indo-european origins, cont. (was: What Are the Race Deniers Denying?)

Gerold Firl (geroldf@sdd.hp.com)
18 Oct 1996 19:59:48 GMT

In article <541hqg$gd4@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, pdeitik@bcm.tmc.edu (Philip Deitiker) writes:

|> geroldf@sdd.hp.com (Gerold Firl) wrote:

|> >My best guess is that the proto-IE people occupied the great swath of
|> >steppe lands from the ukraine east to lake balkash, descending
|> >directly from the ice-age big game hunters whose mammoth-tusk shelters
|> >are so well known. They probably had pretty close affinity to the more
|> >westerly europeans as well; the hungarian and north german plains are
|> >similar habitats.

|> This would have placed peoples of vastly different characteristics in
|> long term association with one another.

The majority east asian peoples of today are fairly recent immigrants,
who have been expanding their range south and west for several
millenia. During the time of the PIE (proto-indo-europeans) (say, 5000-
10,000 bp) the mongoloid peoples lived in a much more restricted
range, in the cold northeast. I look at the ainu as a more
representative subspecies of post-ice age east asia. In the old 3-race
model of humanity, the ainu were classified as "caucasian"; in a more
accurate taxonomy they would be a race of their own, the last remnants
of the post-ice age paleo-siberians.

To summarize, I'm suggesting that the PIE occupied the entire eurasian
steppe. At the end of the ice age, when changing climate and expanding
populations in the middle east were driving the conversion to
agriculture, the PIE were able to continue as hunter-gatherers for a
much longer time, since the grasslands still supported large herds of
game animals. As population pressure increased, domestication
(possibly adopted from the civilized south) increased carrying
capacity; the evolution of lactose-tolerance increased it still
further. It wasn't until about 4000 bp that the PIE became too
numerous to sustain their accustomed way of life in the steppes, but
rather than taking up agriculture they burst out of their homeland
upon their civilized neighbors to the south, and upon their less
civilized neighbors to the east and west. Mobile warfare had long been
the supreme art of the plains, and the PIE had a significant military
advantage over everybody else. They rapidly conquered northern india,
anatolia, and the middle east as far as egypt. Based on the chariots
of shang china, they may have gotten there too; possibly as far as
shantung. They probably reached jutland before shantung, since the
corridor of plains is much more open westward. Jutland was like a
miniature steppe, except that the grass grew a lot thicker, the
winters were much milder, and you needed to be a seafarer if you
wanted to get anywhere. The techniques of sea-borne raiding are not
that different from the old ways of the chariot, and the IE people
took to it avidly. The celts of ireland and britain were still using
chariots when the romans arrived, and the vikings simply took the next
logical step.

-- 

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Disclaimer claims dat de claims claimed in dis are de claims of meself,

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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=----   Gerold Firl @ ..hplabs!hp-sdd!geroldf