Ishwa helper Reged: 03/03/02 Posts: 553

Re: For Lhotse and Priyadarshini and anyone else [Re: venky] #12959 - 03/05/02 04:25 AM Edit Reply Quote

Dear Venkat, Skin colour can change either way. It just depends upon pigmentation or depigmentation. Lhotse is right about the climatical and environmental adaptation. The reason why the Indo-Europeans are thought to have advantage of other cultures in that period is mainly for military reasons and especially the (spoke) wheeled chariots drawn by horses, and some other military equipments. I think that the matter is more complex. Semi-nomadic people are allways attracted by more urban cultures and at a certain moment of time conquer urban cultures. The urban cultures depend heavily on agricultural supplies. So not only urban cultures, but also the (semi)nomadic cultures indirectly are involved with agricultural settlements and developments. The main reason for every culture is to survive and feed the mouths, besides being too greedy and to plunder. You are right, Venkat, that the spread of agriculture and the movements and spread of cultures go side by side. Another point to remember is that urban cultures can become (semi)nomadic if forced to leave a region because of climatical change, war or economical collapses and the technological advancements made there. It takes time to rebuild their previous hight. And that depends on the opportuinities they get. If the entire new environment is hostile the change to rebuild quickly is low. About the fourth and third millennium and nomadic movements we have to look at the Kurgan culture in the Eurasian steppes. It is a big question what relation it has with the Indo-Europeans. That it is an IE culture is plausible. The reason why IE or any culture went deeply into many countries is, I think, mostly for military-cum-economical reasons. Whenever a (temporary) homeland becomes inhabitable for climatical reasons or military conquest of alien cultures, you have to leave your (temporary) homeland. The movement of one culture has directly effect on the neighbours, so that eventually a domino effect is the result. This happens in waves, dependant on when the first culture starts a conquest. Between the waves the wounds are healed and new cultures established. What is very significant is that a kernal group of people having an identity can impose there way of thinking, language and other things on other subject groups forming a part of the confederation. The leading group initially imposes their ideas first maybe by force, but gradually that is not necessary anymore. People tend to be related to strong cultures and voluntarily deny their own ethnical identity to become a member of the new, alien confederation to become a conquering member of that group: Mongols where never only Mongolians. They had mamluks or slaves and normal soldiers. The normal and slaves were mostly Turks, but also remnants of older IE cultures, such as the Tukhara, Hephtalites, etc. The whole group has the name Mongol, though the originally IE speaking people were actually different. The same was the case with the Kassites, Mitanni-Hurrians and Hittite-Hattis. So no culture is ever pure. I don't think that words such as 'race' are ever used by the older cultures in the same way as we now do. Their identity depended on a belonging to a socio-cultural organisation around a political-economical strength. This might be true of words like "Varna" (from vr=to choose in vrnoti and svayam-VARA) and "Jati" (from jan=to be born, namely in a tribal sense. This last we can see in the "zai" suffix of Pathan tribes, from zati-jati), which were words to describe of which cultural group or tribe one was rather than having the meaning of "caste" of later days.