Indo-European homeland, Pashtun point of view?

[Indo-Europeanist]

Greetings everyone!

Since Pashtuns are Indo-European speakers, the Indo-European homeland debate is part of your history. I am starting this thread in an effort to provoke some discussion and get a general idea of the most popular hypothesis/theory that prevails in the Pashtun community. Now there are many hypotheses as far as the PIE debate is concerned, so I've decided to list only the most popular ones. I suspect that Indigenous Aryanism à la Out of India isn't popular among Pashtuns, for nationalist reasons. But maybe you guys think of Pakistan as the proto-Indo-European urheimat? Please discuss which hypothesis/theory you prefer and why.

[Indo-Europeanist]

I forgot to add India, could a moderator fix this? Please don't vote until India has been added. Thank you.

Add India in alphabetical order as "India (Indigenous Aryanism)".

[Karachi]

The most recent study is suggesting that Anatolia(Turkey) is where the first proto indo european languages developed. so that is probably the original home land. The second choice is the steppes in Russia , But I think the region between Turkey and Caspain Sea is the best bet.

Out of India theory doesn't make sense any more, because recent genetics tests have clearly shown that much of south asians have high amounts of (ancestral south indian) Dna in them, while the non south asians groups almost totally lack this dna, because of this, it is easy to conclude that people from India did not go any where outside.

As for pakistan, the northern half of the country is a interesting area, I think that is where the indo aryans probably settled when they came with in the south asian boundries, Groups like Kalash, Dardics Pashtuns, Kashmirires probably have relations with them

[Midnight_Sun]

Pashtuns were a settled people yet some still are semi nomadic. I think the Indo Europeans were the same way. Their ancestral homeland stretched from Eurasia through the Central Asian steppe lands to as far as China. Their homes and settlements were found all over.

[Admin Khan]

Pashtuns were a settled people yet some still are semi nomadic. I think the Indo Europeans were the same way. Their ancestral homeland stretched from Eurasia through the Central Asian steppe lands to as far as China. Their homes and settlements were found all over.

I always felt like the majority of Pashtuns in the past were always nomads, and the nomads we see today are those that refused to change their life-styles, I could be totally wrong though.

With respect to the thread, I'd go with Turkey. I'd also assume that Kandahar and Cabul had a major role in the homeland, if we take into consideration old Hindu-scriptures that explicitly mention their names, i.e Kandahar. I guess it's hard to attribute their homeland to a modern nation, since most of what we see today on the map was rather more unified. Modern day Pakistan was part of Afghanistan, etc.

Do take your time and read this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/researchers-identify-present-day-turkey-as-origin-of-indo-european-languages/2012/08/23/6133c564-ed3e-11e1-b09d-07d971dee30a_story.html

Also, welcome to PukhtunForums.

[Midnight_Sun]

From what I recall reading, they were initially nomadic , some settled, some even went back to nomadism when it suited them, and some were in transition to becoming landowners. Genetically, I go with the Kurgan hypothesis, but I think there is some merit to the diversity of R1a1 in Central and South Asia.

[Toramana]

From what I recall reading, they were initially nomadic , some settled, some even went back to nomadism when it suited them, and some were in transition to becoming landowners. Genetically, I go with the Kurgan hypothesis, but I think there is some merit to the diversity of R1a1 in Central and South Asia.

I believe many if not most Pashtuns were nomads till at least 18th century. For example, when Yousafzai settled in Swat, Sawabi, Mradan, etc. they devised a land distribution system called "Da Shiekh Mali Daftar". It was a migratory system of land distribution (garzanda waish). Every clan was allotted a piece of land every 10 years based on lottery that it has to live on and then move to another piece of land after another lottery held for land distribution again after 10 years. This system couldn't be sustained by the the later decades of 19th century and slowly gave way to sedentary life-style.

I persnally concur with Steppe or Anatolian theory.

[abassinafghan]

I believe many if not most Pashtuns were nomads till at least 18th century

nonsence , they were settled small farmers in villages .

[Hakim Khan Urgonai]

I am a proud brown black desi ****** from Karachi. Never Europe.

[Tjanaparh]

I suppose somwhere arround the Caspian sea, in greater sense - I would distance i restricting, however it is a pleasure to her the Gamkrelidze-Ivanov hypohesis, but even if i is not right, not much changes. In our tradition we have some stories which would confirm Gamkrelidze and Ivanov theory - but any can be wrong, the trouth does not change if a place changes. And nobody is better or higher if the indoeuropean motherland or any other motherland is in his country

[Tor Gul]

I think the difficulty in establishing a homeland is due to the Indo-European moniker and the insistence of the academic community in combining the Semitic & Japhethic peoples into one homogeneous race. if they are divided in accordance with the scriptures then the archeological evidence becomes more clear. the Semites originate in the levant, while the Japhethites originate north of the caucasus between the black & caspian seas. from there they spread primarily east & west and a smaller group going south.

[DMXX]

The totality of the evidence (genetic, linguistic, archaeological) suggests the Proto-Indo-European homeland is in what is now south Russia. These people were semi-pastoral nomads whose language (Proto-Indo-European) shows interactions with proto-Kartvelian (Caucasian) and Semitic.

The Pashtun territories - As well as the Iranian plateau for that matter - Have the position of being recipients of one sub-branch of the Indo-European languages, which is Iranian. Even then, the origin of its' branch (Proto-Indo-Iranian/Late Indo-Iranian) lies much further north in what is now Kazakhstan. Archaeologists have assigned the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures to them.

A "Pashtun POV" is completely irrelevant to the discussion, given the Indo-European question is a scientific one which should be investigated and expressed in as objective a way as possible.

[Indo-Europeanist]

The totality of the evidence (genetic, linguistic, archaeological) suggests the Proto-Indo-European homeland is in what is now south Russia. These people were semi-pastoral nomads whose language (Proto-Indo-European) shows interactions with proto-Kartvelian (Caucasian) and Semitic.

The Pashtun territories - As well as the Iranian plateau for that matter - Have the position of being recipients of one sub-branch of the Indo-European languages, which is Iranian. Even then, the origin of its' branch (Proto-Indo-Iranian/Late Indo-Iranian) lies much further north in what is now Kazakhstan. Archaeologists have assigned the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures to them.

A "Pashtun POV" is completely irrelevant to the discussion, given the Indo-European question is a scientific one which should be investigated and expressed in as objective a way as possible.

Agreed with everything in this post (excellent post by the way), especially the irrelevance of the Pashtun POV. I started this thread out of curiousity, as a comparison between the Pashtun vis-à-vis the Indian mentality. Indians have in the past argued that India was the proto-Indo-European urheimat. This is not uncommon with other modern Indo-European speaking ethnic groups, that they argue a geographic poition based on their own ethnic background.

[torkham]

Just by geography of ethiopia, arabian peninsula and gwadar coast may have been closer at time of arrival of PIE language speakers Out Of Africa, and the existence of a Moenjodaro civilisation regionally closer to Gwadar, I suspect the PIE speakers migrated through Pakistan heading north following river indus upto gandhara and onwards, via river jhelum into kashmir, and consequently left flank spreading to iran, central thrust into afghanistan and northern-stans, eastern flank into himaliya. I am speculating.

[Apollyon]

Science paper returned from Discovery after submitting dna ... says im Eastern European "Lituanian region" I have brown hair brown eyes olive complexion Logari/Paghmani back ground.

So based on science Iam Eastern Europoid supporting the Kurgan Migration theory.


Anatolian or Caucasian origins ?
The origins of R1b are not entirely clear to this day. Some of the oldest forms of R1b are found in the Near East and around the Caucasus. Haplogroup R1* and R2* might have originated in southern Central Asia (between the Caspian and the Hindu Kush). A branch of R1 would have developed into R1b* then R1b1* in the northern part of the Middle East during the Ice Age. It presumptively moved to northern Anatolia and across the Caucasus during the early Neolithic, where it became R1b1b. The Near Eastern leftovers evolved into R1b1a (M18), now found at low frequencies among the Lebanese and the Druze.The Phoenicians (who came from modern day Lebanon) spread this R1b1a and R1b1* to their colonies, notably Sardinia and the Maghreb.
The subclades R1b1b1 and R1b1b2 (the most common form in Europe) are closely associated with the spread of Indo-European languages, as attested by its presence in all regions of the world where Indo-European languages were spoken in ancient times, from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the Indian subcontinent, including almost all Europe (except Finland and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Anatolia, Armenia, Europan Russia, southern Siberia, many pockets around Central Asia (notably Xinjiang, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan), without forgetting Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. The history of R1b and R1a are intricately connected to each others. Whereas R1b1 is found is such places as the Levant or Cameroon, R1b1b mostly likely originated in north-eastern Anatolia.

The North Caucasus and the Pontic-Caspian steppe : the Indo-European link
Modern linguists have placed the Proto-Indo-European homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, a distinct geographic and archeological region extending from the Danube estuary to the Ural mountains to the east and North Caucasus to the south. The Neolithic, Eneolithic and early Bronze Age cultures in Pontic-Caspian steppe has been called the Kurgan culture (Marija Gimbutas), due to the lasting practice of burying the deads under mounds (“kurgan”) among the succession of cultures in that region. Horses were first domesticated around 4000 BCE in the steppe, perhaps somewhere around the Don or the lower Volga, and soon became a defining element of steppe (7000-2200 BCE) by culture. During the Bronze-age period, known as the Yamna horizon (3300-2500 BCE), the cattle and sheep herders adopted wagons to transport their food and tents, which allowed them to move deeper into the steppe, giving rise to a new mobile lifestyle that would eventually lead to the great Indo-European migrations.

The Pontic-Caspian steppe cultures can be divided in a western group, ranging from the Don River to the Dniester (and later Danube), and an eastern one, in the Volga-Ural region. The Pontic steppe was probably inhabited by men of mixed R1a and R1b lineages, with higher densities of R1b just north of the Caucasus, and more R1a in the the northern steppes and the forest-steppes.
R1b almost certainly crossed over from northern Anatolia to the Pontic-Caspian steppe. It is not clear whether this happened before, during or after the Neolithic. A regular flow of R1b across the Caucasus cannot be excluded either. The genetic diversity of R1b being greater around the Caucasus, it is hard to deny that R1b settled and evolved there before entering the steppe world. Does that mean that Indo-European languages originated in the steppes with R1a people, and that R1b immigrants blended into the established culture ? Or that Proro-Indo-European language appear in northern Anatolia or in the Caucasus, then spread to the steppes with R1b ? Or else did Proro-Indo-European first appear in the steppe as a hybrid language of Caucasian/Anatolian R1b and steppe R1a ? This question has no obvious answer, but based on the antiquity and archaic character of the Anatolian branch (Hittite, Palaic, Luwian, Lydian, and so on) an northern Anatolian origin of Proto-Indo-European is credible. Furthermore, there is documented evidence of loan words from Caucasian languages in Indo-European languages. This is much more likely to have happened if Proto-Indo-European developed near the Caucasus than in the distant steppes. R1b would consequently have been the spreading factor of PIE to the steppes, and from there to Europe, Central Asia and South Asia....Without DNA testing it is impossible to say if these two populations were an Anatolian R1b group and a G2a Caucasian group, or whether R1a people had settled there two. The two or three etnicities might even have cohabited side by side in different settlements. Typical Caucasian Y-DNA lineages (such as G2a) do not follow the pattern of Indo-European migrations, so intermarriages must have been limited, or at least restricted to Indo-European men taking Caucasian wives rather than the other way round.....

..The rise of the IE-speaking Hittites in Central Anatolia happened a few centuries after the disappearance of the Maykop culture. A back migration from the North Caucasus to northern Anatolia is very likely in this age of expansion. What is certain is that the Hittites used chariots, invented in the Volga-Ural steppes. R1a being found a low frequencies in Armenia and northern Anatolia, it is not unreasonable to imagine that a hybrid group of R1a-R1b from the Volga-Ural region migrated to this region sometime between 2000 BCE and 1650 BCE.

http://www.szabir.com/blog/r1b-and-t...ean-languages/