[Sonsowey]

You may be aware, that English is an "Indo-European" language. In this language family are languages as diverse as English, Spanish, Russian, Kurdish, Gaelic, Farsi, Hindi, Greek, and many extinct languages, such as Latin, Tocharian, Hittite, Sanskrit, etc.



Language families are all just descendants of one original language, and the original language was Indo European, or Proto Indo-European, a language that now seems likely to have been spoken about 5,000-6,000 years ago in the Ukraine/Russia



These people likely were able to spread out and conquer areas ranging, eventually, from Ireland to parts of China, because of a combination of having domesticated horses, chariots, battle axes, which they used to obliterate settled populations in areas. The mounted horse-back raid that wipes out farmers is a common meme throughout history, and here we have a very successful example of it. They were lactose-tolerant when many people weren't, and it is hypothesized that the domestication of horses was initially done for meat, and later for their milk, and only after horses had been domesticated for some time was riding them adopted. Trying to ride a wild horse seems rather unfeasible.



As well as sharing languages, material cultures, burial customs, and warfare styles, these people also shared a religion descended from an original source. This religion became what is today Hinduism in India, and what was called Paganism throughout Europe. The religions of Greece, The Vikings, the Romans, The Celts, all of these religions seem similar because they really are just variations of a common theme.

You see this simply in the names for the principal Gods in many religions. From Wikipedia:

*Dyēus Ph2tēr (literally "sky father" [in Indo European]) is the god of the day-lit sky and the chief god of the Indo-European pantheon. The name survives in Greek Zeus with a vocative form Zeu pater; Latin Jūpiter (from the archaic Latin Iovis pater; Diēspiter), Sanskrit Dyáus Pitā, and Illyrian Dei-pátrous.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-...n_religion

India still maintains its Pagan religion, and it is seen in other areas throughout the world. You may recall Yazidis, a group that is Ethnically Kurdish (the Kurds are an Indo-European speaking group) but instead of being Muslim, they are pagans. ISIS was not so happy about them existing and they were close to being wiped out. These people maintain some form of paganism hearkening back to thousands of years ago, though they are likely not long for this earth.

Zoroastrianism took a lot of the pagan gods and turned them into other divine figures, for instance, many of the divine figures in the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hinduisms sacred texts, are cast as demons in Zoroastrianism.

It is curious to me that after so much conquering from such a small starting point, and after such a succesful culture that dominated much of Eurasia, that pagan religions outside of India started falling before Monotheistic religions.

There are today in Europe people who are called Neo-Pagans who want to re-claim their old religions. Why would Norweigans worship a religion founded in the Middle East when they have their own traditions based in their own culture? The question is no different than asking why conquered people in Africa or Latin America should believe the religion of their conquerors instead of their own native beliefs.

It's strange to look at India and think, in some ways, those people have kept the ancient Pagan traditions that used to exist in Europe alive (albeit in a form that has evolved significantly) more so than they have been kept in Europe.

Greek and Roman mythology still fascinate people, obviously we have many classicists here who look to ancient writings for sources of wisdom. Understanding that ancient religion is more than just myth, but actually a historical story of our own origins, is fascinating to me.

[Teutatis]

One could argue that monotheistic religions are not really monotheistic as they have an array of different figures to worship, like saints, angels, holy figures and so on, and that pagan religions, despite all the gods they worship, are really monotheistic in the sense that in all of them they have the one source that created all others, but still, maybe that's the natural evolution of human though, chaos/ignorance --> gods --> god --> no god.

[berserk]

Good work, this is a very interesting field of study, though also quite controversial.

I wouldn't take offense to being labeled a neo-pagan.

I wonder why so many Europeans go to India to find 'enlightenment'? Well, with what you know now, perhaps they are not so weird after all, but merely rediscovering some ancient lingering trace of their past. It's also interesting that Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. More inviting with no caste systems, but the same fundamental worldview. Consider how Buddhism came to play a role in most of Asia and that Khmer were actually Hindus during their prime (they fell after Buddhism). However, crazy how far this culture of the indo-europeans stretched. Might have made it all the way to China. Certainly challenges the idea of an isolated East vs West. Then the East influenced the West and the other way round. In a way, these Indo-Europeans, did influence much of the world as we know it today.It's a fascinating story, you see it almost right, this group of people leaving their icy northern homeland for adventure.

Strange thing this monotheism from the middle east. It's very crude compared to Indo-Aryan religion, but also very effective. It conquered a lot of Indo-European nations either by force or by subversion.

I'd like to point out though that Christianity was heavily influenced by paganism in Europe. Basically all christian holidays are pagan, Yuletide/Christmas, Easter/Eostre/May Queen, celebration of midsummer etc.

I understand your last sentence very well. It's like looking down history and seeing your ancestors living. I imagine it's how jews feel reading the Torah or muslims when they read the Quran, except this story of ours is older than both, at least 3000-4000 years old, possibly as much as 5000-7000 years old. It's like the real world Lord of The Rings.

[Deluge]

(02-14-2015 10:22 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

You may be aware, that English is an "Indo-European" language. In this language family are languages as diverse as English, Spanish, Russian, Kurdish, Gaelic, Farsi, Hindi, Greek, and many extinct languages, such as Latin, Tocharian, Hittite, Sanskrit, etc.

As an aside, this a map of the R family of Y-DNA haplogroups, which are passed down unbroken from father to son. Notice how this map lines up exactly with those of Indo-European languages (it's presence among Native Americans is due to European admixture). The Indo-Europeans began expanding from the Russian steppe around 3500 BC and imposed themselves over huge swathes of humanity. It's pretty mind boggling.

[Sonsowey]

Deluge,

There was a new paper out about Indo Europeans and haplogroups R1a and R1b:
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/02/10/013433

It appears that they did come with Indo Europeans, but that Indo Europeans weren't the only ones to have them, ie, they got them from somewhere, and so there are other non-Indo European peoples who have these haplogroups as well. Greg Cochran discusses it here:


"The big new paper on European origins is out (by Wolfgang Haak, Iosif Lazaridis, Nick Patterson, David Reich, etc) .

The Corded Ware population is quite different from the preceding Neolithic farmers: it is about 75% descended from a Yamnaya-like population (the Yamnaya being steppe herders from the Ukraine and thereabouts). The Yamnaya themselves are another fusion product: they’re a mix of farmers from the Middle East (a different population than the one that originally settled Europe, something like Armenians) and a population similar to ancient hunter-gatherers from Russia (somewhat like ancient Karelians). This population also introduced R1a and R1b chromosomes into Europe, now extremely common.

In northern Europe, the newcomers didn’t tax the neolithic farmers: mostly, they killed them. Razib Khan compares this to the original Mongol plan ( kill them, kill them all), before that Khitan bureaucrat explained the joys of taxation. In the Corded Ware/Single Grave/Battleaxe culture, there’s no sign that the farmers are around as serfs: there are almost no buildings, almost no sign of agriculture. Jim, comment on this.

My guesses:

The Karelian-like population is mostly from further east than Samara: the guys that domesticated the horse.

The Karelian-like poulation conquered the Armenian-like farmers: they account for about half the autosomal ancestry of the Yamnaya, but far more of the Y chromosomes.

it would be interesting to see if the Yamnaya picked up neolithic farmers ancestry through the female line: could you look at X-chromosomes?

In places like Italy, people are autosomally mostly neolithic farmers while the old Neolithic-farmer y-chromsomes are almost gone. Conquest, rather than extermination: younger sons go forth to conquer again. Some of the old Y chromosomes lingered in the hills – a bit like Vlachs after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Did the ur-IndoEuropeans have the European lactose-tolerance mutation? Probably. And they had the common CF mutations, too.

Archaeologists should read more Conan: Robert E. Howard was way closer to the mark than they were or are. Even good guys like David Anthony were influenced: but I’ll bet he’s over that now."

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2015/02/1...migration/

[The Llort]

Fascinating subject...

My question would be though...wtf happened to the Indians (in the nation of India)?

All modern day Indo-Europeans from Europe to Iran are pretty fair skinned. Yet many Indians are blacker than blacks. It doesn't add up.

[Sonsowey]

(02-17-2015 09:35 PM)berserk Wrote:  

I wonder why so many Europeans go to India to find 'enlightenment'? Well, with what you know now, perhaps they are not so weird after all, but merely rediscovering some ancient lingering trace of their past. It's also interesting that Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. More inviting with no caste systems, but the same fundamental worldview.

The caste system in India, it seems pretty clearly, is not a relic of older Indo European religions, but a novel racial system of hierarchy imposed by the invading Aryans on the Dravidians and Aboriginal Indians that they found there.

I recently read more into this, having known little about it. I thought that Dravidians were basically the original people of India, pre-aryan, and thus Dravidian languages and religion were the original languages and religion of the whole Indian subcontinent.

It appears now that Dravidians may have originally come to India from the area of Iran (which interestingly was later a staging ground for Indo-Aryans). So when they came to India they conquered the indigenous people who have non-Dravidian languages and religions.

Indo-Aryans basically created the caste system putting themselves on top, Dravidians on the bottom, and the indigenous people outside of the system all together.

[Deluge]

It's worth noting, the genetic distance between the Indo-Europeans (themselves a hybrid group) and the hunter gatherers of Europe they conquered and mixed with, is about as large as the difference between Europeans and the Han Chinese today. The hunter-gathers, the Neolithic farmers and the Indo-Europeans were very different groups, it's fascinating how you can't see any relic that today. Also, Razib Khan seems to think it's actually the Norwegians not the Russians who have the highest Yamnaya admixture (49%) even though they aren't so R Y-DNA dominant, rather than the Russians who mixed heavily with Finnic groups.

(02-18-2015 12:50 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(02-17-2015 09:35 PM)berserk Wrote:  

I wonder why so many Europeans go to India to find 'enlightenment'? Well, with what you know now, perhaps they are not so weird after all, but merely rediscovering some ancient lingering trace of their past. It's also interesting that Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. More inviting with no caste systems, but the same fundamental worldview.

The caste system in India, it seems pretty clearly, is not a relic of older Indo European religions, but a novel racial system of hierarchy imposed by the invading Aryans on the Dravidians and Aboriginal Indians that they found there.

I recently read more into this, having known little about it. I thought that Dravidians were basically the original people of India, pre-aryan, and thus Dravidian languages and religion were the original languages and religion of the whole Indian subcontinent.

It appears now that Dravidians may have originally come to India from the area of Iran (which interestingly was later a staging ground for Indo-Aryans). So when they came to India they conquered the indigenous people who have non-Dravidian languages and religions.

Indo-Aryans basically created the caste system putting themselves on top, Dravidians on the bottom, and the indigenous people outside of the system all together.

This is true. People used to think that there were two major inputs to South Asia. The Ancestral North Indians (Indo-Europeans of the Aryan branch), and Ancestral South Indians who spoke Dravidian languages. It now turns out that the Aryans and the ANI were two completely separate groups. So you the "indigenous" population of the sub-continent who came directly from Africa and whose closest relatives today are the Andaman Islanders, the Dravidian speakers who came from the Middle East and/or the Caucus, and the Aryans who came from the Russian steppe via Iran. The Aryans have had the most genetic impact, very substantial even in the South where Dravidian languages are still spoken. And besides the Andaman Islanders there is not a single group in the sub-continent that is purely indigenous.

[bojangles]

I wrote about this in another thread. Me and Krauser had a big chat whilst we were in Croatia filming. It centered around why Hinduism still held strong and why India despite it's immense population was always invaded in the past (always). We focused on the religion aspects and concluded that it was teh freedom that religion gave which became it's own downfall. Hinduism has a structure as do other polytheistic religions, however your level of worship is not dictated nor are you supposed to follow fervently. This is the opposite to monotheism, which is a structure for control, a single god, you do must do this, you must do that, you must do this in the name of "whoever". When you're able to control the actions and thoughts of your followers than they will go to hell and back to ensure you succeed. Great example of this could be the initial battles between the Islamic Arabs and the Sassanids. There was on force of 18,000 men believing in the will of Allah who set off into Persia to take down the Sassanids, they fought 4 battles, each time with an army of around 30-50,000 and won every single one. The Sassanids weren't fighting in the name of God, they were fighting for their emperor. The Arabs were fighting in the name of God and were willing to die for him.

This is probably why the end result of all the Crusades was technically status quo (the arabs got back Jerusalem). You had 2 montheistic religions killing each other in the name of God. Meanwhile back to Hinduism, people here aren't going to spread Hinduism in the name of God, they truly don't give a shit, they care more about being 'good' about 'good karma' about 'dharma'. You can't exactly expand your religion and kill unbelievers if you're supposed to be good, truthful and virtuous throughout your life.

[Krusyos]

I used to identify as Asatru... no longer anymore. However, it still shapes my living philosophy to an extreme degree, and I identify with it almost as much as Christianity. The main crux that Germanic paganism revolves around is building strong, self-reliant men. I also recommend reading The Poetic Edda, not only to gain the gems of wisdom contained within, but also to find a way to learn more about the people who in most probability have been your ancestors (if you have any English, German, or Scandinavian.

"Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great dead "

from the Havamal, a collection of Asatru proverbs.

[berserk]

(02-18-2015 07:15 AM)bojangles Wrote:  

I wrote about this in another thread. Me and Krauser had a big chat whilst we were in Croatia filming. It centered around why Hinduism still held strong and why India despite it's immense population was always invaded in the past (always). We focused on the religion aspects and concluded that it was teh freedom that religion gave which became it's own downfall. Hinduism has a structure as do other polytheistic religions, however your level of worship is not dictated nor are you supposed to follow fervently. This is the opposite to monotheism, which is a structure for control, a single god, you do must do this, you must do that, you must do this in the name of "whoever". When you're able to control the actions and thoughts of your followers than they will go to hell and back to ensure you succeed. Great example of this could be the initial battles between the Islamic Arabs and the Sassanids. There was on force of 18,000 men believing in the will of Allah who set off into Persia to take down the Sassanids, they fought 4 battles, each time with an army of around 30-50,000 and won every single one. The Sassanids weren't fighting in the name of God, they were fighting for their emperor. The Arabs were fighting in the name of God and were willing to die for him.

This is probably why the end result of all the Crusades was technically status quo (the arabs got back Jerusalem). You had 2 montheistic religions killing each other in the name of God. Meanwhile back to Hinduism, people here aren't going to spread Hinduism in the name of God, they truly don't give a shit, they care more about being 'good' about 'good karma' about 'dharma'. You can't exactly expand your religion and kill unbelievers if you're supposed to be good, truthful and virtuous throughout your life.

Indo-European polytheistic religions have the unique concept of fate and cosmic order.

Basically, whatever man does he can't escapte fate/the order of the universe. That goes for the gods as well. The Asir (Norse gods) will all perish in the final battle Ragnarok and they know this, yet they all will go on that day. Zeus killed his father Cronos and the Greek gods are not the creators of the world they only inhabit it.

The gods don't have any unique truth or powers to change the universe, they are not omnipotent, no man or god escapes fate/the laws of the universe.

This is basically the first glimpses of understanding causality in science and natural law.

[Sonsowey]

(02-18-2015 12:32 AM)The Llort Wrote:  

Fascinating subject...

My question would be though...wtf happened to the Indians (in the nation of India)?

All modern day Indo-Europeans from Europe to Iran are pretty fair skinned. Yet many Indians are blacker than blacks. It doesn't add up.

Indians, ie. people who live in India or more broadly the Indian sub-continent, are not by any means purely Indo-European by descent.

All throughout India, besides the Andaman Islanders, everyone has SOME Indo-European heritage. But let's compare different Indian populations.

Andaman Islanders, the closest modern population to "indigenous", ie. Pre-Dravidian Indians, with no Indo-European ancestry:


Dravidian people, mixed with Indo-European:


Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, a born Brahmin, which is the "priest" caste.


Kalash people, pagans from Pakistan with high Indo-European ancestry:


Facial composite of the average Bollywood actor:


Facial composite of a south-Indian male:


Facial composite of Bollywood actresses:


Facial composite of South Indian females


India has over 1 billion people, there is great diversity among them in language, religion, ethnicity, appearance, in basically every aspect. There are more differnet peoples, languages, religions, etc. in India than in Europe.

[Deluge]

(02-18-2015 12:32 AM)The Llort Wrote:  

Fascinating subject...

My question would be though...wtf happened to the Indians (in the nation of India)?

All modern day Indo-Europeans from Europe to Iran are pretty fair skinned. Yet many Indians are blacker than blacks. It doesn't add up.

What Sonsowey said is a main reason. The other reason is sexual selection, having white skin in the Indian sub-continent would've been a big disadvantage much like having Black skin would've been in Europe.

Fun fact: Europeans have actually had dark skin for the vast majority of the time they've been living there, and it seems like they evolved blue eyes thousands of years BEFORE they evolved white skin.

[Sonsowey]

(02-18-2015 10:45 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

Fun fact: Europeans have actually had dark skin for the vast majority of the time they've been living there, and it seems like they evolved blue eyes thousands of years BEFORE they evolved white skin.

You probably know this but it's a bit inaccurate to say "Europeans evolved blue eyes before they evolved white skin" as it seems like blue eyes were evolved by the Western Hunter Gatherers, the "indigenous" inhabitants of Europe, before invaders from both the Levant and the Steppe brought in lighter skin and other features, and through a long process of mixture, created what we now know as "Europeans".

It wasn't like there was a hunter-gatherer population in Europe that just evolved in situ into what we now know as Europeans, all Europeans are composed of 3 basic ancestral elements. Hell those other ancestral elements themselves are composits as well.

I'm sure you knew that, but not everyone here does.

Here's a blog post discussing this in more detail:
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2013/12/an...three.html



Here "Western Hunter Gatherers" are the "indigenous" European Hunter-Gatherers who were dark-skinned and light-eyed.

The "EEF" are "Early European Farmers" from the Levant, typified by Southern Europeans.

The "ANE" are Ancient North Eurasians, this ancestry was present in Indo Europeans, but it seems they were also mixed with another population, similar to "Western Hunter Gatherers", but not quite, ie. some are starting to call them Eastern Hunter Gatherers. To Be Continued.

Anyway the mixture of these 3 groups gives us "Europeans" as we know them today.

[Deluge]

(02-18-2015 11:13 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

You probably know this but it's a bit inaccurate to say "Europeans evolved blue eyes before they evolved white skin" as it seems like blue eyes were evolved by the Western Hunter Gatherers, the "indigenous" inhabitants of Europe, before invaders from both the Levant and the Steppe brought in lighter skin and other features, and through a long process of mixture, created what we now know as "Europeans".

It's not like the dark skin of the hunter gatherers became white entirely due to mixing, sexual selection was the major cause. I mean, it's the Europeans with the most descent from Middle Eastern Neolithic farmers who have the darkest skin today (because of the climate further South in Europe), rather then say the Irish. I guess a more accurate description is indigenous Europeans evolved blue eyes before they eventually lost their dark skin due to sexual selection, and mixed with Middle Eastern farmers and Indo-Europeans to become modern Europeans.

Somehow despite all this Europe today is not any more genetically heterogeneous than other continents.

[The Llort]

(02-18-2015 10:45 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

(02-18-2015 12:32 AM)The Llort Wrote:  

Fascinating subject...

My question would be though...wtf happened to the Indians (in the nation of India)?

All modern day Indo-Europeans from Europe to Iran are pretty fair skinned. Yet many Indians are blacker than blacks. It doesn't add up.

What Sonsowey said is a main reason. The other reason is sexual selection, having white skin in the Indian sub-continent would've been a big disadvantage much like having Black skin would've been in Europe.

Sexual selection? That doesn't make much sense. Indians worship pale skin and have for millennia.

Quote:

Fun fact: Europeans have actually had dark skin for the vast majority of the time they've been living there, and it seems like they evolved blue eyes thousands of years BEFORE they evolved white skin.

Source? I find that very hard to believe.

Fair skin, light eyes and light hair are all due to a lack of melanin in the body. Europeans evolved to produce less melanin because it enabled them absorb more vitamin D with limited sunshine. Light eyes would have merely been a byproduct of an adaption that started in the skin.

What's more, how many black people are walking around with blue eyes? Given that was our original state supposedly, there should be a lot more of them...

[Sonsowey]

Llort, ancient DNA shows that indigenous European Hunter Gatherers had dark skin and blue eyes.

http://www.unz.com/pfrost/the-brown-man-with-blue-eyes/

"Interestingly, although the Luxembourg man was blue-eyed, he also had brown skin. He lacked the ‘European’ alleles at all three genes involved in the whitening of European skin. Such a genotype is extremely rare today in unadmixed Europeans (Khan, 2014). Equally odd is the fact that this brown-skinned European lived long after (Beleza et al., 2013) or probably after (Canfield et al., 2014) the time period when European skin turned white. How could that be? Well, these estimates apply only to the ancestors of living Europeans. This individual may not have been so lucky."

Llort you seem to misunderstand several things. Our "original state" in Eastern Africa over 100,000 years ago has little to do with phenotypes of different people from 7,000 years ago. These Europeans may have had dark skin but that does not make them analagous to Africans or anything like that.

Light hair, skin, and eyes are not uniformly due to one mutation that produces less melanin in your body on a whole.

Skin, hair abd eye color are all controlled by several different specific genes, and are not necessarily correlated. Chinese people for instance have dark hair and eyes, but light skin. There are melanesians with dark skin and eyes and blonde hair.



You can read about the specific mutations that cause light hair and eyes on your own if you are interested. The Vitamin D explanation for dark skin seems largely unconvincing now, considering there were these dark skinned Europeans living in Europe for thousands of years.

Deluge,

There was some chart Razib (I think) posted showing the Indo European, Levantine Farmer, and West Hunter Gatherer proportions of different Europeans recently.

If I remember right all European populations have something like 5-10% Western Hunter gatherer ancestry, with the remaining 90% being the other two populations. I cannot remember where I saw this though, I read it this week I recall. I wonder if you remember the same chart.

[Deluge]

^^Here's a tip for the future: try to actually learn something about the basics of a subject, before you go and comment on it.

(02-18-2015 12:03 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

If I remember right all European populations have something like 5-10% Western Hunter gatherer ancestry, with the remaining 90% being the other two populations. I cannot remember where I saw this though, I read it this week I recall. I wonder if you remember the same chart.

I don't recall that info, but it doesn't surprise me. I just used the Irish as an example before they're at the furthest corner from the Steppe and Anatolia

[berserk]

Sonsowey,

The science around European white skin is not settled and different studies show different things. Another recent study says blue eyes and light skin is likely from the neanderthals who lived in Northern Europe way before Sapiens even made their way there.

New DNA studies seem to suggest that hair and skin color was the primary heritage from Neanderthals, which makes sense, since Neanderthals had adapted to cold, sunless climates.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...n-science/

Quote:

For example, the Neanderthal version of the skin gene POU2F3 is found in around 66 percent of East Asians, while the Neanderthal version of BNC2, which affects skin color, among other traits, is found in 70 percent of Europeans.

Scandinavians are the population group most closely linked to the first Europeans, meaning the earliest instance of a genetic split between Asian populations and European populations, which happened about 45.000 years ago (http://sciencenordic.com/scandinavians-a...-europeans)

Nordic populations of hunter gatherers were also the last to meet the new farmers of the south-east, so it makes sense to speculate that the original European was in fact light skinned and blue eyed, since these traits are so strong in Scandinavians. If the invading farming populations had blue eyes, then they likely got it from the original European hunter gatherers and not the other way around.

Quote:

Researchers believe that darker skin and hair color came from the human gene lines, where as genes yielding red or blonde hair and lighter skin complexion came from Neanderthals. Perhaps that explains like regions such as Scotland and Scandinavia where Neanderthals are believed to have survived the longest have the highest rates of red or blond hair and fair skin

http://www.dailytech.com/NeanderthalHuma...e34236.htm

Basically, nordic white skin and light eyes are Neanderthal DNA. I am sure future research will show Nordics to have the most Neanderthal DNA in modern populations. It makes perfect sense. Neanderthals are already adapted to the cold climate and their genes affecting skin color (Vit D production) would be a distinct evolutionary advantage in survival for the Sapiens Neanderthal hybrids.

[Sonsowey]

(02-18-2015 12:20 PM)berserk Wrote:  

Basically, nordic white skin and light eyes are Neanderthal DNA. I am sure future research will show Nordics to have the most Neanderthal DNA in modern populations.

Well for now it seems that East Asians are more Neanderthal than Europeans on the whole:

http://www.unz.com/gnxp/east-asians-are-...oga-booga/

"In 2010 when the Neandertal sequence paper was published the word was that all non-Africans had the same proportion of ancestry from this population, a few percent. Over the past few years researchers have looked closer, and come to the conclusion that that was wrong. In particular, East Asians seem to have ~20 percent greater Neandertal ancestry than Europeans. Why? A simple solution is that there were several admixture events with Neandertals on the way out of Africa as modern humans settled the world. But there are other options, making recourse to standard population genetic theories."

[Quintus Curtius]

Interesting thread. But I think we need to be very careful about drawing all sorts of unfounded conclusions from the available linguistic evidence.

It is true that the Indo-European family of languages is huge. The general consensus is that, many thousands of years ago, some vaguely defined group in central Asia spread out (or exerted influence) over a wide area, including Europe and northern India.

But beyond that, I am skeptical of the cultural and "racial" conclusions that I'm seeing in this thread here. Culture and ethnicity develop in response to local conditions: geographic, climatological, and various other factors. It's not surprising that we see a huge variance in cultures and ethnicity as we go from Europe to Northern India.

Ethnic traits (skin tone, facial features, etc) develop through the natural selection process, as nature's way of ensuring that the human organism is best adapted to the geographic conditions of his or her region.

But this has nothing to do with language. We have to be scrupulous about not mish-mashing a bunch of unrelated concepts together, which produce all sorts of unfounded conclusions.

So, I think we need to be very careful about drawing sweeping generalizations from these basic premises.

.

[Sonsowey]

Deluge,

I'm trying to find what I mentioned and can't. If I recall correctly the Indo-Europeans, the Yamnaya and the Bell Beaker Culture, all had ancestry that was a mix between ANE and another Hunter Gatherer population that was similar to the original WHG population but not exactly.

And so most Europeans have little of the original WHG, but have a lot of DNA that is similar but came from a different source ultimately.

If you want to see which ancestral populations you belong to, and you have your 23andme results, you can do it with GEDMatch and this calculator found here:
http://bga101.blogspot.com/2013/12/eef-w...peans.html

I have basically Italian, Jewish, German, English, "General European" and a bit of Mid-Eastern/African. According to this test, I am:

72% EEF (The Levantine Farming Population modal in Southern Europeans)
17% WHG
12% ANE

This is a little inaccurate but seems to be right in general. I basically look "Mediterranean" and people usually guess I'm Italian, Jewish, or Middle Eastern.

[Sonsowey]

(02-18-2015 01:01 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

Ethnic traits (skin tone, facial features, etc) develop through the natural selection process, as nature's way of ensuring that the human organism is best adapted to the geographic conditions of his or her region.

But this has nothing to do with language. We have to be scrupulous about not mish-mashing a bunch of unrelated concepts together, which produce all sorts of unfounded conclusions.

So, I think we need to be very careful about drawing sweeping generalizations from these basic premises.

Quintus, this is an understandable position.

However, think of it this way.

Why is it that in Detroit, people have certain racial features? Are the racial features of Detroit evolutionarily selected to be best for the environment in Detroit?

No they aren't. The racial features in Detroit are the result of natural selection for one environment that is completely distinct from the environment that these people currently inhabit.

White South Africans aren't "evolved" for their environment. Chinese people in Flushing, NY aren't "evolved" for their environment. People can be "evolved" for one environment and move to another area.

Often when this happens, people either wipe out, displace, or mix with the original population of the area they come to inhabit. Thus people in the Andes have genes from Spaniards that have little to do with an ancestral high-altitude environment.

I don't think anyone here is making unfounded wild conclusions really, if there are any conclusions being made without evidence please point them out, the goal here is to understand history as best as we can, not to make up wild stories.

The fact that Northern Indians are lighter-skinned than Southern Indians, and that this is because of a larger proportion of ancestry from Indo-Aryan invaders who spoke Indo-European languages is heavily supported, for instance.

[berserk]

(02-18-2015 01:01 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

Interesting thread. But I think we need to be very careful about drawing all sorts of unfounded conclusions from the available linguistic evidence.

It is true that the Indo-European family of languages is huge. The general consensus is that, many thousands of years ago, some vaguely defined group in central Asia spread out (or exerted influence) over a wide area, including Europe and northern India.

But beyond that, I am skeptical of the cultural and "racial" conclusions that I'm seeing in this thread here. Culture and ethnicity develop in response to local conditions: geographic, climatological, and various other factors. It's not surprising that we see a huge variance in cultures and ethnicity as we go from Europe to Northern India.

Ethnic traits (skin tone, facial features, etc) develop through the natural selection process, as nature's way of ensuring that the human organism is best adapted to the geographic conditions of his or her region.

But this has nothing to do with language. We have to be scrupulous about not mish-mashing a bunch of unrelated concepts together, which produce all sorts of unfounded conclusions.

So, I think we need to be very careful about drawing sweeping generalizations from these basic premises.

.

As you probably know, Indo-European is simply the new preferred term for the same ethnic group which used to be called Aryans pre-WW2.

This is purely a political choice because the term Aryan is now so corrupted.

Language is not a good ethnicity indicator, case in point Turkish, which is a Mongolian steppe language but the Turks are not mongoloid.

This is because language can be forced upon a people like the Turks force their language today on the Kurds.

This is consistent with the idea of an invading people setting themselves up as a ruling class and forcing their language on others, while their genetic influence in posterity is slight, while their linguistic influence is large, case in point, all the Spanish speaking people in South and Central America.

Until WW2 the accepted theory was that of Aryan invasion from a northern homeland, mainly modern day Russia/Ukraine, in all scholarly circles. Americans were instrumental in this research.

[The Llort]

(02-18-2015 12:06 PM)Deluge Wrote:  

^^Here's a tip for the future: try to actually learn something about the basics of a subject, before you go and comment on it.

Instead of calling me an ignoramus, why don't you admit your dark skin blue eyes theory is highly contested and just one of the many theories out there?

The origins of mankind, given millenia of migrations, is far from an exact science. If you'd done any reading up on the subject, you wouldn't be so dogged in your position.

There are loads of scientists who prescribe to a theory more like Berserks. Developing light skin had evolutionary utility, indeed it was crucial to our survivor.

Blacks and dark-skinned blokes get severe vit D deficiency after living in Europe for a while. Euros don't, simply because of our pigment.

And you've still yet to answer the question...if we originated from dark-skinned blue eyed peoples, how come that phenotype is virtually non-existent today?

I tell you why. It's an extremely rare and recessive genetic combo. Finding one specimen from 8,000 years ago doesn't really change that.