Ancient Babylonian Music

[alfred russel]

In the lack of better evidence I would assume they were aboriginal.

With the exception of some often more modern incidents (migration to the new world post columbus a major example), in the cases that DNA and skeletal tests have been done, isn't it usually the case that people in a region from the historical period more or less looked like the same people living there today?

My default assumption would be the ancient sumerians basically looked the same as the people living in the region now. I also think it is unlikely they came from somewhere else considering there wasn't a migration in the historical record and there was considerable cultural continuity going back into the prehistoric period.

[The Minsky Moment]

Archaeologically speaking there is considerable cultural continuity going back thousands of years., at least that's my understanding.   

[Queequeg]

In the lack of better evidence I would assume they were aboriginal.

With the exception of some often more modern incidents (migration to the new world post columbus a major example), in the cases that DNA and skeletal tests have been done, isn't it usually the case that people in a region from the historical period more or less looked like the same people living there today?

My default assumption would be the ancient sumerians basically looked the same as the people living in the region now. I also think it is unlikely they came from somewhere else considering there wasn't a migration in the historical record and there was considerable cultural continuity going back into the prehistoric period.

TBH, I think people of the far future would make that assumption about New Yorkers today vs. New Yorkers 900 years ago. 

Classical authors talk about Thracians and Dacians being pale and red-haired, but those traits are really uncommon among modern Bulgarians and Romanians.  Ditto red hair for the Uyghurs and Kazakhs. 

[alfred russel]

TBH, I think people of the far future would make that assumption about New Yorkers today vs. New Yorkers 900 years ago. 

There are exceptions, and the one exception I explicitly stated is the one you bring up. 

Classical authors talk about Thracians and Dacians being pale and red-haired, but those traits are really uncommon among modern Bulgarians and Romanians.  Ditto red hair for the Uyghurs and Kazakhs.

I realize I'm quoting wikipedia, but from the article on Thracians:

Several Thracian graves or tombstones have the name Rufus inscribed on them, meaning "redhead" – a common name given to people with red hair.[41] Ancient Greek artwork often depicts Thracians as redheads.[42] Rhesus of Thrace, a mythological Thracian King, derived his name because of his red hair and is depicted on Greek pottery as having red hair and beard.[42] Ancient Greek writers also described the Thracians as red haired. A fragment by the Greek poet Xenophanes describes the Thracians as blue-eyed and red haired:

...Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair.[43]
Bacchylides described Theseus as wearing a hat with red hair, which classicists believe was Thracian in origin.[44] Other ancient writers who described the hair of the Thracians as red include Hecataeus of Miletus,[45] Galen,[46] Clement of Alexandria,[47] and Julius Firmicus Maternus.[48]

Nevertheless, academic studies have concluded that Thracians had physical characteristics typical of European Mediterraneans. According to Dr. Beth Cohen, Thracians had "the same dark hair and the same facial features as the Ancient Greeks."[49] Recent genetic analysis comparing DNA samples of ancient Thracian fossil material from southeastern Romania with individuals from modern ethnicities place Italian, Albanian and Greek individuals in closer genetic kinship with the Thracians than Romanian and Bulgarian individuals.[50] On the other hand, Dr. Aris N. Poulianos states that Thracians, like modern Bulgarians, belong mainly to the Aegean anthropological type.[51]

[Queequeg]

That seems fair, but the point on the Tocharians and the steppe in general still stands.

This attractive woman was native to the Tarim Basin, modern day Xinjiang province in western China.



The issue was that after the Indo-European groups reached kind of a natural limit of their expansion in the forests and mountains of modern Western Mongolia, certain groups were materially and culturally integrated and influenced by Indo-European peoples, and probably genetically influenced as well, but they weren't completely integrated.  Eventually, the great steppe pump got going as people from the arid and frozen steppe continuously displaced people from the western steppe.  We have records of this going back to the Cimmerians.  So every generation would look more "eastern" than the next, meaning that while in the Middle Ages people described Turkic populations ancestral to the modern Tatars and Kazakhs as "blondes" or "pale people", that's just not how we think of most of these populations today. 

I suspect something true has happened both in the Levant and in North Africa.  When urban and agricultural populations are weak, nomads have the advantage and move in, and this happens continuously. 

[alfred russel]

The issue was that after the Indo-European groups reached kind of a natural limit of their expansion in the forests and mountains of modern Western Mongolia, certain groups were materially and culturally integrated and influenced by Indo-European peoples, and probably genetically influenced as well, but they weren't completely integrated.  Eventually, the great steppe pump got going as people from the arid and frozen steppe continuously displaced people from the western steppe.  We have records of this going back to the Cimmerians.  So every generation would look more "eastern" than the next, meaning that while in the Middle Ages people described Turkic populations ancestral to the modern Tatars and Kazakhs as "blondes" or "pale people", that's just not how we think of most of these populations today. 

I suspect something true has happened both in the Levant and in North Africa.  When urban and agricultural populations are weak, nomads have the advantage and move in, and this happens continuously.

So basically the regions under discussion looked roughly as they do now prior to the indo european expansion, then with the Indo European expansion the white people moved in displacing the indigineous looking people who became nomads, and through the centuries the nomads bred with the indo european elite (which in this case would include sumerians?) eventually producing the current looking populations?

I don't know....

[alfred russel]

Aside from sumerian language not being indo european, the archeological evidence suggests they were indigineous.

[Ideologue]

Say what? Basque and Spanish are nothing alike, and in no conceivable way do they sound alike. Basque sounds like fucking Klingon.

Also, while there was undoubtly some Basque-Castillian mixing early on I don't think that Basque influence was as great as you describe it, and you might be making the relatively common mistake of foreigners to associate the Kingdom of Navarre with Basqueness, which it was not.

You grew up knowing one language and being familiar with the other.  I've heard quite a bit of Basque, and I think the sound inventory sounds vaguely similar to Spanish. The structure very clearly isn't though, which is what you might be hearing.  The vowel system is basically the same.   

And I don't really think so.  Navarre was ethnically mixed, but I think its ethnic core was Basque.  IIRC Castile was settled partially by people from Asturias, and presumably some of the reconquered area would have had some remaining Mozarabic Romance-speaking population.

If you say to somebody from Navarre that their ethnic core is Basque there is a not insignificant chance that you'll end up lynched.

Euros, everybody.  They still care about what kind of Caucasian they are.

[Ideologue]

great steppe pump

If you ever write a book, you already have your title.

[Queequeg]

The issue was that after the Indo-European groups reached kind of a natural limit of their expansion in the forests and mountains of modern Western Mongolia, certain groups were materially and culturally integrated and influenced by Indo-European peoples, and probably genetically influenced as well, but they weren't completely integrated.  Eventually, the great steppe pump got going as people from the arid and frozen steppe continuously displaced people from the western steppe.  We have records of this going back to the Cimmerians.  So every generation would look more "eastern" than the next, meaning that while in the Middle Ages people described Turkic populations ancestral to the modern Tatars and Kazakhs as "blondes" or "pale people", that's just not how we think of most of these populations today. 

I suspect something true has happened both in the Levant and in North Africa.  When urban and agricultural populations are weak, nomads have the advantage and move in, and this happens continuously.

So basically the regions under discussion looked roughly as they do now prior to the indo european expansion, then with the Indo European expansion the white people moved in displacing the indigineous looking people who became nomads, and through the centuries the nomads bred with the indo european elite (which in this case would include sumerians?) eventually producing the current looking populations?

I don't know....

Oh.

We're talking about the fertile crescent, so the nomads in question would come from both the Steppe AND the deep desert.  Amorites, for instance. 

[Queequeg]

great steppe pump

If you ever write a book, you already have your title.

Is that a joke?

That's exactly what it was, though. 

[Razgovory]

I think it should be kept in mind that concepts like color and ethnicity often differ quite a bit from culture to culture and time period to time period.  For classical Greeks, what they called "Thracians" may not line up exactly with what what we call "Thracians", and their description of "red" may be somewhat different then what we would call it.  Greeks might see some Celtic slaves with light brown hair being marched through town, and describe them as "red headed Thracians".


Take for instance the English phrase "Grey eminence" which comes from a French to describe Richelieu's assistant Father Joseph a powerful monk.  The "grey", was used to describe his clothing, however the color he wore would not be described as "Grey" today.  It would be described as a light brown or maybe buff.

[Ideologue]

I'm sure Richelieu kept in shape, but buff?

[Grinning_Colossus]

How much do we even know about Sumerian's genetic relationships?

Generally speaking nearby mountain populations are going to be a lot more conservative.  Eastern Arab populations are going to reflect 1,400 years of the Arab slave trade and 3,000 years of migration of nomads from the deep desert, the steppe and Europe.  They'd probably look like Caucasians.  I think there's actually some evidence for this; Jews outside of the Beta Israel and Kaifeng populations (who have been, at least legally, endogamous for 2,500 years) are pretty closely grouped with Armenians and Turks.  There's also some evidence that Sumerians migrated to their core area from the north IIRC.

I'm confused here - is the question what the Sumerians might have looked like?  Because then the subsequent activities of nomads and slave traders would not be relevant.  (?)

Also - what is the evidence of Sumerian migration?  I had always understood Sumerian origins to be unknown.

The question was about Sumerian's genetic relationships, not Sumerians' genetic relationships.

[Martinus]

Great steppe pump vs. Incan torpedo boats? The History Channel should do an episode on that.