I cannot help but wonder with the discussion of The Abyss and its seeming clear connection with Sheol or Hell or Tartarus, Cavern World, etc., that perhaps the Tartar Sea (Mare di Tartaria) – that we now call the Arctic Ocean + Beaufort Sea + Chukchi Sea + East Siberian Sea + Laptev Sea + probably Lara / Kara Sea (and maybe Greenland Sea) – is the connected needed to understand the Tartar people and who they were or where they came from.
Where they the original Vedic people who came out of The Abyss (into the Tartar Sea) and spread down to India and other lands?
Take a look at this Wikipedia 1776 Zatta map (Western Parts of North America):
@Soretna , I think you caught onto something here...the Tatar were often referred to as one of the major invading tribes of North-Western Asia...history books often club them in the same category of invaders as the Persians and Turks - the exact statement being "the fearsome Tatars , Turks and Persians" . There was even a branch of Tatars known as the Volga Tatars - from present day Russia...there was also a mention of "Tartary and Cham" in history .
Now whether those Tatar people were same as the "Tartar" folk , is to be determined . You also make a fascinating connection between the Tartar sea and the Arctic Ocean...hmm !
Folks , the Arctic Ocean actually used to be called the Tatar Sea !
***I am beginning to think that the description of Tartarus as the Underworld was from the perspective of the Hollow Earthers , who were bathed in the light & warmth of their inner sun , for full 24 hours everyday...from their point of view , the frigid Arctic Ocean on the other side of the Abyss (North Polar Opening) was the most inhospitable place imaginable - given it had 6 months of total darkness every year ! Therefore , they considered the Arctic Ocean of Earth's outer surface as the "Underworld" , from their vantage point !!
Somehow , mankind on Earth's outer surface lost all contact with their Hollow Earth origins (due to the great flood perhaps ??) and even forgot about the very existence of Hollow Earth . What did survive somehow were the ancient beliefs of the Hollow Earthers , which now became totally out of context - for humans living on Earth's outer surface & hence the immense confusion . In fact , most people treat all such stories as "gibberish" and nothing more than the fanciful imagination of our ancient forefathers...!
Russian historians following the lead of the Russian state have sought to eliminate references to Tatars and Tatarstan while projecting the presence of Russia and Russians back into a past when much of their country was in fact part of Tatary, Rafael Khakimov says.
They have managed to convince many that the Volga is a Russian rather than a Tatar river and to have suppressed the fact that at one point in its history the Arctic Ocean on which the Kremlin now places so many hopes was called the Tatar Sea, according to the Kazan historian and former advisor to Mintimir Shaymiyev.
What is especially unfortunate, Khakimov argues, is that the Russians who have engaged in this misrepresentation of the past have succeeded in convincing many Tatars of the accuracy of their claims, something that leads Tatars to forget their glorious past and be more willing to be absorbed into the Russian world.
“From the school bench, we hear completely negative things about the Tatars while only elaborate praise is given to Russia,” he continues. Teachers always talk about how large Russia is and ignore the fact that it was once a marginal principality on the edge of a much larger Tatar world, something obscured by a systematic misrepresentation of maps and toponyms.
An element of the 17th century map of Asia titled “Map of Asia With The Islands Adjoining Described” published by John Speed in 1626 showing Tataria (Tatary) and the Tatarian Sea (the Arctic Ocean).
Khakimov recounts how shocked he himself was when he visited the Vatican and was shown older maps which showed just how large and important Tatarstan once was and was told by the curators of the map collections there, “this is your country,” something few Tatars have had the chance to hear.
“Having seen Great Tatary” on those maps, the historian says he was “shocked” because he too had become accustomed to thinking of Tatarstan as something small, a minuscule part of the USSR. They were once in a position of dominance in Eurasia, while Muscovy (what’s now the Russian state) was the small and minuscule part of that continent.
“Tatars arose as a nation long ago and with the very same name they have today,” Khakimov suggests. “The attempts of certain ideologues to present them as a young nation are directed at the ignorant.” Those who know more know that “the origins of the Tatars has been discussed not for years but for centuries” – evidence of just how long they’ve existed.
Yes , thanks @Soretna...and as can be seen from this map , there was a near complete overlap between the territory of present day Russia and what was known as Tatarstan in ancient times !
Folks , there has clearly been a suppression of Tatarstan's ancient history...it's quite surprising that an area roughly 50% the size of entire Eurasia , was practically blanked out by mainstream history books...I wonder why ?? Even the writer of the enclosed article seems to carry a pre-conceived notion about this topic :))
During some recent wanderings on the internet, I came across a most particular subreddit: “Tartaria”. At first, I thought the subreddit was dedicated to some fantasy or steampunk fictional world, but after a couple of posts, I realized that it was actually all about a conspiracy theory regarding an ancient kingdom, either ignored or purposely hidden by historians. Most of the posts there show European-style buildings in the United States built, supposedly, with “Tartarian” technology, or speculate over artistic representations of “lost technology”.
As a historian, these theories sounded really nonsensical and absurd to me. I couldn’t stop wondering what that was all about, though, and where the theory could’ve come from. After some research, I found it to be a symptom of a major problem: disinformation, distrust in science and its methods, and a belief in pseudoscience. There are other problems sprinkled here and there in the theory as a whole, and I’ll cover them shortly – but first things first.
Origins: my ignorance is as worthy as your knowledge
I’ll make a disclaimer: When I say ignorance, I merely mean the lack of knowledge about a subject, and not an ad-hominem to the people believing in these conspiracy theories. Well then: I traced most of the discussion about Tartaria back to a blog called “Stolen History” (that has been removed since then).
The premise of the blog is not bad, it claims that history is written by the victors, so it sets people out to find different perspectives and facts: something historians encourage, by seeking out as many sources as possible. As it is an open forum, though, pretty much all speculations are discussed seriously, without much evidence. That’s when things go sour.
Basically, some people noticed that until the 18th and 19th century, maps included a region called “Tartary” or “Grand Tartary” in the east of Russia, Central Asia and Siberia. They ally this with quotes from the Encyclopedia Britannica (an 18th century work) in articles like this one to claim that there’s a hidden Empire in history.
This comes to show a profound lack of historical context. European geographers didn’t have a deep knowledge about the region and its peoples – the nomadic nature of the Turkic and Mongolic populations who roamed the steppes. For example, maps simply denoted the region where these nomadic people used to roam, not a kingdom in the molds of a Western one. As geographers learned more about the region, “Tartar/Tatar” lost its use as an umbrella term for the nomadic populations of the region. Other elements like a “Tartarian language”, flag, and crest – which were generalized from one tribe to all the other ones living in the region – are considered by the conspiracy theorists as proof that such a mighty Empire existed.
It gets worse. Another supposed evidence that academic history is a hoax is the discrepancy between 15th – 18th century depictions of people like Genghis Khan, Batu Khan and Tamerlane and more current ones (the examples they use, in fact, are just as old, only they’re paintings made by the actual ruler’s court painter). Only the “old” depictions deemed more accurate are white-washed versions of the sovereigns: because the European artists who made those were not familiar with the ethnicity they were representing, so they just imagined Genghis Khan like a regular Western king. This is not just ignorance but also low-key racism.
Asian and European depictions of Central Asian rulers / Photo-montage of pictures retrieved from Stolenhistory.org
It doesn’t stop there, though. Remember what I said about buildings in the United States? Well, based on color-coding on a couple of old maps and badly interpreted Latin, there’s a belief that Tartary had a hold in North America. That’s right. Linking all of this together, the conspiracy theorists believe that most architectural styles and technology associated with Western Europe, including the ones in Europe and out of it, are actually Tartarian. Old drawings and paintings picturing how technology would be in the future, Jules Verne style, depicting people with flying suits and weird steampunk helicopters, are attributed to Tartary, implying that the Empire held advanced technology that was simply hidden, destroyed or modified by European conquerors.
There are entire discussions about how old maps changed their shape in odd ways (completely dismissing how hard and inaccurate cartography used to be without modern equipment), attributing such changes to great floods and whatnot. I could go on and on, but the examples I gave here are enough to show how this “hidden history” works – by cherry picking and distorted pattern recognition.
As condescending as I may sound while presenting these theories, I don’t think people in these kinds of forums should just shut up. Questioning is a fundamental part of science; all great discoveries originate in a will to understand more, a realization that the things we know are incomplete. Curiosity and the will to increase our understanding of little researched topics is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be just thoughtless guessing. That’s why the scientific method exists: you cross-check facts and information, peer review articles, discuss theories with experts on congresses and seminars, conduct discussions in academia. Truly, it’s fascinating to see people going after knowledge for themselves.
What I see is lacking is an understanding of how knowledge is made*.* Sometimes, we think the things we know are taken for granted – we listen to our teachers at school and read our books already thinking it has always been there, and that everyone agrees on what’s been deemed as facts, since ever. Believing in conspiracies and pseudo science often seems to originate from the moment people realize that knowledge can be contested – and is being contested constantly, by the way! What do you mean, there are alternative explanations to what I’ve been taught? What else could be a lie? There they go, setting off to seek knowledge, but without method.
Method is important, or rather, fundamental and perhaps we need to learn more about that than learn about what’s been discovered so far. Everyone can do science and produce knowledge, yes, absolutely – but without method, we end up connecting points entirely unrelated to another.
Tartaria shows how a simple ignorance about other people’s culture and history can lead to huge misunderstandings. In Brazil, where I grew up, Asian history and the Russian Revolution are topics barely touched upon, and just because it relates to the bigger European scenario; European history garners the most focus in Western education, giving little attention to African and Asian history. Without studying, I could have just as easily have fallen for it.
If you think this kind of theory is harmless, just take into consideration the setbacks we are experiencing because there are flat-earthers and people who believe the Nazis were left wing. Conspiracy theories like these slow science down, spread disinformation and support delusional thinking. If anything, it distracts scholars from continuing research to expand our current knowledge by making them have to prove what is already widely known.
As most of the problems we have nowadays, the key to solving this general discrediting of science and widespread conspiracy theorizing can be only one: education, good education. The kingdom of Tartaria and all its technology may not be real, but the damage conspiracy theories do to science and trust in academic history is very much real.
@deandddd still not find "Meksiko" (that we seem to have both previously seen in some other map) on some of these older maps, but you might take a peek as well to see if you see any. There is a place called "Muxetus" just west of China in this last map.
@Soretna , if there is a "Tartar sauce" , then there must have been a land of the Tatars somewhere :))
The root cause for all this confusion about Tartary/Tatarstan is it's connection to ancient legends of the underworld...people who emerged from Hollow Earth settled in various parts of the Eurasian continent and carried these legends with them...over time these stories got totally mixed up and the original context was lost - that might explain the mystery which exists around this fascinating subject !
PM Orbán met Pope Francis and presented a letter that King Béla IV wrote for Pope Innocent IV in 1250. The King warned of the looming threat of the Tatar invasion and called for the unity of Europe. He was ignored. 35 yrs later HU fended off the Tatars with great bloodshed.
I think that mankind on Earth's outer surface lost all contact with their Hollow Earth origins, exceot for where the Puranas survived. I imagine that the a few brahmin communities were aware until the arrival of fthe British and all of their "science".
Interestingly the Hungarian prime minister mentions a different spelling that makes me think they have relabeled them / destroyed their identity in some fashion: 