Unmasking AIT

[Husky]

Post 1/n



Anthony-Doniger joined forces to make steppes the homeland.



Almost feel sorry for Anthony (:not that his own team - headed by the computational biologist from Harvard, Patterson who worked on Haak et al and Mathieson et al and who spoke on behalf of the team - said steppes no longer PIE urheimat and was announcing they'll be looking into whether "IA" entered India from Caucasus next, meaning that Sintashta in steppes can't be PII either.





Anyway, looking at Anthony-Doniger's attempts to make the data fit:





First, here's their argument for why Sintashta must have been PII (Proto-Indo-Iranian) 'homeland' -



wackypedia on "Sintashta culture"

The people of the Sintashta culture are thought to have spoken Proto-Indo-Iranian, the ancestor of the Indo-Iranian language family. This identification is based primarily on similarities between sections of the Rig Veda, an Indian religious text which includes ancient Indo-Iranian hymns recorded in Vedic Sanskrit, with the funerary rituals of the Sintashta culture as revealed by archaeology.[15]

[15] Anthony 2007, pp. 408–411.

Looking up the reference to [15] from David Anthony's book "The Horse, the Wheel ..." (the Spiel) - 2007, reprint 2010 - here's how he argued for PII in Sintashta, with a sample of his "proofs" (he actually doesn't provide all that many, surprisingly):

Similarities between rituals excavated at Sintashta and Arkaim and those described later in the RV have solved, for many, the problem of Indo-Iranian origins.46 The parallels include a reference in RV 10.18 to a kurgan ("let them....bury death in this hill"), a roofed burial chamber supported with posts ("let the fathers hold up this pillar for you"), and with shored walls ("I shore up the earth all around you; let me not injure you as I lay down this clod of earth"). This is a precise description of Sintashta and Potapovka-Filatovka grave pits, which had wooden plank roofs supported by timber posts and plank shoring walls.

The horse sacrifice at a royal funeral is described in RV 1.162: "Keep the limbs undamaged and place them in the proper pattern. Cut them apart, calling out piece by piece." The horse sacrifices in Sintashta, Potapovka, and Filatovka graves match this description, with the lower legs of horses carefully cut apart at the joints and placed in and over the grave. The preference for horses as sacrificial animals in Sintashta funeral rituals, a species choice setting Sintashta apart from earlier steppe cultures, was again paralleled in the RV.

The above translations are all taken from Doniger:

* The translation for RV 10.18 is from Doniger's 2005 book "Rig Veda", conveniently in time for Anthony's 2007 storytelling.

* And the translation for RV 1.162 is from Doniger's 1988 "Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism", conveniently appearing at the end of the 1985-1988 excavations at Potapovka (and the infamous archaeological forgery projected as the burial of the Vedic Rishi Dadhyanch). The Potapovka digs, as seen from Anthony 2007's snippet above is EXACTLY what he's on about.



Not surprised the translations matched so miraculously - how did Anthony put it? Oh yeah, "precise description". Yeah well, maybe Doniger worked back to front: she looked at the Potapovka and Sintashta digs and then made the translation of the RV fit.



Because compare with the translation credited to that earlier indologist for the same verses: "Rig Veda" Ralph T.H. Griffith, 1896

Bear in mind that his translations are at least independent of Sintashta digs from about a century later, and so that's no reason to be disappointed if it doesn't conform to Sintashta.



Comparing with Griffith (1896) translation of RV 10.18:



1. Instead of Doniger-Anthony's "let them....bury death in this hill" as being a reference to a kurgan "of course",



Griffith has: "may they bury Death beneath this mountain."



so where exactly does it follow we need to conclude kurgans? Does mountain mean kurgan? More importantly from an IEist POV: can it be made to mean kurgan?

(And this is ALL the proof for kurgan in the RV that Anthony has been able to mine in Doniger, apparently...)





2. Instead of Doniger-Anthony combine's "I shore up the earth all around you; let me not injure you as I lay down this clod of earth",



Griffith: "I stay the earth from thee, while over thee I place this piece of earth. May I be free from injury."



which is different in several ways. But again: where does it imply "shoring up walls of earth" around someone for a burial? The way I read it can just mean sprinkling some earth on them. ("piece of earth")

Remember: Anthony pointed to this shloka from the RV as "a precise description" of the burials with "shored walls" seen in Sintashta and Potapovka-Filatovka of the steppes.





3. At least the line concerning a pillar is similar in Griffith: "Here let the Fathers keep this pillar firm for thee".

However, in both translations, there's mention of just a single pillar. How does that multiply into multiple posts let alone "a roofed burial chamber supported by posts" to match Anthony's Sintashtan dig oh-so-"precisely"?





Comparing with Griffith (1896) translation for RV 1.162:



- Doniger translation: "Keep the limbs undamaged and place them in the proper pattern. Cut them apart, calling out piece by piece"



- Griffith's translation: "Cut ye with skill, so that the parts be flawless, and piece by piece declaring them dissect them."



So where's that pattern that's so all important to Anthony? Even a generic pattern would do, though Anthony was off waffling on about - well, this:



Anthony's find: "lower legs of horses carefully cut apart at the joints and placed in and over the grave"



Anthony is really, really particular in his description, as can be seen. On the other hand, Griffith's translation for the line in RV 1.162 can't even mention a "pattern". Doniger had to supply that.



So the question remains: where did Doniger get all these "extra" bits that are 'coincidentally' the very bits that were necessary to make it all 'fit' [=relative term] the fabulous tale of how Sintashta "matches the Vedic descriptions precisely"?



Anthony is very grateful to Doniger for her help. No wonder he only uses her translations. I mean, if I was him (i.e. an oryanist=white supremacist wanting to forge a steppe homeland for them oryans into history), then I would go with Doniger's translations too, wouldn't you? Griffith is certainly no help. Early indologists - as detrimental as they were - hold no *candle* to the lying out there among their descendants today.





Also, these the next verses in Griffith's translation of RV 1.162 shows that the creature in the Vedic rite is not buried (as in Sintashta) but offered into the fire, which may well turn out to be the most crucial part for all I know, as this sounds like the process by which the sacrificed horse is returned to live on with the Gods:



19 Of Tvaṣṭar's Charger there is one dissector,—this is the custom-two there are who guide him.

Such of his limbs as I divide in order, these, amid the balls, in fire I offer.

20 Let not thy dear soul burn thee as thou comest, let not the hatchet linger in thy body.

Let not a greedy clumsy immolator, missing the joints, mangle thy limbs unduly.

21 No, here thou diest not, thou art not injured: by easy paths unto the Gods thou goest.

Both Bays, both spotted mares are now thy fellows, and to the ass's pole is yoked the Charger.





Then again, steppists would argue - or would have argued, before Patterson's announcement through to Jones et al's 2015 paper insinuating Maykop (3700-3000 BCE) as next potential IA locus - that there was no IE or IA "fire cult and cremation" before the Fedorovo steppe kultur of 1500-1300 BCE, so that the the original, pre-Fedorovo steppe Rig VediK KKKultur was entirely about burials, etc:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andronovo_culture

At least four sub-cultures of the Andronovo horizon have been distinguished, during which the culture expands towards the south and the east:



Sintashta-Petrovka-Arkaim (Southern Urals, northern Kazakhstan, 2200–1600 BCE)

the Sintashta fortification of ca. 1800 BCE in Chelyabinsk Oblast



[...]

Fedorovo (1500–1300 BCE) in southern Siberia (earliest evidence of cremation and fire cult[4])

Beshkent-Vakhsh (1000–800 BCE)

But I thought it was nice to know that so much of Andronovo culture - post Sintashta at any rate - was quite Siberian qua ethnicity.

Yay for the Siberians: Siberians 1. Europods 0.



It's like those 2 E-Asian-specific Scythians found at 2500 ybp: E-Asians 2. Europods 1.