I’m looking for someone with a local knowledge of the history of the Karakalpakstan area, especially the Khorazem Civilization and its links to the larger Oxus Civilization. It’s incredibly hard to get reliable information in English, and someone with a grasp on the local archeological sites, philosophical presumptions of the current population, and educated assumption of the past would be of help.
Any background on the Aryan migration in the Vedidad, via pics or archeological evidence would be appreciated as well, as well as possible Macedonian-Buddhist influence.
My access to Al-Buruni is limited, but am holding him as highly as Ibn Khaldun. Any insight on his anthropological and comparative theology would be appreciated as well. I’ve hit a dead end source wise here, and failed to find English speaking Penpals.
I am here, Conta-Nietzsche. I am familiar with that of which you speak.
Biruni was a great man, who I have dined with on many occasions. He was a great teacher, and friend, and neighbour. If he is currenty dead, then may he rest in peace.
I’m stuck comparing iconography from Mesopotamia to this region for testing parative philosophy works. There is only one big work out from a Russian, and a art collector selling her ‘wares’.
It’s a very important proto-Zoroastrian civilization, appears to of single handily imported the Agni cult into India.
It’s important to find a local who has like me, been walking around, poking around and digging. The civilization lasted until the 1600s when the rivers started shifting away from the Caspian Sea to the Aral (which is drying up again) right after the Russians arrived on the scene, everyone instantly becoming desert nomads or hill people.
Such a shock usually enforces a entrenchment of cultural identity and longing, and destitute nomadic populations usually aren’t the first target for cultural exchange when empires move in on a territory.
Plus, the Soviets dumped a bunch of Steppe Folk Art museums there to spur economic progress, which is tardily liberal thinking, but is useful none the less for this task. I just don’t have access to them, as its not something that dominates google searches apparently.
I’ve been in the Middle Eastern Room and The Rare Books Room and The Map Archive enough to know they don’t have what I need. It wasn’t for this search, but I got now a learned understanding in how they specialize. There are two books there that would be of interest to me, but I can also via a Greek Bishop and a Persian I know access the authors directly…
What I need is my counterpart in Uzbekistan (there is bound to be someone sorta like me) who can provide me with better, first hand info. Someone on the ground, who knows the terrain, his people, and their thoughts better than anyone, and who has a penetrating sense of the regions history. You don’t usually get that from books- sometimes, but not usually.
There is a international university of Central Asia, I was reading about based out of several regional countries, I’m going to see if they have a archeology department yet… it’s a brand new interstate university system, but maybe it has experienced guys… I hate taking all my knowledge on the BMAC Civilization from one archeologist, which is pretty much what we have been doing in the west, everything traces back to the same guy from The Black Sands Documentry.
They have like, a archeologist who now lives in Greece/Moscow, and their Anthropologists are nothing more than disgruntled Soviet era Marxists, requiring me to look at this Society via Hegel Goggles. I already got enough disgruntled ex-communist in my own community to know they aren’t very good at History, one is pulling off a Walden Act in a 750,000 dollar cabin-complex built in the 1700s and is on the same property Granny Smith Apples first grew… and she can’t even manage to grow her own apples. That’s what happens to socialists when their system collapses… they do stupid shit, and stop thinking.
