My name is Colton Kizzire. The story I am going to relate is one that I really can't provide definitive proof as is demanded by modern academics, yet I do believe that as you read it, you will know that it is the truth. It's a story that is older than the Exodus of the Jew's from Egypt, and indeed is older than the Pyramids themselves. A story that was old before the Sphinx was young. The Roma people have a place in this story, and it's not an insignificant place. I will tell you now that it both extolls the Roma people, and also casts dispersion on them. I tell you this so you understand that this story is not a glamour piece, but simply the tale that has been told to the Kizzire's while the ground was still wet from the Flood, until today. I will hope that in it's telling, that the Roma people will be given a history that has been denied them, and by way of this history an identity that is more rich than the already very colorful and captivating history that is known to the world today.

The ultimate goal of this story is to make the Roma people, among other tribes in this world understand that they have a homeland, a place that was and is and always will be there own. A place which until them who made a pact with the very land itself will not see peace. This place need's the Roma just as the Roma need a place. Somewhere that no Roma need fear anything or anybody, where the generations of hatred and jealously thrown upon the Roma are but memories. Home is where the heart is they say, so let me attempt to relate a tale that may return a beating heart to a land, and a home to a people that have been scattered.

DNA analysis of Roma people's have traced them to Northern India. This, is true. The people who would be Roma in later times did indeed originate from this general area. However, the timeline put forward is not correct, or at least, not complete. This story goes back 5000 years, to when civilization was just beginning in Sumer and the Indus Valley and Anatolia in Asia Minor. The Roma people were in those earliest days in no way different from the general population of the Indus Valley. Potters, farmers..and workers in copper and other metals. As civilization began to come together in tribes large enough to wage war, and technology began to give these tribes the ability to do so in true form...war was let loose upon the Indus Valley and surrounding lands. These stories are recorded in the Hindu epic's, and are remembered by many people's in their own stories. It was a war that lasted perhaps a hundred years or more, for it was no easy task to complete a campaign when people were still new to this phenomena that we call war.

Was this conflict waged over food...resources..glory? It's hard to say, and perhaps I will go into more detail in a later tale. What I can say is that as this war was waged, tribes from a vast area came and went, fascinated and disgusted by this new activity that humans had taken up. In doing so they introduced innovations of their own, and took innovations of others and this was in no small part responsible for the spreading of technology and civilizations to the four corners of the world. The people of the Asian Steppe brought horses...those of Sumer brought new forms of cultivation and grains that could feed armies, those of Anatolia brought metal working techniques and animal husbandry. It was a blender filled with humanity good and bad from all places. Some came just to see what they could trade for, some came to conquer, some to learn and some simply to seek the glory that young men and women so often feel the need to grasp in order to feel larger than life. This war devastated the Indus Valley Culture..and ultimately ended it. We see that the end of those great cities at Harrapa and Mohenjo Daro contained the remains of people killed in war.

Though the great cities ended, the smaller communities continued to farm and go about life as before. They now had been exposed to many different technologies and people's, and they would continue the tradition of passing this tale down though the eons until it was put into print. In the meantime, people began to drift back to their homelands and other places where we still find them. One of the people that entered the fray of war were called the Kassites, a tough mountain dwelling people from the Zagros Mountains in what is today Iran.

The Kassites were kings. They conquered Babylon on a whim after being kings in Kish for a very long time, and reigned in Babylon for 570 years, the longest reign of any dynasty. They were a warrior people and this arrangement suited them, as they were in a place where they could raid and then retreat to a walled city instead of mountains, and so it was until the Elamites became too numerous. Faced with defeats, they left Babylon as it no longer provided the secure place of plenty they always sought out, and instead went to Anatolia. By this time, they had developed a two wheeled chariot, which now was a true weapon of war having been brought back from the Hindu Maha's. With the chariot, came those who fashioned the fittings and cared for the horses that were trained to pull and to fight. These, were those people who would be called the Roma. They were skilled workers that kept a language all their own, a way to keep secrets of trade secret, and allow a sense of community across a wide range of land. More a guild at first than a tribe, they followed the Kassites through their ventures until they reached south eastern Anatolia.

Here the Hurrian people reigned. Tough, quick to anger, quick to laughter and sharing a love for much the same lifestyle as the Kassites, they found themselves quick to become intertwined as one people and the land became Kizzuwatna, the Kingdom of the God's. This land, where Gobekli Tepe the worlds oldest megalithic structure and Catal Huyuk, the oldest proto-city were to be found. It was an ancient place even when the Kassites came into it. The Luwian people, the People of Light, dominated Asia Minor and much of central Europe, and so the culture of the Luwians, which was quite advanced, became mixed with that of the Kassite/Hurrians....only later to be further mixed when Kizzuwatna signed a treaty, the first ever recorded, with the Hittites to become part of the Hittie Empire. In Kizzuwatna did the mighty King's of Hattusha keep their religion, for the Hitties were known as the people of a thousand God's, and it was in this land, called Qode in ancient Egyptian, that their great priests and priestesses attended to these many divine entities. Many believe the very word God derives from the word Qode, and this wouldn't be surprising in the least, for this was the land of beginnings, the land many scholars believe to have contained the Garden of Eden and where people began to act in large groups for a common goal. A marvellous place.

The Kizzuwatna provided troops and the modified battle chariots and worlds first true war horses to the Hittite army in the battle of Kadesh, the first battle that good records exist for. The horses of the Hitties were feared as much as their soldiers, and it was in no small part due to the "Kikulli", or horse masters that cared and bred them, even writing the first known treatise on horse care. These Kikulli, are what I am quite sure to be the Roma people, now becoming a distinct tribe within the Hittite Empire, where their skills in metal working and horse care were highly valued.

Then came the Trojan War. Troy was a Luwian people, and Priam was a great king, of noble virtue. The Kizzuwanta, also a noble people and hungry for glory went to their aid. They did not want their horses mixed with those of Troy, and the feeling was mutual. They would simply use the Trojans horse stock, and leave their own in the care of the Kikulli, with strict instructions....if the Greek's came to steal the horses...kill the horses...all of them. Do not let the Greeks get even one. Horses were holy to all Luwians, and horse burials are very common such was the reverence for this animal.

During the course of the Illiad, finding no way to gain access to the great walled city of Troy...the wily Odysseus devised a ploy. He and Achillies, along with Nestor and Patroclus raided Kizzuwanta. The Kikulli, seeing that they far outnumbered the Greeks, and unaware of the prowess of these particular warriors, decided to speak with them seeing no danger in it. There, on the beach, they noticed the great bronze rams upon the prows of the triremes of these famed warriors, each weighing up to 4 tons. Noticing the interest of these people who so loved metals, they decided to entice them with a trade. "Give us your sick horses, to be used to make hide for shields and to haul gear, and the bronze is yours." This was the offer made by Odysseus, who intended to use these horses for a far more sinister purpose. Thinking this was certainly a good trade, and maybe even a blow to the Greeks in trading what they considered horses that were to be killed anyway for a great deal of precious bronze, loaded up about 80 horse on the ships, took the bronze....and in doing so doomed the Trojans.

The war was long, over ten years. Toward the end, the Greeks arrived back from their raiding with 80 sickly horses and marched them proudly off the boats as if they were fine stallions. For Odysseus knew that Priam and those of Kizzuwanta would instantly understand what the implications were. These horses carried diseases that those of Troy had no immunity to, and as such they caught hoof and mouth disease and parasites...and began to die within the wall's of Troy. Unable to bury or burn the horses outside the city wall's, their rotting corpses began to spread disease. Within the besieged city, this disease spread rapidly among the Trojans,and even to the Greeks outside. But it was the Trojans who were to be the worst off, for their warriors were closest to the horses, and it was they who suffered the debilitation the most. Having already found a way into the city dressed as a beggar, Odysseus knew that these violently ill Trojans would be unable to keep the  watch as they usually did, with vigilance and eagle eyed sight, using their famed bowskills to destroy any who would intrude.

There was no Trojan horse of wood and filled with Greeks. What a silly idea...There was Trojan horses, and there was infiltration and opening of the gates...and thus ended Troy. Priam and his sons, seeing now that it was the end, fought hard to allow the escape of their Luwian and Scythian comrades. The Kizzuwanta wished to stay as did the Scythians. It was explained to them that there was a much longer game at stake, and that there was to be a later battle to be fought. So, the Kizzuwanta marched east and homeward. When they arrived..they were enraged...and looking for a place to put that anger, they laid it upon the Kikulli. They banished them, told them to scatter, to be gone from this place that was their home as much as it was anybody else's. Nothing was possible as a punishment the greater than being banished from ones land. Death was preferable. This was the great sin of the Kizzuwatna, and it follows their descendants even to this day. For the Kikulli were among those whom made the first treaty, where Mithra, a Hindu deity of contracts was cited as witness. This was a deity brought by the Kikulli themselves....from Northern India. Mithra does not care for the passage of time...a contract is a contract. To have it broken from within was sacrilege. And so, those who carried the blood of the Kings of Kizzuwanta, the descendants of Queen Puduhepa, Great Queen of the Hittite Empire, suffered themselves to be made without a home..to themselves be made to wander.

This came to pass when the End came. The Luwians formed an Alliance, the greatest yet seen by the world..and invaded Assyria, Egypt and the Hittites all at once...and ended the Bronze Age. To much power did the great Empires control, and without the levelheaded Minoans to keep the peace, their Luwian cousins among others decide the only way to save the world was to end it. And so it was. After this, the Kizzuwanta tried to stay in their land, and the core of these people did their best through the thousands of years to do so. They became the Kussar, Gens Cassia, Qizar and other storied families, scattered here and there. But in what would be Armenia, still in those same lands where man first planted crops and tamed the great aurochs into cattle remained the family which today is called Kizzire. The rivers and cities even today carry the name of them who were so intertwined with the people which they provided for, it was hard to differentiate them. This ended with the Armenian Genocide, where the Ottoman Turks attempted to rid the land of people who had very real claims to it, and very real claims to a nobility and royal bloodline that stretched back into a time that was as remote as any time could be. This worried the Beys of the Ottoman machine, for many respected the rule of Kings, and thus they decided to murder those people who had this claim, just to be safe.

The Kizzire's escaped due to the goodness of a Kararite Jewish family, who from Constantiople gave them not only safe passage to the America's, but a credit line as well. These Jew's too respected the blood of royalty, when it deserved to be respected. Thus, all Kizzires that were not killed now reside in the US, were we enjoy the benefits that the God's had for so long given to us, and also suffered the penalties of oaths broken by our ancestor's. It then fall's to me to attempt a correction of this imbalance, and in doing so, give a homeland to many. The land of Cilicia is and always was our's..Roma..Kurd, Yazid and Armenian among many others..and only by genocide and distasteful and childish actions was it removed from our care. I write this to attempt a beginning of a process that I hope will result in the returning of people to the land that for so long nurtured them. To me, it's a feeling that seem's divinely inspired, as it was a story I did not care for, and even ridiculed as superstitious nonsense. Yet, one day I woke up, and it was as if I fell down a rabbit hole, directed by a will not my own, guided by a hand unfamiliar to me. I really have no clue what will happen, only who I am, and what calls to me. I believe it calls to you to, that land, that time. It's great antiquity give us our sense of identity and a promise of better times ahead, of safety and of pride. I can only hope that this begins a movement that will result in our returning to Cilicia with all our cousin people's, as the Jew's returned to Israel, and there be able to do the world some good. It's not up to me though... it's up to you. Unless we go as a people united in purpose and having forgiven each other all transgressions... all petty squabbles... we will never have a home of our own, not ever. So please, if you feel as I feel, then help me... be a torch in the darkness, a guiding hand. I know what I need to do... but not the way in which to do it... for the God's only reach out halfway and the rest must be the burden of them who would have the reward.

That is you, and me, and all who would have that land beneath our feet again. May we see each other as neighbors in Cilicia... may our grandchildren's grandchildren ride grand horses upon the beaches and through the mountains. I can think of no greater reward, and no greater cause. Let us all hope that we are all of the same mind.