Dude, I am so Asian.

In my family, we always knew that we Hungarians are Asian, originating in the vast steppes between the Himalayas and the Urals. A recent publication in Nature pushed our ancestral homeland even farther east: “Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples,” by Tian Chen Zeng, Leonid A. Vyazov, et al., (2 July 2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09189-3. 

"Uralic languages, distributed from Western Siberia to Central Europe, are geographically separated from languages of the Eastern Steppes and far Northeast Siberia, but linguists have discovered ... high levels of typological similarity with languages in the ‘Altaic’ language area (Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic) ... To resolve this conundrum, some linguists have suggested a recent eastern origin of the population giving rise to later expansions of Uralic speakers (for example, a “pre-proto-Uralic spoken further east… probably somewhere… near both Mongolia and the watershed area between the Yenisei and the Lena, possibly as recently as 3000 bc”60)—a scenario compatible with our results. Future ancient DNA sampling from this region would allow for a more precise determination of the archaeological identity of the Proto-Uralic-speaking community, and illuminate the relationship between it and the wider social world of the West Siberian Bronze Age." (ibid)

They still name boys Attila. Among very many, consider Attila Losonczy, MD, PhD,  neuroscientist at Columbia University (briefly at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Losonczy). Bela Lugosi and Bela Bartók were named for Attila’s brother, in whose honor the village of Beda/Buda was dedicated. When I was about eight or ten, at our branch library, I found The White Stag by Kate Seredy, which was honored with Newberry Medal and Lewis Carroll Shelf awards. In that retelling, when the Magyars are surrounded, the Huns come riding out of the sky to turn the battle. 

Sometime in my mid-thirties to mid-forties, my brother sent me some references to the Samoyed, Ostyak, and Vogul languages of western Siberia and I found cognates to words such as "dog" and the numbers one, two, three, that I knew in Hungarian.

(Wikimedia. Marotta Commune.)

As for the paternal line, Marotta is a commune on the east coast of Italy, opposite Croatia. How they got to Sicily is lost to history. My father told me that his parents “came from Palermo.” Decades later, my half-brother explained that Palermo was just where they got on the ship that brought them here. They really came from a village called Sant’Agata on the east side of the north coast of Sicily, near the Straits of Messina and the "toe" of Italy. 

That the commune of Marotta lies across the Adriatic from Croatia touches on the fact that my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Kovanics (Covanič); her father was Croatian having moved into the Hungarian realm of the Austrian empire to pursue business in pottery. Her mother and her husband were ethnic Magyars. That easy interaction across tribes defines the first Asian ancestors of the Hungarians. 

“… we show that the Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers harboured a continuous gradient of ancestry from fully European-related in the Baltic, to fully East Asian-related in the Transbaikal. …Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is associated with Yeniseian-speaking groups and those that admixed with them, and ancestry from the second, Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is associated with migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers.” (ibid)

I have B-positive blood.

As the various tribes were disrupted by as-yet-undiscovered forces, individuals migrated west and merged into new, admixed populations, now tagged for convenience as Admixed Inner Eurasians, “a term designating all populations in Central and Northern Eurasia that are the product of Holocene admixtures between West Eurasian ancestries and East Asian ancestries, including present-day and ancient Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic and Uralic populations, as well as ancient Scythians, Sarmatians and pre-Scythian nomads of the Iron Age Steppes.” (ibid) 

We have a big family. 

I believe that everyone does. Every ethnic tree you trace has tangled taproots and evidence of cross-pollination. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Living Fish Swims Under Water 

The Atlatl

Sándor Kőrösi Csoma 

The Problem of Cultural Patrimony

THE DRUNKEN ASTRONOMERS

This year’s vernal equinox brought a solar eclipse that was visible across northern Eurasia. To view totality, you had to be on the Faroe Islands, 62° north between Scotland and Iceland, or the Svalbard group between Norway and the North Pole at 74° to 81° north.  I missed it entirely, and only saw the news the next day.  But I kept my head, unlike the drunken astronomers of ancient China.

(This is expanded and revised from an article published by The Sidereal Times (April 2015) of the Austin Astronomical Society.)

The story of Hsi and Ho came to my colleague Bradford S. Wade and me while we met often at The Tower Inn Cafe in Ypsilanti, across the street from Eastern Michigan University.  We had a class together, Ethics in Physics with Dr. Patrick Koehn.  After a few meetings or maybe only after a few beers, we took up a joint publication, a review of Astronomical Symbols on Ancient and Medieval Coins by Marshall Faintich.  We placed that in the Bulletin of the Society for the History of Astronomy, Issue 21, Spring 2011. 

As for the drunken astronomers, the stories vary and are often retold, especially by sky gazers, but the teaching point is easy.  Hsi  (also given as Hi or He) and Ho were the court astronomers.  Among their duties, they were responsible for predicting eclipses so that people could beat gongs, shoot arrows, and otherwise scare off the dragon that was eating the sun.  However, they spent most of their time drinking rice wine, so they not only failed to predict an eclipse, but they also slept through it.  Fortunately for all of us, the common people rallied and chased the demon away.  Hsi and Ho were executed. 

The story comes from an ancient manuscript known as The Book of Documents, which has been variously rendered as Shu-king, Shu Ching, Shujing, and Shangshu. (Wikipedia has an entry, of course: Book of Documents.)  The story of Hsi and Ho comes from the fourth part, fifth book, thirteenth chapter.  There, the chancellor, prime minister, or “prince” Yi Ying exhorts government officials not to be derelict in their duties as were Hsi and Ho. All of that happened in legendary times.  (The earliest attested date in Chinese history is equivalent to 831 BCE.)  The most likely date for the eclipse in question is October 22, 2137 BCE.

You can find some reliable modern detail at the Astronomy Today website.  Put “ancient eclipses” in the search box and it should come up first after the Google Ads.  The story of Hsi and Ho is in Part I. The story is embellished in Totality: Eclipses of the Sun, by Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak, and Ken Willcox (Oxford 1991; also on Google Books).  A brief note about the drunken Chinese astronomers, ending with an original poem, appeared in The Journal of the Astronomical Society of India, vol. 4. No. 3, Jan. 1914.  It was cited as coming from The Observatory for December 1913.  Indeed, it did appear in Volume XXXVI, Number 468, page 478. The author was C. Thomas Edgar

The pages below are from The Chinese Classics, Volume 3: The Shoo King or Book of Historical Documents by James Legge, first published by the author at Hong Kong in 1865, then reprinted with errata and corrigenda by Clarendon Press, Oxford 1893-1895.   Below these lines are lengthy glosses on the nuances of the grammar and syntax  of the ideograms.  A modern version (with only a few notes) was edited by Clae Waltham and published by Gateway Editions from Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1971.  You will see that at first Hsi and Ho are the family names of two sets of brothers.  Then, they became individuals.  Also, Legge's translation was before even the Wade-Giles system and is far from the modern Pinyang rules.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Seeing in the Dark: Your Front Row Seat to the Universe

Teaching Science with Science Fiction

Chopmarks

Sacred Silver from the Roof of the World

Counterfeiting and the Tragedy of the Commons

It does not take much research to read far too much about the glut of counterfeit numismatic materials manufactured in China and sold on eBay.  Chinese counterfeit factories purchased old U.S. Mint equipment, old dies, and other tools.  Their work destroyed the markets in Seated Liberty coins and Trade Dollars, but any coin, even the most common, is a potential target.  Not surprisingly, some have faked the certifcation holders of PCGS and NGC. At conventions and shows, numismatists display educational exhibits of counterfeit coins in real holders and bogus coins in  bogus holders.  The federal government does nothing. 

On the other hand, ahead of the Super Bowl, enforcement against phony NFL gear is vigorous.

So far this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies participating in "Operation Interception" have confiscated 36,273 counterfeit trademarked items nationwide, with more expected through the weekend. The value of the haul thus far: more than $3.56 million.   (Full story from CNN.com for February 5, 2011, is here.)

This is an example of the tragedy of the commons.  The NFL trademarks belong to someone.  Those someones are also wealthy.  So, they get the government to pay attention when they are victimized, and rightfully so.  With collectible numismatic material, no one owns the images and designs.  (One exception is the Sacagawea Dollar, owned by artist Glenna Goodacre, and licensed to the U.S. Mint.)

Of course, counterfeiting an old silver dollar is also a federal offense: money is money; and all federal money is the lawful obligation of the U.S. Treasury, no matter how old it is.  With some exceptions, such as Gold Notes, all U.S. money is legal tender.  But, of course, no one spends rolls of 1872 Seated Dollars or even 1922 Morgans.  So, the actual threat to the govenment is minimal: individual collectors take the losses.  The real threats are from counterfeit paper money; and the Federal Reserve is a private institution.  By comparison, the Bank of England is also like our Fed, nominally private, with a government-appointed board of governors.  Bank of England money carries a copyright notice.  Counterfeiting is a crime, not so much because it wrong to defraud people - though there is that - but mostly because it transgresses the intellectual property of the banks.  Since no banks issue Bust Dollars or Capped Bust Half Dollars, enforcement is lax.

This story from About.Com exposing a Chinese counterfeiting factory dates to April 2, 2008.  The Collectors Universe message board (NASDAQ symbol CLCT) for September 27, 2009, carried a summary (read here) of Dr. Gregory V. DuBay's talk at that summer's ANA convention in Philadelphia, revealing more about the depth and breadth of numismatic counterfeits from China.  His system for classifying Chinese dies was included as an appendix in the first edition of the  Red Book Professional Edition, but was deleted from the second edition.  I spoke on the same subject at the ANA convention in Pittsburgh in 2004.  The information I presented was not new or original with me: I only gathered examples from others... and all too easily... 

This is a known problem.  Nothing is done because no one owns it.