Bharat Rakshak

Prem Kumar wrote:Sharing a paper here that ManasaTaramgini (Teetar handle @blog_supplement) shared, claiming that this supports AIT: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/earl ... 8.full.pdf

I pointed out to him that, far from supporting AIT, it debunks it & it in fact agrees with the Metspalu paper. In this paper:
CEU: Northern European Ancestry
GIH: North Indian Ancestry

The authors conclude: These findings suggest that the GIH ancestors remained in close contact with CEU ancestors until about 10kya

Metspalu says that North India didnt receive any gene influx for at least the last 12500 years! (similar conclusion)

P.S. Apparently @blog_supplement is a geneticist & he is convinced about AIT (mind you not AMT, but AIT - meaning large genetic influx into India)

Prem Kumar wrote:Shiv: I had an interesting exchange on Teetar with neha_aks, explaining AIT & genetic evidence against it. One question came up which I found interesting. Is it possible for tribes to have split off say 10K years before present (irrespective of AIT or OIT) with no subsequent interaction?

My answer was "No" because:

a) We have the Mittani evidence: Indra/Varuna etc in treaty as well as in Rig Veda. The counter to this argument is that both tribes might have memories of really old (10K year old) Gods like Mitra, Indra etc which they recalled in their respective Treaty & Rig Veda. Which leads to the 2nd point .....

b) Grammatical similarities: the invocation of Indra etc in Mittani tongue is grammatically similar to Rig Veda (& even the sequence in which Mitra, Varuna etc are recalled). Its unlikely that similar grammar would also have been maintained by 2 separated cultures over several thousand years

Are there any other reasons that make it unlikely that the PIE split happened 10K years ago? Or is it possible? Note that the answer is equally applicable whether we go with the AIT or OIT model.

Linguists tell us that languages change over time. That means that if a parent language gives rise to two daughter languages, those languages will drift apart over time.

If there really was a hypothetical “PIE” it is easy to postulate that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin are all “descendants” of PIE that have undergone the process of word change over time.

But if you look at the remarkable similarities between a very old language (Sanskrit) and Slavonic, it appears that they are sister languages from some common root. It appears that Sanskrit and the so called “Balto-Slavic” languages are closer to each other than Greek and Latin.

However if you look at modern “language family trees” invented by linguists, the Balto Slavic languages are a totally different branch off PIE and Sanskrit is placed on a separate branch as “Indo-Iranian”. This classification appears fake and contrived to me. It appears to have been created to explain a particular pre-conceived history of languages.

It is far more likely that the so called “Balto-Slavic” languages and “Indo-Iranian” languages came off the same branch. Also significant is that Russian and Slavonic are so similar to Sanskrit (a very old language) that this defies the commonly cited theory of inevitable language change. Clearly Russian, Slavonic and Lithuanian have not changed that much.

It should not be difficult to conjure up a hypothesis to show that the common root of Indo-Iranian and Balto Slavic was the original PIE of which Latin and Greek are offshoots. But linguists will protest and squirm at such heresies.

Bennedose Ji, you have raised a number of most fundamental questions. It is not easy to answer them in a blog. I’ll try to express my view on this in the next few days.

Prem Kumar wrote:Ramana Garu: Vamsee's description is right. MT is an AIT proponent & is quite firm in his belief. I had a long exchange with him on Twitter. Its in my TL.

But his version of AIT has earlier dates. When asked, he placed AIT between 6K YBP - 3.5K YBP.

Prem Kumar wrote: His blog is interesting to follow, though I dont agree with his conclusions whenever he writes about AIT. He also writes about a lot of other things - medieval wars etc. I'm yet to ask him if he has posted on this thread. His blog: http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/

Skanda wrote:The massacre of the Yazidis

Who are the Yazidi and why does the IS want to exterminate them? Although influenced by Christianity and Islam, the Yazidi religion has ancient roots that go back at least to the late Bronze Age. Interestingly, their beliefs have many similarities with Hinduism — for instance, they believe in reincarnation, say their prayers facing the sun at sunrise and sunset, etc. They also worship Tawuse-Melek, the peacock angel — a bird not found in Yazidi lands, but only in the Indian subcontinent.

Once, these cultural links would have been explained away in terms of an “Aryan invasion” from Central Asia. However, we now know that the great Harappan cities were abandoned due to climate change and the drying of the Saraswati river around 2000 BC. Most people moved on to the Ganga or went south, thereby seeding Indic civilisation. But, did some groups migrate west? There is a lot of evidence of Indian links with the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Iran and of their Parsi descendants, is clearly related to Vedic religion and the oldest Zoroastrian texts — the Gathas — are composed in a language very close to Rig Vedic Sanskrit.

Intriguingly, there is evidence of an Indian tribe that may have migrated even further west. We have details of a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni around 1380 BC. The Mitanni were a tribe that once ruled over the same area now inhabited by the Yazidi and the treaty invokes the names of Vedic gods Indra, Varuna, Nasatya and Mitra. We also know that the Mitanni were not locals but had come from the east. The names of their leaders and several of their military and equestrian terms also appear to be derived from Sanskrit. Most intriguingly, Mitanni art shows peacocks and peacock-like griffins.

Are the Yazidis descendants of the Mitanni? We do not know for sure, but it is certainly an intriguing possibility, especially since recent genetic studies show that certain lineages commonly found in northern India are also found in eastern Iran and among the Kurds (no specific data is available on the Yazidi).

Over time, the Yazidis were dubbed as “devil-worshippers” and subjected to constant persecution. It was especially extreme under the Ottoman Turks in the 18th and 19th centuries. A series of massacres killed thousands and almost led to their extinction. Under Saddam Hussain, they were not subjected to overt religious persecution, but remained under pressure to Arabise their culture. Matters have become much worse since the dictator was deposed. In April 2007, gunmen dragged 23 Yazidi men from a bus and shot them dead. In August that year, a series of coordinated car-bombs killed at least 300 more, including women and children.

Rony wrote:

Ajatshatru wrote:"Yazidi and Hindu Similarity":

http://kiranasis.blogspot.in/2014/08/ya ... arity.html

Rony wrote:Check out this Yezidi site

http://www.yeziditruth.org


The Yezidi Name

Since their founding many thousands of years ago in India, these people have always been known as the Yezidis or Yazidis. According to Eszter Spat in The Yezidis, the name is derived from ez Xwede dam, meaning “I was created by God.” Some Yezidis maintain that it translates as “Followers of the true path.” The term Yezidi or Yazidi is also very close to the Persion/Zoroastrian word Yazdan, meaning “God“, and Yazata, meaning “divine” or “angelic being“.

For this reason scholars have theorized a Persian origin for the Yezidis. Other scholars have associated the name Yazidi with Yazid bin Muawiyah, a Moslem Caliph ofthe early Umayyad Dynasty. According to the current Yezidi belief, however, the Caliph Yazid was a Moslem ruler who eventually became disenchanted with his religion and converted to Yezidism.

The Peacock Angel

The Peacock Angel and the Sumerians

In the religion of Sumeria the Peacock Angel was manifest as Enki, the Lord of the Earth, who was also the Lord of Wisdom and the Serpent on the Tree of Dilman, the Sumerian Eden. The Sumerians may have adopted Enki from Yezidi emissaries from India who played a role in the fledgling Sumerian civilization. Or they may have received him from the gnostic sect of Mandeans who were also assimilated into Sumerian civilization after migrating from the East, specifically Sri Lanka, the island patronized by the Peacock Angel as the Hindu Murugan or Sanat Kumara.

The Peacock Angel in Hinduism

Since the Yezidis originated in India, the Hindus’ manifestation of Tawsi Melek is naturally very close to the Peacock Angel of the Yezidis.

SwamyG wrote:HH => Hauma Hamiddha. I have seen/read him in http://www.india-forum.com

There are lots of Right Wingers, who support some form of AIT.

matrimc wrote:Anantha: good observation. The way to deflate their "racist" affinity to the Caucasus is it remind them gently that everybody is from Africa.

matrimc wrote:Anantha: good observation. The way to deflate their "racist" affinity to the Caucasus is it remind them gently that everybody is from Africa.

For example, ancient stone tools in southern India were found above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba eruption and were very similar across these layers, suggesting that the dust clouds from the eruption did not wipe out this local population.[37][38][39] Additional archaeological evidence from southern and northern India also suggests a lack of evidence for effects of the eruption on local populations, leading the authors of the study to conclude, "many forms of life survived the supereruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks".[40] However, evidence from pollen analysis has suggested prolonged deforestation in South Asia, and some researchers have suggested that the Toba eruption may have forced humans to adopt new adaptive strategies, which may have permitted them to replace Neanderthals and "other archaic human species".[41] This has been challenged by evidence for the presence of Neanderthals in Europe and Homo floresiensis in Southeastern Asia who survived the eruption by 50,000 and 60,000 years, respectively.[42]

Anantha wrote:

SwamyG wrote:HH => Hauma Hamiddha. I have seen/read him in http://www.india-forum.com

There are lots of Right Wingers, who support some form of AIT.

There are several RW guys who are closet AIT believers, mostly because they do not want to believe that their forefathers were Africans. Also AIT gives some of these "upper caste" guys a relationship to Europeans.

shiv wrote:There is/was a guy on DFI who openly said he was of north Indian Aryan stock and was pointing out how the black dravidian south Indians are ugly and a different race and that his lot definitely came from somewhere up north - Russia or somewhere. He posted lots of photos of people from north Indian and Russia and and compared them with selected photos from south India to prove his point. I am sure the thread still exists. And he was not even Paki.
So it would be wrong to generalize that all Indian followers of AIT are people who are being unfairly dissed.

UlanBatori wrote:Wow! I was totally ignorant of this event, and this whole scientific community.

Interesting conferences, surely! Do they start their Plenary Lectures and Banquets in 3D IMAX theaters, I wonder.

For example, ancient stone tools in southern India were found above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba eruption and were very similar across these layers, suggesting that the dust clouds from the eruption did not wipe out this local population.[37][38][39] Additional archaeological evidence from southern and northern India also suggests a lack of evidence for effects of the eruption on local populations, leading the authors of the study to conclude, "many forms of life survived the supereruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks".[40] However, evidence from pollen analysis has suggested prolonged deforestation in South Asia, and some researchers have suggested that the Toba eruption may have forced humans to adopt new adaptive strategies, which may have permitted them to replace Neanderthals and "other archaic human species".[41] This has been challenged by evidence for the presence of Neanderthals in Europe and Homo floresiensis in Southeastern Asia who survived the eruption by 50,000 and 60,000 years, respectively.[42]

So this calmly goes on the assumption that humans (a) lived in southern India and (b) used tools well before, and continuously through, the ash-fall 77,000 years ago. Given the state of technology except for cell-phones in many parts of India today, why would anyone think that a community that used 'tools' that far ago, did not already have a deep philosophical knowledge base?

UlanBatori wrote:BTW, this implies that any archipelago / whatever they call clusters of islands, are remnants of super-volcanos. When was the eruption of the one around the LakshaDweep/ Diego Garcia/ Maldives? This would have had a much more significant impact than one in Sumatra. Or the one in the South Indian Ocean, where the MH370 search gangs were prowling?

Or the Andamans? How do these ppl know that the ash that was found in Andhra is from Toba, not from the Andamans? And the ash in East Africa not from the Maldives?

http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/rese ... ash_layer/