The Azerbaijan Connection

Challenging Euro-Centric Theories of Migration
by Dr. Thor Heyerdahl


In late November 1994, Dr. Thor Heyerdahl visited Azerbaijan where,
among other things, he wanted another chance to see the boat
petroglyphs of the ancient caves of Gobustan not far from Baku.

Here, in the pages of Azerbaijan International, Heyerdahl makes
public for the first time his "growing suspicion" that Azerbaijanis
may be ancestors of the Scandinavians including his own native
countrymen in Norway.

In the global research that I've been involved with for many years,
Azerbaijan is beginning to play a rather pivotal role. My growing
suspicion is that what today is left as the little Republic of
Azerbaijan around the capital Baku is only vestiges of what was
once a large and dynamic nation bordering on an inland sea but
transmitting merchandise and even colonists to remote outposts
in both Asia and Europe.

For a long time, I've been puzzled by the fact that three great
civilizations surrounding the Arabian peninsula appeared in about
3,000 B.C. as ready-developed, organized dynasties at the same
astonishingly high level and all three were remarkably alike.
The definite impression is that related priest-kings at that time
came from elsewhere with their respective entourages, and imposed
their dynasties on areas formerly occupied by more primitive or, at
least, culturally far less advanced, tribes.

Boat Petroglyphs

But where could they have come from? Is there a "zero hour for
civilized man"? I've been convinced for quite some time that the
clues to this mystery, no doubt, lie in the prehistoric boat
petroglyphs which are found on widely scattered continental shores
and islands all over the world and even near dried-out waterways
deep inside the Sahara Desert. Petroglyphs and rock paintings of
watercraft represent the earliest known illustrations of human
architecture and even predate pictures of dwellings or temples.
I've seen such sketches from below the equator in Polynesia to
above the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway. Everywhere they testify
to the fact that boats were of extreme importance to early man as
they provided security and transportation millennia before there
were roads through the wilderness.

Our lack of knowledge about our own past is appalling. In the
course of two million years of human activity, ice has come and
gone, and land has emerged and submerged. Forest humus, desert
sand, river silt and volcanic eruptions have hidden from view
large portions of the former surface of the earth. The sea level
has altered; 70% of our planet is now below water, and underwater
archaeology has barely begun in coastal areas. We are accustomed
to finding sunken ships with old amphora and other cargo beneath
the sea, but speculation as to the discovery of other human
vestiges on the bottom of the ocean still remains a subject for
science fiction writers.

Identical Petroglyphs in Norway and Azerbaijan

It may not be pure coincidence that the ship petroglyphs that
the early Azeri depicted while navigating on the Caspian Sea
and up the Russian rivers are identical to those of the
ancestors of the Vikings along the fjords of Norway millennia
later. In Scandinavia, there are two different types of boat
petroglyphs, both well represented in Norway. One is similar
to those at Gobustan and is drawn as a simple sickle-shaped
line which forms the base of the ship with vertical lines
on deck to illustrate crew or raised oars.

Famous "Foldable Boats"

The other ship type probably represents a "skin boat" with a
rather short and bulky hull and an interior framework of wood,
appearing on the petroglyphs as if viewed from outside. Such a
boat is mentioned in early Norwegian sagas written down by the
Icelander, Snorre Sturlason, before his death in 1241, (Snorri,
The Sagas of the Viking Kings of Norway. English translation:
J. M. Stenersens Forlag, Oslo 1987). According to the saga, the
Viking kings descended from Odin, an immigrant hierarch who came
in a vessel called Skithblathnir (Skidbladner) which could be
folded together like a cloth. Odin came from the land of the
"Aser", and is, therefore, frequently referred to as "Asa-Odin".
The legendary land of the people known as Aser is given a very
exact location in Snorre's saga as east of the Caucasus mountains
and the Black Sea. From there, according to the same saga, Odin,
owner of the foldable boat migrated with all his people
northwestwardly through Russia, Saxland, and Denmark into Sweden
where he died and lay buried in a huge funerary mound at Sigtuna.
Asa-Odin's saga with his boat and his itinerary has been considered
by Nordic historians as a myth concocted in medieval times,
although they consider the Nordic people as Caucasians. But,
perhaps, Odin's boat may indicate that the land of the Aser really
lay by the Caspian Sea east of the Caucasus. In fact, in the 5th
century B.C., the Greek historian, Herodotus, described such
marvelous foldable boats used precisely in the area referred to
in Asa-Odin's saga as the home of th Aser, namely the land of
the present day Azeri and Armenians. In this area, Herodotus
wrote, traveling merchants used boats built with a framework
of wood and canes covered with skin, and of such great size that
they carried one or more donkeys in addition to crew and cargo.
They navigated down river to Babylonia where they sold their
merchandise and the framework (wood), then they folded the skins
and loaded them on the donkeys for their return upstream in
preparation for the next voyage.

Oral Tradition or Fairy Tale?

I'm personally convinced that Snorre recorded oral history rather
than a concocted myth, and I think it's time to look for the land
that my Scandinavian ancestors came from and not merely where they
subsequently went on their Viking raids and explorations. They
certainly did not come out from under the glaciers when the ice-age
ended so they must have immigrated from the south. Since their
physical type is referred to as Caucasian and their very own
descendant preserved an itinerary from south of the Caucasus and
north of Turkey, I suspect that the present Azeri people and the
Aser of the Norse sagas have common roots and that my ancestry
originated there.

The unwritten history of both the Scandinavians and the Azeri
doubtlessly began with ships and navigation. Both had access
to waterways which permitted them to explore and travel far and
wide. The Azeri could easily have sailed across their inland sea
to the great centers of civilization in antiquity and up the
river Volga which was navigable past present-day Moscow to its
sources which are suspiciously close to the sources of the river
Dvina which empties into the Baltic Sea at Riga, where the first
Christian Norwegian Viking king, Olav Trygvason, was born.

Azerbaijan as Spreading Center of Caucasians, not Europe

This would mean that Azerbaijan and not northern Europe was the
spreading center of the Caucasian people buried in northwestern
China some 4,000 years ago and now discovered by Chinese
archaeologists who theorize (probably wrongly) that they came
from northern Europe because they were tall, blond, blue-eyed
and with Caucasian features. According to modern scholars in
Azerbaijan, there used to be a strong blond and fair-skinned
element in the aboriginal Azeri population, as illustrated by
the stone-age hunters at the Gobustan Museum. Subsequent invasions
by Romans and Arabs have somewhat modified the original Azeri type.

As to the remarkably high level of culture evinced by the 4,000
year old mummies in China, no people in Northern Europe had
reached a corresponding cultural level at that early time. But
the merchants of Azerbaijan could have, due to their long-range
trade by skin-boats with Babylonia.

Beyond a Euro-Centric Perspective

We must as scientists get beyond the dogmatic medieval view of
history printed by us in Europe in which we describe our own
ancestors as the discoverers of the rest of the world. There were
advanced civilizations with navigators and script in Asia, Africa
and Middle America before mariners from Crete brought script and
civilization from the Middle East to southern Europe. Before
European history began, mariners from Africa had settled the
Canary Island, voyagers from America had settled the West Indies,
and every inhabitable island in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific
had been peopled from Asia and America. Azerbaijan, and not Europe,
was part of the fermenting kettle of brewing civilization with
navigators that spread early trade and cultural impulses far and
wide.

Many clues are still invisible about the human history prior to
the sudden cultural bloom in Egypt, Sumer and the Indus valley
some five millennia ago. But with advanced technology, some day
the answers may be found under the sand and sea. The challenge
for scholars is to look deeper into foreign relations in the
region of present-day Azerbaijan to determine what those prehistoric
roots and linkages were.


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From Azerbaijan International (3.1) Spring 1995.