DVD DESCRIPTION: This critically acclaimed documentary explores the 700-year history of [Black] Islamic rule on the Iberian Peninsula [Spain and Portugal]. Although generations of Spanish historians have portrayed the Moors as brutish occupiers, recent research paints a much different picture. The Islamic invaders actually brought stunning advances in science and art to their territories. Oxford-educated historian Bettany Hughes gives modern viewers a rich, nuanced understanding of Islamic history and culture while visiting such sites as the Alhambra Palace and the Great Mosque at Cordoba.
REVIEW: "The drama seems infused, suddenly, with important complexity, with great questions of war, peace, civilian casualties" -- The Wall Street Journal
"highly informative and entertaining" -- Memorable TV
(Eli from Russia) REPUBLIC OF KALMYKIA. Four hundred years ago the descendants of Mongolian Oirats (Kalmyks) migrated to Europe. They created the Kalmyk Khanate, which lasted from 1635 to 1779, in the south of the European portion of Russia's massive territory. Today they form the majority in Kalmykia, located on the Kalmyk Steppe, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. They are the only traditionally Buddhist people located in Europe, and they herd and ride Bactrian camels. This place, cold as it feels with the windchill, has burning watersprings.
Southernmost republic of Russia | Makhachkala, abandoned villages, Khabib's, Machu Picchu
(Eli from Russia) Redheaded correspondent travels the length of a nation so big, it might as well be many countries called Europe 2.0. Dagestan is named the "hidden gem of the Caucasus in Russia." It is also the most multinational republic in the country. Let's discover its beautiful mountain villages, canyons (deeper than the Grand Canyon, USA), and get to know the local traditions.
Time codes
Russian redheads blend in well in Soviet Union
0:00 Welcome to Dagestan!
1:36 Local cuisine and payment for breaking the dishes
- Real life in Grozny. Is the Chechen Republic of Russia safe for traveling?
• The Chechen wedding isn't what you'd...- Visiting the Chechen wedding | Code of honor, traditions, and life of the Chechens
📌elinabakunova.com/russianclub: Russian Speaking Club where participants can practice the Russian language. Join at any level ;)
🔸What can be found on this channel?
👉🏻 Explanations of Russian culture and facts about Russia that are not found on Google
👉🏻interviews with people on the streets talking about controversial topics
👉🏻opportunities for education for international students learning Russian 👉🏻travel vlogs from the Big Country
📍
📸 elibakunova - on Instagram sharing more content about Russia, its cultures, traveling through, and daily life
🤍 elifromrussia - for those who feel like supporting this channel through Patreon
Adopted WQ Russian Correspondent Eli Bakunova ("Eli from Russia"), YouTube, Jan. 20, 2024, Nov. 26, 2021; Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The Buddha-to-be Prince Siddhartha Gautama lived in seasonal capital palaces like Mes Aynak.
Central Asia/Gandhara is NW of pre-1948 India
(Eurasia) Despite having the same size as Mexico, Central Asia is one of the most diverse and unique areas on Earth. Yet, most people know nothing about it or its peoples. This video shows the amazing diversity of the region, a blend of East and West, possibly the "Middle Country" (Majjhimadesa) of Buddhist lore where buddhas originate, and the interesting cultures, music, food, and customs that come with them.
Leave video suggestions in the comments, which are checked often. Follow on social media on Instagram (theeurasiia) and Twitter (eurasiia1).
Who were these blue-eyed people like the Buddha living in Central Asia near Iranian Aryans?
Who were the Scythians who could make gold jewelry like this comb? (Solokha, 4th cent. BC)
Buddhist coin, gold kapana, circulating in Scythia/India
The distinct caps
When the Buddha-to-be, the Bodhisatta, was a boy, he grew up spoiled in a Scythian warrior culture. He had a white pony named Kanthaka. He was married off at 16 to his extraordinarily beautiful 16-year-old cousin, Princess Bimba (known to the world by the moniker Yasodhara). He learned to ride, shoot with bow and arrow, play and compete with other Scythian boys, and was educated in all the arts and sciences of the day by royal tutors, likely Brahmins and other instructors. All of this would be extraordinarily unlikely for a Nepalese or Indian boy, but it was common for a Central Asian, a Gandharan, a proto-Afghan. Similar to the Scythians of Central and North Asia are another culture designated by recent studies by Western scholars of the Yamnaya (named by Russians to refer to their burial pits, tumuli, kurgan, barrow tombs, their "stupas" of sorts).
Scythians (Barry Cuneliffe)
The Buddha was not from India. He was an outsider, a foreigner. First of all, there was no "India" at the time. There may have been a "Great Bharat" (Maha Bharata) at some time in the past, but not until the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka united disparate kingdoms and republics into a united empire two centuries after the life of the Buddha did anything like modern India come to be.
It was perhaps bigger in the past, extending into Pakistan and Afghanistan (until 1947's Partition that divided India between Hindu-majority and Muslim-majority areas (Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangladesh). The Buddha was from ancient Gandhara (in a region that is now Afghanistan), part of what the ancient Greeks called Scythia.
This was the Indo-Scythian land of the Sakas (Shakyas). These formerly nomadic horse-riding warriors (not caste kshatriyas) were very strange compared to the people of Magadha and neighboring kingdoms where Prince Siddhartha Gautama, renouncing his kingdom of Kapilavastu, went in search of spiritual answers, namely, "What do we suffer, and what can be done about it." The Magadhis and people we would today label as Indians spoke poorly of the barbarians in the Northwest frontier. They did things that ran contrary to the post-Indus Valley Civilization peoples guided by Brahmin priests and their Vedas and countless creeds, belief systems, and practices.
Female Scythians, warrior princesses
For one, they (Scythians in general throughout Central Asia, not South Asia and Indo-Scythians from around ancient Gandhara by Taxila, Pakistan, and modern Sakastan/Afghanistan/Sistan Baluchistan):
did not adhere to the Vedic/Brahminical caste system
did not revere Brahmins as but ruled by kings and warriors
did not subjugate women, who were fellow warriors
did not keep sexual standards as the east did, marrying among cousins [like British and other royals]
and so on as befits an exceedingly "proud," nomadic, horseback extended family clans in there mahajanapada or "country" (foothold of the clan).
What was the Buddha's country?
The Shakyan Clan was one of these Aryan peoples, living in what is now the Stans, the steppe of Central Asia all the way up to Ukraine and down to Persia/Iran, or land of Iranians/Ariyans.
Dr. Ranajit Pal, Ph.D.
This is not the story we are told, but it is very well explained by maverick Indian historian Dr. Ranajit Pal, Ph.D. and aligns with the facts we have from the texts about how the Buddha was regarded, particularly by the founder of Hindu-ism (Indus-ism) as a systematic religion under the Brahmins and extending their lineage back thousands of years to the ancient Vedas [much like Jews due to push themselves back as a group into Sumerian times and the precursors of the Bible stories].
The video above shows how these family clans, these Scythian-like people venturing to the steppe, like Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes on the eastern end of Asia in and around Mongolia.
Territory of the Indo-Scythians in and around Gandhara and expanding into South Asia
Super Afghan stupa carved out of stone
One of the most distinguishing aspects of the Buddha and Buddhism and what he perceived to be his (Solar Race, Aryan) lineage and their traditions is the stupa or burial mounds. These barrows, tumuli, kurgans, burial mounds have an ancient history. The Buddha continued it. One Ukrainian scholar even saw fit to declare that the Buddha was from Ukraine nearer to North Asia than Central Asia, and while this may sound ludicrous and self-aggrandizing, there are indications that he was more a part of that ancient Scythian, for lack of a better more comprehensive designation, tradition than anything "Indian." But the Indo-Scythians abutted the kingdoms that later became India, and it is said that the Buddha's clan, the Sakas or Shakyas (Shakyian/Scythians) invaded and took over and occupied Bihar (now a state in India so named because of the large number of Buddhist vihars or abbeys built throughout the land), where their leader had his great enlightenment in Bodh Gaya.
Devoted Scythian couples with the Buddha (center), Scytho-Parthian, Kushan (wiki)
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The Yamnaya culture [a] or the Yamna culture [b], also known as the Pit Grave Culture or Ochre Grave Culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE [2].
It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная (Romanization Yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means "related to pits (yama)," as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers.
Research in recent years has found that Mikhaylovka, in lower Dnieper river, Ukraine, formed the Core Yamnaya culture (c. 3600–3400 BCE) [3]. The Yamnaya economy was based upon animal husbandry, fishing, and foraging, and the manufacture of ceramics, tools, and weapons [4].
Exotic nomadic Eurasians with wagons
The people of the Yamnaya culture lived primarily as nomads, with a chiefdom system and wheeled carts and wagons that allowed them to manage large herds [5].
They are also closely connected to Final Neolithic cultures, which later spread throughout Europe and Central Asia, especially the Corded Ware people and the Bell Beaker culture [5], as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubnaya cultures.
Back migration from Corded Ware also contributed to Sintashta and Andronovo [6]. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamnaya culture are present [c].
Yamnaya material culture was very similar to the Afanasevo culture of South Siberia, and the populations of the two cultures are genetically indistinguishable [1]. This suggests that the Afanasevo culture may have originated from the migration of Yamnaya groups to the Altai region or, alternatively, that both cultures developed from an earlier shared cultural source [7].
Genetic studies have suggested that the people of the Yamnaya culture can be modelled as a genetic admixture between a population related to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) [d] and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG) in roughly equal proportions [8], an ancestral component which is often named "Steppe ancestry," with additional admixture from Anatolian, Levantine, or Early European farmers [9, 10].
Genetic studies also indicate that populations associated with the Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, Sintashta, and Andronovo cultures derived large parts of their ancestry from the Yamnaya or a closely related population [1, 11, 12, 13].
According to the widely-accepted Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas, the people that produced the Yamnaya culture spoke a stage of the Proto Indo-European language, which later spread eastwards and westwards as part of the Indo-European migrations. More: Yamnaya culture
Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
(Best Documentary) Feb. 8, 2024: RAJASTHAN
This land rich in history embodies all the magic of India. Located in the northwest of India, it is the ancestral land of the maharajas "great kings" and Rajputs (rajaputras) or "sons of kings." Let's meet inhabitants and travelers of this isolated state between plains and mountains in the most inhabited desert in the world.
Director: Laurent Cadoret. Original title: "Somewhere on Earth: Rajasthan"
Avenged Sevenfold – "We Love You" Moar (Featuring Pussy Riot)
(Avenged Sevenfold) Oct. 5, 2023: A7x had a lot of fun reimagining and rerecording “We Love You” with Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova.
Nadya of Anarcho Punk Collective Pussy Riot
"We Love You Moar" is available everywhere now: A7X.lnk.to/WeLoveYouMoar. The band collaborated with Nadya to create a custom balaclava (knitted facemask to stay warm in a Siberian gulag) with proceeds going to SOS North Caucasus. Limited to 300 with each purchase helping LGBTQ+ people facing mortal danger and persecution in the North Caucasus, Russia:
Buddhism is the religion of Afghanistan (Gandhara, Central Asia, the real Kapilavastu), where the Buddha was born and raised, after which he traveled east to Magadha, Bihar, and Varanasi/Benares (proto-India) to set the Wheel of the Dharma in motion. The Shakyas (Sakas) ordained in their country (maha-janapada) and became the Monks and Nuns of the Mines (National Geographic) in ancient Afghanistan.
(CaspianReport) Formerly Buddhist (ranajitpal.com) Afghanistan's mountains obstruct stability and prosperity. Conflict and tribalism have shaken the formerly Buddhist, British, Russian, USA/CIA, and future Chinese state to its core. Now, those same mountains may hold the answer to its misfortune. They are full of gold, copper, and rare earth minerals, the value of which fluctuates on the world market as demand increases due to electronics like iPhones and computers.
Wisdom Quarterly joins Afghan students near UCLA (at Federal Building on Wilshire Blvd. in support of Save Mes Aynak documentary makers years ago when China was about to demolish Mes Aynak to extract rare earth minerals. Then the world price dropped due to discover of such minerals on sea floor and price plummet.
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Will the dispute between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan be settled?
(Al Jazeera English) Inside Story, Sept. 18, 2022. More fighting has taken place between [the formerly Buddhist Central Asian 'stans of] Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over border territory -- a dispute that goes back to the collapse of the Soviet Union/USSR in 1991.
Skirmishes that started a few days ago have killed and injured dozens of people.
Both landlocked nations accuse each other of breaking a recent ceasefire.
What's caused this latest round of fighting?
(WION) ~100 reported dead in clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Clashes between two of the Stans that took place on 9/15-16 killed around
100. The ceasefire is on since Friday after Russia called for de-escalation.
AJE Presenter: Hashem Ahelbarra. Guests: Former Kyrgyzstan Ambassador to the US and Canada Kadyr Toktogulov, Director of the Institute of Political Studies in Moscow and a former member of the Russian Parliament Sergei Markov, journalist who specializes in Central Asia Bruce Pannier.
System of a Down (SOAD) is featured in this documentary, Screamers, about the Armenian Genocide.
Los Angeles has the largest population of Armenians, spreading out from the little foothill hamlet of Glendale, so we are bombarded with news about the genocide. When do the Ottomans or Turks stand up and show that it was something other than a genocide? It might have been a case of he said, she said, but Pacifica Radio's "special programming" at 1:00 PM today (Law and Disorder with attorneys Heidi Bogosian and Michael Steven Smith) describes a situation that could not be explained away as mere "casualties" of war. This was targeted a targeted extermination with follow up atrocities.
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What is the Armenian Genocide?
(AlternateHistoryHub, April 24, 2015) Today marks the 104th anniversary of the start of the genocide of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians by Turkish nationalists. Over a century of denial about the events that took place. History can never be revised to suit the needs of some. We learn from our past so we can have a better future. This is not alternative history. It only leaves one to wonder what could have been had this atrocity not taken place or been denied for so long.
Armenian Genocide (The Hidden Holocaust)
(1915GenocidalTurks/Wiki) The Armenian Genocide (Armenian Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն) is also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally among Armenians, as the Great Crime (Armenian Մեծ Եղեռն or Medz Yeghern).
It was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian (Greek, and Assyrian) subjects from their historic homeland in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. It took place during and after World War I and was implemented in two phases, the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor and the deportation of women, children, elderly, and infirm on death marches to the Syrian desert. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million.
The Assyrians, Greeks, and other minority groups were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy. It is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate (or ethnically cleanse) the Armenians. And it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Jewish Holocaust by the German Nazis. The word "genocide" was coined in order to describe these events.
The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word "genocide" is an accurate description of the events. In recent years it and other nations of the world (most notably the USA) have faced repeated calls to accept the events as a genocide. To date, 20-30 countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view.
System of a Young Turk
Why can't four Turkish guys get together and form a band like System of a Down (SOAD)? That way we'll play your song "It Was No Genocide." Until then we will continue to hear from one of the world greatest bands of all time. And, regrettably, debate will be stifled. Questioning will be outlawed. Denialism will end in prison or with fines, as if the state could outlaw ideas by labeling some of them as Orwellian "thought crimes." Are Jewish scholars celebrating the end of free speech and free thought alongside shortsighted Armenian scholars?
Turks protest bill making it illegal to deny Armenian genocide
(AP Archive, July 30, 2015) "I don't know what they have against us. This Armenian issue is over a century old. What is it about? It's just creating tensions."
STORYLINE: Hundreds of members of the Turkish community gathered behind France's National Assembly in Paris on Thursday to protest against a bill that would render the denial of the Armenian genocide a crime. Politicians approved the measure that will make it a crime in France to deny that a mass killings of Armenians in 1915 amounted to a genocide. This could put France on a collision course with Turkey, a strategic ally and trading partner that argues the conflict nearly 100 years ago should be left to historians. Holding Turkish and French flags, protesters demanded that French politicians oppose the bill. "We are asked to officially recognize that our grandparents were assassins, but no one can say that," said demonstrator Fatih Ekici. More
(MTV News, Decoded April 27, 2016) The Surprisingly Racist History of the Term Caucasian
"Caucasian"?
Wisdom Quarterly (OPINION)
Facts presented in a fresh way -- concise, to the point, building up to support the thesis, exquisite! And who knew, right? Actually, readers may know this from a recent post about where the people Europeans enslaved in America came from.
No, it's not Africa like we're all taught. Slaves came from America! Wow, they enslaved and raped mated with the natives, some of whom were black, all of which were called the "copper colored" races. America was the land of "reds" and "blacks."
Latin-American singer Christina Aguilera
See Dr. Joy DeGruy, who goes much deeper into the social construction of the idea of "white" as one race, which originally kept out the Irish, some of the lightest skinned people on the planet. It's amazing; there was no thinking, "We're all 'white'."
Now everyone in the U.S. and Europe takes it for granted, unless you're Latino/a. Then you can be as "white" as Christina Aguilera or Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, but have a drop of Spanish blood (which is all European and not at all native) or a Spanish surname and you're "brown."
Latin-American Wonder Woman
Of course, our country suffers from more than just prejudice, racism, and implicit bias. We have colorism or shadism: the darker your skin, the worse treatment you get.
Who knew MTV (pronounced eMpTyV) was still around or ever doing anything good? We hear they want to bring music videos back, but that's just a rumor. It didn't pay enough the first time. Happy College Signing Day.
Why was the judge so fearful? Because she understood the archaic language he was speaking as it pertains to laws still on the books the court system has done everything it can to circumvent by tacit agreement as it forces and dupes us into signing away our natural rights. We cannot emphasize the importance and significance of what this man accomplished on camera which the modern legal system wishes no one would ever know about.
The Bozeman Chronicle editorial board released a
statement objecting to WEST banning all recording and spectators from
ernie's court proceedings: bozemandailychronicle.com
Surprising Mainstream Media Items
AP wins Pulitzer stories on slavery in the seafood industry The AP won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for documenting the use of slave labor in Southeast Asia to supply seafood to American tables -- an investigation that spurred the release of more than 2,000 captive slaves.
US to send 200+ troops, Apache helicopters to Iraq The U.S. gov't wants to deploy more than 200 additional troops to Iraq and to send eight Apache helicopters to kill in a fight against the alleged Islamic State group in Iraq, the first major increase in U.S. forces in nearly a year, defense officials said.
Pentagon misled lawmakers on military-sexual-assault rates The Pentagon misled Congress by using inaccurate or vague information about cases of sexual assault [homosexual and heterosexual rape of fellow troops] in an effort to blunt support for a Senate bill that would make a major change in how the military handles allegations of sexual misconduct, an AP investigation found.
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