The Aryans (Aryans) are one of the most controversial topics in archeology and history. Historically, this word denoted a group of peoples who spoke the languages of the Aryan group and lived in the territory of modern Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. However, later this word began to denote all Indo-Europeans, and even later it was heavily stained with the racial theories of the Third Reich.
Nowadays, there is a huge amount of misinformation and banal inventions about the ancient Aryans. In this article we will try to deal with them.
10. The origin of the word "Arias"
The word "Aryan" (Aryan) comes from the Sanskrit word Arya - the self-name of the Vedic Indians, but the meaning of this word is not fully understood. Some translate it as "pure" or "noble" or "free", but mostly this word simply designated their people, distinguishing them from outsiders.
9. Indian civilization
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For decades, scholars envisioned the Aryan invasion of the Indus Valley as a conquest. They say that the glorious Aryans in chariots crossed the Hindu Kush mountains and conquered the "lower" Dravidian culture. For many, this fact was also proof of a more advanced and superior Aryan civilization.
Nevertheless, it was not so. The Indian civilization, long before the Aryans, was one of the most developed in the ancient world. The first evidence of Indian religious practices dates back to 5500 BC. And 4000-2500 years BC there were already farming communities in which complex underground sewage systems were laid.
But around 1800 BC, the Sarasvati River began to either dry up or, on the contrary, overflow with catastrophic floods and decline began. Agriculture began to give up and when nomads from Central Asia came here, it was almost bent over. So the Aryans just took over the remaining vacuum.
8. Genetic traces
In 2011, an Indian specialist in cellular and molecular biology, Lalji Singh from Hyderabad, stated that the Aryan migration was a myth.
"There is no genetic evidence that the Aryans invaded or migrated to India, and there is no evidence that they even existed at all."
However, it later turned out that it was simply necessary to look elsewhere. Singh worked with mitochondrial DNA inherited from the mother, while other research focused on the male Y chromosome. And it turned out that 17.5% of all male Indians belong to the halo group R1a. Representatives of this halogen group mainly live in Central and Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, Southern Siberia and Scandinavia.
Geneticists believe that the first carriers of this group appeared in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, and from there spread throughout Central Asia, Europe and South Asia. It was somewhere between 5000-3500 years ago, and together with representatives of this group, the Indo-European language came to India. That is, this halo group can be safely considered the "genetic signature" of the Aryans.
7. Disinformation of the Third Reich
Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf became the real Bible for the Third Reich. By the beginning of World War II, 5 million copies were sold and it was translated into 11 languages. The central theme of the book is the exaltation of the German race, which Hitler calls Aryan and the demands to restore the glory of the German people and expand to Russia - the homeland of the Aryans.
Scientists have long noticed the similarity of some words from Sanskrit with some languages, including Baltic and Slavic. Because of which, the mythical race "Indo-Aryan" was even invented, which supposedly was the ancestor of the Indians and Europeans. Hitler believed that the ancestral home of the Aryans was somewhere in the Caucasus mountains.
6. The language of the Aryans
Sanskrit was the sacred language of Hinduism and many believe that it arrived in India with the Aryan nomads. At the same time, this language was surprisingly associated with religion and art. Poems, novels, prayers were read on it. Sometimes it is even called the "Language of the Gods".
At the same time, where this language came from is very difficult to say unequivocally. It has similarities with the Finno-Ugric languages and with the Baltic and Russian, which, of course, does not really fit with the theory that the Aryans originated in the Asian steppes. Therefore, a number of researchers claim that the speakers of this language (Aryans) really came to Pakistan and India from somewhere in the north.
5. The last purebred Aryans
In the lost Himalayan regions of Kashmir, a tribe called Minaro or Brokla still lives today, who consider themselves the last purebred Aryans, or rather the direct descendants of the first wave of Indo-European migration.
They live in villages at an altitude of 3,000 meters and for many years have been a culturally and genetically isolated group. In their culture, even marriages with foreigners were forbidden and they strictly preserved ancient customs. They still do not drink milk or eat poultry meat, but they adore mutton.
Minaro are distinguished from all other Tibetan-Mongolian inhabitants of the Himalayas by their "European" appearance. They are taller, they have not round, but elongated faces, thin straight noses and lighter skin. They often have people with light eyes and light hair. And even scientists don't know where Minaro came from.
4. Caste system
The tradition of caste division originated in India with the arrival of the Aryans in 1500 BC and scholars believe that it was created in order to separate the local, considered inferior, from the Aryans who arrived here. For example, there were mentioned words such as "Dasas" or "Dasyi", which are translated from Sanskrit as "enemy" and were used in relation to the non-Aryan tribes of India. Some scholars translate this word as "servant".
The caste system consists of 4 classifications: At the top are the brahmanas (priests), below their kshatriyas (warriors), then the vaisyas (merchants and farmers) and below all the sudras (workers). To designate castes, the word "varna" was used, which is translated from Sanskrit as "color", thus it was mainly a division into light-skinned newcomers and black-skinned indigenous Indians.
By the way, among Indian brahmins, the majority of them have a much lighter skin, and about 70% of brahmins are carriers of the R1a halo group.
3. Excavated Aryan cities
In the South Urals in the Chelyabinsk region, Orenburg region, Bashkortostan and in the north of Kazakhstan there is the so-called "Country of cities". On the territory of about 350 km are scattered very similar in type ancient circular settlements with storm sewers, metallurgy and other signs of a very developed society.
The most famous of them is Arkaim, and all these "cities" were built in the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. Officially, they are attributed to the Sintashta culture, but because of the symbol on the ceramics in the form of a swastika (the symbol of the sun), chariots and other facts, these are obviously Aryan settlements, which were probably created during the "migration from north to east". Although, of course, there is no direct evidence of this.
2. Aryan Iran
In 1935 Shah Reza Pahlavi officially asked foreign delegations to call his country not Persia, but Iran. And according to studies, Iran in translation means "Land of the Aryans" and comes from the ancient Persian word Arya or Aria, which is related to the word from Sanskrit with the same meaning.
According to the historian Gerardo Gnoli, the term arya did not mean people, but those close to the royal circle and is translated as "noble". He also said that the term Iran comes from the words of Airyanam-Vaej, which is the mythical ancestral home of the ancient Iranians and comes, in turn, generally from Zoroastrianism.
1. Where is the ancestral home of the Aryans?
This is probably the main question of the whole topic related to the Aryans. Modern scholars generally consider them the ancestral home of the steppe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Some experts attribute to the ancient Aryans the representatives of the so-called Yamnaya culture, who were herders from Central Asia. It is from here that they say they went east and west, although there is no actual evidence of this. Versions with the ancestral home in the north of Russia or in the north of Europe are considered mythical.