Caucasians in China

As India or Europe or even OTL China's Han migration experience says, ATL Caucasians will overrun Southern China as well as China's geography is flat and the only barrier is the Yellow River. I could see that ATL Caucasian-dominated China will dominate the Southern part.

Cultural domination is different from lingustic unity though. IOTL, while Northern and Southern China speak (more or less) the same language, Northern Chinese are more closely related to Europeans, and Southern Chinese to Australian Aborigines, than either group is to each other.

Thus, while I'd say it's likely that an Indo-European language could dominate southern China, Indo-European genes would not.

Also, look at India. The Dravidian south was almost certainly conquered by the Aryans at some point (given common religion, and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka). Yet the presumably ancient Dravidian languages survived. True, India never unified in prehistory the way China did, but there was no significant geographic barrier stopping this.
 
Cultural domination is different from lingustic unity though. IOTL, while Northern and Southern China speak (more or less) the same language, Northern Chinese are more closely related to Europeans, and Southern Chinese to Australian Aborigines, than either group is to each other.

Thus, while I'd say it's likely that an Indo-European language could dominate southern China, Indo-European genes would not.

Also, look at India. The Dravidian south was almost certainly conquered by the Aryans at some point (given common religion, and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka). Yet the presumably ancient Dravidian languages survived. True, India never unified in prehistory the way China did, but there was no significant geographic barrier stopping this.
Never heard this about China before, where'd you read that? Sounds interesting. Must say I can't think of there being much differences in looks.
 
Never heard this about China before, where'd you read that? Sounds interesting. Must say I can't think of there being much differences in looks.

same. this is very new to me as well.

i personally always just thought tocharians were interesting. it's just kind of cool seeing a pocket native population that seems so out of place compared to other ethnic groups surrounding. kinda like the polynesians in south america
 
Actually, genetics heavily begs to differ on that issue: at least partially, it was definitely an invasion from the steppe. At least in some places (in particular Eastern Europe and Scandinavia) there was a massive population replacement. India too was probably invaded by the Indo-Europeans, but here something interesting happened: apparently Indo-European men were far more likely to marry non-Indo-European women than vice versa. The result is that Indo-European Y-DNA got vastly accumulated whereas mitochondrial and autosomal DNA got considerably diluted. The bulk of the modern population of Eastern Europe and northern India is by paternal lineage directly descended from the Corded Ware and Andronovo cultures as (note that this has been verified by DNA samples from graves of said cultures - via Y-Haplogroup R1a1a), which probably represent two early branches of Indo-European.

You are probably right about there being a lot of migration to Eastern Europe and India. Perhaps I should have said invasion wasn't the only means by which proto-Indo-European spread. But regarding the OP, there will never be enough Indo-Europeans to make China "Caucasian". That's what I meant. It just seems to me that people relate linguistics with archaelogy and genetics too much.

After all, someone from the Punjab doesn't really look Caucasian.
 
To those who think the "split China" genetics is odd, here's a genetic tree. North Chinese aren't on this particular one, but they group very closely to Koreans, Japanese, and Tibetans.

languag1.gif


It may seem odd, particularly because to western eyes people from Northeast and Southeast Asia look more similar than different. However, external "race" means nothing - it's just a phenotype of the body. This is why, for example, people from New Guinea look like Africans despite not being closely related. Perhaps a similar environment in Asia made East Asians veer towards similar looks despite different origins.
 

Typo

Banned
Never heard this about China before, where'd you read that? Sounds interesting. Must say I can't think of there being much differences in looks.
The original group of hunter-gatherers who were in modern day southeast Asia were wiped out some time after the advent of agriculture by farmers from southern China. The same is true of the Philippines as well. In other words, modern day Vietnamese, Thai etc are ultimately descendants of southern Chinese farmers who themselves might have originated around the Yangtze river.
 
As India or Europe or even OTL China's Han migration experience says, ATL Caucasians will overrun Southern China as well as China's geography is flat and the only barrier is the Yellow River. I could see that ATL Caucasian-dominated China will dominate the Southern part.

I think the Miaos could serve as a barrier or buffer between Bai Yue people and the Indo-Europeans, I think the Bai Yue will be more advanced compared to the northerners at this point so they can also migrate and dominate their northern counterparts..


The original group of hunter-gatherers who were in modern day southeast Asia were wiped out some time after the advent of agriculture by farmers from southern China. The same is true of the Philippines as well. In other words, modern day Vietnamese, Thai etc are ultimately descendants of southern Chinese farmers who themselves might have originated around the Yangtze river.
Thais were recent arrivals because they were pushed out of China by the Han to modern day Thailand..
 
I read some place, The Asian - Eye Fold, Cheek-bones, Black Hair - is genetically dominate.
It is very possible there were Indo-Europeans Settlers on the 10,000 BP Pacific coast. However once these 3 Mutation became Dominate. ..............
Genetists tell us that by 3,000 the Asian eye-folds and check-bones will be Dominate World wide
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I read some place, The Asian - Eye Fold, Cheek-bones, Black Hair - is genetically dominate.
It is very possible there were Indo-Europeans Settlers on the 10,000 BP Pacific coast. However once these 3 Mutation became Dominate. ..............
Genetists tell us that by 3,000 the Asian eye-folds and check-bones will be Dominate World wide

It really depends a lot, my maternal family is mixed and really apart from some traits that crop up most of the current generation look virtually european. However I do suspect that any such Tokharian invasion would lead to a reverse situation of now east-asian looking indo-europeans.

Now that would make for weird ATL racism if the notion of Aryans still shows up in modern european racist thought (although it's true the nazis excluded the slavs while keeping a lot of the "satem"-branch of asian indo-european peuples)
 
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As India or Europe or even OTL China's Han migration experience says, ATL Caucasians will overrun Southern China as well as China's geography is flat and the only barrier is the Yellow River. I could see that ATL Caucasian-dominated China will dominate the Southern part.
Linguistic diversity increases sharply as you go south in China. This map shows the distribution of Sinitic languages in China.
281px-Map_of_sinitic_languages-en.svg.png
If you look at this map, all but two of the Sinitic languages are found only in the south. Much of that difference is due to mountains separating the populations and the remnants of the languages spoken by the original inhabitants of the region who were absorbed into the Han. The southern languages also preserve the most features of older forms of Chinese. If an invasion of Caucasians comes down from the north-west, their cultural and genetic impact is likely to remain in the north just as Altaic influences stayed in the north OTL.
Cultural domination is different from lingustic unity though. IOTL, while Northern and Southern China speak (more or less) the same language, Northern Chinese are more closely related to Europeans, and Southern Chinese to Australian Aborigines, than either group is to each other.
I'm guessing that much of the genetic differences are due to migration across Central Asia from the Middle East into northern China and intermarriage with the hundreds of ethnic groups in the south.

I'd like to see what markers the genetic tree you posted is based on. Polynesians being on a different branch from the rest of the Austronesian speakers is a little odd. It seems to be more of a geographic division than a genetic one.
Never heard this about China before, where'd you read that? Sounds interesting. Must say I can't think of there being much differences in looks.
There are certain looks that you tend to find only in the north and other looks that you'd find only in the south. Until recently overseas Chinese were overwhelmingly from the south. Northern Chinese can look very different from what most people think are typical Chinese.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
There are certain looks that you tend to find only in the north and other looks that you'd find only in the south. Until recently overseas Chinese were overwhelmingly from the south. Northern Chinese can look very different from what most people think are typical Chinese.

(on the map: I can't help but notice that non-sinitic languages are not on it :p )
Also, IIRC a part of the difference was both climate and diet: the north grew more wheat, the south more rice.
 
(on the map: I can't help but notice that non-sinitic languages are not on it :p )
Also, IIRC a part of the difference was both climate and diet: the north grew more wheat, the south more rice.

Well, that one would look like this (though this one leaves off the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan and Hainan):
China_linguistic_map.jpg
 
DuQuense said:
It is very possible there were Indo-Europeans Settlers on the 10,000 BP Pacific coast. However once these 3 Mutation became Dominate.

Um, it is actually very IMpossible, as Indo-European can only be dated back to about 4000 BC (which might be a little conservative, but I believe that is the current understanding of most scholars). So there is no way there could be Indo-Europeans in China 10,000 years ago, especially considering the massive distance between China and the supposed PIE homeland on the Pontic Steppe.
 
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