Halfway across southern Russia are the Altai mountains, where the borders of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China, and Russia meet, those mountains which were not inhabited until the “iron age” begun circa 120o b. c. when kurgan structures such as the Pazyryk Burials were built, like those to the west as far as the Black Sea and eastward into Mongolia, of the Scythians, named for Japheth’s grandson Ashkenaz.
