Children of the Kalash tribe in Northern Pakistan Photo: EPA Posted on 09/21/2009 12:09:41 PM PDT by Nikas777
Taliban targets descendants of Alexander the Great
For centuries, the blond-haired, blue-eyed people of the Kalash tribes of North West Pakistan have lived a libertine lifestyle.
By Dean Nelson in New Delhi and Emal Khan in Peshawar
Published: 6:48PM BST 21 Sep 2009
Children of the Kalash tribe in Northern Pakistan Photo: EPA
The group, believed to be descendants of Alexander the Great's invading army, were shielded from conservative Islam by the steep slopes of their remote valleys.
While Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians were slowly driven out of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province by Muslim militants, the Kalash were free to drink their own distilled spirits and smoke cannabis.
But the militant maulanas of the Taliban have finally caught up with them and declared war on their culture and heritage by kidnapping their most devoted supporter.
Taliban commanders have taken Professor Athanasion Larounis, a Greek aid worker who has generated £2.5 million in donations to build schools, clinics, clean water projects and a museum.
They are now demanding £1.25 million and the release of three militant leaders in exchange for his safe return.
According to local police, it was Professor Larounis's dedication to preserving Kalasha culture that Taliban commanders in Nuristan, on the Afghan side of the border that made him a target.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The Kushans for example minted their coins in Greek and used Greek as the language of court for record purposes at least.
When Alexander reached Afghanistan, he met Greek exiles who had fled Greece with the Persians in 479 BCE. Since they were considered traitors, they were exterminated.
I see there are several opinions about the Kushan “racial” background. The consensus seems to be that they were Indo-European. With the exception of the Huns it seems the “Mongol” type peoples didn’t move westward till somewhat later.
Better if the Greeks would have their top special forces soldiers come up with a plan and make the Taliban pay dearly for this action. Make it so expensive and so painful that the terrorist thugs will never again target someone of Greek ancestry. The Taliban will go for a safer target, like Americans, since obama is a sissy and a pushover who wants the Taliban to win, and these people will be safe.
Interestingly the Kalash live right next to Nuristan. This area was known as Kafiristan till the 1890s. It was the last major area of Afghanistan inhabited by “pagans.” It’s the area where Kipling set “The Man Who Would Be King.”
During the 1890s it was subjected to good old-fashioned jihadi forced coversion and is now 100% Muslim.
Just like Jews who became Hellenized were called "Greeks" by non Hellenized Jews during the aftermath of Alexander's empire.
That is what I mean by the last remnants of the old world are gone now.
The possibility remains that Greek missionaries may have spread Buddhism to China. The First Chinese explorer reached Bactria just after the Greek Kingdom fell. The road to the East was open.
Reminds me of the Kippling story — THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING.
Imperialist racist pig fornicators these Taliban be.
can you say ethnic cleansing??
NO! of course not...muslims dont ethnic cleanse, they purify islam..there is a difference.
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks Nikas777. |
||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Actually, one of the sources (written centuries after Alexander, and its author Curtius was a gossip monger) contained the probably made-up story about the descendants of Anatolian Greeks exiled by the Persians to Central Asia. Their old home was Didyma, For no reason whatsoever, Alexander is said to have massacred all them the day after they found this out-of-place Greek city. There’s not any such ruin known in Central Asia, the reliable sources don’t mention this “event” at all, and there’s not even any evidence that the Persians exiled anyone from Didyma after they smashed and burned everything.
Some in the academic community have speculated that the Kalash might be from ancient Middle Eastern populations, an indigenous population from South Asia, or members of Alexander the Great's army. Though often overstated, instances of blond hair or light eyes are not uncommon. In a 2005 study of ASPM gene variants, Mekel-Bobrov et al. found that the Kalash people of Pakistan have among the highest rate of the newly-evolved ASPM haplogroup D, at 60% occurrence of the approximately 6,000-year-old allele. The Kalash also have been shown to exhibit the exceedingly rare 19 allele value at autosomal marker D9S1120 at a frequency higher than the majority of other world populations which do have it... Another study with Qasim Ayub, and S. Qasim Mehdi, and led by Quintana-Murci claims that "the western Eurasian presence in the Kalash population reaches a frequency of 100%, the most prevalent [mtDNA] haplogroup being U4, (pre-HV)1, U2e, and J2," and that they show "no detectable East or South Asian lineages... a western Eurasian origin for this population is likely, in view of their maternal lineages, which can ultimately be traced back to the Middle East". The estimates by Qamar et al. of Greek admixture has been dismissed by Toomas Kivisild et al. (2003)... A genetic study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics by Sengupta et al. (2006), found the Kalash to comprise high frequencies of Haplogroup L3 (25%), R1a (20%), H1* (20%), Haplogroup G2a (20%), R* (5%), J2a and J2b2 at (5%) each[33]. Haplogroup L originates from prehistoric South Asia. A study by Rosenberg et al. (2006) employing genetic testing among the Kalash population concluded that they are, in fact, a distinct (and perhaps aboriginal) population with only minor contributions from outside peoples. In one cluster analysis with (K = 7), the Kalash formed one cluster, the others being Africans, Europeans/Middle Easterners/South Asians, East Asians, Melanesians, and Native Americans.
Did Alexander perhaps exterminate the men, but leave the women alive to make his troops happy, thus maintaining the blood lines?
Even the Successors like Antigonos One Eyed would send troublesome elements like the too independent Silver Shields Phalanx unit there too get killed off. Afghanistan was a convenient dumping ground for the unwanted.
Alexander left colonies in Afghanistan. Greeks culture persisted there for centuries.
The story is just made up, it didn’t happen at all.
I have always assumed that these people were called descendants of Alexander's army because they were locals who had become Hellenized. When Bactria was overrun by non Hellenized outsiders they would naturally have seen these natives as "Greeks" in the cultural sense of the word.
Kushans were a tribe of central asian nomads that over threw the Bactrian Greeks but in turn were Hellenized themselves. Kushan = Kalash?
Or maybe when the new order came in the Kalash were associated with the old order - the Greeks.
Sort of like if the invading Germanics identifying the Britons as "Romans".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.