Post 268:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Aryans invaders are depicted as blonde whit blue eyes .But were this type of fizionomy apear so? Some say that apear first in Scandinavia during the ice age.This conclusion may be related whit the fact that most of blonde people are there.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Your first statement answers your question. Aryans are <i>depicted</i> as having certain features. No evidence for any Aryans, let alone for any of their invasions. Europeans made them up and then imagined they must look European - particularly northern European.
Post 270:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->We must renunce to theory spread by AIT that blonde hair gene apear in Europe .<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Why? Is there evidence to denounce the theory? I'm not even sure I comprehend all of the original theory - where in Europe are the genes for fair hair thought to have arisen?
I have no idea where blonde hair 'originated' or even whether it had one point of origin. The Australian Aboriginals (who migrated to Australia 60,000 to 40,000 bce) have frequent occurrences of blonde hair. Did they give rise to the blonde hair phenotype in Europe? Yes, no, maybe?
I suspect that there are multiple origins. And <i>I think</i> that maybe the central or northern parts of Eastern-Europe or Russia could be the origin for <i>European</i> fair hair.
Red hair is mentioned amongst Japanese - some Samurai were described as being 'red-headed'. I don't know if this was meant symbolically (to designate particular heroic or villainous characters) or meant literally or whether the Japanese found brown hair so strange that they described it as red. This might be like how the Greeks described Alexander as having fair hair and then looking at the famous painting of him, his hair colour is medium-brown. So this is then light enough to be considered 'fair hair' in ancient Greece.
And as a curious aside, I know a South Korean girl with only Korean ancestry who has very light brown hair.
There are some dark-brown haired people in India, and a smaller proportion in the North with dark reddish-brown hair (like if one puts Mehendi also called Henna in one's hair). That's normal and part of a continuum from black to dark brown to possibly reddish in the very cold climate of Kashmir.
In South India, a very few people have dark brown hair, for instance Aishwarya Rai's real hair colour is a dark brown (not seen in her films now).
A few Kashmiri Khans and Pakistani Punjabis have (bright) red hair. Perhaps this has to do with some Turkic, Iranian or even Arabian or other ancestry (see below).
Post 271:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The yellow gene was find on a much large world scale then today.The AIT proponents forgot to mention that. They make up the idea that yellow hair can be only germanic and the sarmatians,medes,persians whit blonde hair ,or that brahman whit red hair are in fact germaic aryans .<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I don't know whether light hair is actually indigenous to Afghans and Persians. Before Islam, some southern Russians were Zoroastrians: they were ethnically Slavic, and religiously Zoroastrian and were affiliated nationally with the edges of the extended Persian Empire.
After Islam, slaves from unconverted countries were transported all over the 'Islamic World'. There were many slaves from Eastern-Europe, Greece and Russia - and even greater numbers from India, Persia and Africa - who were kidnapped by and sold into the then expanding Muslim world.
When Persia and Afghanistan were converted to Islam, they too started bringing large numbers of people over from the bordering European countries to serve as slaves. The women went into the Arabian, Turkish, Egyptian, Iranian and Afghan harems (because their European features were much prized) and the men went into their armies. Male slaves of most countries were often castrated, though the frequency of the occurrence varied depending on country of origin and was in fact based on racism.
Mamaluks literally means "White slaves". Many children born of the women of the harem would of course have inherited genetic material from their maternal side too. I think that more than anything explains why there are particular regions in these now-Muslim countries where there are light-brown, red and even blonde-haired people.
If you look at pictures of the people of Iran who've traditionally remained Zoroastrians until today, they still have very dark hair and look more like the people of the Indian subcontinent than other Iranians do.
Recent Iranian re-converts to Zoroastrianism could well have different hair colours, though.
One more thing, I've always wondered why people point to light eye-colours in India and say that that's proof of an Aryan invasion or at least of some connection with the European 'Caucasian' gene pool. I don't know that it proves anything of the sort.
I've seen 2 stray cats and several stray dogs in India that have green, grey and even blue eyes. Did they come to India by way of an Aryan Invasion too? Are they Caucasian cats and dogs originally from Europe or central Asia? Do the indologists' rules for AIT apply only to humans or are such phenomena among animals taken into account too?
Post 271:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Even more, they pretend that blonde gene apear during the ice age because blonde womens was considered more atractive then womens whit brown hair.So it was a natural selection.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think that hair colour is a phenomenon that might have to do with climate and region. Or perhaps it's no different from fur colours. Or perhaps it's a combination of several factors that have caused the development of various hair colours, including but not necessarily limited to climate (geography) and something similar to the principles determining fur colour.
I have no idea, never studied this. <b>But here's an interesting National Geographic article I found (check out the CG picture on the page too):</b>
Photo in the News: Mammoths Came in Blond, Brunette?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->July 6, 2006âThe same gene that gives redheads their fiery locks gave woolly mammoths either light or dark coats, scientists say.
Researchers made the discovery after sequencing a gene found in ancient DNA taken from the leg bone of a frozen Siberian mammoth.
The gene is known to help determine hair color in many mammals, from humans to mice. (Two Florida beach mice with light and dark fur are pictured here atop reconstructions of mammoths.)
The study marks the first time researchers have mapped a complete gene from the nuclear DNA of an extinct animal. It also explains the different shades found in preserved mammoth hair.
<i>"Nobody knew if the hair changed its color over time lying in the soil, or whether there is a genetic basis for these color differences,"</i> said Michael Hofreiter, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
His research <i>suggests</i> the latter, although scientists still don't know which color hair the Ice Age beasts grew, only that it came in light and dark shades. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->If I had the chance, I'd have liked to ask <b>indologists</b> the following:
Does the above count as evidence that these Mammoths (who it seems might possibly have come in blonde and brunette besides the generally known black fur) are Indo-European/Aryan? Did they come from the Aryan Urheimat too - where the purported Aryan people are thought to have existed in blonde-, brunette- and black-haired varieties? It's a shame that it doesn't look like these animals spoke any languages... else we might finally have proof for PIE. (Whether the mammoths telepathically communicated in PIE can't be determined, I think <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo--> ).
If the mammoths need not have originated in the Urheimat, why should I believe all 'European' features originated in the Urheimat (wherever that is)? <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Mudy Post 272:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->rkumar/romani,
Have you seen or met any Brahman?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I was going to ask exactly the same thing. The greater mystery is how so many indologists - who've probably never even come to India, or at least had a proper look around - imagine that traditional brahmin communities have more 'European' features.
It is said Saraswat Brahmins sometimes have brown hair and occasionally have light eyes. But that would be reasonable in their case, because they originally came from the Punjab region, and then travelled to Kashmir and settled in other parts, as well as coming down to Gomantak in more recent times. So far up north in India it is much colder and they lived there for a very long time (furry mammoths' hair might turn from black to brown there too if they stayed there long enough).
Romani,
The only blonde-haired person in India I've ever seen is a son of an old actor called Shashi Kapoor. The son looks Australian in the pictures I've come across. But that is because his mother (Shashi Kapoor's wife) is British.
There may be others with fair hair in India today, but I suspect that this could be because there were women who were assaulted by the British (see the page on European Imperialism at www.atributetohinduism.com). Such sad events could have resulted in children and they might have had descendants who have passed on these recently-introduced European genes.
No Tamil Brahmana, nor Tamil brahmin community member I've seen has ever had light hair, let alone a hair colour that could really be called brown (and I've been to many, many weddings in Chennai). That might be because I come from Tamil Nadu and all the traditionally brahmin communities there are practically entirely indigenous to the region and look the same on average as all the other Hindus there, and have about the same level of variation.
But Mudy appears to be from a northern part of India and if she can't confirm your expectations of blonde- or red-haired brahmanas, then I think it's worthwhile to stop assuming it.
Post 270:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->We must renunce to theory spread by AIT that blonde hair gene apear in Europe .<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Why? Is there evidence to denounce the theory? I'm not even sure I comprehend all of the original theory - where in Europe are the genes for fair hair thought to have arisen?
I have no idea where blonde hair 'originated' or even whether it had one point of origin. The Australian Aboriginals (who migrated to Australia 60,000 to 40,000 bce) have frequent occurrences of blonde hair. Did they give rise to the blonde hair phenotype in Europe? Yes, no, maybe?
I suspect that there are multiple origins. And <i>I think</i> that maybe the central or northern parts of Eastern-Europe or Russia could be the origin for <i>European</i> fair hair.
Red hair is mentioned amongst Japanese - some Samurai were described as being 'red-headed'. I don't know if this was meant symbolically (to designate particular heroic or villainous characters) or meant literally or whether the Japanese found brown hair so strange that they described it as red. This might be like how the Greeks described Alexander as having fair hair and then looking at the famous painting of him, his hair colour is medium-brown. So this is then light enough to be considered 'fair hair' in ancient Greece.
And as a curious aside, I know a South Korean girl with only Korean ancestry who has very light brown hair.
There are some dark-brown haired people in India, and a smaller proportion in the North with dark reddish-brown hair (like if one puts Mehendi also called Henna in one's hair). That's normal and part of a continuum from black to dark brown to possibly reddish in the very cold climate of Kashmir.
In South India, a very few people have dark brown hair, for instance Aishwarya Rai's real hair colour is a dark brown (not seen in her films now).
A few Kashmiri Khans and Pakistani Punjabis have (bright) red hair. Perhaps this has to do with some Turkic, Iranian or even Arabian or other ancestry (see below).
Post 271:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The yellow gene was find on a much large world scale then today.The AIT proponents forgot to mention that. They make up the idea that yellow hair can be only germanic and the sarmatians,medes,persians whit blonde hair ,or that brahman whit red hair are in fact germaic aryans .<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I don't know whether light hair is actually indigenous to Afghans and Persians. Before Islam, some southern Russians were Zoroastrians: they were ethnically Slavic, and religiously Zoroastrian and were affiliated nationally with the edges of the extended Persian Empire.
After Islam, slaves from unconverted countries were transported all over the 'Islamic World'. There were many slaves from Eastern-Europe, Greece and Russia - and even greater numbers from India, Persia and Africa - who were kidnapped by and sold into the then expanding Muslim world.
When Persia and Afghanistan were converted to Islam, they too started bringing large numbers of people over from the bordering European countries to serve as slaves. The women went into the Arabian, Turkish, Egyptian, Iranian and Afghan harems (because their European features were much prized) and the men went into their armies. Male slaves of most countries were often castrated, though the frequency of the occurrence varied depending on country of origin and was in fact based on racism.
Mamaluks literally means "White slaves". Many children born of the women of the harem would of course have inherited genetic material from their maternal side too. I think that more than anything explains why there are particular regions in these now-Muslim countries where there are light-brown, red and even blonde-haired people.
If you look at pictures of the people of Iran who've traditionally remained Zoroastrians until today, they still have very dark hair and look more like the people of the Indian subcontinent than other Iranians do.
Recent Iranian re-converts to Zoroastrianism could well have different hair colours, though.
One more thing, I've always wondered why people point to light eye-colours in India and say that that's proof of an Aryan invasion or at least of some connection with the European 'Caucasian' gene pool. I don't know that it proves anything of the sort.
I've seen 2 stray cats and several stray dogs in India that have green, grey and even blue eyes. Did they come to India by way of an Aryan Invasion too? Are they Caucasian cats and dogs originally from Europe or central Asia? Do the indologists' rules for AIT apply only to humans or are such phenomena among animals taken into account too?
Post 271:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Even more, they pretend that blonde gene apear during the ice age because blonde womens was considered more atractive then womens whit brown hair.So it was a natural selection.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think that hair colour is a phenomenon that might have to do with climate and region. Or perhaps it's no different from fur colours. Or perhaps it's a combination of several factors that have caused the development of various hair colours, including but not necessarily limited to climate (geography) and something similar to the principles determining fur colour.
I have no idea, never studied this. <b>But here's an interesting National Geographic article I found (check out the CG picture on the page too):</b>
Photo in the News: Mammoths Came in Blond, Brunette?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->July 6, 2006âThe same gene that gives redheads their fiery locks gave woolly mammoths either light or dark coats, scientists say.
Researchers made the discovery after sequencing a gene found in ancient DNA taken from the leg bone of a frozen Siberian mammoth.
The gene is known to help determine hair color in many mammals, from humans to mice. (Two Florida beach mice with light and dark fur are pictured here atop reconstructions of mammoths.)
The study marks the first time researchers have mapped a complete gene from the nuclear DNA of an extinct animal. It also explains the different shades found in preserved mammoth hair.
<i>"Nobody knew if the hair changed its color over time lying in the soil, or whether there is a genetic basis for these color differences,"</i> said Michael Hofreiter, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
His research <i>suggests</i> the latter, although scientists still don't know which color hair the Ice Age beasts grew, only that it came in light and dark shades. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->If I had the chance, I'd have liked to ask <b>indologists</b> the following:
Does the above count as evidence that these Mammoths (who it seems might possibly have come in blonde and brunette besides the generally known black fur) are Indo-European/Aryan? Did they come from the Aryan Urheimat too - where the purported Aryan people are thought to have existed in blonde-, brunette- and black-haired varieties? It's a shame that it doesn't look like these animals spoke any languages... else we might finally have proof for PIE. (Whether the mammoths telepathically communicated in PIE can't be determined, I think <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo--> ). If the mammoths need not have originated in the Urheimat, why should I believe all 'European' features originated in the Urheimat (wherever that is)? <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Mudy Post 272:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->rkumar/romani,
Have you seen or met any Brahman?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I was going to ask exactly the same thing. The greater mystery is how so many indologists - who've probably never even come to India, or at least had a proper look around - imagine that traditional brahmin communities have more 'European' features.
It is said Saraswat Brahmins sometimes have brown hair and occasionally have light eyes. But that would be reasonable in their case, because they originally came from the Punjab region, and then travelled to Kashmir and settled in other parts, as well as coming down to Gomantak in more recent times. So far up north in India it is much colder and they lived there for a very long time (furry mammoths' hair might turn from black to brown there too if they stayed there long enough).
Romani,
The only blonde-haired person in India I've ever seen is a son of an old actor called Shashi Kapoor. The son looks Australian in the pictures I've come across. But that is because his mother (Shashi Kapoor's wife) is British.
There may be others with fair hair in India today, but I suspect that this could be because there were women who were assaulted by the British (see the page on European Imperialism at www.atributetohinduism.com). Such sad events could have resulted in children and they might have had descendants who have passed on these recently-introduced European genes.
No Tamil Brahmana, nor Tamil brahmin community member I've seen has ever had light hair, let alone a hair colour that could really be called brown (and I've been to many, many weddings in Chennai). That might be because I come from Tamil Nadu and all the traditionally brahmin communities there are practically entirely indigenous to the region and look the same on average as all the other Hindus there, and have about the same level of variation.
But Mudy appears to be from a northern part of India and if she can't confirm your expectations of blonde- or red-haired brahmanas, then I think it's worthwhile to stop assuming it.