Common Sense about the Arya in India

Common Sense about the Arya in India

One only needs to walk through the cities, towns and villages of India, listen to the words spoken, look at the faces, observe the customs and notice how all of these vary considerably even within each local region and how they change even more as we move across the subcontinent. 

This alone makes us understand that we humans of the subcontinent are a very diverse agglomeration or confluence of biological and cultural streams that continue to mingle and flow as they have been doing through the ages, in spite of all the partial barriers constructed over time against the mixing of genes and cultures. 

In particular, it seems highly unlikely that the "Arya" communities and cultures, with their partiality towards light skin and "Caucasoid" features and with their languages linked to those extending from Iran through Kurdistan and Armenia to those of much of Europe, could have been born from the soil of our sun-baked land, as claimed. 

The term "Arya" was also used among the ancient Persians. Even the latter-day Shah of Iran presumed to adopt the title "Aryamehr". 

Of course, languages (and more generally cultures) and genetics should not be confused. Though they often coincide to some degree, they just as often do not. 

So we can have groups with clearly different general physical traits speaking the same general language and sharing the same general culture, including faith, and we can have groups with very similar physical traits speaking very different languages and having very different cultures, including faiths, etc. 

The reasons for this are historical. This can be understood by considering some examples. 

Southern Blacks and Whites in the USA have been separated by barriers that lasted long after slavery was abolished and still persist. However, though they may often look very different and have very different genetics, they speak the same local or regional dialects of English and share the same Christian faiths. 

Of course, many in the US South, in both "White" and "Black" communities, share ancestries through marital and extramarital unions over the centuries of slavery and subsequently, while the dynamics of slavery and segregation have resulted in some cultural differences that still persist. 

In places such as Cuba and Brazil, the mixing of genes and cultures between Africans, Europeans (and, in the case of Brazil, indigenous folk) has proceeded further. 

In Belgium, it might be difficult to distinguish in physical appearance or even in genetics between Flemings and Walloons. Yet the languages they speak at home are quite distinct (Flemish and the local French). And while the languages of the Flemings and the Dutch may not differ by much, the two communities are still separated by religion and an international border.  

Indo-Aryan or Indic is a linguistic grouping, as is Indo-European, and this may or may not coincide with genetic groupings, previously based on physical features and now more on DNA studies. 

That said, one notes that the favored, 'Arya' skin tones and facial features are shared with later entrants from the northwest--from around 1000 AD on, mostly Muslims, as still evidenced in the complexions and features of many of our Indian film stars.

It is unlikely that the 'Arya' could have even existed there (in the sun-drenched subcontinent) for very long without gaining (through natural selection) the pigmentation needed to shield them from the adverse affects of solar radiation--perhaps a few thousand years, at most, despite the sexual selection in place that favors light skinned brides, etc. 

It could not be more than that, in my rough estimate, based on what one sees among the indigenous folk in most other tropical parts of the world, including, for instance, Central America and northern South America. 

These populations are taken to have mostly entered the Americas, beginning tens of thousands of years ago, from northeastern Asia, via Alaska, and so were likely adapted to cold and cloudy climates with weaker sunlight, where ligher, thinner skin allows for enough penetratiin of sunlight to ensure sufficient vitamin D production.

However, they have subsequently adapted, in sunny regions of the Americas, to conditions there, gaining in the ability to produce enough protective skin melanin.  

One notes the persistence of lighter skin and heavier legs (adaptations to less sunny and colder climates) among parts of the population of tropical Indonesia and SE Asia. The likely reason for this is fairly recent migration (again over the past several thousand years at most) of populations from more northern parts of East Asia into these regions. 

Among these populations, there is also a color prejudice, a preference for lighter skin, especially for women, as one notices in the widespread use of parasols by females.

This is a custom also common in southern parts of China and carried over into Chinese and other Asian communities elsewhere, including my "hometown" of Brooklyn, New York.

Like all other humans in the subcontinent, the Arya probably entered it from other regions, relatively late in the prehistory of human habitation of the subcontinent, preceded by others and followed in turn by others, with of course flows back and forth in and out of the subcontinent into adjoining areas as well as distant ones over time. 

As for the Harappan civilization, it always seemed to me unlikely that its population (probably diverse, given its extent in time and space) was directly connected with the one that gave us the Vedas or the later epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. 

Surely, there must have been cultural contacts and influences and surely the genes of the Harappan peoples survive in our current diverse populations along with those of others. 

Beyond these commonsense observations, we have to leave it to the experts in DNA analysis, to those who can find connections between the physical artifacts of the past and, if the Harappan script is ever properly deciphered, to the linguists who can then do their specialized work.