compare Indo-Aryans & Europeans

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Pratik Chakraborty, Jun 19, 2010.

  1. Pratik Chakraborty Registered Member

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    What are the similarities & dissimilarities of Indo-Aryans & Europeans on Anthropological basis?
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2010
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Based on linguistic evidence, which so far does not disagree too badly with DNA analysis, the Proto-Indo-European tribe lived on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, at least as far back as 4000BCE. Around 2500BCE it began to break up into two populations.

    The Western Branch separated further as it migrated into western Europe. The Celts were the first to arrive while the Germanic tribes went north through Scandinavia; the Hellenic and Italic tribes followed and settled in the south.

    The Eastern Branch also separated. The Balto-Slavic people remained close to home until approximately 0CE when they began to expand westward, while the Indo-Iranian tribes migrated southward.

    (This greatly simplified explanation ignores a few Indo-European peoples who speak or spoke languages like Albanian and Armenian that arrived in their current location via more circuitous routes, or like Tocharian which died out.)

    So the wording of your question is a little misleading. The Eastern European peoples--the Slavs (who speak the Slavic languages) and the Baltic people (who speak Latvian and Lithuanian)--are (relatively) closely related to the Indic peoples and the Iranic peoples. Both of them are less closely related to the Western European peoples than they are to each other.

    (Again, in the interest of concision I have simplified. The Finns and Hungarians are not of Indo-European origin; nor are the Bulgarians although they adopted the Proto-Slavic language; the Gypsies are an Indic people from Kashmir; the Jews who speak Yiddish are a Semitic people; the ancestors of the Basques were there before the Indo-Europeans arrived; etc...)

    So: A Bengali, a Tajik, a Serbian and a Lithuanian are more closely related to each other than any of them is to a Norwegian, a Greek or a Spaniard.
     
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  5. superstring01 Moderator

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    Really? I never heard that.

    ~String
     
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