Bernd
12/25/2019 (Wed) 14:04:37
No.33425
del
I had this idea to find shots of the mythical Csörsz árka (Ditch of Csörsz).
It's long lines of ditches and banks on and around the Great Hungarian Plain, running about 600 kms long (one article said over 1200 kms, which is literal bullshit considering the Carpathians are 1500 kms, and these run on a way shorter arc, some places however there are couple of parallel lines, maybe they calculated their length too). Ofc after a little look-see my idea seems futile because now they are unnoticeable even tho archaeologists use aerial recon when they wish to do their diggings around it. If I knew exactly where those ditches run I might could spot them here and there but the maps I found are quite inaccurate due to their scale.
So no interesting satellite image for Bernd now.
This system of ditches and banks has many folksy names since the people came up quite a few myths of origin. Some calls it Devil's Ditch, they say the devil plowed them, or a giant. The name I mentioned first also comes from a folk legend which says it was built on the order of an Avar khagan, called Csörsz noosr js nooqrs, so he could transport her newly wedded wife home on water because that was the wish of his father-in-law. This tale at least related to a likely theory, that these ditches and banks were built for water flow control.
Another group of great tale producers historians and archaeologists named it Limes Sarmatiae creating the impression that Romans called like this. They did not. In fact the first documented mention of this dyke-trench system come from the 11-12th centuries. Anyway right now the "offical scientific" explanation is that the Sarmatians built them with Roman help and direction as a defense line against other barbarian tribes, like Goths. They aren't bothered by such facts that at not one places the ditch is on the western side while the bank is on the east.
I don't think it's even sure that they were built in the same time, but they are dated to the times of Sarmatians (4th century) because a few crosscut excavations found Sarmatian pottery fragments just below of them. Tho this only means the structures can't be older (but not necessarily from the same age, so they could be way younger).
Anyway there's a nice reconstructed example just east of Debrecen, how they imagine it looked like or supposed to be looked like (but never finished by the Romans).