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Only in early 20th-century racist fantasies is the term "Aryan" used to describe the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. In modern scholarly terminology, "Aryan" i

Only in early 20th-century racist fantasies is the term "Aryan" used to describe the speakers of Proto-Indo-European. In modern scholarly terminology, "Aryan" is only identified as a self-appellation of some speakers of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, not Proto-Indo-European itself. We don't know what the speakers of Proto-Indo-European called themselves. (Before anyone brings up the old claim, still in some pop-sci works, that Ireland's Irish name Eire comes from Aryan, that has been discredited for decades now.) Besides that, it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, both in Greece and in interaction with Anatolian peoples, and actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth.

gumby 6y ago
> it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, ... actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth. Is that the case? It's been a couple of decades since I was immersed in the scholarship of this domain so it's quite possible there is more recent scholarship I'm utterly unaware of. It's pretty overt that there are common religious and linguistic elements of the ancient vedic and greek mythologies (less so with zoerastrianism) though it's indeed impossible to unscramble the egg to try to ascertain how much might have been brought in from some ur-culture and how much arrived via later transmission between cultures (that had an even longer history of trade). As for the use of Aryan, well, it's a millennia-old self-descriptive term in old Persian and Sanskrit, but I certainly agree its adoption by Europeans in the mid 19th century was in support of a particular racial Weltanschauung. Hence my specific calling out of this factor. Another trace can be found in the common (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Marathi etc) use of "Indo-European" vs the German "Indogermanisch''
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Work in reconstructing both Indo-European myth and Eastern Mediterranean myth has made great strides in the last 20–25 years. As I said, Greek myth has a handful of things that go back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Urheimat, but most of Greek myth must be derived locally from Greece, Anatolia and the Levant instead. The standard modern reference for all this is M.L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford University Press, 2007), and then you can mine its bibliography for more reading material. Exactly, Aryan is self-descriptive in Old Persian and Sanskrit, so only the Indo-Iranian branch and nowhere else in the Indo-European family. It is inappropriate to even mention this term if you are talking about the Proto-Indo-European-speaking community, not only because it is wrong, but also because it will only turn laypeople off because of the racist associations.

gumby 6y ago

> it is recognized that most of Greek myth originates in Eastern Mediterranean cultures, ... actually very little in Greek mythology can be traced back to Indo-European myth. Is that the case? It's been a couple of decades since I was immersed in the scholarship of this domain so it's quite possible there is more recent scholarship I'm utterly unaware of. It's pretty overt that there are common religious and linguistic elements of the ancient vedic and greek mythologies (less so with zoerastrianism) though it's indeed impossible to unscramble the egg to try to ascertain how much might have been brought in from some ur-culture and how much arrived via later transmission between cultures (that had an even longer history of trade). As for the use of Aryan, well, it's a millennia-old self-descriptive term in old Persian and Sanskrit, but I certainly agree its adoption by Europeans in the mid 19th century was in support of a particular racial Weltanschauung. Hence my specific calling out of this factor. Another trace can be found in the common (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Marathi etc) use of "Indo-European" vs the German "Indogermanisch''

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Work in reconstructing both Indo-European myth and Eastern Mediterranean myth has made great strides in the last 20–25 years. As I said, Greek myth has a handful of things that go back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Urheimat, but most of Greek myth must be derived locally from Greece, Anatolia and the Levant instead. The standard modern reference for all this is M.L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford University Press, 2007), and then you can mine its bibliography for more reading material. Exactly, Aryan is self-descriptive in Old Persian and Sanskrit, so only the Indo-Iranian branch and nowhere else in the Indo-European family. It is inappropriate to even mention this term if you are talking about the Proto-Indo-European-speaking community, not only because it is wrong, but also because it will only turn laypeople off because of the racist associations.