Dzungarian Gate - Hyperborean Connection

Hyperborean Connection

The Dzungarian Gate on the Chinese-Kazakhstan border.

The Dzungarian Gate has been noted in modern history as the most convenient pass for horseback riders between the western Eurasian steppe and lands further east, and for its fierce and almost constant winds. The area has also become known for its gold deposits and for producing prodigious numbers of dinosaur fossils, especially Protoceratops. Given that Herodotus relates a story of a traveller to the East who visited a land where griffins guard gold and east of which live the Hyperboreans, modern scholars have theorized that the Dzungarian Gate may be the real-world location of the home of Boreas, the North Wind of Greek Legend.

The Greek writer Herodotus writes in his Histories (4.13) that the explorer Aristeas, a native of Proconnesus in Asia Minor active circa 7th century BC, had written a now lost hexameter poem about a journey to the Issedones of the far north. Aristeas reported that beyond them lived the one-eyed Arimaspians, further on were the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans.

"This Aristeas, possessed by Phoibos, visited the Issedones; beyond these (he said) live the one-eyed Arimaspoi, beyond whom are the Grypes that guard gold, and beyond these again the Hyperboreoi, whose territory reaches to the sea. Except for the Hyperboreoi, all these nations (and first the Arimaspoi) are always at war with their neighbors..."

Based on Greek and Scythian sources, Herodotus describes the Issedones as living east of Scythia and north of the Massagetae, while the geographer Ptolemy (VI.16.7) appears to place the trading stations of Issedon Scythica and Issedon Serica in the Tarim Basin. They may have been identical with the people described in Chinese sources as the Wusun. According to E. D. Phillips, the Issedones are "placed by some in Western Siberia and by others in Chinese Turkestan." J.D.P. Bolton places them on the south-western slopes of the Altay mountains.

Since Herodotus places the Hyperboreans beyond the Massagetae and Issedones, both Central Asian peoples, it appears that his Hyperboreans may have lived in Siberia. Heracles sought the golden-antlered hind of Artemis in Hyperborea. As the reindeer is the only deer species of which females bear antlers, this would suggest an arctic or subarctic region. Following J.D.P. Bolton's location of the Issedones on the south-western slopes of the Altay mountains, Carl P.Ruck places Hyperborea beyond the Dzungarian Gate into northern Xinjiang, noting that the Hyperboreans were probably Chinese.