Okay, Internet, I need to do some research on the Aryan Migration.
Did you mean Naaazis?
No, I did not.
Here are some articles about Naaazis.
I want information about ancient Indian history.
Here’s some articles about how Modi is a Naaazi.
*incoherent cry of frustration*
Ahem. Well, it seems I’ll be working with a reduced set of resources on this one. As mentioned in the previous hypothesis article, I’m trying to improve my understanding of the subcontinent, starting with the ancient history. This ran into the gaps in the available information, and an almost mendacious approach to data interpretation by the ‘experts’ in the field. This particular second hypothesis came to mind while I was listening to a review of arguments about resolving an apparent contradiction in the available evidence, but there was one possibility that was glaring in how pointedly it was not even addressed, even to give it an offhand dismissal. As though mentioning it was itself anathema.
As I listened to the various pieces of information presented and the rebuttals of the most contrived explainations, the more I was convinced that the hypothesis which shall not be mentioned was a better fit to explain the apparent contradiction.
Since I already mentioned them in the introductory skit, this is about Aryans. Their popular association with some unpleasant people has, I believe, led to a desire in academia to minize or delete them, even if unconsciously. I’m going to stick to what I’ve been able to suss out in a factual manner, but I admit my sources have been constained. Also, I may use ‘India’ in the pre-partition sense to refer to the subcontinent, this is not meant to lead to confusion.
So, why am I talking about Aryans? It has to do with language and culture. In India there are two main language families. The Dravidian languages are spoken in the south and in an exclade in western Pakistan. The Indo-European languages are spoken across the north. As with all language boundaries, the dividing line is messy across the middle of the subcontinent. The Aryans are the people attributed with bringing the Indo-European language family into India, and are said to have migrated from the northwest across to the Ganges delta, which is the core of the distribution of Indo-European languages in India today.
So why is this article a Harappan Hypothesis? Well, there are a bunch of data points which come into play. I’ll list them.
1: Harappan civilization sites are the oldest known cities in India, located along the Indus, Sarasvati and Ganges river valleys
2: From the material culture and architectual elements uncovered thusfar, there is remarkable continuity with later Indian civilization from the Harappan foundations.
3: The earliest Harappan sites are dated to older than 3000 BC.
4: The currently accepted estimate for the Aryan migration is between 1500 and 1000 BC.
This has led some to use this reduced data set to conclude that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking peoples later overrun by the Aryans. Only this ignores the apparent contradictions I was referencing earlier. These have to do with the Vedas. The Vedas are Hindu scriptures written in Sanskrit which form a significant element of that religion. They also contain descriptions of ritual, geography, and historical allegory which fit very clearly into the setting of north India.
That bit about Sanskrit matters. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, associated with the Aryans, and the composition of the Vedas is attributed to the Aryans. And here’s where we get into the extended data set.
5: The geography of the Vedas does not fit any other region outside of north India, and many of the rivers mentioned by name are still called by the same names today, in the same general layout.
6: The rivers of the region are unstable, leaving behind multiple paleochannels. The shifting of these rivers has resulted in the Sarasvati drying up between 2000 and 1800 BC after its tributaries moved to drain into the Indus and Ganges instead.
7: Many Harappan sites are located along the dry paleochannels of the Sarasvati.
8: The Rig Veda praises the Sarasvati as a great and mighty river running from the mountains to the sea, while later passages reference the place where the Sarasvati disappears among the sands, indicating the Vedas were composed while the Sarasvati flowed and while it was drying up.
9: There is no archeologial evidence of a disruptive material culture moving across north India between 1500 and 1000 BC.
10: There is no agreement on what Aryan material culture looked like. Different experts have put forth different sets of artifacts as exemplars, but there is no consensus from person to person, with collections being contradictory and mutually exclusive.
11: Late Harappan sites begin to appear in the Ganges valley around 1800 BC, and lead to the start of urban centers in that region.
12: I found offhand references to Iron being associated with the Aryans, but could not locate more definitive statements. So while I will mention the discovery of evidence of Iron smelting in the Ganges starting around 1800 BC, it is an ambiguous data point.
13: The genetic data is ambiguous, leaving no insights, but also not indicating a sudden influx of a different population.
14: What skeletal remains we have do not show a noticeable change in attributes at any time. Note, skeletal remains are not extensively found.
So, what does this extended data set tell us? Well, the academicians I’m miffed at pointedly shied away from drawing particular conclusions that struck me as obvious. I got the impression that they wanted the Harappans to be a Dravidian people, but that would have required contrivances. It would have meant that when the Aryans arrived they would have to have abandoned almost all of their own culture to the point of not even decorating their pottery in a manner different from the resident Harappans, yet still caused everyone around them to adopt the language they brought along, recording the religious hymns of the locals in an Indo-European tongue.
This just doesn’t strike me as rational. When you have an influx of new people you get results along a spectrum from overt replacement of the local culture with the newcomers to complete assimilation into the local culture by the newcomers. But most of the time you get a hybridization. What you don’t get is a complete adoption of the local culture by the newcomers, except for a complete retention of their language which is adopted by the locals.
So, my hypothesis is thus – The traditional estimate of 1500-1000 BC for the Aryan migration is wrong, and the Harappans are the Aryans. The expanse of their civilization – stretching along the Indus, Sarasvati, and Ganges basins – matches. They moved from west to east, an outlier in Asian migration patterns. They resided in the landscape of the Vedas at the time they had to have been composed. And lastly, they had one last eastward migration at around 1800 BC where they entered the Ganges region, bringing iron close to when the Aryans traditionally were held to do so [citation still needed].
With the falsification of one data point that is an estimate whose origins I can’t even find, the facts fall into a neat and cohesive alignment. It’s just one that people don’t like.
First power!
First power!
First power!
I think the dating of 3000 BC is bullshit based on the depths of Dwarka. Saw a video on this recently. Archaeologists will have to adjust yet another civilization’s timeline further back in history if they allow the research to actually take place. They dragged their heels and bitched up a storm when it was discovered.
And when I say older, I’m talking exponentially based on the limited testing on artifacts found underwater there. 12,500 years old based on carbon dating of preserved artifacts.
In Indonesia, native geologists have tried to argue (to the chagrin of many archaeologists) that Gunung Padangis very, very ancient and man-made. Perhaps 27,000 years ago based on sonar imaging and carbon dating. They haven’t been able to dig because of an outcry from archaeologists which resulted in Indonesia’s ministry of culture to block access to the site..
This same video touches briefly on Dwarka I believe, though I can’t find the timestamp. I believe it’s under the section on whether the claim of 27,000 years is ridiculous towards the end.
There is a lot of land in the area of Indonesia underground and unexplored. Prime real estate in the ice age.
I like when you go all archeology. I thought it was a straight-up profession. You go, you dig, you carbon-date, you make hypotheses, you adjust timelines, you tell the world. I never thought about it being one political circle jerk to keep egos intact.
Everything has always been political.
Check out the history of paleontology sometime.
“Exponentially” is not a comparative term.
Have you found any historical accounts from before the rise of you-know-who? They might be more honest, if what appears to be happening is actually happening.
Not my line of work, so I can only speculate. But political correctness is destroying every other field so why not history.
The whole reason I added the opening skit is because of my difficulty in finding relevant sources. It doesn’t help that a lot of the digging was done recently.
Do you know how the underwater city referenced above was “discovered?” I put that in scare quotes firstly because the locals already knew of its existence, but were ignored. Sonar imaging was done in the 2000’s when they were studying pollution levels and they kept coming across square objects that wouldn’t normally occur in nature. So they finally decided to look and found an entire city just like the locals said there was. Then they did some carbon dating that indicates its much earlier than previous estimates for civilization in the area.
Not only haven’t they dug enough, there’s a real resistance to digging and upending the apple cart. Dwarka should be one of the most studied sites in modern archaeology along with Gobekli Tepi. Instead, archaeologists try to handwave away the carbon dating done at the site as being inaccurate. They don’t even deign to address claims of native populations or myths.
I don’t think Trump tried to stop archeology.
Not directly, but his insistence on gold-plated shovels, panda-fur brushes and concession stands at every digsite really put a slowdown on the industry.
There is no agreement on what Aryan material culture looked like.
Swastikas. Sheesh.
/ducks
And snappy black clothing with silver highlights- plus overengineered bows and arrows.
There were multiple Indo-Aryan migrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migrations
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The Indo-Aryan migrations[note 1] were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today’s Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Eastern Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Indo-Aryan migration into the region, from Central Asia, are considered to have started after 2000 BCE as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period and led to a language shift in the northern Indian subcontinent. Several hundred years later, the Iranian languages were brought into the Iranian plateau by the Iranians, who were closely related to the Indo-Aryans.
The Proto-Indo-Iranian culture, which gave rise to the Indo-Aryans and Iranians, developed on the Central Asian steppes north of the Caspian Sea as the Sintashta culture (c. 2200-1900 BCE),[2] in present-day Russia and Kazakhstan, and developed further as the Andronovo culture (2000–1450 BCE).[3][4]
The Indo-Aryans split off sometime between 2000 BCE and 1600 BCE from the Indo-Iranians,[5] and migrated southwards to the Bactria–Margiana culture (BMAC), from which they borrowed some of their distinctive religious beliefs and practices.[6] From the BMAC, the Indo-Aryans migrated into northern Syria and, possibly in multiple waves, into the Punjab (northern Pakistan and India), while the Iranians could have reached western Iran before 1300 BCE,[7] both bringing with them the Indo-Iranian languages.
Migration by an Indo-European-speaking people was first hypothesized in the late 18th century, following the discovery of the Indo-European language family, when similarities between western and Indian languages had been noted. Given these similarities, a single source or origin was proposed, which was diffused by migrations from some original homeland.
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The Sintashta culture is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe. It existed from 2100 BC to 1800 BC and was present around modern Chelyabinsk Oblast of Russia. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of this warfare technology, which spread throughout Europe, Anatolia and Egypt.
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1. I remember someone around here, who shall remain nameless, trying to tell me that linguistics were not used as proof of migrations or interactions in archaeology.
2. Most of the evidence for the Aryan migrations is linguistic.
3. No one really knows how it played out.
UCS’s main point that there is little archaeological evidence of change is fairly accurate and the reason the Aryan invasion theory is mostly considered debunked.
If you’re referring to me, my skepticism about Greek sailors reaching Easter Island is based on the fact that the only surviving linguistic evidence is one account from Spanish explorers. If Greek sailors reached the island, I would expect them to have at least carved some Greek writing somewhere, or left behind something that was unmistakably from their culture.
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The Aryan Invasion Theory is a hypothesis developed in the 20th century that states that a group of people called Aryans invaded northern India and destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization. The theory was refined into what is now known as the Indo-Aryan Migration theory (IAMT), which states that the Indo-Aryans migrated into India rather than invaded it, but the indigenous peoples were nonetheless subjugated and had Indo-Aryan religion (Hinduism) and culture imposed on them. The theory is controversial, with detractors arguing that it was created to justify British conquest of India and has no archaeological or genetic basis.
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The first chariots were found in what is today Russia. Chariots feature prominently in Hindu scripture. Ergo, warriors in chariots and stories about them came to India from somewhere else.
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Ratha (Proto-Indo-Iranian: *Hrátʰas, Sanskrit: रथ, rátha; Avestan: raθa) is the Indo-Iranian term for a spoked-wheel chariot or a cart. The term has been used since antiquity for both fast chariots and other wheeled vehicles pulled by animals or humans, in particular the large temple cars or processional carts still used in Indian religious processions to carry images of a deity.
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Whether it was an invasion or a migration is irrelevant. The culture that has dominated India did not originate there. You might as well try to argue that there were always Muslims in India.
The reference was to Not Adahn who doubted the validity of linguistic studies in archaeology. I have no issue with someone being skeptical of the claim that Greek culture influenced islands in Polynesia, though I do object to someone who is ignorant of archaeological and historical theory disregarding completely valid forms of research. But I’ll still address the above.
Your own Wikipedia article goes through a multitude of theories. The fact that you latch onto one piece of technology, the chariot, and try to make a sweeping and broad argument based on that alone shows a lack of understanding of the subject at hand.
From Wikipedia:
There are a multitude of theories. The chariot spread throughout all of the Middle East down into Egypt and North Africa and through Europe etc. There were Aryan migrations into India, but there is not widespread archaeological evidence of a great shift away from the previous culture. Nor is their DNA evidence of that.
The Rigveda is dated to centuries after the Indo-Aryan split/migrations, and lets go back to Wikipedia:
The Rigveda offers no direct evidence of social or political systems in the Vedic era, whether ordinary or elite.[37] Only hints such as cattle raising and horse racing are discernible, and the text offers very general ideas about the ancient Indian society. There is no evidence, state Jamison and Brereton, of any elaborate, pervasive or structured caste system.[37] Social stratification seems embryonic, then and later a social ideal rather than a social reality.
The Rigveda is just one of the Vedas. There are three others.
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The Vedas (/ˈveɪdəz/[4] or /ˈviːdəz/,[5] IAST: veda, Sanskrit: वेदः, lit. ’knowledge’) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.[6][7][8]
There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda.[9][10]
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The Vedas have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE
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Indo-Aryan migration into the region, from Central Asia, are considered to have started after 2000 BCE as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period and led to a language shift in the northern Indian subcontinent.
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The Vedas and the migration/invasion happened at about the same time.
fun fact: the word “Veda” is related to the Greek word eidos and the word “idea”.
If there had been no invasion, one would expect the same language family to dominate the Indian subcontinent as there are few natural barriers, sort of like the way Niger-Congo languages dominate sub-Saharan Africa.
I’ll add that some group invented chariots before anyone else, and that group, whoever they were, would have a huge advantage in a nomadic warrior lifestyle.
It’s interesting to note that the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC, for which there is much evidence, came at the tail end of the Aryan migrations. This was also about the time when the Jews made their Exodus from Egypt according to the Bible.
You realize that almost no one seriously considers the “invasion” theory anymore, right? Did you actually read the entirety of your own Wikipedia links?
The Rigveda is the oldest of the Vedas and is believed to have been composed sometime between 1500-1000 BC. There is about the entire history of the United States between their composition (or several centuries longer depending on the date you pick) and the earliest migrations of Aryans. I know when looking at ancient history its easy to jay what’s a few centuries, but yea…that’s centuries of time for shit to change.
And you are reading far more into them than actual historians do.
The archaeological record and DNA evidence do not indicate a great displacement. Or even dominance of Aryan people. And there is no real evidence of an Aryan ruling class. The language is really the only basis for the claim of Aryan domination or an “invasion,” and it’s countered by nearly every other source of evidence we have.
Why was the language of outsiders adopted? We don’t know. There are a lot of competing theories, but few go along with the invasion hypothesis anymore.
Derp – yea, that was the simplistic view of the history taken in the early 20th century. The reason it’s no longer the dominant theory isn’t political correctness or even politics. Or Nazis. It’s because there’s no evidence in the archaeological record of this warfare.
The Indus Valley civilization started its decline before the earliest evidence of Aryan migrations, as well.
The timelines don’t add up.
Again…read your own Wikipedia articles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_India
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An excavation at Sinauli’s necropolis has yielded copper swords, helmets and chariots, dating from 2000 to 1800 BC, which suggests the presence of a warrior Indo-Aryan people who followed Vedic religion in the region during the Copper-Bronze Age (2000 BC–1200 BC).[6]
The Rigvedic tribes of Indo-Aryans were led by their kings (raja) and engaged in wars with each other and other tribes. They used bronze weapons and horse-drawn spoke-wheeled chariots described prominently in the Rigveda. The main share from the booty obtained during cattle raids and battles went to the chief of the tribe. The warriors belonged to the Kshatriya varna. The earliest of such battles is noted in Rigveda as the Battle of the Ten Kings.
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So there’s tangible and written evidence of a warrior people who in the region during the correct time frame.
On the other hand, we have this:
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Sinauli is an archaeological site in western Uttar Pradesh, India, at the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. The site gained attention for its Bronze Age solid-disk wheel carts (interpreted by one individual), found in 2018,[1] which were interpreted by some as horse-pulled “chariots”.[news 1][note 2]
The excavations in Sinauli were conducted by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in 2005-06 and in mid-2018.[news 2] The remains found in 2005–2006 season, the “Sanauli cemetery”, belong to the Late Bronze Age,[2] and were ascribed by excavation director Sharma to the Harappan civilisation,[news 2] though a Late Harappan Phase or post-Harappan identification is more likely.[3][news 3]
Major findings from 2018 trial excavations are dated to c. 2000 – 1800 BCE, and ascribed to the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP)/Copper Hoard Culture, which was contemporaneous with the Late Harappan culture.[news 2][note 1] They include several wooden coffin burials, copper swords, helmets, and wooden carts,[4][1] with solid disk wheels and protected by copper sheets.[news 2][2] The carts were presented by Sanjay Manjul, director of the excavations, as chariots,[news 2][news 1][note 3] and he further notes that “the rituals relating to the Sanauli burials showed close affinity with Vedic rituals.”[news 2]
Some see the suggestion of identification as “chariots” as a challenge to the Indo-Aryan migration theory, indicating the presence of horses before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans.[news 1][news 4] Others object, noting that solid wheels belong to carts, not chariots.
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So it seems that even archaeologists aren’t sure sometimes about what is or isn’t Aryan.
It’s known that many of the languages of Europe and India are related. There are three ways to explain that:
1. European Aryans invaded India.
2. Indian Aryans invaded Europe.
3. India and Europe were invaded by Aryans from some other place.
There’s no evidence for 1 or 2, so it has to be 3.
In a similar way, there are only a few ways to explain the presence of chariots in the ancient world:
1. A bunch of widely separated groups invented them at different times.
2. Someone invented them first, and the idea gradually spread.
It’s like writing. We can roughly trace how it spread because it’s only been independently invented a few times.
Derp…none of that has to do with what I’ve responded with. That there were Aryans who entered the Indian subcontinent is not being debated. The extent of their migration, their interactions with native populations, and the amount of cultural influence they had is the debate.
The fact that it isn’t clear in the archaeological record what is or isn’t Aryan is evidence of their limited archaeological footprint in India. The DNA evidence indicates small migrations, not an invading horde that dominated the local population.
OK. I guess I misunderstood the thrust of what UCS was saying. Arguing about the degree of invasion/intermarriage seems like splitting hairs though.
You’re making shit up again.
See if you can understand the difference between these three statements:
a) $technique is invalid.
b) This particular implementation of $technique is invalid
c) The claim that the implementation of $technique is so vague and hand-wavey that I have no idea if it was valid or not and as such I have no reason to believe this is extraordinary evidence supporting an extraordinary claim.
And when your bitch burp you smell my balls in the air.
I love this topic and discussion. I don’t know anything about Aryans, but I’m not surprised by any of the theories.
The first chariots were found in what is today Russia
If we start looking for the roots of Indo-European, for the proto language, we don’t find it either, at least not decisively. Everything seems to point to the steppe, but we see through a glass dimly. We don’t know where within a hundred miles; we don’t know when within a century. We just know that everything heads that way no matter whether we look back from Celtic, German, Latin, or Slavic language groups.
I find the parallels exciting and the cognates comforting: to see mom and mountain and chariot play out so similarly all across the west is fabulous.
I don’t speak any foreign languages, but I try to keep up with the most important hundred words and get from bar to bathroom. The foreign language I study is English; how its structure and vocabulary have blended all the formerly disparate languages and conquered the world fascinates. I love knowing more than a little about the thing that my peoples have been perfecting in the caldron that is the North Sea for the past two millennia.
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The Swadesh list (/ˈswɑːdɛʃ/) is a compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatedness of those languages. The Swadesh list is named after linguist Morris Swadesh. It is used in lexicostatistics (the quantitative assessment of the genealogical relatedness of languages) and glottochronology (the dating of language divergence). Because there are several different lists, some authors also refer to “Swadesh lists”.
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Swadesh had a particular interest in the indigenous languages of the Americas, and conducted extensive fieldwork throughout North America. He was one of the pioneers of glottochronology and lexicostatistics, and is known for his creation of the Swadesh list, a compilation of basic concepts believed to present across cultures and thus suitable for cross-linguistic comparison. Swadesh believed that his techniques could discover deep relationships between apparently unrelated languages, thus allowing for the identification of macrofamilies and possibly even a “Proto-Human” language. His theories were often controversial, and some have been deprecated by later linguists.
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The proto-human language (also proto-sapiens, proto-world) is the hypothetical direct genetic predecessor of all the world’s spoken languages.[1]
The concept is speculative and not amenable to analysis in historical linguistics. It presupposes a monogenetic origin of language, i.e. the derivation of all natural languages from a single origin, presumably at some time in the Middle Paleolithic period. As the predecessor of all extant languages spoken by modern humans (Homo sapiens), proto-human language as hypothesised would not necessarily be ancestral to any hypothetical Neanderthal language.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-human_language
I enjoyed that UCS,
Thanks
Some cheerful news tonight — the house impeached Mayorkas — finally.
Should be some fun watching. Just mute when it’s the Dems turn.
So what is driving the interest in Indian history? Is this for some story line you are working on?
It was a gap in my knowledge.
I had a good understanding of European history, American History, Chinese History, Ancient near east, Greco-Roman history, Egyptian history… but Indian History was this giant void. It still is, because finding good sources is proving troublesome. Too many want to focus on modern history – which I already know enough given the overlap once you reach the 19th century.
the Vedic period, from wiki
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The Vedas are liturgical texts which formed the basis of the influential Brahmanical ideology, which developed in the Kuru Kingdom, a tribal union of several Indo-Aryan tribes. The Vedas contain details of life during this period that have been interpreted to be historical[1][note 1] and constitute the primary sources for understanding the period. These documents, alongside the corresponding archaeological record, allow for the evolution of the Indo-Aryan and Vedic culture to be traced and inferred.[2]
The Vedas were composed and orally transmitted by speakers of an Old Indo-Aryan language who had migrated into the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent early in this period. The Vedic society was patriarchal and patrilineal.[note 2] Early Indo-Aryans were a Late Bronze Age society centred in the Punjab, organised into tribes rather than kingdoms, and primarily sustained by a pastoral way of life.
Around c. 1200–1000 BCE the Aryan culture spread eastward to the fertile western Ganges Plain. Iron tools were adopted, which allowed for the clearing of forests and the adoption of a more settled, agricultural way of life. The second half of the Vedic period was characterised by the emergence of towns, kingdoms, and a complex social differentiation distinctive to India,[2] and the Kuru Kingdom’s codification of orthodox sacrificial ritual.[3][4] During this time, the central Ganges Plain was dominated by a related but non-Vedic Indo-Aryan culture, of Greater Magadha. The end of the Vedic period witnessed the rise of true cities and large states (called mahajanapadas) as well as śramaṇa movements (including Jainism and Buddhism) which challenged the Vedic orthodoxy.[5]
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The transition from pastoral to agricultural is more proof of the invasion/migration theory.
Given the accuracy issues that wikipedia has, I have trouble taking anything said there at face value.
For non-controversial topics, it’s generally reliable.
https://theconversation.com/students-are-told-not-to-use-wikipedia-for-research-but-its-a-trustworthy-source-168834
Indian history and anything touching on religion are not non-controversial topics though
True.
Wikipedia Or Encyclopædia Britannica: Which Has More Bias?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2015/01/20/wikipedia-or-encyclopaedia-britannica-which-has-more-bias/?sh=780e59207d4a
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Zhu and Greenstein then identified some 4,000 articles that appeared in both Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, and determined how many of each of these code words were included, in an effort to determine overall bias and direction.
They found that in general, Wikipedia articles were more biased—with 73 percent of them containing code words, compared to just 34 percent in Britannica.
In almost all cases, Wikipedia was more left-leaning than Britannica. Dividing articles into categories, the researchers found, for example, that stories on corporations were 11 percent more slanted toward Democrats, while observing similar leanings on topics such as government (9 percent), education (4 percent), immigration (4 percent), and civil rights (3 percent). Other categories did not have enough data to significantly identify bias.
Of course, those findings don’t say which of the two sources is correct in its viewpoint—only how they compare to one another. “We can only say [that] Wikipedia is more left,” says Zhu. “We can’t say which is reflecting true reality.”
What’s more, much of Wikipedia’s bias seems to be due to the longer article length of the online publication, where word count is less of an issue than the historically printed Britannica. When compared word to word, most (though not all) of Wikipedia’s left-leaning proclivities come out in the wash. In other words, for articles of the same length, Wikipedia is as middle-of-the-road as Britannica.
“If you read 100 words of a Wikipedia article, and 100 words of a Britannica [article], you will find no significant difference in bias,” says Zhu.
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Also this article from 2005:
Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
The journal Nature says the open-access encyclopedia is about as accurate as the old standby.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/
Cool.
How do the Aryans mucking around in what is now modern day India tie in with Hitler’s veneration of them as ancestors of the German super race in northwestern Europe?
*shrug*
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The Ahnenerbe (German: [ˈaːnənˌʔɛʁbə], “Ancestral Heritage”) was a Schutzstaffel (SS) pseudo-scientific organization which was active in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. It was established by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promoting the racial doctrines espoused by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The Ahnenerbe was composed of scholars and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines and fostered the idea that the German people descended from an Aryan race which was racially superior to other racial groups.
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I see that theory of Rosenberg’s in Wiki. Germans supposedly descended from Aryans which were pinnacle of humanity (master race) who left Baltic region and advanced south in their chariots to conquer Iran, India. What do modern archaeologists think about the origins of the Aryans?
Basically, the Aryans started out somewhere between the Urals and the Black Sea. One bunch migrated to Europe and another to India. Those bunches later fragmented into more tribes. Since both groups were initially the same, this accounts for the similarity of many European and Indian languages.
City making safety improvements where pedestrians’ safety is at risk
1/ city taxes me
2/ city takes proceeds and installs considerable improvements: cross-walks, traffic signals, computerized controls, enhancements for the visually-impaired
3/ local morons ignore all the convenience and safety of those improvements and wander around in traffic until they are run over
4/ city decides to install even more improvements
5/ ?
6/ profit !
A lot of urban issues would be resolved if we weren’t spending so much time, effort, and dollars deliberately pandering to local morons.
Many urban (and suburban and rural) issues would be fixed by the government stopping to try and fix them.
I know who should be the next mayor of NYC.
Can add dipshittery like curb outs and absolute pedestrian right of way. Both of which have decreased safety.
I got yelled at by someone who basically stepped out in front of my car for not stopping and yielding right-of-way. I explained she was no longer in wherever it was she came from and jaywalking was in fact still illegal in Texas and that her crossing against a stop sign would make her liable for any damage she did to my car if I had hit her. I also pointed that the cross walk was 20 feet the other direction and had she been in that, I would have complied with the law. Oddly, it seemed to work and she shut her maw.
Nice work Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
You city folk are weird. I had no idea what ‘jaywalking’ or ‘double parking’ were until I was a teenager, and that only came from gleaning it from TV shows written by folks who grew up and lived in stupidity incubators, or cities as yall call ’em.
She’s lying. Those things are the law everywhere I know of, even here in NY.
Hybrid cross-walks. They put these in Austin where shitbirds were more likely to cross mid block. You press the button, and while not instantaneous, you get a legal crossing quicker than you do at a legitimate intersection and traffic gets a red light. You guessed it, they get roundly ignored. It’s almost like shitbirds prefer to cause grief for everyone.
5/ – Be a connected contractor who sells traffic improvements
Can you give an example of such artifacts that would be considered mutually exclusive in a cultural context?
It’s more that the sets are mutually exclusive. As in “Expert A says item 1 and 2 are and 3 and 4 are not while Expert B says item 3 and 4 are and 1 and 2 are not, while Expert C says 2 and 3 are while 1 and 4 are not…”
It sounds to me as if it’s the “experts” that are contradictory, not necessarily the artifacts.
I was today years old when I learned everything in this article. Thanks UCS.
Me too.
So, maybe it was an influx of female Aryans? The men started getting them pregnant and they nagged them into speaking their language?
Lol. That’s a theory I can support.
Heh. Seperatly, due to my own youtube viewing I was served a video on the spread of Proto-Indo-European, and I just now got a segment where they talk about a spread through women being married off.
neah chicks don’t travel
Okay, Internet, I need to do some research on the Aryan Migration. – build your own search engine.
Mornin glibbies.
Tonight I did a google for ‘Traditional Argentinian hat’ and got only shopping links, with an Amazonesque sidebar to purchase options.
This is foreshadowing…
Since I already mentioned them in the introductory skit, this is about Aryans. Their popular association with some unpleasant people – the Ayatollahs?
It’s too late for many to read, but I started watching Alexander: The Making Of A God. It’s a documentary in the vein of Oliver Stone’s Alexander.
Alexander – he’s gay, overly emotional, weak and easily manipulated. He is and believes in all of his own propaganda.
Hephaestion – his overly competent gay lover. Not the man who Alexander himself once told he’d be nothing without his favor. The guy was a dumb meathead who killed himself by binging on wine and chicken while sick.
Darius – probably the most accurate. An arrogant preening douche who married into nobility, though his wife exerts far too much control over him and their is simply no basis for this aspect of the portrayal. It’s just their for more strong female representation.
Olympia – Alexander’s overbearing mother. This is the only character who is ever portrayed even remotely accurately. She is seemingly the hand that guides Alexander’s every move in the modern portrayals. The histories left to us credit her for many of the questionable acts Alexander took, especially initially. But this goes back to the above….these historians present the Alexander propaganda and do nothing to get at the real man.
Alexander was a cunning, calculating son of a bitch with a massive ego and keen insight into other people’s minds. Was he shaped by his mother? Certainly. Was he the overly emotional child with mommy and daddy issues he’s portrayed as? No. Alexander was prone to fits of anger, particularly post-Gaugamela. But where the fuck does all this crying Alexander shit come from? Early Alexander was also a hell of a soldier with incredible physical endurance and self-control. He showed little interest in over indulgence in anything. Even later Alexander knew he wasn’t a god.
The show starts off by fawning over Alexander in a way that’s kind of embarrassing. They call him a military genius. Yet nothing about how they portray him convinces the viewer of that. Just like Oliver Stone’s piece of shit.
I doubt Alexander was gay. Maybe bi or straight who did occasional gay things. That being said, crying may have been much more culturally acceptable for a tough man in his case, so he may be weeping like a little bitch with a skinned knee while being tough a warrior. Weak he was not… But he was probably an alcoholic like all of them…
I feel Darius and Olympia in your comments are contradictory… which was accurate?
But the gayness whatever it was should not be in any way prominent as it is not that relevant. It is nothing that shaped the man just a secondary thing at best. But everything needs to be super gay these days.
Do you mean in terms of the girl power stuff? Olympias was a legit example of a girl boss in the ancient Greek world. One of the few who, as a mother and a political actor, managed to leave her mark.
The most notable thing left to us about Darius’s wife was that she offered herself to Alexander after being captured. She was treated with respect yadayada.
Alexander definitely produced a son and thus had sexual relations with women. He just wasn’t like his father who fucked everything that moved.
In terms of the alcoholism, Alexander is first noted as doing something stupid under its effects only after the Battle of Gaugamela when he may or may not have burned down the Persian capital in a drunken stupor. It’s debated today as to why he really did it, and whether he actually regretted it after the fact. He had political reasons to do what he did.
Alexander does start to exert some control in this documentary as he crosses into Asia, but they credit this to the confidence given to him by Olympias. She sent him on a vision quest where she revealed to him that he was a demigod. Alexander was always an arrogant little shit, but one of the more curious anecdotes that survives is one of his court historians fawning over him when he suffered an injury saying it was the ichor of the gods and Alexander snapping at him for saying dumb shit in that moment. He clearly states it’s the blood of a man, if the story is true. I personally don’t believe Alexander was ever delusional.
They completely gloss over his lightening campaign to subdue the Thracians, Illyrians, and Greeks after taking the throne and act like his crossing the Hellespont was his first real moment to acquaint himself with his troops.
Olympias did shape Alexander, but she did not dominate him and as time went on he seems to have more or less tolerated her. For her part, she was noted to have hated Hephaestion. Just one example of Alexander being his own man.
I mean ” probably the most accurate” and “This is the only character who is ever portrayed even remotely accurately” seem contradictory as both, I understand, are fairly accurate in your view.
” He just wasn’t like his father who fucked everything that moved. ” – see he should have
In terms of the alcoholism I meant he did drink heavily in his off times, as probably many did.
Overall there are a lot of fuzzy things in the past which are presented as certainties to satisfy present narratives.
My first google of genetics got me this
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6800651/
which does not clarify much.
The most hashtag science hashtag science has ever been.
Happy Valentine’s morning!
☺💞
👉👌
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2sky1tt8vLA
🎶🎶
Morning,.
Good morning, Sean, U, Ted’S., and Stinky! Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!
You mean those flowers in the produce section weren’t edible?
Well…I don’t know for sure that they’re not… 😕
Having had rosewater flavored turkish ‘delight’, I would argue that they’re not worth it.
Yeah, roses are for noses (and for the eyes.)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/02/13/uber-lyft-drivers-valentines-day-strike/72589902007/
Get a real job.
Get an idea that not every type of job is supposed to be able to support a one-income household of four.
It’s 4.5 with a white picket fence and a dog.
Sign: “Uber pay up for a guaranteed minimum $35/hr and medical insurance”
Are you fucking kidding me?
Strikers: “Make Uber mandatory!”
Good morning all.
Spring is in the air, and Hope springs eternal.
Pitchers and catchers report today!
No.
Give us a reprieve from sportsball.
Qualifying for the Daytona 500 starts tonight! 😉
Was that what he was talking about?
I hope so.
The alternatives risk our Family Friendly rating.
Dude, the Superbowl was like three long days ago. How much of a break do you need?
two or three years.
Dude. You’re a bowler.
Don’t be such a ball-sport partisan.
When’s the last time I brought it up? I’ve been giving (almost) all of you a break from it for a while.
Honestly, I don’t remember you ever describing the actual sport, just that you were invovled in it.
BTW, KWS Sunday at 1:00.
I finally mounted an optic on my PCC. It’s sub-optimal, but I’ll run it in order to get a few rounds off before the 2-gun match next weekend.
NPR had a debate on whether the good ratings for the Superbowl were mostly because of Tay-Tay or Usher.
Good morning, ‘slinger!
Morning GT!
suh’ fam
whats goody
TALL VALENTINES CANS!