The Last Aryans of Ladakh
bbc.com
bbc.com
I'm no geneticist but I wonder if such statements have any scientific value or even meaning.
What is an "untampered" gene pool? The article mentions that they are likely to have migrated there from somewhere. Their existence was a secret to no one in the region. That they may have had a high rate of intermarriage for centuries due to relative seclusion seems likely. But is that tantamount to being "pire blooded"...
Presumably all other local tribes have already intermarried over many generations and the differences within them is minimal.
There's no basis for that usage. The writer just used those terms to catch the attention of people who are intrigued by the largely fictional concept of "pure-blood". At most, they might have a high concentration of particular traits due to marrying only among themselves for a long time.
The ancestry that the article itself purports for the tribe - moving from Central to South Asia via the Indus Valley - would mean they intersected with several different populations along that route. That route is through the crossroads of Asia, so it's very unlikely that they are "pure-blooded" in the way that, for example, the Sentinelese Islanders are - separated from any other population for 10s of thousands of years.
Despite the Brokpa's current isolation, they probably share some of their genetics with nearby South and Central Asian populations, but the article provides no citations about their genetics, despite it's casual claims. This article [1] suggests that nothing is known today about their genetics at all. Curiously, it does say they are traditionally vegan.
I'm not sure that even the Sentinelese themselves are "pure-blooded" in any sense of the word, but rather they just had an earlier branching point from other human populations than most, with no contact since then.
[1] https://sinchi-foundation.com/news/claims-of-aryan-ancestry-...
I thought it referred to a hypothetical group of ppl who spoke the root language of all indo-european group of languages. It didn't ever refer to a specific group of ppl that are known to exist to us, only hypothetical.
I think their name "aryans" is not related to Mueller's aryan invasion theory. Its merely a coincidence. Author seems to have conflated both of those. Sanskrit arya has nothing to do with origins of the tribe or migration from iran.
Modern Europeans really are descended from asian warriors, the battle-axe culture[1] (or corded ware culture if you want it to sound boring), who exterminated the old indigenous Europeans about 4000 years ago.
[1]https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-battle-axe-cultu...
Sanskrit word arya has nothing to do with aryan invasion theory.
I see statements like this:
Professor Anthony suggests that the spread of Yamnaya culture may have been facilitated by a kind of protection racket, in which the Yamnaya warriors would offer settled communities protection from gang activity, in exchange for their vassalage.
and
Did this conquest take the form of a single, unstoppable wave? Certainly not. This was a process effected in a piecemeal fashion, over the course of millennia...
The article mentions a massive influx into the gene pool but I would think this does not rule out, say, subjugation of an existing population and interbreeding.
As far as I'm aware, Arya is a term used only by the proto-Indo-Iranian tribes, which branched off from the PIE homeland much later than other branches of Indo-Europeans.
curious, how was this link established?
And why limit it to humans? What makes us so different from other animals in this regard?