03-23-2007, 12:56 PM
comments on the above:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->All the great civilizations were founded around fertile deltas of the great rivers - the Indus/Saraswati, the Nile, the Tigris/Euphrates, etc. In the southern route out-of-Africa, the first major river(s) that early man reached would likely have been the Indus/Saraswati, home of the Indus valley civilization. Thus the expansion of the population required to subsequently populate northern Africa, temperate Europe, China and the Russian Plain possibly occured here rather than the arid Arabian peninsula or glaciated and mountainous Persia or further west to which there was no easy beach or shore route for these migrants. Since the very first civilization would have taken some time to evolve before there could be lateral (and faster) geographical diffusion of the new technologies, the pattern of distribution of the Saraswati-Sindhu/Harappan/Indus valley cities is telling. They followed the course of the great rivers feeding the Western subcontinent. From here it is easy to postulate migration and settlement upon glacial retreat of the other great city civilizations that followed, in Sumer and in Egypt. Even the course of domestication of cattle and fowl and grain appear to diffuse out of greater India by most accounts, which makes eminent sense if Saraswati-Sindhu is hypothesized as the first site of civilization for the fledgling species. With timelines now shrunk to about 50,000 years ago when mankind first made the trek out-of-Africa, there comes a narrowing of the spread between this momentous event and the dates of the Harappan cities and even the presence of the Vedic Mitanni people in West Asia. All indications are for radial (and racial) diffusion out-of-India initially. It was only much later that the direction or migration was reversed and human tribes like the Sakas and Hunas returned to get reabsorbed into their long-forgotten ancestral homeland and civilzation.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The concept of a South Asian urmheit (homeland) for non-African human races is now mainstream in anthropology. For the flat-earth indologists who still cling to a reverse invasion/migration of a mythical 'white' Indo-European tribe from a Caspian sea homeland, this real science (as opposed to their pseudo-science of linguistics and conjecture; and in the case of people like Romilla Thapar just shoddy third-hand reinterpretation of the work of others) must be especially galling. What will Farmer and Witzel do when their tenous claim to academics goes the way of physiognomists and other quacks of history?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->All the great civilizations were founded around fertile deltas of the great rivers - the Indus/Saraswati, the Nile, the Tigris/Euphrates, etc. In the southern route out-of-Africa, the first major river(s) that early man reached would likely have been the Indus/Saraswati, home of the Indus valley civilization. Thus the expansion of the population required to subsequently populate northern Africa, temperate Europe, China and the Russian Plain possibly occured here rather than the arid Arabian peninsula or glaciated and mountainous Persia or further west to which there was no easy beach or shore route for these migrants. Since the very first civilization would have taken some time to evolve before there could be lateral (and faster) geographical diffusion of the new technologies, the pattern of distribution of the Saraswati-Sindhu/Harappan/Indus valley cities is telling. They followed the course of the great rivers feeding the Western subcontinent. From here it is easy to postulate migration and settlement upon glacial retreat of the other great city civilizations that followed, in Sumer and in Egypt. Even the course of domestication of cattle and fowl and grain appear to diffuse out of greater India by most accounts, which makes eminent sense if Saraswati-Sindhu is hypothesized as the first site of civilization for the fledgling species. With timelines now shrunk to about 50,000 years ago when mankind first made the trek out-of-Africa, there comes a narrowing of the spread between this momentous event and the dates of the Harappan cities and even the presence of the Vedic Mitanni people in West Asia. All indications are for radial (and racial) diffusion out-of-India initially. It was only much later that the direction or migration was reversed and human tribes like the Sakas and Hunas returned to get reabsorbed into their long-forgotten ancestral homeland and civilzation.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The concept of a South Asian urmheit (homeland) for non-African human races is now mainstream in anthropology. For the flat-earth indologists who still cling to a reverse invasion/migration of a mythical 'white' Indo-European tribe from a Caspian sea homeland, this real science (as opposed to their pseudo-science of linguistics and conjecture; and in the case of people like Romilla Thapar just shoddy third-hand reinterpretation of the work of others) must be especially galling. What will Farmer and Witzel do when their tenous claim to academics goes the way of physiognomists and other quacks of history?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->