Geography > Dzungarian Gate
Dzungarian Gate
Background
The Dzungarian Gate has been noted in modern history as the most convenient pass for horseback riders between the western Eurasian steppe and lands further east, and for its fierce and almost constant winds. The area is also known for its gold deposits and for producing large numbers of dinosaur fossils, especially Protoceratops. Given that Herodotus relates a story of a traveler to the East who visited a land where griffins guard gold and east of which live the Hyperboreans, modern scholars have theorized that the Dzungarian Gate may be the real-world location of the home of Boreas, the North Wind of Greek Legend.
Herodotus writes in his "Histories" (4.13) about the explorer Aristeas, a native of Proconnesus in Asia Minor active around the 7th century BCE, who wrote a hexameter poem (now lost) about a journey to the Issedones of the far north. Aristeas reported that beyond the Issedones lived the one-eyed Arimaspians, further on were the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans.
Based on Greek and Scythian sources, Herodotus describes the Issedones as living east of Scythia and north of the Massagetae, while the geographer Ptolemy appears to place the trading stations of Issedon Scythica and Issedon Serica in the Tarim Basin. They may have been identical with the people described in Chinese sources as the Wusun. According to E. D. Phillips, the Issedones are "placed by some in Western Siberia and by others in Xinjiang." J. D. P. Bolton places them on the southwestern slopes of the Altai Mountains.
Since Herodotus places the Hyperboreans beyond the Massagetae and Issedones, both Central Asian peoples, it appears that his Hyperboreans may have lived in Siberia. Heracles sought the golden-antlered hind of Artemis in Hyperborea. As the reindeer is the only deer species whose females bear antlers, this suggests an arctic or subarctic region. Following Bolton's location of the Issedones on the southwestern slopes of the Altai Mountains, Ruck places Hyperborea beyond the Dzungarian Gate into northern Xinjiang.
Griffin and Fossils
Protoceratops skeletons are often found disarticulated. Unconnected to the skull, the plates of the head shield could be misinterpreted as wings. The griffin, a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, is a common heraldic theme of Central Asia. According to modern theory, the griffin was an ancient misconception derived from fossilized remains of the Protoceratops found in conjunction with gold mining in the mountains of Scythia, present-day eastern Kazakhstan.
According to Mayor and Dodson, the association of the Dzungarian Gate with gold and griffin (Protoceratops) skeletons spanned a thousand years of classical history:The second-century A.D. Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy and ancient Chinese sources agree in locating the Issedonians along the old trade routes from China to the West, from the western Gobi desert to the Dzungarian (or Junggarian) Gate, the mountain pass between modern Kazakhstan and north-western China. Recent linguistic and archaeological studies confirm that Greek and Roman trade with Saka-Scythian nomads flourished in that region from Aristeas's day to about A.D. 300—exactly the period during which griffins were most prominently featured in Greco-Roman art and literature.
North Wind (Boreas)
The story of Boreas, the personified cold north winter wind of Greek legend who lived in a cave north of Greece, parallels that of the buran, a strong winter wind said to blow into the Kazakh Steppe out of a hole in a mountainside in the Dzungarian Gate.
Ildikó Lehtinen writes that "the story of the cave of the stormwinds somewhere near the Dzungarian Gate" has been known for 2500 years, from travelers like Aristeas in the classical era, to Giovanni di Piano Carpini in the Middle Ages (before Marco Polo), and to Gustaf John Ramstedt in the 20th Century.
Carruthers reports the story of the buran, a ferocious winter wind said to sally from a hole in the side of a mountain:We had frequently heard of the terrors, dangers, and winds of the Dzungarian Gate... The natives relate the usual traditions as to the origin of the winds in this locality. In the myths of Central Asia, a "hole in the mountain," or "an iron gate in a lake" is the usual explanation of the origin of winds. In the case of which I am writing, the island called Ala-tyube—a small extinct volcano in Ala Kul—is made responsible for the furious winds which sweep through the depression; the wind is called "ebe," or "yube" by the Kirghiz, and in special cases, when it reaches its maximum velocity, the term "buran" is applied.
Boreas was the Greek god of the cold north wind and the bringer of winter. Mallory and Adams speculate that the name may derive from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "mountain." Boreas is depicted as very strong, with a violent temper. He was frequently shown as a winged old man with shaggy hair and beard, holding a conch shell and wearing a billowing cloak. Pausanias wrote that Boreas had snakes instead of feet, though in art he was usually depicted with winged human feet. Boreas was associated with horses, and he was said to have fathered twelve colts after taking the form of a stallion and mating with the mares of Erichthonius, king of Troy. Pliny thought that mares might stand with their hindquarters to the North Wind and bear foals without a stallion. The Greeks believed that Boreas's home was in Thrace, and Herodotus and Pliny both describe a northern land known as Hyperborea ("Beyond the North Wind"), where people lived in complete happiness and had extraordinarily long lifespans.
