Posted on 03/31/2004 7:24:50 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Surprising Discoveries in Silla's Royal Tomb No. 98 (including Greco-Roman artifacts)
King Nae-Mool(birth/death: unknown/402 AD) and his queen's royal tomb in Dae-Roong-Won, Kyong-ju, S. Korea was excavated in 1973-75 to yield some truly unexpected findings later. Many artifacts were quite different from those known to be produced in Korea or China. Exotic designs and materials abound. Further research established that these artifacts originated from Central Asia, Black Sea, Caucasus, Persia and Eastern Mediterranean. This is quite far away from the South Eastern tip of Korean Peninsula, where this ancient Kingdom, Silla, located. The last of 5 short videos below shows how artifacts found in Silla's royal tombs match up with the ones found in these far-away areas.
(my note: Many scholars now advance a hypothesis that nomadic tribes around Tien-shan Mountains(N.W. China, next to Central Asia) started migrating out in the 3rd century AD, due to a weather-related disaster. These people were under the Scythian cultural influence, which was, in turn, heavily traded with Greco-Roman culture. Some went West, others went South, and still others went East. Part of those who migrated East ended up in S.E. Korea, while some of them even went further and reached Japan around 400 AD. Some speculate that they maintained the trade links with the West even after they settled down in S.E. Korea, even though they cannot yet pinpoint with confidence the trade route these people could have used.)
| (Click the start button on the left to view the video) Artifacts found inside the tomb. A silver vessel, a gold-plated bracelet, many glasswares. They were only found in the Kyong-ju area of Korea. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (Click the start button on the left to view the video ) The golden crown found inside the tomb. Such a crown was not used in other parts of Korea and China at the time. Unfolded, we can see that the crown has three tree shapes in the middle and two deer antler shapes on each side. What is the significance of such a design? The next two video answers the question. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (Click the start button on the left to view the video) The video from the turn of the century shows a Siberian shaman conducting his ritual. A tree is an important part of his ritual. A tree is a passage way to bring Shaman's soul to the heaven and commune with god and back to earth carrying god's messages. The trees in the crown have a religious significance. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (Click the start button on the left to view the video) Deers were important food source for people in Eurasian steppes. Naturally, it was also the object of religious worship. Hence, deer antlers also have a religious significance. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (Click the start button on the left to view the video) The Altaic shaman mask at the start of the video has three trees on its head but no deer antlers. However, the combination of trees and deers does show up in a Scythian golden crown. The video shows the Eremitazhu Museum in Russia(?). It has many Scythian golden artifacts, including a golden crown which has one tree in the middle, two deers on each side(, and extra figure on the right side.) Short comments from a Russian scholar follow. After that, more Scythian golden artifacts are shown, starting with a golden comb. For the last 40% of the video, it shows the surprising match between artifacts found around the Steppe Road which Scythians used and the ones found in Silla's ancient tombs in S. E. Korea. The table below serves as the annotation of the video clip.
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Ancient mummies uncovered in Central Asia were virtually inaccessible to the West until a Penn professor with a fine sense of timing and a passion for the past overcame Chinese reticence and political fears. Mummies, always a crowd-pleaser in any museum, were a crowd-pleaser in China, too, where they went on display in museums in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region beginning in 1987.
The first time Mair saw the mummies, he was "thunderstruck." The 3,000- to 4,000-year-old mummies "looked so lifelike. I had a hard time believing they were dead that long. The faces pretty much were the way they looked in life. They retained their original skin color. Quite a few were fair, with blond, light brown and reddish hair."
The mummies were recovered in the Taklamakan desert -- the second-largest desert in the world. Its arid climate, with extreme summer heat and extreme winter cold, aided by the highly saline soil in some areas, was ideal and preserved the mummies, their clothes and burial objects.
. . . The earliest group of mummies, dating from 2000 to 1000 B.C., were not simply Caucasoid. Mair believes they are the ancestors of the Tocharians, a group that spoke an Indo-European language related to Celtic languages and to Hittite, the oldest known Indo-European language, from Anatolia or modern Turkey
Perhaps not Celtic but the The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber decisively identifies their clothing as very similar to Celtic weaves.
Jacob, you've let your history/archaeology/anthropology slip horribly out of date. They are finding Celtic (Proto-Celtic) influence all the way to Beijing. Also, Read Victor Mair's book The Tarim Mummies
The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy
Fedora, I wonder if these are the Hakka we were talking about last night? Remember that I said during the drought that the people who went toward Europe were the Schytians and those who went in the opposite direction were Hakka, Han, Hun and Saka.
Barber and Goode said the fabrics found with the mummies (In the Urumchi area) compare exactly with the fabrics from the famous Celtic sites at Hallstadt, Austria. They are alike in style, material and Manufacturing technique although they are 1,000 years and 4,000 miles apart in time/distance.
The oldest paper ever found came from this site and the extinct (Indo-European) Tocharian language was written on it. Tocharian is most similar to Celtic than other Indo-European languages.
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