Quote:
Originally Posted by timb
You can be short and have dark hair and brown eyes, and still be caucasian. The steppes, which reasonably includes East Turkestan, are commonly referred to as Central Asia, though "Eurasia" seems to be the term favored by academe now.
|
An apt description of yours truly. Eurasia indeed had caucasoid and middle eastern peoples at various times. But the Gobi is way East. Here is a
map from Encarta.
That part of the East is very definitely in Asia, and thought to be peopled by Asians: short for the most part, black hair, narrow eyes...
The presence of caucasoids receiving a burial like this in the Gobi is somewhat unexpected. I remember hearing some interesting things about Ghangis Khan, and Carlin mentions it also, but those facts have more or less been ignored or thought of as "he was talked up". Pringles made a similar comment in "The Mummy Congresses". The story is that a mummy researcher was visiting a museum in Asia and came upon some clearly caucasoid mummies that had been recovered in the Gobi. She made reference to some early Chinese writings that seemed to describe such peoples, but had been written off previously because the groups were not known to have mixed. The few comments were disregarded or thought to be 'poetic license'. That understanding is now being revisited by some researchers to see if dates line up, etc.
I am not saying the Mongolians were purely Asian, but I would argue that they were enough so to not be particularly out of place in the developing cultures of the region. Certainly not caucasoid, at least from what we know.
I don't remember the details more than that, sorry. I returned the book to the library.
Quote:
|
Carlin was probably just repeating something Herodotus told him.
|
I have no idea. When I get a few--will hopefully be settled next week--I may put some more time into reading. We'll see if my interest stays piqued.