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The Ubykh used to inhabit an area just northwest of Abkhazia in the Caucasus . They were probably one of the populations to inhabit the ancient nation of Colchis , and some of the people involved in the myth of the Golden Fleece may have been Ubykh speakers. Outside of mythology, the ancestors of the Ubykh were mentioned in book IV of Procopius ' ''De Bello Gotico'' (''The Gothic War''), under the name βρου̃χοι (''Brouchoi'') , a corruption of the native term '''twaχ'''. The Ubykhs were semi- Nomad ic horseback people, and the Ubykh language still contains a finely differentiated vocabulary related to horses and tack. Some Ubykhs also practised Favomancy and Spatulamancy . However, the Ubykh people gained more prominence in modern times. In 1864 , during the reign of the Tsar Alexander II , Georgia and Abkhazia were invaded by the Russia n army. The Adyghe and Abkhazian peoples were decimated, and the Abaza people were partially driven out of the Caucasus. But the result on the Ubykh people was much more widespread; the Ubykh nation was told to get out of the Caucasus or be subjugated by the Russian army. Deciding to leave free rather than stay and be ruled, the entire Ubykh nation left the Caucasus ''en masse'', beginning on the 6th of March, 1864, and ending less than two months later, with the last Ubykhs departing on the 21st of May. They eventually settled in western Turkey . The Ubykh Elder s decided that it would be best if the Ubykh people were to assimilate into Turkish culture, in order to avoid discrimination. They shifted from being a nomadic horseback culture to becoming a culture of farmers, eventually settling in a number of villages around the municipality of Manyas . The Ubykh language was displaced by Turkish and Circassian , and the last native speaker of Ubykh, Tevfik Esenç , died in 1992. Today, the Ubykh diaspora has been scattered into Russia , Turkey, and to a much lesser extent, Abkhazia and Jordan . The Ubykh nation ''per se'' no longer exists, although those who are of Ubykh ancestry are proud to call themselves Ubykh, and a couple of villages are still found in Turkey where the vast majority of the population is still Ubykh by descent. Ubykh society was Patrilineal ; many Ubykhs, even today, know five, six, or even seven generations of their Agnatic Ancestry . Nevertheless, as in other Northwest Caucasian cultures, women were especially venerated, and the Ubykh language retains a special second person pronoun prefix used exclusively with women (-). |
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