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Central Asia
What's in a Name - Asia
by Edward Dawson & Peter Kessler, 27 October 2017

Asia as a name is ancient. The Greeks were the first to record it for FOLLOWING PAGES:
Indo-European Daughter Languages:
posterity, although it doubtless existed in common use for some time
Tocharian
before that. A History of Indo-Europeans

The earliest attribution seems to be by Herodotus (around 440 BC) who RULERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD:
was referencing Anatolia - or possibly the Persian empire as a whole - in Athens
Persian Empire
order to differentiate it from Greece or that other great civilisation,
Ishuwa
Egypt. Hittite New Empire
Troy / Ilium (Wilusa?)
Exploring the Asia of Herodotus Mycenaeans
Indo-Europeans
The origins of this usage appear to be in a confederacy in western Yamnaya Horizon
Anatolia known as Assuwa or Assua (Ishuwa in normal usage). Certainly Indo-Iranians/Indo-Aryans
Germanics
by about 1400-1300 BC this confederacy had already been formed by a
Turks
number of regional minor states which, collectively, were allied to the
Hittite empire dominating Anatolia at that time. The city of Troy (or EXTERNAL LINKS:
Wilusa) was a member of this confederacy. The United Sites of Indo-Europeans
Linguistics Research Center, University of
Texas at Austin
The name Assuwa may or may not have survived the great dark age
Indo-European Chronology - Countries and
collapse at the end of the thirteenth century BC. This collapse was Peoples
caused by drought and loss of crops, but it took place amid an Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (J
international system that was already starting to break down. It gave Pokorny)
the Mycenaean Greeks more freedom to colonise western Anatolia in the Online Etymological Dictionary
face of their own collapse on the Greek mainland, and ensured that
Mycenaean civilisation survived both there and in Athens. Given this, it's
quite likely that the use of Assuwa did survive in Greek usage to denote
western Anatolia.
In time the name seems to have been used to refer to an increasing
amount of Anatolia so that, by the time of Herodotus, it could be used to
refer to Anatolia as a whole. Whether or not this usage formed the basis
for the modern word 'Asia' and its usage to denote all of the continental
land mass to the east of the Ural Mountains and Anatolia is open to
debate, although this is the commonly-held opinion.
Some modern guesses at the origins of Asia/Assuwa have been
proposed, such as using the Aegean root 'Asis', meaning 'muddy, silted',
This Yamnaya skull from the Samara
to refer to the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea. Admittedly, this could region was typically covered in red ochre
be the basis for Assuwa even though the Assuwans were Luwian
speakers rather than Greek (see the related link, right, for an RELATED LINKS:
exploration of Indo-European Daughter Languages: Anatolian). Indo-European Daughter Languages:
Anatolian

Another claim is that it could derive from the borrowed Semitic root
WHAT'S IN A NAME?:
'Asu' (wasum), meaning 'rising, light' as a reference to the sunrise with
Asia
the inference that Asia is the land of the sunrise. This option is far less
Britain
likely to be correct than using Assuwa to refer to ever-increasing areas
China
of Anatolia, and should be dismissed as being somewhat desperate.
Scandinavia
Xionites
Instead, a far older word could be the basis for 'Asia' as a name. This
option seems to be virtually ignored or, more likely, its relevance has not
been realised by many. It relates to the ancestors of the Greeks and
Luwians, a group of peoples who are now known as Indo-Europeans. As
well as spreading westwards into Europe they also headed eastwards
from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (to the north of the Black Sea and
Caspian Sea) to dominate Central Asia.
Prehistoric background

These Indo-Europeans (IEs) were the most widely ranging ethnic group

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in ancient times. Due to their existence on the Pontic-Caspian steppe as

cattle and horse-raising people, they were quite mobile - a characteristic
which they shared with other, later, steppe nomads such as the Turkic
and Mongolian peoples.

Map 3 from the earlier feature on Indo-European (IE) language and migration shows IE
migration out of the Pontic-Caspian steppe by around 3000 BC, with East IEs (Indo-
Iranians) spreading out towards the east and the proto-Germanic groups heading north-
west towards Scandinavia (click on map to view full sized)

Linguistic analysis has shown that the core IEs began to separate into
definite proto languages around 3000 BC, during an expansion phase
which is known as the Yamnaya horizon. These proto languages soon
became unintelligible to each other, although this fragmenting process
excludes the Anatolian branch of IEs who had already headed
southwards from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (see the feature, A History
of Indo-Europeans, Migrations and Language, for more detail).
To the north and east of the Caspian steppe was a division of Indo- RELATED LINKS:
A History of Indo-Europeans, Migrations and
Europeans which soon established itself - in later terminology - as the
Language
Indo-Iranian branch. These Indo-Iranians moved eastwards, displacing
earlier tribal populations of foragers with their horse-riding, cattle-
herding sophistication. From there they spread out between southern
Siberia and Central Asia. From around 2200-1700 BC they were able to
migrate further, entering southern Central Asia and setting themselves
up for further migrations towards Iran and India. They quickly became
the dominant ethnic group across Asia on the western side of the
Himalayas.
The origins of Asia as a name
These Indo-Iranians and their later division, the Indo-Ayrans, would
become very familiar to the Greeks following the campaigns of
Alexander the Great into the farthest depths of the conquered Persian
empire in the late fourth century BC. These peoples didn't know
themselves as Indo-Iranians, of course. That's a label create by modern
scholars to describe them. They would have used an older word, and it
is this word which could be suspected as being the basis for 'Asia'. A painting of two Buddhist monks from
the eastern Tarim Basin around the
eighth century AD shows an Indo-
There exists today a very ancient practical philosophy in Zoroastrianism European Tocharian on the left
called Asha. In ancient times it went by the name 'Arte' in Iranian (the
language of the Indo-Iranians) and 'Rte' in Sanskrit (used by the Indo-
Aryans, mainly in India). Traces of this philosophy may possibly be
found in German legends of their myth of Mannus and his three sons,
one of which appears to be named Hermin or Ermin (Aryaman to Indo-
Aryans), and another Istwae.
So what do these names or words all have in common - Asia, Ist(wae),
Asha, Arte, and Rte? The answer is that they appear to all be forms of
the verb 'to be'.

When some readers first look at the Upanishads they can be rather

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amazed to discover that they are written in a manner that looks very
logical and sensible, almost Germanic in their precision. [1]
German itself, despite being a West Indo-European language group, has [ 1 ] The Upanishads are a collection
some noticeable influences from the East Indo-European Indo-Iranians, of texts of a religious and
but it is only recently that these links have been explored in depth philosophical nature, written in India
probably between about 800-500 BC
(notably by the History Files itself). during a time at which Indian society
started to question the traditional
Indo-European philosophy Vedic religious order.

Now it can be posited that, at some time during or immediately after the
Yamnaya horizon of about 3500-2500 BC, there developed a practical
philosophy of daily life and spiritual life whose followers were devoted to
the truth as 'what is'. This philosophy would have given its devotees a
powerful advantage over their neighbours because they would have
made practical, hard-nosed decisions rather than decisions based on
fantasy or belief.
Whether or not the people of Assuwa in western Anatolia were devotees
of this philosophy is entirely unknown. As they were around a good
thousand years after the end of the Yamnaya horizon it may be quite
hard to determine this possibility anyway.

But the people remaining along the northern coast of the Black Sea -
still Indo-European cousins of the Greeks and Luwians - almost certainly
did follow this philosophy, as did their ancestors. One of their mythic
'lords' ('ahura' in Old Iranian, 'asura' in Sanskrit) is 'aryaman'. The word
does not mean 'noble' or 'gentleman' (in the meaning of a lordly person
or someone of superior status), although it was later extended to mean
that.

Instead it referred to the 'man of the truth of what is'. This is perhaps a
somewhat tricky concept to grasp at first, but remember that 'what is'
was an acceptance of real life, of the facts on the ground, of the
situation as it existed for these cattle-herding pastoralists of the steppe.
The 'truth of what is' literally was that - 'this is how things are'. A 'man
of the truth of what is' was someone who realised and accepted this
The people of the Himachal Pradesh
philosophy of life. This made him an aryaman. In today's English, the region which borders Indian Punjab show
people of 'what is' could perhaps be equated to practical people who a marked Indo-European ancestry
dismiss 'airy-fairy', head-in-the-clouds, woolly-minded thinking in favour
of hard-nosed realism, and who then go onto upload their own videos to
YouTube and build up a following of like-minded individuals who practice
the same philosophy.

The same philosophy survives under one of its devolved branches as

part of Zoroastrianism. It also survives as a habit amongst Hindus and
Germans - the latter may be a surprising addition here until one
remembers the East IE influences on the early Germanic language. DNA
evidence supports this, showing a small percentage of German ancestry
apparently coming from eastern nomads.
For the moment, however, the current genetic evidence can be open to
question. There is no doubt that the Y-DNA haplogroup R1a is present in
Germans, but it could have come from Balts or Slavs instead of Indo-
Iranian nomads (the Balts and Slavs also have an East IE heritage).

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This king's tomb in the Indo-European settlement in the Karakum (modern Turkmenistan)
contains a valuable horse to accompany him into the afterlife - a typically Indo-European
custom

On the other hand, the mythological evidence is clear enough to support

this contention. The names of all three sons of the mythical Mannus
point to the Indo-Iranian language group. Even the Germanic languages
themselves point to this. Who else besides Indo-Iranians and Germanic
speakers use the word 'man' to refer to a man? There are traces in other
IE language groups of course, such as in Latin, but in Latin it is very
distorted, indicating a much older connection. The Latin words
'humanus' and 'homo' have an origin in 'man', but this origin would
seem to be a much older one, which predated the emergence of
'aryaman' and its associated philosophy.
Different tribes of Indo-Iranians used whatever verb form of 'to be' was
most applicable. Some - largely Indo-Iranians - used the 'as-' stem that
we find in 'Asia', and in German this was 'is-' or 'ist-'. Others - largely
Indo-Aryans - used the 'art-' or 'rt-' stem.
In English 'art' is an older form of the verb 'are', another form of the
verb 'to be'.
It is this Indo-Iranian form of the verb 'to be' - using the 'as-' stem -
that is relevant here. The 'As' appear in Germanic mythology as the Æsir
(Aesir) or Os. Æsir is the plural form of ǫ́ss (or áss, ás), although this is
more often shown as 'As' in modern English texts. [2]
While this has clearly survived in Germanic form, its older Indo-Iranian
form is harder to discern. But it would seem entirely reasonable to claim
that 'Asia' is the land of the 'As' (the Æsir or Os), the practical Indo- Odin (or Woden in older source material)
was the ruler of the 'gods' of Asgard, ie.
European people of 'what is', who later became legends to Germanic the king of this band of warrior heroes
speakers and were deified by them.
[ 2 ] See the feature, Tribal Warfare
If one were to translate 'Asia' into German one would write 'Isten', with of the Gods in Scandinavia for an
'ist' being the stem plus the plural suffix '-en'. The initial 'a' of 'as-' exploration of the Asgard as a
development of the 'As', and Original
becomes an 'i' in German, and it does in other words when comparing Indo-European Names for more
German languages to Old Iranian. discussion about Asuras, Os, and Æsir.

Why is there a 't' on the end of 'ist'? Because that was a common
addition in the verb 'to be', seen in 'art' in Middle English, and in 'est' in
Latin. If one searches the Central Asia section of this very website one
will find a number of peoples named after the verb 'to be'.

Asia indeed. The land of the people of 'what is'.

Main Sources
Anthony, David W - The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian
Steppes Shaped the Modern World
Mallory, JP & Adams, DQ (Eds) - Encyclopaedia of Indo-European Culture, 1997
Online Sources
Indo-European Chronology - Countries and Peoples
Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
Online Etymological Dictionary
Pokorny - Indo-European Etymological Dictionary
The United Sites of Indo-Europeans

Maps and text copyright © Edward Dawson & P L Kessler. An original feature for the History Files.

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