Preamble
Interest in the concept of “Tartaria” has grown in recent years, primarily due to the work of Moscow State University mathematicians Anatoly Fomenko and Gleb Nosovsky, who have been developing the “New Chronology” theory for over 40 years. Fomenko’s first work on the “New Chronology” was published in English by the British Library, Department of printed books, and some of his first books on the subject in Russian were published by Edwin Mellen Press in the US. At the same time, as some researchers note, the word “Tartaria” did not appear in their works immediately, but only about 20 years ago: in the book “Empire”, in the chapter “Great Tartaria and China”.
Subsequently, the theme of Great Tartaria, touched upon by them, was picked up first by Russian, and then by Western independent researchers. Over time, this theme attracted many authors, artists and various content creators, who began to bring more and more personal creativity to what could be learned about Tartaria. Thus, one of the significant information hubs dedicated to disseminating mainly New Age information about Tartaria is called tart-aria.info, immediately hinting that behind the word “Tartaria” are (tart-)arians. A couple of years ago, Bloomberg, one of the largest financial news agencies, published an article, “Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture“, devoted entirely to this topic.
At the same time, many critics pointed out that the word “Tartaria” is just an obsolete version of the word “Tataria” and thus attempts to describe a certain Great Tartaria in isolation from the Tatars is a commonplace historical falsification. There are numerous ancient sources available online in which the words “Tartar” and “Tatar” occur simultaneously, in many of which expressions along the lines of “Tartars or Tartars” or “Tartars, or more correctly Tartars” can be clearly read. It may be noted that in response to this, some popular video bloggers successfully monetising the Great Tartaria theme even publish separate attempts to “debunk and refute” such criticism, thus attempting to dissociate the Tatars from the “Great Tart-aryans”.
The graphs of the mentions of the words “Tartaria” and “Tataria” in the English language, among the data digitised by Google corporation, show that the peak of the mentions of “Tartaria” was about 300-400 years ago, and the word “Tataria” first began to be mentioned regularly about 250 years ago. It was only during the Second World War that the use of the word “Tataria” began to prevail over the word “Tartaria”. This is demonstrated more clearly by the graphs of the mentions in English of the “Armenian-Tatar Massacre“, the bloody clashes in the Transcaucasus between Armenians and Azerbaijanis (referred to at the time as Transcaucasian Tatars in Russia and Transcaucasian Tartars in the West).
The massacre was originally called “Armenian-Tartar” in the Western press, and it was only about 90 years ago that the reference to “Armenian-Tatar” became predominant. Continue reading