Empire Blue 1500: Fill & Download for Free

Scholars in the field have migrated from the “Aryan Invasion theory” - Even the greatest specialists have failed to prove the Aryan invasion theory: Koenraad ElstAryan Invasion theory is a fantasy and it served a lot of politicians of the 20th century. For the British Raj, it was a tool for their legitimacy. For the Nazis, it was a tool for racism. For Indian elite such as Nehru, it was a source of links with the Europeans. For Hindutva campaigners such as Savarkar it was a source of pride. For the Dravidastan campaigners it was a justification for their hatred towards the northerners and Brahmins. In short, it was a happy theory for everyone.However, as the historians went deep they didn’t find much evidence for this “mindblowing” theory.Think of what the Aryan Invasion means. Some group of Central Asians barged into the largest civilization of world [IVC] at about 1500 BCE, taken over the whole subcontinent and predominantly brought their gene pool, culture, language etc. And they didn’t have any super weapon like guns, nuclear bombs or automobiles to bring this fantasy.These must be super human ninjas, right?Was that feat every replicated? British empire was the most powerful of its time and brought a lot of cultural changes over 2 centuries. But, does that mean Indians became Europeans in genetic terms? Even with all its power and naval extent, it didn’t change India’s gene pool. In the same way, the Mughals brought the guns and built among the most powerful empires of the world of its time. Did that make Indians into Central Asians?India was quite populated even in 1500 BCE and any small group of central Asian “Aryans” who came to Indian borders would have merged into India without a trace, like what happened in Hun Invasions or later Mughal & British invasions.And they did without leaving any evidence of mass destruction or in folk literature. It didn’t appear in the Ramayana or the Mahabharata of that time. Maybe the “blue eyed ninjas” were biased towards their own?But, even the other writers such as Buddha and Megasthenes or Arian of Greece who came little after that time didn’t mention any such thing. Greeks were more puzzled about the peculiarities of Indian culture. Neither in folk literature of India nor in Europe/West Asia we find any direct evidence of these. In the absence of these, linguists for a long time relied on the Deva-Asura battles and other parts of Indian epics. Later, even these had too many holes.We don’t have any real evidence for Aryan Invasion theory. Sure, there are similarities between Indian and European cultures, but with Occam’s Razor we can use simpler explanations for migration of language, culture or earlier large migrations in place of en masse changes in Indian genetic pool

The big country of China.Starting at about 2000+ years ago, China was constantly invaded by the Xiongnu tribes. In fact, the Great Wall was built partially to protect China from the constant invasions launched by the Xiongnu Warriors. At the Battle of Baideng in 200 BC, Emperor Liu Bang lost most of his troops and was almost killed until he offered the Xiongnu a great trade deal and was left off the hook. However, the Xiongnu would remain a threat until Emperor Han Wudi defeated them at the Battle of Mobei in 119 BC.Xiongnu Empire at its peak in the image aboveDespite the fact that Han China was victorious, the Xiongnu would constantly harass China for the next several hundred years, until the Xiongnu tribes split into Northern and Southern groups. Eventually, the northern tribes migrated away (possibly becoming the ancestors of Attila the Hun, but it’s not clear or proven), while the southern tribes integrated into Chinese society.Next came the era of the Five Barbarians in 304 AD. Actually, I was pointed out by Chen Yankai before that technically speaking, a lot of the tribes by this time were living in China for a while now, so it can’t really be considered an invasion. This might be true for some of them (Xiongnu, Qiang, Jie, etc.), but one exception should be the Xianbei tribes.The Xianbei tribes were Mongolic people, and they are one of the possible ancestors of Mongolians. Although many of them lived inside the Chinese border, the Rouran Xianbei for sure lived outside of Chinese territories. The Rouran Xianbei, although they failed to conquer significant Chinese territories, would remain a thorn in the side of a divided China for hundreds of years.After that came the Uyghur Khaganate in 757 AD. At that time, the Tang Dynasty was going through the deadly An Lushan Rebellion. Tang was unable to defeat the rebel troops, so it requested aid from the Uyghurs to the north and west. The Uyghur agreed, but on one condition: the Uyghurs would have free rein to invade and pillage Chinese cities however they see fit. The Tang reluctantly agreed to this (I think this is the most pathetic chapter of Tang’s history. You would seriously have to be desperate as a ruler to allow this)As if that weren’t bad enough, even Tibet was able to invade Tang China in 763 AD; the Tibetans were able to capture the capital city of Chang’An, looted its treasures, and burned parts of the palace and city down.At its height, Tibet was a seriously powerful empire that you do not want to mess with.With the collapse of the Tang dynasty in the 900’s, a nomadic tribe by the name of the Khitans rose in the northeastern part of the country. They broke off from China and formed their own empire and invaded the divided China. NOTE: while most people remember this empire as Liao, the truth was, it was only known as Liao for a short period of time. It was mostly referred to as Khitan Empire for most of its history.Khitan Empire, represented by Liao in pink, at its height. Note that the modern day city of Beijing is within the Khitan’s empire.After the Khitans came the Jurchens, who were the ancestors of Manchus. They defeated the Khitans and then invaded Song China, capturing all of what is northern day China. The most notorious incident during this time was the Jingkang Massacre, when the Jurchens took over the Chinese capital of Kaifeng and enslaved the entire royal family (except for one guy, who was lucky enough to not be in the city at that time… that’s why the Song dynasty managed to survive)Jurchen Jin Empire in blue above, during the 1100’s to early 1200’s ADAfter that, we had the Mongol Empire. Everyone knows Genghis Khan and how he conquered much of the known world. All of China fell to the Mongols in 1279 AD.The Ming overthrew the Mongols in 1368 AD, but the Mongols still constantly invaded China for the next two hundred years. The Ming also faced invasions from Japanese pirates for almost its entire existence (although later historians discovered that the pirates in the 1500’s were mostly Chinese and other nationals)Some would say the Manchus came next, but it’s debatable if it was an invasion or rebellion, as Manchuria was technically under Ming’s rule.Let’s now go to close to modern times. Towards the middle of the 1800’s and onwards, China has been invaded by Japan, Great Britain, and Russia (also other countries like France and Germany, etc., but mostly the above three). The big one was Japan during WWII, but the Soviet Union also invaded China in the 1930’s after seeing the Japanese invasion (the Russians wanted to steal as much Chinese territories, especially in Xinjiang, and the Chinese being distracted by Japan’s invasion could do very little about it)

Turkey here!We have this:And this:In face to face. Two architectural beauties, one 1500 years old, the other 400 years old. The legacies of 2 empires can be seen.Can guess what are those?1-the Hagia Sophia.2-the Blue Mosque(called Sultanahmet Camii in Turkish).