Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Phoenicians part 1

The Phoenicians are complicated , interesting , and important . History has a strange way of repeating itself , the Phoenician system of commerce is very similar to the current world system . The Phoenicians with the best naval in the world at the time ,  had colonies with Carthage (their most important colony) ultimately becoming more powerful than the Phoenician mainland (sound familar?) . The best way to study the Phoenicians through the Bible would be to look at what the scriptures say about Tyre , it's chief city.  In Isaiah 23 Tyre is called both the daughter of Sidon ( verse 12) and daughter of Tarshish (verse 10) :

Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength.
He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms: the LORD hath given a commandment against the merchant city, to destroy the strong holds thereof.
And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin, daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Chittim; there also shalt thou have no rest. 
                                                                                                Isaiah 23 : 10 -12

This is really a major clue as to why Tyre and the ships of Tarshish are often linked together in the Bible , when looking at secular sources you come across this :

The Phoenicians called themselves Canaanites, and modern researchers tell us they were the descendants of two groups, the early Canaanites who inhabited the coast of Lebanon, and the Sea People who invaded Lebanon about l200 B.C. The early Canaanites had a limited ship building technology, sailing only flat bottomed barges that hugged the shore. The invading Sea People, some of whom stayed on, introduced among other things, a much more sophisticated maritime technology. Thus their descendants, the Phoenicians, appeared on the scene with an established maritime tradition, and the technology to build ships with a keeled hull. This allowed them to sail the open seas, and as a result, the Phoenicians developed a flourishing sea trade. They settled along the coast of Lebanon, in a loose federation of city states that were built on islands of rocky promontories which provided natural harbors for ship building and trade. The cities, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Arqad, studded the seacoast like jewels, and their wealth became legendary. At the height of their trading empire, they imported copper from Cyprus; linen from Egypt; ivory from India; tin from Spain; horses from Anatolla; and peacocks from Africa. They became famous for their highly prized purple dye extracted from the murex snail, and for the fine timber cut from their forests. - Pat Remler.


How interesting how this sounds identical to Isaiah 23 : the daughter of Sidon (Canaanite) and the daughter of Tarshish (sea peoples). Thomas Jefferson's YDNA group is Haplogroup T (formerly K2) , this would best be described as Tarshish , and than E-V22 would best be described at Sidon . Here is a map of the Phoenician colonies , the yellow is Phoenician : 


Saturday, April 7, 2012

Japheth/Gomer : Togarmah

2The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, 
and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
 3And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, 
and Togarmah                                                        Genesis 10 : 2-3

Now we are going to look at Gomer's 3rd son Togarmah , it should be noted that Gomer's second son Riphath is not mention anywhere else in scripture beside in the table of Nations listing that can be found in both Genesis 10 and 1 Chronicles 1.

They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules.  
                                                                  
                                                                                                                   Ezekiel 27:14




Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.
                                                                                                                   Ezekiel 38 :14

So in these two verses we can see that Togarmah has horses , horsemen , and mules . This fits steppes peoples which is interesting because in the Ashkenaz series we saw that he had horses as well and more than likely was the Scythians . We also see  in Ezekiel 38 Togarmah is in the north quarters and he is alot of people as it says house of Togarmah and also says all his bands and many people. Let's look at DNA in the north quarters and see what we might be able to come up with :


Haplogroup N is the most dominant Northern DNA group in Eurasia , let's look at the others :


Haplogroup Q does not seem to be the dominant north quarter at all.


Haplogroup R which apears to be the one that Togarmah's brother Ashkenaz came from .

The DNA maps don't give a completely clear image , but we do know that Togarmah is associated with horses . This disqualifies Haplogroup Q since most of it is Amerindian and they didn't have the Horse domesticated. The culture credited with the first domestication of the horse is the Botai Culture in Kazakhstan.(Botai Culture and Horse Domestication)

Well haplogroup N seems to be the most north quartered based so if we look for a link we come up with : Seima-Turbino_Phenomenon  . There could be a circumstancial case made that Togarmah is Haplogroup N.

Now there have been a few people that have long wanted to link Togarmah to the Turks , this actually could be possible even within this hypothesis. Check out this link , this one points to a possible Uralic and Central Asian connection to the Turkish people and then also the Yakuts peoples are the highest level of Haplogroup N in the world and they are a Turkish people who ironically live in the Sakha Republic in Siberia. Sakha sounds similar to Scythia and thus Ashkenaz the brother of Togarmah . So there is a circumstansial case for Togarmah being Haplogroup N in the far north who's houses or descendants swept through Central Asia with there hordes of horses.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Japheth/Gomer : Ashkenaz

The sons of Japheth:
Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.
The sons of Gomer:
Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.                       Genesis 10 : 2-3

  Today we are going to look at Gomer's first son Ashkenaz , he is only mentioned once in the scriptures outside of the Table of Nations so let's take a look at it :



27 “Lift up a banner in the land!  Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations for battle against her;
   summon against her these kingdoms: Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz. Appoint a commander against her;
   send up horses like a swarm of locusts. 


                                                                                                 Jeremiah 51 : 27

Here Ashkenaz one of the children of Gomer is listed with Ararat and Minni . We know that Ararat was a kingdom called  Urartu .




So we know where Ararat was . Minni sounds similar to Mitanni





The problem would be that Mitanni was around before Urartu. So Mitanni can't be the Minni talked about , but a couple of interesting things come from Mitanni : 1 . It is linked to the same language group ar Urartu and that is Hurro-Urartian  But looking at the time period of Jeremiah which would be roughly from 640 ad to 580 bc , one interesting name that comes up for Minni is Mannea .Perhaps the most interesting part of this kingdom is that it was defeated for good about 585 bc this would fit the time frame and located on lake Van it is near Ararat . So now we have Ararat and Minni most likely. What we learn about Minni is that they eventually fell to both the Assyrians and the Scythians. The Scythians are interesting because the Jews have long held that Ashkenaz is modern Germany , hence the name Ashkenazi Jews for Jews from there . What's real interesting about all this is that R1a is the Haplogroup most linked with the Scythians , this group has members of German , Slavs , Iranians , and Aryans of the Indo-European language group within it's ranks. Anciently the Scythians ruled the Eurassian steppes thanks to domestication of the horse. Ashkenaz's brother Togarmah is mentioned  in the scripture as handling horses : Ezekiel 27:14 We also see in the verse in Jeremiah that mentions Ashkenaz that horses are contained in the verse as well .Years later the Turks would replace the Scythians on the steps , it might be noted that the Turk's DNA group is next to impossible to find and usually they seem to be Haplogroup R1a the same group as the Scythians. All this circumstancial evidence could point to Ashkenaz actually being German Peoples, reading through the DNA paragraph
you will notice that R1a makes up 60 to 70% of modern German males , this is the same Haplogroup that makes up a good portion of Slavic peoples , Iranian peoples , Indo-Aryans , and many Turks along the steppes here is a map of distribution of 1 of it's subclades :



One final potential link of Ashkenaz with Indo-Iranian Peoples is that the Kingdom of Mitanni (the olderone) has evidence that it was ruled by a Indo-Iranian class over the common people that had the Hurro-Uratu languages


So in conclusion the evidence points most likely to Ashkenaz being R1a , but there is a possibility that he may have been the Hurro-Uratu language family , however the use of Horses by his brother and the geography just make it very difficult to view Ashkenaz as any group other than Scythians.