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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 211.30.222.155 (talk) at 06:35, 12 October 2007 (→Racial classifications). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Religion of Tamils before Hinduism

Yes, there were indigenous animistic faiths amongst the ancient Tamils and other ethnic groups in Southern India. Todays version of Hinduism in Southern India is a mixture of indigenous faiths and Vedic faiths to an extent. The reason you are going on this campaign is the fact that you cannot stomach the idea that we are all indigenous aboriginals of South Asia. All you have to do is take a look at our distant cousins in Australia and parts of the Indonesian archipelago. Apart from that, I would like to leave a famous quote:

"We are fit to think of `Self-Respect' only when the notion of superior and inferior caste is banished from our land." - Periyar Ramaswamy
Wiki Raja 20:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, yeah right. Gnanapiti 21:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is the most weakest come back I have ever heard. Enough with this nonsense. Wiki Raja 21:25, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comeback? Do you even expect a comeback for your cruft stemmed out of illusions? Gnanapiti 21:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At least I support my info with legitimate sources. End of discussion. Wiki Raja 23:22, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Legitimate sources where? Are we provided with different versions of Wikipedia here? Gnanapiti 16:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hindu.net

User:0scalefactor has tried to add back the Hindu.net website as a reliable source. It is not a reliable source. Its arguments for Dravidians and Aryans being the same race are primarily religious. The physical anthropology reasons it gives are uncited and do not explain their reasonings. They state that it is well-known that Dravidians are Mediterranean Caucasoids. The expertise of the author to assert such a statement is in question.----DarkTea© 05:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:0scaelfactor has a sockpuppet named User:Excel 2008 who made this edit which reverted the article. I am sure that the citations it removed were accidental and were just a part of the reversion. The other parts misrepresent the sources. --DarkTea© 07:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]




This statement about Blumenbach is uncited original research.--DarkTea© 07:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


This misrepresents Huxley. Huxley considered Mongoloids, Australoids, and Mesochroi to exist in India. He didn't say they were all Australoids.--DarkTea© 07:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


This is uncited original research.----DarkTea© 07:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

0scalefactor added back Egon Eickstadt's racial classification of India. The problem is I made that map and I did not cite it, making it original research. I can't trust the map I made, because I realize that even if Eickstadt says Mediterraneans live in India, it doesn't necessarily mean all of India. The source I found the map was a poor summary and a secondary source. From that source, I could not gather the extent of Mediterraneans in India. Also, Eickstadt never said Oesteropoids, Mediterraneans, Alpines and Nordics belong to the same race. Not all anthropologists recognize a grand racial classification that includes Nordics and Mediterraneans.----DarkTea© 08:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


This is in reference to Chandler claiming that "Ethiopian Negritos" founded India. While it may be true that the term "Ethiopian" may not imply membership in the black race, Chandler specifically says these Ethiopian Negritos are a part of the black race, making the above critical distinction irrelevant.----DarkTea© 08:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


0scalefactor is misrepresenting Gobineau. Indians were classified as racially "degenerative" by Gobineau because they incorporated the black, yellow and white races. Gobineau did not define a "Degenerative Race".----DarkTea© 12:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Racial classifications

the "Racial classifications" part is too long, even longer than Genetic classification, as for these are just theories. And have nothing to do with serious science. Someone should re-edit it or just remove it.Asian2duracell 01:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be part of the scope of this article. I see no reason for removing it.----DarkTea© 15:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah its a part of this article but way to long for its relevance, most of this statement have nothing to do with science. Some are political and some racist statement. If Dravidians fall under Caucasoid/Asiatic (we talk about scinece, not ones own opinion)....why do we need a statement from the 18th century which sais that they are negroid or veddoid or australoid or whatever. A few sentences like.... "the Dravidians have been mistaken or classified as other races in the past".. is enough.Asian2duracell 21:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your original research opinion that all past and present anthropologists have been wrong is irrelevant.----DarkTea© 21:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is indeed quite long, and is covered in detail in the main article Historical definitions of races in India. The summary in this article should be limited to a length and level of detail comparable to the other topics in this article per WP:Summary_style. --JWB 03:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Many of these citations are just about Dravidians without racial classifications about the rest of India. In places where I can find the characterizations for the rest of India by the anthropologists, I will add them to the races of India article. When all the anthropologists here are represented in the "Historical definitions of races in India" article, I will make a summary in the Dravidian article. The summary will be, "Although the historical racial classifications of Dravidians have differed, they were by and large regarded as a type of black race whether it be a Negrito, Negro, Malay or Australoid or some mixture of the three often with Caucasoid admixture from the Aryan invader and less frequently ascribed Mongoloid admixture."----DarkTea© 04:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Negro? when were Dravidians ever thought to have Negro admixture?. I mean from phenotypes from what ive seen (being a dravidian and having been to South India) there are Australoid influences (possibly from mixture with Mundas and Adivasis) and prevalently caucasoid phenotypes but no Negroid at all. It is highly unlikely we have any negroid admixture, I don't see the point of putting such a misleading statement whether a dated scientifically racist view now changed or not. People claiming Dravidian speakers are of the Negroid race or have a mixture of Negro because of their overall slightly darker skin than Indo-Aryans is like saying that Mongoloids are more prone to down syndrome due to their appearance similarity with people from other races who suffer down syndrome. I would think that genetic facts and phenotypes would suggest that Dravidians are overall of the same stock as our Indo-Aryan counterparts and that the dark skin is partly due to the evolution occurring within a close proximity to the equator, also that "regarded as a type of black race whether it be a Negrito, Negro, Malay or Australoid or some mixture of the three often with Caucasoid admixture from the Aryan invader and less frequently ascribed Mongoloid admixture. " is misleading, false to a point, and falsely suggesting all Dravidian language speakers as distinct race from Indo-Aryans of India. Is this largely outdated and mostly false appearing information on racial classifications of Dravidians worth putting in this article? i.e are previous overridden claims worth knowing about by readers of this article? or at least a statement about actual phenotypes should be made at the end of the section or a stress on the greater credibility of genetic classification over historical racial classifications to give a better idea to readers about the peoples who historically speak Dravidian languages. Please reassess the relevance of your edits Dark. Cheers 211.30.222.155 13:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The term "negro" is Spanish for "black". Many Indians have a glaring similarity to other blacks. It is generally undisputed that Dravidians came from Africa, thus having Negroid ancestry. They have Negroid ancestry and a Negroid appearence, ergo they are Negroids. The Mongoloid analogy is poor, because it compares a disorder which could be found on all peoples with a permanent racial classification. In your point of view, the Aryan invasion theory is false, but many experts endorse the theory. I find the arguments for the homogeneity of the Indian populace unconvincing. I doubt the genetic classifications if they do not verify the black racial nature of Dravidians. Anyways, geneticists are not anthropologists and they are talking outside of their field of expertise when they try to define race.----DarkTea© 13:45, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, now I'm convinced you are POV, how Dravidians have a Negroid appearance, i can never fully understand, honestly ive seen many Dravidians and at most ive seen a Dravidian who looks like a full blood Australian Aboriginal but no African appearance ie not the same hair, physical stature, size of lips and roundness of head, people like that can be spotted of a mile away, figuratively speaking, in a Dravidian area. If you mix Dravidians with a cross -section of Indo-Aryan peoples you genuinely cant really tell who's what. I mean its a fact that Adivasis in Kerala are racially abused. In fact Dravidian speakers are also multi-racial, Kodagu people are Dravidians speculated to be of Indo-Scythian racial origin and gonds(Dravidian speakers) are of the Aboriginal race. I mean look at the variability, some look like Aishwarya Rai, most look like Mohan Lal and Anil Kumble i.e Caucasoid with Australoid influence, though some have none and some can have a large amount (i.e some Tamils and South Keralites), a minority look like I.M Vijayan (a dalit), and Kerala Nasrani have Syrian-Arab blood. I mean i understand from a foreigners perspective that we can somewhat resemble Africans ( how can we fully? i mean some are Australoid looking but Indigenous Aboriginals are not racially Africans)the same way as it is hard for most people except maybe natives themselves to tell apart racially east and south-east Asians. I agree we are not homogeneous but racial variability in India cant be grouped by language family, but more by caste or smaller communities.. racial variability isn't even important as Indians are all mixed. Overall Dravidian speakers resemble more their Indo-Aryan counterparts than anyone else and are largely Caucasoid from phenotypes. "Many Indians have a glaring similarity to other blacks. It is generally undisputed that Dravidians came from Africa, thus having Negroid ancestry. They have Negroid ancestry and a Negroid appearence, ergo they are Negroids". This is laughable, im sure few Dravidians have ever thought this but please show me the proof apart from the fact that all humanity came out of Africa. I hope you will refrain from placing such rubbish, in my view, in the main article. I never said Aryan-Invasion was false so i dont understand how you came to that conclusion, though speaking of that i personally believe in group by group "Aryan" migration not invasion. Besides the concept of race has largely been abandoned by modern scientists as the term race is a social construct and you seem to be very keen on it judging by you talk page211.30.222.155 14:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was just summarizing the anthropologists I cited. They back my assertion and they are the evidence. The Dravidian race can either be conceived as the culmination of the racial mixes which formed it (Wayne Chandler) or the first black migrants who formed it (K Than). Anthropologists, not all mind you, have classified the original stock of the Dravidians as Negroid. Now, they may not look exactly like West Africans, but it is not clear that that is a requirement to be part of the Negroid race. I have certainly seen people from India who are tall, black-skinned, round-headed and with large lips, but with straight hair. Contrary to your assertion, Indians with a strong West African appearence can't be discerned from West Africans a "mile away". The Dravidian language is different from the Dravidian race. The Indo-Aryans in India are mixed with the Dravidians and likewise the Dravidians are mixed with the Aryans, so if you juxtaposed a community of Indo-Aryan speakers and Dravidian speakers you couldn't necessarily tell them apart. Maybe our bone of contention is my definition of a Dravidian as the original Negroids of the Indian Subcontinent whose civilization was invaded by the Aryans and your definition of Dravidians as people who speak the Dravidian languages today.----DarkTea© 16:54, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in that case your definition is less relevant as the article itself states, Dravidian people refers to populations who speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Populations of speakers are found mostly in Southern India and some minor populations are found in Brahui[1]-speaking parts of Pakistan, Kurukh[2]-speaking parts of Bangladesh, and Tamil-speaking parts of Sri Lanka. "I have certainly seen people from India who are tall, black-skinned, round-headed and with large lips, but with straight hair". Are you sure you are not confusing Dravidians with Munda peoples? Munda peoples are the indigenous peoples of India and have a different racial origin to Dravidians. I have never seen a Dravidian matching your description, perhaps a Gond or Kurukh (Adivasis) might match that description but they are the tiny minority of Dravidians in India with possible different origins and you cannot apply that to all Dravidians. Anyway the whole racial classifications section should be removed and if you feel you must, be placed into a different article called, Proto-Dravidian race(theories) or Dravidian race(theories). Like the Indo-Aryan peoples page racial origin theories should not be more than barely mentioned as race is not relevant to the more than average mixed Indian races and the fact that race itself is a vague social construct and genetics is more valid as a description: "Many anthropologists contend that while the features on which racial categorizations are made may be based on genetic factors, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into groups based on selected hereditary features, are social constructs.", to dispute your earlier point concerning genetics and race. 211.30.222.155 03:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The anthropologists cited do not define the Dravidian people as the people who speak the Dravidian languages. You cite this same Wikipedia article as defining the term "Dravidian" to be solely linguistic which may not even be cited, but many more citations in this article define Dravidians as purely racial in nature. I don't know whether the black-appearing Indian was Dravidian. S/he was from Bombay and I didn't pry any further. Regardless of his/her ancestral location or the language s/he spoke, Dravidians are the founding black race of India who were dispersed and mixed into the Aryans. Therefore, this person is probably also a Dravidian. I have seen someone from Kerala who matches Huxley's description of a Dravidian, "have dark, usually chocolate-colored skins; fine dark wavy hair; dark eyes overhung by beetle brows;coarse, projecting jaws;broad and dilated but not especially flattened noses, and lips which, though prominant, are eminantly flexible. The skulls of these people are always long and narrow... [f]or the most part, fair stature, erect and well built, except for an unusual slenderness in the lower limbs". In Chandler's hypothesis, some Dravidians may have more Negrito or Australoid typological features due to being less mixed with later Mongoloid and Caucasoid stocks, so there may be no fine distinction between thse Munda Dravidians and other Dravidians. If there were a new article which soley dealt with the Dravidian racial theories it couldn't be called "Proto-Dravidian" anything since all of the citations are for the term "Dravidian". It also couldn't be called "Dravidian race", since the citations are not for a distinct Dravidian race. The citations are for Dravidians being constituted of the black race or races i.e. the Malays, Negritos, Australoids, Negroids or a combination of the four, often with Mediterranean Caucasoid, Nordic Caucasoid, and Southern Mongoloid racial admixture.----DarkTea© 04:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well don't know what Huxley is talking about when he says prominent lips, haven't seen anything like that. Also Munda peoples are as different to Dravidians as Dravidians are to Indo-Aryans. "Dravidians are the founding black race of India who were dispersed and mixed into the Aryans", i dont believe this is true because Dravidians are not the indigenous peoples of India, the Mundas and tribals are, also that Dravidians are not a black race, whatever that suggests. I am from the Nair race, which I believe within most sub-castes are pure-blood Dravidians also like Bunts, Naidus etc, because of our separate long history and our policy of only marrying within the community with the penalty of exclusion from the community if marrying outside it, even till lately, unlike other people classified in the Dravidian race, who were probably wrongly being studied by anthropologists as a representative sample of the Dravidian population, such as most Tamils who i believe have racial mixture from Adivasis and Mundas. Which means that Nairs, Bunts and Naidus have no tribal Adivasi or Munda mixture. Nair people can exhibit very "Aryan" looks, I have people in my family with very light brown skin and rare occurrences of light eyes(green, hazel) with most having aquiline noses and medium brown skin, with a minority of people having very dark skin with flared wide bulbous noses, hooked noses and rounded small foreheads. I believe based on these phenotypes that the real unmixed Dravidian race are an earlier version of Indo-Aryan ie a proto-Caucasoid, such as the Ancient Egyptians, who settled the Indus Valley from West Asia, possibly linked to the Elamites, and later moved to south India. The Indo-Aryans Caucasoids who evolved differently from the Dravidians, from the common proto-Caucasoid ancestor, due to stronger sexual selection who also came from West Asia migrated later group by group. The Kerala Brahmins are a mixture of both which gives them an overall Mediterranean Caucasoid appearance. I think there is proof of this theory of mine, because I have read the many facts supporting this on wikipedia, and other sources. It is not likely people like Aishwarya Rai(Bunt), Shilpa Shetty(Bunt) and Shashi Tharoor(Nair) have any Indo-Aryan admixture due to the facts concerning their communities histories, with the only other likely possibility that Dravidians are descended from proto-Caucasoids who are closely related to todays Indo-Aryans. 211.30.222.155 05:14, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your caste rules, I gather from, "our policy of only marrying within the community", only suggests endogamy after the caste system was imposed by the Aryans. If the "Nair people can exhibit very "Aryan" looks", then their caste or ethnic group were formed from a mixture of the Dravidian and Aryan races. Since this happened long ago, the Nairs may have reached an equilibrium of Dravidian and Aryan traits without a sharp distinction of races. Your theory about Egyptian origins is very interesting. Maybe you'll find an anthropologist you can cite to get it in the article. I agree with your statement, "Dravidians are descended from proto-Caucasoids". These proto-Caucasoids are called Negroids. Dravidians are descended from Negroids and are still Negroids.----DarkTea© 05:42, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By 50,000 years ago the population that had remained in southern Iran had evolved into proto-Caucasoids and began to expand -- to the east into Pakistan and northern India". I highly doubt any populations in Iran belonged to the Negroid race and your statement "These proto-Caucasoids are called Negroids. Dravidians are descended from Negroids and are still Negroids" is POV and possibly entirely inaccurate, please refrain from placing such ridiculous claims on the main article. All the racial theories that place Negroid elements in the Dravidian peoples are dated to the early 20th century and are not relevant.211.30.222.155 06:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Confusion of language and race is typical of late 19th and early 20th century racial ideas up through the Nazis. After WWII it was scrupulously avoided, like the typological view of race.

"Aryan" was used originally for the Indo-Aryan languages and then for Proto-Indo-European and then for the race supposed to have spoken Proto-Indo-European. It was placed in opposition to "Semitic" which is also a language family and was then also assumed to be a racial type. Both concepts went out of fashion with the Nazis and the words have very restricted use today.

"Dravidian" was another term coined to name a language family and then applied to race. The usage for the language family is the original meaning, is precise, and has persisted to the present. The usage for a racial type is derivative, imprecise, varies with each writer, and has fallen out of use, though it is not as stigmatized in the West as "Aryan" simply because Westerners are less familiar with it and its political implications. I have seen people from India stiffen at the mention of the word "Dravidian", apparently due to its political associations.

DT says "Dravidian" for race was used by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1972, when the biographical article says in the first sentence that he lived 1868-1963. The other writers quoted from 1985 to the present are racist extremists with marginal views contrary to present and post-WWII science.

There is no alternative name for the language family, as "Indo-European" is alternative to "Aryan", so "Dravidian" continues to be the name of the language family. However, the history of the various ideas of a black race in India belongs in the articles on the history of racial ideas. Not all of these ideas used the word "Dravidian", and the word is not basic to the idea. "Dravidian" only makes sense in the eras and places where Dravidian languages are known to have been spoken. --JWB 06:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DNA Tribes

User:82.5.117.20 removed DNA Tribes information from on this edit, on the grounds that it is a commerical organization which involved many people testing DNA ancestry for a price which is odd because its commercial nature doesn't lower its credibility. DNA Tribes does its work into the present and incorporates multiple experts, making it a reliable source. User:82.5.117.20 did not remove Cavalli Sforza whose work represents one person's opinion and was done in th 1980's even though it was not as reliable a source. User:82.5.117.20 gripe seems to be disingenuous in attacking the stronger reliable source when the weaker source disagrees with them. I see nothing unreliable about the DNA Tribes source.----DarkTea© 14:22, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In [1] Valaitis says nothing about his methods and data except that he is using autosomal short tandem repeats, but says they are proprietary. This is the key difference between proprietary commercial work and open scientific publication where methods and data are detailed for peer review. In particular, different statistical methods, even on the same data, can give different branching trees. It is impossible to evaluate the DNA Tribes work without any information.

You interpret Valaitis as saying "India is genetically closest to East and Southeast Asians with little genetic similarity to Europeans". His tree diagram appears to say the distance between Indians and Europeans is about .61 and the distance between Indians and East Asians is about .53, which does not justify "little genetic similarity". "About 15% less similarity" would be a more accurate representation.

Cavalli-Sforza publishes with a large number of co-authors and it is not accurate to represent his work as more "one person's opinion" than Valaitis.

There is plenty of work in the open scientific literature and you should look for support for your POV there. --JWB 03:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1870)
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