AHC/WI:'White' Central Asia,West and Central China,Parts of East Asia and India

OP's obsession with "the white race" and "making Central Asia/India white" is more than a little odd, but more than anything, this is just an outdated way of looking at things. Yes, there probably were many blonde/red-haired and fair-skinned people among the ancient Indo-Europeans -- but then there were probably many of different phenotypes as well. If you look at the modern Kalasha, some look "Nordic", while others just look like light-skinned Indians. The same thing applies within Indian populations as well, where you even within families, you'll have very light-skinned people with much darker children or relatives. Is my dad (very light skinned Indian) a different "race" from his uncle (a very dark skinned Indian)?

For all intents and purposes, race doesn't exist. Spaniards (considered white) probably have more in common genetically with Moroccans (not considered white) than they do with Germans or Russians. It's social conditioning and nothing more.
 
OP's obsession with "the white race" and "making Central Asia/India white" is more than a little odd, but more than anything, this is just an outdated way of looking at things. Yes, there probably were many blonde/red-haired and fair-skinned people among the ancient Indo-Europeans -- but then there were probably many of different phenotypes as well. If you look at the modern Kalasha, some look "Nordic", while others just look like light-skinned Indians. The same thing applies within Indian populations as well, where you even within families, you'll have very light-skinned people with much darker children or relatives. Is my dad (very light skinned Indian) a different "race" from his uncle (a very dark skinned Indian)?

For all intents and purposes, race doesn't exist. Spaniards (considered white) probably have more in common genetically with Moroccans (not considered white) than they do with Germans or Russians. It's social conditioning and nothing more.
I don't know if the OP was a native English speaker or not, but a charitable interpretation is that they were using the colloquial term "white" (anachronistic in a discussion about migrations thousands of years ago, I know) to refer to the proto Into-Europeans or something, if the term "white" means the northwestern branch of the Indo-European languages.

There's a sizable amount of linguistic evidence that central Asia plays an important role in the history of early migrations. The proto Into-European language originated in an area of central Asia called the pontic steppe, stretching from today's Eastern Ukraine to Western Kazakhstan. The PIE people were the first to domesticate horses, which is why the PIE languages have spread so far west to Europe and south to Iran and northern India.
 
OP's obsession with "the white race" and "making Central Asia/India white" is more than a little odd, but more than anything, this is just an outdated way of looking at things. Yes, there probably were many blonde/red-haired and fair-skinned people among the ancient Indo-Europeans -- but then there were probably many of different phenotypes as well. If you look at the modern Kalasha, some look "Nordic", while others just look like light-skinned Indians. The same thing applies within Indian populations as well, where you even within families, you'll have very light-skinned people with much darker children or relatives. Is my dad (very light skinned Indian) a different "race" from his uncle (a very dark skinned Indian)?

For all intents and purposes, race doesn't exist. Spaniards (considered white) probably have more in common genetically with Moroccans (not considered white) than they do with Germans or Russians. It's social conditioning and nothing more.

The second point about the Spaniards is totally incorrect, the Iberian peninsula is one of the primary centres of the Celtic ‘haplogroup’ and shares little thus with Morocco, influenced by maghrebi Arabs and Berber.

Also, outside the western/European perception; medieval Islamic scholarship and perception, saw the Iberians as the lightest colored and fairest in tone of the then Islamic world.
 
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^That's interesting and surprising, I would have imagined that centuries of colonization by Maghrebis would have left their genetic mark on the Spanish. Kind of like how Mexicans probably have more genetic similarities with Spaniards than they do with Czechs or French people.
 
The second point about the Spaniards is totally incorrect, the Iberian peninsula is one of the primary centres of the Celtic ‘haplogroup’ and shares little thus with Morocco, influenced by maghrebi Arabs and Berber.
AFAIK Spain is not particularly Celtic(which means more some kind Indo-European, it's hard to distinguish between specific later large linguistic groups with high confidence, if at all), it has actually a high degree of neolithic farmers ancestry coupled with strangely high paternal indo-european ancestry(haplogroups show direct paternal or maternal ancestry, but they don't really show you much about general genetic relatedness and are more useful to signal migrations).

^That's interesting and surprising, I would have imagined that centuries of colonization by Maghrebis would have left their genetic mark on the Spanish. Kind of like how Mexicans probably have more genetic similarities with Spaniards than they do with Czechs or French people.
AFAIK it did leave some influence, which is not surprising, the question that remain open is how would you divide earlier influence from like Phoenecians and the one from Arab-Berbers, it's not straightforward.
In any case the influence is not big enough to make Spaniards closer to Moroccans than to Germans and (maybe) Russians, but I think you can research that easily outside this site, as it's a bit off-topic, but beware of freaky sites.
 
^That's interesting and surprising, I would have imagined that centuries of colonization by Maghrebis would have left their genetic mark on the Spanish. Kind of like how Mexicans probably have more genetic similarities with Spaniards than they do with Czechs or French people.

That is where your assumption lies and the origin of the incorrect or misinformed statement. According to what we have form the Islamic sources, the Muslim populace of Iberia was not Arabs in the official sense as a totality, but made up of converts to Islam. In other words, Islam in Iberia, survived so well, not because it was an Islam of conquest, but like in Iran after the Abbasid, an Islam of the Visigoths and of the native inhabitants, with an addition of Berber warrior classes (Moors) and Arabs who migrated across the Islamic world. In the words of many of the Islamic scholars of the past, who were interested in race and pigmentation, such as al-Jahiz, he described the Andalusians or Spaniards as of the Frankish tone, and in his mind, a people whose skin was "half-baked", while in his perception, the Arab was fully done, as bread cooked to completion, while to him once more, the sub-Sahara African was overcooked bread. The idea that Islam in Iberia was a sort of invasive species or not molded to the psyche of the people therein, is a byproduct of the Reconquista.
 
AFAIK Spain is not particularly Celtic(which means more some kind Indo-European, it's hard to distinguish between specific later large linguistic groups with high confidence, if at all), it has actually a high degree of neolithic farmers ancestry coupled with strangely high paternal indo-european ancestry(haplogroups show direct paternal or maternal ancestry, but they don't really show you much about general genetic relatedness and are more useful to signal migrations).


AFAIK it did leave some influence, which is not surprising, the question that remain open is how would you divide earlier influence from like Phoenecians and the one from Arab-Berbers, it's not straightforward.
In any case the influence is not big enough to make Spaniards closer to Moroccans than to Germans and (maybe) Russians, but I think you can research that easily outside this site, as it's a bit off-topic, but beware of freaky sites.

According to data on 'haplogroup R1b' occurs at a frequency of 80%-55% across Iberia. With northern sectors of Iberia, such as Asturias, Navarre, Catalonia and Aragon, ranging from 70% to around 80%+, while Portugal south of Porto, and lower areas of Iberia such as historical Baetica, Valencia, etc,,, all vary but stay well above 50%. This distribution breaks even with how Iberia existed prior to Roman occupation, that is, Celtic powers in the north and central, with unsure linguistic presence of other groups in Baetica and Lusitania and then the Phoenician presence in the region corresponding to Valencia.

It should be remembered that the northern sectors of Iberia exceed by over 10% in this haplogroup appearance than much of central France, the stronghold of the Gallic civilization, yet this section of Iberia also is less heavily within this group than the more famed modern Celtic lands, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, etc...

Regarding Arabo-Iberian relations, my opinion is rendered earlier, that without the Reconquest of the region by Catholic states in the north, the status of Iberia, would be similar to Iran, that is an Islamic land with great effects from Arab culture in the sense of art, architecture and language, but ultimately Iranian/Persian.
 
According to data on 'haplogroup R1b' occurs at a frequency of 80%-55% across Iberia. With northern sectors of Iberia, such as Asturias, Navarre, Catalonia and Aragon, ranging from 70% to around 80%+, while Portugal south of Porto, and lower areas of Iberia such as historical Baetica, Valencia, etc,,, all vary but stay well above 50%. This distribution breaks even with how Iberia existed prior to Roman occupation, that is, Celtic powers in the north and central, with unsure linguistic presence of other groups in Baetica and Lusitania and then the Phoenician presence in the region corresponding to Valencia.

It should be remembered that the northern sectors of Iberia exceed by over 10% in this haplogroup appearance than much of central France, the stronghold of the Gallic civilization, yet this section of Iberia also is less heavily within this group than the more famed modern Celtic lands, Brittany, Ireland, Wales, etc...
R1b is that "strangely high paternal indo-european heritage" I was speaking of, but in actuality autosomal tests detect that Spaniards are one of the people with least indo-european influence overall, bested only by Sardinians and some other small group. Plus R1b is actually a general indo-european haplogroup, hardly specific to Celts(this ties in how it's hard to distinguish between less ancestral groups as they get increasingly similar or less markedly isolated)

So the Celtic connection to the modern genetics is tenuous, especially if you consider pre-Celtic indo-European people, the disputed nature of some attested pre-Roman groups and the nature of haplogroups itself(mind that some groups in Niger have relatively high R1B and we really can't say that means Indo-European connection, let alone Celtic or European.

This is further removed from how humans perceive race which is mostly either in an ethnic way(as in based on identity, culture, religion, language etc.) or based on appearances, but at the end of the day you can have 2 groups that look the same but are on paper quite different and 2 others which are quite different in appearance but are on paper similar, so basically haplogroups =/= general relatdness =/= perceived kinship.
 
Regarding Arabo-Iberian relations, my opinion is rendered earlier, that without the Reconquest of the region by Catholic states in the north, the status of Iberia, would be similar to Iran, that is an Islamic land with great effects from Arab culture in the sense of art, architecture and language, but ultimately Iranian/Persian.
I'm not so sure, because Spain was seemingly more Arabized than Persia ended up being, maybe it would be so diverging as to not be Arab in identity or culture, but in language it would probably end up being Arabic rather than Mozarabic.
 
I'm not so sure, because Spain was seemingly more Arabized than Persia ended up being, maybe it would be so diverging as to not be Arab in identity or culture, but in language it would probably end up being Arabic rather than Mozarabic.

I am not sure, in Iran, the Persian languages were affected heavily by Arabic, and Arabic dominated political discourse until far later times in Islamic history, to points in time when Islamic Iberia had been reduced to little more than a sliver on the peninsula. In essence, if we look at the time frame of existence that Islamic Iberia existed beyond Granada, Persian was seemingly weak and most all important documents and notations from the region are in Arabic or Syriac. Thus, if one was to observe during that period the trends, they may assume that in the course of history, Arabic would replace Persian and its dialects by the modern era, as Arabic did to Syriac and some other languages. Certainly without the Reconquista, the situation in Iberia would be similar, but perhaps less pronounced.
 
I am not sure, in Iran, the Persian languages were affected heavily by Arabic, and Arabic dominated political discourse until far later times in Islamic history, to points in time when Islamic Iberia had been reduced to little more than a sliver on the peninsula. In essence, if we look at the time frame of existence that Islamic Iberia existed beyond Granada, Persian was seemingly weak and most all important documents and notations from the region are in Arabic or Syriac. Thus, if one was to observe during that period the trends, they may assume that in the course of history, Arabic would replace Persian and its dialects by the modern era, as Arabic did to Syriac and some other languages. Certainly without the Reconquista, the situation in Iberia would be similar, but perhaps less pronounced.
AFAIK it's not just a trend for Iberia, by the time that Granada was the last territory left the entirety of the population there was Arabic speaking, with just about no sizeable Romance or Christian community.
This might have been caused by the reconquista and population shuffling but even this in of itself is more complete linguistic Arabization than the Iranian plateau experienced, as Arabs assimilated mostly the non-Iranic regions(Khuzestan is maybe the only Iranic territory assimilated?) to begin with.
 
R1b is that "strangely high paternal indo-european heritage" I was speaking of, but in actuality autosomal tests detect that Spaniards are one of the people with least indo-european influence overall, bested only by Sardinians and some other small group. Plus R1b is actually a general indo-european haplogroup, hardly specific to Celts(this ties in how it's hard to distinguish between less ancestral groups as they get increasingly similar or less markedly isolated)

So the Celtic connection to the modern genetics is tenuous, especially if you consider pre-Celtic indo-European people, the disputed nature of some attested pre-Roman groups and the nature of haplogroups itself(mind that some groups in Niger have relatively high R1B and we really can't say that means Indo-European connection, let alone Celtic or European.

This is further removed from how humans perceive race which is mostly either in an ethnic way(as in based on identity, culture, religion, language etc.) or based on appearances, but at the end of the day you can have 2 groups that look the same but are on paper quite different and 2 others which are quite different in appearance but are on paper similar, so basically haplogroups =/= general relatdness =/= perceived kinship.
Indeed, it's worth pointing out that Y chromosomal and mitochondrial haplogroups, while indicating descent, aren't specific phenotypes (maleness obviously excluded).
 
R1b is that "strangely high paternal indo-european heritage" I was speaking of, but in actuality autosomal tests detect that Spaniards are one of the people with least indo-european influence overall, bested only by Sardinians and some other small group. Plus R1b is actually a general indo-european haplogroup, hardly specific to Celts(this ties in how it's hard to distinguish between less ancestral groups as they get increasingly similar or less markedly isolated)

So the Celtic connection to the modern genetics is tenuous, especially if you consider pre-Celtic indo-European people, the disputed nature of some attested pre-Roman groups and the nature of haplogroups itself(mind that some groups in Niger have relatively high R1B and we really can't say that means Indo-European connection, let alone Celtic or European.

This is further removed from how humans perceive race which is mostly either in an ethnic way(as in based on identity, culture, religion, language etc.) or based on appearances, but at the end of the day you can have 2 groups that look the same but are on paper quite different and 2 others which are quite different in appearance but are on paper similar, so basically haplogroups =/= general relatdness =/= perceived kinship.


Not disputing any of what you state, but assuming or withdrawing the clear-cut knowledge that we have regarding the status of Celtic habitation of Iberia, and then disputing the association in terms of haplogorups that Iberians share with nearby peoples, is somewhat of a weak view. If the Iberian populaces in the north share such similarities in this regard to a very closeby Brittany, yet do not share this association to Sardinia (Sardinia has very small percentages of this R1b), then reason would dictate us to draw conclusions no? Or are you of the opinion that no amount of data or proximity can warrant an inference? Bringing forward the red herrings of Chad or Uyghurs or such, is just that, distractions and unwillingness to classify Iberians, as unlike Chad which is separated from vast distances from this hearth of Celtic associations, Iberia is very closely connected to these lands by migration routes and also is documented by our sources as having Celtic habitation.
 
AFAIK it's not just a trend for Iberia, by the time that Granada was the last territory left the entirety of the population there was Arabic speaking, with just about no sizeable Romance or Christian community.
This might have been caused by the reconquista and population shuffling but even this in of itself is more complete linguistic Arabization than the Iranian plateau experienced, as Arabs assimilated mostly the non-Iranic regions(Khuzestan is maybe the only Iranic territory assimilated?) to begin with.

Once more, this is looking at the topic with the ability of hindsight and yet then simultaneously limiting your analysis. If we look into Iran at different periods, it would seem that it was on its way to arabization in a process similar to Granada, yet later developments and underlining situations denied this development. Ultimately, Iran went through massive changes in ways similar to Granada, the Saffarids, the Saljuq, the Mongol Hordes, Timurids and then the Safavids... In a sense, the lack of power of Arabic within the Iranian plateau, can be inferred to be a contra-example to the situation you described in Granada.
 
Not disputing any of what you state, but assuming or withdrawing the clear-cut knowledge that we have regarding the status of Celtic habitation of Iberia, and then disputing the association in terms of haplogorups that Iberians share with nearby peoples, is somewhat of a weak view. If the Iberian populaces in the north share such similarities in this regard to a very closeby Brittany, yet do not share this association to Sardinia (Sardinia has very small percentages of this R1b), then reason would dictate us to draw conclusions no? Or are you of the opinion that no amount of data or proximity can warrant an inference? Bringing forward the red herrings of Chad or Uyghurs or such, is just that, distractions and unwillingness to classify Iberians, as unlike Chad which is separated from vast distances from this hearth of Celtic associations, Iberia is very closely connected to these lands by migration routes and also is documented by our sources as having Celtic habitation.
But it's not a red herring, by autosomal analysis we can see that Iberians are quite similar to people that existed throughout Western Europe before any Indo-European populations came, the high paternal ancestry from indo-europeans can exist without as sizeable of general ancestry from the same group.
If we didn't have autosomal dna we would rely on haplogroups only and maybe reach those conclusions but nowadays we do and they are a better indicator of overall relatedness.
Also even if we look at just this indicator, why would places like Basque country and Catonia have more R1b than Galicia? It's not so self-evident that R1b is an indicator of Celtic presence in this region.

If we like had evidence of people in the early modern era with R1b haplogroups in like the Americas East Coast, we could safely say they are from Europe(although Inuits are in theory possible too AFAIK), but in the context of Spain, a places that experienced not just one single migratory wave from Europe even in the context of just the Bronze and Iron age, it's not wise to connect such a volatile genetic component(volatile because changes in Y haplogroups in it can happen faster than general autosomal dna) and draw conclusions from it.

This is not to say that the Celts had no impact, it's clear that a population isn't going to change language and assume in language and identity on a grand scale without at least some genetic influence, but at the same time we should be wary of using haplogroups and connecting them to some ethnicity specifically,
 
Once more, this is looking at the topic with the ability of hindsight and yet then simultaneously limiting your analysis. If we look into Iran at different periods, it would seem that it was on its way to arabization in a process similar to Granada, yet later developments and underlining situations denied this development. Ultimately, Iran went through massive changes in ways similar to Granada, the Saffarids, the Saljuq, the Mongol Hordes, Timurids and then the Safavids... In a sense, the lack of power of Arabic within the Iranian plateau, can be inferred to be a contra-example to the situation you described in Granada.
Did the Berber dynasites halt the Arabization of the Muslim Spanish population? Because as far as I can see outside this one group there isn't much in the way of groups similar to the Turks or Mongols that could halt Arabization while not putting an end to Islamic dominance.
 
Did the Berber dynasites halt the Arabization of the Muslim Spanish population? Because as far as I can see outside this one group there isn't much in the way of groups similar to the Turks or Mongols that could halt Arabization while not putting an end to Islamic dominance.

No my point was that the reconquista was the parallel to the Mongol conquest or other statements regarding Arabic.

The Berber rulers should be noted, remained peoples of an Islamo-Berber culture and ethnicity, despite all evidences of their literature having used Arabic. This is ultimately similar to how I view Iran or how Iberia could or would have developed in an Islamic world.
 
But it's not a red herring, by autosomal analysis we can see that Iberians are quite similar to people that existed throughout Western Europe before any Indo-European populations came, the high paternal ancestry from indo-europeans can exist without as sizeable of general ancestry from the same group.
If we didn't have autosomal dna we would rely on haplogroups only and maybe reach those conclusions but nowadays we do and they are a better indicator of overall relatedness.
Also even if we look at just this indicator, why would places like Basque country and Catonia have more R1b than Galicia? It's not so self-evident that R1b is an indicator of Celtic presence in this region.

If we like had evidence of people in the early modern era with R1b haplogroups in like the Americas East Coast, we could safely say they are from Europe(although Inuits are in theory possible too AFAIK), but in the context of Spain, a places that experienced not just one single migratory wave from Europe even in the context of just the Bronze and Iron age, it's not wise to connect such a volatile genetic component(volatile because changes in Y haplogroups in it can happen faster than general autosomal dna) and draw conclusions from it.

This is not to say that the Celts had no impact, it's clear that a population isn't going to change language and assume in language and identity on a grand scale without at least some genetic influence, but at the same time we should be wary of using haplogroups and connecting them to some ethnicity specifically,

Maybe, I am not informed enough on the data and methodology to continue this. However, it is clear in my view that we largely agree. It seems ultimately we have diverged greatly from the original discussion, that was disagreeing with a certain poster.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Note to Mods: The discussion will continue about the other aspects that are not relevant to the OP,if that's okay.
The Scythian language and people survived until the 12th century most surely. Khotan being the last remnant of Scytho-Tocharian civilization.
Probably you are right. It says 1001 CE here. But Khotan was inhabited by Scythians and Indo-Aryan Gandhara people and not Tocharians. Tocharians occupied the entire Northern fringe containing Kashgar,Aksu,Kuche,Turfan and the South-Eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin. Khotanese as this map in this page shows occupied the Western fringe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Khotan
But they might have formed the components of the Yuezhi confederation along with Tocharians,who established the Kushan empire later. Considering both were Buddhist also,there could have been a significant Tocharian population but I could be wrong.
Edit: Map of Tocharian regions is indicated in maps in this page. Tocharians as this Wikipedia says,were extinct by 9th century CE. So around the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharian_languages
 
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Albert.Nik

Banned
So,mods? Can discussions continue in this subject about alternate migrations,settlement and Social developments regarding the title topic without bringing in unacceptable things or should we stop?
 
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