Aryan Origins

The correspondence below with the National Futurist leader Constantin von Hoffmeister outlines my thoughts on our origins. Since this exchange, I have learnt of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory of Indo-European Origins, which confirms many of my speculations (http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html)

Hail Constantin,

Yes, I’ve read WAFFEN-SS VERSUS ARYANS. Here’s why I think it’s wrong:

NO ARYAN INVASION OF EUROPE – ARYANS EVOLVED IN EUROPE

Aryans are the branch of mankind that evolved from Cro-Magnons (Homo Sapiens Sapiens). If you accept the diffusionist model of human evolution, then Aryans are the branch of mankind that evolved separately on the western peninsular of the Eurasian continent. These Cro-Magnons represent a quantum leap in evolution; we were the first to develop the creative imagination, as seen in cave art in the south of France and Spain from about 30 millennia ago. We were the first to create sculptured ivory and stone, and our weapons and other technologies underwent a corresponding step-change in sophistication. Cro-Magnons created the Aurignacian culture, which later developed into the Megalithic civilization of the western Eurasian seaboard. Whether Cro-Magnons owe their superior intelligence to intermixing with humans already living in that area (i.e. Neanderthals) has yet to be conclusively determined.
Take a look at a map of Eurasia, bearing in mind that humans of the time were essentially coastal creatures. You don’t have to accept the whole of the Aquatic Ape theory, although it’s increasingly scientifically plausible, in order to understand the advantages for our ancestors of living by the sea. What you see in Europe is a land with lots of coast-lines, islands, peninsulas sticking into the ocean, and easy access to the lush interior (i.e. the north European plain) via broad, well-drained rivers (even broader at the end of the last Ice Age). These conditions were ideal for the evolution of our early ancestors, unlike the deserts, mountains and scrubland that separate western Eurasia from Africa and eastern Eurasia. The only other part of the Eurasian land-mass with comparably favourable conditions for humans is the great northern plain of China with access to the coast via huge rivers flowing east and south-east to the Pacific. Guess what – that’s exactly where the Oriental/ Mongol race of humans evolved, and later where we find the very first evidence of Chinese civilization.
As ice retreated from Europe 10,000 years ago, these former-Cro-Magnons from France and Spain spread northward and eastward as far as Russia, Ukraine, Scandinavia etc.. They colonized and exploited the banks of the Rhine, Danube, Dnepr, Don and Volga so successfully that waves of population in turn went back to the western coasts, unifying the Aurignacian culture again; the process has been going on ever since and evidence of Mesolithic and Neolithic trade right across the continent of Europe is prolific. People living in Russia were a part of this western Eurasian diffusionist evolution, people who later the Greeks and Romans knew as Scythians and Slavs. It was these people (“Cardial” civilization) who developed farming, urban life and writing in Viols-le-Fort, Languedoc, France and surrounding regions, including Malta, from around 10,000 years ago. Many of these earliest costal towns were subsequently inundated as sea-levels rose dramatically at the end of the last Ice Age. Later, these same people developed and recorded their pantheons, social structure, weltanschauung, which were closely-related, if not the same, and which was later classified as Indo-European, or Aryan.

Of course, other parts of the world saw different types of human emerge: the previously-mentioned Oriental Mongols, and (of particular relevance to later European history) the Semites in Arabia and Africa. An argument can be made for saying Semites might not just be a separate civilization, but a separate species of humanity with their own Neanderthal or non-Sapiens-Sapiens antecedents.

There never was an Aryan invasion of Europe. We have always been here, at least since Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Cro-Magnons). Genetic tests of skeletons 10,000 years old from Cheddar Gorge, England, show contemporary inhabitants to be descendants. “Proto-Europeans” were as Aryan as you or me. For more about this, see Colin Renfrew’s LANGUAGE AND HISTORY. All we’ve had in Europe is continual development for c30-40,000 years: Perigordian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian (marking the end of the last ice age), Cardial, (start of Neolithic Age: farming, domestication), Mesolithic, Neolithic (Carnac, Orkneys, Malta, Iberia, Stonehenge etc.) and “Aryan” when Europeans started to record their myths etc., in the Bronze/ Heroic Age. Later, Aryans developed philosophy, literature, mathematics, music, art, science and technology to further express the creative imagination of the race.

Aryan is best thought of as a level of consciousness – the level of consciousness Cro-Magnons had reached when pre-history turned into history, and we started to write. European Heroic Age myths across the continent, such as the Iliad and Eddas, all indicate a common origin. Because all Europeans were descended from Cro-Magons and shared the same language, culture and worldview, then it’s unsurprising that the later tribes of Slavs, Teutons, Italics and Celts should have an “Aryan” language, social and mythological structure.

GOD OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND WRITING IS AN ARYAN GOD

The divine archetype called Odin/ Woden exists in ALL Aryan pantheons, not just in Germanic/ Teutonic mythology. He is Lugus/ Lugh with Celts, Mercury/ Hermes with Italics/Latins/Greeks, Volos with the Slavs (Orthodoxized as St. Nicholas), Velinas/ Patollus with the Balts etc. For more, read Georges Dumezil or any Indo-Europeanist since Dumezil.

LOKI

Presently, Loki is bound to a rock, struggling against the dripping venom of a poisonous snake, but the day he is free is Ragnarok, Gotterdammerung when Asgard and Midgard are destroyed and rise anew. Loki represents the dynamic of evolution, and He is a catalyst, related to Prometheus and Faust in his relationship to mankind.
On another matter. As you well know, the West is increasingly illegalizing freedom of thought and speech. Tony Blair’s Nu Labor introduced a bill into Parliament yesterday which would outlaw freedom of expression against religion (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam). I’ve read that there’s still respect for the idea of freedom of speech in Russia. Do you think that if someone fell foul of our laws, then they would be able to apply for political asylum in Russia?! How successful do you think that application would be? Don’t you think it’s hugely ironic, after all those old black&white Cold-War spy movies, that it’s the West that has a drab, stupefied, cowered population?

Delenda est Carthago!

>Technically, you are right : Semites (Jews, Arabs and Turks) are White >because parts of the Anatolian, Touranian, South-Oriental and/or >Indo-Afghan subspecies. Together with the Ainu subspecie, they represent >what we could call the Asia-White races (M89, M201, M69, M20, M9, M172 and >M170 ADN genetic markers). Then, you have the Nordic, East-European, >Dinaric, Alpine and Mediterranean) Euro-White subspecies (M45, LLY22, M173, >M17 and M343 ADN genetic markers). But to say that White Jews or Arabs are >the same than White Latins or Scandinavians would be as preposterous as >saying that Black Bushmen (Khoisan subspecie) are the same than Black Nubas >(Black subspecie).

Ave Constantin!

Saw your photo on the Athenaeum site – very dashing! I can’t read Russian but the title is promising.
I noticed that RevDevalez on the New Right newsgroup has already responded to your ARYANS: KILLERS DURING SUNSET essay pointing out that the people you (and Marija Gimbutas, Ralph Metzner etc. – you’re in good company) keep endearingly referring to as “indigenous Europeans” or “Old Europeans” were the same people as the Aryans.
I concur with RevDevalez. All the most recent genetic and archeological evidence that I’ve read suggests that the southern Russian steppes were initially colonized from the west. Indeed, this is the only conclusion compatible with theories about the end of the last Ice Age, the retreat of the glaciers and our costal “aquatic ape” origins. Because of the dramatically different environment, early European farmers were forced to adapt to a more nomadic existence in the vast, empty plains. This may account for some of the cultural constants that we have come to associate with an Aryan worldview; for example, the importance of horses. It may even have contributed to the Aryan, Faustian spirit of space, limitlessness and infinity, qualities it shares with the American West frontier of the Nineteenth Century.

Some of these inherent traits of Europeans may have found first expression and manifestation on the open grasslands north and east of the Black Sea, but that makes them no less European for that. As I said in my ARYAN ORIGINS essay, Aryan is a name given to a certain cultural pattern that emerged in the Bronze Age, significantly developed by Europeans (descendents of Cro-Magnon cave-painters of southern France and Iberia) in southern Russia.
“It is possible that once the new pastoralist economy of the steppes was established, the arable/ steppe boundary may have shifted some way westward. What may have been in reality an evolution from mixed farming to pastoralism in that area could thus appear in the archaeological record as a westward movement. Nor need one doubt that several of the characteristics of steppe culture which they developed were indeed taken up in neighbouring lands to the west. These ‘Kurgan’ influences may in some cases have involved some movement of people. In others they may simply reflect the adoption of some practices derived from the steppes by the populations on their western margins. At a detailed level there is much to be done in following up these ideas, but from the standpoint of Europe as a whole, it is difficult to believe that there was any significant and sustained movement of population from eastern to central Europe at this time, around 3500 to 3000bc. This is not the solution to the Indo-European problem, although it might be relevant to it.” – Colin Renfrew, Archaeology & Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins.
These cultural innovations spread back westward into central and western Europe, but as Colin Renfrew points out, there need never have been an invasion (unlike the Aryan invasion of India, which was an incursion into a pre-existing civilization racially and culturally unrelated).

I think a good analogy would be with the spread of railroads across Europe.

An archaeologist in the far future, assuming he had no written record, would discover the earliest railroads, from the 1830s, located in England only. He would see that by the 1870s the whole continent was covered in a tight network of railroads, with single threads stretching into Asia and Africa. Along the European railroads, he might find some old steam engines, with writing like “Richard Garrett & Sons” or “Duncan & Grant – Belgium” stamped on the side. At railway termini across Europe he would see stone buildings with “Bristol Hotel” just legible above their ruined doorways. He might even come across the Thyssen family mausoleum, compare the DNA with that of Robert Stephenson in Westminster Abbey, and conclude that they were the same race! Our future archaeologist might reasonably conclude that during the Nineteenth Century, England successfully conquered the whole continent!
But railways spread quickly in Europe because Europeans were ready for railways. If George Stephenson hadn’t developed the locomotive, then someone else in England, or northwest Europe, would have done within the following decade. “None of these developments showed any signs of a ‘forced’ growth imposed from outside. On the contrary, they were building on the foundation of centuries of slow accumulation of capital, technical skills, capitalistic attitudes and wage labour.” – European Economic Integration, Sidney Pollard.

The same is true, I believe, with the Aryan hypothesis; it should be considered as a continent-wide cultural shift, a crystallization of mythology, politics, technics and aesthetics. It is like the industrial and scientific revolutions, or the Renaissance, or Classical civilization itself, only more significant and profound because it is the very first pan-European cultural development that we know about in some detail. The fact is that people have been moving about, invading each other, within Europe, for millennia, but that movement makes no difference to our overall genetic make-up as Aryan Europeans.

Best wishes,
Alisdair
Delenda est Carthago!