Jean-Paul Demoule Quotes

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.

The problematic therefore becomes obvious: Which of the two peoples are the Indo-Iranians, the Andronovo people or the BMAC people, keeping in mind that their material cultures, as well as their economic systems, were radically different? Both answers have, of course, been proposed, each with acceptable arguments, and we will not even attempt to sum up the highly technical debates—ongoing and nowhere near resolution—between the proponents of the BMAC option52 (incidentally, this is where Adolphe Pictet located the original Cradle in 1859) and proponents of the steppic option.53 In reality, the archaeological arguments needed to certify the “Indo-Iranian-ness” of a given site are highly debatable.54 Reference is made to the existence of a “fire cult,” to the crushing of plants to obtain an inebriating drink (the soma of the Indians and the haoma of the Iranians—of which we know nothing), the exposure and defleshing of corpses, and, in contrast, their cremation, etc. However, these activities do not leave unequivocal and specific traces within the archaeological record. Cremation occurs no earlier on the steppes than in the BMAC area, and, in any case, it is not a particularly strong marker of ethnicity, regardless of the period in question.55 The iconography found on luxury goods associated with the BMAC does not share any themes with the ancient Indo-Iranian texts. We encounter a goddess, a bird of prey hero, a dragon, and an ibex-god, which evoke both a shared Eurasian background and clear influences from Elam; only a small number of silver vessels bear scenes that, according to Henri-Paul Francfort, might potentially find comparisons in Indo-Iranian mythologies.56

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.

Which components of the reconstructed Indo-European proto-culture can be used as evidence of a steppic location?... two arguments are generally singled out by the proponents of the steppic theory: the case of the horse and that of the chariot. The domesticated horse, on the one hand, and the chariot on the other, are supposedly well-attested in the shared vocabulary and are particularly valorized in the earliest Indo-European mythologies, where the sacrifice of a horse is the ultimate royal sacrifice... The most common root for the horse is certainly found in a significant number of Indo-European languages... Its absence in Slavic is all the more surprising since the historical “cradle” of the Slavs is often said to be located in the North Pontic Steppes, or close by, precisely where the earliest domestication of the horse is reputed to have occurred.

...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.

This controversial scholar, the first translator of Darwin and by extension the first promoter of “social Darwinism” in France, stated in her preface to the Origine des espèces that the most courageous “races” had overcome the others since “man, having become the stronger, could impose himself on the mate that pleased him most; and hence woman, who had nothing to do but please and submit, became more and more beautiful, in accordance with man’s ideal, man who himself became even stronger, having only to fight, command, and protect.” Thus we see the “reckless and blind” error of Christianity and democracy which scorned natural selection: “while all care, all devotions of love and pity are considered to be owed to the deposed and degenerate representatives of the species, there is nothing to encourage the development of the emerging force or to propagate merit, talent and virtue.”

There is a degree of coherence when, in the context of the Indo-European question, such robust biological racism is associated with a thesis that is both Euro-centrist and migrationist; this is in contrast to Broca’s “entrenched” anti-linguistic autochtonism. In the opinion of Clémence Royer, “a race that is powerful enough to overrun all of Europe and all of western Asia cannot have had its origins in a Pamirian valley; mountain peoples are peoples who have retreated and defend themselves; they are never conquering peoples.” Yet “the blond European race, as a whole, appears to have always been a race of travelers, a race that is essentially war-like and conquering.” “In the end, these high plateaus of Asia can be discounted; once we wanted to believe that these plateaus were the birthplace of everything but all they have ever given rise to are avalanches.”

...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.

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.

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 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.

The model of diffusion of “archaeological cultures,” each corresponding to a given “people,” is both naturalist and directly inspired by the nation states of the nineteenth century; it does not correspond to numerous situations provided, for example, by the ethnology of other continents or by the history and archaeology of protohistoric peoples of Early Medieval Europe.

Without exaggeration and in a definitive reply to Momigliano (who paradoxically was a member of the Italian Fascist Party before having to flee Mussolini’s anti-Semitic laws) and Ginzburg, we can state that Dumézil was not a Nazi supporter in the 1930s. He was, however, a fascist in the precise meaning of the term.