Posted on 08/07/2006 5:21:33 PM PDT by blam
Them Celts got around ;-)
The book by Victor Mair, The Tarim Mummies is an excellent book. I've read it three times.
Professor Victor Mair is much older than the above picture.
Ping.
It's not surprising to find the very same people reaching China.
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Iranians were not Celts!
Unless you define every Caucasian as Celt.
I wouldn't comment but the Irish/Scottish proclivity for proclaiming Celtic dominance baffles me.
I mean, y'all got pushed as far West as you could go without falling into the Atlantic, so where's the dominance? ;^)
Celtic Y-chromosome DNA is R1b.
Iranian Y-chromosome DNA is E3b,H, etc.
It's pretty clear that the Chinese found a non-Iranian (non-Aryan) skeleton. At the same time the Chinese also find Iranians as far East as Western China in the earliest times.
The period under study is at the time of the Qin emperor (who is the first emperor of what we can call "China"). That's a long time ago.
In later periods, e.g. Ming, it was common for Iranian-type folks to become high government officials in China.
Celts lived along the Black Sea and the major rivers feeding into it.
Is it corrrect to call anyone with red-hair a Celt or a proto-Celt?
No ~ "Celt" refers to a culture. There are other types of red-heads. I've even met some Koreans with naturally red hair.
Okay. Thanks.
I've read that the incidence of red-hair in Libya is the same as it is in Ireland.
At the same time you can go to Yemen and find, way back in the hills, folks who express "blondism", which means red or blond hair, blue or green eyes, and lighter than average skin. Now not everybody in those areas exhibits such traits, but there's enough of it around to know it's pretty ancient.
You can go to Sweden and find folks with kinky blond hair too.
Humanity is "mixed" and has been for a very long time.
BTW, speaking of the incidence of red hair in Ireland, it's not as high as the incidence of red hair in Wales.
Red hair is very rare in Scandinavia and Germany today. It is an Iranic trait. Red hair came to Europe from the Iranic-speaking steppe tribes who inhabited the areas north of and around the Black Sea from 4,000 years ago to the 6th century, when they were replaced by the Slavs whose predominant hair color is shades of brown and dark blonde.
Sarmatians, Scythians, Thracians, Cimmerians, and other Balkan peoples originally carried this "Iranic" ginger trait to other peoples, including the Celts, whose original hair color was "Paleo-Atlantid-Mediterranean"....shades of brown, black, and mixed.
Germanic and Scandinavian people living in the "de-pigmented" zone during the Ice Age were blondes, with most blondes living in Finland primarily and secondarily in Norway/Sweden. Most Scandinavians have light brown hair. Red hair shows up in Afghanistan, Iran, and the Urals today. Azerbaijan and Georgia also have lots of red-haired people. Where are the most redheads found today? Scotland, Ireland, among the Ashkenazim from Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine, and in Russia. Now, were the Rus called Rus (Red) because of their hair, their skin, the color of the steppes' clay/soil, or their standard banners? There also was the Red Khaganate of Turanian peoples, but that was their standard or banner color. Then again you have red Khazars and white Khazars, but that again, was their flag or standard/banners.
The answer is the ginger gene shows up in people of many ethnicities. It's a gene. Neanderthals had it, early Homo Sapiens, and it's found all over the world, but mostly in the depigmented zone that had the severest Ice Age. It's also known as an "Iranic" trait attributed to the Sarmatians and their ancestors. In ancient Rome, most murals depicted women with red hair, but again, that could just be henna imported from Antioch.
1. Most of Scandinavia as we now know it was covered with ice.
2. Only the North West coastline was icefree.
3. Sa'ami are the first known occupants of Sapmi (or Lappland). The Sa'mi are "European" ~ probably prototypically European, but they are different culturally, linguistically and to a degree genetically than the Indo-European people to their South who arrived several thousand years later.
Although it was supposed for a long time that the "vaguely Asian" look so many Sa'ami have implied an East Asian origin, the fact is that this is what Europeans looked like initially.
I know some Sa'ami descendants who are platinum blonds ~ with brothers and sisters with dark hair.
As I have mentioned before on these threads, I have visited this tomb. Amongst the ranks of terra cotta warriors there are several who are dressed in what appears to be Turkish, or other Western uniforms. They also have western features (no two statues are alike).
The story we were told by the guides was that this particular emporor buried these statues (also horses and chariots) instead of burying his actual army, as had been the custom before his rule. He was considered to be a kindly emperor. Previously, rules killed anyone working on the tomb when their work was finished to keep the location and layout of the tomb secret.
Of course, that could be just a story made up for Western ears.
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