The Hunza of Pakistan and ancient Proto-Balkan-Caucasian peoples

In the past two years I had been reading many theories about the existence of a proposed family of Dene'-Caucasian languages.
Many theories of Proto-Caucasian (Caucasian as in people of the Caucasus see my other post) peoples and languages being spoken across Europe prior to the Indo-European migration which is believed to have occurred sometime during the fourth millennium BC onwards.

Prior to this time period in human history, little has been known about Europe until new research emerged about the possibility of Proto-Caucasian languages being amongst the many diverse language families spoken in the region of which may have been survived by Basque.

Many recent hypothesis suggest Proto-Caucasians languages and peoples populating areas of Europe. Certain linguistic theories have also linked the Burushaski language of hypothetical Caucasian families that also include Basque.
These hypothesis, though not proven lead me to a theory of my own. Despite lack of genetic evidence to support it and being doubtful of genetic results since most DNA tests on the Hunza populations seem show them to be related to the rest of Pakistan. I theorized that for the Basque and other extinct Caucasian languages to be spoken in Europe, a mass set of migrations must have taken place.

Thousands of years before the rise of the ancient Indo-Europeans, Proto-Caucasian tribes left their original homeland and moved westward and possibly southward since there are theories that the Sumerian language may be related to modern Caucasian languages.

But amongst these Proto-Caucasian migrations, a tribe or small set of tribes somehow ended up moving eastward. There are many cases of small populations migrating in opposite directions of the larger family, such as the case of the Tocharians who are said to be a Proto-Celtic tribe ending up in the Chinese desert instead of going along with the rest of the Indo-European migration.

If an established link is found between Basque and modern Caucasian languages as well as Burushaski and Ibero-Caucasian, then my theory is that the Hunza were a lost ancient Proto-Caucasian tribe that settled in Pakistan many hundred perhaps thousands of years prior to Indo-European domination in most of Eurasia.

Perhaps the Hunza are not descendants of these people as per most of the genetic evidence, but the language they speak may have come through a Proto-Balkan-Caucasian tribe that settled in Pakistan.

The Hunza are amongst the fairest people in Pakistan and bear a closer physical resemblance to Caucasian and European populations than to most Pakistani populations despite being closely related genetically; hence they might not be related to the people of the Caucasus genetically, but rather a people who inherited a Proto-Caucasian language due to nomadic settlements.

Or the alternate scenario could be that the Proto-Caucasians are the ancestors of the Hunza and absorbed outside genes as race mixing occurred.

Random migrations in ancient times may have led these Caucasians to enter the Indus Valley many thousands of years ago.
Only further research will reveal what the world was like prior to massive expansions and dominance of the speakers of many language families today, primarily Altaic and Indo-European.

"Dark-skinned" immigrants targetted in Russia

Frequently we hear of racist attacks against Central Asian and Caucasian (Caucasian as in people from the Caucasus) immigrants in the Russian Federation.

Alot of the times reports from agencies and newspapers state that these people are targeted because of their Asiatic looks or their "dark looks."
The first statement is more or less true since the modern-day inhabitants of Central Asia are predominantly Mongoloid, save for a few pockets of European migrants/settlers and Tajiks who seem to be predominantly Caucasoid (Caucasoid in this case refers to skull type).

The second statement is somewhat absurd and ignorant. Aside from many Tajiks, the people of Central Asia and the Caucasus are far from being "dark-skinned" people. Most of the Central Asian immigrants are Mongoloid typically with yellow skin. The immigrants from the Caucasus are predominantly white people ("white" in this case refers to physical appearance) and are indistinguishable from the average European population most of the time.

Below are pictures of Azerbaijanis. Can any "dark looks" be found in them?




Most of Caucasian peoples culture, linguistics and genetics differ from the Europeans, but in appearance, the vast majority of them except for a few mixed ones are as white as Europeans, with a huge percentage having blond hair, blue eyes. Others have red, brown hair with green eyes or blue eyes.
Where are the "dark looks?"

Even the Russian Neo-Nazis who target them, use the term "black" for the immigrants. The whole truth is that the "black" label is applied to people of non-European ethnicity which includes Chinese and other eastern Asian immigrants of non-European origins.

Being a blond-haired, blue eyed Lezghin or Azerbaijani makes no difference to the Neo-Nazi attackers.

Azerbaijani musicians:


Azerbaijani soldier:


Either the media misinterprets this "black" term or out of ignorance leads people to believe that anyone originating outside of Europe is always "dark"/non-white.
A lot of reports also claim that immigrants are prey to attacks due to their non-Slavic appearance.

This is a true statement as well. Though Slavic peoples, Western Europeans and Caucasians are of the same skin complexion, their facial structure generally gives out their racial identity or at least a clue of it.

But the main point is that the people of the Caucasus are predominantly white just as Slavic peoples and other Europeans.
The darker Caucasians are a result of mixing with darker invaders in the Caucasus such as Arabs and Persians.

To label all the Caucasians as "black" or "dark" on the basis of a handful is absurd. By the same contrast, Caucasians could also label Russians as "black" because of Russians like Alexander Pushkin.

Some more Azerbaijanis. Their appearance matches that of most other peoples of the Caucasus:

Is Persia Iran?

For a long time many people used to think of Persian and Iranian to be of the same meaning. But now with the age of the Internet and free flow of information, most people know this to be completely false. For Persian to be the same is Iranian would be like saying Punjabi is an equivalent for Pakistani.

Like Pakistan, Iran is a multilingual country with Persians constituting a little over half the population.
Many people also believe that Persia is an ancient name of Iran. The reason why the name Iran was not used before is because the modern state of Iran was not established before 1935.

Prior to that Iran's Fars province was known as Persia, but the other provinces of Iran home to the various non-Persian populations are not Persia.
It's accurate to say that Persia is not really an ancient equivalent of Iran, but rather a province of Iran; hence Persian history is a part of Iranian history now that Persia is a province of Iran.

Though the name Persia was used in Western terminology, it has it's roots in present-day Iran. The name is said to be derived from the word "Fars" or better the Fars province of Iran. This word sometimes pronounced as Pars (also used to refer to Zoroastrians in Pakistan "Parsi") hence the word "Persia" developed. The word Persia does not refer to the entire Iran. It specifically refers to the Fars province.
Fars=Persian person. Farsi=Persian language. Iranian=Person from Iran be it Kurd, Azeri, Baloch, Fars/Persian etc. Fars province of Iran=Persia.

There was a paragraph I found on http://www.iraninfo.dk/multimedia-videos/videodirectlink-70.html (the site no longer seems to exist) which I wanted to share:

Fars is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. It is in the south of the country and its center is Shiraz. It has an area of 122,400 km². In 1996, this province had a population of 3.8 million people, of which 56.7% were registered as urban dwellers, 41.0% villagers, and 1.4% nomad tribes. Nominally, F?rs is the original homeland of the Persian people. The native name of the Persian language is Farsi or Parsi. Persia and Persian both derive from the Hellenized form ?????? Persis of the root word P?rs. The Old Persian word was P?rs?. Fars province was originally called Pars after the Persians(pronounced Pars in Persian) which settled there. After the Arab conquest of Iran it was renamed Fars. A branch of the Indo-Iranians migrated to Fars in the second millennium BC. The ancient Persians became the rulers of a large empire under the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century BC. The ruins of Persepolis and Pasargadae , two of the four capitals of the Achaemenid Empire, are located in Fars. The Achaemenid Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. The Seleucid Empire was defeated by the Parthians in 238 BC. The city of Shiraz is located in Fars.

Iranian vs Iranic

Though usually the language family of Iranic is often referred to as "Iranian" even by the scholars, Iranic is actually the correct term for the language family and peoples.

Here's why:
-Iranian most accurately today refers to a citizen of Iran. This includes non-Iranic speaking peoples as well such as the Semitic speaking Arabs in the Khuzestan province south of Iran or the Turkic speaking Azeris and Torkomans in the North Eastern and North Western parts of the country.

-The Pashtuns while never having been historically native to Iran, but rather Afghanistan and Pakistan, so they are Iranic, but not Iranian.

-When referring to the Turkic language family, Turkic is specifically used and never Turkish which is an individual language and does not refer to the language family.

-The same is used when referring to Germanic languages. They are not referred to as "German" but as Germanic.

-The same is used when referring to the Italic language family whereas the word Italian refers specifically to the language.

-Likewise, Iranic is the most correct term to refer to a set of languages which are also spoken outside of Iran in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and other parts of the Caucasus.

Now there might be no such language as "Iranian" but the fact is Iranian is a native of Iran, weather an Iranic speaker or not. To refer to Iranic speaking peoples as Iranian is essentially declaring them citizens of Iran.

The people of Uzbekistan are Turkic, but they are not Turkish, otherwise they would be from Turkey.

The same way Iranic peoples are not necessarily indigenous to Iran and should not be called "Iranian."
Alot of people, including Iranians are slowly coming to terms with the difference between the two words.

The Indo-European language family.

(click on above image to enlarge)

Being the largest family on Earth, the Indo-European (IE) language family has brought fascination and confusion to many people interested in this family.

A huge misconception that has spread over the decades (most likely propelled by Indian chauvinists) is that Sanskrit is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language from which arose the modern-day IE family of languages.

In reality, nobody knows the name of the PIE language. While Sanskrit is one of the most ancient IE languages spoken and the first known IE language to use a writing system, it is not the PIE.

Sanskrit is derived from Proto-Indo-Aryan, which in turn is derived from the Proto-Indo-Iranic language.
Sanskrit is the parent of all modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu/Undri etc.

Another fact most people interested in the IE family are unaware of is that the closest living language to PIE according to linguists is Lithuanian. This is because unlike most IE languages of today, Lithuanian stayed mostly the same and changed very little grammatically.

According to a friend of mine who has a masters degree in linguistics, the closest language to PIE was Hittite, a language spoken in Anatolia, present-day Turkey.

Another widespread misconception promoted by Indian pseudo-scientists is that the IE family started in present-day India and spread out from there.
This is known as the "out of India theory," but only accepted by Indians and rejected elsewhere worldwide.

The IE family is actually traced back to it's early beginnings in the Black Sea region. Some linguists and historians claim that the PIE language can be traced back specifically to Southern Ukrainian regions of which many have been submerged by the Black Sea.
However, what is agreed upon by linguists and historians is that the IE family did start somewhere around the Black Sea region.

My best guess is the IE family was spoken in areas today submerged under the Black Sea.

From there the ancestors of most modern-day IE speaking peoples spread to the most Eastern and Western corners of Eurasia. Over time and geography, their languages slowly started to drift apart and slowly evolved into the modern-day IE languages as we know them today.

Depending on their geography, IE languages borrowed vocabulary from languages near them.
As an example, the IE languages spoken in Iran and Pakistan have a lot of Arabic and Turkic words in their vocabulary. This is due to their close proximity to Arab and Turkic speaking areas.

The furthermost east the ancient IE speaking peoples reached was the Altay mountain region and the Xiang province in present-day China.

According to a documentary I saw on the Tocharians, the Centum languages in the IE family are differentiated from Satem languages because Centum languages use certain suffixation and sounds that are absent in Satem languages.

The IE peoples that went westward evolved into modern-day Europeans. Most IE speaking peoples (not all) share common Haplogroups R1A and R1B

At one time ancient Indo-Europeans spanned throughout most of Central Asia but were later destroyed and/or assimilated by nomadic waves of Turanian peoples spreading out of the Altay mountain region.

A lot is to be learned about the PIE language and it's early successors. So far linguists have been able to reconstruct certain words based on modern IE languages and older ones such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

But until they do, it would be wrong to assume anything and elevate it to "fact" without proof or even evidence.

My thoughts on the Nostratic theory

Though I'm not a qualified linguist, I'm well read on the subject of linguistics and taken courses in the field.
Based on all the knowledge that I have in the subject, I have decided to post my opinions on what I feel is an exaggerated hypothesis.

Those who have a basic insight into major language families and their histories will know what I'm writing about.
The Nostratic theory is a hypothetical Super family of various language families thought to be related to one another going back thousands of years. Most of these language families are major language families spoken in the world including Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic, Dravidian, South Caucasian, Afro-Asiatic and some Native American families (Native American languages are diverse and grouped into various families unrelated to each other).

All the mentioned families save for Dravidian, South Caucasian and some Native American families are major families in the world in terms of number of languages and speakers.

From all my knowledge on linguistics which goes down a great deal, I believe some supporters of the Nostratic theory (both linguists and non-linguists alike) are getting carried away from all the findings of the last few centuries.

The discovery of the Indo-European family for example is no small finding. Numerically and geographically speaking this is the largest family on Earth spoken in almost every continent as a first or second language. It's also an extremely diverse family.
The discovery of it's existence has connected many dots for the first time in human history and was a major step in discovering the existence of various language families using various comparison techniques.

From there, I feel linguists are getting their hopes too high that by connecting one set of dots may help them connect even more dots and answer many unanswered questions.
Explaining the existence of a large family like Indo-European does not explain why so many languages sometimes with shared geography are not related to one another.

This is from where the over-excitement comes in. Because linguists have managed to fit many distinct major and diverse languages into large families, they could be pushing harder and overestimating what could very well be coincidental similar sounds in root words found in the mentioned language families.
As an example, some linguists have gone ahead to try and include Burushaski, a language isolate spoken in the far northern areas of Pakistan, into the Indo-European family.

A close friend of mine and well known Internet blogger, Robert Lindsay has an education in linguistics and appears to be a supporter of the Nostratic hypothesis.
Though I respect his views, I do not find myself in agreement with him. According to him about 12,000 common cognates (core vocabulary) have been found between proposed Nostratic languages.

Though identifying a proposed language family usually begins with this step supposedly called phono-semantic sets, I find the overuse of this technique especially in the wrong area can lead to misconception.

My view is also shared by linguists who do not support the Nostratic theory. The grammatical evidence used for this family by supporters also seems a hypothesis of it's own that most likely stems on common geography.
All these hypothetical macro families share a common geography, which is the most likely cause of them having similar sounding supposed core vocabulary or 'root words' (an alternation of roots words in a language due to outside influence cannot be considered a root word or at least a pure root word).

For example there is an Indo-Uralic hypothetical family consisting of Uralic and Indo-European.
Not only do the proposed birthplaces of these two language families share a common geographic area, but even many of their modern members have a common location.

The map below shows the proposed birth places of Uralic (marked in blue) and Indo-European (marked in red):



Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian, the most widely spoken Uralic languages today belonging to the Finno-Ugric branch of Uralic are spoken in the heart of Europe, a predominantly Indo-European speaking continent.
They are surrounded by Indo-European languages and have been used to compare proposed similarities between Uralic and IE based on similar sounding words which most likely were influenced by the IE languages that have been surrounding them for centuries.

Another comparison has been made between IE and Semitic, a subbranch of the Afro-Asiatic family.
It should be noted that no other subbranch of Afro-Asiatic has been compared to IE except for Semitic, which shares a common geography with the IE speaking world unlike other subfamilies of Afro-Asiatic.
In this comparison between the two for example, the linguist comparing them admits the same similarities between Semitic and other proposed Nostratic languages have been hard to find.

This is another piece of possible genetic evidence that pro-Nostraticists would take into consideration.

The map below shows the close geography of Semitic (spoken mainly in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula) to Indo-European:


There has also been a proposed Ural-Altaic family, which most linguists today have discounted on the basis there's not enough genetic relationship between the two.
Again the proposed relationship between Uralic and Altaic coincides with a relatively common geography between the most likely birthplaces of these two language families which is in Northern Asia.
An indirect relationship between the two may exist since both show common grammar and vocabulary to Dravidian, Sumerian and some Native American language families in certain areas.

From here comes important questions for those who use theories like Indo-Uralic, Indo-European-Semitic and Alto-Uralic (better known as Ural-Altaic) as evidence for a common Nostratic family.
Why are certain branches within the proposed Nostratic family hypothesized to have a common sub grouping such as Indo-Uralic or Alto-Uralic or Semitic-Indo-European?
Is the common geography between these subfamilies coincidental or a likely cause for common sounding 'roots words' (remember root words that may be influenced cannot be considered root words or pure root words at least) and genetic relationships?

Why is there no Indo-Altaic hypothesis? Or Afro-Uralic hypothesis? Or an Afro-Altaic hypothesis? Even if they are all close enough to push into one hypothetical family, why has there been no deep comparison between Afro-Asiatic and Uralic or IE and Altaic or Afro-Asiatic?

A bizarre chart of the proposed Nostratic family. Note how it is lumped alongside the proposed Borean family. Also note how the Paleo-Siberian languages have been lumped together as "one family:"


For established language families, you may pick any two languages of that particular family and compare their core vocabulary along with genetic grammar.
This has not been done with proposed Nostratic languages despite the theory being enhanced as far back as the 1950s.

Many linguists have criticized the use of supposed common core vocabulary between Nostratic languages to propose common origins and I find myself in agreement with them.
The method of using similar sounding core vocab should be used only as a starting point to propose a common relationship, but genetic evidence must be added to confirm this otherwise it is accepted that the core vocab is either borrowed/influenced (hence not pure roots words anymore) or merely coincidental.

From all the supposed genetic evidence found which could also very well be coincidence or a result of common geography for thousands of years, I have challenged that there should be a comparative study on every subbranch of Nostratic.

Another chart of the proposed Nostratic family. The arrangement and inclusion of some language families in this chart is also disputed amongst linguists:


Some of the theories linking IE to Semitic also includes the similar sound of certain consonants. This could also be the result of borrowing due to the common geography between the two language families. In another post I had concluded that the use of Dravidian-sounding consonants in Indo-Aryan languages and some Iranic ones was from influence, again due to common geographic proximity.

Until full genetic comparisons between all members of Nostratic languages can be made, no credibility should be given to this theory.
I have not touched much on certain Native American language families and South Caucasian languages because I have not read on them as much, so I cannot really comment on those yet.

I also believe that in the future some evidence of migration of supposed Nostratic speakers is found to prove a separation from the supposed birthplace of Proto-Nostratic to the birthplaces of the modern families that Nostratic supposedly consists of such as Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, Dravidian and others.