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Comment by joh234p2342343 | Hacker News Reader

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> For years, the Europeans 'scholars' have dogmatically asserted that 'Aryans' were European. That Indian culture, and thus all of its achievements were brought in by the 'mighty European white-skinned warriors' who 'by their grace' not only conquered them violently, but also 'graciously' brought everything valuable in Indian civilization, which of course was then 'corrupted' by the despicable dark-skinned natives.

That is not what Western science claims. You seem to be describing a garbled version of some junk pseudo history that the Nazis spouted decades ago but that is not at all representative of any reputable modern science

There is also a micro-aggression against Iranians by fringe communities of Europe/US and even our Arab/Turk neighbors! They somehow think that the name of Iran is "fake" or "manufactured" in 1930s! at the request of Hitler [1].

While we literally have attestations in government letters (in almost every century prior to 20th), local literature and population awareness of the continuity of the freaking name of the country but somehow they completely ignore it.

They also frequently use the word "Aryan" as a derogatory/fake term for Iranians and say "why you don't look like white Europeans if you claim to be Aryan".

[1]: https://www.les-crises.fr/l-origine-nazie-du-nom-de-liran-un...

Despite your best attempts to skim-read and then cake a Hindu-nationalist veneer on it, what you're saying is not even close to what this article is saying, even if it were correct. No serious scholar argues for an origin of the the language tree in the subcontinent or Iran.

Also nobody other than Nazis calls the Aryans "European";

The origin of the Indo-European language family tree is from the Pontic-Caspian steppe region; what is today southeastern Ukraine and southern Russia, roughly from the Dniepro to the Volga. The "Aryans" (really multiple names and multiple peoples) were people who moved eastwards from there, carrying early Indo-Iranian languages with them. (Over a 1000+ year history, winding their way eastwards across central Asia, so I'm not sure how you could spin that as "European")

I don't think the Aryan invasion theory was appropriate to justify colonization, but I'm also not sure this constitutes evidence against it. In any case, Sanskrit is far more archaic than Hittite, and even with the genetic evidence it doesn't make sense that Hittite would precede the Indo-aryan languages.

The Bhagavad Gita is quite clear about the cultures of the old Aryan peoples. They were nomadic, cowherding peoples, who were highly patriarchal, that valued prowess in battle and the ability to kill your enemies ruthlessly, even if they were members of your own family. They were probably white because Tocharian speakers in western China are depicted in cave painting as having blond hair and blue eyes[0], a group of people who completely split off the rest of the Indo-European tribal peoples well before they entered the subcontinent.

Is Nazi race science as a justification for brutal genocide and the destruction of labor organizing something I agree with? No, but the Nazis understood that anyone can spin a story to justify any political regime, and that whoever is in power is constantly inventing their own histories to justify their power. None of these things are very meaningful, in the end. Language, culture, and history is far more diverse than the question of Yamnaya genetics.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharian_languages#/media/Fil...

> The Bhagavad Gita is quite clear about the cultures of the old Aryan peoples. They were nomadic, cowherding peoples, who were highly patriarchal, that valued prowess in battle and the ability to kill your enemies ruthlessly, even if they were members of your own family.

Not this again. This is an old missionaries tale. There are descriptions of large cities and palaces in Mahabharata (of which Gita is part). Nomads don't construct palaces and large cities. Also, the Gita is about duty to preserve good not killing. (A few months ago I debunked a similar comment on this site lol)

https://vedicfeed.com/places-mentioned-in-mahabharata/

I’m not sure how do these things contradict each other? Nomadic civilizations can definitely transition to almost fully sedentary ones and ‘start building palaces’ while preserving some of their cultural history and social norms.

The comment I replied to implies no such transition happened. Also the Bhagavad Gita is a short read, you can read and find there are no mentions of nomadic lifestyles in that.

I did not say that they never transitioned to a pastoral lifestyle, I said that the original peoples clearly migrated as a nomadic tribe, which is substantiated by a lot of evidence. Unless you believe in the Out of India Theory which is peddled by members of the far-right in order to justify their political supremacy.

From reading David Anthony's book and others... The evidence seems to be that early proto-Indo-Iranian speakers traded and blended with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in central Asia on their way to the subcontinent and the Persian Gulf. BMAC was a settled agrarian society with extensive trade networks and an unknown spoken language that probably lent a whole pile of words and concepts into the Indo-Aryan culture (multiple times in different eras, too, apparently).

A somewhat similar process likely happened in the settling of Europe the Yamnaya culture passed through, integrated with, displaced, or dominated the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture and other settled agriculture societies in the Danube & Balkans regions.

Likely by the time early Indic speakers came to dominate in the subcontinent they were at least in part a non-pastoral culture, maybe with the typical Indo-European tri-partite class system with warrior-priest-farmer, but all proto-Indo-Aryan speaking.

So are you saying that they weren’t nomads when they migrated to India (or invaded it)?

> Bhagavad Gita is a short read, you can read and find there are no mentions of nomadic lifestyles in that.

Which was written between 5th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE? So at least 1000 years Indo-European migrations. How is that relevant?

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