Jean-Paul Demoule Quotes

At least one thing is sure: the collapse of both these urban civilizations (i.e., those of the BMAC and the Indus) was not caused by attacks by Andronovan barbarians from the steppes. In fact, it was the result of the slow breakdown of centralized authoritarian power, which did not leave behind a wasteland but rather gave way to more modest, village-type settlements. There are no traces of Andronovan objects south of the BMAC, and the same is true in the Hindu Kush mountain passes that lead to India. As we have seen, there are no traces either in the Indus Valley. But since the current languages spoken in Northern India indeed belong to the Indo-European group, there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations.

The Sintashta culture, revealed by excavations carried out over the past three decades, is quite spectacular with its circular fortified cities and its princely tombs, which contain some of the oldest known spoke-wheeled chariots. Its possible long-distance links with the Mycenaean world have already been mentioned. Apart from the eponymous Sintashta site, the most mediatized site is Arkaim, discovered in 1987 and excavated by controversial archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich. No doubt in a laudable attempt to save it from being submerged by an artificial lake (he was successful in his efforts), the latter identified the site as a sort of original capital of the “Aryans.” Soon baptized “Swastika City” or “Mandala City” and considered a Stonehenge-like astronomical observatory, the site has attracted the attention of a number of New Age gurus who preside over imagined pagan ceremonies every year on the occasion of the summer solstice; it has also fallen prey to certain far-right nationalist movements. Arkaim is now seen as the “City of the Aryan hierarchy and of racial purity,” the place where “the Old Russian high priest Zoroaster is buried.” As Russian archaeologist Viktor Shnirelman49 has pertinently pointed out, this discovery, which coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, allowed the “Slavity” of these territories (although they were only relatively recently conquered by the Tsars) to be reaffirmed through their “Aryan-ness.” Naturally, Russian president Vladimir Putin has made a point of visiting these sites. Zdanovich himself has claimed: “We, the Slavs, consider ourselves as newcomers. But this is not true. The Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians have lived here [in the South Urals] since the Stone Age and have incorporated and unified through common ties the Kazakhs, Bashkirs and the Slavs.”50 And the circle is completed when it is claimed that the Indo-Europeans indeed came from the Far North before settling in the Urals.

We do not find any evidence for the diffusion of the entire material culture of the steppes to those regions where historically attested Indo-European languages were spoken

We will now turn our attention to the two other principal hypotheses, both migrationist and both with a long history (although regularly updated): on the one hand, a Near Eastern origin linked to the arrival of Neolithic colonists, and, on the other, an origin in the steppes to the north of the Black Sea. We will see that the difficulties which they pose ought to prompt us to question the overly simplistic model on which they are both founded.

We realize, therefore, that even in these faraway places, whose study requires a certain level of archaeological knowledge, issues that appear to be scientific are, in fact, anything but innocent. Thus, the identification of the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures with the original Indo-Iranians, before their southward migration, is biased from the very start. All the more so since proof of the “Indo-Iranian” character of these cultures is quite weak. The existence of hearths, even in graves, is reminiscent of the fire cult practiced by later Indo-Iranians. But, like sacrifices of horses, bulls, and sheep, it is a practice found in numerous parts of the world. Beyond the caricature of Arkaim, the affirmation of ancient cultural ties between Russia and present day Turkish-speaking Central Asia (part of the USSR until 1992) is clearly a major issue regardless of whether the archaeologists involved are aware of it or not.

...there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations. To this end, James Mallory, for example, came up with the military-inspired notion of Kulturkugel (“culture bullets”)—as if, perhaps, a Germanic term might excuse, almost in a humorous manner, the use of a diffusionist model by an English-speaking author. Mallory’s explanatory drawing shows a rifle cartridge (or a shell, depending) in which the bullet itself is the material culture and the charge is the language. Thus, the Indo-Aryan nomads of the steppes would have traveled across the BMAC, shedding their entire material culture on the way but not their language. Having thus become archaeologically undetectable, they would then have descended toward the Indus Plains to impose their new culture and their preserved language; this new culture would have had no known archaeological equivalent at the time.

The past and present exploitation by nationalist and extremist movements of the canonical Indo-European model of an original People who emerged from an original Homeland is a magnified reflection of the ideological representations that are underpinned by this model.

It is presumptuous to say the least to claim that the migratory routes traveled by the Indo-Europeans from their original Homeland have now been clearly traced.

In France, the movement known as “Nouvelle Droite” would become one of the most mediatized, most developed, and best known examples, even though, strictly speaking it was not a fully formed doctrine but rather an evolving nebulous body made up of individuals, movements, publications, and doctrines and within which we encounter the classic themes of prewar right-wing extremism: hatred of equality, democracy, Judeo-Christianity, American imperialism, the neoliberal plutocracy, and racial mixing; the exaltation of an imperial, aristocratic, elitist, and even “pagan” Europe; and advocacy of racial inequality and, of course, of an “Indo-European heritage.” All of this was wrapped up in the traditional “neither left nor right” rhetoric of the extreme right.

...The currently irresolvable contradictions that mar the many attempts made to reconcile the linguistic and archaeological evidence (and indeed biological anthropological evidence) for the “arrival of the Aryans in India” do not mean that the supposed “original Indo-European People” emerged in India (this would pose the same problems, but in reverse), nor do they mean that “invisible migrations” did not exist in the past. It simply means that, in the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated. Given the stakes involved, extreme caution needs to be exercised when attempting to solve this issue.

The 'problem' is primarily in the head of Indo-Europeanists: It is a problem of interpretative logic and ideology. We have seen that one primarily places the lE's in the north if one is German, . . . in the east if one is Russian, and in the middle if, being Italian or Spanish, one has no chance of competing for the privilege.

In his “Que sais-je?” on the Indo-Europeans, which is a follow-on to a first volume almost entirely devoted to Indo-European linguistics, Jean Haudry describes an ideal proto Indo-European society, which for the most part belongs to the realm of fantasy as becomes more and more obvious as the book progresses.

There is in fact no evidence for the gradual progression of an entire material culture from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Atlantic or the Ganges—unless, of course, we drastically force the data.

...Just as the cultures of the steppes have various historical origins and not solely Pontic, similarly, the BMAC has predecessors which are archaeologically visible in the material culture, both within its home area and further west, when the Neolithic way of life was being established. It is therefore very difficult to assign it a steppic origin. Incidentally, this is confirmed by biological anthropology, with all its limitations, which shows the permanency of physical characteristics within the BMAC and the very limited extent of mixing with steppic populations.57

In the postwar years, British anthropologist Roger Pearson founded the Northern League for North European Friendship, which brought together former Nazis, like raciologist Hans Günther (who at the time was writing under a pseudonym); former SS member Arthur Ehrhardt; Franz Altheim, one time collaborator of Himmler within the Ahnenerbe (after the war he held a professorship at Halle in East Germany and then in West Berlin); and various neo-Nazis and neo-fascists such as Colin Jordan, Alastair Harper, and John Tyndall in Great Britain. In 1960, Pearson established the Mankind Quarterly journal, the mouthpiece of “scientific racism,” in collaboration with Robert Gayre and, most notably, with Nazi geneticist Ottmar von Verschuer, Mengele’s former superior.