Psammetichus's Law, or the most ancient language in the world the Colchis dragon spoke

"How did the world's first language emerge?" and "Where?" are questions historical linguists usually ignore when they try to provide their reconstructions of proto-languages. But when they try to answer the question "When?" applying it to some hypothetical intermediary proto-language, they willingly use methods and tools from other sciences not initially intended to be used in linguistics, with no verification of the results obtained in such a way. The issues with reconstructing a proto-language start with the system of rules assumed in the comparative method's model. In this video, we will shed more light on why this system is likely to be wrong using, among others, the historical record and provide a fresh and more precise perspective on the languages of Ukraine, the Caucasus, and some regions outside, of the ancient and mediaeval period - including Scythian, Cimmerian, Sauromatian, and Hunnic to name a few.

Keywords: Scythian language, Cimmerian language, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, Hunnic language, Khazars, Kyivan Rus, Ukrainian language, Catacomb culture

Narrated Text (minorly different from the real speech in the video, the text version being primary; every new timestamp is a new slide on the screen):

(00:00) Hello Dear Viewers. In the previous video, I said about my intention to continue developing the theme of Khazar history. And we will continue ... by looking into the past that occurred on their land. We will be analysing, among others, the pre-Scythian history of Ukraine. And, as usual, we will be discussing the evolution of the Ukrainian language. Some people who watched my previous videos (or some of them) disagree with me about my statement (which I made in my very first video) that the Scythian language is Ancient Ukrainian. They can be roughly divided into two groups. The first group is a Slavic-speaking community that thinks Scythian is Proto-Slavic, Common Slavic, or sort of that. They claim that Scythian history or heritage doesn't belong only to Ukrainians. Why they are upset is explicable but unjustifiable. The second group is mainly a non-Slavic-speaking community that believes that no nation, no people has their own history that starts in the distant past. They think that their nation doesn't have such a history and that's why others don't deserve any. They obviously don't know the Ukrainian formula "Ukraine did, does, and will exist." Among them there were those who called themselves scholars or academics. There were, of course, those who tried to provide me with some reasonable points, but they were the vast minority. For me as a native Ukrainian speaker, obviously, it was simpler to start from the comparison of the Scythian language with Ukrainian. And while I was doing it, I saw it worked. It works in many more cases than previously discussed. When you compare an undeciphered language (important! - the Scythian language remained completely! undeciphered before me - this statement irritates those believing otherwise - but it became partly deciphered thanks to me - this statement also irritates them) ... when you compare an undeciphered language to any other language, you see which language does fit the undeciphered one and which doesn't, which fits more and which fits less. It may happen that you will not find a perfect fit. But when the difference is negligible (or seems to be that), you already have some imaginary "geometrical line" that passes through the "points of one colour", you already have some language that is close to the "centre" of the imaginary "sphere of languages". You may choose whatever abstraction you prefer. If I had compared the Scythian language to several languages at once, I would possibly unnecessarily have blurred the edges between them. Is that smart? Definitely. Because the irritation of the irritated led them to criticise only one statement of mine - without argumentation of course. Joking aside, those who don't like this approach might have thought that I should compare the Scythian language to Proto-Slavic than to the modern Slavic languages. The problem of this approach is that we don't know Proto-Slavic. What is called Proto-Slavic is a reconstruction we cannot verify. Objectively, we don't know whether it existed and when it emerged. Some proto-languages did exist, but whether there was Proto-Slavic as an intermediary language that diverged from any of them is not known for sure. The point that it existed from the 2nd millennium BCE to the 6th century CE (as written on Wikipedia), in fact, has no evidence. The glottochronological method was never accurate, the newest one (Bayesian dating) is also not. We don't know when Slavic languages finally diverged. It may have happened much earlier than the 2nd millennium BCE. Proto-Slavic is reconstructed mainly by means of comparative linguistics, separately from the historical record, which is wrong a priori. But the real languages, conversely, are not only attested - they exist right now. We can listen to them, we can verify them. As the last argument, the dissatisfied say, "But we have written sources. They show that there was Common Slavic till the very, very 12th century." This fallacy arises from the misunderstanding of two facts. The first one is that we don't know the initial state of Slavic languages even in the Common Era to compare the stages, say the 6th century stage to the 12th century stage. The second one is that written language is not the same as spoken language. To illustrate this misunderstanding, try to answer the following question, "Do Romance languages originate from Latin?" Let's think a bit. First of all, the Latin language is the language of the Italic tribe of Latins which might be just one or several of many Romance dialects. This tribe started forming alliances with its neighbours or conquering their lands. In this way, the Latins expanded their influence over an ever-greater territory. When a controlled territory becomes too vast, the imposition of a common language is only a matter of time. To understand what happened next, let's think about what likely happened far before - in the days when some proto-languages (like Proto-Italic) already existed. Similarly to modern languages, proto-languages also had dialects. But at the beginning of their development, when every person in the areas where they spread already had some lexicon, they might have looked like dialect continua - that's how proto-languages (say Proto-Indo-European) are traditionally viewed by scholars. It means that their neighbouring dialects were not much different and mutually intelligible, but their most distant dialects not necessarily were. (We are currently not discussing a more general approach to view proto-languages - we can omit it for now.) The "similarity" of these dialects may depend on the size of the population, the area of the territory it inhabits, its density across this area, the natural environment it's surrounded by, the climate, the landscape, etc. There are many factors that may affect human speech, but let's build a simplified model. For several groups of people to communicate one with another, they need to have some common lexicon. In the case of mutually intelligible dialects, they already have it. But each of these groups may introduce part of their vocabulary into the new language or new dialect that will become common for these groups. This process is not symmetrical. In time, some words disappear, some remain dialectical even for this new language or dialect. Each time the common vocabulary expands, the percentage of newly arrived loanwords decreases, along with the possibility to be "adopted". After some words become extinct, the dialect subcontinua get "sharper" - the edges between them become more obvious. This "dialect sharpening" may be catalysed by killings and wars. When all native speakers of a dialect die, the bridges that previously connected other dialects via the speakers of this dialect no longer exist. Imagine a dialect continuum in the form of a net with tiny cells. You have a pair of scissors with which you indiscriminately, every time in a different random place, cut this net. What will happen? You may arbitrarily create isolated subnets - new languages. Most likely, the same happened in ancient states, especially centralised ones. To communicate with authorities or to hold office, you will likely need to know an official language of the state. On the one hand, it looks like Latin in the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire. But if I'm not mistaken, in these states, there was no specific requirement for non-Latin speakers to know Latin, and there was no continuous state policy banning non-Latin languages, such a policy can mainly be applied to written languages (by banning literature for example), not spoken, which I doubt is the case here. Let's concentrate only on Romance speakers. The Latin language was initially spoken primarily by the Italic tribe of Latins. But once it became the state language, non-Latin Romance speakers (if any at that very moment) could not completely avoid it. If speakers of one language switch to another, their previous native tongue dies naturally. No speakers, no language. But the extinction of dialectical words and dialects causes other dialects to gather into separate languages (unless these dialects are on the outskirts of the continuum). For a language to finally disappear, virtually every single word of this language has to die. Its "remains" scattered across other languages don't preserve the language itself, that's what I mean. Recall the net and the scissors. The Latin language might have borrowed some non-Latin Romance terms and vice versa. And these possible loanwords in Latin might give the wrong impression that they are native to Latin. Hypothetically, the Romance languages might have originated from so-called Old Latin. But it's impossible to say precisely when, and recent linguistic researches, however, deny this - they confirm that Latin is not their direct predecessor. In the previous video, we had a Scythian (Slavic) word, "Exampaios" ("Ἐξαμπαῖος"), that indirectly suggests that there could have been a separate Romance ancestor of French in the 5th century BCE or before. If not as a separate language, then as a distinguishable dialect subcontinuum. It might not be a proof, but a compelling argument. Buf if that's not true, either we are probably completely wrong about how Old Latin was pronounced, or we are dealing with an echo of Proto-Romance. When scholars analyse the corpora in Classical Latin (which is a literary, written language), the texts they deal with cover the time period when the dominions of the Romance speakers already covered the vast land. When a spoken language or dialect develops new features, they indeed may appear in the written language of the whole state, which may have nothing to do with that particular spoken language or dialect. But the emergence of spoken features in a written language doesn't mean that these spoken features didn't develop in speech before, there might be a delay before their emergence in text. And some might never become observable until the whole spoken language becomes the language of literature. Scholars indeed rely on written languages to speculate about spoken languages or dialects of those days. From their perspective, there is no other choice. "We use what we have," they may say. But if we accept that their approach is applicable to Romance languages, we cannot say the same about Slavic languages. My previous research suggests that in the 5th century BCE there were likely at least two Slavic languages: Scythian and the Budini language. Scythian is hard to distinguish from Ukrainian, the Budini language may be the direct ancestor of Polish. Because the Budini, according to Herodotus, lived in forests, the whole of Ukraine must have been inhabited by Slavs. Because most of it is the steppe and forest steppe zone, only the north and north-west of Ukraine belong to the forest zone. - In this video, we will be investigating where resided some specific tribes mentioned by Herodotus. - The area of Ukraine is two times bigger than that of Italy, an approximate one previously inhabited by the Italic tribes. The Romance, or quote unquote "Latin", tribes covered a much smaller region, whereas the Slavic tribes probably had their abodes even outside Ukraine. We are comparing the areas as of the 5th century BCE. It's hard to believe that on such a wide territory there was a solid and uniform Proto-Slavic continuum without distinguishable subcontinua. When Old Church Slavonic, which is a South Slavic language, was created, there already existed either several different Slavic languages with their own dialects or one Proto-Slavic language with its many different dialects. As the territory covered by these dialects was too vast, we cannot but think about separation of languages. You may think that these languages are in fact dialect subcontinua of a single Proto-Slavic, but all its dialects could not have existed or stayed the same for an infinitely long time. Once separate groups of dialects become self-sufficient and too different from one another, they are no longer dialects of a single language - those having survived become dialects of the new diverged languages. And communication between people rather accelerates their obliteration: a dialectical term initially attached to a specific region, once it circulates everywhere in the area of its language, ceases to be dialectical. That is both intercommunication and self-isolation obliterate dialects to some extent. That's the difference between them and languages: while the magic of dialects is that they can blend together, such a capability is limited for languages. How often do you communicate with people whose language you don't know and who don't know your language? No sea, no ocean, no river, no lake, no mountain, is required to isolate your language from theirs. Though the landscape may speed up their shaping. That's why nowadays loanwords are not borrowed en masse, they percolate, in blocks or not. Unless there is a strong power forcing you to borrow foreign words - it happens, for example, when you are forced to switch to another language. A foreign term is also likely to be borrowed into a language if the language cannot provide its counterpart when it's needed. Languages "do not like holes", but they are "too slow to notice them". In this way appeared computer-related Anglicisms in some languages.

That's why we return to the first model anyway - several languages instead of many dialects. Again, it doesn't negate the fact that languages have dialects and dialects have subdialects. But if you wish, you may imagine these "languages" as "subcontinua". Old Church Slavonic is just one of the Slavic dialects that was also used by other Slavs. But it was foreign to them, almost like Latin to the non-Latins. Since then appeared its local varieties, which are usually referred to as Church Slavonic. It was a liturgical and literary language, but not local spoken. (14:11) That's why Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος (Constantine Porphyrogenitus), listing the Dnipro river's rapids in his "De administrando imperio" (or "Πρὸς τὸν ἴδιον υἱὸν Ρωμανόν"), provides two names almost per each: in the Rus' language and "Slavonic". The Rus' language is the Ukrainian or Rusyn spoken! language, and "Slavonic" is Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic, the South Slavic liturgical, literary! language. When he calls a rapid neither by a Rus' name nor "Slavonic", he provides its Greek name. Such an example is the rapid called "γελανδρί" ("Gelandri"). It's a Greek appellation consisting of "γέλως" or "γέλιο" ("laughter") and "ἀνήρ" or "άνδρας" ("(male) man" or "human being"). Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος says that in "Slavonic" it means "Sound / Noise / Speech / Voice / Tongue of the Barrage", in other words "Noisy Barrage". He didn't record the "Slavonic" name for this rapid - maybe he forgot - but he knew its Greek name. That's why he doesn't say that the appellation "γελανδρί" is a Rus' term. But if this term is not Greek and indeed Scandinavian, then his account double-confirms that the Rus' (that is the Russes) are a Slavic people speaking Ukrainian or the Rusyn language or dialect of the Ukrainian language. There were definitely more than two Ukrainian and/or Rusyn dialects, but for the sake of clarity I'm highlighting only these two main groups - Ukrainian for the Khazars and Rusyn and/or Ukrainian for the Rus' / Russes - which in fact are almost one and the same thing so that we can refer to both the groups as the Ukrainian language and use the term "Rusyn" when necessary, keeping that in mind.

After the introduction of Old Church Slavonic in the Slavic communities beyond the First Bulgarian Empire, there were not many people who knew this language, and thus Old Church Slavonic could not acquire many spoken features. Not everyone recorded anything in this language so some spoken features might have never appeared in Church Slavonic texts. And the fact that a person knows a second language doesn't mean at all that they will introduce any features of their spoken language into the literary language or introduce them immediately. It rather depends on how well they know the second and how the first is distant from the second. Do you know English? How well? How many spoken features of your language are you introducing into English while speaking it? How many spoken features of your language remained and are now found in Standard English? It's more likely that we will be introducing our native words into another language in communication if it doesn't differ much from ours. The smaller the difference, the closer the speakers' languages to the "blending threshold". But it will be a temporary occurrence if we make efforts to correct ourselves or are corrected by others. And it doesn't affect the language of our interlocutor we speak in in a single case - it affects only our speech when we have no choice but to recourse to our personal vocabulary. For the Russes, Church Slavonic much differed from their native language - South Slavic Church Slavonic versus East Slavic Ukrainian - so that the dialectical blending could not happen. That's what the account of Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος indicates. Some Ukrainian words might have been borrowed into Church Slavonic and vice versa. But the point that the Russes' mother tongue was so primitive that they were able to only introduce foreign words in their vocabulary simply doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. The statement that there were still no separate Slavic languages but only Slavic dialects even after the invention of Old Church Slavonic is speculation. The statement that there was a single Old East Slavic with not many dialects as the intermediary language from which modern Ukrainian (along with Rusyn), Belarusian, and Russian evolved, is not just pure speculation, but a myth already debunked. After Russian scholars, including the historian Валентин Лаврентьевич Янин (Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin) and the linguist Андрей Анатольевич Зализняк (Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak), conducted a multidisciplinary research on the Novgorod birch bark manuscripts, its results revealed that the dialects used in Novgorod since the 11th century CE were totally different from those in Rus'. (Back then, in the 11th century, Novgorod was not even considered to be part of Rus'.) Based on the conclusions of these scholars, Валентин Лаврентьевич Янин in the interview with him published on Lomonosov Moscow State University's site titled "The Origins of Novgorod Statehood" (in the original Russian - "Истоки новгородской государственности") in early 2005 describes the formation of new dialects in Rus' and Novgorod from the 11th century to the 13th century as a process of obliteration of more numerous previous dialects owing to the intercommunication between neighbouring groups of people. That's what I already explained before. For some reason, scholars needed to spend many years to prove what could have been reached by a mental experiment. According to the research of the birch bark manuscripts, the so-called Old Novgorod dialect has not much to do with Russian. Валентин Янин says that the speakers of the Novgorod and Pskov region came from the territories inhabited by the West Slavs, in particular by Lechitic-speaking people. In other words, the Old East Slavic language, as it's usually imagined by many, didn't exist at all. When I say that the Russian language didn't exist before the Common Era, I mean that this language didn't have its own dialect subcontinuum before the Common Era. The Russian linguist Борис Андреевич Успенский (Boris Andreevich Uspenskij), in his work "A Brief Outline of the History of the Russian Literary Language" (in the original Russian - "Краткий очерк истории русского литературного языка") from 1994, describes the language situation in Rus' (that is Ukraine) of the 14th-16th centuries as "bilingualism": this period is characterised by the Rus' literary language (sometimes referred to as Chancery Slavonic or Ruthenian), which was being strongly influenced by spoken Ukrainian, supplanting literary Church Slavonic, and Church Slavonic being cleansed of Rus' elements. Before the late 14th century, according to him, the spoken Rus' language and written Church Slavonic co-existed in a relationship of "diglossia" - two different languages serving different functions. While diglossia developed into bilingualism in Rus', such a development didn't happen in Muscovy in the same period. The times of the "Church-Slavonic-and-Ruthenian bilingualism" in Ukraine ended when the literary Ruthenian language completely replaced Church Slavonic. In Muscovy, these times hadn't even started yet. Before bilingualism replaced diglossia in Muscovy, in the view of Борис Успенский, the second language, besides Church Slavonic, was a chancery, mandative language not distinguishable by the locals from Church Slavonic - contrary to the bilingualism in Rus', where the church and the chancery language opposed one another. While the chancery language in Rus' was dependent on the spoken dialects and thus changed, the same didn't happen in Muscovy. We can interpret this view of Борис Успенский as meaning that there was no spoken Slavic language in Muscovy. He, of course, doesn't say that - instead, he "creates" the Russian language out of nothing. According to him, the period of diglossia in Muscovy ended in about the late 17th century under the influence of the Ukrainian edition of Church Slavonic via a "mass expansion of the [Ukrainian] culture" to Muscovy in the second half of the same 17th century. In this context, instead of the term "Ukrainian", he applies the non-scientific term "South-West Rus'". During this "expansion", Борис Успенский relates, the Muscovites (this term is not used by him) were actively taught to speak a new Church Slavonic that was a mix of its Ukrainian and Muscovy editions. Thus, it became spoken in the academic community. Here Борис Успенский contradicts himself as he also states that Church Slavonic was the cultural language in Muscovy before. Therefore it must have already been spoken at least by the most educated Muscovites. It can only mean that this new, "external" Church Slavonic which came from Ukraine was somehow different from its Muscovy counterpart. In other words, the only spoken language in Muscovy, based on the research by Борис Успенский, was Church Slavonic, and the Ukrainian elements that infiltrated into the Muscovy edition of Church Slavonic destroyed the never-existing "Church-Slavonic-and-Russian diglossia", which in fact was simply a single Church Slavonic language.

This work of Борис Успенский suggests that the language we today call Russian developed into a separate distinguishable language on the basis of some others not earlier than in the Late Middle Ages, in particular written Church Slavonic, which explains why this language is very poor in dialects. If its primary form was Slavic texts and not Slavic speech, where to get them? To Finno-Ugric speaking people, Church Slavonic was even more foreign than to the Russes. There is no natural source for many Slavic dialects in this case - Finno-Ugric languages cannot be their "factory". A totally different path was followed by Ukrainian and Belarusian. In his work, Борис Успенский admits that the modern literary Ukrainian and Belarusian language were virtually unaffected by their past chancery analogues. That's why the Scythian language may and does resemble modern Ukrainian. Because literary and standard modern Ukrainian is built on the colloquial tongue. The chancery Ruthenian language is not an ancestor of Ukrainian, but the spoken Rus' language is. Some of the spoken Rus' words are found in the aforementioned work of Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος, as I already said. In the description to this video, you can find the links to the interview with Валентин Янин and to its analysis by the author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel. The link to the analysis of the work of Борис Успенский by the same author was provided under my first video.

(23:46) Why have I shown the Wiki article about Proto-Slavic? When in my first video I said that in the view of some scholars "Slavs appeared suddenly on some small piece of land surrounded by Germanic tribes", I meant that, from the perspective of the historical record, the earliest tribes that can be referred to as Slavs by us with more or less high confidence were known to their contemporaries (that is "appeared in historical sources") not earlier than in the Common Era. Obviously, if Proto-Slavic existed before the Common Era, the Slavs before the Common Era also existed. The problem for scholars was to identify which tribes in historical texts were Slavic and which were not. They, of course, proposed some hypotheses, but they didn't much care about linguistic matters. At the same time, some tribes were already traditionally assumed to be Germanic. And, as a consequence, it created an exaggerated view on their presence. The traditional view conceives of the Slavs as hidden among other non-Slavic speaking tribes. By such, scholars mean, in particular, the Hunni (in English they are called "Huns"), though not all of them agree with such a delusional point. The Hunni can be Slavs because their lexicon recorded in several sources is virtually entirely Slavic. One of the scholars who thought that the Hunni were Slavs was the Russian historian Дмитрий Иванович Иловайский (Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaysky). In his work "The Beginnings of Rus'" (in the original Russian - "Начало Руси"), he provides the reader with the three Hunnic words: "strava" (in different Slavic languages including Ukrainian, this word means "food", "dish"), "medos" (he connects this word with the Slavic "med" which means "honey"), and "kvas" (in the Greek text - "Κάμον") (it's a Slavic drink whose name is translated into English as "kvass" as well). (25:28) The last two come from "History" of Πρίσκος Πανίτης (or Priscus of Panium) - the 5th century CE. Some excerpts of his account are provided in the first volume of "Corpus Byzantinae Historiae" (also known as "De Byzantinae historiae scriptoribus") authored by the French Jesuit scholar Philippe Labbe. The first edition is dated 1648, but we will be referring to the second one published after his death in 1729. Recounting an episode of his journey, Πρίσκος writes that the Hunni supplied their embassy with "millet instead of corn and 'medos' instead of wine". This "medos" is an alcoholic drink that in English is called "mead" which is made from "honey". Millet is a heat-resistant crop and is less demanding on moisture than corn, and that the Hunni provided it is rather expected because they were people of steppes. (26:17) In the second or third century CE, Διονύσιος ὁ Περιηγητής (Dionysius Periegetes) placed them near the Caspian Sea in the North Caucasus. In the 1828 edition of his "Survey of the World" (or "Οικουμένης περιήγησης") published by the German philologist Gottfried Bernhardy, we can read that the Hunni lived between the Scythians and the Caspians. According to Διονύσιος, the Scythians dwelt on a sea coast near the "Cronium Sea" at the "mouth of the Caspian Sea". The "mouth of the Caspian Sea" is the mouth of the Volga river. (26:48) The "Cronium Sea" is the Arctic Ocean - because, in the view of Διονύσιος, the Caspian Sea was a gulf of the Cronium Sea which was located further north and called "frozen" ("πεπηγότα") or "dead" ("νεκρὸν"). And the sea coast inhabited by the Scythians is the coast of the Arctic Ocean and the Caspian Sea at one and the same time. The fact that Διονύσιος relates the Scythians to the Arctic Ocean stems from a mistake made by his predecessors, such as Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder who called the Arctic Ocean Scythian. Like Διονύσιος, Pomponius Mela shared the view that the Caspian Sea was its gulf. The Roman and Greek authors of that age had scarce knowledge about the regions north of Ukraine and the North Caucasus. Pliny the Eder in his "Naturalis Historia" conveys that, before his time or in his time, there were those who believed that the Sea of Azov was a gulf of the Northern Ocean. Any reports about faraway corners of the world that reached ancient authors could not but have mingled with those coming from closer areas. But the thought that there exist some unknown remote places beyond the already known lands (which are sometimes called in Ancient Greek "οἰκουμένη", in English "ecumene") fueled the creation of myths and mythical characters like griffins and cyclopes known as Arimaspoi. The real events that became sources for these myths did not necessarily happen somewhere far - those that did in proximity could have been transferred over a distance away. According to Διονύσιος, the Arimaspoi dwelt somewhere near the Cronium Sea. And it's also known that this place should be found near the Riphean Mountains. The English scholar James David Pennington Bolton in his work "Aristeas of Proconnesus" concludes that the Riphean Mountains are the Ural Mountains. On the one hand, it doesn't contradict the account of Διονύσιος. But it contradicts several others. (28:38) According to Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος (or Claudius Ptolemy), these mountains, though situated far north in latitude, were west of the Caucasus Mountains in longitude, and their longitude (63°) was close to that of Theodosia (63°20′). Present-day Theodosia is found in the south-east of the Crimean Peninsula. These coordinates are definitely not precise, but they still maintain the point I already expressed in my first video - that the Riphean Mountains were the Donets' Ridge in Ukraine. Though in that video I referred to the author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel, this point can be argumented more rigorously in addition to what he found out.

In the ancient epoch, it was believed that the major Scythian rivers flow out of the Riphean Mountains. (29:22) In the 5th century CE, Φιλοστόργιος (Philostorgius) in his "Ecclesiastical History" (in the translation by Edward Walford) writes that out of these mountains flows the river Tanais. Don't rush into claiming that the river Tanais is always the river Don. (29:37) In the 3rd century BCE, Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος (Apollonius of Rhodes) in his "Ἀργοναυτικά" ("Argonautica") (in the translation by Robert Cooper Seaton), in the Riphean Mountains, placed the springs of the Ister (the river Danube). The only big mountains that the Danube can be attributed to are the Carpathian Mountains and the Alps. But they also cannot be the Riphean Mountains for the following reason. (29:58) In the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder in his "Naturalis Historia" (in the translation by Harris Rackham) mentions the Riphean Mountains in several passages. We will read only three of them:

"The actual Lake Maeotis [the Sea of Azov], which receives the Tanais flowing down from the Ripaean Mountains, the river being the extreme boundary between Europe and Asia, is said to measure 1406, or according to other authorities 1125, miles in circumference [that is the perimeter of the Sea of Azov]. The distance in a straight line between the entrance of Lake Maeotis [that is the Kerch Strait] and the mouth of the Tanais is agreed to be 375 miles."

One Roman mile in Pliny the Elder's time was about 1.482 kilometres. 1125 Roman miles is about 1667.25 kilometres, which is bigger than the real perimeter of the present-day Sea of Azov. 375 Roman miles is about 555.75 kilometres. "In a straight line", it's approximately the distance between the Kerch Strait and the river Donets' near the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation (accepting that one degree of latitude is one hundred and eleven kilometres), though this is not a mouth at all. The Ural Mountains are much farther than this intersection.

(31:26) "After Taphrae [roughly speaking, Crimea], the interior of the mainland is occupied by the Auchetai and the Neuri, in whose territories respectively are the sources of the Hypanis [the river Buh] and the Borysthenes [the river Dnipro], the Geloni, Thyssagetae, Budini, Basilidae and Agathyrsi, the last a dark-haired people; above them are the Nomads and then the Man-eaters [that is the Androphagi; previously, by referring to the author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel, I've hastily said that they are the Mordvinians - in fact, they are almost undoubtedly Finno-Ugric (and we will try to prove it in this video), but not necessarily the Mordvinians], and after Lake Buces [the lagoons called the Syvash on the west coast of the Sea of Azov separated from it by the Arabat Spit] above the Maeotis the Sauromatae and Essedones. Along the coast, as far as the river Tanais, are the Maeotae from whom the lake receives its name, and last of all in the rear of the Maeotae are the Arimaspi. Then come the Ripaean Mountains and the region called Pterophorus, because of the feather-like snow continually falling there; it is a part of the world that lies under the condemnation of nature and is plunged in dense darkness, and occupied only by the work of frost and the chilly lurking-places of the north wind [also known as Βορέας]. Behind these mountains and beyond the north wind there dwells (if we can believe it) a happy race of people called the Hyperboreans [or Ὑπερβόρε(ι)οι in Ancient Greek - that is those who live "beyond Βορέας", "beyond the North Wind"], who live to extreme old age and are famous for legendary marvels."

(33:16) A similar passage that can be attributed to the region called Pterophorus is found in Herodotus's "Histories" (or "Ἱστορίαι") (in the translation by George Campbell Macaulay):

"Now this sacred gold is guarded by the kings with the utmost care [the gold that came down from heaven - we talked about it in the previous video - the gold that blazed with fire when the two elder sons of Targitaos approached it], and they visit it every year with solemn sacrifices of propitiation: moreover if any one goes to sleep while watching in the open air over this gold during the festival, the Scythians say that he does not live out the year [let's recall the people called Arimaspoi: in the first video I've interpreted their name as the Ukrainian "Дрімазби" ("Drimazby") meaning "those interrupting their own doze / nap / snooze" - "those sleeping with one eye open" - Arimaspoi were those who protected the Scythian gold or Scythia's border guards; such a replacement of the "Δ" ("delta") with the "Α" ("alpha") may have occurred much earlier than Herodotus's times, but it's still not clear what circumstances led to this]; and there is given him for this so much land as he shall ride round himself on his horse in one day [for example, in order to be able to protect this gold]. Now as the land was large, Colaxaïs [the youngest son of Targitaos], they say, established three kingdoms for his[!] sons; and of these he made one larger than the rest, and in this[!] the gold is kept. But as to the upper parts which lie on the North side of those who dwell above[!] this land, they say one can neither see nor pass through any further by reason of feathers which are poured down; for both the earth and the air are full of feathers, and this is that which shuts off the view. [Pterophorus.]"

According to these records, the Arimaspoi dwelt south of Pterophorus. At the same time, it's also known that different ancient authors, a list of which can be found in James Bolton's research, placed the Riphean Mountains next to the Arimaspoi. So where were these Riphean Mountains? (35:35) Let's refer to Pliny the Elder again:

"Below this lies the Black Sea district named Colica, in which the Caucasus range curves round to the Ripaean Mountains, as we have previously stated, one side sloping down towards the Black Sea and the Maeotis, and the other towards the Caspian and Hyrcanian Sea. The tribes occupying almost all the rest of the coasts are the Melanchlaeni and the Coraxi, with the Colchian city of Dioscurias on the river Anthemus, now deserted, but once so famous that according to Timosthenes 300 tribes speaking different languages [that is languages of the Caucasus region] used to resort to it; and subsequently business was carried on there by Roman traders with the help of a staff of 130 interpreters."

Pliny the Elder (or to be accurate - his text) suggests that the Riphean Mountains are somehow connected to the Caucasus range or found in its proximity. A reflection of this account, we already saw on Ibn Hawqal's map (in the previous video). There, the Crimean Peninsula is named "Bab al-Abwab" ("Gate of the Gates" in Arabic). But the appellation "Bab al-Abwab", as well known, in the 10th century CE, was also applied to the Caucasus Mountains. But why? On the one hand, because the "Gate of the Gates" may be interpreted as "Port of the Ports". On the other, because the Crimean Peninsula has the Crimean Mountains which can be imagined as an extension of the Caucasus range. But it's still unlikely that the Crimean Mountains are the Ripheans - it contradicts many accounts at once. So where were they? (37:23) In the 4th century BCE, Ἀριστοτέλης (Aristotle) in his "Meteorology" ("Μετεωρολογικά") (in the translation by Erwin Wentworth Webster) writes,

"In the extreme north, beyond furthest Scythia, are the mountains called Rhipae. The stories about their size are altogether too fabulous: however, they say that the most and (after the Istrus) the greatest rivers flow from them."

By the greatest rivers after the Istrus (that is the Danube), Ἀριστοτέλης probably means, at least, the rivers Borysthenes (Dnipro) and Tanais, likely the river Buh (that is the Southern Buh), and maybe the river Dnister. The river Dnipro doesn't flow out of the Ural Mountains. The river Don also doesn't. Though it might have been confused with the river Volga (such a confusion becomes easier to notice in the Middle Ages) - in total, all these rivers flow or appear to flow out of different mountains or none. Ἀριστοτέλης thinks that the size of the Riphean Mountains is exaggerated, which is applicable to the Donets' Ridge. It's not big mountains but is still rather mountains than hills, which, at some stage, might have led to their confusion with the Urals, the Carpathians, and the Crimean Mountains, by ancient authors. Accepting that only one of these three ranges is the real Riphean Mountains, the mental transference of one mountain range to another becomes the least explicable. But it becomes the most once we place the Ripheans between them all, right where the Donets' Ridge is, which is much closer than the Urals and also in the proximity of the Caucasus range, like the Crimean Mountains. Some Scythian rivers, indeed, may be regarded as flowing out of the Donets' Ridge. To some extent, such is the river Dnipro which approaches it from the north but doesn't flow out of it. The crucial river, though, defining the Riphean Mountains is the river Tanais. If you remember, Movses Khorenatsi (or, to be more accurate, the author who wrote the works known by his name) places the Riphean Mountains between Sarmatia Prima (which is Sarmatia Europea) and Sarmatia Secunda (which is Sarmatia Asiatica). His account indirectly also suggests that the Tanais flows out of the Riphean Mountains because the border between Europe and Asia, according to that author, was formed by these mountains, the Tanais proper, and the Sea of Azov. Plausible as it seems, the fact that it flows out of the Ripheans doesn't mean yet that they are the Urals or were the Urals before Movses Khorenatsi. According to Pliny the Elder, its mouth was 375 miles away from the entrance of Lake Maeotis in a straight line. I've consciously said about the river Donets' (also known as the Sivers'kyi Donets') near Ukraine's border because, if the Ripheans are the Donets' Ridge, the Tanais flows out of them as well. Several centuries ago, scholars knew that both the river Donets' and the river Don were the river Tanais. To distinguish the Donets' and the Don, they applied, respectively, the terms "Tanais Minor" and "Tanais Maior". (40:25) And now we understand why, according to Διονύσιος, the river Παντικάπης (Panticapes) also flows out of the Ripheans. It's well known that the Ancient Greek name for the Ukrainian city of Kerch is "Παντικάπαιον". And it's expected that the river Παντικάπης - which Herodotus describes as "navigable from the sea" - is somewhere nearby. Indeed, the river Παντικάπης, first of all, is the Kerch Strait which can be imagined as an extension of the rivers Tanais Minor and Tanais Maior, the last being known by the Khazar name "Ковзань" / "Kovzan'" ("the Slippery (river)"). The river Don freezes in winter near its mouth - it was enough for the ancients to associate it with the far north. But the Kerch Strait is only a part of the Παντικάπης. (41:09) Herodotus provides the following description for this river:

"This also flows both from the North and from a lake, and in the space between this river and the Borysthenes dwell the agricultural Scythians: it runs out into the region of [Ὑβλαία], and having passed by this it mingles with the Borysthenes."

This lake is the Syvash lagoons (for the sake of clarity, we will be sometimes calling them Lake Syvash). This means that the river Παντικάπης consists of the Heniches'k Strait which connects the Syvash with the rest of the Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait, and a path that connects them. To understand how this path can mingle with the Borysthenes, we need to understand where Ὑβλαία is located. But it's already clear that it's somehow related to Crimea. (41:53) "Ὑβλαία" derives from the Ancient Greek "Ὕβλα" - the name of the "mother goddess of the Earth and fertility, venerated in Sicily by the [tribe of] Sicels" as defined by the English-language Wiktionary, which doesn't help us identify where it is. Scholars interpret this "Ὑβλαία" as "Ὑλαία" ("Hylaia") and translate the last as "Woodlands". (42:12) As you remember, Ὑλαία is a region Heracles reached where he begat the three sons Ἀγάθυρσος, Γελωνός, and Σκύθης, according to the Hellenes' tale about the Scythians' origin. And now I will clearly demonstrate the incompetence of some scholars by deciphering these names. Besides the fact that there are those claiming the Scythians to be Indo-Iranian (I call such people "Indo-Iranian fantasisers"), they claim the name "Ἀγάθυρσος" to be also Indo-Iranian. (42:37) In fact, it's a Germanic name, "Hagaþyrs" or "Hagaþurs" (the original pronunciation could have been slightly different of course), that corresponds to the English "hawthorn" - a plant known as Crataegus. (42:49) In Old English, as Wiktionary reports, "þyrs" means "monster", "demon", or "giant". (42:55) In Old Norse, "þurs" means "giant", "ogre", "monster", "dunce", "numskull", and is also a name of the corresponding rune which is called either "thurs" / "þurs" or "thorn" / "þorn". (43:05) The Old English "haga" means "enclosure", "fenced-in area", or "yard". The Old Norse "hagi" means "pasture" or "field for grazing". And both are cognate with the English "haw" meaning, among other things, "hedge". "hagi", "haga", and "haw", connects the fenced-in area and the horned cattle grazing on the field. The enclosure is the territory "cut off from other lands" (recall the previous videos) - cut off by a sharp object, such as the plough, horn of the cattle, knife, sabre, sword, etc. - cut off by a line traced on the ground (which may be a circle by the way: I made a post on Google and Facebook in the Ukrainian language - and recently put the same text in a post in my blog - on the etymology of the Ukrainian preposition "біля" meaning "near" or "close to" and its link to the horned cattle). (43:55) That's why the name "Hagathyrs" or "Hagathurs" may be interpreted as "Hornthorn" or "Horny Thorn" - moreover, the Old English "þyrs" may be cognate with the English "pierce". And that's not the only Germanic name recorded by Herodotus. (44:09) "Ἰδάνθυρσος" ("Idanthyrsos") is also a Germanic name. Though Ἰδάνθυρσος indeed lived in Scythia and, according to Herodotus, was a Scythian king - more probably he was not an ethnic Scythian. His name means "Woodenthorn", (44:22) because the Old Norse "viðan" means "furnishing of wood" - that is his name was sort of "Viðanþyrs" or "Viðanþurs" - and can be connected to the region of Ὑλαία, the Woodlands. But does this Ὑλαία correspond to Ὑβλαία? Is it the same Ὑλαία that was reached by Heracles? The name "Woodenthorn" relates to the coniferous forest, the forest of trees with thorns. In Ukraine, such trees grow in the Crimean Mountains in the subtropical forests in southern Crimea, on the territory that was previously inhabited by the Taurians. Outside Crimea, coniferous trees can be found in the Caucasus forests. If the place where the river Παντικάπης crosses the region of Ὑβλαία is the Kerch Strait, then "Ὑβλαία" indeed should be replaced with "Ὑλαία". For it to mingle with the Borysthenes, it has to skirt the Crimean Peninsula, (45:11) which corresponds to Herodotus's description of another river navigable from the sea - Ὑπάκυρις (Hypakyris):

"Sixth comes the river Hypakyris, which starts from a lake, and flowing through the midst of the nomad Scythians runs out into the sea by the city of Carkinitis, skirting on its right bank the region of Hylaia and the so-called racecourse of Achilles."

The river Ὑπάκυρις is called by Pliny the Elder "Hypanis" and corresponds to the present-day river Kuban'. The modern name of this river is thought to be directly derived from "Hypanis". (45:42) That the Ὑπάκυρις is indeed the Kuban' is corroborated by Herodotus's description of the river Γέρρος (Gerros):

"Seventh is the Gerros, which parts off from the Borysthenes near about that part of the country where the Borysthenes ceases to be known,--it parts off, I say, in this region and has the same name which this region itself has, namely Gerros; and as it flows to the sea it borders the country of the nomad and that of the Royal Scythians, and runs out into the Hypakyris."

(46:12) The Russian-language Wikipedia reports a version that the river Γέρρος is the Ukrainian river Molochna. And that's a right version. Let's justify it linguistically first. The same Wikipedia article reads that the Nogais called this river "Токмак" ("Tokmak"). (46:26) The term "toqmaq" exists in the Crimean Tatar language and means "mallet", "hammer", "sledgehammer" - in other words, "tool for threshing". The English term "threshing" corresponds to the Ukrainian words "молотьба", "обмолот", "обмолочування" - "обмолочувати" means "to thresh". That's why this river is called "Molochna" - not or not only because the term "milk" is translated into the Ukrainian "молоко". (46:50) According to the Primary Chronicle in the Hypatian Codex, the name of this river is "Сутинъ" ("Sutyn"); in the Laurentian Codex, "Сутѣнь" ("Sutin'"). Let's accept for a while that it should be reread as "Сютень" ("Syuten'") - in this case, indeed, it's possible to interpret "Molochna" as "Milky". In the Crimean Tatar language, "sütten", if I understand properly, means "from milk" (as in "made from milk"). It's the ablative of the noun "süt" ("milk"). (47:15) But this Turkic "Sütten" (or "Süt" according to the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi) could have also emerged as the result of the etymological reinterpretation (important! - not! a distortion) by some Turkic tribe or people of another appellation in a language of a different language family. (For the sake of simplicity, to refer to the Turkic tribes / peoples, we will be using the term "the Turks".) (47:38) The original "Сутинъ" ("Sutyn") or "Сутѣнь" ("Sutin'") can be the transliteration of a Greek entry: for example, the one that starts with "Συτην-". But this entry, at the same time, can be read as "Ситень" ("Syten'"), connected to the Ukrainian adjective "ситий" ("replete", "full of food"), which correlates with that of its Scythian counterpart. "Γέρρος" can be deciphered as the Ukrainian /'ʒɛrɛʦʲ/ or /ʒɛ'rɛʦʲ/ ("Жерець"), the related verb "жерти" meaning "to gorge". (48:02) "Threshing" or "обмолот" is the "process of loosening the chaff from the grain so as to remove it", tells us Wikipedia. The term for chaff in the Ukrainian language is "полова". That's why the Polovtsi, who lived on the river Ситень / Syten', are called the Polovtsi - they were "chaff extractors" or "chaff collectors". (48:20) Chaff is used as animal feed. For livestock to eat chaff, it needs to be soft enough. The fresh chaff preserves relative softness, but when it dries out, some of its types become dangerous for the animals because of rough awns. That's partly why horses and cows are given chaff in the moistened or stewed form depending on its hardness. Usually, chaff is not their primary forage, even in winter when there is no access to grass. But if there is no grass, and hay is not enough or needs to be reserved, chaff can be used. (48:52) The terms "chaff" and "horse" appear in one context when Herodotus narrates the Scythian funeral rites:

"The burial-place of the kings is in the land of the Gerrians [the Ukrainian term "жрець" means "pagan priest" and may share the same root with the term "жертва" - "sacrifice"], the place up to which the Borysthenes is navigable. In this place, when their king has died, they make a large square excavation in the earth; and when they have made this ready, they take up the corpse [...] and they convey it in a waggon to another nation. Then those who receive the corpse thus conveyed to them do the same as the Royal Scythians, [attention!] that is they cut off a part of their ear and shave their hair round about [Λέων ο Διάκονος (or Leo the Deacon) describes Svyatoslav the Brave as having a completely shaved head except for a lock of hair - such an appearance had the Ukrainian Cossacks - and one gold earring fastened on his ear - the Indo-Iranian and Turkic fantasisers don't read primary sources] and cut themselves all over the arms and tear their forehead and nose and pass arrows through their left hand [the Latin poet Claudius Claudianus, known as Claudian, in his "Against Rufinus" (or "In Rufinum") portrays the Gelonians - who, according to Herodotus, as we know, spoke "partly the Scythian language and partly the Hellenic" - as those who tattoo their limbs]. [...] and when they have gone round to all conveying the corpse, then they are in the land of the Gerrians, who have their settlements furthest away of all the nations over whom they rule, and they have reached the spot where the burial place is. [...] they strangle and bury in the remaining space of the tomb one of the king's mistresses, his cup-bearer, his cook, his horse-keeper, his attendant, and his bearer of messages, and also horses, and a first portion of all things else, and cups of gold; for silver they do not use at all, nor yet bronze."

(50:56) "Afterwards, when the year comes round again, they do as follows:-- they take the most capable of the remaining servants,--and these are native Scythians, for those serve him whom the king himself commands to do so, and his servants are not bought for money,--of these attendants then they strangle fifty and also fifty of the finest horses; and when they have taken out their bowels and cleansed the belly, they fill it with chaff and sew it together again."

(51:24) "Thus they bury their kings; but as for the other Scythians, when they die their nearest relations carry them round laid in waggons to their friends in succession; and of them each one when he receives the body entertains those who accompany it, and before the corpse they serve up of all things about the same quantity as before the others. Thus private persons are carried about for forty days, and then they are buried [the forty days after death - where does this rite come from?] [...]"

(51:56) To localise the Gerrians, at first we will open the map in the Ukrainian-language Wikipedia article "Фізико-географічне районування України" (or in English - "Physical-geographical zoning of Ukraine"). Providing this map, Wikipedia refers to the book from 1987 under the editorship of the Soviet and Ukrainian scholar Анатолій Вікторович Кудрицький (Anatolii Viktorovych Kudryts'kyi) and others titled "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic: Encyclopedic Reference Book" (in the original Russian - "Украинская Советская Социалистическая Республика: Энциклопедический справочник"). As well known, the landscape of Ukraine, from the south-east to the north-west, excluding the Carpathians and the Crimean Mountains, consists of the three zones: steppe zone, forest-steppe zone, and forest zone. The Budini, according to Herodotus, lived in forests: "Their land is all thickly overgrown with forests of all kinds of trees, and in the thickest forest there is a large and deep lake, and round it marshy ground and reeds." This "large and deep lake" relates to the so-called Swamps of Belarus'. (52:56) The Russian-language Wikipedia reads that they are "excessively dewy areas of land with specific vegetation, as a result of the vital activity and death of which peat is formed, and are among the largest in Europe". Indeed, in the south of Belarus' are found peat soils. This is corroborated by the soil map provided in the Soviet book from 1978 under the editorship of the Soviet Belarusian academician Пётар Усьцінавіч Броўка (Piotar Uścinavič Broŭka) and others titled "Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic" (in the original Russian - "Белорусская Советская Социалистическая Республика"). But if the Budini spoke Polish, why did they inhabit Belarus' or part of it? The term "Budini" is not an ethnonym. The Budini have to be considered not only as the Polish-speaking people but in some cases as those living near the Swamps of Belarus'. The same with the term "Ляхи" ("Lyakhy") in the Primary Chronicle: in the "narrow sense", they are Poles; in the "broad sense", they are those living in forests (because the Polish "las" means "forest"). The Ляхи are the counterpart of the Budini - it means that the Budini might have also included tribes / peoples whose offsprings would be known by the name of "Vyatichi", (54:03) which correlates with Herodotus's record about the Budini living above the Sauromatae and with that by Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος - the Budini Mountains in his "Cosmographia" might be located east of present-day Belarus'. (54:15) Herodotus contrasts the Gelonians to the Budini in terms of the areas they inhabited which may suggest that the Gelonians lived in the forest-steppe zone of Ukraine. The Gelonians spoke "partly the Scythian language and partly the Hellenic". But why? Because a part of its society was Greek - the Hellenes who "removed from the trading stations on the coast and settled among the Budinoi" - and its second part was Scythian or Scythian-related. But who are these Greeks in this case? If they lived in southern Ukraine near the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov, we might have concluded that they are the Melanchlainoi - that is the Black-cloaks. A similar name appears in the Kyivan Chronicle, and you probably heard it - "Black-klobuks" also known as "Black-hats". The word "клобук" that exists in the Ukrainian language is most likely cognate with the English "cloak". That's why it's disputable whether the Ukrainian language borrowed this term from a Turkic language. Both these words ("klobuk" and "cloak"), though being slightly different in meaning, convey the same point. Who wears the black cloak or the black hat? Priests. The Melanchlainoi were either the Scythian pagan priests or sacrificers or the Hellenic Hierei - Greek pagan priests. The Kyivan Chronicle doesn't depict the Black-klobuks as priests explicitly. But it suggests that they influenced the decisions of the Rus' knyazes and mentions them several times in the repetitive expression "all the Rus' land and the Black-klobuks". Nowadays the word "klobuk" denotes a headdress worn by some monks - they wear both a "black klobuk" and a "black cloak". If the Black-klobuks were not priests or monks, the reason why they wore such clothes still could have been the religion. According to the Kyivan Chronicle, the Black-klobuks were situated on or north of the river Ros' - that is in Ukraine's forest-steppe zone or in the forest zone. And the Gerrians, who were likely the pagan sacrificers, possibly lived in the same place. Because they "have their settlements furthest away of all the nations over whom [the Royal Scythians] rule". (56:10) The question is whether the Gelonians were part of the Scythians or not and whether they really lived in the forest-steppe zone.

"[...] the [Budini's] houses are of wood also and the temples; for there are in it temples of Hellenic gods furnished after Hellenic fashion with sacred images and altars and cells, all of wood; and they keep festivals every other year to Dionysos and celebrate the rites of Bacchus: for the Gelonians are originally Hellenes, and they removed from the trading stations on the coast and settled among the Budinoi [...]"

It means that at least some of the Gelonians were part of the Budini. But where did this part reside? (56:48) The Lithuanian word "geluonis" is translated as "sting". It corresponds to the Latvian "dzelonis", but the last resembles "Γελωνός" to a lesser extent. If the Gelonians are "stingers", then they were Slavs known by the Lithuanian exonym. And we know what Slavs were mixed up with the Lithuanians in the Middle Ages. Belarusians. The Ukrainian and Belarusian language are mutually intelligible. They both could have been referred to as Scythian by Herodotus. But at the same time, the Belarusian shares some linguistic features with Polish that it doesn't share with Ukrainian, that's why it's rather expected that the native Belarusian speakers lived, roughly speaking, between the native Ukrainian and native Polish speakers even in the past. The account from Claudian's "Against Rufinus" of the Gelonians "tattooing their limbs" can be linked to the passage about the Scythians "passing arrows through their left hand" - and thus to the word "sting". As this passage is provided by the author in the context of the Gerrians, we have a reason to put them in the same place as the Gelonians - on the territory of Belarus'. Because, according to Herodotus, up to the land of the Gerrians, the Borysthenes is still navigable. The present-day river Dnipro splits into the Dnipro proper and the quite big river Pryp'iat' near the border of Ukraine with Belarus', which makes the Belarusian localisation of the Gerrians possible, (58:06) whereas the Melanchlainoi might have dwelt south of them:

"[...] from Ister to the Borysthenes is ten days' journey, and from the Borysthenes to the Maiotian lake ten days' more; and the distance inland to the Melanchlainoi, who are settled above the Scythians, is a journey of twenty days. Now I have reckoned the day's journey at two hundred furlongs [the translator uses the term "furlong" to denote the "stadion"; the last is approximately equal to one hundred and eighty, one hundred and eighty-five metres]: and by this reckoning the cross lines of Scythia would be four thousand furlongs [or stadia] in length, and the perpendiculars which tend inland would be the same number of [stadia]. Such is the size of this land."

Four thousand stadia is about seven hundred and twenty, seven hundred and forty kilometres. The north-south axis projection of the distance between the city of Yalta and the city of Kyiv is about six hundred and sixty kilometres. Between Yalta and the city of Chornobyl is about seven hundred and fifty kilometres. Obviously, nobody travelled along this vertical line, which means that the Melanchlainoi could have resided even south of the city of Kyiv. If the distance from the Danube's mouth to the Dnipro–Buh estuary is ten days' journey, and from the last, crossing the inland and the Isthmus of Perekop, to the Sea of Azov is also ten days' journey, then, by eye, using Google Maps, the Melanchlainoi were probably found somewhere near the city of Cherkasy and the river Ros' - in twenty days' journey along the Dnipro from its outfall. In other words, we have reasonable grounds to say that the ancient Melanchlainoi, known as the Black-cloaks, correspond to the mediaeval Black-klobuks in some way. (59:44) In turn - as the Gerrians, according to Herodotus, were forty days distant from the Dnipro's mouth - we may place them on the territory of Belarus' - that is on the territory of the Gelonians. If the Melanchlainoi were Hellenic but not Slavic - though Δίων Χρυσόστομος (Dio Chrysostom), unlike Herodotus, believed they were Scythian - it's also possible that the Gelonian Slavs were called the Gerrians, while the Gelonian Greeks were called the Melanchlainoi, the last being situated both in Ukraine and Belarus'. As for the river Γέρρος (which is the river Molochna in the south of Ukraine), it bore such a name possibly for the following reason. The proper feeding of horses requires them to be watered before eating their forage, and this river could have been a sort of horse station. The horse is a pack animal, whereas - as we remember from the previous video (well, it's me who still remembers) - the name of the city of Berdyans'k, which is not much far from the river Molochna, may derive from the Arabic "بَرْذَعَة") "برذعة") / "barḏaʿa", "packsaddle". The possible presence of the horse station in Berdyans'k or between the Molochna and Berdyans'k justifies the link between this area and the chaff - at this site, chaff was stored for winter in order to be fed to horses with its onset - hence the name "Polovtsi". The word "полова" is also understood as something or somebody inferior - "garbage" - which can explain the late appearance of the Polovtsi in the text of the Primary Chronicle - in the mid-eleventh century CE. Apparently, back then, this appellation was geographical but not ethnical and could have been initially applied to the Slavs (though not necessarily). But when the Primary Chronicle was being written, it already had the negative connotation, so the mediaeval author simply recorded the last state of the national memory of the Russes.

According to the legend, Heracles reached Scythia with his mares. But he also drove the cattle of Γηρυόνης (Γηρῠόνης). (01:01:30) Γηρυόνης (or Geryon) is a mythical giant who dwelt on the island Erytheia which is usually thought to be the present-day city of Cádiz in south-western Spain. We cannot say that the name "Γηρυόνης" is linguistically related to that of the river Γέρρος. But their similarity, oddly, hints where Heracles stopped before he went to Ὑλαία - approximately near this river or the city of Berdyans'k - which means that Heracles crossed the Kerch Strait, the Cimmerian Bosporus. (01:01:57) That's why "Βόσπορος" is called that - "cow, ox, or cattle passage". The Thracian Bosporus and the Cimmerian Bosporus are connected by an imaginary waterway along which the mythical cattle were grazed - in particular by Heracles who was also a member of the crew of the ship Argo. In Greek mythology, the Argonauts stole the Golden Fleece protected by a dragon. The dragon is, roughly speaking, a mix of the bird and the lizard or the bird and the snake. And we know that Heracles, in Ὑλαία, met a creature that was half a woman and half a serpent. The point that this creature could have been a mermaid is still valid - at least because of Epiktetos. Every legend can be treated as a set of the minimal possible number of distortions of which some can come from the same source and co-exist in one story - our task is to identify them. While Heracles was sleeping in Scythia, his mares disappeared. Why did they disappear? ... What happened? ... Elementary. His mares, female horses, didn't have food. Because Heracles prepared neither hay nor chaff for the coming winter. When a horse has no access to grass, hay, straw, chaff, it starts to look for anything that contains a grain. When it's hungry, it may bite even wooden fences. To survive, Heracles's mares reached Ὑλαία, that is the Woodlands - the Crimean Mountains and the Crimean Forest around them, which were inhabited by the Taurians. This story is a sort of toponymic legend - it conveys that the Taurians originated from the cattle that reached the southern coast of Crimea. In the previous video, I supposed that Ὑλαία in this legend is a Slavic term denoting a cattle walking place - the Walklands instead of the Woodlands. A reason for such a thought was the way of life of the Khazars recorded by Al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal in their description of the Crimean Peninsula. (01:03:44) According to the Russian translation by Nikolai Karaulov, Al-Istakhri, in his "Routes of the Realms", writes:

"[...] this is a considerable island, covered with thickets, bushes, and springs, and madder is taken from it. People from Berda'a come to it and take out madder [or the madder] from it, and besides, they ferry domestic animals to it in ships from Berda'a and other places, then release them until they grow fat."

The copy C of the text and Yaqut al-Hamawi extend this passage. According to Michael Jan de Goeje, they add, "And an island known as the Rus' island [or the island of the Russes] (and small islands)". (01:04:23) Ibn Hawqal, in his "The Face of the Earth", writes almost the same as Al-Istakhri:

"[...] it's also large and there is madder on it, and it's visited from the direction of Berda'a as madder pastures. It's visited willingly, and the cattle from the country of Berda'a and other nearby places are carried to it; there the cattle are released until they grow fat."

The way from the city of Berdyans'k to Crimea not by sea but by land corresponds to that of Heracles. If Ὑλαία had been a Slavic term, it could have been applied to the Isthmus of Perekop. But it was not the final stop of the mares or the cattle Heracles grazed. That's why, if the Slavic "Ὑλαία" existed, it could have referred to their path from Berdyans'k or the river Γέρρος to the Crimean Forest, while the Greek "Ὑλαία" could have been their destination. The plant called madder is also known by its Latin name "Rubia". A similar appellation appears in a fragment of a work supposedly belonging to Πρίσκος Πανίτης presented in "Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum", in which the author mentions a person called Οὐάλιψ (Valips). A similar name was also recorded by Ιωάννης της Αντιόχειας (or John of Antioch), Ούλλιβος, and it was a name of a Scythian. It doesn't mean that either of these two names is Slavic. Since at least the 3rd century CE, Germanic-speaking people, sometimes, were also referred to as Scythians. (01:05:45) For instance, Dexippus, in the 3rd century CE, in his "Scythica Vindobonensia", reports about a Scythian called "Cniva" ("κνίβα"). The transliteration or transcription of this name probably comes from the Germanic "knive" or "kniva" related to the English "knife". The account of Iordanes (or Jordanes) in his "De origine actibusque Getarum" (or simply "Getica") from the 6th century CE suggests that Cniva was an Ostrogoth. By the Goths in general, he (that is his text) means Germanic-speaking people. According to him, they came from Scandinavia. But the quote unquote "Gothic" words he has recorded are not all Scandinavian. (01:06:25) In the translation by Charles Christopher Mierow, they are as follows (their spelling corresponds to that in the Latin text): "Haliurunnae" (or "Haliurunnas"), "gepanta", "Ansis", "belagines", and "Oium". The word "helrunan" appears in the Old English poem "Beowulf", but I currently cannot say whether there is a similar word in any other Germanic language. (01:06:47) The word "gepanta" can be interpreted as a Germanic word consisting of the West Germanic prefix "ge-" producing the past participle and the Middle English "panten" meaning "to pant", "to draw breath quickly or urgently". "panten" is thought to come from the Old French "pantoisier", "to breathe with difficulty". And that's interesting for two reasons. (01:07:08) First, because it corresponds to Iordanes's description of the Gepidae:

"You surely remember that in the beginning I said the Goths went forth from the bosom of the island of Scandza with Berig, their king, sailing in only three ships toward the hither shore of Ocean, namely to Gothiscandza. One of these three ships proved to be slower than the others, as is usually the case, and thus is said to have given the tribe their name, for in their language gepanta means slow."

The name of the Gepidae was associated with "gepanta" by some people because after running a long distance they started to gasp, so they needed to take a rest. The shortness of breath prevented them from moving fast. Not clear whether it's a Germanic folk etymology or not, but the association or connection between "Gepidae" and "gepanta" as such was probably invented by West Germanic speakers. I would have supposed that this word is not necessarily related to Middle English (and by extension to Old English) and could be Frankish because of the prefix and the French-like part. Though the next word "Ansis" may justify this point, there is one reason - which will become more noticeable later - to not give preference to either version for now.

(01:08:21) "And because of the great victory they [i. e. the Goths according to Iordanes] had won in this region, they thereafter called their leaders, by whose good fortune they seemed to have conquered, not mere men, but demigods, that is Ansis."

(01:08:37) The word "Ansis", oddly, corresponds to the Old French "cheance" (meaning "chance") which in the northern dialects was pronounced /ˈkanʃə/ or /kəˈantʃə/. The northern pronunciation corresponds to the (01:08:48) Middle Dutch "canse". This passage proves that, in those days, there were some Germanic speakers that called somebody or something "Ansis", "Kansis", "Keansis", because they were "fortunate", "lucky". These speakers could have been the Franks. In the view of Iordanes's text, the Goths might have included them, as it can be interpreted. The disappearance of the /k/ or /ke/ might have happened in the following situation: some Romance speakers (e. g. Old French speakers) or even Germanic speakers could have treated this /k/ or /ke/ as the Romance pronoun "qu'" ("*qu'ance"), "qui" ("*qui ance"), or "que" ("*que ance").

The first three Germanic words we've deciphered allegedly being Gothic are in fact West Germanic, the classification of the first one being questionable. (01:09:36) The forth word, "belagines", is Germanic, but what branch of the Germanic languages it belongs to is hard to say. Iordanes writes that "belagines" was what the Goths called their laws which they possessed in the written form. (01:09:49) The word resembles the German "belegen" ("to document", "to back", "to substantiate"). The German language is West Slavic, but this word also has (01:09:57) Scandinavian counterparts: the Danish "belægge" ("to substantiate", "to place some tax, requirement, punishment or similar on something") and (01:10:06) the Swedish "belägga" ("to substantiate", "to prove", "to attest (to find a word in records)"). The second part of all these words is cognate with the English "lay" (01:10:15) and the English "law" and at the same time with the Norwegian "lag" which also means "law".

The next word, "Oium", can be classified as Scandinavian. (01:10:24) Oium is portrayed by Iordanes as a region in Scythia reached by the Goths from Scandinavia. Here is what he writes about this place:

"In search of suitable homes and pleasant places they came to the land of Scythia, called Oium in that tongue [actually, "in their tongue" - "quae lingua eorum Oium vocabantur"]. Here they were delighted with the great richness of the country, and it is said that when half the army had been brought over, the bridge whereby they had crossed the river fell in utter ruin, nor could anyone thereafter pass to or fro. For the place is said to be surrounded by quaking bogs and an encircling abyss, so that by this double obstacle nature has made it inaccessible. And even to-day one may hear in that neighborhood the lowing of cattle ["armentum" means "ox" or "horse"] and may find traces of men [to be more accurate, "may comprehend / perceive indications of men" - "indicia hominum depraehendi"], if we are to believe the stories of travellers, although we must grant that they hear these things from afar."

The correct decipherment of this appellation illustrates the lack of competence of yet another group of scholars on the matter of what "Oium" means, where Oium was located, and when it was reached by the Goths. "-um" is a Latin ending which can be easily removed, (01:11:43) and "oi" is a Scandinavian word corresponding to the Norwegian "øy" which means "island". This island is the Crimean Peninsula. (01:11:51) The "bridge that fell in utter ruin" is the Isthmus of Perekop: that river flowed under the bridge - under the isthmus. That's why Ibn Hawqal depicted the Crimean Peninsula on his map as an island. It was "surrounded by quaking bogs and an encircling abyss" - it was surrounded by water - by the Syvash lagoons ("quaking bogs"), the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea, and the imaginary river. "Even to-day one may hear in that neighbourhood the lowing of cattle" - the cattle of Γηρυόνης grazed by the Khazars, the cows grazed by Heracles. And one "may comprehend / perceive indications of men", and travellers "heard these things from afar". They heard sounds. In the Ukrainian language, the previous name of the Sea of Azov was "Озів" (the genitive - "Озову", the adjective - "озівський" or "озовський"; the dictionary by Григо́рій Костянти́нович Голоске́вич / Hryhorii Kostyantynovych Holoskevych from 1929 and the one by Овсій Прокопович Ізюмов / Ovsii Prokopovych Izyumov from 1930). "озов" means "call" or "hail". But whose call? The call by a dog or a woman. (01:12:54) Strabo (in the translation by Horace Leonard Jones), referring to Ὅμηρος (or Homer), writes in his "Geographica" that the Cimmerians lived near the kingdom of Hades:

"Now, that night is a thing of evil omen and associated with Hades, is obvious; also that Hades is associated with Tartarus. Accordingly, one might reasonably suppose that Homer, because he heard about Tartessus, named the farthermost of the nether-regions Tartarus after Tartessis, with a slight alteration of letters; and that he also added a mythical element, thus conserving the creative quality of poetry. Just as the poet, because he knew that the Cimmerians had taken their abode in northern and gloomy regions about the Bosporus, settled them in the neighbourhood of Hades, though perhaps he did it also in accordance with a certain common hatred of the Ionians for this tribe (indeed, it was in the time of Homer, or shortly before his time, they say, that that Cimmerian invasion which reached as far as Aeolis and Ionia took place)."

In Greek mythology, Tartarus is a deep abyss that was situated beneath the kingdom of Hades. (01:14:05) In the same place, Pseudo-Apollodorus, in the 1st or 2nd century CE, in his "Bibliotheca" (in the translation by James George Frazer) placed the Cyclopes. And we may suppose who they were. They were Arimaspoi - properly Drimazby - "those who sleep with one eye open":

"After these, Earth bore him the Cyclopes, to wit, Arges, Steropes, Brontes of whom each had one eye on his forehead. But them Sky bound and cast into Tartarus, a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky."

The entrance from and to the kingdom of Hades, as well known, was guarded by Cerberus which was a three-headed dog. (01:14:47) And Pliny the Elder's account tells us where this kingdom could have been:

"The actual coast of the Bosporus on both the Asiatic and the European sides curves into the Maeotis. The towns at its entrance are Hermonasa and next the Milesian town of Cepi, then Stratoclia and Phanagoria and the almost deserted town of Apaturos, and at the extreme end of the mouth Cimmerium, the former name of which was Cerberion."

The location of the kingdom of Hades depended on who told about it or Cerberus. But we can certainly say that at least one of the entrances to this kingdom was the Kerch Strait, which flowed in or next to the region of Ὑλαία, which was crossed by Heracles - because his twelfth labour (or eleventh according to Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης / Diodorus Siculus) was the capture of Cerberus. The kingdom of Hades is the Sea of Azov, and the Drimazby (known as the Arimaspoi) dwelt next to it, near the Riphean Mountains. That's why the Riphean Mountains cannot be the Carpathians. That's why they cannot be the Urals. They could have been only the Donets' Ridge, the Crimean Mountains, and/or the Caucasus Mountains - in their primaeval sense if the Riphean Mountains were mountains. In the tale about the Argonauts, where Heracles was one of the main heroes, Μήδεια (Medea), the daugther of the Colchis king Αἰήτης (Aeëtes), helped Ἰάσων (Jason) to steal the Golden Fleece from a never-sleeping dragon or serpent by lulling it to sleep either by her drugs or by her song: Pseudo-Apollodorus speaks of a dragon and drugs, Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος speaks of a serpent and a song. And we can again recall that Heracles met a creature that was half a woman and half a serpent. But the difference between these two stories is that the one happened in Crimea, the other happened in Colchis. But where was this Colchis? The Colchis in the tale about the Argonauts is the Taman' Peninsula which is separated from Crimea by the Kerch Strait. The point that ancient Colchis was found near the Sea of Azov is not brave new. It was expressed at least by the authors of the book "Abkhazia from ancient times to the present day" (in the original Russian - "Абхазия с древнейших времен до наших дней") from 2009, the editor-in-chief being the Georgian scholar, born in Abkhazia, Jemal Gamakharia (ჯემალ გამახარია). He and his colleagues write that the account of Ὅμηρος, in his "Odyssey", suggests that the kingdom of Αἰήτης was next to the Cimmerian land. (01:17:11) According to Publius Ovidius Naso's "Heroides" (in the translation by Anthony S. Kline), Μήδεια, in her letter to Ἰάσων, comparing the dominions of her father to that of the father of Κρέουσα (Creusa of Corinth), his new bride, writes:

"Her father holds Corinth, between two seas, mine all

that lies to the left of Pontus, as far as the Scythian snows."

By the "Scythian snows", we may understand the Donets' Ridge and the river Tanais - it means that the whole Scythian land was in the dominions of the father of Μήδεια, so we should look for Colchis in the North Caucasus. This thought is confirmed by the records of two other authors. (01:17:51) Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης, in his "Historical Library" (or "Βιβλιοθήκη Ἱστορική") (in the translation by Charles Henry Oldfather), tells about the events, as they are told by the Egyptians, connected to the legendary Egyptian king Σέσωστρις (Sesostris) or Σεσόωσις (Sesoösis) who "conquered the whole world":

"Not only did he [Σεσόωσις], in fact, visit the territory which was afterwards won by Alexander of Macedon, but also certain peoples into whose country Alexander did not cross. For he even passed over the river Ganges and visited all of India as far as the ocean, as well as the tribes of the Scythians as far as the river Tanaïs, which divides Europe from Asia; and it was at this time, they say, that some of the Egyptians, having been left behind near the Lake Maeotis, founded the nation of the Colchi. And the proof which they offer of the Egyptian origin of this nation is the fact that the Colchi practise circumcision even as the Egyptians do, the custom continuing among the colonists sent out from Egypt as it also did in the case of the Jews."

Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης is not alone in saying that the Colchi were found near the Sea of Azov. (01:18:59) His words are indirectly confirmed by Pliny the Elder. This region is called by him, oddly, "Colica" - because "the Caucasus range curves round to the Ripaean Mountains" - that is to the Donets' Ridge and the Crimean Mountains at one and the same time. This visual geographical distortion allows us to place Colica on the Taman' Peninsula - because along the northern border of Colica the Caucasus range curves round to the Crimean Mountains, but along its southern border curves to the Donets' Ridge: either across the Sea of Azov, or across Crimea, the Isthmus of Perekop, and south-eastern Ukraine - by circle around the Sea of Azov.

Colica was ancient Colchis or its north-western region where dwelt the never-sleeping dragon or serpent protecting the Golden Fleece. This dragon, on the one hand, can be a portrayal of the Drimazby. On the other, of the gold-guarding griffins. In the first video, I interpreted the term "griffins" (the Ancient Greek accusative plural "γρῦπας") as the Ukrainian "гривії" or "гривнії" and related it to the Ukrainian currency "hryvnia". This version, in my view, made the etymology of this currency more logical than the one usually believed. When I interpreted this term, I looked into the context in which the griffins are mentioned along with the Arimaspoi. Herodotus was not the only author mentioning them together. (01:20:16) Pliny the Elder, for instance, in his work, writes that gold in Scythia was dug up by griffins and provides the following details:

"... these people [the Arimaspi] wage continual war around their mines with the griffins, a kind of wild beast with wings, as commonly reported, that digs gold out of mines, which the creatures guard and the Arimaspi try to take from them, both with remarkable covetousness."

(01:20:43) Παυσανίας (Pausanias), in the 2nd century CE, in his "Description of Greece" ("Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις") (in the translation by William Henry Samuel Jones and Henry Ardene Ormerod) repeats this narrative:

"These griffins, Aristeas of Proconnesus says in his poem, fight for the gold with the Arimaspi beyond the Issedones. The gold which the griffins guard, he says, comes out of the earth [that is not from mountains]; the Arimaspi are men all born with one eye; griffins are beasts like lions, but with the beak and wings of an eagle. I will say no more about the griffins."

In the second half of the 19th century, in the Russian Empire, the mining engineer Олександр Олексійович Носов (Oleksandr Oleksiiovych Nosov), brother of Анемподист Олексійович Носов (Anempodyst Oleksiiovych Nosov), born in Kharkiv (Ukraine), discovered pieces of copper ore and animal bones impregnated with copper oxide in dumps from ancient mining and smelting in the Donbas. These and finds of other engineers later led to the discovery of the Donbas mining and smelting complex dating back to the Bronze Age. This allows us to place both the Drimazby and the griffins near the Donets' Ridge. But the fact that they "waged continual war" against each other may suggest that the griffins are the dragon protecting the Golden Fleece, whereas the Drimazby guarded the Donets' Ridge. (01:22:02) When I prepared the first video, I couldn't understand why George Macaulay translated the word "γρῦπας" as "griffins". If the Drimazby are people, then the "γρῦπας" are also people - why griffins? "People are not griffins." Because of this "tunnel vision" of mine, it didn't occur to me to check the origin of the term "griffin". The nominative of the Ancient Greek "γρῦπας" is "γρύψ". Through several transformations - through the Latin "gryphus" and the Old French "griffon" - it became the English "griffin". If "γρύψ" were a Ukrainian word, it would be "гривич" or "гривчій", which sounds more natural. We already said in the previous video that "ψ" may represent the consonant cluster /pʧ/, /bʧ/, and thus it can represent the cluster /ʋʧ/. This word could have obtained such a meaning through its reinterpretation by the Scythians. But the primaeval language of this term is not Slavic - it's Egyptian. (01:22:54) In the Egyptian language, "wps" means "to incinerate" or "incinerating", "burning something until it's completely destroyed", whereas "ḥr" denotes Horus, the "falcon-headed Egyptian god of the sky, war, and kingship". The creature "ḥrwps" being the "incinerating falcon" is known to us by the name of "phoenix". It's a mythical bird that burns itself and is born from its ashes, and, I think, is a portrayal of the greedy person. When someone has too much money or power, they yield to temptation to get even more of it. Our desires is a fire inside us. Like the fire that ignites when we want food. Our decision to get more than enough may kill us. A lot of food may lead to diseases. A lot of power may lead to the lack of control over it. Wishing more, the ruler may kill the disloyal and those whom they suspect, attack another people, another country. And these incommensurate actions may finally lead to their murder. And the next ruler succeeding to the throne may repeat the destiny of their predecessor. That's what the phoenix is about. And that's why Pliny the Elder wrote about the covetousness of the griffins and the Arimaspi - they possibly stole the gold from each other. Every empire is not eternal, but it's alive while it expands. But once it loses, the new empire takes its place. Just as the phoenix dies many times, so the old empires are many times reborn. It seems that such simple things were apparent to the ancients - the creatures they invented are based on the knowledge and observations they collected.

That the term "γρύψ" is Egyptian corresponds to the account of Herodotus and Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης. In essence, they both write that the Colchi were soldiers of the army either of Σέσωστρις or Σεσόωσις. And as they founded Colchis or Colica on the Taman' Peninsula, we may say that the griffins (being phoenixes) and the Colchis dragon are one and the same thing. The term "phoenix" is also associated with the country of Phoenicia, in which the city of Byblos is situated. (01:24:54) In this regard, Pliny the Elder provides us with an obscure link between the Scythians and this country:

"Beyond are some tribes of Scythians. To these the Persians have given the general name of Sacae, from the tribe nearest to Persia, but old writers call them the Aramii, ..."

(An important remark. This phrase "white with snow", if you still remember, corresponds to "nive candidum" in the Latin text. In the first video, I've wrongly said that the proper translation of this phrase is "white snow". "nive" is the ablative noun, "candidum" is the nominative adjective. "white with snow" means "white because of snow" or "snow-white".)

The Scythians were called "Sagae" (in Middle Persian) and "Sacae" (in Old Persian) because, in the view of the Persians, they were "dogs" or "wolves". Roland Grubb Kent, the author of the book "Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon", thinks that the Old Persian "Saka-" was probably understood as "guardian of the flocks". He is right or almost right. The path between the Thracian Bosporus and the Cimmerian Bosporus was the "cattle passage" for at least two reasons: because Heracles grazed the cattle of Γηρυόνης along this way and (01:26:03) because the ship Argo was the "dog" grazing these cattle - the Ancient Greek "ἀργός", when said of dogs, means "swift". Dogs, same as people, can be herdsmen. This herdsman was the ship.

The Aramii or Arameans, (01:26:17) according to the English-language Wikipedia, "were an ancient Semitic-speaking people in the Near East that was first recorded in historical sources from the late 12th century BC [that is the 12th-11th century BCE]". "The Aramean homeland, sometimes known as the land of Aram, encompassed central regions of modern Syria." In this article, Wikipedia clarifies that the 12th-11th century BCE is the "earliest undisputed historical attestation of Arameans as a people". The 12th century BCE is roughly coincident with the time of the Trojan War, but when precisely this event or events happened is unknown. Wikipedia adds that "during the eighth century BC, local Aramaean city states were gradually conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire". (01:27:03) And, in the article about Syria, it reads that the name "Syria" derives from a similar 8th century BCE term. We are currently not talking about the real etymology of the term "Syria" - we are trying to understand why Pliny the Elder writes that some authors called the Scythians the Arameans. The first thought that can cross our mind is that someone believed that the term "Syria" is somehow related to the Scythians. This connection can be found in the term "Syrmatae". In the first video, we've read the text belonging to Ψευδοσκύλαξ (or Pseudo-Scylax) whose account places the Syrmatae in Crimea. The previous time, we referred to the Lukas Holste / Lukas Holstenius edition from 1684 of the "Ἐθνικά" ("Ethnica") authored by Στέφανος Βυζάντιος (Stephanus of Byzantium). (Then I didn't quite properly present that work: the edition bears his name because it was published from the documents in his collections after his death.) This time we will be working with the edition of Thomas de Pinedo from 1678.

Besides the possible Slavic etymology of the term "Syria", there is also its Greek interpretation. (01:28:05) The Ancient Greek "σύρω" means "to draw", "to drag", "to trail". A noun related to this verb is "σύρμα" with its plural "σύρματα". "σύρμα" also means "abrasion", "scaly skin disease". We can again recall the painter Epiktetos and his work. But besides him, we have a similar description of the Scythians by Ἱπποκράτης (Hippocrates) that also provides us with other interesting details about their appearance. (01:28:31) Here is what he writes in his "Airs, Waters, Places" ("Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, τόπων") (in the translation by Francis Adams):

"I will give you a strong proof of the humidity [...] of their constitutions. You will find the greater part of the Scythians, and all the Nomades, with marks of the cautery on their shoulders, arms, wrists, breasts, hip-joint, and loins, and that for no other reason but the humidity and flabbiness of their constitution [...] The Scythian race are tawny from the cold, and not from the intense heat of the sun, for the whiteness of the skin is parched by the cold, and becomes tawny."

The tawny colour of their skin correlates with the account of Liutprandus Cremonensis (or Liutprand of Cremona) about the Russes. (01:29:17) He writes that to the north there was a people whom the Greeks called "Russos" or "Rusios" because of a "quality of their bodies" (his work contains two appellations similar to one another). (01:29:28) In the Ancient Greek language, indeed, there exist the word "ῥούσιος" and in the Greek language "ρούσος" meaning "red", "reddish", "ruddy". (What is interesting, in Ancient Greek, there are also such words as "ῥοῦς" and "ῥόος" meaning "stream", "flow", "current".) Some scholars, on the basis of Liutprand's account, suggest that the ethnonym "Rus'" emerged as a Greek exonym - they disagree with the Normanists and the Anti-Normanists about the interpretation of this appellation. In fact, what Liutprand wrote is more likely to be an example of Greek folk etymology. The same may apply to the term "Syrmatae" - it can be a Greek reinterpretation of the original Ukrainian term. Most probably, in that passage by Ἱπποκράτης, it was the Syrmatae whom he calls the Scythians, which, in turn, means that the Scythians he mentioned lived in Crimea. Their depiction as tawny-coloured people on a par with the virtually identical one of the "red-coloured" Russes raises the following question, "Was the abode of the Russes ever associated with Crimea?" According to the accounts of several mediaeval authors, it was. And you already know at least one of them - Λέων ο Διάκονος (or Leo the Deacon). (01:30:40) He writes that the Tauroscythians were called the Russes / Rosses in "κοινή διάλεκτος", i. e. popular or common language - that is in some local non-Greek language that was common for the Tauroscythians and somebody else - which confirms that the term "Ῥῶς" corresponds at least to the Ukrainian dual "розі" meaning "(two) horns". "ταῦρος" / "ταύρος" means "bull" - that's why the Tauroscythians are the Russes. A second author is Ibn Rustah, also known under the name "Ibn Dastah" which was misspelt from "Ibn Rustah" by the Russian Empire and Jewish scholar, born in Vilnius (present-day Lithuania), Даниил Авраамович Хвольсон (דניאל אברמוביץ' חבולסון / Daniel Abramovich Chwolson). (01:31:19) In his translation, Ibn Dastah or Ibn Rustah writes:

"As for Rus', it's located on an island surrounded by a lake. The circumference of this island on which they [the Russes] live is equal to three days' journey; it's covered with forests and swamps; it's unhealthy and dewy to the extent that once one puts the foot on the ground, it shakes, due to [...] the abundance of water.

"Rus' has a king which is called Khakan-Rus'."

The word "unhealthy", in this text, is the translation from the Arabic "وبࢨة" ("wabiah"). Besides Ibn Dastah or Ibn Rustah, another author who placed the Russes on an "unhealthy island" was Yaqut al-Hamawi. In the Heinrich Ferdinand Wüstenfeld edition of his dictionary, he ascribes this account to Al-Maqdisi. That's why the Russian Empire historian Сергей Михайлович Соловьев (Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov) wrote about the Russes living on the island Vabia, and that's what I hadn't properly investigated when I made my first video. The Crimean Peninsula is an "unhealthy and dewy" island because when people have a cold, they sneeze - their nose gets wet. (Oddly, the shape of the Crimean Peninsula resembles the human nose.) People may catch a cold because of rains. But they also may sneeze because of smell. Ibn Hawqal called the Khazar Sea stinky because, in summer, Lake Syvash releases a putrid odour. In turn, this odour could have been attributed to the whole peninsula and to the whole Sea of Azov. The aforementioned swamps and the ground that shakes due to the abundance of water reflect the peat soils in the Crimean Mountains. Whereas the Crimean Forest is the reason why the whole Crimean Peninsula, in the view of the written account (i. e. the text) of Ibn Rustah, is covered by forests - the ancient name of Crimea "Taurica" derives from the one belonging to the Taurians living near its southern coast. And that the Russes bore the Khazar title "Khakan" (that is "Kovhan") only justifies the point that the Russes were permanently or temporarily found in Crimea in the days of Ibn Rustah or earlier. This statement is also corroborated by the Khazar Correspondence, but we will not be dealing with it now.

The Russes were not the only people whom Ibn Rustah connected to Crimea. (01:33:37) Here is what he writes about the Burtas:

"The land of the Burtas lies between the Khazar and Bulgar lands, at a fifteen-day distance from the first. The Burtas obey the king of the Khazars and put 10,000 horsemen in the field.

"They do not have a supreme head who would rule over them and whose authority would be deemed legitimate; in each village they have only one or two headmen whom they turn to for judgement in their strife. In earnest do they obey the king of the Khazars. [Alternatively - "Essentially do they obey the king of the Khazars."]

"Their land is spacious and abounds in wooded places. Being strong and brave, they launch raids against the Bulgars and Pechenegs. Their faith is similar to the faith of the Guzs."

(01:34:23) In another place, Ibn Rustah adds:

"The land inhabited by them [by the Burtas] is flat, and of the trees, Khelenj is most common."

(01:34:32) From modern Arabic, "خلنج" ("khalenj") is translated as "heather". It's a plant that is known under the Latin name "Erica". The Russian-language Wikipedia reads that besides Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, and islands of the Atlantic Ocean, it also grows in the Caucasus. But it doesn't justify yet that the Burtas lived in the same region. Not quite. (01:34:53) Даниил Хвольсон pays attention to an important thing. He writes that, according to the Turkish Kamus - and that's true - the khelenj (or khalenj) is "of the genus "چام" ("çam") and resembles the tamarisk". The Ottoman Turkish "چام" ("çam") means "fir" or "pine", and Даниил Хвольсон translates this word in the same way. (What is interesting is that it derives from the Arabic "شَمْع" ("šamʕ") meaning "wax", "candle", "torch".) Даниил Хвольсон continues, "Blacksmiths mostly use the charcoal of this tree for stoking furnaces." To be accurate, the version of the Turkish Kamus transcribed into the Latin letters by Mustafa Koç and Eyyüp Tanrıverdi doesn't mention a purpose for which the blacksmiths used the charcoal, but it's relevant that the "خلنج" ("khalenj") is related to fire. (The Turkish Kamus is the Ottoman Turkish translation of the Arabic dictionary Al-Qamus al-Muhit compiled in the 14th-15th century by Al-Fayruzabadi. Into Ottoman Turkish, it was translated in the early 19th century by Âsim Efendi also known as Mütercim Âsım (which means "Translator Âsım").) The link between this tree and the fire, besides the noticeable connection between the term "خلنج" ("khalenj") and the present-day town of "Gelendzhik" on the Taman' Peninsula, confirms that on this peninsula lived the Colchis dragon whose flame may be the fire obtained from this tree. The name of this tree is Pallas pine (Pinus Pallasiana) or Crimean pine. It grows not only in Crimea, but also in the North Caucasus. And it seems that both these places belong to the region that Herodotus referred to as Ὑλαία. (01:36:30) That's why he placed the nomad Scythians also in the Woodlands but east of the agricultural Scythians who lived in Crimea. Because the river Borysthenes is not only the river Dnipro. The river Borysthenes and the river Παντικάπης together are waterways surrounding Crimea and joining each other near the southern coast of the peninsula. (01:36:50) That's why Herodotus writes, "after crossing the Borysthenes, first from the sea-coast [that is, from the southern sea-coast of Crimea] is Hylaia, and beyond this [that is, north of the southern coast of Crimea] as one goes up the river dwell agricultural Scythians". The river Borysthenes is the water road that was travelled by the Russes on their monoxylons in 10th century CE and by someone before the Common Era. That's why the Borysthenes, in the Ukrainian language, was called "Вористень" - as the river "crying small rafts", "crying monoxylons". And now we understand why all the Scythian rivers flowed out of the Riphean Mountains - because their common source, as that of the waterways, was the Sea of Azov. (01:37:35) Herodotus's passage reading that the nomad Scythians lived between the river Παντικάπης and the river Γέρρος means that they lived both in Ukraine and Kuban', from the Kerch Strait to the river Molochna, around the Sea of Azov by circle. The piece "a distance of fourteen days' journey Eastwards" in George Campbell Macaulay's translation doesn't say that someone travelled fourteen days eastwards and only eastwards. The journey for this traveller only started! eastwards from the Kerch Strait, but then they could turn left or right or even return back.

(01:38:08) "Then on the other side [that is, on the western side] of the Gerros we have those parts which are called the "Royal" lands and those Scythians who are the bravest and most numerous and who esteem the other Scythians their slaves. These reach Southwards to the Tauric land [that is, Crimea], and Eastwards to the trench which those who were begotten of the blind slaves dug, and to the trading station which is called Cremnoi upon the Maiotian lake; and some parts of their country reach to the river Tanaïs. Beyond the Royal Scythians towards the North Wind dwell the Melanchlainoi, of a different race and not Scythian. The region beyond the Melanchlainoi is marshy and not inhabited by any, so far as we know [if this marshy region is the Swamps of Belarus', Herodotus is mistaken here because the territory of Belarus' was inhabited by Slavs - such a mistake is expected because Herodotus personally, according to the common knowledge, didn't visit that place; if this is another marshy region, the phrase "beyond the Melanchlainoi" in this piece can be understood as "beyond the Gelonians"]."

Herodotus conveys that the Royal Scythians inhabited present-day Kherson Oblast' and partly south-eastern Ukraine. The region between the river Molochna and the river Tanais was shared by the Royal Scythians and the nomad Scythians. (01:39:25) Pliny the Elder almost fully confirms his words in the following passage:

"Lake Buces itself [Lake Syvash] is shut off by a rocky ridge [the Arabat Spit] from the Bay of Coretus in the Maeotis [the part of the Sea of Azov east of the Arabat Spit]. Into it run the rivers Buces [i. e. the Παντικάπης, which is the Heniches'k Strait and the Kerch Strait], Gerrhus [the river Molochna] and Hypanis [the river Kuban' or Ὑπάκυρις], coming from different directions: for the Gerrhus separates the Nomads [the nomad Scythians] and the Basilides [the Royal Scythians], while the Hypanis [which includes the Isthmus of Perekop, the Heniches'k Strait, and the river Kuban' joining one another] flows through the Nomads and Hylaei and discharges by an artificially made channel [the Isthmus of Perekop] into the Buces [Lake Syvash] and by a natural channel [the Heniches'k Strait] into the Coretus: this region has the name of Scythia Sindica [located on the Taman' Peninsula]. [The rivers in the text of Pliny the Elder intersect the Sea of Azov.]"

In essence, Pliny the Elder and Herodotus's accounts repeat the story about Heracles reaching the river Γέρρος with the cattle of Γηρυόνης and the mares. Viewing this legend as a toponymic one, it simply says that the nomad Scythians were horsemen, and the Royal Scythians (or among the Royal Scythians) were cowherds. The river Molochna, on the one hand, can be regarded as "milky" because west of it lived the Royal Scythians, but on the other, as "chaffy" because east of it lived the nomad Scythians. Its ancient name /'ʒɛrɛʦJ/, /ʒɛ'rɛʦJ/ ("Жерець") (the reverse transliteration or transcription of "Γέρρος") is probably connected to the feeding of these animals. That's why, according to Herodotus, after killing the horses, the Scythians filled their bellies with chaff. The chaff was believed to be the food for these horses in their afterlives. And that's another reason, besides the phonetic similarity, to view the English "chubby" as being cognate with the English "chaff". Furthermore, in Ukraine, there is also the river Konka or Кінські Води / Kins'ki Vody (in the translation - "Horse Waters" or "Equine Waters") north-east of the river Molochna. It means that the Royal Scythians between the Γέρρος and the Tanais might have been geographically closer to the Sea of Azov than the nomad Scythians, though this point may be debatable. And it's still unclear whether the names "Molochna" and "Kins'ki Vody" (or something similar) co-existed in those times with the name /'ʒɛrɛʦJ/, /ʒɛ'rɛʦJ/ ("Жерець"). In the Ukrainian language, there is also the word "жеребець" ("stallion") which, from the linguistic perspective, is considered to be cognate with the Sanskrit "गर्भ" (gárbha) meaning "womb". As you probably already gathered, the English "woman" and "womb" may share the same root.

That the Royal Scythians or among them were cowherds is corroborated by a paragraph from Herodotus's "Histories" and which, in my view, is not quite correctly understood by many. He doesn't mention the Royal Scythians in this paragraph but indirectly highlights them:

"Now the Scythians put out the eyes of all their slaves [either the Royal Scythians themselves or someone by their order who did this] because of the milk which they drink; [...] When they had drawn the milk they pour it into wooden vessels hollowed out, and they set the blind slaves in order about the vessels and agitate the milk. Then that which comes to the top they skim off, considering it the more valuable part, whereas they esteem that which settles down to be less good than the other. For this reason the Scythians put out the eyes of all whom they catch; for they are not tillers of the soil but nomads."

(01:43:00) The term "νομάς" in Ancient Greek is used to denote pastoral tribes in general. Besides the "pastoral tribes" (or "pastoralists"), in science, there also exists the term "nomadic tribes" or "nomads". They are somewhat similar (and both are generally referred to as "nomads") but somewhat different. What is common is that each of these groups grazes herds. But what distinguishes them is that the pastoral tribes raise and herd the livestock. The term "νομάς" in the text of Herodotus simply denotes a person accompanying an animal like a cow or a horse. It's related to mobility but doesn't say to what extent the person with their herds is mobile. The phrase "they are not tillers of the soil but nomads" can be reread as "they are not tillers of the soil but herdsmen [or cattlemen]". But to distinguish the tribes dealing with cows from those dealing with horses, Herodotus calls the second group the nomad Scythians, because horses are more mobile than cows - a horse signifies a quote unquote "nomad", whereas a cow signifies a quote unquote "pastoralist". This observation hints that at least the Scythian inhabitants of Kherson Oblast' were an autochthonous community, which we will try to prove later.

(01:44:11) Herodotus says that the Royal Scythian lands reach "Eastwards to the trench which those who were begotten of the blind slaves dug". To find this trench, we will turn to Baron Sigismund von Herberstein for help. (01:44:22) In the 1557 German edition of his "Notes on Muscovite Affairs" he writes that in the country of Precop (or Perekop), "in Latin called the Tauric Peninsula" (i. e. Crimea), was the castle or town of Krym which in ancient times was a residence of "the kings" (in the 1567 German edition and other editions - of "the Tauric kings"). One day, one of them, Sigismund von Herberstein conveys, wished the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to be connected by getting the narrow line of soil separating them dug (i. e. the Isthmus of Perekop) so that the peninsula would turn into an island. The task was not completed, but after the Tauric kings had a town near this ditch built, the town and their country took the name of Precop. Sigismund von Herberstein virtually repeats what is written by Iordanes about the Goths who reached the land called Oium, but their accounts also correlate with (and seemingly correspond to) that of Herodotus:

(01:45:18) "From these their slaves then, I say, and from their wives had been born and bred up a generation of young men, who having learnt the manner of their birth set themselves to oppose the Scythians as they were returning from the Medes. And first they cut off their land by digging a broad trench extending from the Tauric mountains to the Maiotian lake, at the point where this is broadest; then afterwards when the Scythians attempted to invade the land, they took up a position against them and fought; [...]"

Trying to localise the trench mentioned in this passage, scholars suggest several versions. According to one of them, the trench was dug by the Cimmerians and refers to the so-called Cimmerian Wall separating the Kerch Peninsula from the rest of Crimea. Another equates it with the Perekop Wall or Perekop Trench located on the Isthmus of Perekop which also might have been dug by the Cimmerians. What in the text brings confusion is the "point where the Maiotian lake is broadest". The broadest part of the present-day Sea of Azov is its northern part extending from the Isthmus of Perekop through the Heniches'k Strait to the river Tanais. For Herodotus's account to be valid, the trench has to join the Isthmus of Perekop, Lake Syvash, and the Cimmerian Wall in one line. (01:46:33) And that's probably why he wrote the following:

"And there are at the present time in the land of Scythia Kimmerian walls [separating the Kerch Peninsula from Crimea], and a Kimmerian ferry [the Isthmus of Perekop, Lake Syvash, and/or the Heniches'k Strait]; and there is also a region which is called Kimmeria [possibly Crimea or the Crimean Mountains], and the so-called Kimmerian Bosphorus [the Kerch Strait]."

The term "Crimea" is rather unrelated to the term "Cimmeria". In the Ukrainian language, Crimea is called Крим / Krym, just like the name of the town of Krym mentioned in the German editions of Sigismund von Herberstein's work. In the Latin editions, this town is called "Krijm". I conjecture that at least the form "Krym" corresponds to the toponym "Κριοῦ Μέτωπον" that is found in the works of Pomponius Mela, Ammianus Marcellinus, Strabo, Ψευδοσκύλαξ, Ψευδοσκύμνος (Pseudo-Scymnus), and others. Besides the promontory of Κριοῦ Μέτωπον on Crete, according to the ancient authors there was a one located in Crimea. Scholars assign the Crimean promontory of Κριοῦ Μέτωπον to Cape Tarkhankut on the Tarkhankut Peninsula, Cape Sarych next to the town of Foros, Cape Ay-Todor, or even Mount Ayu-Dag. The accounts of Pomponius Mela and Ammianus Marcellinus suggest that Κριοῦ Μέτωπον is Tarkhankut. Pomponius Mela conveys that Κριοῦ Μέτωπον is separated from Cape Παρθένιον by Καλὸς Λιμήν. In that text, Cape Παρθένιον is roughly the Heracles Peninsula on which lies Cape Fiolent and Cape Sarych, and Καλὸς Λιμήν is Kalamita Bay. Ammianus Marcellinus partly repeats the account of Strabo. (01:48:07) Both of them write that the distance between the promontory of Κάραμβις (usually assigned to present-day Turkish Kerempe Burun) and the promontory of Κριοῦ Μέτωπον is two thousand five hundred stadia. The distance between Κάραμβις and Sarych is about one! thousand five hundred stadia - Κριοῦ Μέτωπον cannot be placed on the Heracles Peninsula if these data are true. But it indeed seems that Strabo confused Cape Tarkhankut with Cape Sarych in another passage where he writes that the two thousand five hundred stadia is the distance from Κάραμβις to the "city of Chersonesites" while the distance to Κριοῦ Μέτωπον is "much less". The reason for the confusion, as can be deduced from the text, is the travellers observing "both promontories, on either side, at the same time". Most likely, the two promontories they saw were the Heracles Peninsula and the Tarkhankut Peninsula. Of course, the travellers couldn't have seen them both at the same time - the distance between them is too big - but scholars also call attention to the fact that Strabo mentions a similar unrealistic event when writes about a person that was able to see at the distance from Marsala to Carthage. It's enough to explain Strabo's confusion about Κριοῦ Μέτωπον. The fact of this confusion suggests that Sigismund von Herberstein, by the town of Krym, could have meant some site near Cape Sarych. But the accounts of Ψευδοσκύλαξ and Ψευδοσκύμνος together rather confirm that the real Κριοῦ Μέτωπον is Cape Tarkhankut or the Tarkhankut Peninsula. According to Ψευδοσκύλαξ, the voyage from Κριοῦ Μέτωπον to Παντικάπαιον (that is Kerch) takes one day and one night. According to Ψευδοσκύμνος, the same lapse of time corresponds to the sail from Κάραμβις to Κριοῦ Μέτωπον. What additionally confirms the connection in question is the fact that "Тарханкут" is the Ukrainian name of Κριοῦ Μέτωπον. (01:49:51) "Κριοῦ Μέτωπον" means "Ram's Forehead"; and "Тарханкут", consisting of the Ukrainian "тархан" ("ox") and the Ukrainian "кут" ("angle"), means "Ox's Angle", like "Тарганріг" / "Tarhanrih" (present-day "Taganrog") means "Ox's Horn" in the Ukrainian language. But what proves that at some point, if not always, Tarkhankut was indeed called Κριοῦ Μέτωπον is the account of Διονύσιος ὁ Περιηγητής. In his "Survey of the World", he places Κριοῦ Μέτωπον in front of the mouth of the river Borysthenes. "Κριοῦ Μέτωπον" corresponds to "Tarkhankut" in the same way as does (01:50:24) the Ancient Greek "Συμβόλων Λιμήν" ("Signal Harbour") to the Ukrainian "Балаклава" / "Balaklava". "Балакуча Лава" (literally "Babbling Bench") means "Babbling Port", that is "Chattering Port", "Speaking Port", "Port That Speaks". A bench is a place where we sometimes want to sit down to take a rest after a long walk. Ships "take a rest" when they reach a harbour. "Балакуча Лава" can be understood as "Babbling Stop" or "Babbling Station". (01:50:50) "Κριοῦ Μέτωπον" could have been clipped to "Κριοῦμ" and then transformed either to "Κριυμ", "Κρυμ" and "Krym", or to "Κριυμ" and "Krijm". The Crimean Tatar "Qırım" is definitely unrelated to "Κριοῦ Μέτωπον", it has a totally different etymology: I have a hypothesis that "Qırım" comes from the Hebrew "כיריים" ("כִּירַיִם") /kiʁajim/ meaning "stove", "hearth", or "range", and is related to the Pechenegs whose name may be interpreted as "Bakers". But we can consider a possibility that the "Krijm" in the Latin editions of Sigismund von Herberstein's work might have been derived from the Crimean Tatar "Qırım".

(01:51:24) The Royal Scythian lands reached not only "Eastwards to the trench" but also to the Κρημνοί. The "trading station which is called Cremnoi upon the Maiotian lake" is rather unlikely to be linked with the name of Crimea. (01:51:36) The Ancient Greek "κρημνός" means, among others, "edge of a trench" or "beetling cliff", whose plural form "κρημνοί" clearly defines the Arabat Spit which is "east of the trech": east of the Isthmus of Perekop and Lake Syvash. As the trading station, the Κρημνοί might refer to the Ukrainian port city of Heniches'k. But it could have been known as the Κρημνοί only after the Arabat Spit. Another translation for "κρημνός", "labia", allows us to suggest why the Arabat Spit is called that. Because it's "two labias separated by the Heniches'k Strait" - it's the place that according to Herodotus was reached by the Amazons. In the previous videos, we considered the Slavic etymology for this term. But if such an etymology ever existed, it probably wasn't the primaeval one, as in the case of the word "griffin". According to Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης, the homeland of the true Amazons was Morocco. (01:52:25) His account reads that they lived on some island in the marsh Tritonis (known as Lake Tritonis) next to the Atlas Mountains. The official languages in present-day Morocco are Arabic and Standard Moroccan Amazigh. The last one is a Berber language comprising features and the lexicon from the following three, starting from the most spoken to the least: Tashelhit, Tamazight, and Tarifit. To decipher the name "Amazon", we will use the English-Tashelhit dictionary compiled by Lahsen Oulhadj - I think it contains the relevant entry. (01:52:55) Their dictionary mentions the word "amazan" being a translation of several English terms: "ambassador", "delegate", "emissary", "envoy", "mailman", "messenger", "postman", "prophet", "representative". I think that "Amazon" means "prophet". And now I will explain why. Telling about the deeds of the Amazons, (01:53:14) Διόδωρος singles out one of their queens, Μύρινα (Myrina). According to the account, after "striking a treaty of friendship" with the king of Egypt Ὧρος / Horus, she subdued the lands of present-day Syria (and apparently Iraq where former Assyria was) and southern Turkey to the river Bakırçay (Κάϊκος / Caïcus). Then she "seized some of the islands" in the northern Aegean Sea including Lesbos.

(01:53:37) "After that, while subduing some of the rest of the islands, she was caught in a storm, and after she had offered up prayers for her safety to the Mother of the Gods, she was carried to one of the uninhabited islands; this island, in obedience to a vision which she beheld in her dreams, she made sacred to this goddess, and set up altars there and offered magnificent sacrifices. [...] after the Amazons had returned to the continent, the myth relates, the Mother of the Gods, well pleased with the island, settled in it certain other people, and also her own sons, who are known by the name of [Κορύβαντες] — who their father was is handed down in their rites as a matter not to be divulged; and she established the mysteries which are now celebrated on the island and ordained by law that the sacred area should enjoy the right of sanctuary."

Μύρινα was a prophet because she had a dream about the future. But she was also a "representative" because the future she herself implemented was the desire of the "Mother of the Gods". She represented her interests. From the linguistic standpoint, the connection between the terms "envoy", "emissary", "messenger", "prophet", and the rest, is obvious. When people asked deities about their future, they sent them a question and waited for an answer, in the same way as we send one another correspondence. The difference is that, while we send our messages and letters in space, to be a prophet is to have the ability to communicate with the future in time. To be a prophet also means to have magic powers. According to Ὅμηρος, Atlas - the place next to where the Amazons originated from - was a wizard. Like Atlas, the Amazons were witches - they were those who were able to communicate with deities and the "Mother of the Gods" in particular.

The events related by Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης are said to happen long before the Trojan War. (01:55:30) In those times, his account relates, besides the Amazon Μύρινα, there lived such people as Mopsus the Thracian and Σίπυλος (Sipylus) the Scythian who were exiled from their countries. Σίπυλος was "exiled from that part of Scythia which borders upon Thrace" - it means the last was born in Scythia Minor (roughly in eastern Romania). The name "Σίπυλος" may hint why this person was exiled. (01:55:53) It resembles the Ukrainian "цибуля" which is translated into the English "onion". A similar word is also present in the Slovak, Czech, and Belarusian vocabulary ("cibuľa", "cibule", "цыбуля"). It corresponds to the Upper Sorbian "cybla" and the Lower Sorbian "cybula". In Polish and Slovene, it has a vowel /e/ instead of the /ɪ/, /i/ ("cebula", "čebula"). In the remaining modern South Slavic languages and in Russian (which, in those times, didn't even have its own dialect subcontinuum, which will be later argumented why), it corresponds to the word "лук" / "luk". The same word in the Ukrainian language, "лук", is translated as "bow" (when said of a weapon). In the view of some linguists, the word "цибуля" was borrowed from Latin. But now we have a reason to doubt it because why the Scythian may have borne the name "Onion" is explicable. What happens when people peel onions? Their eyes tear up - they cry. The Scythian was called "Onion" because he caused other Scythians pain. That's why he was exiled: for others not to suffer from him. If such a name or such a word really existed before the Trojan War, we will have to say that its age crosses the age mark of three thousand years. (01:57:08) Διόδωρος mentions Σίπυλος the Scythian and Mopsus the Thracian as those who "invaded the land of the Amazons" and "gained the upper hand" over them in a "pitched battle", thus bringing the history of the Moroccan Amazons to an end. The temporary presence of the Scythians in Asia (that is present-day Turkey) is not denied by scholars as it's corroborated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire's historical records. The more tricky question is when they appeared in Asia for the first or the earliest known time and whether and how this event is connected to Syria, Phoenicia, and its city of Byblos. Διόδωρος writes that, before the Amazons were defeated by the army of the Thracian "fellow-exiles" and a not less than one exiled Scythian, Μύρινα "struck a treaty of friendship" with the Egyptian king Ὧρος / Horus. Besides the Egyptian deity, such a name was borne by some of the Egyptian pharaohs as one of the five parts of the titulary, the first of which is called the Horus name. If this ruler was a real person, who was his mother referred to as Ἶσις / Isis by Διόδωρος and who was his father, then? (01:58:14) Wikipedia conveys that some scholars think that Ἶσις personifies the throne and "was considered the king's mother, and thus a goddess, because of its power to make a man into a king", though not all scholars agree with this interpretation. What if Ἶσις or her husband was in fact a human being too? In ancient Egyptian mythology, the Nile flood was believed to be the tears of Ἶσις she shed for her slain brother and husband Ὄσιρις / Osiris. Indeed, the deity known as Ὧρος was a son of Ἶσις. (01:58:47) But her tears enable me to suggest that her husband (or a later prototype of him) was the Egyptian pharaoh of the Second Dynasty Nefer-ka-sokar which is claimed in Old Kingdom legends to be the one who "saved Egypt from a long-lasting drought". (01:59:03) According to Wikipedia, his name means either "beautiful soul of Sokar" or "the soul of Sokar is complete", whereas Sokar is a "hawk or falcon god of the Memphite necropolis [...] who was known as a patron of the living, as well as a god of the dead". Sokar is a counterpart of Ὄσιρις - (01:59:23) Ὄσιρις was also a god of the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, though not only. According to the so-called Osiris myth, Ὄσιρις was murdered by his brother Set, an Egyptian god of deserts, storms, chaos, and violence, to usurp his throne. But then Ἶσις restores the body of Ὄσιρις and conceives their son Ὧρος who, afterwards, "becomes Set's rival for the throne". Nefer-ka-sokar could have been associated with the deity Ὄσιρις. He ruled approximately in the 28th century BCE. It's believed that according to the Turin King List (also known as the Royal Canon of Turin) his reign lasted only eight years, though the hieroglyph preceding the sign "eight" is missed. If the missed sign was a digit, his actual reign might have reached eighteen, twenty-eight, thirty-eight, or forty-eight years. The last option points to the pharaoh of the Second Dynasty Σέσωχρις mentioned in Manetho's "History of Egypt". (02:00:22) The ruler that is usually named the successor of Nefer-ka-sokar is believed to be Hudjefa I who, according to the same Royal Canon of Turin, ruled for eleven, twenty-one, or thirty-one years. In the view of some scholars, "Hudjefa" is not a name but a term denoting that the original name or title was impossible to read to write it down in the list. "Hudjefa" is usually translated as "erased". Some other scholars suppose that the reason why this pharaoh was recorded as Hudjefa was the prohibition of mentioning his name. They draw attention to the case of the king Seth-Peribsen "whose birth name was [possibly] banished from [New Kingdom] Ramesside king lists", (02:01:04) "such as the Abydos King List, the Saqqara King List, and the Royal Canon of Turin", and consider or considered the possibility that Hudjefa is identical with Seth-Peribsen. Seth-Peribsen is one of few known pharaohs who "has the Set animal, representing Seth, on his serekh" and the only pharaoh known to have the Set animal replacing Horus. If Nefer-ka-sokar ruled not for forty-eight but eight years, the brevity of his reign may be conjectured to be caused by his murder by Hudjefa. But before it happened, Hudjefa might have been his co-ruler. It's still not clear whether the Egyptian realm was divided into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt in those days - scholars argue. (02:01:45) Nefer-ka-sokar ruled at least in Lower Egypt, whereas Seth-Peribsen at least in Upper Egypt. Hudjefa, like Nefer-ka-sokar, is also considered to be an Egyptian ruler of Lower Egypt. But if Hudjefa is Seth-Peribsen, he might have killed Nefer-ka-sokar to rule over the Two Lands. Currently, it's only a hypothesis. But regardless of whether this murder really took place or not, Hudjefa and/or Peribsen might have been the incarnation of Set. And if Nefer-ka-sokar is Ὄσιρις, who is his son? (02:02:16) The only pharaoh of the Second or Third Dynasty known under the name "Horus" who might have ruled shortly after Nefer-ka-sokar, Hudjefa, or Peribsen, but whose existence is disputable, is Horus Sa or Horus Za. This Horus Sa or Horus Za might have been the pharaoh Horus mentioned by Διόδωρος and the rival of Set - in fact, the pharaoh with the Set animal atop his serekh. His account might partly reflect the events of the 28th-27th century BCE. Whether the Scythian Цибуля (Tsybula) existed in that time is not clear. Whether Σεσόωσις is identical with Σέσωχρις, we also don't know. Manetho's "History of Egypt" mentions the three Egyptian rulers whose name starts with "Σεσο-": Σέσωχρις, Σέσονχοσις, Σέσωστρις. That's why we cannot say that Σεσόωσις is one of them, it can be someone else. But we can try to decipher each of these names. (02:03:11) I think that the first part "Σεσο-" corresponds to the Egyptian word "šꜣsw" ("shasu"). This term, on the one hand, denotes the nomads known since the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt as Shasu. On the other, the Egyptian "šꜣs" ("shas") means "to travell", "to wander", "to go", and "šꜣsw", as a masculine noun derived from the verb "šꜣs", means "traveller", "wanderer", "nomad". "shasu" is not a pronunciation. Among the Egyptologists there is an agreement to transliterate the Egyptian words instead of transcribing because the real pronunciation is unknown, though some reconstructions also exist. That's why it's quite possible that "šꜣsw" was pronounced like /ʃɛsu/ or /ʃɛso/. To justify this point, we will first decipher the name "Σέσονχοσις". (02:03:54) This pharaoh is linked by scholars with Senusret I. He is known for initiating two military campaigns against Nubia that finally led to the occupation of its part down to the Second Cataract of the Nile and expansion of Egypt. In my current view, the fact of launching these campaigns is reflected in his name. (02:04:12) Its second part corresponds to the Egyptian "nḥs" (nehs), that is "nchos", which means "Nubia", or "nḥsj" (nehsi), that is "nchosi", which means "Nubian". The whole name can be translated as "wanderer of Nubia" or "Nubian wanderer". The term "wanderer" can be understood as "invader", "conqueror", "occupier", "one who enters a new land". Σέσωστρις is associated with one or several Egyptian pharaohs but mainly with Senusret III. The decipherment I currently consider is provided without a specific context, but his name may mean the same as "Σέσωχρις" and "Σεσόωσις". (02:04:47) I think that the second part "-str-" is the Egyptian "stꜣ" ("seta") which means "to light", "to set on fire", "to ignite", or is an adjective derived from this verb. It's worth noting that the verb "stꜣ" ("seta") itself consists of the causative prefix "s-" ("se-") and the verb "tꜣ" ("ta"), (02:05:03) the last can be interpreted as the noun meaning "dry land". "Σέσωστρις" might be translated as "igniting wanderer". (02:05:10) "Σέσωχρις", with the second part being possibly the Egyptian adjective "qr" ("qer") derived from the verb "qrr" ("qerer") meaning "to fire (pottery)" or "to stoke (a kiln)", seems to have a similar translation, "firing / heating / stoking nomad". What about "Σεσόωσις"? (02:05:25) It appears that the second part corresponds to the Egyptian noun "ws" ("wes"), that is "os" or "us". But what does it mean? According to Wiktionary, it exists only in one phrase, "pr-m-ws" ("per-em-wes") (which, by the way, resembles the word "pyramid"). (02:05:38) "pr-m-ws" is interpreted as "(one that) comes forth from 'something'", "(one that) emerges from 'something'", or "(one that) ascends from 'something'". And this "something", for some unclear reason, is believed to be the word "height". And here I'm clutching my head. Please someone explain me, how do you imagine this that something tall, like skyscraper, ascends from height? So, you have a height. But something ascends even higher from it, does it? Do you say that trees ascend from height? No, you don't. Trees, like pyramids, ascend from ground. Pyramids emerge from sand. Because unlike plants, they grow in desert. (02:06:14) The word "ws" ("os") is probably translated as "sand" or "dry ground", "ground without water". The antonym of this word is "oasis". The name "Σεσόωσις" can mean "sand / desert traveller" and thus "sand / desert conqueror". He might have been a one who defeated a long-lasting drought. Σεσόωσις can be identical with Nefer-ka-sokar. This is rather an assumption as we currently have no data confirming for certain that Σεσόωσις, Σέσωχρις, and Nefer-ka-sokar, are one and the same person. (02:06:45) The name "Ὄσιρις" is written in Egyptian as "wsjr" ("wesir"). The etymology of his name is unknown. Therefore, I will suggest mine. (02:06:52) I think that it's connected to the Egyptian word "wšr" ("wesher") meaning "to be(come) dried out", "to wither" - on the one hand. On the other, it may also be connected to the Egyptian "wsr" ("weser") meaning "oar" and "wsḫ" ("wesekh") meaning "barge". All these words are united by water. Ὄσιρις was murdered by his brother Set but was then resurrected after Ἶσις shed her tears for him - he might have died after his body dried up. But this is also an assumption.

Σεσόωσις is usually equated by scholars with Σέσωστρις. According to Herodotus, it was Σέσωστρις who reached Colchis, whereas Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης attributes this deed to Σεσόωσις. The idea that any pharaoh of the Second Dynasty could have invaded the Taman' Peninsula seems less likely than the idea that Σέσωστρις from the Twelfth Dynasty from the 19th century BCE or one of his successors led such a campaign. Because Διόδωρος describes the history of the more ancient Amazons - Moroccan Amazons - he possibly ascribed the deeds of Σέσωστρις to Σεσόωσις. Σέσωστρις, as the "igniting wanderer", might have personified the phoenix the Scythians became familiar with after his arrival in Colchis. On the other hand, the hypothetical "Scytho-Egyptian contact" on the Taman' Peninsula might be unrelated to the arrival of any army. But if such an event was real, it should date back before the Trojan War. This would reinforce the legend about the Argonauts. Besides, the story about the Moroccan Amazons, the exiled Thracians and the Scythian Цибуля recalls the events of the 7th century BCE, that is after the Trojan War, (02:08:26) described by Herodotus:

"Then the Medes fought with the Scythians, and having been worsted in the battle they lost their power, and the Scythians obtained rule over all Asia [roughly Turkey].

"Thence they went on to invade Egypt; and when they were in Syria which is called Palestine [or "in the part of Syria called Palestine" in the translation by Alfred Denis Godley], Psammetichos king of Egypt met them; and by gifts and entreaties he turned them from their purpose, so that they should not advance any further: and as they retreated, when they came to the city of Ascalon in Syria [present-day Ashkelon in Israel], most of the Scythians passed through without doing any damage, but a few of them who had stayed behind plundered the temple of Aphrodite Urania. Now this temple, as I find by inquiry, is the most ancient of all the temples which belong to this goddess; for the temple in Cyprus was founded from this, as the people of Cyprus themselves report, and it was the Phenicians who founded the temple in Kythera, coming from this land of Syria. So these Scythians who had plundered the temple at Ascalon, and their descendants for ever, were smitten by the divinity with a disease which made them women instead of men: and the Scythians say that it was for this reason that they were diseased, and that for this reason travellers who visit Scythia now, see among them the affection of those who by the Scythians are called Enareës.

"For eight-and-twenty years then the Scythians were rulers of Asia [...]"

The word "Ἐνάρεες" seems to be an Ancient Greek term (02:10:01) consisting of "εἷς" / "ἕνᾰ" for "one" and "ῥέω" for "I flow" or "I stream". The term "Ἐνάρεες" probably denotes those who "flow in one and the same direction". Who "flow in one and the same direction"? Homosexual pairs. To conceive a child, there have to meet a man and a woman. They can meet because they move in the opposite directions - to each other. But the homosexual pairs cannot do the same because they move in the same direction - their "river paths" never intersect. "Women instead of men". Doesn't it remind you of the Amazons? The ancients tried to find an explanation for phenomena surrounding them: why there are seasons, why there is day and night, why the sun is yellow, why people do not fly like birds. The myth about the Moroccan Amazons and the exiles could have been an attempt to explain the origin of homosexuality - the last were exiled because, the myth implies, there was something wrong with them. Both the account of Herodotus and Διόδωρος may relate real events, albeit those that happened in different epochs. But at the same time, they might have been shrouded in another story similar in both the cases. Another common element between these two narratives is Media. (02:11:10) Διόδωρος conveys that the "Scythians who inhabit the country bordering upon India" "extended [according to some Scythians] their power as far as the Nile in Egypt". Διόδωρος clarifies that "at first, then, they dwelt on the Araxes river". This river is the same Araxes, beyond which, (02:11:27) according to Herodotus, were found the Massagetae, but Διόδωρος (or his account) might confuse them with the Issedones. Herodotus describes the river Araxes as flowing into the Caspian Sea, and that's explicable. Because, by this river, he meant the present-day Araxes and the river Kura. According to Pliny the Elder and Ἀππιανὸς Ἀλεξανδρεύς (Appian of Alexandria), the Araxes was a tributary of the Cyrus (that is the Kura), which is true by the way. It means that the Massagetae lived on the territory of Azerbaijan or north of it. Let's uncover the language spoken by them. (02:11:59) We know at least two names of theirs: the name of at least one of their queens "Τόμυρις" and the name of her son "Σπαργαπίσης". Let's start from the last one. I've prepared very bad news for the Indo-Iranian fantasisers. We know that a language may have words with a long consonant cluster at their beginning. If such a situation happens, in a language into which this word is transcribed or transliterated, a new vowel may be added in between or before this cluster. It may not be required if an already existing vowel can be interplaced with a neighbouring consonant or consonant subcluster. (02:12:31) "Σπαργαπίσης" seems to be this last case. Having respelt "Σπαργαπίσης" as "Σπραγαπίσης", it becomes decipherable. (When I say this, it irritates some people, especially those who have neither such skills nor any obvious, noticeable, clear success in doing decipherments. Honestly.) "Σπραγαπίσης" may correspond to the Slavic, most likely Ukrainian (that is Scythian), "Збражапиш". This is not the only case when the letter "γ" may represent the phoneme /ʒ/, we are already acquainted with a similar example in the previous video. "Збражапиш" is a compound of the prefix "з-", the noun "брага" ("beer"), and the verb "пити" ("to drink"). Here the prefix "з-" probably attaches to the verb and signifies its perfect aspect. And thus, his name can be understood as "one who gets drunk on beer" or more rudely "alcoholic". (02:13:22) This is what Herodotus writes about the Massagetae in general:

"[...] Moreover it is said that other trees have been discovered by them which yield fruit of such a kind that when they have assembled together in companies in the same place and lighted a fire, they sit round in a circle and throw some of it into the fire, and they smell the fruit which is thrown on, as it burns, and are intoxicated by the scent as the Hellenes are with wine, and when more of the fruit is thrown on they become more intoxicated, until at last they rise up to dance and begin to sing. [...]"

This passage describes a method of making mead, the alcoholic drink taken by the Hunni. The description of this method can be found in the work by Володимир Васильович Сиротенко (Volodymyr Vasylyovych Syrotenko) titled "Miraculous drinks of Viktor Zabila" (in the original Ukrainian - "Чудодійні напої Віктора Забіли"). I currently cannot assess the reliability of the whole work of his, but the described method doesn't seem to be made-up. We can read about it on the Ukrainian-language Wikipedia. In the beginning, so-called "sour mead" is prepared: aged mead is diluted with sour juice and is heated up in a copper cauldron with firewood from fruit trees. Now we understand why Herodotus writes about fruits. What may confirm, in my view, why this drink is mead is the name of the mother of Збражапиш. We know that the letter "τ" can represent the phoneme /ʧ/. But if you remember, in the previous video I've mentioned one word with the same letter where it represents the phoneme /ʦ/. At this stage, it's not clear yet when this phoneme is represented by the letter "τ" and whether and when by the letter "σ", especially at the beginning of a word. But we can safely assume that even if the letter "τ" doesn't represent the phoneme /ʦ/ in an individual case, such an attempt may help us decipher the word. The art of decipherment is about the search, among other things, of legitimate substitute operations. (02:15:20) The name "Τόμυρις" can be retranscribed into the Ukrainian language as "Цьомирія" / "Цьомиря". The first consonant in the original name still can be /ʧ/ - for example "Чьомирія" / "Чьомиря". But interpreting it as "Цьомирія" / "Цьомиря", it can be viewed as a compound of the noun "цьом" meaning "kiss" (which is usually applied to children) and the verb "роїти" meaning "to let out a swarm". "Цьомирія" / "Цьомиря" comes from "роїти цьоми". Her name may represent Τόμυρις as the queen of bees, the one who "lets out a swarm of kisses". The kisses she leave are her stings (in other words, stings of her sting). (02:15:58) An alternative view suggests that her name is actually "Чмиря". The Ukrainian word "чмир" is the same as the Ukrainian "хміль" for "hop plant" or "intoxication". But the first version enables us to provide the etymology for the appellation of the city of Tomis (present-day Constanța) - it may simply mean "kiss", though it's not necessarily true. The Massagetae are traditionally placed next to the Caspian Sea, roughly in the same place where lived the Hunni according to Διονύσιος ὁ Περιηγητής, and their name may confirm it. The thing is that it doesn't seem to be Slavic. (02:16:31) According to the online Ingush-Russian dictionary on "doshlorg.ru", the adjective "масса" means "high-speed" or "fast", and the verb "гIетта" means "to fly". The translation of "Massagetae" as "fast-flying" correlates with an assumption that they considered themselves or were considered by others as a swarm of bees and strengthens the link between the Massagetae and the Hunni. "Massagetae" can be an Ingush exonym. The Ingushes are a Northeast Caucasian people.

Дмитрий Иванович Иловайский rightly said that (02:17:03) one of Hunnic words is the Slavic "мед" meaning "honey" or "mead". And he may be right about his point that the word "Κάμον" is "квас" / "kvas". (02:17:12) The reason why it's possible is explained by the fact that in Greek cursive and Greek minuscule the Greek letters "β", "κ", and "μ", sometimes look similar. "Κάμον" may be in fact "Κάβον". "-ον" is the Greek termination that has to be ignored. What remains is "Κάβ-". Recalling what I recently said about consonant clusters, we may conclude that "kvas" may have been perceived by the Greeks as a word with the Greek termination "-ας". "Κβας" became "Κβον" and then "Κάβον" or became "Κάβας" and then "Κάβον". The letter "α" doesn't always represent the absent vowel in the original word. For example the first "α" in the Scythian appellation "Παραλάται" (Ukrainian "правлячі") may be the same as the Proto-Slavic extra-short close back vowel "ŭ", which is sometimes referred to and is quite often transcribed as the back yer ("ъ"). It corresponds to different vowels in modern Slavic languages, particularly to the absent vowel, the vowel /u/ and /a/. There is no rule that would spell out what vowel in what language. (02:18:11) The Ukrainian noun "тарган" for "smoke-coloured ox" derives from the reconstructed Proto-Slavic verb "*tъrgati", "to tear" or "to rip". But the corresponding verb "тр̏гати" / "tȑgati" in Serbo-Croatian has no corresponding vowel between the consonants. (Though I'm currently partly referring to Wiktionary, I advise against trusting it much - sometimes its editors put their wrong beliefs and very often don't provide any reference.) There are also opposite cases when the vowel /a/ appears in South Slavic languages instead. (02:18:39) For example the Polish verb "łgać" and the Czech "lhát" for "to lie" correspond to the Serbo-Croatian "ла̀гати" / "làgati" and the Slovak "luhať". That's why "Παραλάται" may be in fact not a transcription of "пъравлячі" but that of "паравлячі" coming from the reconstructed Ancient Ukrainian verb "*паравити", "to rule". My previous explanation of the name "Παραλάται" is wrong and has to be rejected. Another Scythian word with such an "α" is "Μαιῆτις" / "Μαιῶτις", and Pliny the Elder will help us to answer what it means. (02:19:09) This time we will be referring to the translation of his "Naturalis Historia" by John Bostock and Henry Thomas Riley.

"The Scythæ were the first to discover the plant known as “scythice,” which grows in the vicinity of the Palus Mæotis. Among its other properties, this plant is remarkably sweet, and extremely useful for the affection known as “asthma.” It is also possessed of another great recommendation—so long as a person keeps it in his month, he will never experience hunger or thirst."

You likely know this plant because you probably took it at least once in your life (or at least heard about it) but not raw. You took it as its chemical analogue that is added as an ingredient to some candies. This chemical component is called menthol which is used in some cough drops and is produced from mint. The English word "mint" is translated into the Polish "mięta" and the Ukrainian "м'ята". That's what "Μαιῆτις" / "Μαιῶτις" means. Herodotus calls this sea "Μαιῆτις", and this form is closer to the Polish variant ("*mъięta" / "*maięta"). But why it's this variant that is recorded is currently unclear. Whereas "Μαιῶτις" is closer to the Ukrainian translation ("*мъята" / "*маята"). The presence of the vowel "ω" in the Greek transcription might be explained in the same way as the Greek vowel "ο" in the appellation "Σκολότοι" which corresponds to the Ukrainian noun "соколяти" ("young falcons") or adjective "соколячі" ("falcon-like (ones)"). The second version is a new one, I didn't propose it previously, though, to explain why this vowel is transcribed here, a long-term study is required anyway. "Μαιῆτις" / "Μαιῶτις" may also be an adjective. If so, it would correspond to the reconstructed Polish "*mъięce" / "*maięce" / "*mięce" and Ukrainian "*мъяче" / "*маяче" / "*м'яче". (02:20:55) But if the name "Μαιῆτις" is Proto-Slavic, it already doesn't match the currently proposed reconstruction "*męta". That's why I said at the very beginning that we cannot rely on reconstructions, we have to rely on something that really exists.

(02:21:08) The data we have about the Massagetae and Herodotus's account about them being "of Scythian race" as "some say" enable us to place them in the North Caucasus near the Caspian Sea. Herodotus may partly confuse them with another people because he mentions the Massagetae's custom of slaughtering the aged. The Soviet scholar Гайдар Абдулвагирович Гаджиев (Gaĭdar Abdulvagirovich Gadzhiev) in his work "Pre-Islamic beliefs and rites of the peoples of highland Dagestan" (in the original Russian - "Доисламские верования и обряды народов Нагорного Дагестана") from 1991 writes that such a custom was (or maybe still is) believed by Caucasian peoples to be performed in their past, specifically among the Avars and Lezgins (also known as Leks). Similar rites were actually spread among different peoples, but the point that, besides Slavs, by the Massagetae, Northeast Caucasians might have been understood doesn't contradict the account of Herodotus.

But if the Massagetae were not situated next to the river Araxes, then who was it who did? According to Herodotus, the Massagetae dwelt "over against the Issedonians". It means that the Issedones were their neighbours or lived on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. (02:22:18) To localise them, first we have to ascertain the abode of the Argippaians.

"[...] towards the East dwell other Scythians, who have revolted from the Royal Scythians and so have come to this region.

"As far as the country of these Scythians the whole land which has been described is level plain and has a deep soil; but after this point it is stony and rugged. Then when one has passed through a great extent of this rugged country, there dwell in the skirts of lofty mountains men who are said to be all bald-headed from their birth, male and female equally, and who have flat noses and large chins and speak a language of their own, using the Scythian manner of dress, and living on the produce of trees. The tree on the fruit of which they live is called the Pontic tree, and it is about the size of a fig- tree: this bears a fruit the size of a bean, containing a stone. When the fruit has ripened, they strain it through cloths and there flows from it a thick black juice, and this juice which flows from it is called [ἄσχυ]. This they either lick up or drink mixed with milk, and from its lees, that is the solid part, they make cakes and use them for food; for they have not many cattle, since the pastures there are by no means good. Each man has his dwelling under a tree, in winter covering the tree all round with close white felt-cloth, and in summer without it. These are injured by no men, for they are said to be sacred, and they possess no weapon of war. These are they also who decide the disputes rising among their neighbours; and besides this, whatever fugitive takes refuge with them is injured by no one: and they are called Argippaians.

(02:24:10) "Now as far as these bald-headed men there is abundantly clear information about the land and about the nations on this side of them; for not only do certain of the Scythians go to them, from whom it is not difficult to get information, but also some of the Hellenes who are at the trading-station of the Borysthenes and the other trading- places of the Pontic coast: and those of the Scythians who go to them transact their business through seven interpreters and in seven different languages."

The Argippaians are a people or peoples who were known in the 10th century CE under the name "As-Sarir" or "As-Serir" who, according to Ibn Rustah, "worshipped the dry head". Their name, "Argippaians", conveys that they lived in the western part of the Caucasus Mountains that was known as the Hippian Mountains and near or in the place to which moored the ship Argo, that is the Taman' Peninsula, ancient Colchis. (02:25:07) The Argippaians are Northwest Caucasians, and the word "ἄσχυ" proves it because it corresponds to the Kabardian "шху" and the Adyghe "щхыу" which mean "sour milk" (apparently the Greek "α" in the transcription being epenthetic), and Herodotus speaks of the milk. The Scythians had to involve translators to communicate with the Argippaians because the Scythians are not Caucasians, they are Slavs. Then and now, excluding Russians for the obvious reason, Ukrainians were and remain neighbours of the Northwest Caucasian peoples. And because of the Massagetae, we also have to suggest that some of the Scythians may have been present in the North Caucasus next to the Caspian Sea. (02:25:49) And now we can clearly show where the Issedones dwelt.

"So far as these, I say, the land is known; but concerning the region to the North of the bald-headed men [that is, north of some Northwest Caucasian people] no one can speak with certainty, for lofty and impassable mountains divide it off, and no one passes over them [either the Caucasus Mountains again or the Riphean Mountains]. However these bald-headed men say (though I do not believe it) that the mountains [the Caucasus Mountains, the Crimean Mountains, or the Ripheans] are inhabited by men with goats' feet; and that after one has passed beyond[!] these, others[!] are found [other people are found] who sleep through six months of the year. This I do not admit at all as true. However, the country to the East of the bald-headed men is known with certainty, being inhabited by the Issedonians, but that which lies beyond both the bald-headed men and the Issedonians towards the North Wind [that is, north of the Caucasus Mountains] is unknown, except so far as we know it from the accounts given by these nations which have just been mentioned. [The Issedones dwelt south of the Caucasus Mountains.]

[...] but as to the region beyond them [beyond the Issedones], it is the Issedonians who report that there are there one-eyed men and gold-guarding griffins; and the Scythians report this having received it from them, and from the Scythians we, that is the rest of mankind, have got our belief; and we call them in Scythian language Arimaspians, for the Scythians call the number one [ἄριμα] and the eye [σποῦ]. [In this video, I will say what both these words mean. In fact, they are not Scythian.]"

The knowledge of the Hellenes about those living beyond the Caucasus Mountains was poor. That's why the Ripheans could have been the Donets' Ridge situated in their proximity: from the perspective of the Issedones, who dwelt in the South Caucasus, the Donets' Ridge was far to the north. The Issedones were found "over against" the Massagetae. For this reason, the only place where the Issedones could have resided is the territory of Azerbaijan, roughly north of present-day Iran and east of the Lesser Caucasus. Alternatively, it's a small region around the eastern part of the Caucasus Mountains, but in this case they will be far from the river Araxes. The ethnicity of the Issedones is currently unknown.

(02:28:25) The narrative mentioned by Διόδωρος about the Scythians dwelling on the river Araxes is now more clear. His account seems to derive them from the Issedones, by mistake or not. At the same time, the story itself might be connected with an early human migration, for example with one of those of early Indo-Europeans. Though this hypothesis might contradict similar thoughts of mine about another place I will name in this video, (02:28:50) the account by Διόδωρος might confirm it.

"[...] some time later the descendants of these kings [the descendants of the brothers Palus and Napes who are themselves descended from legendary Σκύθης] [...] subdued much of the territory beyond the Tanaïs river as far as Thrace, and advancing with their armies to the other side [in the direction of present-day Turkey] they extended their power as far as the Nile in Egypt. And after enslaving many great peoples which lay between the Thracians and the Egyptians they advanced the empire of the Scythians on the one side as far as the ocean to the east [probably the Indian Ocean], and on the other side to the Caspian Sea and Lake Maeotis; [...] many of the conquered peoples were removed to other homes, and two of these became very great colonies: the one was composed of Assyrians and was removed to the land between Paphlagonia and Pontus, and the other was drawn from Media and planted along the Tanaïs, its people receiving the name Sauromatae. Many years later this people became powerful and ravaged a large part of Scythia, and destroying utterly all whom they subdued they turned most of the land into a desert."

If these advances of the Scythians are true in some way, they could have reflected a sort of the Kurgan hypothesis about the genesis of the Indo-Europeans. In this case, "Scythian" would be a synonym of "early Indo-European" or "proto-Indo-European". The crucial difference is that the legend places the source of their expansion in some region next to the Caspian Sea. For this reason, an alternative view, which also can be questioned, may be that this region was the homeland of early Nostratic or proto-Nostratic speakers.

This passage also speaks of the Sauromatae. The reason why they are derived from the Medians will be said a bit later, but for the rest, their mention looks more like a geographical legend that simply tells where they dwelt - in a "desert" of the North Caucasus, that is in its steppe. The Sauromatae are also a link between the Scythians and the Amazons - according to Herodotus, they had the Scythian father and the Amazonian mother. It appears as if these two narratives about their origin (from the Medes and from the Amazons), (02:31:07) the narrative about the Enareës, and that about the Scythian exile Цибуля meeting the Moroccan Amazons, are connected to one another.

Herodotus's passage about the Scythians returning from Psammetichus suggests that they were at least once in Syria (in present-day Israel and Palestine) and possibly Phoenicia. The last can be argumented by the data from the "Ethnica" dictionary of Στέφανος Βυζάντιος in the Thomas de Pinedo edition, (02:31:33) according to which the Βυβλίοι are a Scythian people. It makes Pliny the Elder's account about the Scythians being called by some the Arameans a bit clearer. The Slavs might have been confused, for some reason, with the Semites. There exists an opinion that biblical Ashkenaz relate to the Scythians as a predecessor of theirs. But I doubt we can consider it to make an argument related to the topic we are dealing with. Pliny the Elder in his "Naturalis Historia" and Gaius Julius Solinus in his "De mirabilibus mundi" ("The wonders of the world") mention a city of Scythopolis, a possible Scythian colony in present-day Beit She'an in the Northern District of Israel. It might have explained the confusion (if it existed), but it doesn't say anything about whether the Scythians were really present in Byblos. Herodotus mentions the temple of Aphrodite Urania in Ascalon. The word "Ascalon" itself could have been compared by the ancients with the Persian "Sacae", though they are rather unlikely to be linguistically related. In the previous video I've also said that the Hellenes might have believed that the Scythians come from the siren Ἀργίμπασα. The goddess Ἀργίμπασα, if you remember, is the Scythian counterpart of Aphrodite Urania. On the one hand, such coincidences suggest the Scythian presence at least in Ascalon could have been fictitious, and, if Herodotus was told this story by the Hellenes, the Ancient Greek term "Ἐνάρεες" may reinforce this assumption. On the other, it's hard to state that the whole passage by Herodotus is just someone's invention when several descriptions by the two different authors intersect in different pairs and resemble pieces of one common puzzle. If it conveys some real events, what are they? We haven't yet turned our attention to the Egyptian king Psammetichus. Psammetichus, or Psamtik I, is known for conducting a linguistic experiment to find the oldest nation. (02:33:25) The experiment and its result seem to be real.

"[...] Now Psammetichos, when he was not able by inquiry to find out any means of knowing who had come into being first of all men, contrived a device of the following kind:--Taking two new-born children belonging to persons of the common sort he gave them to a shepherd to bring up at the place where his flocks were, with a manner of bringing up such as I shall say, charging him namely that no man should utter any word in their presence, and that they should be placed by themselves in a room where none might come, and at the proper time he should bring to them she-goats, and when he had satisfied them with milk he should do for them whatever else was needed. These things Psammetichos did and gave him this charge wishing to hear what word the children would let break forth first, after they had ceased from wailings without sense. And accordingly so it came to pass; for after a space of two years had gone by, during which the shepherd went on acting so, at length, when he opened the door and entered, both the children fell before him in entreaty and uttered the word bekos, stretching forth their hands. At first when he heard this the shepherd kept silence; but since this word was often repeated, as he visited them constantly and attended to them, at last he declared the matter to his master, and at his command he brought the children before his face. Then Psammetichos having himself also heard it, began to inquire about what nation of men named anything bekos, and inquiring he found that the Phrygians had this name for bread. In this manner and guided by an indication such as this, the Egyptians were brought to allow that the Phrygians were a more ancient people than themselves."

The children indeed were saying "bekos", but not because it means "bread" or because they wanted bread. The point of the experiment was to place the children into the environment where human speech is replaced with another controlled sound in order to check whether they would mimic it. And they did. Being unable to copy human words, they mimicked the bleating of the she-goats (horned cattle by the way) which sounds like this: /bee..e/, /bee..e/, /bee..e/. (02:35:57) That's why in the Ukrainian language there is the verb "бекати" meaning "to bleat" where the root "-бек-" (or the root "-бе-" and the suffix "-к-") is onomatopoeic. The consonant /k/ appears after this /bee..e/ as a kind of breath stopper. You may not hear it, but your throat feel it, and thus this throaty consonant can be amplified. We don't know what happened to these children after this experiment, but we know what happened to those that were deprived human speech in their childhood, such cases are unfortunately real. They managed to extend their vocabulary, but their tongue lacks one noticeable thing - syntax. The word order in their sentences is chaotic. That's why the point that the Proto-Human or Proto-World language had any sentence structure like SVO (subject–verb–object), SOV, or any other, is just untenable. The Proto-World language or languages, most likely, didn't even have parts of speech. To speak this language or these languages, humans probably used an unordered set of phonemic markers, each having been developed by mimicking surrounding sounds, the only possible way (in my current view) for a first language or first languages to emerge. Psammetichus tried to replicate the conditions when no human language existed - and he succeeded. (02:37:17) It's also quite possible that he tried to conduct this experiment several times: the narrative that he "cut out the tongues of certain women, and then caused the children to live with these women" may be real. His experiment proves that mimicry was one of the engines that shaped modern languages. And now I will provide you with several Ukrainian roots that most likely emerged in this way.

(02:37:40) The first one is found in the Ukrainian verb "дихати" ("to breathe"). Its root "-дих-" exists also in the forms "-тих-", "-тиш-", "-тух-", "-тх-", "-дух-", "-душ-", "-дус-" (as in the words "тихий" for "quiet", "тиша" for "silence", "тухлий" for "putrid", "затхлий" for "musty", "дух" for "spirit", and "душа" for "soul"). This alternating vowel, roughly speaking, denotes nothing, it just functions as a splitter of the initial consonant cluster "-т-х-" / "-т-ш-" / "-д-х-" / "-д-ш-" / "-д-с-". But before its appearance, this and/or other phonemic blocks may have been pronounced whisperingly or almost without involving the vocal folds. Odd as it may sound, "whispered" is not a synonym of "voiceless". In a whisper, the voiced and voiceless consonants can be still distinguishable at least by the speaker. The root in question emerged in the aftermath of the mimicry of pants (that is heavy breathing) that you can hear when you are running. Whisperingly: [ḍᵊˈɦ̣ᵊ], [ḍᵊˈɦ̣ᵊ], ..., [ḍᵊˈɦ̣ᵊ]; and without a whisper but voicelessly: [d̥ᵊˈɦ̥ᵊ], [d̥ᵊˈɦ̥ᵊ], ..., [d̥ᵊˈɦ̥ᵊ].

(02:38:56) The next root is found in the verbs "кашляти" and "кахикати" meaning "to cough". It's common for the Ukrainian verbs and the English one, from which the English "cough" is traditionally derived. It can be written down as "-к-х-" / "-к-ш-" and denotes the same as its full verb realisations.

(02:39:12) The Ukrainian noun "кінь", the Rusyn "кунь", and the Polish "koń", for "horse", has the onomatopoeic root "-к-н-". It reflects beats of the horse's hooves: [ḳʷᵊˈṇʷᵊ], [ḳʷᵊˈṇʷᵊ], ..., [ḳʷᵊˈṇʷᵊ]. What the horses' horseshoes, if any, were made from and what type of ground their hooves hit before this sound got mimicked, where, and when, is yet to be discovered.

(02:39:39) The next root is "-ш-м-" that is present in the noun "шум" ("noise"), the noun "шмаркля" (a piece of nasal mucus), the verb "шмаркати" ("to blow one's nose"), and the verb "шморгати" ("to sniff"). These terms may seem unrelated to one another until we notice the corresponding set of similar words in English: "noise", "nose", which are cognate. The root "-ш-м-" is roughly a mimicked copy of the sound occurring when one blows one's nose which was associated with noise by the ancients. A feature of this root is that the consonant /ʃ/ is a "(sonic) mimicry of sound" (or "sound (sonic) mimicry"), whereas the consonant /m/ is a "(sonic) mimicry of articulation" (or "articulation (sonic) mimicry") - it's a situation when the phone is felt by the speaker when they operate their speech apparatus but whose realisation itself doesn't produce any phone. Such an "articulation phone" is audible only when it's neighboured by other phones unrelated to this one. To replicate the original form of the root "-ш-м-", the nasal consonant /m/ has to be replaced with an act of closing the mouth, and the preceding phone has to be slightly nasalised: [ˈʃ̣ːʷ̃ᵊṃ̆ʷᵊː], [ˈʃ̣ːʷ̃ᵊṃ̆ʷᵊː], ..., [ˈʃ̣ːʷ̃ᵊṃ̆ʷᵊː]. The consonants /r/ and /k/, /ɦ/, in the verbs "шмаркати", "шморгати", are harder to explain. After blowing our nose, we may pull the nasal mucus back. This pulling act can be represented by the ingressive consonant /ʀ̥↓/, whereas the act of swallowing the nasal mucus which ends the whole process by the ingressive consonant /k↓/ or /ɦ↓/ ([ˈʃ̣ːʷ̃ᵊṃ̆ʷᵊː ʀ̥̣↓ːḳ↓], [ˈʃ̣ːʷ̃ᵊṃ̆ʷᵊː ʀ̥̣↓ːḳ↓], ..., [ˈʃ̣ːʷ̃ᵊṃ̆ʷᵊː ʀ̥̣↓ːḳ↓]). The connection between the nose and the noise can be corroborated on the following groups of cognates: the Ukrainian "сопля" (a piece of nasal mucus), "сопіти" ("to puff", "to snore", "to snort"), and "спати" ("to sleep"), and the English "sneeze" and "snooze".

(02:41:39) The ingressive consonant that turned into the egressive one may be found in the Ukrainian noun "сік" for "juice", the Kabardian "шху" and the Adyghe "щхыу" for "sour milk", the Abkhaz "а́-хш" and the Abaza "хшы́" for "milk", and perhaps the Ukrainian adjective "кислий" for "sour". Notwithstanding that the Northwest Caucasian languages are ergative and are not Indo-European, all these terms still may be cognate - the root they have likely reflects the sound of sucking liquid (maybe a sour one). For the same reason, the English "suck" is probably also cognate with the Ukrainian "сік". The order of the consonants in their root, "-с-к-" / "-ш-х-" / "-щ-х-" or "-к-с-" / "-х-ш-", seems to be irrelevant - it's more likely that the original sound was repetitive, such that either of the consonants in the sequence could have been selected to be first, and therefore was mimicked in both the ways: [ɕ̣ᵊ↓x̣ʷᵊ↓ː ɕ̣ᵊ↓x̣ʷᵊ↓ː ... ɕ̣ᵊ↓x̣ʷᵊ↓ː], [x̣ᵊ↓ɕ̣ʷᵊ↓ː x̣ᵊ↓ɕ̣ʷᵊ↓ː ... x̣ᵊ↓ɕ̣ʷᵊ↓ː]. The Ukrainian noun "сік" means not only "juice" but also "sap" (in other words, "tree juice"), and we know the context in which juice, milk, and trees appear together - it's Herodotus's description of the Argippaians. The tree whose fruits have the "black juice" is the plum. "It is about the size of a fig-tree," - true. "This bears a fruit the size of a bean, containing a stone," - almost true. Apparently it's not the size of its fruit but the size of the stone of its fruit that is equal to that of a bean, or, more precisely, of a broad bean ("κύαμος" in Ancient Greek). "This they either lick up or drink mixed with milk, and from its lees, that is the solid part, [or "of the thickest of the lees of it" according to Alfred Denis Godley] they make cakes [that is fruitcakes, "παλάθαι"] and use them for food," - in my view, these lees are not connected to any liquid, it's just prunes, dried plums, which indeed are used in preparing cakes and other sweet dishes. In the Ukrainian language, a dried plum, or prune, is called "чорнослив" which literally means "black plum", and it's indeed black unlike the juice itself. It's also possible that the narrative about the "black juice" appeared in the aftermath of the influence of the Ukrainian language in the Caucasus. The Ukrainian noun "слива" for "plum" may come from the verb "лити" ("to pour"), whereas the English "plum" may be cognate with the English verb "ply" whose root "-p-l-" is found in such Ukrainian words as "пливти" / "плисти" / "плавати" ("to swim") and "плин" ("flow") and may be also onomatopoeic - I will say what it may have been mimicked from a bit later. That's why, I think, Herodotus writes about the "black juice". His description can be viewed as one more way to justify the existence of a link between the Ukrainian "сік" and the corresponding Caucasian words. Besides, in the Ukrainian language, there is yet another word whose cognates can be found in the Northwest Caucasian languages. The Ukrainian noun "бджола" meaning "bee" shares the common phonemic block with the Kabardian "бжьэ" and the Adyghe "бжьэ" (also meaning "bee"). Mimicry, or sonic mimicry, explains the emergence of the first atomic morphemes, or, more accurately, "sonemes", that constituted the speech of proto-humans. Every such morpheme represented some specific natural sound it mimicked and, as a result, some basic set of ideas or meanings directly connected to this sound. But to acquire a new idea or meaning, the morpheme was then applied by the ancients to a bunch of the elements - like objects, processes, actions, etc. - that accompanied the source of the sound in the same context. It can be imagined as a picture gallery where every picture is titled a sentence in a language nobody knows. And if we wanted to understand what it means, the first thing we would try would be assigning every word in the title to a specific element in the picture. We will not know whether our assumption is correct, but our attempt will resemble the way how the ancients attributed a sound they heard - either immediately from the source or from other people - to the elements belonging to the same context. An ancient hearing the sound [ḳʷᵊˈṇʷᵊ] could have associated it not only with an or the horse but also with an or the person riding it. The person riding a horse is the knight. The word "knight" indeed has the consonants /k/ and /n/, though the first one is not pronounced in modern English. According to Юрий Иванович Венелин (Yuriy Ivanovich Venelin), the title "knyaz'" means the same, "horse rider". That's why cognates can be similar in pronunciation but different in meaning, and that was the way the Proto-Human language or languages expanded: the same process could have started at different sites at the same time or in different times, and we currently don't know for certain whether such human species as Homo ergaster and Homo neanderthalensis were able to speak as we do or at least in a similar way - the study of mimicry might be an extra tool to bring us closer to the answer. After humans created some first sonemes, they started combining them into bases (such as morphemes and stems) and then into words, clauses, and sentences. The development of languages was probably not that linear, but the main trend must have been like this. Sonemes are like pictograms or ideograms used in Egyptian or Chinese. But while the Egyptian or Chinese character depicts some "visual image", the soneme reflects a "sonic image", a sequence of which shapes a word. If there existed a museum of the Proto-Human language or languages, the picture gallery of sonemes would be part of it. The world's first Linguistic Educational Museum founded in Ukraine in 1992 is not enough.

(02:47:11) The root in the Ukrainian verb "сікти" ("to chop"), "-с-к-" (which may be unrelated to that in the word "сік" ("juice")), or its part "-к-", may have been produced by mimicry as well. The onomatopoeic sequence possibly comes from the sound of an axe chopping wood: either - [ṣᵊˈḳᵊ], [ṣᵊˈḳᵊ], ..., [ṣᵊˈḳᵊ]; or - [ḳᵊ], [ḳᵊ], ..., [ḳᵊ]. The phoneme /s/ might also be connected to the breathing of the performer (in linguistic terms, agent). The choice of consonants is strongly determined by the way the original sound was performed and the place in the speech apparatus a human felt resonance in.

(02:47:55) The Ukrainian verbs "чиркати" ("to strike" as in "to strike a match") and "зиркати" ("to dart a look"), in my view, share the same root, "-ч-р-" / "-з-р-". But the form "-ч-р-" is closer to the original sound - it's a mimicry of rubbing two objects together like a flint and a steel, a flint and an iron pyrites, or two flints to build a fire: [t͡ʃ̣ˠᵊˈɹ̣ˠᵊ], [t͡ʃ̣ˠᵊˈɹ̣ˠᵊ], ..., [t͡ʃ̣ˠᵊˈɹ̣ˠᵊ]. It appears likely that the same root is found in the English noun "chert", which is a synonym of the term "flint", and the noun "flint" shares the same root with the noun "flame". In the last case, the same root, "-f-l-" / "-p-l-", is found in such Ukrainian nouns as "полум'я" ("flame") and probably "плем'я" ("tribe"). The root "-з-р-", which is cognate with the root "-ч-р-", is the same root as in the noun "зір" ("eyesight"), "озеро" ("lake"), and "дзеркало" ("mirror"). The connection between these nouns is not only explicable but is also proveable. Because similar ones are found in the following pairs of English words: "water" - "to watch", "sea" - "to see", "lake" - "to look". Before the invention of glass, the only places where humans could see their reflection were water bodies. At the same time, the verb "чиркати" ("to strike") may be related to the Ukrainian adjective "чорний" ("black"). Because fire was the only way to see in darkness. That's how and why the root "-ч-р-" in the word "чорний" and the root "-дз-р-" in the word "дзеркало" are likely cognate. The suffix "-к-" in "чиркати" is a probable example of the articulation mimicry, which means that it was not mimicked from the sound heard. It can also be viewed as a breath stopper similar to that in the verb "бекати" ("to bleat"), possibly being this type of mimicry as well. The root "-b-l-" in the word "black", I think, may correspond to the root "-f-l-" / "-p-l-" in the English "flame", Ukrainian "полум'я" (for "flame"), English "flint", Ukrainian "плем'я" ("tribe"), Ukrainian "палати" ("to flame"), but, in addition, the Ukrainian "плавати" ("to swim") and "плин" ("flow"). In this case - and this needs to be verified - the root "-п-л-" denotes fire extinguishing and combines the antonymic ideas in itself, and this is what it may sound: [ˈp̣͡ɸ̣ʷːḷʰ], [ˈp̣͡ɸ̣ʷːḷʰ], ..., [ˈp̣͡ɸ̣ʷːḷʰ].

(02:50:17) The list of onomatopoeic roots can be continued. The Ukrainian verb "цьомати" ("to kiss") also likely has one, and it's mimicked from the act of kissing: [ṃ̆ʷ↓ˈṭ͡ṣ↓ᵊ], [ṃ̆ʷ↓ˈṭ͡ṣ↓ᵊ], ..., [ṃ̆ʷ↓ˈṭ͡ṣ↓ᵊ]. The consonants /m/ and /t͡s/ are pronounced almost at one and the same time - that's why humans could have ordered them in any way as they built spoken language. The reason why the consonant /t͡s/ appears earlier in the word "цьомати" than /m/ is because the first consonant is closer to the throat, and, when people speak, they usually breathe out the air rather than draw in.

The root "-сип-" in the Ukrainian verb "сипати" ("to pour" as in "to pour sand") seems to be simply mimicked from the act of pouring some powdery substance: [ˈṣᵊːp̣̆], [ˈṣᵊːp̣̆], ..., [ˈṣᵊːp̣̆], where the consonant /p/ is another type of breath stopper. Whether the Ukrainian noun "пісок" ("sand") has the same root but reverse is yet to be verified.

The Ukrainian words "гамати" ("to eat") and "гамір" ("tumult") probably share the same onomatopoeic root "-гам-" which reflects the sound of eating food: [ˈḥɑ̣ṃṃ̆↓ṭ͡ɕ̣↓], [ˈḥɑ̣ṃṃ̆↓ṭ͡ɕ̣↓], ..., [ˈḥɑ̣ṃṃ̆↓ṭ͡ɕ̣↓]. What confirms the connection between these two words is the English pair "tummy - tumult". It's also worth noting that, most likely, the root of the Spanish verb "comer" ("to eat") is another form of the root "-гам-". This means that, to identify cognates, we should look not for words similar in meaning but for morphemes similar in pronunciation, or sometimes in writing, whose relatedness can be verified (and now we know how). Otherwise, our reconstructions of sound changes may be incorrect. This also points to the conclusion that there was not necessarily only one Proto-Human language. Our observations neither prove this nor refute.

(02:52:11) The Ukrainian noun "хвиля" ("wave", "breaker"), the verbs "коливати" ("to swing") and "колихати", "колисати" ("to sway", "to rock", "to lull") have somewhat different and somewhat similar roots. And they all may also be onomatopoeic and, oddly, may represent the same idea - "waves breaking on the shore". In the case of the word "хвиля", the original from which the root was mimicked may sound like this: [ˈx̣͡ɸ̣ʷːʊ̣ːḷʰ], [ˈx̣͡ɸ̣ʷːʊ̣ːḷʰ], ..., [ˈx̣͡ɸ̣ʷːʊ̣ːḷʰ]. We could have thought that the consonant /l/ belongs to a different morpheme in the noun "хвиля", but the consonants in the root of the verb "коливати" ("to swing") might have been mimicked from the same three original sounds but in a different order: [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷɸ̣], [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷɸ̣], ..., [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷɸ̣]. Likely in the same way emerged the verbs "колихати" and "колисати" ("to sway", "to rock", "to lull"): [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷʰː], [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷʰː], ..., [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷʰː]; [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷᶿː], [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷᶿː], ..., [ˈx̣ʷɵ̣ːḷᶿː]. The question I asked myself is whether the name "Colchis" is connected to the Ukrainian verb "колихати". We know that the history of ancient Colchis is closely tied to the Egyptian king Σέσωστρις or Σεσόωσις. An Egyptian word that is close to "Colchis" is the name of the Egyptian goddess Kauket, the female counterpart of the god Kek, the god of primordial darkness. In the source known as the Greek Magical Papyri, the name of this goddess is spelt as "Χουχ". Kek and Kauket belong to the so-called Ogdoad, the eight primordial Egyptian deities. The Greek Magical Papyri names them as follows: "Η" and "Ω" (possibly Heh and Hauhet, the god and the goddess of infinity and eternity), "Χω" and "Χουχ" (the first one seems to be Kek, the second is Kauket), "Νουν" and "Ναυνι" (Nu and Naunet, the god and the goddess of the primordial watery abyss), "Ἀμοῦν" and "Ἀμαυνι" (Amun and Amunet, the god and the goddess of the air). We know that the Persian name of the Taman' Peninsula "Siyâh Guyâ" and the name of its city "T'mutorokan'" mean "blackly-speaking", and this correlates with the idea that the name "Colchis" can be related to the Egyptian goddess Kauket. Regardless of whether "Colchis" is an Egyptian or Ukrainian appellation (because I guess it was initially an Egyptian word reinterpreted by the Scythians into the Ukrainian language; reinterpreted!, not! distorted - it's important to understand the difference), I suppose that the stories about the Amazons, about the Egyptian king Psammetichus, and about their encounter with the Scythians who were called by some the Arameans, describe the history of the development of human languages, the history of the spread of human speech. And the Ogdoad may symbolise it. To create anything, one needs some space as a basis - Heh and Hauhet created such a basis for the whole world, the infinite space, the universe. But in it, there was nothing yet. To build something, one needs "nothing". This "nothing" was created by Kek and Kauket in the form of primordial darkness. It symbolises the absence of light and sound, silence, speechlessness. Then, Nu and Naunet created "something", they laid the foundation of the ability to speak and the ability to light. But the speech was chaotic, like a noise - that's why they are gods of the watery abyss. Everything we create is created for some purpose. This purpose is to spread our creation. Amun and Amunet spread the human speech, light, knowledge, across the globe. That's why they are gods of the air - because thanks to the air, the invisible cloth on the top of the universe, we can spread all of them, and, having been given such an ability, we can wander it - we become nomads. Maybe that's why the Taman' Peninsula was called "blackly-speaking" or probably "darkness-speaking" - it means "to hiss like a snake", whisperingly. The Taman' Peninsula might have been a cradle of some language. Into Ukrainian, the word "cradle" is translated as "колиска", and it's directly related to the verb "колихати". The cradle is a place where sleeps a child. This child is the Colchis dragon that was lulled to sleep by the witch Μήδεια in the tale about the Argonauts of which Heracles was a crew member. (02:56:50) And that's why, according to Διόδωρος, in the view of some ancients, the Sauromatae were descendants of the Medians. Yuriy Venelin interpreted the term "Sauromatae" as "lizard-eyed". I tried to reinterpret it to justify why they were confused with the Scythians and the Sarmatae, though, in fact, the Sauromatae have nothing to do with the Scythians nor with the Sarmatae nor with the Syrmatae, and in this video we will try to unveil their real ethnicity - the Sauromatae are not Slavs. In the previous video I suggested that the meaning or sense "blackly-speaking", or "darkness-speaking", for Siyâh Guyâ and T'mutorokan' may have been connected with Christianity. But now it seems that I was likely wrong. And I have probably mistakenly equated Kuyaba with Kuban'. This time I will provide another explanation of why Ibn Hawqal separated it from Rus', but not now.

Besides Colchis as a possible candidate for the cradle of some language, we already know one legend that indeed contains a linguistic narrative - (02:57:46) it's the tale about Heracles and his three sons: Ἀγάθυρσος, Γελωνός, and Σκύθης. The eldest son has the Germanic name "Hagaþyrs" or "Hagaþurs", which means "hawthorn", because he symbolises the Germanic languages. Γελωνός has the Baltic name "Geluonis", which means "sting", because he symbolises the Baltic languages, though the Gelonians themselves are not Baltic - most likely they were ancestors of present-day Belarusians and, additionally, maybe included the ancestors of present-day Lithuanians. Historically, "Lithuania" was the name of Belarus'. The Belarusian name "Літва" is compounded from the Belarusian verb "ліць" ("to pour") and the Belarusian deverbative noun-forming suffix "-тва". Lithuania owes its name to the Slavs that were known in the past under the name "Budini" which means "aquatic people": the Gelonians were part of the Budini, as we know. The Baltic (not necessarily Lithuanian) name of present-day Lithuania "Lietuva" used by present-day Lithuanians means almost the same as its Belarusian counterpart, but neither of them is a corruption of the other - roughly speaking, they are translations of each other, reinterpretations. "Reinterpretation!, not! distortion. Reinterpretation!, not! corruption." The youngest son Σκύθης symbolises the Slavic languages. In the previous videos, I've said this name is connected to the Ukrainian noun "сокіт" ("chattering"), but that's true only partly. The common feature of the names "Ἀγάθυρσος" and "Γελωνός" is that they all are related to a sharp object: in the first case, to the thorn; in the second, to the sting. The name "Σκύθης" is related to the sharp object known as the horn. The paradox of this name is that it can be also interpreted as related to the Ancient Ukrainian noun "*скіт" corresponding to the modern Ukrainian "скот" ("cattle"). In South Slavic countries, some people think that the name "Σκύθης" is linked with their South Slavic term "скитам се" (Bulgarian "I wander") or "skitati (se)" (Serbo-Croatian "to wander"). They are partly right because their verb indeed shares the same root with the Ukrainian noun "скот" ("cattle") - because to be a "wanderer" is the same as to be a "cattleman". The name of the Scythian ruler "Σκυθάρκης" mentioned by Κτησίας ο Κνίδιος (Ctesias of Cnidus) in his "Περσικά" ("Persica") who lived in the 5th-4th century BCE corresponds to the Ukrainian word "скотарка" and means "cattlewoman". Her original name was either "Скітарка", "Скитарка", or "Скутарка" - I doubt that "Σκυθάρκης" is a Greek word. The Ukrainian words "сокіт" ("chattering") and "скот" ("cattle") are cognate, in the same way as the English "cattle" and "chatter" share the same root, and in the same way as does the Ancient Greek "νομάς" ("pastoralist"), "νομός" ("pasture"), and "ὄνομα" ("name"). In the Indo-European linguistic culture, at least in it, the cattle is linked with the human speech. That's why "Σκύθης" means both "cattleman" (or "wanderer") and "chatterer", just like the Scythian name "Ταργιτάος" (Ukrainian "Таргича") means "cattleman" and "one who speaks" together - because "тарган" ("smoke-coloured ox") and "тарготіти" ("to prattle") share the same root as well.

The connection between the human speech and the horned cattle is also found in the term "Rugian" we analysed in the previous video. The Rugians were cattlemen and, because the Polish "róg" means "horn", were called so. (03:01:00) But the Polish "róg" is cognate with the Polish "rugać", "to scold", "to berate", the reflexive verb "rugać się" meaning "to scold each other", "to berate each other". Somewhat similar can be found in the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian has the verb "чубитися" meaning "to scuffle", but its first meaning is "to pull (tear) one another's hair" because it comes from the noun "чуб", "forelock". In the Polish linguistic culture of those days, the argument may have already been connected to the top part of the head. (03:01:31) This would explain why Iordanes derives the Slavic tribes / peoples under the names "Antes" (or "Antae") and "Sclaveni" from the Venethi (that is the Vistula Veneti), whereas Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς (Procopius of Caesarea) in his "History of the Wars" (or "Ὑπὲρ τῶν Πολέμων Λόγοι"; in the translation by Henry Bronson Dewing) derives them from the Spori (or Σπόροι). "Σπόροι" is a Slavic name that corresponds, among others, to the Polish "spór" (the plural "spory") meaning "dispute", "disagreement". (03:02:03) "Venethi" corresponds to the Polish "wieniec" which means "wreath", "garland", or "antlers". We remember that the name of the Rugians is linked to the horns of the deer - that may be a reason why the Antae are called the Antae. (03:02:17) On the other hand, the name "Antae" may be connected to the English or English-related "vaunt" ("to speak boastfully"). What is astonishing is that both "antler" and "vaunt", in the view of linguists, come from their Old French counterparts - we know too little of the English language. (03:02:34) The Polish word "wieniec" connects the horns of the deer with the garland of flowers because this garland was worn on the head or neck. We remember that Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος mentions the tribe of the ῥουτΐκλοιοι associated by some scholars with the Rugians. He places them approximately between the river Oder and the river Vistula on the territory of Poland. In the previous video I've suggested that "ῥουτΐκλοιοι" may mean "rue-headed" or "rue-necked", and the names of the Venethi and the Antae seem to confirm that. (03:03:07) Besides, the name "Antae", oddly, too much resembles the Ancient Greek "ἄνθος" meaning "flower". The human speech is related not only to horns or flowers but also to the water. First because in the Slavic linguistic culture there are roots that connect the water and the plant: for instance, the root "-рос-" in the Ukrainian nouns "роса" ("dew") and "рослина" ("plant"). (The English "plant", by the way, contains the root "-p-l-" I spoke of before.) Ibn Rustah places the Russes on some dewy island. That explains why they were called "Russes" or "Rosses". They were called "рузі" because they lived on the territory "cut off from other lands", the plural noun "рузі" coming from the Rusyn verb "*рузати" ("to cut"). The island separated from the inland territory is the Crimean Peninsula. They were called "Rosses" because, on the one hand, they were cattlemen (because "розі" means "(two) horns"), but on the other hand, their name may be indeed connected with the term "роса" ("dew"). It looks like a pun, but this pun might be linguistic by nature - the term "Khazar" can be explained in the same way. (03:04:18) In the Primary Chronicle (the Laurentian Codex being on the left, the Hypatian Codex being on the right side of the slide), they are called "Козарѣ", "Козари", "Козаре", apparently because, relative to others, they were or were believed to be the goatherds - "козар" for "goatherd" comes from the Slavic noun "коза" meaning "goat". According to Al-Bakri, the Khazars, or Козарі́, had sheep which lambed two times per year. (03:04:44) But as they lived next to the Sea of Azov, some people might have called them "Косарі" because the noun "коса" means "spit". They might have been called "Козирі" (from "козир" meaning "royal suit") because they believed or indeed were descendants of the Royal Scythians, though it's debatable - the Royal Scythians, according to Herodotus, lived mainly in Kherson Oblast' and only partly near the river Tanais. The Khazars might have been called "Казарі" because they were "those who speak" - because the Ukrainian verb "казати" means "to say"; one the other hand, because they were "judges" - in the Polish language, the verb "kazać" means "to order" and "skazać" means "to convict", "to sentence". According to the account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan recorded by Yaqut al-Hamawi, the head of the Muslim community in Khazaria over which he exercised judicial jurisdiction was called "خز" ("khaz"). (By the way, in the Arabic language, the word "خز" also exists: it's a verb that means "to stab", "to pierce", "to transfix".) The real name of the Khazars, the name they called themselves, might have been preserved in the Schechter Letter. Contrary to the Khazar Correspondence where their name is spelt with a letter "כ" ("kaf") ("כזר"), in the Schechter Letter it starts with a letter "ק" ("qof") ("קזר"). A letter "ק" is also present in the name of the city of Kyiv in the Kyivan Letter ("קייוב"). Though I previously thought that this name may be Wendish, the letter "ק" refutes this idea. This word seems to be written with the Polish ending "-ów", but the original name is not necessarily Polish. Why do I mention these two names, "קזר" and "קייוב"? Because the letter "ק" and the Latin "q" are the reflections of each other. In the Romance languages and in English, the letter "q" is almost always followed by the letter "u". This sequence is pronounced in many cases as /kw/. But a similar one exists in the Ukrainian language, it's the consonant cluster "хв". "קייוב" contains a "ק" because the written word was pronounced "Kwijów" which derives either from the Ukrainian "квітнути", "квітити", Belarusian "квітнець", "квіцець", Polish "kwitnąć" - "to bloom", or the Polish "kwiecić" - "to adorn with flowers". That's why Kyiv was called "كويابة" ("Kuyaba") by the Arabic authors of the 10th century CE. The Arabic "و" ("wāw") in this name is not a vowel, it's a consonant. "Kuyaba" corresponds either to the Polish "Kwijów" or its genitive "Kwijowa", or the Belarusian "Квіяў" or its genitive "Квіявa". (In the Ukrainian language, the city would be called "Квіїв", and its genitive would be "Квієва".) That's why Κωνσταντῖνος Πορφυρογέννητος wrote down this name as "Κιοάβα", "Κιόβα", "Κιάβον" - he didn't know how to transliterate it: the Arabic letter "ا" ("ʾalif"), as this case shows, might represent not necessarily the vowel /a/ but the vowel /o/ or /u/. Kuyaba is not only a city but also a land which Ibn Hawqal separated from Rus' and quote unquote "Bulgaria" (without specifying where this quote unquote "Bulgaria" was) in one passage. If we assume that Kuyaba is indeed Kuban', who inhabited Crimea, then? The residents of Kuyaba? Unlikely. The quote unquote "Bulgarians" / "Bulgars"? Unlikely - in this model the "Bulgarians" / "Bulgars" will have to be the Danube Bulgarians. The Russes? Most likely yes. This explains why the Russes, according to Ibn Rustah, had the title Khakan-Rus'. The Russian Empire orientalist Авраам (Альберт) Яковлевич Гаркави (Abraham (Albert) Yakovlevich Harkavy) notes that the passage about the separation of these three lands agrees with the account of Ibn Fadlan. But Ibn Fadlan, unlike Al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal, according to Авраам Гаркави, doesn't mention Kuyaba as a Rus' city. It means that perhaps Kyiv didn't always belong to Rus' - Kuyaba and Rus' were separate lands, but then something changed.

(03:08:39) The word "קזר" with a "ק" can be read as "хвизар". In the Ukrainian language, the word "хвизанка" means the same as "ковзалка" / "ковзанка", "ice rink", and the verbs "ховзати" and "ковзати" mean "to skate". The verbs "ковзати", "ховзати", and "хвизати", have the common onomatopoeic root "-х-в-з-" that is mimicked from the sound of slipping: [ˌx̣͡ɸ̣ˈẓᵊ], [ˌx̣͡ɸ̣ˈẓᵊ], ..., [ˌx̣͡ɸ̣ˈẓᵊ]. The real name of the Khazars might have been "Хвизарі" or "Ковзарі": in other words, "Skaters". "קזר" with a "ק" corresponds to the form "хвизар", "כזר" with a "כ" corresponds to the form "ковзар", which is the same. The name of the Khazars may be related with the name of their river "Ковзань" but also with their title "ковган". Because, besides its meaning "wild boar", "ковган" also means "piece of ice". The names "Rus'" and "Khazar" connect the water with the horned cattle, which confirms the connection between the water and the human speech.

The name "Bulgarian" can be explained from the perspective of the Ukrainian language. The verb "булькати", "булькотати", "булькотіти", means "to bubble", the verb "белькотати", "белькотіти", means "to babble". I think you've got the point. "Bulgarian" means "one who bubbles" and "one who babbles", which is corroborated by the Schechter Letter. Their country is named, in that document, "Пійниль" ("פייניל"), "Floodland". The phoneme /g/ in their name might have developed under the influence of the Latin "vulgaris", but here I'm not sure.

The link between the human speech and the horns can be tracked down even in the Primary Chronicle. (03:10:19) It's reflected in the form of two names: Askold and Dir. The name "Askold" or "Oskold" (it's spelt differently in the Primary Chronicle) is connected to the verb "scold", and the name "Dir" or "Dird" (also spelt differently) is connected to the noun "deer" and the verb "deered" produced from this noun. "deered" is a synonym of the word "horned", and the prefix "a-" / "o-" in the name "Askold" / "Oskold" may denote the same as the English prefix "a-" in "aware", "alike", "awash", "abubble", maybe "abeat" - "ascold" may mean "scolding". If so, "Ascold" and "Deered" correspond to "Scolding" and "Horned". Though these names are Germanic, they may be related to the Rugians.

(03:11:03) The Bavarian Geographer mentions a tribe / people under the name "Caziri" which are usually equated with the Khazars. I think that the author simply recorded their Hebrew name coming from the Hebrew "קָצִיר" /katsiʀ/ meaning "harvest". The letter "z" ("dzeta") in this word should be pronounced /t͡s/, like the Italian "z" ("dzeta"). In the same way it should be pronounced in the name "Unlizi" because the Unlizi are the Ulichi. According to the Bavarian Geographer, they had three hundred and eighteen towns or cities, and thus were one of the most populous peoples on the list. "Уличи" / "Оуличи" may correspond to the Ukrainian name "Вуличі" coming from the Ukrainian noun "вулик" ("hive"). (Whether the Ukrainian "вулик" is cognate with the Ukrainian "вулиця" ("street") is yet to be established.) Some scholars think that the reason why their name on the list of the Bavarian Geographer starts with "Un-" is owing to the transliteration of the Church Slavonic letter "Ѫ ѫ" ("big yus"). Other scholars think that the Bavarian Geographer recorded the other form of their name "Вугличі": in the Greek language, it would be spelt with a "γλ" pronounced like /ŋgl/. They etymologise it differently. Some derive it from the noun "угол" (Ukrainian "вугол" - "corner", "angle") and connect their name with at least either of the following two places in south-eastern Ukraine: the first being the river Inhul, the other being the region Budjak which may be related with a similar Khazar toponym in the Khazar Correspondence; others analysed the possibility of its origination from the noun "уголь" (Ukrainian "вугілля" - "coal"). But I mentioned the Ulichi to show how to decipher one Scythian word left by Pliny the Elder in his "Naturalis Historia". (03:12:43) It also contains the letter "z", and this word is "Catizi". To decipher it, we have to use the proper Latin edition. The term "edition" usually denotes the "printed edition" and is not applied to manuscripts - to my regret, I didn't take this into account in my first video. (The term "manuscript" means "written by hand".) Pliny the Elder's "Naturalis Historia" is extant in a big number of manuscripts, and different printed editions, in general, may rely on any of them. If we don't know what manuscript is used in what edition, we have to start from the earliest ones because the later editions may depend on the previous. This time, I will not be providing you with several editions as I did before - it's time-consuming. Instead, I will be showing you the one where the Latin spelling of the terms being analysed in this video is very close or corresponds to the original text - the edition from 1470. According to the English translation by Harris Rackham, "Catizi" is a local name of one Scythian tribe. But in the Latin text by Pliny the Elder, they are not called "Catizi", they are called "Gatizi". Recalling that the Latin "z" can be pronounced /t͡s/ and understanding that, by analogy with the Ancient Greek "γ", the Latin "g" may represent the phoneme /ʒ/, we can decisively conclude that "Gatizi" or "Gatitsi" is just the Ukrainian name "Жатичі". The Ukrainian verb "жати" means "to reap", "to harvest", "to crop", "to mow". Among others, the Scythians were scythemen, mowers, croppers, reapers. "The whole of this region was occupied by the Scythian tribe called the Ploughmen [...] their name in the local dialect used to be [Жатичи] [that is Reapers, Mowers, Ploughmen]." For a similar reason the Khazars bear their name: not only because they were skaters, and not only because they were goatherds, but also because they were scythe-bearers. That's partly why they are known under different names. The Ukrainian word "козак" (which means "Cossack") probably appeared in the aftermath of the linguistic occurrence known as analogical change, namely contamination and perhaps folk etymology: "козак" is a blend of the nouns "косак" ("large knife"), "коса" ("scythe", "spit"), "коза" ("goat"), and maybe the verb "ковзати" ("to skate") - because, if not skaters, they were both goatherds and soldiers. The horned cattle are connected to the sharp weapon.

The depiction of the Khazars by Al-Bakri as shepherds is more applicable to the Hunni than to them, which may be an argument in favour of their confusion. (03:15:12) Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς, in his "History of the Wars", mentions two Hunnic groups of people - the Οὐτίγουροι and the Κουτρίγουροι - which he derives from two brothers with the respective names who lived in ancient times. Though in the Ukrainian language there is the word "вівгура" / "вовгура" (which means "wolfman"), the termination "-igur-" or "-gur-" is way too rare in it. But a similar suffix exists in Germanic languages. (03:15:36) And not merely Germanic, this suffix might be Scandinavian corresponding to the Old Norse "-igr" and the English "-y". But the first parts of these two names may be Slavic - it means that the original ones were Germanicised by Germanic speakers. (03:15:50) The word "Οὐτίγουροι" can be legitimately reread as "Овчигури" / "Овчігури" which means either "sheepmen", that is "sheep farmers" or "shepherds" (if the name's termination is the same as in the word "вівгура" / "вовгура"), or "sheep-like" (in the case of the Germanic termination) - because the singular noun "sheep" (or to be accurate, "ewe" - "female sheep") is translated into the Ukrainian "вівця" whose genitive plural is "овець". The second name also can be related with sheep. "Κουτρίγουροι" can be reread as "Куч(е)ригури" / "Куч(е)рігури". "кучері" means "curls". They are what sheep wear on their body. It's known that at least one time per year domestic sheep have to be shorn. Not doing this can lead to their death. The appellations "Οὐτίγουροι" and "Κουτρίγουροι" denote two related professions. While the Οὐτίγουροι were sheep grazers, the Κουτρίγουροι produced goods from their wool. The Ukrainian word for "wool" is "вовна". And the word "вовна" is likely cognate with the Ukrainian word "овен". The latter is usually applied to the constellation of the Ram, known as Aries. But in the past, it was likely used as a denotation of the male sheep, and the name "Hunni" confirms this. Their name was not pronounced "Гуни" in the Ukrainian language, it was pronounced "Овни". The original name was transcribed or transliterated into the Greek "Οὖννοι", but because the Greek "ου" is standardly pronounced /u/, the Овни became the Hunni. That's one more evidence that nails the idea of the Hunni being Turkic, Mongolic, etc. - this drivel has nothing to do with science. The Goths and the Hunni were neighbours. And if the Goths are Germanic, why do you think that their neighbours were not Slavs but Turks or even Mongolians? Because the Germanics and the Slavs were neighbours, they were sometimes confused. (03:17:36) Paulus Orosius in his "Histories against the Pagans" (or "Historiae adversus paganos") (in the translation by Irving Woodworth Raymond with corrections) mentions one Hunnic and one Gothic leader together, Uldin and Sarus. But Paulus Orosius doesn't say that Uldin was the leader of the Hunni or that Sarus was the leader of the Goths. "Uldin" is a Germanic name ("Gülden" which means "golden"), "Sarus" may be a Slavic name ("Заря" or "Žár" which means "glow"). The last one is not necessarily Ukrainian. Though in the "broad sense" the Slavs might have been collectively referred to as the Hunni, as their first mention and even the account of Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς tie them to the Caucasus, the Hunni in the "narrow sense" could have spoken Ukrainian only. Σωζομενός (Sozomen) doesn't write that Οὖλδις (that is Uldin) was the leader of the Hunni, he calls him simply the leader of the tribes dwelling near the river Ἴστρος, he says neither that he was a Hunnic nor a Gothic leader. Φιλοστόργιος (Philostorgius) also doesn't say that Sarus was a Goth, nor Ζώσιμος (Zosimus). Though Ζώσιμος indeed calls Οὔλδης (that is Uldin) the Hunnic leader, he lived long time after Paulus Orosius. On the other hand, we cannot say that all Hunnic leaders bore Slavic names. For example, the names "Attila" and "Bleda" (the name of Attila's brother) might be Germanic. This would explain why Attila's son Dintzic, Denzicus, Δεγγιζίχ, or Δινζίριχος, bore the name he bore. The names with such terminations are usually common among Germanic speakers, though I'm not stating yet that this particular name is Germanic. Another Hunnic leader bore the name "Ἀμβαζούκης". (03:19:12) They are mentioned by Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς. Though he writes that Ἀμβαζούκης is a Hun by birth, their name might be Armenian. The Armenian original might be "անբազուկ" ("Anbazuk") which means "impotent", "powerless". "բազուկ" ("bazuk") means "power". The prefix "ան-" ("an-") means the same as the English affixes "un-" and "-less". According to Προκόπιος, Ἀμβαζούκης died of some disease which might confirm my point. The fact that some Hun is mentioned under an Armenian name says about their influence in this region. But how was it established? After Ἀμβαζούκης died, "Cabades overpowered his sons and took possession of the [Caspian] Gates". Cabades is Kavad I, the father of Khosrow I Anushirvan. What connects the Hunni and Armenia is the Khazar invasions of it. The invasions that were ascribed by Qudama ibn Ja'far and Movses Khorenatsi to the Khazars were committed by the Hunni several centuries before. Διονύσιος ὁ Περιηγητής places the Hunni near the Caspian Sea, approximately in the same place where were found the Massagetae and the historical Derbent whose location there is no reason to reconsider. The Khazars, or the Hunni, invaded Armenia from the area of Derbent through the territory of Caucasian Albania. Approximately down the same path, the Scythians invaded the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Besides such words that can be ascribed to the Hunni as "страва", "мед", maybe "квас", probably "вівгура", possibly "рожань", definitely "овен", likely "вовна", and perhaps "вівця" and "кучері", (03:20:42) there is one more Hunnic word that is Slavic or again Ukrainian - "дохня" recorded by Μένανδρος Προτίκτωρ (Menander Protector). In the Greek text of his "History" it's written "δόχια", but we know from the previous video that the Scythian appellation "Κατίαροί" is the Ukrainian "качнярі". (The version "кавчарі" has to be rejected.) Not everyone would be able to realise that this word is Hunnic because Μένανδρος Προτίκτωρ thinks it's Turkic. In the translation by Спиридон Юрьевич Дестунис (Spiridon Yurievich Destunis), he writes that, by this word, the Turks call the rites over the dead. But in the same passage he mentions the Hunnic captives whom the Turks are going to sacrifice and the Turkic leader Τούρξανθος who talked to them in their language. It was a day of mourning: there recently died the father of Τούρξανθος Διλζίβουλος, and Τούρξανθος ordered the Hunnic captives to communicate a message to him. The name of the rite "дохня" comes from the Ukrainian verb "дохнути" which means "to die", "to perish", "to croak", and can be translated as "execution" or "occurrence of croaking". To make their unfounded claims, scholars never properly studied the Hunnic, the Scythian, the Khazar, or any other related lexicon. They either didn't attempt or didn't do this professionally.

We've shown that the terms "Rus", "Khazar", "Scythian", "Hun", are all connected to the cattle, and some of them are connected to the sharp object, the human speech, and/or the water. The tale about the three sons of Heracles not just says about the existence of the three language families - Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic - but possibly also reflects the ancient belief in their origin from one common ancestor. Besides, what son is assigned what language is not arbitrary. The reason for Σκύθης being the youngest son is that the Slavic languages are autochthonous and the speakers of the two other families left their abode. The middle son symbolises the Baltic languages because the Baltic languages are closer to the Slavic than the Germanic - the difference between the age of the middle son and the youngest is less than between the age of the eldest son and the youngest. That's why the Germanic languages are represented by the eldest son. The youngest son didn't leave his abode because according to the custom of the appanage he receives the land of his father.

The point that the Scythians are autochthonous may explain why Deucalion, (03:22:54) the man who survived the "great inundation" (or "great flood") and from whom our present mankind sprang according to the treatise from the 2nd century CE "On the Syrian Goddess" (or "Περὶ τῆς Συρίης Θεοῦ") supposedly left by Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς (Lucian of Samosata) (in the translation by Thomas Francklin) and who is considered to be the son of Prometheus, is called a Scythian. As well known, Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus Mountains and freed by Heracles, one of the Argonauts whose crew reached ancient Colchis, next to which dwelt the Scythians. The term "Scythian" means several things, and one of its meanings is "one who speaks". The tale about Deucalion might be connected to the development of human speech and the emergence of some proto-language in the Caucasus region. And the "great inundation" or "great flood" might have happened in the same place. On the other hand, a "great flood" is what can stop a "long-lasting drought". The person who reportedly defeated one was the Egyptian pharaoh Nefer-ka-sokar who might have been associated with the god Ὄσιρις, and the name "Ὄσιρις" is probably also connected to the water as I've suggested before. Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς writes that according to some of the Byblians Ὄσιρις was buried in their city. And as we remember, some of the ancients connected Byblos to the Scythians as well. But we can say that some link between Scythia and Egypt exists anyway. According to Herodotus, the Scythians had seven gods. And we know that four of them have Slavic names, two of them have Greek names, and one of them is Ἄρης. (03:24:23) I think that Ὧρος and Ἄρης are one and the same deity because by Ἄρης Herodotus also calls the Egyptian Ὧρος. The name of this god means "falcon", and when the Scythians called themselves Σκολότοι ("соколячі" - "falcon-like"), they meant that they are children of Ἄρης, children of the Falcon. That's why "they didn't make images, altars or temples to any except him". All the previous versions of mine regarding his name have to be rejected - they are wrong. The Egyptian version seems to be only possible.

The Scythian gods with Greek names are Ἀργίμπασα and Θαγιμασάδας. To be accurate, these names come from the Ancient Greek "Ἀρχίμπασα" and "Θαχιμαξάδας" or "Θαχυμαξάδας" and became Scythian-adopted. My previous point that a copyist replaced the letter "ξ" with "σ" is most likely wrong too. The name "Θαγιμασάδας" is not the only Greek name in the account of Herodotus that has such a termination. The Indo-Iranian fantasisers lost the connection with reality to such an extent that in their view the name "Ὀκταμασάδης" is also Indo-Iranian. (03:25:25) At least once in your life, you probably heard such a musical term as "octave". The Ancient Greek "ὀκτώ" means "eight", "ἅμαξα" means "waggon", the Greek "αμαξάδα" means "drive (by horse-drawn vehicle)" - "Ὀκταμαξάδης" means "octopus", "sea creature or monster with eight legs". (03:25:44) The name of his borther Σκύλης is probably Greek as well and means either "dog" (like the Ancient Greek "σκύλαξ" and the Greek "σκύλος") or "dogfish" (like the Ancient Greek "σκύλιον"). At this stage I don't think that any of these words has anything to do with the word "Σκολότοι".

(03:26:02) The gods with Slavic names are as follows: "Гойтозир" (this transcription is more probable than "Гойтозір"; the name comes from the Ukrainian "гоїти зір", "to heal eyesight"), "Ваби" or "Вабія" (the rest of the decipherments previously suggested are wrong; the first appellation is a plural noun, the second one is singular; comes from "вабити", "to (sexually) attract", but the first phoneme might have been /w/, as in Polish, instead of /ʋ/ - "Łaby", "Łabi(j)a"), "Чавиці" or "Чавиця" (the first one is a plural noun or a singular noun with a plural-like form, the second one is singular; the other versions should be rejected for now; comes from "чавити", "to squeeze"), and "Бабай". Бабай is the god of fear. Though he is a Scythian god according to Herodotus, his name is easier to explain with the Polish language. The Polish reflexive verb "bać się" means "to fear". Its non-reflexive counterpart "bać" is almost never used except some phrases like "nie bój żaby". But if it were common, it would mean "to scare". And it seems it was common because it's present in the name "Бабай", twice. But why? Бабай, as a character in Slavic folklore, at night, takes those children who don't sleep. Бабай is sometimes described as a lame old man. But what is the connection between an old man and a child? The age, the height, and the size, are bigger than that of a child. Every /ba/ in the name "Бабай" is a mimicry of stamping a foot: [ˈb̥a ˈb̥a]. Every /ba/ is a step of a giant: [ˈp̥ʰa ˈp̥ʰa]. This mimicry is also reflected in the Egyptian language. The hieroglyph representing the consonant /b/ is depicted as the lower leg there. And this /ba/ can also be found in the Ukrainian verb "стрибати" ("to jump"). The last consists of the two roots: "стри-" is probably connected with soaring up into the air - because the same part "стри-" is present in the name of the Slavic god of wind Стрибог; and "-ба-" denotes the impact of feet on the ground. "стрибати" can be literally understood as "up and down". Thus I reject my previous linguistic interpretations of the name "Бабай".

But the list of the Scythian deities is bigger. The name of one more is recorded in an inscription found in Crimea dating back to the 2nd century BCE. (03:28:26) The inscription is presented in the work of the Russian scholar Юрий Германович Виноградов (Yuriy Germanovich Vinogradov) titled "A votive inscription of the daughter of the king Skilur from Panticapaeum and problems of the history of Scythia and the Bosporan Kingdom in the 2nd c. BCE" (in the original Russian - "Вотивная надпись дочери царя Скилура из Пантикапея и проблемы истории Скифии и Боспора во II в. до н.э."). The inscription was found on the marble offering table in the sanctuary of the goddess acting as the Greek Artemis-Hecate. Artemis and Hecate are two different goddesses, but their images are not always easy to distinguish without inscriptions. But it's enough to know that both of them are lunar deities which means that they are linked with the night. Such a Scythian lunar goddess mentioned in the Crimean inscription is called "Διθαγοια". Her name comes from the Ukrainian phrase "гоїти дітей", "to heal children". But of what? When children are in pain or feel ill, they may cry. They may also cry when they have bad dreams. Дітагоя or Дитягоя heals children of nightmares. She protects them from the night evil. Elementary. One may accuse Herodotus of lying. But inscriptions, unlike Herodotus, cannot lie. The Indo-Iranian or Turkic fantasisers don't even understand what they research. That's why I say they are incompetent. That's why I say their statements have nothing to do with science. "Дітагоя" or "Дитягоя", because of the consonant /d/, the vowel /i/, /ɪ/, and the consonant /t/, is a Ukrainian or a Czech name. The Czech option seems unlikely to me, though the name of the Scythian goddess of the hearth, Ταβιτί, can be explained from the Czech perspective - "Ταβιτί", besides the Ukrainian "чавити", may correspond to the Czech verb "tavit" and the Slovak "taviť", "to melt (down)". But in this case, it would mean that this name might not be Scythian because the name of the river Tanais (Τάναϊς) comes from the Ukrainian verb "танути" ("to melt") and it's unique relative to its semantic analogues in the rest of the Slavic languages. (03:30:34) That "Tanais" is the same as "Melting" (as in "the Melting river") is corroborated by Pliny the Elder's account:

"The Tanais, itself is called by the natives the Silis, and the Maeotis the Temarunda, which means in their language 'the mother of the sea.' There is also a town at the mouth of the Tanais."

Pliny the Elder mentions the river Silis two times. The first time, he writes that it was the river Tanais that was called "Silin" (or "Silis"), but the second time that it was the river Ἰαξάρτης (Jaxartes) that was believed to be the Tanais by Alexander the Great and called "Sylin" (or "Sylis") by the Scythians. (03:31:12) The correct name for the river Tanais is "Sylin" / "Sylis" because in several Finnic languages including Finnish the adjective "sula" means "molten", "melted", "thawed". Furthermore, (03:31:25) the river Don is called today "Don" because in the Azerbaijani language "don" means "frozen" or "frost" and in Turkish "frost". At the same time, (03:31:35) "Temarunda" is spelt in the 1470 edition as "Temerinda", which should mean, according to Pliny the Elder, "the mother of the sea". And that's almost true. (03:31:45) Into the Finnish language, "mother of the seas" is translated as "äitee merien". In Estonian, Finnish, and Proto-Finnic, (03:31:53) the word "meri" means "sea". Its genitive plural in Estonian is "merede"; in Finnish, "merten" or "merien"; in Proto-Finnic, "*merden" or "*meriden". (03:32:04) "the mother of the seas" can be translated into Proto-Finnic as "*äitei meriden" - "temerinda". But the language in which these names were spoken is closer to Finnish than Estonian. Roughly speaking, it seems to be the Ancient Finnish language. Though I'm not stating that it's Proto-Finnic, (03:32:21) the Proto-Finnic "*äitei" is borrowed from the Proto-Germanic "*aiþį̄". It means that the ancestors of the Finns were neighbours of the Germanic speakers. But the present-day situation is the same: the Finns are still their neighbours. Thus, it's unlikely that the Ancient Finns (along with the Ancient Estonians) lived near the Sea of Azov and then migrated to their present-day homes. They are most likely to be autochthonous: the Finns were the neighbours of the Germanic speakers in the past and they remain them today. But why does Pliny the Elder, speaking of the Scythians, mention Finnish terms? Because in the days of Pliny the Elder and even earlier, the Finno-Ugric tribes / peoples also were called Scythians. After Herodotus and probably after Alexander the Great, the knowledge about the north-eastern borders of Scythia significantly deteriorated. As a result of this deterioration, the Arctic Ocean received the name of the Scythian Ocean. And later, after the Turks appeared on the historical stage under the name of the Turks, some mediaeval authors associated them with the Scythians as well - as it can be seen, for instance, in "History" authored by Μένανδρος Προτίκτωρ from the 6th century CE.

The previous inscription is not the oldest one. An older one was found in Zaporizhzhia Oblast' in the burial ground Mamai-Hora in southern Ukraine, which is very close to Kherson Oblast'. To see it, (03:33:40) we will open the work of the Ukrainian historian Сергій Жанович Пустовалов (Serhii Zhanovych Pustovalov) titled "Did the Catacomb population of the Northern Black Sea region have any written language?" (in the original Ukrainian - "Чи була писемність у катакомбного населення Північного Надчорномор'я?"). To provide this image, he refers to the Ukrainian archaeologist Геннадій Миколайович Тощев (Hennadii Mykolaiovych Toshchev). The burial where this inscription was discovered is dated by scholars differently. The Ukrainian archaeologist Віталій Васильович Отрощенко (Vitalii Vasylyovych Otroshchenko) thinks that it belongs to the Zrubna (or Srubnaya) archaeological culture (1900-1200 BCE), whereas Сергій Пустовалов dates it back to the Catacomb period (2500-1950 BCE). We will be estimating its date at 1950-1900 BCE. The fact is that the inscription itself seems to be indeed written in the Catacomb signs. To decipher it, we will be relying on the research conducted by the Ukrainian scholar Ігор Миколайович Рассоха (Ihor Mykolaiovych Rassokha) titled "Indo-European origin of alphabetic systems and deciphering of the Byblos script". His work consists of two parts. The last is about his attempt to decipher the Byblos script proper; the first contains a table where different alphabetic systems are compared, including the signs of the Catacomb alphabet. The object on which the Catacomb characters are inscribed is called "pot" by Геннадій Тощев and Сергій Пустовалов. But it also resembles a jug (that is a pitcher). The word "pot", "jug" (or "pitcher", which is the same as "jug") is what we may expect to see in this inscription - and I think it's indeed present here but in a slightly different form. (03:35:16) The word "pitcher" is translated into Ukrainian as "збан" or "збанок" (alternative forms being "жбан", "дзбан", and so on), "little pitcher" as "збаня́", and the initial characters of the inscription suggest it comes first. The first four of them, according to Ihor Rassokha's table and my interpretation of the inscription, may correspond to the consonants /z/, /b/, /ɣ/, /n/. The second consonant is interpreted as /b/ not quite based on Ihor Rassokha's column for the Catacomb characters but on those for the rest: in particular the Phoenician and Elder Futhark runic characters. The next two signs seem to represent a suffix. The first phoneme in this suffix is an /i/- or /a/-like vowel - in Ihor Rassokha's table their signs look somewhat similar. The second one is the consonant /k/. Unlike the previous two consonants /ɣ/ and /n/ which are written top-to-bottom, these two ones are written bottom-to-top and appear to form a ligature. (In advance, I can say that this inscription is not the only one where the bottom-to-top direction is used, but the others will be shown another time.) The first word in the inscription in question is either "*збганик", which means "little jug" or "little pitcher", or "*збганяк" - simply "jug" or "pitcher". In the Ukrainian language, there is also the word "баняк" which means "metal pot", but whether it's related to the word "збан" in any way is unclear. But we can say why the previous form of the Ukrainian "збан" was "збган". Because "збган" is related to the perfect verb "збгати", "зібгати". The imperfect "бгати" or perfect "зібгати" means "to crumple", "to rumple". To make something from clay, clay is rumpled. The letter "з" in the word "збан" (like "ж" in "жбан" and "дз" in "дзбан") is a prefix. (03:37:03) This point seems to be corroborated by the Vedic Sanskrit word for "jug" "कुम्भ" (/kum.bʱɐ́/). The first syllable /kum/ is probably also a prefix, and the Latin "cum" is likely its morphemical counterpart. The Latin preposition "cum" means "with" as does the Ukrainian preposition "з". But these two prefixes and prepositions didn't develop from the same soneme. Most likely, the Proto-Human language contained both their prototypes. But in the future languages, their final realisations became different. The Proto-Human language might have been a sort of union of the morphemes of the modern languages, not their intersection from any perspective. When it emerged, it might have had many dialects since almost the very first day. The fact that the Ukrainian language probably has the prefixes "ж-" and "дз-" that are alternative forms of the prefix "з-" / "с-" seems incredible. But in the Ukrainian language there is a word with one more variant on it - "шлюб" ("marriage"). In Polish and Belarusian it also exists - "ślub" and "шлюб" respectively. And there is no such word in Russian. Why do I mention Russian? Because I'm also debunking the myth about the "great Russian culture". The word "шлюб" consists of a form of the prefix "с-" which can be literally translated as "with-" and the root "-люб-" which is present in the verb "любити" ("to like"). The term "шлюб" denotes two persons that like each other. Don't let the verb "like" instead of "love" confuse you because the Ukrainian word for "married couple" is "подружжя" where the root "-друг-" denotes the friend.

(03:38:33) Now, what does the second part of the inscription say? The next sign, I think, is a ligature of two (though such a character, not as a ligature, exists in the Byblos script). The first one probably represents the phoneme /o/, the second is the same as that in the first part of the inscription that was pronounced /ɣ/ in the previous case. In what order we should place them becomes clear after reading the next two, the first of which corresponds to the phoneme /r/, and the second to /u/, /v/, /w/, or a phoneme alike. The whole phrase, in terms of pronunciation, resembles one of the following options: "*збганик огру", "*збганяк огру", "*збганик охру", "*збганяк охру". In modern Ukrainian, it means, respectively, "збаник охри" ("little jug of ochre") or "збанок охри" ("jug of ochre"). Ochre or its traces are found in many graves at Mamai-Hora either under or on the skeletons of the buried people. In the grave with the jug, there are found its clods, the jug itself lying near the skeleton of a child. Ochre is encountered in the Catacomb burial places much more often than in those of the Zrubna (or Srubnaya) culture. Therefore, our dating of the inscription to 1950-1900 BCE is fair enough. Whether this inscription is written in a dialect of Proto-Slavic or in a separate Slavic language is what we can probably argue about. The word "ochre" in this inscription is a masculine noun; in modern Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian, Bulgarian, it's a feminine noun; in the other Slavic languages it's a masculine noun, but in Slovene it exists in both the genders: masculine "oker" and feminine "okra". On the other hand, the second phoneme of the word "ochre" in the inscription is rather unlikely to be /k/ - it's either /ɣ/ or /x/. In this word, the phoneme /x/ is pronounced in Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian, and Bulgarian. That's why, due to the geography, most likely, this inscription is written in the ancestor of the Ukrainian language, regardless of whether it's Proto-Slavic or not. In the case if not, the age of the Ukrainian language will cross the mark of about four thousand years - it would mean that Proto-Slavic diverged earlier - before the 2nd millennium BCE, which should not surprise us.

In the inscription, several signs already resemble, to some extent, some of the letters in modern alphabets. (03:40:51) The sign for /b/ is almost the precise copy of the Cyrillic ⟨Б б⟩, the Glagolitic ⟨Ⰱ⟩ ("buky"), the Latin lower-case ⟨b⟩, and the Hebrew ⟨ב⟩. But why is it expected? Because these letters seem to be the counterparts of the Egyptian "lower leg" hieroglyph which is also pronounced /b/. This means that the first contact between the Scythians and the Egyptians might have happened before the 2nd millennium BCE. Answering the question of whether the Scythians resided in southern Ukraine in the 20th century BCE, my answer will be, "Likely. The Scythians are an autochthonous Ukrainian-speaking people on the territory of Ukraine."

The last sign in the inscription resembles the modern Cyrillic ⟨У у⟩, the Latin ⟨Y y⟩, and the Greek ⟨Υ υ⟩. Treating it as the Greek letter enables us to consider a scenario in which the last word is pronounced not "огру" or "охру" but "огри" or "охри". In any case, the idea that the word "ochre" in the Slavic languages was borrowed from Greek or Latin has to be rethought as it may be wrong.

Long time ago in this video, we started talking about the Burtas, but we've said nothing about their ethnicity. With the help of Ibn Rustah's account, we've identified that they dwelt in the region of Ὑλαία which consisted of the two parts: the one in Crimea and the one in Taman'. The people that resided on both the sides of the Kerch Strait was those whom we know under the name of the Crimean Goths. (03:42:15) This is what Iordanes writes about them:

"This part of the Goths [the Crimean Goths], which is said to have crossed the river [the Isthmus of Perekop] and entered with Filimer into the country of Oium [Crimea], came into possession of the desired land, and there they soon came upon the race of the Spali, joined battle with them and won the victory. Thence the victors hastened to the farthest part of Scythia, which is near the sea of Pontus [they reached the Taman' Peninsula]; for so the story is generally told in their early songs, in almost historic fashion."

The name "Spali" may derive from the Ukrainian verb "спати" ("to sleep"). They may have been given such a name for their relation to the Colchis dragon or, alternatively, to the Drimazby. The account of Iordanes is not clear about their location, but it can be assumed the Spali were situated next to the Kerch Strait, especially if they were its guards. Guards, among others, are those watching the entrance, for example gates. Such quote unquote "gates" may be the Kerch Strait and/or the Heniches'k Strait. In the account of Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς, the Crimean Goths are called the Τετραξῖται. The following passage from his "History of the Wars" clearly shows this:

"Now when these Huns came near the Maeotic Lake, they chanced upon the Goths there who are called Tetraxitae. And at first the Goths formed a barrier with their shields and made a stand against their assailants in their own defence, trusting both in their own strength and the advantage of their position; for they are the most stalwart of all the barbarians of that region. Now the head of the outlet of the Maeotic Lake, where the Tetraxitae Goths were then settled, forms a crescent-shaped bay by which they were almost completely surrounded, so that only one approach, and that not a very wide one, was open to those who attacked them."

This "crescent-shaped bay" is Lake Syvash, and the "only open approach to those who attacked them" is the Isthmus of Perekop. The difference between the accounts of the two authors is that the account of Iordanes suggests it was the Goths who reached Crimea, whereas the account of Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς suggests it was the Hunni and that the Goths already resided there. Both the authors are at least partly right about the event they describe. The event they describe is the migration of the Cimmerians to Crimea. The ancient authors believed that "Cimmerians" and "Cimbrians" are names of one people, one of them being a corrupted form of the other. Some have even recorded a couple of folk etymologies of the name "Cimbrian" existing in those days. (03:44:53) The tales about the Cimbrians mentioned by Strabo that depict them as those who left the Cimbrian Peninsula (or simply Jutland) because of flood tides and who then returned to their homes may be based on the wrong belief that the word "Cimbri" is connected to the Spanish "cimbrar" (in the Latin manner - /kimbrar/) which means "to sway", "to swing", though there is also another explanation. (03:45:16) Πλούταρχος (Plutarch), in his "Parallel Lives" (or "Βίοι Παράλληλοι") (in the translation by Bernadotte Perrin), writes that "the Germans call robbers Cimbri". This point is based on the similarity of the word "Cimbri" with the Danish "indbrud", Swedish "inbrott", Norwegian "innbrudd", Icelandic "innbrot", meaning "burglary" and is also applicable to the previous passage. Though this is also a folk etymology, the data provided by Πλούταρχος enable us to conclude the first phoneme in the original name of the Cimbrians is not necessarily /k/. The words "Cimbrian" and "Cimmerian" are indeed related: they are both Germanic. (03:45:53) But one of them is English or Scandinavian, the other is Scandinavian. "Cimmerian" is connected with the English word "gimmer" and the Norwegian "gimmer", "Cimbrian" with the Old Norse "gymbr". These words mean "yearling ewe lamb". This explains why Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς derives the Hunni from the Cimmerians: the name of the Hunni means "sheep" or "male sheep", whereas the name of the Cimmerians roughly means "female sheep". Though the Hunni were probably indeed confused with the Germanics, it's more likely that the descendants of the Cimmerians were those whom we call the Crimean Goths, but not the Hunni. The name "Goth" may be Germanic as well, (03:46:30) but the only option I find felicitous in this case is the Middle English "goot" meaning "goat" or "female goat", a type of horned cattle. Why their name is spelt "Γότθοι" in Greek is explicable. In Scandinavian languages, the Latin "t", in some cases, is pronounced like /t͡θ/ or /t͡s/. The term "Goth" may be English, English-related, or, at a pinch, Scandinavian in some way, but not "Gothic", not East Germanic. Such is the paradox. But this quote unquote "paradox" agrees with the historical record. Ἰδάνθυρσος, mentioned by Herodotus, bears the Germanic (possibly Scandinavian) name "Viðanþyrs" or "Viðanþurs" because he was a Cimmerian who may have lived in Crimea or Taman'. (03:47:13) Herodotus, explaining the name "Arimaspoi", writes that "the Scythians call the number one [ἄριμα] and the eye [σποῦ]" because these terms are not Slavic, they are Cimmerian as well. "ἄριμα" corresponds either to the Old Irish "adrími" ("to count"), the Proto-Celtic "*rīmā" meaning "number", or the Old English "riman" ("to count"), the Proto-Germanic "*rīmą" also meaning "number". (03:47:36) The second part, "σποῦ", is related to the English "spy". More likely, the exact translation is not "spy" but "spying", and the word itself resembled the Proto-West-Germanic "*spehu" ("spying") in pronunciation - it's also possible that this reconstruction is not fully correct. A spy is a watcher, an observer. That's why some ancients believed that this word denoted the eye. From the Germanic or Celtic perspective, this word looks meaningless. It means that the original word may have been Slavic which was then reinterpreted by the Cimmerians applying their folk etymology which was then communicated to the Greeks. That's why my idea that "Arimaspoi" should be interpreted as "Drimazby" cannot be rejected at this stage. (03:48:16) These thoughts are corroborated by the whole of Herodotus's passage where he tells the story behind the name and then explains it, and now we will read it with my changes:

"[...] but as to the region beyond them [that is - north of the Issedones who lived approximately in present-day Azerbaijan], it is the Issedonians who report that there are there one-eyed men and gold-guarding griffins; and the [Cimmerians] report this having received it from them, and from the [Cimmerians] we, that is the rest of mankind, have got our belief; and we call them in [Cimmerian] language Arimaspians, for the [Cimmerians] call the number one [ἄριμα] and the eye [σποῦ]."

The Cimmerians most probably didn't learn about the Arimaspoi from the Issedones (rather from the Scythians), but an important detail in this passage is that the Cimmerians, like the Issedones, according to Herodotus, regarded the Arimaspoi as those being north of them. And that's true because the Drimazby were found near the Donets' Ridge (the Riphean Mountains) while the Cimmerians were situated in Crimea and Taman'. Some ancient authors may have called the Cimmerians the Arimaspoi and the Arimaspoi the griffins. This confusion can be found in another passage from Herodotus's work:

"Aristeas however the son of Caÿstrobios, a man of Proconnesos, said in the verses which he composed, that he came to the land of the Issedonians being possessed by Phœbus [the god of the sun; probably for the reason that the Issedones resided to the south where it's warmer], and that beyond the Issedonians [to the north where it's colder] dwelt Arimaspians [the Cimmerians], a one-eyed race, and beyond these the gold-guarding griffins [the Drimazby], and beyond them the Hyperboreans extending as far as the sea [the Scythian Ocean]: [...]"

(03:49:58) The so-called Scythian words "οἰὸρ" and "πατὰ" are also not Scythian, they are Cimmerian. In my very first video, when I was not so much experienced, I suggested that "Οἰόρπατα" may derive from the Ukrainian "гороб'ята". Unlike the term "Arimaspoi", there is possibly no Slavic original behind "Οἰόρπατα". The word "οἰὸρ", in spelling, starts with a vowel. This means that the first phoneme in the original one may be a labio-dental approximant or a bilabial or labio-dental fricative. But to decipher this word, we have to recall the linguistic occurrence known as betacism and precede it with the consonant /b/. The trick is to replace the original word with a modern one. Having done this, we will see the answer. The Cimmerian "οἰὸρ" corresponds to the English "bowyer", that is "archer", and the reason why some ancients believed that "οἰὸρ" means "man" is because, from the perspective of the Cimmerian folk etymology or the folk etymology by someone else based on the knowledge of the Cimmerian language or languages (the so-called "folk-in-foreign etymology"), the word "bowyer" (in the modern representation) comes from the word "boy" ("young man"): "boy" - "bowyer", or in that language "*voy" - "*vowyer" or "*woy" - "*wowyer". The word "πατὰ" was probably believed to be connected to the English or English-related word "battle" - that's why Herodotus writes that "πατὰ" means "to slay". But in fact, "πατὰ" is related to the Scandinavian "patte" meaning "a woman's breast". The Cimmerians called the Amazons by the name "Οἰόρπατα", or "Vowyer-Patte" / "Wowyer-Patte" - that is "Archer-Breast" - because, instead of their "burnt-up" right breast, they had a bow. And the female breast, to some extent, indeed resembles the bow. The mystery is solved.

Among the Cimmerians, there were definitely Germanic speakers. What we don't know yet is whether they spoke only one Germanic language or several. Some of their terms are decipherable with the help of English, others with the help of Scandinavian languages. If there was only one Germanic language spoken by them, we can view this language as an Anglo-Scandinavian one whose lexicon was the union (or its subset) of the English and Scandinavian entries, which raises the question about whether Proto-Germanic ever existed and what it looked like if so. The second view is that the Cimmerians spoke at least two Germanic languages belonging to the two sub-families respectively: West-Germanic and North-Germanic. In this model, the West-Germanic language is English or English-related (which we can name "Cimmerian English"), the other is Old Norse or Old-Norse-related (so-called "Cimmerian Norse"), which will mean that Proto-West-Germanic and Proto-Norse diverged before the 2nd century CE, contrary to the common belief.

The term "Arimaspoi" raises the question of whether there were Celtic speakers among the Cimmerians. The same question applies to the known dilemma about the Cimbrians. Among scholars there is no agreement on whether the Cimbrians were Germanic-speaking or Celtic-speaking. But the ancients seem to soundly equate them with the Cimmerians, and the historical record is aware of those of them who might have borne Celtic names. (03:52:58) Among such is the Cimmerian king Teušpa. His name was probably pronounced differently. It's mentioned in the Royal Inscriptions of the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire Esarhaddon; Teušpa himself lived in the 8th-7th century BCE. In one of the copies of Esarhaddon's inscriptions that scholars refer to as "Nineveh B", the name "Teušpa", without the marker for gender "𒁹", is spelt "𒋼𒍑𒉺𒀀" ("te-uš-pa-a"). The syllables "-𒀀-" ("-a-") appear at the end of various names - for this reason, only the three signs are relevant for the decipherment, "𒋼𒍑𒉺" ("te-uš-pa"). The last sign of these three has alternative pronunciations: "ḫad", "ḫat", "ḫaṭ". (03:53:35) In my current view, "te-uš-ḫat", as the correct interpretation of the name "𒋼𒍑𒉺-" ("te-uš-pa-"), is the Celtic (alternatively, Germanic) "teuchat". In the Akkadian language, it's impossible to represent every single foreign term without a considerable loss of information - the language has its limitations. But we know that the Akkadian language is Semitic, such as Hebrew and Arabic. By historical tradition, in Hebrew and Arabic, not all vowels are spelt - they are not that relevant as consonants. That's why some vowels (and not only for this reason) in transcriptions of Akkadian signs may be ignored. But the removal of a vowel is the last resort. Before removing, we should try to change it or shift it within the phonemes of the same Akkadian sign. "te-uš-ḫat" might derive from "te-šu-ḫat" while "te-šu-ḫat" from "t-šu-ḫat", though the sign for "-šu-" exists separately. The word "teuchat" is not just a Celtic word that exists at least in Scots - it's also found in the English vocabulary, and we don't know whether and when it was borrowed between English and the Celtic language family (without specifying the direction of the borrowing). Whether Teušpa was a Germanic or a Celtic speaker is not known for sure, but yet another mention of English may confirm the classification of the Cimmerian Germanic languages.

(03:54:48) In the same inscription, Esarhaddon mentions a Scythian called Išpakaia. To be accurate, his name is transcribed as "iš-pa-ka-a-a" ("𒅖𒉺𒅗𒀀𒀀"). In scholars' view, his name refers to dogs; in mine, "-𒉺-" ("-pa-") should be interpreted in the same way as in the name "𒋼𒍑𒉺-" ("te-uš-pa-"), and "-𒅖-" ("-iš-") should be interpreted as "-mil-", so that "iš-pa-ka" ("𒅖𒉺𒅗") changes into "mil-ḫat-ka". The real name of Išpakaia may have been "Милятко", "Хмілятко", or "Хмільнятко". "Милятко" derives from the adjective "милий" ("beloved", "amiable", "cute"); "Хмілятко" from the noun "хміль" ("hop", "hops"); "Хмільнятко" from the adjective "хмільний" ("heady", "intoxicating"). In the case of either of the last two options, Išpakaia may have been of the Massagetean origin; in the first case, his name may mean that he was very young - was "cute like a baby". If the expected phoneme "ḫ" is in fact silent in the name "mil-ḫat-ka", it can be silent in the name "te-uš-ḫat" so that permutations of its phonemes may be unnecessary. Rereading "te-uš-ḫat" as "te-uš-at", the phoneme /x/ in "teuchat" may correspond to the phoneme "š" in "uš", and "e" in "te" may function as a palataliser (though the last point is rather debatable). Either way, "teuchat" for "Teušpa" is currently the best possible decipherment. Decipherments of other names recorded in Neo-Assyrian sources will be provided another time.

To confirm that Cimmerians lived in Taman', we will use the account of Strabo. (03:56:15) In his "Geographica", he mentions the toponym "Κοροκονδάμη", which incompetent writers think to be also Indo-Iranian. "Whenever unclear, label it Indo-Iranian and hope that others will never verify!" - their motto. The motto of the Turkic fantasisers is slightly different, "Label everything Turkic and don't care ... at least while there exist Indo-Iranian opponents to suffer." Strabo applies this name to a village south of the Taman' Bay after which the bay itself was called "Κοροκονδαμῖτις". Thinking of this village from the perspective of the bay and the land where it's situated, (03:56:48) "Κοροκονδάμη" turns into the English phrase "Crooken Dam" - "dam resembling the crook" ("crook" roughly means "hook", but is connected to sheep) - which strengthens the point that "Taman'" may derive from the Ukrainian "тама", also meaning "dam". The Taman' Peninsula and the Taman' Bay indeed can be viewed as crooks. On the other hand, a crook (or, for the sake of clarity, a hook) can be associated with a device with the help of which ships are moored. "Crooken Dam" can be reformulated as "Anchoring Dam" and may simply denote a place where ships make a stop - "Anchoring Stop". The name of the toponym and the historical record about the Cimmerians raises several quite interesting questions. Did the Cimmerians have the words "sheep" and "ship" in their lexicon and did they regard them as related? Is the connection between these two words just a possible Cimmerian folk etymology or something bigger than that? ...

The Burtas are the Cimmerians, and the Burtas are the so-called Crimean Goths, Τετραξῖται Goths. But Ibn Rustah is not the first author mentioning them. (03:57:49) In the 3rd century CE, they were known to Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός (Gregory Thaumaturgus) by the name of the Βοράδοι. In his "Ἐπιστολὴ κανονική" ("Epistola Canonica") reportedly dating back to 258, Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός speaks of barbarians having recently invaded Asia Minor "who had not sacrificed to idols" (in the translation by Stewart Dingwall Fordyce Salmond). His account suggests that the Βοράδοι were among those invaders along with the Γότθοι - for some reason, Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός does not equate, separates them. It's usually believed, at least not denied, that (03:58:21) Ζώσιμος in his "Ἱστορία Νέα" (or "Historia Nova") (the 5th-6th century CE) names the Βοράδοι the Βορανοὶ. But unlike Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός, he seems to ascribe that invasion of Asia to the Scythians, not to the Γότθοι, though he knows of their existence. A possible reason why Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός distinguished the Γότθοι from the Βοράδοι is a difference between their ethnicities. The incursions of Asia by the Γότθοι and the Βοράδοι may have been the same way common as the attacks by the Scythians and the Cimmerians on the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This would explain why the Goths may have been regarded as goatherds - they were the Khazars, the Slavs living in Crimea, so named by their Germanic neighbours. It's impossible that the Russes, who lived in Ukraine, called themselves the Nordmani or the Nortmani (the "Northern People"). No. This name was given to them by someone dwelling to the south - it was the Cimmerians who called the Russes Nordmani or Nortmani, the Slavs dwelling to the north. In the days of Herodotus, the term "Goth", or "Khazar", or both, possibly existed. The following passage, which we already read, may serve as an argument for this point:

"[...] concerning the region to the North of the bald-headed men [the Northwest Caucasians] no one can speak with certainty, for lofty and impassable mountains [the Caucasus Mountains and the Riphean Mountains separately at the same time or as one and the same thing] divide it off, and no one passes over them. However these bald-headed men say (though I do not believe it) that the mountains [the Riphean Mountains] are inhabited by men with goats' feet; and that after one has passed beyond these [and beyond the Riphean Mountains, and beyond the Donets' Ridge], others are found who sleep through six months of the year."

"men with goats' feet" means "goatherds": the Goths, the Khazars, or both, or at the same time. The term "Goth" may also have the meaning unrelated to goats and correlate with the term "Βοράδοι". (04:00:17) "Βοράδοι" seems to be related to the reconstructed Scandinavian "*vörðaðr" ("respected"), whereas "Βορανοὶ" may correspond to "*vörðandi" ("respecting"). The names of these groups of people may be connected to religion. This would correlate with the account of Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός about the barbarians "not sacrificing to idols", that is those not being pagans. It's known that in the early 4th century CE there already existed Christian communities in the Bosporan Kingdom, but scholars do not confirm that in 258 there were Christians among the Goths. (04:00:49) According to the 1814 translation by an anonymous author, Ζώσιμος places the Borani (which are the Βορανοὶ) along with the Gothi, the Carpi, and the Urugundi, on the river Ister. What the author says is only that all of them together dwelt on this river, but doesn't every people on the list. The Βορανοὶ were likely found near the river Dnipro and/or the river Buh - because the Scythian, that is Ukrainian, name of the Dnipro is Вористень and because in the extended edition of the response of the Kovhan Joseph to Hasdai ibn Shaprut the river Buh is called by the name spelt "ואגז" ("V-a-g-z") in Hebrew. The word "ואגז" ("V-a-g-z") is a transcription either of the English word "worth" or, alternatively, "worthy" - just pronounce the English "r" as the French one. "worth" and "worthy" are cognate with the Scandinavian "*vörðaðr" and "*vörðandi" and are related to the English term "worship". The river bears this name ("Worthy") for the same reason why it's called "Buh" in a Slavic language: "Buh" or "Boh" means "God". Both the names, Germanic and Slavic, of this river are connected to religion, and thus the names "Βοράδοι" and "Βορανοὶ" may also be connected to religion - Christianity or something resembling Christianity. The Βοράδοι, or the Burtas, professed the religion they adopted probably from the Bosporan Kingdom. But what were they "respected" for?

Let's analyse the word "Τετραξῖται". According to a first interpretation of mine, it may derive from the Greek "τέτραξ", "hazel grouse". The appearance of this bird may suggest the connection between the Τετραξῖται and the Syrmatae (I remind that the Ancient Greek "σύρμα" means "abrasion", "scaly skin disease"). What is unclear in this case is whether the Syrmatae were Scythian or Cimmerian, but such a link between the Syrmatae and the Τετραξῖται would obviously mean the main residence of the latter was Crimea. (04:02:37) According to a second interpretation of mine, the singular "Τετραξῖτης" consists of the prefix "τετρα-", the verb "ἀξιόω", and the suffix "-ίτης" or "-της". Literally, it can be understood as "one deserving the four" or "one having the right for the four", "four" in this phrase representing the cross, as it has four arms. "Τετραξῖτης" can be translated as "one deserving / having the right to be baptised" or "one having the right to baptise others". (04:03:03) The Βοράδοι might have been respected for being priests - for having knowledge about the monotheistic religion then practised in the Bosporan Kingdom, whereas the Βορανοὶ might have been their parish. If the term "Γότθοι" is also connected to religion, it also can be interpreted as "Priests" - that's how the Ukrainian word "готці" (literally - "fathers" / "Fathers") can be translated - but this version is debatable: it's rather strange that a Slavic word would have been spelt with the Greek "θ" in transcription.

The point that the Βοράδοι were priests in the 3rd century CE may appear to be way too radical, but it's highly likely that they and the Βορανοὶ professed monotheism back then. The Βορανοὶ - whose name, on the one hand, may correspond to the reconstructed Scandinavian "*vörðandi" - on the other hand, may be the Varangians mentioned in the Primary Chronicle: "Βορανοὶ" may come from the word "Warang". The English letter combination "-war-" with the closed vowel is quite often pronounced /wɔː(r)/: "war", "warm", "warn", "ward" (with an "a"), "swarm", "sward" (with an "a"), "swarthy", "wardrobe", "award" - and thus "Warang" may be the same as "*Worang". ("award", by the way, may be connected with the English "worth" and "worthy" - I find more logic in this version than in the idea that "award" is connected with the English "guard": because an award is something one deserves.) In my previous videos I tried to justify the point suggested at least by the author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel (which he also tried to argue) that the term "Varangian" can be translated from Wendish as "swordsman". Its main problem is the Wendish language itself. The only reason why we cannot fully reject it is the names of the rivers Інгул and Інгулець. But if these rivers bear Wendish names, it would suggest that some Wends migrated to southern Ukraine, along with the Cimmerians or not. I'm not saying it's completely impossible but would like to provide a slightly different etymology for this term. If the Βορανοὶ are Varangians, the Βοράδοι are most likely Varangians as well. In this case, the Varangians along with the Russes (who are possibly referred to as the Goths by Γρηγόριος ὁ Θαυματουργός) must have come not from the north but from the south: from Crimea to Kuyaba. (04:05:11) Before the calling of the Varangians, according to the Primary Chronicle, they were "expelled across the sea", and then, those who expelled them "went across the sea to the Varangians to the Russes". The author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel has several thoughts about what this sea is: a first suggests it may be Lake Ilmen', a second is that "across the sea" means "along the sea route". But I think this sea is the Khazar Sea which separates Crimea from inland Ukraine because the Crimean Peninsula was believed to be an island. The same sea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, can be fairly called and was sometimes referred to as the Varangian Sea. That's why the Russes also had the title Khakan (Khakan-Rus'). Because they were part of the Khazars. The Rus' dynasty from Crimea replaced, partly or fully, the Rugian elite in Kyiv. This explains why in the Kyivan Letter the name of Kyiv is spelt with the Polish suffix - the Russes are Ukrainians, the Rugians are Poles. And that's possibly why Olha of Kyiv was called the queen of the Rugians - the knowledge of Europeans was not up to date yet. (04:06:16) The author of the Primary Chronicle writes that "many Varangians were Christians", but the terms "Varangian" and "Christian" might have been synonyms; in the broad sense, combining the meaning "Christian" with the point that a Varangian represents a swordsman, "to be a Varangian" becomes to mean "to be a noble man", "to be a Christian knight". Those who expelled the Varangians wanted them to return back and rule over them because without Christianity there is no law and there is no order. (04:06:42) The author of the chronicle doesn't write that the Russes were Varangians. They write that Christians, but likely in their days, were common among the Russes, among the Swedes, among the Norwegians, among the Danes, and among the Goths (I'm currently involving the author of the "История Руси" YouTube channel's interpretation of this list) - here is the reason why the Varangians are known under these different names. Different Varangians were of different ethnicities. The author of the chronicle neither equates the Varangians with the Russes, nor the Russes with the Swedes. Conversely - in their text, the Russes, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes, and the Goths, are different peoples, collectively referred to as the Varangians possibly because of the spread of Christianity in their communities. (04:07:23) That the Varangians were Christians could be corroborated by the tale in the Primary Chronicle about one Christian Varangian and his son that were killed by pagans, but the exact meaning of this term is still open to debate.

In the days of Ibn Rustah, the Burtas, for certain, professed Christianity, and so did the Guzs. But who are they? (04:07:42) According to Al-Istakhri, the river Itil (or Atil) separates their lands from those of the Kaimak. Nowadays, the Kaimak are called the Kimek or Yemek and are considered to be a Turkic tribe. What is known about them is that at least for some time they lived in Kazakhstan. Hence we can conclude that the Guzs dwelt south of the river Volga - in the North Caucasus. The Christians in the North Caucasus are the Hungarians whose land in this region is known as Magna Hungaria. In the 13th century CE, Friar Julianus (based on the translation by Владислав Норбертович Юргевич / Vladislav Norbertovich Iurgevich) reached Magna Hungaria from so-called "Great Bulgaria" which is believed to be so-called "Volga Bulgaria". But this "Volga Bulgaria" was south of the land of the Guzs. So-called "Volga Bulgaria", even in the 13th century CE, was situated near the Caucasus Mountains. (04:08:33) That's why according to Ibn Rustah, the river Itil (or Atil) separated the lands of the Burtas (that is the Cimmerians) and the neighbouring Bulgars. In his text, the name of the Bulgars is spelt with the letter "ݣ" ("naf"). Previously, this letter was used in Ottoman Turkish, but it's absent in the standard Arabic alphabet. Without the three dots, "ݣ" / "ڭ" ("naf") turns into "ك" ("kāf"). These "Bulgars" are just the Balkars. They are indeed Turks, and they still live near the Caucasus Mountains. The so-called "Volga Bulgar" language probably never became extinct. Do you now understand the scale of the mistake committed by some scholars? (04:09:09) Al-Istakhri confirms the words of Ibn Rustah. According to the translation by Николай Александрович Караулов (Nikolai Aleksandrovich Karaulov), the river Itil / Atil flows behind the Bulgarians to the west and then back to the east through the lands of the Russes. But afterwards, the same river crosses the lands of the Bulgars and then those of the Burtas until it reaches the Khazar Sea. Previous time, I was not fully correct when I said that in Nikolai Karaulov's translation Al-Istakhri speaks only of the Slavic Bulgarians. In fact, even in the translation, in some passages, by the Bulgars, the account of Al-Istakhri means the Balkars. In the original Arabic text, as far as I can see, the Bulgarians and the Balkars are not distinguished. To both the peoples, Al-Istakhri applies the same name, "Bulgar" ("بُلْغار"). According to this author, the river Itil / Atil flows almost by circle. Not counting the river Volga, it flows along the river Don, across the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait, along the river Danube in or near the lands of the Slavic Bulgarians, flows back and crosses the lands of the Russes, flows into the river Donets' and again into the river Don, and reaches the Sea of Azov which is the Khazar Sea or its part. The river Atil, roughly, is a collective representation of all the Scythian rivers flowing out of the Riphean Mountains. Nearly every major Scythian river, if not every one, can be referred to as the river Atil. Though the Guzs are the Hungarians, the appellation "Guz" might be Turkic. (04:10:33) In the Azerbaijani language, "göz" means "evil eye". Do you see any analogy? (04:10:38) "evil eye" is almost the same as "lizard eye". The next question is, "Is there any connection between the Guzs and the Sauromatae?" (04:10:45) According to Herodotus, the Sauromatae participated in the war against the Persians in the division led by the king Σκώπασις. The first consonant /s/ seems to be a Slavic prefix. But the remaining part "-κώπασις" corresponds to the Hungarian word "kopás" which means "attrition (wearing or grinding down by friction)". But in this case, the word "attrition" has the additional meaning as in the phrase "the war of attrition". The task of the division was to exhaust the enemy. In what way? By retiring and attacking, retiring and attacking - "wearing-tearing", "wearing-tearing" - attrition. "wear and tear" is another translation of the word "kopás". (04:11:21) We can apply the same logic to decipher the name of the king Τάξακις who led another division. Their task was also to retire before the Persians, but for a different purpose. The division brought the enemy to the territory of those who refused to participate in the war in order to involve them against their will. According to Herodotus, the division consisted of the Gelonians and the Budini. By analogy with the previous case, the name "Τάξακις" is either Belarusian or Polish. The letter "ξ" - and we've learned that from the previous video - can represent the original consonant cluster /ʃʧ/. Making this substitution, we will see that the name "Τάξακις" comes from the Belarusian or Polish original "Та́щак" / "Tászczak" or "Таща́к" / "Taszczák". In the Polish language, there is the verb "taszczyć" which means "to lug (in some direction)", "to tote (in some direction)" - in other words, "to pull". Its Belarusian and Ukrainian phonetic / phonemic counterparts are "тащыць" and "тащити" respectively. But in the last two languages, if I'm not wrong, these terms are dialectical today. That's why I think this name is more likely to be Polish. In the English translation, it means "Puller". The verb "to pull (in)" is also a synonym of the verbs "to involve", "to engage". The king Tászczak / Taszczák was the "puller" - that is the "engager" - of the Persian army and of those who refused to fight with it.

The Sauromatae are a Finno-Ugric people. And I think we can say almost for certain that they are the Hungarians. Magna Hungaria, as early as the 6th-5th century BCE, was west of the Caspian Sea south of the river Volga (or around this river). It's believed that in ancient times the Hungarians lived near the Ural Mountains. And thus we have to raise the question, "Who is mistaken? The linguists stating that Hungarian is related to the Khanty and Mansi language? which are Ugric languages. Or the archaeologists stating that the Hungarians reached the North Caucasus much later than in the times of Herodotus?" I think that the answer is "the archaeologists". (04:13:13) They are as mistaken as those of their colleagues who believe that the Goths reached the country of Oium in the Common Era, though the account of Iordanes sets their arrival at the time before the 1st millennium Before! the Common Era. At least partly, he is right: as early as the 8th century BCE, the Cimmerians already resided in Crimea. Like I said, the Sauromatae have nothing to do with the Syrmatae nor with the Sarmatae. "Sarmatae" was possibly a collective name for all the Slavs or their major part. What may help us decipher it is that the Scythians were herdsmen or cattlemen. The Ancient Greek "σαρμός", according to Ἡσύχιος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς (Hesychius of Alexandria), can be replaced with one of its synonyms the Ancient Greek "χόρτος" which means "feeding place for animals" (in particular "pasture") or "foodstuff for animals" (in particular "fodder"). The noun "Sarmatian" may be interpreted as "herdsman" or "cattleman" as well. In this meaning, the origin of the term "σαρμός" seems unknown.

The Slavic Bulgarians, as well as any other South Slavs, never lived in the North Caucasus in the period covered by the historical record - and never migrated from there. The so-called "migration of the Volga Bulgars from the North Caucasus" might have been confused with the migration of someone else (for example, the Hungarians, depending on the author of that narrative) or might have never existed. Mediaeval authors may have believed in the existence of Volga Bulgaria, it may have been part of their mental image. But in reality - unless Volga Bulgaria was a third Bulgaria - it existed neither in the 10th century CE, nor in the 11th, nor in the 12th, nor in the early 13th. It's a fiction being believed till today for more than ten centuries. The Volga Bulgars were unknown to Hasdai ibn Shaprut. They were unknown to the Kovhan Joseph. In the 12th century CE, they were unknown to Abu Hamid al-Gharnati. The Bulgars near the river Don all of them knew of - and among or near which Al-Gharnati lived for about fifteen-twenty years - were the Balkars too. That's why, another time, with the help of the Balkar language, I will change my interpretation of one toponym in the Schechter Letter.

We can debate whether the name "Та́щак" / "Tászczak" or "Таща́к" / "Taszczák" is Belarusian or Polish. But we can argue that, once Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Polish diverged, there was no separate dialect continuum that was a source of Russian - it emerged after all back then existing Slavic languages had lived a long life. (04:15:29) The author that will help us make it is Pliny the Elder. He writes:

"[...] To the north is the ocean; beyond the river Parapanisus where it washes the coast of Scythia Hecataeus calls it the Amalchian Sea, a name that in the language of the natives means 'frozen'; Philemon says that the Cimbrian name for it is Morimarusa (that is, Dead Sea) from the Parapanisus to Cape Rusbeae, and from that point onward Cronium. [...]"

The Amalchian Sea is almost definitely the Baltic Sea because the Danish word "mælk" means "milk" and the Lithuanian "baltas", along with the Latvian "balts", means "white" - the prefix "a-" in "Amalchian" is possibly epenthetic. The account of Pliny the Elder confuses several things. "Amalchian" doesn't mean "frozen", but this word can actually be regarded as Cimbrian. "Morimarusa" is not Cimbrian, but it's partly connected to the word "dead" and is indeed related to the word "frozen". The phrase "dead sea" is translated into Latvian as "mirusī jūra". But the second part of "Morimarusa" has nothing to do with the Latvian "mirusī", it's a mistake. (04:16:30) "Morimarusa" is a Belarusian phrase meaning "seas of frost". "seas" is translated into Belarusian as "моры", that's why the first part is spelt "Mori-" - it's neither Ukrainian nor Polish nor Russian. (04:16:42) The Belarusian word for "frost" is "мароз" (the genitive "марозу"), the same word in Polish is "mróz" (the genitive "mrozu"). What requires an explanation in the second part "-marusa" is the vowel "u" - as the termination "-a" can be ignored: it should be regarded as the Latin ending. If it's not a distortion under the influence of the Latvian language, it can be some western dialect of Belarusian in which "frost" is translated as "маруз" (which looks possible) and its genitive is "марузу" or maybe "маруза" (which is interesting and requires extra thoughts). Why the Belarusian speakers called some waters "Seas of Frost" instead of "Sea of Frost" is either for the same reason why the English speakers (and not only) sometimes say "skies" instead of "sky" or, possibly, because in the "Seas of Frost" they also included the Arctic Ocean.

In ancient times, the Greeks heard about the two peoples: the Budini and the Gelonians. Even if we assume they spoke the same language (rejecting Herodotus's account), their self-identification made it possible that their languages got separated into Polish and Belarusian. By the 1st century CE, this process already finished. Besides the Budini and the Gelonians, no one else spoke either Polish or Belarusian. The Scythians spoke Ukrainian. The Sauromatae spoke Hungarian. The Cimmerians spoke Germanic and maybe some Celtic. The South Slavs and the rest of the West Slavs probably dwelt somewhere west of the Scythians. But where are the Russians whom many people (not without a reason but without understanding) call East Slavs? These so-called East Slavs didn't exist yet. In the 1st century CE, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Polish, were the three easternmost Slavic languages, the northeasternmost being Belarusian. By a process of elimination, we've just proved more strictly that the ancestors of Russians are the Androphagi and/or the Thyssagetae - (04:18:29) because the Νευροί were most likely Baltic. The account of Herodotus suggests that the neighbours of the Νευροί were the Androphagi and the Melanchlainoi. Since the Melanchlainoi were found on the territory of Ukraine or Ukraine and Belarus' (we considered these two versions), the Νευροί were northern neighbours of the Gelonians. The Ancient Greek "νεῦρον" can be translated into the English "nerve", and we know what the adjective "nervous" means (in the English language though, not Greek). I conjecture that the abode of the Νευροί was on the river Neris (also known as Vilija) whose name may be connected to the Latvian "nerimša", "fidgety person". The Νευροί are probably the ancestors of the Latvians and the Lithuanians, or only the Latvians, or only the Lithuanians, or the East Balts in general. What name Herodotus called the West Balts is unknown.

(04:19:15) After in my first video I said that the Ukrainian term "ставрида" ("horse mackerel") consists of the prefix "с-" / "з-" and the Ancient Greek name for Crimea "Таврида" or "Taurica" that altogether mean "from Taurica", some of you probably thought that I'm insane. But the statement about "ставрида" coming from the Greek "σταυρός" meaning "cross" is simply untenable. To some extent, the Ancient Greek "σαῦρος" for "horse mackerel" already resembles "ставрида", the difference is one consonant only - ignoring the terminations. But why is there the difference? The terms "horse mackerel" and "mackerel" are synonyms. The last is translated into the Greek "σκουμπρί" which comes from the Ancient Greek "σκόμβρος" (also "mackerel") whose etymology is uncertain. Into Ukrainian, "mackerel" is translated as "скумбрія", and it's believed that the Ukrainian "скумбрія" was borrowed from Modern Greek. I would like to suggest a new view. The transformation of the Ancient Greek "σαῦρος" into the Ukrainian "ставрида" might have happened under the influence of folk etymology. Not only does "ставрида" mean "from Taurica" or "from Tauri" (that is "Taurians") but also "скумбрія" can be understood as "from Cymbri" - "from Cimbrians" or "Cimmerians". My hypothesis, though its plausibility is slim, is that the Scythians or Ukrainians might have called these fishes, or one of the kinds, "ставрида" and/or "скумбрія" because they associated them, or it, with non-Scythian residents of Crimea or Crimea itself in or before their days. A question that arises in this regard and anyway is whether the Taurians and the Cimmerians are one and the same people.

In the previous video I've also said that the letter "ψ" could have been used to transliterate clusters with the last consonant being /ʧ/. (04:20:51) The name "Οὐάλιψ" seems to be such a case. I think it corresponds to the Ukrainian name "Хвалібич" from "хвалити" meaning "to praise", "to commend", and "хвальба" meaning "boasting", "bragging". What is not clear is (04:21:02) whether his name speaks of him as an Alazonian (because the Ancient Greek "ἀλαζών" means "braggart", "boaster") or is connected to Christianity. We only know that, according to Herodotus, the Alazones dwelt approximately in the Buh basin, and that, according to Πρίσκος Πανίτης, Οὐάλιψ, in a battle against the Eastern Romans, led the Rubii / Rubians whose homes were possibly in Crimea, in southern Ukraine. The name "Ούλλιβος" remains unanalysed.

(04:21:28) In this video, I've shown you the map "Physical-geographical zoning of Ukraine" provided by the Ukrainian-language Wikipedia. Besides the mere demonstration of the zones, I want to use it to show several cities and towns about which I previously made mistaken points. In the very first video, I rejected the idea that the name of the city of Житомир consists of the words "жито" ("rye") and "мир" ("peace"). But in fact, this point might be justifiable because the city is found on the territory of soddy slightly podzolic and grey podzolised soils bordering on typical low humus chernozems - according to the soil map in the Soviet book from 1965 under the editorship of the Soviet Ukrainian academician Микола Платонович Бажан (Mykola Platonovych Bazhan) and others titled "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic" (in the original Ukrainian - "Українська Радянська Соціалістична Республіка"). In podzols, unlike wheat, rye may grow without liming. Rye is being compared to wheat because bread is usually made from them. (04:22:22) Another mistake is the incorrect explanation of why the name of the town of Прилуки means "near meadows". Not because of the city of Чернігів which is too far from it - unless there was a border between them in the past - but because Прилуки is surrounded by the river Udai which created these meadows, flood-meadows.

In the previous video, I've wrongly translated the name of the toponym Kökçebel. Though I've already made this correction in the separate post, I'm repeating it. It's translated from Crimean Tatar as "Bluish-Gray Spit", not "Bluish-White Spit". In the second video, I've made a mistake in the translation of the fragment containing the Spanish term "Sota", though it doesn't change my thoughts on why this name started to be applied to the jack in the card pack yet. We will get back to that passage another time, translate it again, and try to interpret it again. The Ukrainian title "гетьман" may have the dual nature. The view of the word solely from the Slavic perspective is problematic. If I have time, maybe we will cover this topic as well. The Hebrew phrase "right of the sea" in the Cambridge Document was translated by Solomon Schechter as "south of the sea" not because of a visual image interpretation error of his but because the Hebrew lexeme for "right of" is also translated as "south of". In Hebrew and Arabic, the right hand is the south, the left hand is the north.

If you want to applaud me, I will probably not hear you. But you can leave your comment under the video, like, and subscribe. What is important is that for your likes to not be removed by YouTube, you should watch all the video or its major part. It was Daniel Haidachuk also known as Daniel Poirot.

Links:

Dictionaries:

- Crimean Tatar to Russian Dictionary on "lugat.diyar.im"

- English to Ukrainian Dictionaries on "e2u.org.ua"

- Russian to Ukrainian Dictionaries on "r2u.org.ua"

- Dictionaries on "dict.com"

- Ingush to Russian Dictionary on "doshlorg.ru"

Wiki Articles (as of Aug 1st 2023):

- Wikipedia:

-- en: Proto-Slavic_language, Geryon, Rubia, Arameans, Syria, Isis, List_of_pharaohs, Neferkasokar, Seker, Osiris, Osiris_myth, Hudjefa_I, Seth-Peribsen, Senusret_I, Greek_minuscule, Oium

-- ru: Молочная_(река), Мякина, Болота_Белоруссии, Эрика_(растение)

-- uk: Обмолот, Полова, Фізико-географічне_районування_України (1st image), Мед_(напій)

- Wiktionary:

-- en: Ὕβλα, þyrs, þurs, ᚦ, haga, hagi, viðan, Βόσπορος, βοῦς, panten, pantoisier, cheance, kans, belegen, belægge, belägga, lag, øy, wps, ḥr, ἀργός, σύρμα, ῥοῦς, چام, νομάς, כיריים, κρημνός, šꜣsw, nḥsj, stꜣ, tꜣ, qrr, ws, pr-m-ws, wsjr, wšr, wsr, wsḫ, εἷς, ῥέω, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/tъrgati, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/lъgati, Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/męta, rugać, wieniec, vaunt, ἄνθος, -igr, բազուկ, ան-, ὀκτώ, ἅμαξα, αμαξάδα, σκύλαξ, σκύλος, σκύλιον, sula, don, Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/äitei, meri, Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/meri, कुम्भ, cimbrar, innbrot, gimmer, goot, adrími, riman, Reconstruction:Proto-West_Germanic/spehu, patte, 𒉺, teuchat, 𒅖, vörda, τέτραξ, τετρα-, ἀξιόω, -ίτης, -της, göz, kopás, taszczyć, σαρμός, χόρτος, мора, мароз, νεῦρον, σαῦρος, σκουμπρί, ἀλαζών

-- el: ῥούσιος

-- pl: خلنج

Google Books:

- Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. De administrando imperio (1611) - p. 17

- De Byzantinae historiae scriptoribus (1729) - Excerpta de legationibus, pp. 38, 110

- Dionysius Periegetes: Graece et Latine (1828) - pp. 10-11, 23, 42

- Claudius Ptolemaeus. Geographia Universalis (1540) - pp. 42-43, 94

- Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum, ed. M.J. de Goeje, Vols 1-2 (1870, 1873) - al-Istakhri: pp. 218, 222

- Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, Vol. 5 (1870) - Part 1, p. 24

- The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, Vol. 1 (1849) - pp. 214-215

- Liutprandi Ticinensis ecclesiae Leuitae Rerum gestarum per Europam ipsius praesertim temporibus (1514) - books I,V: search for "Rufios" and "Russos"

- Leonis diaconi Caloënsis Historia scriptoresque alii ad res Byzantinas pertinentes: ... (1819) - p. 38

- Izvi︠e︡stīi︠a︡ o Khozarakh, Burtasakh, Bolgarakh, Madʹi︠a︡rakh, Slavi︠a︡nakh i Russakh Abu-Ali Akhmeda ben Omar Ibn-Dasta ... (1869) - pp. 19-22, 34-35, 79

- Sigmund von Herberstein. Moscouia der Hauptstat in Reissen ... (1557) - search for "Krym"

- Peri poleōn Stephanus De urbibus quem primus Thomas de Pinedo Lusitanus ... (1678) - p. 187

- Thomas Francklin. The Works of Lucian, Volume 2 (1780) - pp. 496-498

Lomonosov Moscow State University:

- "Истоки новгородской государственности". Interview with Валентин Лаврентьевич Янин

"История Руси" ("History of Rus'") YouTube channel:

- Новгородцы говорили на польском языке !

Philostorgius. Ecclesiastical History. E. Walford, Trans.

Apollonius of Rhodes. Argonautica. R. C. Seaton, Trans.

Pliny the Elder. Natural History. H. Rackham, Trans. - Books 4, 6-7, 33

The History of Herodotus. G. C. Macaulay, Trans. - Books 1, 2, 4

Aristotle. Meteorology. E. W. Webster, Trans.

Літопис руський за Іпатіївським списком

Лаврентіївський літопис

Николай Александрович Караулов. Сведения арабских писателей X и XI веков по Р. Хр. о Кавказе, Армении и Адербейджане:

- Ал-Истахрий. Из книги путей царств

- Ибн-Хаукаль. Из «Книги путей и царств»

Jordanes. Getica:

- in English. C. C. Mierow, Trans.

- in Latin

Strabo: The Geography. H. L. Jones, Trans. - Books 2-3, 7, 11

Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library. J. G. Frazer, Trans.

Ovid. The Heroides. A. S. Kline, Trans.

Diodorus Siculus. The Library of History. C. H. Oldfather, Trans. - Books 1-3

Pausanias. Description of Greece. W. H. S. Jones, H. A. Ormerod, Trans.

Gaius Plinius Secundus. Historia Naturalis (1470) - pp. 102, 109, 135, 138 of 765

Lahsen Oulhadj. English/Amazigh (Tashlhit) (2014)

The Natural History of Pliny. J. Bostock, H. T. Riley, Trans.

Академик:

- шху

- щхыу

Procopius: The Wars. H. B. Dewing, Ed. - Books 1, 7-8

- Link 1

- Link 2

Astronomische und mathematische Sammelhandschrift (sog. Geographus Bavarus) - BSB Clm 560 - pp. 149v-150r (pp. 320-321 of 329)

Paulus Orosius: Histories against the Pagans. I. W. Raymond et al., Trans. - Book 7

Менандр Византиец. С. Ю. Дестунис, Перев.

Ю. Г. Виноградов. Вотивная надпись дочери царя Скилура из Пантикапея и проблемы истории Скифии и Боспора во II в. до н.э. (1987)

С. Ж. Пустовалов. Чи була писемність у катакомбного населення Північного Надчорномор'я? (1997)

Ihor Rassokha. Indo-European origin of alphabetic systems and deciphering of the Byblos script (2017)

Plutarch's Lives. B. Perrin, Trans. - The Life of Marius

The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period - Esarhaddon 002. Nineveh B.

Strabo. Geography - Book 11

Gregory Thaumaturgus. Canonical Epistle (Canones)

Zosimus. Historia Nova - Book 1

- in English

- in Greek

Записки Одесского общества истории и древностей. Том V (1863) - Рассказ римско-католического миссионера доминиканца Юлиана ... . В. Н. Юргевич, пер.

By Daniel Haidachuk, aka Daniel Poirot