If you’re interested in European military history, you may have come across the word ‘Huns’, as in the context of war, it was often used as an anti-German slur.
But who were the Huns really?
The Huns were nomads who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. By 430, they had established a vast, but short-lived, empire on the Danubian frontier of the Roman empire in Europe. Under their king, Attila, they made many destructive raids into the Eastern Roman Empire.
Scholars once believed that the Huns originated from Turkic-speaking groups, but recent linguistic research has shown that they had Palaeo-Siberian ancestors, the Xiognu, and spoke a language that belonged to the Yeniseian language family, a subgroup of the so-called Palaeo-Siberian languages which were spoken in Siberia before the invasion of Uralic, Turkic and Tungusic ethnic groups. By studying placenames, scholars have also been able to learn much more than was known before about how these fascinating people ended up settling in Europe.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/two-yurts-in-a-grassy-field-with-mountains-behind-trees-sPA6pypQRFk
