Is not racial purity a misused myth? You and I share such an astounding mix that it keeps us one species that should abound with empathy for each other as we are all one.
Me? After a genealogical search lasting 60 years I find I am 3% Neanderthal, then with so many other genetic donations that the only true nationality I can call myself is “human”.
Hold on! Are there not many remote groups spared contact? What about the Inuit in the remote Canadian Arctic? Well, I did spend several years there, so know why so many Inuit are now travelling to Scotland to trace their genealogy. The Hudson Bay Company hired a lot of Scots to man their trading posts throughout the Arctic. These Scots were most generous in leaving genetic donations. No different from other males throughout history, but theirs was seeking retreat from loneliness.
When armies and/or people move they live off the country. Foraging details keep busy scouring the countryside for livestock and stored foods. Many local families lose everything including their lives; sometimes only a quota is demanded. Women are raped as spoils of war. Terrified villagers may offer their women to placate the foreigners in the hope that they will move on quickly without inflicting more damage. In one way or another migrating groups leave a long and repeated trail of genetic donations. When invaders conquer an area they usually have laws against marrying conquered women, at least for the first generation or two. There were few, if any, laws against using conquered women as slaves and concubines. Recently, two world wars and numerous minor conflicts stirred our genetic mix much more.
Wide-ranging Europeans and their settlers have contributed a major impact but so have others, like the Bantu who originated in Nigeria, then spread all over Africa south of the Sahara, impregnating as they went. They bumped into those Semites fleeing the increasing sands of the Arabian peninsula and who were doing the same. Both slaughter and gene mixing followed while the Bantu, now a new mix, flowed southward, still impregnating, but met the Dutch then the British so genes became even more mixed.
And, we cannot overlook the Indonesians who absorbed other islands; the Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians, and Sudanese in their numerous campaigns; mobile Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and so many others.
So it was, and so it continues to expose with ridicule those who claim racial purity. racial superiority, or accept racial inferiority. As the subject is too vast for a mere blog, let me concentrate on Europe:
ANGLES, SAXONS, JUTES: After the 5th century recall of Roman legions to defend Rome, the Britons(who were then a Celtic-Roman mix) had problems containing raids from the Scotti in Ireland and the Picts in Scotland. A British prince recruited help from Germanic warriors who served well until they realized what a pleasant land this Britain was. Their successful revolt against their employer permitted a large influx of new peoples: the Jutes from north Denmark, the Angles from south Denmark, and the Saxons from NW Germany. These groups interbred with each other and with Britons. As things were getting nicely mixed up, the Vikings invaded, occupying most of the British Isles. Then came the Normans in 1066. Today, Jamaicans, Gurkhas, Pakistani, Ugandans, Syrians, and many more are introducing new genes. So, what is a “Brit”?
ARYANS: Aryan is a sanskrit word meaning "noble". It also applies to a family of Indo-European languages. To the short and dark Dravidians of India, the Aryans were a tall, blonde people who had a Caspian Sea area origin. Between 1500 and 1200 B.C. they swept into India, destroying the Indus Valley civilization. Their songs (vedas) boast of warrior kings sweeping down on unsuspecting peoples and vanquishing them. The Nazis built the myth of the Aryan being the stock of the pure German. Applicants for elite Nazi units had to prove Aryan ancestry. It is said that the only thing pure about 20th-century Aryans was the bull that Herr Goebels used to promote the idea.
CELTS: The Celts were the descendants of the Kurgans, nomadic hunters and warriors who, about 2,400 BC, subdued a more civilized people north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus. They learned well from the conquered, and organized themselves to such an extent that in 2,000 B.C. they were able to sweep all the way to Spain and Britain. They brought a common language to most of Europe. The Kurgans who settled Bohemia became the Celts while those who remained in Russia became the Scythians. Both groups retained the belief that they evolved from animals, and both used horses and 2-man war-chariots. Greek geographers gave them the name "Keltoi" before 500 B.C. About 400 BC, Celtic tribes (BORI, SENONES, INSUBRES, LINGONES) invaded Italy, sacking Rome in 390 BC, and raiding Sicily. In 279 B.C. Celts sacked Delphi and other Greek cities. From 278 to 230 BC they pillaged Asia Minor. Romans rebounded and, from 192 to 58 BC took over Celtic Gaul (France). In 58 BC Julius Caesar annexed all of it. In 1800 Napoleon regained the borders assigned Gaul by Caesar). About 100 BC, German Celtic tribes were forced west of the Rhine by Teutons who were Celts specialized in mixed farming and cattle raising. Celts were tall, fair, muscular, hospitable, fond of feasting, drinking, and fighting. Drinking cups were often made from the skulls of enemies. Women in battle were often more ferocious than men. Their dislike of prolonged battles was a disadvantage against disciplined Romans.
The Celts were too vibrant, too individualistic, and too dominant to advance far beyond the tribal stage. For instance, Celtic Ireland has never been united. The ancient Celtic Britons who opposed the Romans were ferocious but poorly disciplined. Both sexes often went into battle in the nude, using a blue dye, called woad, to create hideous designs, along with loud shouting, to terrify the enemy. Much later, Oxford students wrote the poem, “Woad”, sung to the tune of “Men of Harlech”. (See Blog 113 of 01 Jan 2015).
DORIONS: Dorions inhabited the Danube basin prior to 1200 BC. They were the uncivilized relatives of the ARCHAEANS who had moved into Greece around 1500 BC. Dorians imported modern weapons from the Archaeans who were willing to sell their future for immediate profit. Dorions learned to use them well.
Between 1200 and 1000 BC Danube weather turned colder and wetter, ruining crops, so migrations were vast. Dorions swept into Italy and the Balkans. Greek armies were weakened by the Trojan Wars, enabling the Dorions to so destroy the Greek civilization that even writing became a lost art. The vast number of illegitimate children produced were not treated as equals so their mothers taught the old ways but it still took 300 years for the old Greek culture to emerge, this time stronger and led to the Homer age.
FRANKS: In the 200s Germanic tribal remnants formed the Franks east of the central Rhine. They then broke into SALIANS, RIPUARIANS, and HESSIANS (CHATTI). They allied with the ALAMANNI to colonize Belgium and France from 250 to 650, replacing Latin and Christianity with German and paganism. In 481 CLOVIS inherited the Salian throne, and won control of all Franks by assassinating the other kings. He re-established Christianity to please his wife. His Merovian dynasty followed; then the Carolingians under Charlemagne extended Frankish control over most Germans.
GOTHS, VANDALS, CEPIDAE: These Germanic tribes migrated from Sweden to northern Germany about 100 BC, while CIMBRI and TEUTONIC Germans invaded southern Gaul and northern Italy to be defeated by Marius of Rome in 120 BC. In 98 AD the Roman historian, Tacitus, described in “Germania” Germanic people including: Chatti, Frisii (Frisians), Cherusci, Suebi (Schwaben), Semnones, Angles, Hermunduri, Marcomanni, Bastarnae, Goths, Cepidae, Vandals, Suiones, Sitones, and Langobardi (Lombardy). Germans, within the Roman Empire, used the term “Germani, those outside “Diutisc” which became Deutsch. The Saxons, Burgundians, and Franks became important after the time of Tacitus.
GOTHS and HUNS: The Goths took over northern Germany and Poland from their fellow Scandinavians, the Vandals, about the time of Christ. By 275 they had forced the Romans out of Dacia, to become the Romanian Goths - or VISIGOTHS - (gallant people). The Goths who captured the Ukraine became the OSTROGOTHS (eastern people). In turn the Goths were subdued and scattered by the HUNS, except for the Crimean Ostrogoths who retained their identity through the Middle Ages. The Romans, unable to stop the hordes of uncouth Huns, sweeping in from east of the Volga River, tried to bribe them with up to 2,100 pounds of gold per year. The Huns were primitive pastoral people, but excellent horsemen and archers. Bribes made them wealthy, and they extended their sway to Burgundy. They then revolted against Rome, took the Balkans, and Attila sacked Rome in 410. The Huns forced conquered men into military service, allowing a few to attain high rank. In 451 revolts of conquered people weakened Attila, and his numerous sons quarrelled, dividing his empire and leaving the Huns no significant role in future history (the term "Hun" was used in two world wars as a derogatory term for Germans). When the Romans and Huns had exhausted themselves, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, became King of Italy in 493. Numerous battles and the persecution of Arian Christians caused Ostrogoth decline in Italy by 554. Elsewhere the Visigoths had taken over large parts of France and Spain until defeated by Clovis In 507. They retained southern Spain. Quarrels between the Arian and Athanasian versions of Christianity and massacres by the victorious Aryans weakened the divided Visigoths who became easy prey for the MUSLIMS who invaded Spain in 711.
HELVETII: These Celts, who once inhabited a large area of central Europe, were confined to Switzerland by the Vandals in the first century BC. “Helvetia” is still used on Swiss coins and stamps so as not to slight the French, Italians, Germans, and Romanesques who make up modern Swiss, Suisse, Svizzera, or Schweizerische.
MAGYARS: Mother Russia was the birthplace of yet another race - the Magyars who founded Hungary. They were a group of tribes living between the Volga and the Urals and were related linguistically to the Finns and Turks. In the 400's they were forced west, and set up a federation of the Ten Arrows ("On-Ogur" from which "Hungary" is derived) near the mouth of the Don River. Living here for 400 years they adopted many new Turkish words into their Ugric language. In the 800's they were again forced to move west, and conquered the Danube basin from the Huns and Avars. Until 907 Magyars repeatedly invaded Italy, France, Germany, and the Balkans for booty, women, and slaves. They were forced to settle down on the plains of Hungary by the German King Otto I who defeated them at Lechfeld in 955. They were still a barrier between Slavic Poles and Czechs and the Slavic Serbs and Croats.
MONGOLS: From 1218 to 1500, Mongols, excellent horsemen and archers, organized by Genghis Khan, starting with one small settlement, and followed by Kublai Khan and Tamerlane, carved out an empire in Asia and Europe surpassed in area only by the British Empire. Communications were maintained by 200,000 horses and messengers who averaged 250 miles per day. They cruelly exterminated people who would not join them. They greatly influenced Russian culture and history. They tried in 1271 and 1281, but failed, to invade Japan. They forced the Chinese to wear pigtails as a sign of subservience. The Great Khan had 500 wives and countless concubines stationed to serve him wherever he went from Karikorum in Mongolia to Vienna which was spared in 1242 by the death of the Khan and the race of the generals back to Karakorum to choose a successor. In 1462 Ivan the Great ended Mongol domination in Moscow and began the long expansion of the Muscovite empire.
PICTS and SCOTTI: There were at least five waves of migration into Scotland and Ireland between 4000 and 500 B.C. Vigorous raids on Roman Britain by the Picts of Scotland prompted the building of Hadrian's Wall. In 138 Antonius Pius built a new wall further north between the Clyde and the Firth of Forth. In 200 the Picts breached this and by 367 had broken through Hadrian's Wall. After the departure of Roman legions, Angles fought the Picts and intermingled the two peoples. About 550 the Scotti of Ireland migrated to Scotland bringing their name, their bagpipes (which had originated in Scythia), and their Christianity (that they owed to Saint Patrick, a Romanized Briton who had been captured in a raid, had been made a slave, had escaped to become a bishop, and had returned to convert the Scotti in Ireland). After 300 years of turmoil in Scotland the Picts and Scotti merged. In 597 fresh Irish monks joined Picts-Scotti monks in Northumbria, England, to greet Saint Augustine and 40 monks sent from Rome by Pope Gregory. They all set out to convert the Saxons and then to spread throughout northern Europe, creating a flowering of learning.
SARACENS: These Arabs raided longer but did less damage than the Vikings. At the Battle of Tours in 732, Charles Martel (the Hammer) stopped the Saracen advance into France. The Saracens, however, continued to plunder the coast of Italy and southern France from Carthage. They conquered Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Crete. They destroyed the monastery of Monte Cassino and, in 847, sacked Saint Peter's in Rome. It took the combined efforts of Byzantium, Pisa, Genoa, and Normandy to open, in the late eleventh century, the entire Mediterranean once more to Christian trade.
BALTS and SLAVS: About 2,500 B.C. the Balts and Slavs, of the same linguistic stock, migrated out of Asia into Europe. Drifting apart they began to differentiate about 1,000 B.C., with the Balts moving towards the Baltic Sea. The Slavic culture (Lusatian) grew along the Dneiper, Vistula, and Oder rivers. These areas saw incursions of Celts, Goths, Cepidae, Rugii, Vandals, and Burgundians. The Slavs were dominant for a while after the collapse of the Huns in 455, and formed the Czech and Moravian states which were soon run over by AVARS, Franks, and Magyars. The westernmost state was on the Elbe River. It fell victim to the German Drang nach Osten (March to the East) that started in the 1100's and persisted through Hitler to 1945. Slavic states have included: Poland, Bulgaria, Servia (Serbia), Croatia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Slovakia, Russia, and Slovenia.
VANDALS: These Swedes conquered northern Germany, but were forced south by other Swedes, those Goths, so they seized Silesia, and clashed with the Romans. Some Vandals, captured by the Romans, were settled in Britain. Pursued by the Huns, the Vandals ravaged Gaul, 406-409, tried to invade Britain, but found the Pyrenees easier than the English Channel, so for 20 years they occupied all but eastern Spain.
When Rome set out to reconquer Spain, Count Bonifacius tried to thwart this by inviting the Vandal King Gaiseric to join him against Rome. Some 80,000 Vandals agreed and crossed to North Africa where they caused great devastation as they moved east through Roman Africa. They then turned on Bonifacius, defeated him, and moved on to defeat a combined force from the western and eastern Roman Empires. They signed a treaty of peace, but broke it when they decided to sack Carthage. Flushed with victory, they invaded Sicily, then went on to sack Rome, systematically carting off works of art and all pretty and/or important women. Gaiseric defeated two major Roman attempts to overthrow him, and he died undefeated in 477. In Spain the Vandals had been converted to Arian Christianity, so they persecuted Catholic Christians in Italy. After 500 the Vandals grew less warlike and more tolerant. In 533 a coup d'etat among the Vandals permitted the Roman emperor, Justinian, to defeat and enslave them. They played no further significant role in history. They did leave us the verb "vandalize" to remind us of their legacy.
VIKINGS: From 810 to 1050 the far-roaming Vikings made great donations of Scandinavian genes to women in Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Russia, Poland, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, England, Iceland, France, Spain, and Turkey. They delighted in looting, murdering, raping, and moving on. They slaughtered thousands In cold fury. They exterminated, or drove out, the Irish settlers in Iceland, making it their own stronghold to which they carried off the prettiest women among their captives. They first raided Ireland in 795, then controlled it until 1103, naming it Eire. The Normans (Northmen) of Normandy, who conquered England in 1066, were descendants of the Vikings (Northmen) under Rollo who were given this land by the Carolingian King Charles the Simple in 911 in the vain hope that it would keep them from molesting the rest of France.
Norse settlements in Greenland and Newfoundland did not survive for long, but it is possible that matings occurred with Inuit (Eskimos) and Beothuks. The French settlers of the 17th century, who married Algonquin and Huron women in Canada, could have married women with Viking genes, thus reinforcing their own Viking genes.
The name "Russia" is derived from the Scandinavian "Rus" that was given to the area around Novgorod, northern Russia, in 862 by Vikings.
AMERICANS: In a blog concentrating on Europeans I should include America where the Spanish, Portugese, French, and British variants were all so guilty of cruelly destroying the “First Nations”. But what is American?
Canadians can claim being the first “Americans” as the name was first recognized and used in Bristol, England, after the Newfoundland and eastern Canada voyage in 1497 by John Cabot, an Italian from Genoa in the service of Bristol’s wealthy merchant, Richard Amerike, chief owner of the Mathew, the ship Cabot used. In gratitude to Amerike for presenting him with a pension from King Henry VII, Cabot named the new found lands “America”.
In 1507 the name was applied to South America by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller while working in France. He selected the feminized word after the Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512). In any event the name, historically, applies to all of those two continents residing between the northern tips of Canada and Terra del Fuego in Chile and Argentina.
The people residing in one part of this, not liking the terms Gringo or Yankee, monopolized the name “America” as theirs alone, implying the others do not matter, a slight that still rankles, especially in Latin America.
Today, the genetic mix in the whole America deserves a blog unto itself.
This brief sampling should convince us that, while there are far too many of us for a small, fragile planet, our survival demands we outlaw wars, occupations, and oppression in order to co-operate on solving the numerous problems that challenge us and threaten our survival.
georgesweanor@comcast.net
www.yeoldescribe.com
4
