What would the world be like if Europe, including the Mediterranean was overran by migrations of Steppe peoples. Where would the Europeans go, if anywhere? What would the world look like, even up to now?
Europe overran by Asiatic steppe peoples
- Thread starter Hrvatskiwi
- Start date
The Europeans wouldn't go anywhere. Asiatic steppe nomads, in usual fashion, would just settle down among the people they conquered and more-or-less blend culturally and ethnically with them. Much as the Bulgars and Magyars had. The "Migrations" of Germanic tribes into Europe were really large sections of the tribal aristocracy and the servants and retainers being forced by circumstances to move into the Roman Empire.
TURKS!
KALMYKS!
GOTHS!
FRANKS!
LOMBARDS!
ANGLO-SAXONS!
TATARS!
ARABS!
AZERBAIJANIS!
JAPANESE!
KOREANS!
THAI!
CIRCASSIANS!
Why wouldn't they later become a colonial power?
What the hell are you on about?
Do think of the Turks as Greeks wearing Fezzes and drinking Coffee?
No, nor have I ever indicated I believe so. But it's not like the Turks of Turkey are primarily descended from steppe dwellers. Genetically, they are more Greek than they are Central Asian, which again indicates they are an example of the upper class being the main mobility of the Migration Age. We're talking genealogy here, not culture.
They think themselves are Turks, they have identified with the Spirit of the Turkic Peoples.
Yes, the people of Turkey are Turks. No one has denied that. But they are not the result of some huge Asiatic invasion. Though the culture has changed, the people themselves are of the same stock as has long inhabited Anatolia. This same pattern is repeated all over Europe, the point of this thread.
What the OP is advocating is that we look at a scenario in which the new populations mostly displace the old, which hasn't happened in Europe since farming arrived.
What in the name of Tsargrad does that (underlined) mean?
What is the Spirit of the Turkic Peoples as distinct from the Spirit of the Slavic Peoples?
Looking at the here and now, from say 1500 AD on if you want to go to the past.
Which has what to do with the strength or location of the city's walls?
Istanbul being Tsargrad or Tsargrad as Istanbul or either as Constantinople doesn't really mean anything about the people being Asiatic or European in any sense that the Ottoman Empire was not in its way merely the next evolution of the Empire of Rūm.
To use my favorite name for the polity that started as the eastern half of the megastate Roman Empire.
I don't think the rest of Europe faring similarly to that polity's destruction and reincarnation is going to mean very much, in some ways. And that's the most drastically nonEuropeanized area impacted by "Asiatic steppe peoples".
Practically no chance of this happening. Small bands of Mongols did occasionally go as far west as what is now Belarus & eastern Poland, but they were already overstretching themselves as it was.
Let me say this: large-scale invasions were possible in the Neolithic and in the Copper Age, and apparently DID happen (there's significant genetic evidence for this, especially the transition from Neolithic to Copper Age to Bronze Age seems to have brought tremendous changes in the makeup of Europe). Past that point, it's practically impossible to have a similar drastic impact because population densities were too high. Yes, for instance the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings or the Umayyad Caliphate left decisive marks, but these were just marks, not large-scale population replacements.
Actually, genetically speaking, they are Anatolian. Greek had only supplanted the last of the native Anatolian languages a few centuries before the Turks arrived.
On the main topic, I find it highly unlikely that any steppe culture would stay that way in Europe, except perhaps on the Hungarian plain, as Europe just doesn't make good steppe country. Forest grows too easily, which would make things very different from the steppe.
I wouldn't really call them "Greek", either - Really "post-Ice Age Neolithic settlers of Anatolia" overlapped with a bunch of migrants (Hittites, Galatians, Greeks, Turks, etc).