their way from central Europe (4,000-5,000 miles away) to the Tarim Basin...
and, according to Mair, left little to no archaeological traces along the way.
Posted on 07/06/2004 11:02:03 AM PDT by blam
Would be fascinating to trace everybody back to at least 10000 BC. There is probably enough evidence scattered everywhere if we just keep digging. The Sumerians came from northern Europe.
Yup, that would be great. We probably already have enough samples (worldwide) to do an expanded DNA analysis that could probably place everyone at a location 10k years ago.
The Sumerians came from northern Europe."
How do you know that?
I've not read the book indepth, -- just glanced through it at the library, but what I do note is that it's not easy to define a Celtic physiology as distinct from, say, a Germanic or other Indo-European/Aryan group. Hence, you'd have to base it on linguistics and the evidence does not seem to define that Tocharian was any more related to Celtic than to Iranic-Indic etc.
Victor H Mair (Chinese Language And Literature) makes the Tocharian - Celtic connection...he seems to have the credentials to do so. I'll go with his 'reading' on this subject.
"Throughout the 1990s, Professor Mair organized an interdisciplinary research project on the Bronze Age and Iron Age mummies of Eastern Central Asia. Among other results of his efforts during this period were three documentaries for television (Scientific American, NOVA, and Discovery channel), a major international conference, numerous articles, and The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (Thames and Hudson, 2000)."
Here's what Oppenheimer says on page 472 of his book.
"The Micronesians go so far as to say that the original inhabitants of the western homeland, the 'Men Of Mantang', had red hair and blue eyes and may also have gone to Samoa as well."
He goes on to say:
"Before I am accused of suggesting that a white super-race sailed the Pacific 4,000 years ago, I should say that I think that all these politically incorrect and recurrent myths about colour and technology differences are all still consistent with an Austronesian/Papuan or Asian/Melinesian dichotomy...."
Remember to that the Jomon and Ainu are in the region.
The oldest Jomon skeleton ever found in Japan is 13,000 years old.
Let's suppose that they have it backwards.
What if the original people with the red-hair, blue eyed genes originated in Sundaland and after their home-land submerged (Sundaland was about the size of present day India), made their way up the river valleys of Asia, across the steppes/mountains and into Europe 8,000 years or so ago. If the dispersal point was SE Asia, some would have gone searching for a new home land by sea and some by land...and, they would have gone in all directions perhaps explaining the persistant stories of red-headed people everywhere.
Note: I'm not discounting your ideas. They hold as much water as mine until proved -- that's how we learn. I repeat -- conversing with you is one of the best things on this forum, I learn so much!
Yes, it is amusing. The original inhabitants noted that the ones who brought civilization arrived from the sea. From where? They gestured vaguely toward the west and said 'Merica.
Thanks Blam.
Given that the tribes of Israel partly scattered into india, burma and china, yeah. The charge of Christ to the original Apostles was to minister to the house of Israel. Only Paul had a primary office ministering to the Gentiles.
Matthew 10:6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Matthew 15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Given the charge and the Archeology bearing it out. One has to say, yeah, the Apostles made it there.
We're about due for a major theory changing discovery or a whole new theory of human migrations.
Because they had iPods and were wearing Nikes.
"As we have just mentioned, the people who emerge as the Tocharians in western sources are often equated with a branch of the Yuezhi of Chinese sources who were driven from the Gansu borderlands by the Xiongnu, then further west by the Wusun, arriving at the Oxus, and going on to conquesr Bactria and establish the Kushan empire. Narain argues that once one accepts the equation Tocharian = Yuezhi, then one is forced to follow both the Chinese historical sources (which for him would propel the Yuezhi back to at least the 7th century BC) and the geographical reference of their first cited historical location (Gansu) to the conclusion that they have lived there 'from time immemorial'. Narain infers that they had been there at least since the Qijia culture of c.200BC and probably even earlier in the Yangshao of the Neolothic. This would render the Tocharians as virtually native to Gansu (and earlier than the putative spread of the Neolithic to Xinjiang) and Narain goes so far as to argue that the Indo-Europeans themselves originally dispersed from this area westwards. Seldom has a tail so small wagged a dog so large."
I'm also reminded that David Chatters in his book Ancient Encounters (About Kennewick Man), speculated that Kennewick Man was on a branch of humanity that produced both todays Europeans and Asians.
I wonder if these Tocharians went to Korea. Korea used to be really large, it spanned all the way to Manchuria, thousands of years ago. Actually, Manchuria was Korea. I notice Koreans have red hair. I know Arabs lived in Korea and married Koreans somewhere between 12th to 14th century.
See my post #116.
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