ABSTRACT
The Gutians are the fanged serpent of the mountain, who acted with violence against the gods, who carried off the kingship of the land of Sumer to the mountain land, who filled the land of Sumer with wickedness. The cross-border ideology of Kurdish independence has posed a threat to all the nations in which Kurds reside, but most especially to Turkey. The more recent histories of the different national Kurdish minorities vary, as well as their relationship to the West, but they share an overarching concept of themselves as a people spurned and trampled on by other civilizations. Abdullah Ocalan has echoed this in his observation that all of the historic enemies of the Kurds have labeled them as "the mountain people". Archaeological projects have not really been able to discern that much about these cultures on the peripheries of ancient empires but they have been able to put their skills to work in uncovering the modern one.
