News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginnings and Legends. Parent comment

Re:The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginni... by zozbot234 on Friday June 11, 2021 @09:30AM (#27473057)
Many Indians today believe in the Aryan invasion theory, which views Indian culture and religion as having originated from people living in modern-day Central/Southern Asia and Iran, and only later being adopted by native people in India. This theory is often connected with a view that fairer-skinned people represent "true" Indian culture, not the natives who were generally relegated to lower social status. The caste system itself is not native to India but is instead found widely among PIE cultures, including the Aryans who are said to have invaded India.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginni... by cabalamat on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:18AM (#27473688)
> Many Indians today believe in the Aryan invasion theory

That's because it's almost certainly true! it's why Indians speak Indo-European languages, and why the same Y-chromosome haplogroup (R1a) is common among (for example) Indian Brahmins and Norwegians.

> This theory is often connected with a view that fairer-skinned people represent "true" Indian culture

The Hindu religion in its most ancient form (see e.g. the Rig Veda) derives from the Proto-Indo-European religion, parts of which have been reconstructed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology

(Obviously modern India culture comes from a lot of other sources too!)

> including the Aryans who are said to have invaded India.

You phrase it that was as if to imply that it didn't happen. But I think the evidence that it did: linguistic, genetic, archeological, is very strong.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginni... by Mediterraneo10 on Friday June 11, 2021 @01:59PM (#27476526)
> That's because it's almost certainly true!

Actual Indo-Europeanists today eschew the label "Aryan invasion theory" in favour of e.g. “Aryan migration theory”. While genetic evidence makes a (limited) case for presence of force and population movement in the spread of the Indo-European languages to India, the bulk of the spread was through language shift whereby the indigenous inhabitants gradually adopted Indo-European languages as higher prestige.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen’s Latin or Who Were the Romans? Part I: Beginni... by cmrdporcupine on Friday June 11, 2021 @11:00AM (#27474302)
Sure, but likely by the time the Aryans got to that region they were not "fair skinned." There was an intervening millennia of hanging out in the Caspian / Bactria / Central Asia before entering the subcontinent [1]. Nor were the Yamnaya people ever really "fair skinned" ; they were likely dark haired and olive skinned.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria%E2%80%93Margiana_Archa...

[ Parent | on HN ]