Is the Mesopotamian world for elephant ‘Dravidian’?
How the Mesopotamian word for ‘elephant’ indicates Dravidian language existed in Indus Civilisation. No time to read the original paper in Nature. I lean toward this being right, but the sequence of logic seems to be pretty contingent…
Europe on the Verge of a Revolutionary Breakthrough
Patrick Wyman’s book is a compelling historical narrative of Europe from 1490 to 1530, shot through with colorful stories about people and politics.
Standing athwart history and pushing it back
Recently The New Yorker had a long feature on the German social experiment from the 1970’s to early 2000’s which placed homeless boys in foster care with pedophiles. The whole […]
The ancient Indo-Iranians
Here’s a podcast on the Indo-Iranians from Patrick Wyman.
British imperialism didn’t destroy India
Colonial rule brought relative peace to the subcontinent
A Fallen World
As you may know, I’ve been thinking about the Indo-European expansion a lot. I did a lot more archaeological reading than I’m wont to for my Substacks, Steppe 1.0, Going […]
Darwin will fall
Over at his Substack, Robert Wright puts in a defense of Charles Darwin against a comment in Science, “The Descent of Man,” 150 years on. On the whole, I agree […]
The Jewel and the Dragon, and the fight against the coming darkness
My offhand reference in the open thread to continuity of devotion to the Babylonian God Tammuz to the 10th century elicited a fascinating email from a long-time reader about paganism […]
Truly ancient of days
Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought: The Calusa of southwestern Florida might provide a natural experiment for thinking about our Turkish neolithic site: a complex hierarchical society that built […]
The “Yamnaya” were not the ancestors of the “Corded Ware” and “Bell Beakers”
In 2015 Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe and Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia were published. These two papers were game-changers. They […]
Lakshmi
I’m spending a lot of time reading about the Corded Ware for my series on the steppe. The Corded Ware is a culture that appeared that abruptly in Northern Europe between 2900 and 2800 BC, covering a vast territory of Central and Eastern Europe in a century. The name derives from the unique marks left …
Oppression >>> extermination, greed >>> genocide
There is a narrative that Yelu Chucai, and advisor of Genghis Khan and his son, was responsible for the saving of much human life by making the case for taxation […]
Multiple hearths of agriculture in ancient South Asia
Patrick Wyman’s Tides of History podcast is tackling South Asia and prehistory. He wrote up a Substack for it too, Ancient South Asia – Farming and People in India and Pakistan. I agree with Patrick here, though my confidence is low: …It seems unlikely that a group living 1400 miles to the east would have …
Continue reading “Multiple hearths of agriculture in ancient South Asia”
To the victors go the glory!
I have written an introductory post (it’s free), Entering Steppelandia: pop. 7.7 billion, to a series of posts (mostly paid) that I will write about the Eurasian steppe. So I’m thinking and reading a lot about this topic. This is relevant to “Brown Pundits” because we subcontinental people have been stamped by the steppe. First, …
The Mughals!
The Brown Pundits Clubhouse channel hosted a discussion on “the Mughals” yesterday that went on for a while. There seem to be two polarized extreme views 1) The Mughals were great Indians! Long live the Mughals. 2) The Mughals were genocidal colonizers and induced inter-generational trauma. Most people occupy a position in the middle. As …
How the Irish became white
There is more than some truth to the country’s folklore
How the Irish became white
There is more than some truth to the country’s folklore
How the Irish became white
There is more than some truth to the country’s folklore
Open Thread – 02/27/2021 – Brown Pundits
On Substack, Made in China – Does it matter who writes history if no one reads it?
Readers of this weblog care about China. But know too little about it. Become less ignorant.
Clubhouse at 7 pm PDT https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/MKlLwwoo
On the historicity of the Vedas
BPer Mukunda and I were having a discussion on Twitter, which I want to elevate and push to the blog, because it’s somewhat important. When I was young (20th century) I read stuff about how the Indo-Aryans described the natives of the subcontinent as dark and “snub-nosed.” That their arrival in some ways was a …