I don't feel Iranic anymore

[Wadaad]

What can you expect from a Muslim and black supremacist living in the West...

Instead of refuting you just ad-hom like the low intellect that you are...

[Wadaad]

[ comment ] Everybody has heard about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the recent Walt Disney blockbuster featuring Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of...a prince of Persia. That a rather fair actor with Swedish and Ashkenazi heritage plays the lead role in a story set in ancient Iran caused a minor controversy. Some enlightened people believe that Hollywood missed an opportunity to transcend its stereotypical depictions of non-Europeans, particularly Middle Easterners, by offering the part to a brownish hero. Of course, in private discussions, many Iranians, always prompt to portray themselves as "Aryans," concurred that Gyllenhaal accurately embodies how their ancestors must have looked, before Arabs invaded and imposed both their religion and complexion at the point of the sword.
So far, nothing unusual. What is surprising and alarming, however, is that serious intellectuals condoned these views. Asked to comment on producer Jerry Bruckheimer's declaration to The Times of London that many Iranians were "blond and blue-eyed" until "the Turks kinda changed everything," American-Iranian author Reza Aslan asserted that, indeed, Iranians were Aryans. "If we went back in time 1,700 years to the mythological era," Aslan said, "all Iranians would look like Jake Gyllenhaal." This pronouncement highlights the resilience of what I call the "Aryan syndrome" in modern Iran. A historical detour is necessary to show why it is so problematic.

Aryanism is a system of thought born in early-nineteenth-century Europe that divides mankind into different "races." It deems the Aryan race to be "superior," more creative and morally upright than "inferior" races. Those Semites, "Negroes," and others were believed to be characterized by vicious simplicity, cupidity, treacherousness, and an incapacity to grasp metaphysics. It all started soon after Sir William Jones discovered in 1786 that Sanskrit and Persian were related to Latin and Greek, within what later came to be called the Indo-European family of languages.

The term "Aryan" itself is a neologism coined by a French Orientalist of the era, Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron. It is synonymous with "Indo-European," although the latter has a more geographic connotation. In a Zeitgeist where nations and national cultures were given shape, where myths of genealogy were particularly appealing to intellectuals, and where some were grappling with the moral dilemma of colonizing people in far-off lands, Jones's linguistic theory was swiftly manipulated into a racial one -- linguistic similarity was assumed to denote racial kinship.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Aryanism was wrapped into the discourse of science. Racial anthropology came into being as a discipline claiming to classify humans into different racial categories with immutable psychological features by measuring noses, skulls, and ears. As we know all too well, Aryanists, in particular one Adolf Hitler, became increasingly obsessed with racial purity and elevated the opposition between Aryan and Semite to the level of paradigmatic antagonism. This opened the way for the next stage: extermination. Aryanism provided the ideological backbone for Nazi atrocities.


Despite the rather inglorious legacy of Aryanism, many Iranians still nonchalantly seize every opportunity to emphasize their "Aryanness." But how did Aryanism reach Iran in the first place? Iranian Aryanists would have us believe that we have referred to ourselves as ariya since time immemorial, and that this epithet is a racial one, used to distinguish those who are ariya from those who are not. The claim is fallacious. The term occurs only a handful of times in ancient inscriptions in the Avesta, and on the bas-reliefs of Naqsh-e Rostam and Bisotun. Absolutely no consistent meaning can be derived from these occurrences.

In spite of many attempts to force ariya into Aryanist assumptions, recent scholarship -- in particular the work of Gherardo Gnoli -- has shown that ariya was not quite a racial category. According to Gnoli, in Achaemenid times, ariya was a cultural and religious term to evoke the kings' origin, like a title of particular nobility. In its very restricted, exclusivist nature, that is quite different from a racial category. Moreover, as already mentioned, the term "Aryan" was coined by Anquetil-Duperron. The neologism is charged with modern and romantic European conceptions of "race" that did not exist in Eastern antiquity. Even more importantly, in the entire corpus of Persian literature, verse and prose, there is no reference to an Aryan race until the twentieth century.

[Dandelion]

'Aryan race'. It's so odd to emphasis on such idiocy (and I hope few Iranic people take part in it). The term is a cultural and linguistic term rather the way I understand.

[wvwvw]

Raine is always trying to connect everything to greeks, dont worry about it

The Persians themselves claimed to be descendents of Perseus which firmly dates them to 1320 BC. This is the date when they were speaking an indo-European language which derived from Pelasgian Greek because this is when Perses the son of Perseus became their ruler and imposed Greek on the population.

Spoiler!

"As the son of Uranus, Iapetus is linked to the expansion of the most
ancient of the Hellenes into Mesopotamia. The toponymics Ur, Urartou,
Uroúk, in the region which extends from the estuaries to the sources
of the two main rivers -- the Tigris and the Euphrates -- cannot have
come about by mere chance. The astonishing similarities between the
Hellenic Minyan-Aegean civilization, and that of the Sumerians -- a
fantastic race whose very name is the product of the fertile
imaginations of the British archaeologists who first excavated the
cities of this lost civilization -- have already been emphasized. From
the moment we acknowledge that the Greeks were already seafaring from
the middle of the 5th millennium B.C., with what were at that time
state-of-the-art ships, we can speak about their initial expansion
starting from the Palestinian coast. ... From there it would have been
easy to migrate inland to Mesopotamia, even reaching as far as exotic
India (which would explain the many myths concerning the expeditions to
that place by Dionysus at first and Hercules afterwards). We must not
forget that Alexander the Great followed in the footsteps of his
ancestors. And we are not speaking here about migrations of Hellenes to
those faraway places, but rather of expeditions for trade and
discovery, similar to that of the Argonauts.

However, while in the pursuit of trade and an increase of knowledge,
the Hellenes also transmitted the light of their civilization to the
indigenous populations, greatly influencing them in turn. After the
mist-shrouded ages of Dionysus and Hercules, the Minoan Greeks returned
to these lands, establishing trading posts along the rich Arabian Sea
and Persian Gulf. Lending credibility to this assertion is the
persistence -- as the historian Diodorus Siculus informs us -- of the
Yemenis in the belief that they are descended from the Minoans: and the
aforementioned archaeological finds testify to the accuracy of
Diodorus' account. From the Greeks, therefore, the natives in the lands
that extend from the southern borders of the Caspian region to the
foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, most likely learned new crafts and
skills. This is especially true insofar as metallurgy is concerned, and
explains why the acquisition of a Greek sword or dagger by one of that
region's kings was regarded as a great honor, even down to the
Mycenaean period.

In exchange, the Greeks secured a supply of metals and other valuable
raw materials. This held true up to the regions surrounding the estuary
of the Danube River in the north as well. And here, too, the Greeks,
just as during more ancient times, established trading posts for the
purpose of acquiring raw materials. This resulted in the native
populations of these regions becoming somewhat Hellenized. Continuously
exposed as they were, however, to the persistent raids and incursions
of the barbarians in the hinterlands, they never managed to match the
rate of development of the Greeks. We are of course referring here to
the non-Hellenic populations of the northern Balkans, and not to the
Hellenic Thracians, who, because of similar problems, also did not
follow the rate of development of the Greeks in the south or Asia
Minor, the result being they they are today characterized as
non-Greeks."

[Babak]

The Persians themselves claimed to be descendents of Perseus which firmly dates them to 1320 BC. This is the date when they were speaking an indo-European language which derived from Pelasgian Greek because this is when Perses the son of Perseus became their ruler and imposed Greek on the population.

Spoiler!

"As the son of Uranus, Iapetus is linked to the expansion of the most
ancient of the Hellenes into Mesopotamia. The toponymics Ur, Urartou,
Uroúk, in the region which extends from the estuaries to the sources
of the two main rivers -- the Tigris and the Euphrates -- cannot have
come about by mere chance. The astonishing similarities between the
Hellenic Minyan-Aegean civilization, and that of the Sumerians -- a
fantastic race whose very name is the product of the fertile
imaginations of the British archaeologists who first excavated the
cities of this lost civilization -- have already been emphasized. From
the moment we acknowledge that the Greeks were already seafaring from
the middle of the 5th millennium B.C., with what were at that time
state-of-the-art ships, we can speak about their initial expansion
starting from the Palestinian coast. ... From there it would have been
easy to migrate inland to Mesopotamia, even reaching as far as exotic
India (which would explain the many myths concerning the expeditions to
that place by Dionysus at first and Hercules afterwards). We must not
forget that Alexander the Great followed in the footsteps of his
ancestors. And we are not speaking here about migrations of Hellenes to
those faraway places, but rather of expeditions for trade and
discovery, similar to that of the Argonauts.

However, while in the pursuit of trade and an increase of knowledge,
the Hellenes also transmitted the light of their civilization to the
indigenous populations, greatly influencing them in turn. After the
mist-shrouded ages of Dionysus and Hercules, the Minoan Greeks returned
to these lands, establishing trading posts along the rich Arabian Sea
and Persian Gulf. Lending credibility to this assertion is the
persistence -- as the historian Diodorus Siculus informs us -- of the
Yemenis in the belief that they are descended from the Minoans: and the
aforementioned archaeological finds testify to the accuracy of
Diodorus' account. From the Greeks, therefore, the natives in the lands
that extend from the southern borders of the Caspian region to the
foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, most likely learned new crafts and
skills. This is especially true insofar as metallurgy is concerned, and
explains why the acquisition of a Greek sword or dagger by one of that
region's kings was regarded as a great honor, even down to the
Mycenaean period.

In exchange, the Greeks secured a supply of metals and other valuable
raw materials. This held true up to the regions surrounding the estuary
of the Danube River in the north as well. And here, too, the Greeks,
just as during more ancient times, established trading posts for the
purpose of acquiring raw materials. This resulted in the native
populations of these regions becoming somewhat Hellenized. Continuously
exposed as they were, however, to the persistent raids and incursions
of the barbarians in the hinterlands, they never managed to match the
rate of development of the Greeks. We are of course referring here to
the non-Hellenic populations of the northern Balkans, and not to the
Hellenic Thracians, who, because of similar problems, also did not
follow the rate of development of the Greeks in the south or Asia
Minor, the result being they they are today characterized as
non-Greeks."

Persians were calling themselves "Pars" and they named the capital of Persian empire "Parseh" which was called Persepolis by the Greeks. That doesnt mean they descended from greeks.

The idea of the Persians being descended from Perseus was probably used for propaganda purposes by different sets of people, likely to claim legitimacy of some sort over others, like you for example.

[Wanderer]

'Aryan race'. It's so odd to emphasis on such idiocy (and I hope few Iranic people take part in it). The term is a cultural and linguistic term rather the way I understand.

Anyone who takes this "Aryan" shit seriously is a loon in my book. Normal nationalists don't.

[Myanthropologies]

Anyone who takes this "Aryan" shit seriously is a loon in my book. Normal nationalists don't.

Nationalism in general has unessecary purposes. Its only necessary in cases of cultural genocide

[Myanthropologies]

Why not? Your results are similar to other Afghan Pashtuns and Tajiks who have been tested. Many of the most prominent Iranic empires and historical figures originate in our region (Greater Khorasan i.e. Afghanistan, Eastern Iran, Tajikistan & Uzbekistan). You're prolly 35-40% Steppe in other tools, ADMIXTURE isn't everything

Also, Pamiris are not the only Tajik subgroup. There are many other Tajik subgroups who are much more accomplished and relevant like Tajiks from Balkh, Herat, Samarqand, Bukhara, Badakhshan, Panjsher, etc. Some of them are even closer to Pashtuns genetically than Pamiris are. People on anthro-fora have only heard of Pamiris and over-hype them! In Afghan Badakhshan it is actually Sunni and Persian-speaking Tajiks who are the majority.

Im actually still close to pamiris genetically anyways

[Sekarotuinen]

Nationalism in general has unessecary purposes. Its only necessary in cases of cultural genocide

The USA is the greatest nation on earth.

[Registan]

Im actually still close to pamiris genetically anyways

True but that wasn't my point.