About the Turks in the movie

I am also disturbed by Metto's remarks. It is also extremely untrue.

The Ural-Altaic language family includes several languages of the Steppes all the way to Finnish and Hungarian. Linguistically, there is controversy with how related these two groups are, mostly because there wasn't really any writing from this large language family until relatively recently (about one thousand years give or take, compared to the Indo-European language family that had writing for over three and a half thousand years). Due to some linguistic and historical features, Korean and Japanese were, for a brief time, also included as part of this language group. Linguistics has become a very vigorous discipline, so they are now simply language isolates, whatever the personal feelings of Linguists might be. I happen to think they are quite related, but that is not born out due to the lack of historical recorded evidence.

I know a lot about Mongols and studied how to read the the old cursive writing as well as the modern Cyrillic. Mongols could be called Turkish, as indeed they were in the past. Russians tend to call Mongols "Tartars" despite being an enemy of Mongols (although Mongols formed alliances with them as part of Ghenghis Khan's unification of the tribes). Essentially, Turks, Khirghiz, Mongols, Tartars, etc, were primarily tribal names of various nomadic people that spoke related languages that may have been mutually intelligible.

The Magyar people (Hungarians) also shared enough linguistic and social similarity that Hungarians recognized Mongols as a similar people when Subodai's army reached Eastern Europe. Incidentally, the word "Huns" is a Mongolian word meaning "people" (written 'humun' in the old cursive script, maybe pronounced "hoo-moon" in the distant past but even in Ghenghis Khan's time was probably pronounced Hun "hoon"). They were and are called the Magyar. The only controversy is where the Magyar originated from before reaching the Roman Empire. They may have lived (according to one theory) near northern Iran for a couple of centuries before reaching Rome. That they came form the Steppes in the distant past is not really contradicted. They are a Turkish people.

Of all the languages in the family, it is Finnish that is most controversial. There are competing theories whether they belong in the family at all and how isolated linguistically they are from the rest of the language family. I personally believe they belong in the family, but perhaps there is not enough evidence to back it up. I learned a bit (just a bit) of Finnish and find it to be uncannily similar to Mongolian, grammatically at least.

Arctic people and American Indians are also remarkably similar. I remember watching a program on TV showing Dakota people hosting Mongols and remarking how similar some dances were (such as the bear dance). But that is another discussion.

By the way Ulnoyman, I agree with most of your points including the ludicrous portrayal of Turks in the movie. I will add that in China (where I live at the moment) several dynasties were considered to have too much northern influence (ie, Turkish influence). In addition, the Qing dynasty was a Manchurian dynasty and was never considered "Chinese" even in modern times as asserted by another poster. The fact that the Qing dynasty was considered corrupt and incompetent in dealing with the Europeans probably contributes to this feeling of Chinese wanting to distance themselves from the Qing.

In addition, several scholars, such as Lu Xun and Dr, Lin Yutang considered the Tang dynasty the beginning of several power struggles with Turks where they had considerable influence and sometimes even holding governmental powers in Northern China. Dr. Yutang even made an argument that it was this very power struggle that allowed China to survive so long as a civilization (One I disagree with).

I know this is a very long post, but I want to add one more thing. S-Kemmitt's comment that Mongols defecated while mounted is offensive, and not true. I am sure there were a few drunk young men that may have tried it, but it was not something done as a general rule. They would and could ride all day and night, sleeping, eating and playing music while mounted, living off the their mounts in some cases. Several untrue tales are told, such as Mongols eating horses or bleeding them dry. No Mongol would ever disrespect a horse like that. Sometimes a bit of blood might be drunk during a long march in inhospitable terrain, but Mongol horses are very hardy and can eat and drink where modern horses would simply die. In addition, bowed instruments, such as the violin, cello and the Chinese Urhu owe their heritage to the Steppe people that made the strings from intestines of animals, the sound board from snakeskin and the bow from horse hair. To this day, most bows are still made of horse hair.