[Challenge] Caucasian China

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

Banned
Have China inhabitated by Caucasian, Indo-European speakers and not Mongoloid, Sino-Tibetan speakers.

PoD 2000-500 BC

[pardon the antiquated racial terminology]

Variant II (simpler)
Han Chinese still dominate China but have a significant (20-50%) Caucasian genetic admixture. The same PoD.
 
Avrorrange

Avrorrange

Wasn't it said that there were a number of tribes during the Wuhu Uprising and Sixteen Kingdoms period with noticeable Caucausian features?Maybe something could be done to increase their numbers around China such that by the time of a similar barbarian invasion occurs,these 'Caucasians' can prevail.
 
Last edited:

Mongo

Afanasevo culture

The Afanasevo culture is the earliest Eneolithic archaeological culture found until now in south Siberia, occupying the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains in 3500-2500 BC. Afanasevan sites have also been claimed for Mongolia and Western China, and a possible connection to the Europoid mummies of Xinjiang and the Indo-European Tocharians has been proposed.

[...]

The Afanasevo culture is primarily known for its cemeteries. Approximately ten settlements and fifty cemeteries are known. The Europoid physical type of the Afanasevo is confirmed by both craniological and genetic data. They closely resemble the remains of the Yamna culture of Eastern Europe.

[...]

Although far from the European steppe, the Afanasevo culture shares a significant number of traits with its distant European neighbors. This includes burials in a supine flexed position, the use of ochre, animal remains in graves, pointed-based pots, censers (circular bowls on legs), a Europoid physical type along with both horses and a suspected presence of wheeled vehicles. While the use of kurgans (tumuli) are general on the western steppe, it is likely that the Afanasevo tombs were covered by low mounds. These characteristics have made scholars link the Afanasevo with the cultures of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, specifically the Sredny Stog, Yamna, Catacomb and Poltavka cultures. As a result, the Afanasevo is often regarded as the easternmost branch of the European steppe cultures. Indeed, genetic material extracted from human remains found in Afanasevo sites as well as in the steppe, have confirmed that the Afanasevo people are genetically indistinguishable from the Yamnaya.

Because of its numerous traits attributed to the early Indo-Europeans, like metal-use, horses and wheeled vehicles, and cultural relations with European steppe cultures, the Afanasevans are believed to have been Indo-European-speaking.
Click to expand...

Ordos culture

The Ordos culture was a culture occupying a region centered on the Ordos Loop (modern Inner Mongolia, China) during the Bronze and early Iron Age from the 6th to 2nd centuries BCE. The Ordos culture is known for significant finds of Scythian art and is thought to represent the easternmost extension of Europoid Eurasian nomads, specifically the Scythians.

[...]

According to Iaroslav Lebedynsky, they are thought to be the easternmost people of Scythian affinity to have settled here, just to the east of the better-known Yuezhi. Because the people represented in archaeological finds tend to display Europoid features, also earlier noted by Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, Lededynsky suggests the Ordos culture had "a Scythian affinity". Other scholars have associated it with the Yuezhi. The weapons found in tombs throughout the steppes of the Ordos are very close to those of the Scythians, who known on the Asian Steppes as the Saka.
Click to expand...

Ordos%20culture_zpskemckjxc.jpg


Yuezhi

The Yuezhi may have been an Europoid people, as indicated by the portraits of their kings on the coins they struck following their exodus to Transoxiana (2nd–1st century BCE), portraits from statues in Khalchayan, Bactria in the 1st century BCE, some old place names in Gansu explainable in Tocharian languages, and especially the coins they struck in India as Kushans (1st–3rd century CE). Ancient Chinese sources do describe the existence of "white people with long hair" (the Bai people of the Shan Hai Jing) beyond their northwestern border.

According to one theory, the Yuezhi were connected to a large migration of Indo-European-speaking peoples from eastern Central Asia in the Bronze Age. These were possibly ethnic Tocharian speakers and connected to the Afanasevo culture. Very well preserved Tarim mummies from the 18th century bc to the first centuries bc with Europoid features (light hair and eyes) and dominated by Haplogroup R1a1a (Y-DNA) have been found in the Tarim Basin. One mummy today displayed at the Ürümqi Museum and dated from the 3rd century BCE, found at the ancient oasis on the Silk Road, Niya, has been connected to the Yuezhi. Evidence of the Indo-European Tocharian languages also has been found in the same geographical area, Although the first known epigraphic evidence dates to the 6th century CE, the degree of differentiation between Tocharian A and Tocharian B and the absence of Tocharian language remains beyond that area suggest that a common Tocharian language existed in the same area of Yuezhi settlement during the second half of the 1st millennium BCE.

Esther Jacobson emphasizes that "the Yuezhi/Kushans may properly be considered to have belonged to the larger Scytho-Siberian culture." The nomadic people, probably Scythians, of the Ordos culture of the Ordos Plateau, who lived in northern China, east of the Yuezhi, are another of a later similar migration. According to some scholars the Yuezhi might themselves have been Scythians. The Yuezhi (Rouzhi) are associated by some scholars with the Ordos culture. Also, the Europoid mummies of Pazyryk, which were probably Scythian in origin, were found around 1,500 kilometers northwest of the Yuezhi and date to around the 3rd century BCE. The Pazyryk burials coincide with the apex of Yuezhi power, and has been connected to them by some scholars.
Click to expand...

Wusun

"Among the barbarians in the Western Regions, the look of the Wusun is the most unusual. The present barbarians who have green eyes and red hair, and look like macaque monkeys, are the offspring of this people."

Initially, when only a few number of skulls from Wusun territory were known, the Wusun were recognized as an Europoid people with slight Mongoloid admixture. Later, in a more thorough study by Soviet archaeologists of eighty-seven skulls of Zhetysu, the six skulls of the Wusun period were determined to be purely Europoid or close to it.

[...]

The Wusun are generally believed to have been an Indo-European-speaking people. They are thought to be Iranian-speaking by the archaeologist Elena Kuzmina, linguist János Harmatta, Joseph Kitagawa, David Durand-Guédy, Turkologist Peter B. Golden and Central Asian scholar Denis Sinor. The Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank has suggested that the Wusun, along with the Yuezhi, the Dayuan, the Kangju and the people of Yanqi, could have been Tocharian-speaking. Colin Masica and David Keightley also suggest that the Wusun were Tocharian-speaking. Sinor finds it difficult to include the Wusun within the Tocharian category of Indo-European until further research. Indo-Europeanist J. P. Mallory has suggested that the Wusun contained both Tocharian and Iranian elements. Central Asian scholar Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun were Indo-Aryan-speaking. The first syllable of the Wusun royal title Kunmi was proably the royal title while the second syllable referred to the royal family name. Beckwith specifically suggests an Indo-Aryan etymology of the title Kunmi.
Click to expand...

It appears that at one time, almost all of central Asia was occupied by Indo-Europeans, who had arrived in several waves. The furthest east of them, the Ordos peoples, settled within 500 km of the Yellow Sea. They were eventually driven out or overrun by various expanding Turkic and Mongolian powers, but for thousands of years Indo-Europeans were the dominant power over much of western, central and southern Asia.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top