If they did come from Alexander’s army, then judging by the picture of the girl—this would confirm reports that the greeks were a much more aryan people in the 1st millenium than they are today.
The much older (and deeper in the interior) Urumchi Mummies also show fair hair and fair skin (and are tall) — also, a lot of people have, uh, had liaisons in Central Asia over the course of recent centuries. IOW, it’s difficult to believe such a thing would endure over 2000 years, not least because that’s not a typical look for a Kalash.
Fair haired characteristics among the Homeric Greeks — Helen of Troy/Sparta is described that way, fwiw — is rare.
The Celts had entered Europe as early as 1000 BC (perhaps much earlier) and around 400 BC expanded into Gaul (France), Germany, Poland, etc, and down into the Balkans, and finally into Anatolia, taking the old Phrygian area which was called Galatia as a consequence.
Alexander’s soldiers left no mark
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/07/alexanders-soldiers-left-no-mark/
It is well known that Alexander the Great invaded the Indus river valley. Coincidentally in the mountains shadowing this region are isolated groups of tribal populations whose physical appearance is at at variance with South Asians. In particular, they are much lighter skinned, and often blonde or blue eyed. Naturally this led to 19th and early 20th century speculation that they were lost white races, perhaps descended from some of the Macedonian soldiers of Alexander. This was partly the basis of the Rudyard Kipling novel The Man Who Would Be King. Naturally over time some of these people themselves have forwarded this idea. In the case of a group such as the Kalash of Pakistan this conjecture is supported by the exotic nature of their religion, which seems to be Indo-European, and similar to Vedic Hinduism, with minimal influence from Islam.
Kalash girl, Credit: Dave Watts
The major problem with this set of theses is that they are wrong. And the reason I bring up this tired old idea is that many people, including Wikipedia apparently, do not know that this is wrong. I’ve had correspondents sincerely bringing up this model, and, I’ve seen it presented by scholars offhand during talks. There are many historical genetic issues which remain mysterious, or tendentious. This is not one of them. There are hundreds of thousands of SNPs of the Kalash and Burusho distributed to the public. If you want to know how these populations stack up genetically, analyze them yourself. I know that they aren’t related to Macedonians because I have plenty of European population data sets, and I have plenty of South Asian ones. The peoples of the hills of Pakistan are clearly part of the continuum of the latter, albeit shifted toward Iranian peoples.
Those seeking further proof, and unable to analyze the data themselves for any reason, can check out my posts on the topic:
- The Kalash in perspective
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/02/the-kalash-in-perspective/#.UfdK69__5KA
- Kalash on the human tree
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/02/kalash-on-the-human-tree/#.Uf2ppGS9Kc1