Maybe race is a social construct after all.

Is that not (one of) the area(s) touted to be the origin of the Indo-European language?  The Jewish settlement there would of course be much later. If ever I have a chance I would love to visit that part of the world.

In any event, it is ridiculous to link claims to Israel to this sort of research.

Following on from your train of thought here: Even if race is a social construct, those who see themselves as Jews, have, in my view, a claim to Israel.

For quite a while now I have eschewed arguments about race as the various points of view inevitably end up in a heated clash of fixed points of view.

If one accepts race as a social construct, it still means that it exists. It means that differences exist between groups. One can for example point out the predominance of criminal behaviour in certain race groups. I noted with interest a few Sundays ago, prof Amanda Gouws's comments on RSG in this regard about 'jong swart mans' and crime in the US. She is so very righteous but if Dan Roodt says something like that the clamour for his head is overwhelming.

One can then say that the differences - if explicable as a social construct - are not cast in iron, but as a tool for studying human behaviour, cannot be ignored.

Until the genetic aspect is clarified, such approach is perhaps the only way to encourage collaboration between different view points.

Coming from a farming back ground, I have to say (exposing my bias) that I would be very surprised if there are not genetic differences between different groups. I have seen how milk production  can be genetically improved in a herd of dairy cows. One has the creation of beef races such as the Bonsmara. How many different breeds of dogs do not exist? It is always pointed out that the genetic difference in the DNA between races is very small. How accurate even that is, seems to be open to question these days as the previously thought inert parts of DNA have been discovered to play a role in the make-up of organisms.
 

Why do you say that Caucasian is a misnomer? Did they (we) not originate there (sort of)? Or do you think that the tag should be Iranian?

As for the Mongolians: Are there Chinese who do not look like Chinese?

I must say, it is easy to recognize a Semite!!! ;-) Turks on the other hand, I would be hard pressed to put in a category.

Seems that you are right about the classification of the Semites:

It would appear from Oppenheimer's Out of Africa that there might be a genetic basis for linking the Basques and Etruscans and that they in turn are part of the early penetration of Europe - the first wave of settlers. Their languages are also pre- Indo-European. I would be tempted to include the early civilizations  of Crete and Mycenae - but perhaps they spoke Greek. Their script was the much vaunted Linear-B, generally accepted (I think) as a form of Greek. It seems that some experts doubt whether Linear-B is indeed Greek. Such position would fit in better with an original non-Indo-European  origin.

It also appears from the same source that there is a genetic link between an early Hungary and the original settlers. This could also shed light on why Hungarian is non-Indo-European. Oppenheimer's account does not extend as far a Finland, but if you look at the maps from his book, which are shown below, it seems quite feasible that the old settler penetration went as far as Finland. The difficulty here is that Lithuania (also Indo- European) is geographically in the way!

Just by the way: Oppenheimer wrote at least two other books (which I have not read) where he argues (a) for the geographical position of the Biblical Eden ( on the basis of his own Out of Africa account I place it elsewhere, though) and (b) for the original settlement of Britain not by Celts, but in fact by the Basque line (ie the old/original settlers of Europe).

The Etruscans are interesting in their own right as they lived around Tuscany and were one of the original tribes of Italy. The Romans appear to have arrived later and their exact origin is shrouded in mystery. Some claim a Greek origin for the Romans. The early Etruscans originally ruled the Romans and were the reason why the Romans had built up such a dislike for kingship and monarchy and opted for a sort of Republic!


To get better views of the maps below, right click on the maps and click view image

It seems clear even from the forays into History and Language above that such investigations are useless without group/race  tags. Again, the question is how much genetics are involved in the group tags but tags there have to be for any meaningful discussion.

Just referring briefly again to the earlier (non-Indo-European) inhabitants of Europe: It seems clear that the original language of Crete was not Greek. It makes it likely, I think, that it also was a non-Indo-European language in step with Oppenheimer's maps and related to the the Basque and Etruscan languages and groups/races.

I append a popular historical account  which covers Crete in broad outline.

JM Roberts: History of the world, Penguin (3ed), pp91 et seq.

...

EARLY CIVILIZED LIFE IN THE AEGEAN

A new interplay of cultures brought many changes to peoples on the fringe of the Near East but civilization in the Aegean islands was rooted in the Neolithic as it was elsewhere. The first metal object found in Greece — a copper bead — has been dated to about 4700 BC, and European as well as Asian stimuli may have been at work. Crete is the largest of the Greek islands. Several centuries before 2000 BC towns with a regular layout were


being built there by an advanced people who had been there through Neolithic times. They may have had contacts with Anatolia which spurred them to exceptional achievements, but the evidence is indecisive. They could well have arrived at civilization for themselves. At any rate, for about a thousand years they built the houses and tombs by which their culture is distinguished and these did not change much in style. By about 2500 BC there were important towns and villages on the coasts, built of stone and brick; their inhabitants practised metal-working and made attractive seals and jewels. At this stage, that is to say, the Cretans shared much of the culture of mainland Greece and Asia Minor. They exchanged goods with other Aegean communities. There then came a change. About five hundred years later they began to build the series of great palaces which are the monuments of what we call Minoan civilization; the greatest of them, Knossos, was first built about 1900 BC. Nothing quite as impressive appears anywhere else among the islands and it exercized a cultural hegemony over more or less the whole of the Aegean.

...



The Minoans may well have been the most important single conduit through which the goods and ideas of the first civilizations reached Bronze Age Europe. Certain Cretan products begin to turn up in Egypt in the second millennium BC and this was a major outlet; the art of the New Kingdom shows Cretan influence. There was even, some scholars think, an Egyptian resident for some time at Knossos, presumably to watch over well-established interests, and it has been argued that Minoans fought with the Egyptians against the Hyksos. Cretan vases and metal goods have been found at several places in Asia Minor: these are the things which survive, but it has been asserted that a wide range of "other products — timber, grapes, oil, wood, metal vases and even opium — were supplied by the Minoans to the mainland. In return, they took metal from Asia Minor, alabaster from Egypt, ostrich eggs from Libya. It was a complex trading world.

...


The political arrangements of this society are obscure. The palace was not only a royal residence, but in some sense an economic centre - a great store - which may perhaps best be understood as the apex of an advanced form of exchange based on redistribution by the ruler. The palace was also a temple, but not a fortress. In its maturity it was the centre of a highly organized structure whose inspiration may have been Asian; knowledge of the literate empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia was available to a trading people. One source of our knowledge of what Minoan government was trying to do is a huge collection of thousands of tablets which are its administrative records. They indicate rigid hierarchy and systematized administration, but not how this worked in practice. However effective government was, the only thing the records certainly show is what it aspired to, a supervision far closer and more elaborate than anything conceivable by the later Greek world. If there are any analogies, they are again with the Asian empires and Egypt.

At present, the tablets tell us only of the last phase of Minoan civilization because many of them cannot be read. The weight of scholarly opinion now inclines to the view put forward a few years ago that the script of a great mass of them found at Knossos is used to write Greek and that they date from about 1450 to 1375 BC. This confirms the archaeological evidence-of the arrival of successful invaders from the mainland at about this time and of their supersession of the native rulers. The tablets are their documents, and the script in which they are written has been termed ‘Linear B’. The earlier written records are found at first in hieroglyph, with some symbols borrowed from Egypt, and then in another script (not yet deciphered) termed ‘Linear A’ and used from perhaps as early as 1700 BC.

Almost certainly it was wholly non-Greek. It seems likely that the incoming Greeks took over preexisting Minoan administrative practice and put down records, such as were already kept, in their own tongue. The earlier tablets probably contain, therefore, information very like the later, but it is about Crete before the coming of the Greek-speaking invaders who presided over the last phase and mysterious end of Minoan civilization.

...

Going off in tangents is something I, too, am rather good at, and this particular tangent is one I don't mind taking. 

As a result of this I started reading "Out of Africa's Eden" again, but this time round I'm doing it in conjunction with Google Earth, which was not available at the time I read it first.

Anyway, I also found this on the Web:

Bradshaw Foundation

with the interesting link to:

Journey of Mankind

Good for spending vast amounts of unproductive time on, at any rate.