Would you kill Hitler?

[xmad]

Originally Posted by kishkash

Reza Shah...and he wasn't an islamic supporter...he was the opposite. He was a revolutionary who wanted to modernize iran and had great support from the US and european countries. When he was overthrown it was the US who helped him come back to power.

Yes, Reza Khan/shah wasnt an islamic supporter that's why I said Iran's king.
" Reza Shah tried to avoid involvement with Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; formed from the Russian Empire in 1922). Even though many of his development projects required foreign technical expertise, he avoided awarding contracts to British and Soviet companies. Although Britain, through its ownership of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, controlled all of Iran's oil resources, Reza Shah preferred to obtain technical assistance from Germany, France, Italy and other European countries. This made problems for Iran after 1939, when Germany and Britain became enemies in World War II. Reza Shah proclaimed Iran as a neutral country, but Britain insisted that German engineers and technicians in Iran were spies with missions to sabotage British oil facilities in southwestern Iran. Britain demanded that Iran expel all German citizens, but Reza Shah refused, claiming this would adversely impact his development projects."
"Following Germany's invasion of the USSR in June 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union became allies. Both turned their attention to Iran. Britain and the USSR saw the newly opened Trans-Iranian Railroad as an attractive route to transport supplies from the Persian Gulf to the Soviet region. In August 1941, because Reza Shah refused to expel the German nationals, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran, arrested him and sent him into exile, taking control of Iran's communications and coveted railroad "

for more information you can visit this site :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlavi_dynasty

[marina]

Offtop:
Thanks for answering my question perfectly , Amber

[freddie]

Was there ever such a thing as an Indo-European ethnic group or at least a collecitve entity of this sort?! I thought this just meant similarities between different cultures that were bound together by closeness, military alligances and shared one family of langauges (proto-indo euroepean)? I mean, I know there's evidence of a linguistic connection, since Persian langauge is obviously Indo-European, let alone the fabulous family ties of all Euro langauges, but is there any evidence of there being a single genotype of common Proto-Indoeuropean ancestors?

[haku]

Originally Posted by freddie

Was there ever such a thing as an Indo-European ethnic group or at least a collecitve entity of this sort?! I thought this just meant similarities between different cultures that were bound together by closeness, military alligances and shared one family of langauges (proto-indo euroepean)? I mean, I know there's evidence of a linguistic connection, since Persian langauge is obviously Indo-European, let alone the fabulous family ties of all Euro langauges, but is there any evidence of there being a single genotype of common Proto-Indoeuropean ancestors?

Yes, genetic analysis has showed that except for Basques, Hungarians, and Finns, all European people have Proto-Indo-European genes; Persians and Indians (except for Dravidians in Southern India who are of African origin) also have Proto-Indo-European genes.

There was a Proto-Indo-European nation… and Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Persian, and Indian people all came from that original homeland… one people, one language, same genes… And those genes are still there in modern Europeans, Persians, and Indians and of course they all speak languages derived from that original single language.

That does not mean that European people are 100% Indo-European though, European people are a combination of 2 different genetic materials, one part comes from Pre-Europeans, and the other part comes from Indo-Europeans, on average European people are 70% Pre-European and 30% Indo-European.

Very basically, in Europe, things happened like this:
Homo-Sapiens started to populate Europe about 50,000 years ago during a warm period.
During the last ice age, most of Europe got covered by glaziers and became uninhabitable, Human population decreased to a very small number and only managed to survive in the Iberian and Italian peninsulas and Greece, those people are the 'Pre-Europeans'.
After the end of the last ice age (10,000 BC), Pre-Europeans slowly repopulated northern Europe, eventually they even developed 2 main civilizations, the Minoan one in Crete, and the Megalithic one in North-Western Europe (those people who raised menhirs and dolmens).
From 2,500 BC, Indo-Europeans arrived from the East in several waves, first the Greek group, then the Italic and Celtic groups, then the Germanic group, and finally the Slavic group.

It will take a few centuries for Indo-Europeans to take control of the whole continent and subjugate Pre-Europeans. Pre-Europeans were obviously not eradicated by Indo-Europeans since modern Europeans still have 2 thirds of their genes coming from that old group, but Indo-Europeans clearly became the new rulers of the continent, they imposed their languages, their social structure, their culture, their pantheon…
After the arrival of Indo-Europeans, Pre-European cultures and languages totally disappeared (except for the Basque language), by 1,000 BC, Europe had become linguistically and culturally totally Indo-European.

[freddie]

70%? I find that number almost hard to believe. Especially considering those people were subjugated completely. I doubt any self-respecting indo-european would want to mate with pre-european savages - at least not massively up to an extent where pre-europeans would become genetically dominant.
And I'd say there's another group besides the Ugro-finnish (Hungarians, Estonians, Finns) that's an isolated island surrounded by Indo-European cultures - Albanians! No one really knows for sure where they're coming from. Some say they're the last remains of ancient Iliric cultures. Definitely a mysterious bunch. They make damn good ice-cream though.

[marina]

I don't get it .
Indo-European....but where are all those mongolian genes , Asiatic ? They also mixed and scattered their genes among Indo-European . Surely they contributed towards creating the distinctive look visible to this day in a small percentage of the eastern European population ?

[Linda16]

An alternative theory of the development of Indo-European and Finno-Ugrian languages has been created by a Finnish linguistic professor Kalevi Wiik. According to him Finno-Ugrian languages had far more bigger impact on Indo-European languages and genetically he sees no difference between Indo-Europeans and Finno-Ugrians. You can find some of his basic ideas in the following article: http://www.lib.helsinki.fi/bff/399/wiik.html

[freddie]

I don't agree with this professor. Ugro-finnish langauge group is completely distinct from Indo-European languages. Sure if you'll look for similarity you'll always find it in most langauges - I mean Japanese has been linked to the altaic langauge group (turkish etc.), by some linguists. Of course it must have influenced neigbouring Indo-european dialects as well as Indo-european ones influenced them (for instance hungarian has a whole bunch of slavic expressions in their vocab, just like Romanian for instance). It comes with the territory - quite literaly. But they're clearly a seperate entity in terms of belonging to any other family of langauges around them. Ugro-finnish has been connected to other (extinct) groups of langauges from Asian tundras - there's much more similarity between those groups of langauges and Ugro-finnish than there is between Ugro-finnish and Indo-European. I think that says it all.

And Marina... I don't think there's any real resemblance or genetic similarities between mongoles which were oriental and Indo-europeans of the time. There are however some theories that link genes of North/South American indigenous tribes and oriental people. I'm not familiar with the details of that one, though.

[marina]

Originally Posted by freddie

I don't think there's any real resemblance or genetic similarities between mongoles which were oriental and Indo-europeans of the time.

Yes , you are probably right , freddie . The thing I've been reffering happened much much later ....it's just I was googling and came across this :
http://www.stormfront.org/whitehistory/hwr18.htm

[Linda16]

Originally Posted by freddie

I don't agree with this professor. Ugro-finnish langauge group is completely distinct from Indo-European languages. Sure if you'll look for similarity you'll always find it in most langauges - I mean Japanese has been linked to the altaic langauge group (turkish etc.), by some linguists. Of course it must have influenced neigbouring Indo-european dialects as well as Indo-european ones influenced them (for instance hungarian has a whole bunch of slavic expressions in their vocab, just like Romanian for instance). It comes with the territory - quite literaly. But they're clearly a seperate entity in terms of belonging to any other family of langauges around them. Ugro-finnish has been connected to other (extinct) groups of langauges from Asian tundras - there's much more similarity between those groups of langauges and Ugro-finnish than there is between Ugro-finnish and Indo-European. I think that says it all.

When I studied philology at the university in the 1980s this theory you are describing was the most dominant. We studied that Finno-Ugrians had an "original home" in Urals and that
all Finno-Ugrian languages have developed from one proto-language. It was so-called "theory of a language-tree". Professor Wiik's theory proves that if Finno-Ugrians had an original home, it was somewhere in Southern Ukraine and quite a vast territory of Europe was inhabited by people speaking Finno-Ugrian (or Uralic) languages (8 000 BC - 5 500 BC). It was only in 5 500 BC when Indo-Euroepan language became prevalent (cf. Map 2 in his article)

Read his article, it's quite interesting

[simon]

I read Professor Wiik's article. These kind of arguments about the geographical origins of language groups are notoriously difficult to settle. It appears from what I've read elsewhere that a weakness in his theory is that the reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric language contains words for Siberian pine, Siberian fir and Siberian larch - which does seem to point to the Finno-Ugric Urheimat being in the Urals. Supporters of Wiik point to Indo-European loan words, which they say are very old and indicate the Urheimat spread from the Baltic to the Urals. But I don't see how you can really know how long ago Indo-European loan words crossed over.

There is genetic evidence that Finno-Ugrics have genetic links with people across northern Europe, but genetic origins and linguistic origins can be quite different. The old idea that the ancestors of the Finns and the Estonians migrated from the Urals doesn't stand up to modern genetic evidence, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the language can't have.

Think of the Magyars (Hungarians). The Magyar language is Finno-Ugric too (although about as closely related to Finnish and Estonian as English is to Farsi and Hindi) and known to have migrated from somewhere east, probably near the Urals, in the first millennium. The Magyars themselves show relatively little genetic difference from their Indo-European neighbours. Their language is from the east, but their genes predominantly aren't. It seems that the language was imposed on the Pannonian people of the area by Magyar conquerors after their arrival in 896. It's like the way the French and Romanians speak languages based on Latin. It's not that their ancestors were Romans, it's that Roman occupation displaced Gaulish and Dacian. Something similar could have happened with the Proto-Finnic language thousands of years earlier.

I eagerly await Linda16's rebuttal.

[freddie]

Originally Posted by simon

Think of the Magyars (Hungarians). The Magyar language is Finno-Ugric too (although about as closely related to Finnish and Estonian as English is to Farsi and Hindi) and known to have migrated from somewhere east, probably near the Urals, in the first millennium. The Magyars themselves show relatively little genetic difference from their Indo-European neighbours. Their language is from the east, but their genes predominantly aren't. It seems that the language was imposed on the Pannonian people of the area by Magyar conquerors after their arrival in 896. It's like the way the French and Romanians speak languages based on Latin. It's not that their ancestors were Romans, it's that Roman occupation displaced Gaulish and Dacian. Something similar could have happened with the Proto-Finnic language thousands of years earlier.

In the case of Magyars it's not that the language itself was enforced onto indigenous (indo-european?) tribes. It's just that what was left of the original genetics of this people slowly erroded away and merged with an average indo-european genepoll that was all around them. But eventhough they're genetically much more similar to average Europeans these days (so basically Indo-Europeans with a foreign langauge), they still holda lot of differences inside their culture that makes them very un-european in parts.

As for the theory - I don't know exactly how old load words from Indo-European langauges could contribute to a belief that these langauges were infact familial. Who's to say that both cultures didn't have contact in ancient days when both families of languages were still developing (of course as seperate entities) and thus influencing eachother while still existing as two distinct groups with different evolution.

On a side note I'd have to say that Finnish and Hungarian share a whole lot more similarities than Hindu and english or any other kind of germanic language. I'd say the similarities between Finnish and Hungarian are comparable to similarities between German and English.

[spyretto]

On a side note I'd have to say that Finnish and Hungarian share a whole lot more similarities than Hindu and english or any other kind of germanic language. I'd say the similarities between Finnish and Hungarian are comparable to similarities between German and English.

So the Hungarians have also evolved from the Mongols? Because the current English are Germanics

[haku]

Originally Posted by freddie

And I'd say there's another group besides the Ugro-finnish (Hungarians, Estonians, Finns) that's an isolated island surrounded by Indo-European cultures - Albanians! No one really knows for sure where they're coming from. Some say they're the last remains of ancient Iliric cultures. Definitely a mysterious bunch. They make damn good ice-cream though.

Albanian is indeed a strange language, but it is still considered Indo-European, an isolated one, or so i've read. Wikipedia has a short page on Albanian, there is an interesting table that compares a few key words in various Indo-European languages and whereas other Indo-European languages are obviously related, some Albanian words seem totally isolated. In all Indo-European languages, the words for 'mother' for example are all obviously based on the Proto-Indo-European root 'mater', but not in Albanian, strange indeed.

Originally Posted by Linda16

http://www.lib.helsinki.fi/bff/399/wiik.html

If i understand this theory correctly, it says that Indo-European languages spread through cultural contacts, but that no Indo-European people actually settled in Europe. For me it's going from one extreme to another. One being that Europe was solely populated by Indo-European tribes, which would make Europeans 100% pure Aryans, and the other being that European populations remained unchanged since prehistorical times and that not a single Indo-European tribe ever actually entered Europe.

As often, the reality is most probably in between, Europeans are the result of the mixing of local populations that had been there since prehistorical times with Indo-European tribes that entered the continent at the dawn of historical times.

Also, this theory dates the spreading of Indo-European languages as early as 5,500 BC, which is much earlier than what is generally accepted. Indo-Europeans did not arrive in Greece before 2,500 BC and in Italy before 1,200 BC, much later.
And based on how close Sanskrit and Ancient Greek still were in historical times, linguists generally consider that the Proto-Indo-European language started to break into several branches no earlier than during the 3rd millennium BC.

Moreover, saying that Indo-European languages spread from cultural contacts without the invasion of actual Indo-European tribes is contradicted by actual historical records.
We have countless ancient Greek documents describing how Greek tribes travelled East to West and finally settled in what would become Greece, ancient Greek documents also tell how there was 2 different types of people in Greece for some time, Indo-Europeans who spoke Greek dialects and 'barbarians' who did not.
Archeology shows that Indo-European Italic tribes entered Italy around 1200BC. Before the arrival of Italic tribes, the local population had a totally different culture, but after the arrival of Indo-Europeans, everything changed, language, art, crafts, religion…*This is not simply the propagation of a new language, it's the arrival of new people that actually settled there and changed everything.
Same thing with Indo-European Celtic tribes that arrived in Gaul at about the same time as Italic tribes in Italy, before that, Megalithic people were raising stones everywhere and they had a religion centered around a mother goddess. All of that disappeared with the arrival of Celtic tribes, once again it's not just a language that arrived, it's actual people with a totally different culture from the previous inhabitants.
And even more recently, when the Germanic tribes arrived in western Europe during the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire was at its peak, we have countless Roman documents describing the arrival of those new people at the borders of the Empire. Again, it was not just a language spreading by itself, it was actual Indo-European tribes that had travelled East to West and were now pushing on the borders of the Roman Empire.
Same thing will happen a few centuries later with the Slavic tribes who were also traveling East to West.

So no, i don't think that Indo-European languages spread by themselves through cultural contacts without populations actually moving, those languages were brought in Europe by Indo-European tribes that traveled East to West, settled everywhere in Europe and became the new ruling class, imposing their language and culture to the older European populations.

[spyretto]

Archeology shows that Indo-European Italic tribes entered Italy around 1200BC. Before the arrival of Italic tribes, the local population had a totally different culture, but after the arrival of Indo-Europeans, everything changed, language, art, crafts, religion…*This is not simply the propagation of a new language, it's the arrival of new people that actually settled there and changed everything.

They've actually found ruins in Greece of a ralatively sophisticated culture that dates back to 7000BC and was the way you describe it, before the arrival of the Indo-European tribes. We don't know what language those people spoke, the oldest Indo-European language is Greek, which is based on linear B but even linear A which preceded it and remains undecipherable does not date before 1800BC.

[freddie]

Okay, would it even be POSSIBLE to spread a whole family of langauges and stifle most of the old euro langauges in the process without the people actually moving? So just by contact? I don't doubt there were infulences even before the supposed migration, but there's a difference between an influence while still retaining the original language (for instance like Hungarian and Romanian were influenced by slavic langauges around them) and complete annihilation of the original language. IMO that's hardly plausable without a foreign invasion.

[kishkash]

...wow this thread has certainly gotten interesting...I LOVE IT

how did it morph so much from 'would u kill hitler?' into 'the history of race'



*keeps reading*

[marina]

Originally Posted by freddie

Okay, would it even be POSSIBLE to spread a whole family of langauges and stifle most of the old euro langauges in the process without the people actually moving?

freddie , given the such long amount of time , I cannot see why not ...

[freddie]

Originally Posted by marina

freddie , given the such long amount of time , I cannot see why not ...

Yes, if the Indo-europeans were actually PRESENT, it's quite probably that they'd wipe out entire families of langauges. But not in-directly, is what I'm saying. Only thing that would achieve is alter original languages up to an extent where they'd have a lot of indo-european vocab. But no doubt the core of the langauge would still be the same. Hungarians are a nice presentation of this. The majority of their vocabulary consists of loan-words from their slavic, romanic and germanic neigbours (Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Austria...), and only a small percentage of the original ugro-finnish vocabulary (linking them to Estonians and Finns) remains. However the structure of the language and the core grammatical principles (especially word formation) still say faithful to ancient ugro-finnish prinicples, just like in Finish or Estonian. So point being: you can't wipe out the core of the langauge with indirect influence. To achieve that you need full-out invasion, if not enslavement.

[Linda16]

Originally Posted by simon

I eagerly await Linda16's rebuttal.

I kept a lower profile in this discussion, because I'm not a professional linguist, but only a philologist At the same time a feel a certain missionary challenge to introduce professor Wiik's theory to a wider audience.
His theory is at least taught at Estonian universities, because an Estonian professor of Uralic studies Ago Künnap is his supporter: http://www.ut.ee/Ural/kynnap/kpls.html

The older theory of Fenno-Ugrian "Urheimat" has also been abandoned in official Estonian promoting materials:
http://www.einst.ee/publications/language/history.html
http://www.einst.ee/publications/language/language.html

On his homepage professor Wiik introduces also "A NEW ATLAS on the Origins and Early History of the Europeans" and you can see a demo of this atlas here: http://www.wiik.fi/kalevi/juuret/atlasdemo.pdf

A collection of pro or contra articles about his theory is possoblie to find here: http://www.geocities.com/isolintu/voodoo.html

I, personally, tend to find Wiik's theory interesting. After all, it's nice to know that Finno-Ugrians are among the oldest people in Europe and it's nice to know that genetically there is no difference between Finno-Ugrians and other Europides