Blog # 1

After reading both articles I concluded that language does affect culture, ethnicity and and Religion. It may not seem that obvious at first but it truly touches every single one of them. looking at this point deeply , I think that understanding the roots of each language can help us figure out many missing parts from history. the article by David Crystal mentioned that by studying the Indo-Europeans, who were originally the seminomadic population living in a steppe regions of Southern Russia, around 4000 BC, they found that these people used words like bride and in-laws which showed a patriarchal society where the bride belongs to the husband's family and another example was the fact that these people used words such as farmer and farm pets that showed they were living off farming and they were in agricultural production. Due to the fact that we have no access to communicate with these people drawing inferences such as the one mentioned, are the most reliable answers we can get and history has proved that these are reliable conclusions. Therefore it is essential to study languages because they help us to reach the type of information that cant be reached any other ways. but then the question is " what happens to the forgotten languages?" if what we know about different cultures and ethnicity and religions is hugely dependent on languages then I conclude that there are still many cultures that we dont know about and I believe the article by David Crystal should have focused more on the history of forgotten languages not the very well-known once such as Persian, Italian and such that are already studied and are well understood both culturally and ethnically. Also I think both articles greatly based on sociological approaches rather than anthropological, and I think if it was done in pure anthropological and or religion perspective it would have been much more helpful to understand the situation in the silk road.

My Silk Road adventure began weeks ago with the topic orientalism, ethnicity, religion, culture, and language. This week I will take a step forward in my study of the silk roads and analyze “Migration and Settlement of the Yeuzhi-Kushan: Interaction and Interdependence of Nomadic and Sedentary Societies” by Liu, Xinru.

 I personally found this article by Liu scholarly written and fascinating. What I liked about the article the most was the fact that it was well organized and nicely broken down based on the history and the influence that the Yeuzhi, Kushans, Tukharan people might have had around places that were inhabited by them. Compare to the other articles that I read about the Silk Road, Liu opens the topic fast and proposes the idea quickly. This is very thoughtful because as a reader I really understood the impact of Yeuzhi, Kushans, Tukharan people and grasped the point which I hope I did correctly.

In his article, he basically discusses the relationship of a particular nomadic group, the Yuezhi (which later became the Yuezhi-Kushan), with sedentary agricultural societies across Eurasia. For only about two to three centuries, the Yuezhi-Kushans are directly responsible for some of the greatest historical developments on the Silk Road.

Another important point that I think I should mention is that the Nomads were seen as predators, they did not pay any attention to their environmental harms that they caused due to their secondary civilization.

After reading this article I can not stop thinking about all the “ what if’s” that come to my mind and I hope as I read more about these people I find answers to my “ what ifs”

Blog # 2

To me, history has always been a mystery because when I try to imagine thousands of years ago and understand those “other” people it seems impossible. Now coming from Middle East, I have grown up hearing many myths before falling asleep and so it amuses me how far away from my window, others grew up with myths as well.

To begin with, I would like to talk about Bret Hinsch’s essay “ Myth and the Construction of Foreign Ethnic Identity”. Through this peace he talks about the importance of primordial myths in the construction of ethic identity of the distinct people of Xiong-nu, Xianbei, and Chaoxian in contrast to Han Chinese claim of Chineseness. Due to the fact that Han Chinese has a power over the aforesaid people through myths, they would create a new story for it and use to control or assimilate others. This I believe was the reason behind many myths that came out of Ancient China.

Now after reading this essay, my mind is trying to understand many questions such as: how do we know if these are all the myths we know? Or how were these people really thinking at that time? Or what was the situation that resulted in those myths? These questions are that makes me want to study the silk road because I believe behind all these myths are truths that are hidden to be found and the key to understand future is only if we understand the past therefore studying the Han Chinese or the Chineseness or the construction of all those Asian myths can help us understand who we are and where we are going and that is why history will always stay as a mystery. As we move on, we may be farther away from the past but there are tools that bring us closer to the past.