Unmasking AIT

[Husky]

Interesting reads found directly or indirectly via the links of one Nirjhar<something>:



* jolr.ru/files/(112)jlr2013-9(145-154).pdf

* new-indology.blogspot.com/2013/02/indo-iranians-new-perspectives.html

* varnam.nationalinterest.in/2009/09/a-4000-year-old-lepers-tale/





Elst had claimed that IE-ism has "long since" (since around after WWII) ceased to do with race or let's just call it phenotype.

But:



Comment at:

new-indology.blogspot.com/2013/02/indo-iranians-new-perspectives.html

Giacomo Benedetti

[...]

About the Europe/Asia topic, the Kurgan area is normally defined as Eastern Europe, and Kuzmina and Mallory for instance insist on the white phenotype of the Kurgan people and they even try to demonstrate that this was the phenotype of the 'original' Indo-Iranians.

(And make no mistake, many IE-ists - professional and hobbyist - are working to argue this too)





Excrpts from the article. First the intro, as it's also worth C&P:

new-indology.blogspot.com/2013/02/indo-iranians-new-perspectives.html

Saturday, 2 February 2013

Indo-Iranians: new perspectives

(Giacomo Benedetti)



There are some strange and quite funny ideas in the 'orthodox' academic theory about Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians. One of these is the idea that Indo-Iranians arrived from the steppes with their horses, substituting the local millenarian civilizations in a mysterious way, imposing a new Indo-European pantheon... If we compare the situation of the Hittites in Anatolia, where they are almost absorbed by the local Hattic and Hurrian and Mesopotamian religions, with many gods with non-Indo-European names, we should be amazed by the strength of Indo-Aryan culture in avoiding any contamination with local Dravidian or Munda gods... It is true that Åšiva is regarded as a Dravidian god adopted by the Aryans, but then why does he bear a Sanskrit name (and different Sanskrit epithets starting from the Vedas) and not even a trace of a Dravidian one? And where are non-Indo-European deities in the Avesta? Even the demons (the daevas) are Indo-Iranian there... Another strange idea is that Mitanni Aryans had already Vedic deities and were already Indo-Aryans without ever touching India, as if the Indo-Aryan language and the Vedic religion were not something developed in India, but brought ready-made from a totally different environment, and unchanged when transplanted in South Asia.

And when we look at archaeology, we find that the migrationist/invasionist believers try to forcedly see the arrival of the Aryans in every little trace of steppe pastoralists in Central and South Asia. But how these scanty traces, which just touch the Indus Valley and do not interrupt the continuity of settled civilizations of Margiana and Bactriana, can account for a total change of civilization? This reminds me of a cartoon about creationism compared with the scientific method:



(image of cartoon)



I have the impression that the Aryan Invasionism follows the same method as Creationism. The supporters of the Indo-Iranian invasion from the European steppes of Central and South Asia have no sacred text to defend, although sometimes they use the Vedas or the Avesta with biased (often racial) interpretations. They have a sort of preconceived faith, maybe based on a secret, obstinate Eurocentrism: Europeans must be the conquerors of the Indo-European world, and not the conquered or colonized, they must be the origin of the change, not the recipients.

So, they already firmly believe that the Indo-Aryans must have arrived there in the 2nd millennium BC, and so we have to find, in one way or another, the facts able to support that dogma.



[...]

Well, western IE-ism being Eurocentrism* is barely a secret: despite laughable attempts, they really can't cover it up and sometimes I'm thinking they're not even trying to anymore, so sure are they of their oryanism=white supremacism. (*And the wannabe-Euro or at least a supremacist motivation behind all other IE-ists isn't a secret either, but apparent.) But then, none of them are actually heathens. There is no heathen IE-ist, by definition.



An interesting segment:



new-indology.blogspot.com/2013/02/indo-iranians-new-perspectives.html

The identification of these regions as India is probably due to political reasons, because they were part of an Indian kingdom, so that the Parthians used to call Arachosia 'White India' (see here). But it is also possible that the border between Indians and Iranians was not so clear, and the people of that region, that is, Pashtuns/Pathans and Balochis, were regarded as practically Indians. And it is true that their languages are Iranian (Balochi is even regarded as a Northwestern Iranian language, probably for a recent migration or Parthian influence), but genetically they are quite close to their Pakistani and Indian neighbours. According to Dienekes' table with 12 components of autosomal DNA, Balochis have 33.8% of South Asian component, Pathans 39.1%, and Tajiks (of Tajikistan?) 17.4%. And the study by Haber et al. about Afghanistan genetics reveals:

MDS and Barrier analysis have identified a significant affinity between Pashtun, Tajik, North Indian, and West Indian populations, creating an Afghan-Indian population structure that excludes the Hazaras, Uzbeks, and the South Indian Dravidian speakers. In addition, gene flow to Afghanistan from India marked by Indian lineages, L-M20, H-M69, and R2a-M124, also seems to mostly involve Pashtuns and Tajiks. This genetic affinity and gene flow suggests interactions that could have existed since at least the establishment of the region's first civilizations at the Indus Valley and the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex.



Furthermore, BATWING results indicate that the Afghan populations split from Iranians, Indians and East Europeans at about 10.6 kya (95% CI 7,100–15,825), which marks the start of the Neolithic revolution and the establishment of the farming communities. In addition, Pashtun split first from the rest of the Afghans around 4.7 kya (95% CI 2,775–7,725), which is a date marked by the rise of the Bronze Age civilizations of the region. These dates suggest that the differentiation of the social systems in Afghanistan could have been driven by the emergence of the first urban civilizations.

(image at link)

From this data, it appears that Afghans derive from a common ancestral population which split from the ancestors of Iranians, Indians and East Europeans during the Neolithic revolution, which was an age of diffusion of populations in different areas. According to the table S6, the split between Afghans and North Indians is dated 7525 years ago, which is also in the Neolithic period. The split between Afghan Tajiks and Pashtuns is dated 3950 years ago, which corresponds to the BMAC period, when northern Afghanistan, now inhabited by Tajiks, created the Bactrian civilization. Northwestern and Eastern Iranians (Sistan/Baluchistan), as seen above, seem to be separated 6000 years ago, during the Chalcolithic period. According to Tosi, Shahmirzadi and Joyenda (op. cit., pp.200-201), about 4000 BC three main cultural traditions can be seen: a northern tradition between Elburz, Kopet Dag (Jeitun) and Kashan (Sialk), a southern tradition in the southern Zagros, and another tradition in central-northern Baluchistan and the middle Helmand valley (Mundigak).



Dienekes also remarks that Iranians and Kurds have about 1/10 of South Asian component. And if we look in his aforementioned table at other ancient Iranian areas, we always find strong percentages of the same component: in Turkmens (ancient Margiana), is 13.3%, in Uzbeks (ancient Bactria and Sogdiana) 8.2%, and among Uyghurs (where Iranian languages like Khotanese and Sogdian were used) 8.4%. All this shows quite clearly that Iranians came from a population having strong genetic relations with South Asia. It is true that many Indians migrated or were deported to the Iranian regions during the Middle Ages, but the presence of South Asian DNA among the Uyghurs can hardly be explained in this way. Also North Ossetians, the descendants of the Sarmatians living in the Caucasus, have 4% of South Asian component.

It is also interesting that a study of DNA tribes reveals an 'Indus Valley' STR component (related to Burusho, Tajiks and Pathans) quite strong in the Urals (19.4% of the non-local components). This can be connected with the Sintashta culture of the Bronze Age (2100-1800 BC), typically identified with the Indo-Iranians, because of the chariots and horse sacrifices. There are some interesting remarks on the Wikipedia page about this culture:

Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture. [...] Much of this metal was destined for export to the cities of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Central Asia. [...] The people of the Sintashta culture are thought to have spoken Proto-Indo-Iranian, the ancestor of the Indo-Iranian language family. This identification is based primarily on similarities between sections of the Rig Veda, [..] with the funerary rituals of the Sintashta culture as revealed by archaeology. There is however linguistic evidence of a list of common vocabulary between Finno-Ugric and Indo-Iranian languages. While its origin as a creole of different tribes in the Ural region may make it inaccurate to ascribe the Sintashta culture exclusively to Indo-Iranian ethnicity, interpreting this culture as a blend of two cultures with two distinct languages is a reasonable hypothesis based on the evidence.

About the contacts with the Finno-Ugric speakers, we can add that in the same study of DNA tribes the Finns, among the non-local components, have 6.3% of the 'Indus Valley' component.

(An image at link)



The fact that there was trade with BMAC suggests that Bactria-Margiana merchants and metallurgists went north in search of metal sources and maybe of a better climate, in that period of aridification at the end of the third millennium, and started to colonize that region with their fortified settlements with their perpendicular streets, inner square and concentric walls (see here). These fortresses remind of the late BMAC sites of Gonur Depe, Sapalli Tepe, Jarkutan and Dashly-3, which are now dated to the Middle and Late Bronze Age (2500-1700 BC, Sapalli and Dashly-3 are dated more precisely 2200-2000 BC), then are contemporary and even earlier than Sintashta. I remark this, because Kuzmina and Mallory (p.34) accept the parallelism between Jarkutan and Arkaim in the south Urals, and connect them with the Avestan vara, but in order to support the view that Arkaim is the model, showing the influence of the northern steppe cultures on the Bactrian farmers: an exemplary case of invasionist reversal, particularly strange since the Bactrian fortifications represent rather the northern outposts against the steppe warriors, who are not generally supposed to teach sedentary people how to make buildings! On the other hand, they recognize that BMAC objects are found in Sintashta-Petrovka sites (see here).

Arkaim displays also the use of unburnt bricks and irrigation ditches.



Hints of a northward movement from the Southern Central Asian oases are also in Ferghana,

[...]



The Scythians are the historical Iranian speakers of the steppe. They should be seen not as the bearers of Indo-Iranian languages from the north to the south, but the opposite, as the nomadic pioneers of the Iranian languages (like the Tuiryas and Sairimas of the Avesta), who brought them up to Siberia in the east and Ukraine in the west. The influences of the pastoralists of the steppe reached the south, but they did not bring a radical change, rather the steppe peoples were influenced by the farmers, as recognized by Askarov about the Iron Age in Transoxiana (op.cit., p.441): "The cultural and economic tradition of the advanced southern communities gradually permeated the stockbreeding population of the steppes." Later on (p.451) he writes: "In the south, the economy and domestic architecture of the late decorated pottery culture were identical with those of Sapalli and late Namazga IV (VI?) cultures. The chief occupations were arable farming and stockbreeding, and domestic architecture was monumental - a marked contrast with the Chust culture. [...] an old tradition survived of wheel-thrown pottery, which was completely lacking in the Chust or similar cultures of northern Soviet Central Asia." At p.457 f.: "Cultural transformation in the main oases of Parthia, Margiana and Bactria occured within a clear-cut continuation of local traditions in an area of economics and, to a certain extent, culture. [...] While the settled oases of the south display an overall cultural unity, there are glimpses of original local features that anticipate the cultural features of such ancient people as the Parthians, the Khorezmians and the Bactrians."

So, the Indo-Iranian tradition continued, and was not introduced from the steppes. Indians and Iranians, in their different but contiguous regions, could carry on in evolved forms the civilization of the 'Noble Ones'...



Giacomo Benedetti, Impruneta (Florence), Italy, 2/2/2013

Full article - much longer with more details - at link.