CHILDREN OF ATUR

The author of an unfinished book of historical journalism presents readers with a few chapters. The text has been abridged especially for R+

This is a combustible, oily red-brown, sometimes black, liquid with a specific smell. Occasionally you can see some types of oil yellow-green in colour, or completely colourless. Oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons of different structure, blended with oxygen, sulphur and nitrogen. Deposits are located in sedimentary rocks.

Natural resources - the wealth of the planet made by the great Creator in order to benefit mankind - have not always been a gift, in spite of the brilliant idea. They have been both blessing and a curse for the peoples who owned them. They have often been precious attributes for the domination of one people over another, the criteria for world domination and the cause of wars in a struggle for the coveted prize. "Stone oil", "fire water", "black gold" and "the blood of the earth" are all epithets applied to oil since man first discovered it. During its long history, oil has emerged from smoky fires in the caves of prehistoric man into a substance on which our "motor-gasoline and chemical-technological civilization" has been based for the last two centuries. A hydrocarbon is a powerful tool, a lever in the modern economy and a trump card in world politics. Civilization originated near such deposits, states have risen, changed size and shape and religions have appeared and died.

Land of Fire

This is what Azerbaijan means. Initially, the name was more like Aturpatkan, or the land of Atur - the god of fire - in the language of the ancient Albanians, an ancestral race of modern Azerbaijanis. And no wonder! The whole Absheron Peninsula was alight with gas and oil. For many thousands of years! Fire was the life and religion of the people inhabiting these lands for many centuries. It also played a pivotal role in the history of the oil region, which has repeatedly been the epicentre of significant historic and political events. With its busy and dynamic historical plot, it has interested many of the world's historians since ancient times. It was fire that made the Abseron Peninsula the cradle of an ancient civilization, the spiritual centre of fire-worshipping Zoroastrianism and ... the centre of the world's oil and gas trade, enabling the region to have a serious impact on the important economic, political and cultural development of the whole Caucasus and surrounding areas throughout history.

It so happens that the history of the Abseron Peninsula, including Baku, has been inextricably linked with oil from the very outset. Torches of natural gas and oil spontaneously igniting on land and at sea have made this land an attraction from time immemorial. Burning gas, needing no maintenance, was a catalyst for the development of the first human communities in these territories. In addition to concerns about the preservation of life, Palaeolithic man had the opportunity to develop in terms of early culture at a much faster pace than if he had lived in harsher living conditions. Silent witnesses to this fact are the caves of Qobustan - a haven for primitive man which reflect life through a prism of thousands of petroglyphs, and which tell of the lives of their ancient inhabitants.

Sacred Qobustan

Boyuk Das, Kicik Das, Cingir Dag, Songar Dag, Six Qaya and others are names given to the Qobustan mountains. These are stone matrices displaying the history of the Caspian lands from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages. Thousands and thousands of petroglyphs. In the past, according to the paintings, these sparsely covered desert areas were much more picturesque. A kind of paradise! A savannah! Dense vegetation, clouds of birds and herds of animals. Gazelles - divine sheep, goats, aurochs, buffaloes, pigs, horses, wolves, foxes, lions, leopards, lynxes ... and even deer - native to northern latitudes. Shoals of fish splashed in the sea. Now none of the representatives of the animal kingdom pictured is left here, except for snakes, lizards and the occasional red foxes and squirrels. Low trees and bushes hide in rock crevices.

Gloomy caves - the abode of primitive man. The walls depict various symbols and characters: the swastika, spirals, triangles, circles, crosses and constellations. And one of the caves appears to depict the solar system. Near the caves, there are ancient burial sites - barrows. There are 40 barrows in total here. Apparently, life and death were not greatly segregated in those days. A little to one side, there are gravestones belonging to later times.

The paintings tell us about the hunting by ancient settlers and the emergence of the first crafts - primitive smiths who made tools for hunting and work, the first potters, builders, round buildings and collective work by ploughmen, the art of primitive man, and the oldest art of dance - in rock images of dancing men and women. The dance depicted is still common in Azerbaijani festivals, and not only here. This dance exists in the culture of all Indo-European peoples. Azerbaijanis call it Yalli. Yal means food. It is the ritual dance of ancient people celebrating a successful hunt.

The stones narrate a story of warlike amazons, armed with bows and arrows, and mysterious women whose bodies were painted with intricate patterns. The tough guardians of a great many secrets and mysteries tell us about ancient navigators carrying large balls, which resemble the sun, on big rowing boats and about fantastic humanoid creatures - titans that strike lightning. All these images once shook the great traveller Thor Heyerdahl, who often visited these places, perhaps in search of the answer. In Qobustan everything shakes you, first of all the mountains, inspiring fear and awe. Two fantastically shaped "Table" mountains, with razor-sharp summits. Cingir Dag (mountain of deities) was the ritual seat of ancient people until the early Middle Ages. Here people worshipped the goddess of love - Anan, subsequently - Anahit. "Gaval Das" (tambourine stone) is mounted on a base built from stone boulders weighing many tons. It is an original musical instrument of great antiquity which produces frightening and enchanting sounds as soon as you touch it. A stone "qazan" (pot) for sacrifices to the goddess is carved into the rock. The very scary power of this ancient sacred site is shocking. Qobustan? Perhaps "Gapustan" - a long-forgotten, archaic word which means a terrible place connected with evil spirits and other vermin?

Ancient chroniclers tell us of the spirituality of primitive man and the first cults in which he worshipped. Of these, the cult of fire took centre stage. Fire means life. Having originated here in "hothouse" conditions, civilization evolved and spread not only throughout the South Caucasus and the North Caucasus, but also to the Anatolian mountains and some parts of the Middle East. Abseron oil attracted many incomers to these areas; they settled here later and became part of the nation. A new ethos and, in the end, the Azerbaijani people, originated in this ethnological cocktail.

Unsolved Caspians

Having settled on the shores of Kul-Zum Daniz in ancient times, mysterious alien tribes - the Casps or Caspians - were to establish their own state within these territories. The name of the state would be derived from the name of this nation - the State of Caspiana (9th-8th centuries BC). And, later, the sea would be named the Caspian in honour of these brave explorers and ancient shipbuilders. There is almost no written information about the legendary Caspiana. There are only later references to a state that once existed on the Caspian Sea coast and embraced the mountain slopes of Daskasan and the land between the Kura and Araz rivers. Much information remains about the Caspians themselves, but only after the emergence of Caucasian Albania on the territories of present-day Azerbaijan and Dagestan. The Caspians were mentioned by ancient and oriental historians, including Apollonius of Rhodes, Polybius, Stephen of Byzantium, Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Al-Mas'udi, Al-Muqaddasi, as well as by many others. The Caspians are also mentioned in the famous Behistun inscription as one of the 23 satraps of Atropatena. The crumbs of information collected about this mysterious tribe provide us with an image of a forgotten ancestral people.

With expertise in various fields - from agronomy to chemistry, medicine and astrology, astronomy, and skilled in maritime navigation, the Caspians, even after their state became part of a new state - Caucasian Albania (4th-3th BC), remained a tribe of indisputable authority among the people of Albania, the cultural and spiritual core of a new national community and a tribe which had a significant impact on the development of the union of Aryans. It may be that the ancient Caspians also played a role in creating an alphabet for the Albanians. It is also possible that the cosmological outlook of the Caspians, with all its magical rituals and symbolism - the ziqqurat, swastika, crescent and eight-pointed star symbolizing Sirius - formed the basis of the first ever religion of fire worship in the history of mankind - Zoroastrianism. It is this star and crescent that would decorate, by strange coincidence, the flag of the Azerbaijan Republic thousands of years later.

Using knowledge now hidden from us, the Caspians engaged in irrigation (the remnants of an ancient irrigation system still exist in Abseron and in the Mugan lowlands). They grew unprecedented harvests of crops and fruit and were engaged in selective cattle-breeding. One of the merits of the Caspians is the Caspian horse, which has come down through history. They knew about weaving and wove cloths, wool and lint carpets. They extracted iron ore from the foothills of Daskasan. They knew about foundry work and blacksmithing and forged iron axes, ploughshares and weapons. They built temples and cities. They created highly artistic works from clay, pottery, bronze and stained glass, covering ceramics with a thin, almost lacy, white inlaid geometric pattern. They decorated them with images of the sun, moon, swastikas, stars, the tree of life, sometimes with a ram and a bull's head, and sometimes even with pictographic writing. The Caspians also succeeded in making jewellery, creating beautiful ornaments of gold and silver using precious and semiprecious stones. Some artefacts from Caspian culture can be viewed in the historical museums of Azerbaijan.

The Caspians built their homes first from wood and adobe brick, and later - from brick and local limestone. Their clothing (based on materials from ancient burial sites) was very basic. Men wore fur vests over linen or woollen shirts. They wore woollen hats and caps from goat or sheep skin. In winter, they wore woollen cloaks - the prototype of the Caucasian cloak. Women also wore sleeveless jackets over their shirts. Depending on their wealth, they decorated themselves with a huge number of beads made from cornelian, lapis lazuli, bone and paste. They wore brass, bronze, silver and gold ornaments and used cosmetics - darkening their eyes and eyebrows and using aromatic oils. Both men and women wore metal bracelets on their arms and feet. Later, having assimilated into a multi-ethnic nation, they followed the prevailing fashion.

Skilled shipbuilders, the Caspians were repeatedly invited by Persian kings to build fleets, as mentioned in the Behistun inscription. Being good sailors, they engaged in active trade not only domestically but also abroad. Magnificent Caspian products could be found in India, Khorezm, the Middle East and the northern country of the Rus. They sold agricultural produce, leather, wool, fine wines, dried red fish, glue made from fish, household utensils and jewellery. They also sold horses and iron weapons, red paint made from madder, drugs from medicinal herbs, fish oil and oil, as well as white Abseron limestone. The Caspians were the first oilmen in Abseron. The ancient Caspians had methods of extracting oil, which they called "Napata", and which they extracted with a pit-run method from oil-bearing sand. The Caspians were also able to use oil. Possessing technology for the production of bitumen and asphalt, they covered the roofs of their houses with bitumen which they called "kir" (qir) and the streets of their settlements and, later, cities with asphalt. The present-day tradition of covering the roofs of Baku houses with "kir" was probably inherited from the ancient Caspians. They knew about the medicinal properties of oil and used it to treat wounds and ulcers on the skin, and aching joints. To relieve pain in the stomach, they chewed oil pitch - "saq-qiz". They used implements for the light cleansing of oil from impurities. Artists and musicians (the creators of mugham), poets and philosophers, the Caspians were also warriors: we know from Herodotus that they participated in battles against Alexander the Great and in Xerxes' military campaign against Greece.

The priests of the Caspians - " mugs", or, as the Greeks called them, " mags", possessed knowledge and the secrets of magic. They had extrasensory abilities, were able to cast spells over blood, carry out surgery without tools and mastered the art of hypnosis. They were soothsayers and oracles. The tribal mug priests lived in isolation, zealously guarding their knowledge against the uninitiated, in Mu-Gan - an area which still bears the same name as thousands of years ago. The Caspians buried their fellow tribesmen who had completed their earthly journey, in barrows built from brick, and then from stones, providing them with all the necessities for their long journey - household goods and utensils, ritual pictures, food, animals, tools and weapons and, in some cases - wives and servants. They poured into the grave many beads and other shiny objects representing the stars. Near the graves, they hollowed out dents or cups in the rocky soil, covering them with clay, in order to fill them with offerings on memorial days. They also sacrificed animals whose blood filled the bowls through special furrows. The Caspians' language belonged to the Turkic group. The current, Iranian-speaking population of this area - the Talis who belong to the Indo-European family and who appeared in these areas in more recent times - bears no direct ethnological relationship to the Caspians. Otherwise, something from Caspian culture would have remained in the traditions and memory of these people. From where did the Caspians come to Abseron? There are plenty of theories on this issue, each more incredible than the next. Another famous 19th century Caucasian historian, I. Chopin - a relative of the great Polish composer - argued that the Caspians were survivors from Atlantis. He believed that an exodus of survivors from the legendary Atlantis to Egypt took the following route: from the Caspian region through Mesopotamia and Sinai to the Nile Valley. There are also less extreme theories: that the Caspians were the Sumerians.

Sumerians

The Sumero-Akkadian civilization - a prosperous and highly developed people in Mesopotamia who were bearers of skills and knowledge and a cosmological ideology, which then penetrated many religions of the world, including Zoroastrianism and the three Abrahamic religions, and existed for more than five millennia - ceased to exist one day. They partially dissolved into Semitic tribes, giving birth to the biblical ethos and partially migrated from their lands in different directions, giving rise to many other ethnic groups along their way. The world first learned about them from tablets found in the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. They reported some "secret Sumerian documents". In 1852, archaeological excavations were carried out in the lower reaches of the Euphrates and ... the world found out about a civilization that existed long before the Assyrian-Babylonian one - a civilization that left its records on 25,000 pages of clay - in a cuneiform language unknown to the world. This civilization was named the Sumerian. Only later, as the clay texts were decoded, did it emerge that the Sumerians called themselves "sag-ngig", which meant "blackheads" in this ancient language.

"Blackheads"...

They invented the wheel, the calendar, alphabetic writing, money, the potter's wheel, schools for children, the loom, pharmacology, bricks, steel, the directory, the library, irrigation, transhumance, shipping, glass, alcoholic beverages, including barley beer and grape wine, the legal system, the decimal numbering system, the concept of taxes, as well as bellows, geometry, watches, army, press and hygiene! We can read out a long list. It is easier to imagine a society that did not lag behind modern mankind in terms of knowledge. It was a civilization with expertise in areas such as higher mathematics and astronomy, chemistry and medicine, botany and zoology, geography and geology. They knew the principle of the "golden section" and the building of aircraft. They knew about the structure of the solar system and created the concepts of art, philosophy and psychology. It was a civilization of psychics and magicians who possessed knowledge of the existence of subtle matter. They were aware of the importance of solar energy for life on earth ... it was a civilization whose goal was harmony in society and the world. They argued that they had received all their knowledge and skills from the gods.

How did the ancient Sumerians end up on the territory of ancient Azerbaijan? You can come to different conclusions. Perhaps some migrants settled in the Near East and within the South Caucasus. In those days, about three or two thousand years BC, the tribes that inhabited the territory of modern Azerbaijan maintained contacts with the Sumerians-Akkadian state. And those contacts were by no means rare. A tribal alliance from these territories - Guteys (Kutis) and Lullubeys - had totally taken over the Sumero-Akkadian kingdom. For a whole century! So, nothing is impossible! Moreover, the Sumerians left tangible evidence of their presence on the territory of Azerbaijan. They left a lot! So much that you are lost for words.

Anthropologically, the Sumerians were a small grouping of the huge Indo-Aryan race. Scientists associate them with the Caucasians. The Sumerians wore fur vests over linen shirts. They wore dried woollen hats or caps made from goat or sheep fur. In cooler times of the year, they wore woollen cloaks. The women dressed the same way, decorating themselves with a huge number of beads made of cornelian, lapis lazuli, bone and paste. They wore gold adornments. They darkened their eyes and eyebrows and used essential oils. Both men and women, from birth to death, wore on the waist under their clothes a string of yarn in two colours which was regarded as a holy object (very much like the Zoroastrian "kushti" belt). They wore pectorals on the chest, and metal hoops on their arms and feet. It is known that the Sumerians were familiar with the technology of oil production and were able to use it for different purposes. Burning oil was used to light homes and temples. They also used it for military purposes in the form of combustible mixtures and knew about the medicinal properties of oil. By mixing it with different ingredients, they produced ointments which they used to cure skin diseases. Oil was used to treat aching joints, while stomach pain was treated with pills from petroleum pitch. Ancient doctors prescribed pills as a chewing gum. They used oil for construction as well. The Sumerians extracted oil ... with a pit-run method from oil-bearing sands.

I won't even describe their funeral culture. If you want to known about it, see above - the funeral traditions of the Caspians. Perhaps this is just a coincidence that cannot serve as an argument. Perhaps. But what should we do about it?