romantics.
What? You think people didn't get around 2500 years ago?

Let me show you something...


See this bowl? It's known as the Gundestrup Cauldron:



It was found here, in the Himmerland of the Danish Jutland Peninsula:



It belonged to an ancient Gallic tribe known as the Cimbri, who once occupied the Jutland Peninsula:



Quote:
"As for the Cimbri, much of what is said about them is either incorrect or highly unlikely. For example, one cannot accept that the reason for their pirate-like and nomadic existence is because they were driven from the peninsula that they formerly inhabited due to its having been flooded by a great wave of the sea; for in fact they still occupy the country that they held in earlier times; and they sent as a present to Augustus the most sacred cauldron in their country, with a plea for his friendship and for an amnesty of their earlier offences, and when their petition was granted they set sail for home.....the Cimbri, being a piratical and wandering folk, made an expedition even as far as the region of Lake Maeotis, and that also the "Cimmerian" Bosporus was named after them, being equivalent to "Cimbrian," the Greeks naming the Cimbri "Cimmerii."

"Writers report a custom of the Cimbri to this effect: Their wives, who would accompany them on their expeditions, were attended by priestesses who were seers; these were grey-haired, clad in white, with flaxen cloaks fastened on with clasps, girt with girdles of bronze, and bare-footed; now sword in hand these priestesses would meet with the prisoners of war throughout the camp, and having first crowned them with wreaths would lead them to a brazen vessel of about twenty amphorae; and they would erect an altar which the priestess would attend, and then, bending over the cauldron, would cut the throat of each prisoner after he had been lifted up; and from the blood that poured forth into the vessel some of the priestesses would draw a prophecy."

- Strabo
(below) scene from the Gundestrup Cauldron showing a captured war prisoner being sacrificed as described above by Strabo:


The Gundestrup Cauldron was made here however, in Thrace:



At the time, the Cimbri and other Gallic tribes occupied portions of the region in and around Thrace:

Quote:
"There are those who say that Gaul was once wide and large enough to reach from the furthest sea and the arctic regions to the Maeotic Sea eastward, where it bordered on Pontic Scythia, and from that point on the Gauls and Scythians were mingled together....so that the whole legion was generally known by the name of Gallo-Scythians. Others say that the Cimmerii, anciently known to the Greeks, were only a small part of the nation, who were driven out upon some quarrel among the Scythians, and passed all along from the Maeotic Sea to Asia, under the conduct of one Lygdamis; and that the greater and more warlike part of them still inhabit the remotest regions lying upon the outer ocean. These are said to live in a densely wooded country hardly penetrable by sunlight, the trees being so close and thick, extending into the interior as far as the Hercynian forest....and from this region the people, anciently called Cimmerii, and thereafter, by a slight change, Cimbri"

- Plutarch
Another tribe known as the Getae also occupied part of this region north of Thrace:



And like the Cimbri, the Getae migrated across Europe eventually settling in southern Sweden, where their descendants became known as the Geats:



If the Cimbri and the Geats could travel freely from the shores of the Black Sea all the way to Scandinavia, what makes you think it is improbable that Iberians from the Caucassus were a different people from the Iberians of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain)?

Last edited by Steven L. Akins; January 17th, 2012 at 10:05 AM.