Bygone Vignettes&Vintage: What does Tartar Sauce Have to do with the Shape Shifting Human Psyche?

Some subjects stir up more questions than answers. For example, who truly were the Tatars or Tartars and where was the great global empire of Tartary? It is recorded that there were Great Tartary, Little Tartary, Chinese Tartary and Independent Tartary. History as an academic discipline is a fairly new and had its origins in 19th century Germany. To figure what went on before academically is sometimes accomplished by putting pieces together from here and there in a biased fashion, depending on the point of view of the authors. When relying on historical accounts, are we just being served up fractions of the truth? In the case of Tartary, was there conquests and cover ups for political reasons? Was Tartary mainly an Islamic world? How advanced scientifically was it? It seems that Tartarian related matters have disappeared from many lexicons and to a large extent from the face of the planet.

Eastern Hemisphere showing Tartary in gray. It was huge.

Reference to The Tartars were made as recently as the 19th century. We can find hard historical evidence including maps. Considering that the magnetic north pole is now moving from Canada into the direction of Russia, speculation is fueled that the land mass could have actually been different at that time. This is very interesting to conceive of. There has been speculation about the Bering Land Ridge as a point of connectivity. Also the Chinese would have had a different method of recording events than that of Europe. What is the real history behind the Great Wall of China? The curious land Tibet? Then there is the romantic aspect of this subject in novels like Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, legends of Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions. Words travel, morph and their meanings, sometimes by misnomer, find new life in the human mind in exotic faraway locales. Who would think to associate the Scottish tartan with Tartary (see image below)? And tartar sauce is a word that found its way to North America via Europe - tartare. The conquest driven Tartars (hated but influential) wound their way into western Europe and brought their habit of eating raw ground meat - steak tartare. The sauce for steak tartare became known as tartar sauce. We use 'tartar' sauce in today's particular English food lingo, unmindful of the travel path of the word through the minds of countless peoples of different languages and cultures, from the far reaches of one end of the globe to the other, transforming the word's etymology through the centuries. The Tartars sadly are no more, disappeared from our consciousness, but given the almost cyclical nature of life on this earth, maybe they could arise again in a new way, under a new name as long as the psychic pull of language is deposited in the human psyche with everyday use. This post contains some empirical evidence that would hopefully pique people’s interest to explore more. There is no doubt that Tartary and the Tartarians existed. Shall Tartary live on as romantic figments of our imagination or not at all? Uncovering layers of the past could be quite intriguing even though we have to view things through the lens of countless wars and change.

Tartarin reference: from book by Ian Mortimer

Was Tartary in North America?

The graphics below include:

Declassified CIA information with mention of the Tartars.
Another intriguing eastern hemisphere map.
Another world map showing a close connection to North America and the Bering strait.
Map and description of the countries of the eastern hemisphere, 1820.
List of countries of the 'known world.'
Encyclopedic reference to Tartary.
Flags of the countries of the east, including Tartary.
The Tartarians.

Who were these flesh and blood people and what were the stories of their joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats? The stories of husbands, wives and children? Are they a lost people or were they just absorbed by shifting national boundaries? Maybe, sadly, we will never really know. But the power to rewrite history as some see fit perseveres. For it is has been said that history is written by the victors.