Talk:Aryan race

This page is sophistry

Ctrl-f Yamnaya: no hits — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.219.59.82 (talk) 02:39, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Who cares? That's about "Indo-aryan", quite different. Doug Weller talk 08:30, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Synthesis of Witzel and Anthony to create a false narrative

Anthony (2007) and Witzel (2008) have been synthesized and mis-represented to support this erroneous statement: Scholars state that the historical Aryans, the Vedic period Bronze Age tribes who lived in Iran, Afghanistan, and the northern Indian subcontinent—composers of the Rig Veda and Avesta—were unlikely to be blond or blue-eyed, contrary to the proponents of Aryanism and Nordicism.[25][49

First of all, neither of these sources state that the all people who support these ideas are proponents of Aryanism or Nordicism. David Anthony on page 10 describes a wide variety of sources that have historically twisted the Aryans in to their own ideas, including not just racists but scholars like Marija Gimbutas, a feminist. He ends with the passing statement: it is highly doubtful they were blond or blue-eyed.

That's fair enough, but David Anthony is merely one author, and his research doesn't weigh more than that any other anthropology giant. It is unclear whether he is saying here that no Aryan was ever blond or blue-eyed, or that not all Aryans had such traits.

But Witzel is a bit of an oddjob and he's sympathetic to the Out-of-India theory, which means he comes from a position outside the scholarly consensus. Even so, on pages 10-11, he is far more cautious in his assumptions than Anthony. While acknowledging a racist "blond Aryan" trope, he also admits that this idea prevails among mainstream anthropologists, thus it isn't the exclusive domain of racists. He offers his own opinionated ideas about what they might have looked like, and cites himself as a circular reference. He also states that linguistic evidence is far less capable of answering the question of what the Aryans looked like than genetic evidence, and that the superficial appearance of these people ultimately matters very little.

Elena Kuzmina is is one of the pre-eminent scholars of Aryan origins, unlike Anthony who focuses more on Indo-European origins. Her book, The Origin of the Indo-Iranians carries no less weight than anything Anthony is ever written. She states emphatically on page 172 that the Aryans did frequently have light hair and light eyes.

The Eurasian steppe nomadic Saka were not immigrants from the Near East but direct descendants of Andronovans, and the mixed character of the Indo-Iranian-speaking populations of Iran and India is the result of a new population spreading among aboriginals with whom a new language is probably to be associated. This conclusion is confirmed by the evidence of Indo-Iranian tradition. The Aryans in the Avesta are tall, light-skinned people with light hair; their women were light-eyed, with long, light tresses... In the Rigveda light skin alongside language is the main feature of the Aryans, differentiating them from the aboriginal Dáśa-Dasyu population who were a dark-skinned, small people speaking another language and who did not believe in the Vedic gods... Skin color was the basis of social division of the Vedic Aryans; their society was divided into social groups varṇa, literally 'color'. The varṇas of Aryan priests (brāhmaṇa) and warriors (kṣatriyaḥ or rājanya) were opposed to the varṇas of the aboriginal Dáśa, called 'black-skinned'..."

Again, Kuz'mina is a pre-eminent expert on this subject and is cited throughout this website. So it's unquestionably biased to pretend that the passing comment of David Anthony and the meanderings Michel Witzel (who is sympathetic to the Out-of-India hypothesis...) reflect some kind of scholarly consensus. Kuz'mina isn't a nordicist or a racialist either, so it's a false dichotomy that anyone who believes Aryans were often blond or blue-eyed is a "nordicist". In reality this is a perfectly reasonable position supported by historical and, more recently, genetic evidence.

A genetic study published in 2009 found that individuals belonging to the Andronovo horizon were predominantly fair-haired and light-eyed. If the oldest speakers and spreaders of the Indo-Iranian languages were predominantly light-featured, it is highly probable that some Vedic Aryans in India and Afghanistan also had these attributes. Since that is not a minority or extremist position, --the pre-eminent expert on the topic supports it--, it must be recognized here, or the article is misleading the reader in to thinking that there is a consensus or a taboo where there definitely is not. Blue Raze (talk) 00:45, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 May 2026

The Nazis appropriated instead of adopted. ~2026-29480-89 (talk) 10:50, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

 Not done. It's not clear what changes you want to make. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 12:43, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Some (hopefully) non-contentious copy-editing

I’ve noticed a few passages in this article where pluralisation of a noun is inconsistent with the following verb, nouns lack a necessary preceding article, or nouns are pluralised in non-standard ways (I encountered an instance of “scholarships”, for example).

I’ve tried to rectify this issue with the smallest possible alterations to the passages in question, as the meaning is very precise and the prose is otherwise very good. I intend to go over the rest of the article and fix any other instances of this issue.

Given the sensitivity of the topic, I figured it would be sensible to make a note of this on the talk page, just to clarify that these edits aren’t intended to alter the meaning of the affected passages. I’ve tried to make sure my edit summaries are clear and detailed enough to actually explain why I’ve changed something.

I have no particular expertise in the subject matter; if I’ve gotten anything wrong, I’d be grateful for other editors’ input/edits/feedback. Foxmilder (talk) 03:48, 29 July 2026 (UTC)