Uighur, please! - Lesser-known minorities of the globe

There are isolated weird little groups all over the world.

OP is referring to the Kalash people

Adalat from Shimmy is Uyghur.

Probably not Macedonian. Lots of possibilities. Is Tsyiam, Siam? Or Assam?

The Kalash don't speak Greek.

Uighurs are around 55% Caucasian. Because of this the Chinese have sought to eliminate them through hostile actions in Western China where they live. The Chinese have sent Han Chinese to the region to populate the area and basically force them out. The Chinese are doing the same in Tibet with Tibetans.

[quote]Uighurs are around 55% Caucasian

This has no meaning.

Uighurs are a Muslim Turkic people and thus are the Chinese government's official Muslim "terrorist" scapegoats, like the Chechens in Russia.

This pertains to language more than ethnicity but I read once that the hillbillies living in Appalachia spoke the truest form of old English in existence.

Anyone know if that's true?

R8, they do not speak any form of Old English, pure or impure. Appalachian English has retained a few features that have died out in other varieties of English, as well as other features reminiscent of Scots, but it's otherwise no closer to the English of the colonists that any other.

[quote] I read once that the hillbillies living in Appalachia spoke the truest form of old English in existence.

And Eskimos have 400 words for snow!

R9, yes, I think the those features are what they meant. Obviously not the accent which is pure Dolly Parton.

It's not OldEnglish (a different language from Modern English and one that has to be learned like a foreign language and is unintelligible to speakers of Modern English). I grew up being told that there are pockets of Apalachia where the English is as close an approximation of the English of Shakespeare's time as we reconstruct (so Hamlet would have had a hillbilly twang). I tink that current linguistic scholarship says it isn't so clear that Thetis the case. But all English from the Renaissance on is classified as. Modern; Middle English is the language between the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance (think Chaucer in the original); before that, Old English or Anoo-Saxon, which sounds more like a combination of German and some Scandinavian languages than the English we know.

Uighurs are Turkic speakers who came from Mongolia. There were some Indo-Europeans living in the Tarim Basin when the Uighurs arrived and they were absorbed by the Uighurs. They are Muslims who do not like the Chinese and have their own republic, but they'd rather be free of China all together. They are trying to use the Indo European Tarim Basin mummies as ancestoprovos they can probe that they are not Chinese and deserve independence from them.

They live much more like the Muslims of Central Asia -- Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazaks, etc -- than like Chinese. Their homeland was part of the Silk Road and their allegiance is more with the central part of Asia than the eastern part of Asia.

Melungeons are a tri-racial isolate in Appalachia. They called themselves "Portugee" (Portuguese) to explain their dark skin, but they were "free coloreds" who left the Carolinas to get away from the local racial oppression.

They are part Caucasian, part sub Saharan African and part native American. They always emphasized their native American heritage over their black heritage, but DNA has shown very little Amerindian heritage compared to African and European heritage. They claim to have health problems that are hereditary to people of Portuguese, Arabic, Turkic and Sephardic backgrounds.

Muslims are now trying to claim Abe Lincoln as one of their own, saying that Abe was Melungeon and that the ancestors of the Melungeons were Turks and Berbers who left Spain and Portugal and came to America via the Azores. They also say Muslim sailors were in America before the white Europeans.

Who knows? Maybe they are "all of the above."

At any rate, the white settlers who pushed westward found English-speaking people in Appalacia when they arrived there. They were the Melungeons, who had migrated westward several generations before the whites.

[quote] as ancestoprovos they can probe

Oh dear. iPhone phart.

I find the oddest and most fascinating minorities the Ainu of northern Japan, supposedly the whole of Japan thousands of years ago was Ainu, or :the bear people":

Gypsies all over the world are a distinct, marginalized minority with some customs practised by all. Derived from India.

Nothing like hairy Japanese Ainus!

R16 I think the Ainu of Japan were the original inhabitants of Japan and then some other warlike, aggressive (possibly Mongols?) people came and kicked their ass. They are what we know as the Japanese now.

I have a work colleague who is Melungeon (from Wise County, Virginia). His skin color would make George Hamilton jealous. He also has blue/green eyes like sea glass. He also has a square jaw and a cleft chin. The combination of characteristics looks great on him.

I also think that what we know as traditional Japanese culture was actually borrowed from the Chinese.

The Greek origin story for the Kalash is false. We have good population admixture tools now that reveal the Kalash have no European admixture. Genetic analysis reveals their exclusive affinity with Asia, despite having coloring that reminds foreigners of Europeans.

Post-glacial Europe was settled relatively recently from Asia and the Near East, and that admixture remains strongly evident in genetic analyses of northeast Europeans and Russians today. This northeastern area also has the highest percentage of blond hair and blue eyes among Europeans and may represent an expansion point for light "European" coloring throughout the rest of Europe.

Asian admixture is genetically evident in this European area, though European admixture is absent from the lighter-colored peoples of central Asia, like the Kalash. This points toward light coloring being one evidence of Asian admixture in Europeans, NOT the other way around.

(This is cutting edge population genetics, expect it to make mainstream press in a year or two.)

Look at chart linked below for a K=7 Structure analysis of worldwide populations to see what I'm talking about:

R21:

Well, no, you think wrong. Influence from China/Korean, no doubt. But borrowed? Nah. Nice try.

very interesting, R22

How about the Paradesi Jews of Cochin, India? Yaheh Hallegua is the last remaining member of the community of childbearing age...I'll just let Wikipedia tell the rest:

[quote] Yaheh Hallegua (born in approximately 1973) is the youngest female Paradesi Jew in Cochin, Kerala, south India, and indeed the only Cochin Jew of childbearing age. She is employed as a ticket-seller in the Paradesi Synagogue, handling the thousands of tourists' 2 rupee entrance fees and "periodically shrilling instructions to cover their bare shoulders, or brusquely turning away those who disrespectfully wore above-the-knee skirts or shorts." She has been identified as being "notoriously frosty with visitors." Her refusal to marry one of her cousins and thus help perpetuate the community has resulted in the accusation that, "the end of thousands of years of Jewish history rests on [her] head." In turn, this allegation has been decried as "emotional blackmail," and Yaheh's position referred to as "a uniquely lonely existence."

Polonezköy is a Polish town inside Turkey

R6 The modern Uyghurs have very mixed genetic origin of Indo-european and Turkic. The Indo-european maternal contribution to Uyghurs is 42.6% while the Indo-european paternal contribution varies from 60-75%. On the other hand, the Mongoloid paternal contribution varies from 22-35% and Mongoloid maternal contribution is 57.3%, thus there no pure Caucasian among the Uyghurs

Zoroastrians.

Most Zoroastrians live in India, but they are shown to be Iranian through the male ancestors. They left Persia when Islam took hold.

Freddie Mercury's parents were from India, but he claimed to be Persian. He actually was Persian, because his family were Zoroastrians.

There aren't many Zoroastrians in the world today.

r28: the "tower of silence" at the Zoroastrian/Parsi temple in Mumbai is causing water pollution problems. Zoroastrians practice "sky burial" which means stick the corpse on a platform and let the vultures do the rest. However, the local vultures are getting sloppy and dropping pieces of Parsis in one of the local reservoirs.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Melungeons are illiterate mountain people. If they call themselves "Portughee" it is probably because they are, descended from Portugese settlers who scattered after the wreck of Spanish settlement in the Carolinas during the sixteenth century. I think genetic studies disprove the free black theory.

Native American languages have many similar words to Turkish, since both peoples apparently originated in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.

The Ainu in Japan were not finally defeated until the 19th century.

R22 Total BS! The Kalash are a unique Caucasian group with admixture from Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

Blond hair and blue eyes among Caucasians originated in Northern Europe. It wasn't brought to Europeans by Asians or East Asians. East Asians have brown eyes and black hair exclusively. From Wikipedia: "Black hair is very scarce in the Baltic littoral, where true blondism is believed to have originated."

From Wikipedia on skin color: Solute carrier family 24 member 5 (SLC24A5) regulates calcium in melanocytes and is important in the process of melanogenesis. The Thr111Ala allele (rs1426654) has been shown to be a major factor in the light skin tone of Europeans in a number of studies. It is virtually non-existent in Asian and African populations and is found in about 99.9% of Europeans. It is believed to represent some 25–40% of the difference in skin tone between Europeans and Africans, and appears to have arisen as recently as within the last 10,000 years.

Solute carrier family 45 member 2 (SLC45A2 or MATP) aids in the transport and processing of tyrosine, a precursor to melanin. It has also been shown to be a major factor in the skin color of modern Europeans through its Phe374Leu (rs16891982) variation. Like SLC24A5 it is ubiquitous in European populations but extremely rare elsewhere.

[quote]It wasn't brought to Europeans by Asians or East Asians.

That's the accepted wisdom. It's not what science is telling us.

Look at dbsnp population data for rs1426654, where you are correct in assuming that adenine is found exclusively in Europeans. Adenine at this position is also found in 3% of the east Asian population studied, and tellingly, in 82% of a sample of a south Asians.

Are you telling me that Europeans back migrated into both East Asia and the subcontinent? Europeans are a relatively young population compared to both east and west Asians. It's highly unlikely, and it doesn't agree with the admixture data we're seeing from these areas.

A at rs1426654 is much more likely to have originated in Asia and diffused into Europe.

Malaysia has orang asli people. Bali does as well- they are not friendly to outsiders who try to visit their villages. That's all I know.

I just love threads like this one and the one about lobsters.

Do the Basques count? They're an ethnic group between the borders of France and Spain yet their language is not Romance-derived and is different from many surrounding languages, as well.

My father's family is Melungeon. They are from rural Kentucky, but Dad has a distinct middle-eastern look. (He looks a lot like Danny Thomas, the old TV actor of Lebanese descent). Growing up, I was told my his mother was of Native American heritage, but as an adult I now realize there was no Native American bloodline. We were told that to cover for the Melungeon connection. Years ago families publicly denied their Melungeon roots.

Love that Ainu!

R11, my point (badly made) was that it's not "Old English"; people use that term without knowing what it really means.

Funny, I'm in a much better mood than when I replied yesterday and wouldn't even think to comment on it today.

Unless we're referring to people from the Caucusus region, could we not use the term "Caucasian"? It wounds, scientifically.

Reading all these posts about Melungeons, I was confusing them in my mind with the Lumbee, another triracial isolate from the Appalachians.

Heather Locklear is one! As is Stacy Layne Matthews from last season's Drag Race.

Though it's ending and ending fast, I've always been interested in the isolated culture of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

[quote] I think genetic studies disprove the free black theory.

No. They confirm it. Melungeons are part sub-Saharan African and they were listed as "free colored" on many tax roles. They left the Carolinas in the 1700s.

Later on in their history, they were not allowed to send their children to white schools and refused to send their children to black schools, so they were classified as Indian for schooling purposes. They really refused to be associated with blacks at all, because of the racial stigma in that part of the country.

Me too, R43! I've always wanted to see Saint Pierre. It's one of my fantasy cool destinations when it gets unbearably hot where I live.

R43, when you say the culture is disappearing, how is it changing? Is it becoming more like metropolitan France, or like Quebec? What's the main influence now?

It's not really becoming like any one of those. It is just changing as any culture does when contact with the outside world is made easier and more frequent. I'm the Quebec troll. I went to university there. I've always been fascinated by the place. So when my French was at peak and I was close by, wall closer than I ever would be, I went.

It's expensive to get there. However when you are young and poor and it's an adventure you don't mind hitching free rides and eating store brand granola bars. Know what I mean? Young and poor is always fun. Old and poor not so much.

Andaman islanders...a remnant group of the earliest people out of Africa.

Any of you know...for people really interested in genetics and history, is there a good website or journal to follow?

Here's a Wiki on the Kalash.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon have been generously subsidized by France for fifty years, so I'm not sure what you mean their "culture" is disappearing. As an indigenous fishing culture, it disappeared long ago. As a haven for francophones (and a convenient spot to infiltrate agents into Quebec during the separatist violence times) it is certainly not endangered as France shows no propensity to give it up. And it has always had strong cultural and human ties to Anglo Newfoundland anyway.

I love the snow plow blocking the airplane story.

You have to admit that this wins the best thread title of 2012 by a mile, right?

"and a convenient spot to infiltrate agents into Quebec during the separatist violence times"

LOL what was that the Hundred Years War they had with Ontario?

R52,

De Gaulle made openly separatist comments during a state visit to Quebec - "Vive le Quebec libre!" or something to that effect. It would not shock me if France secretly stoked the separatist fires and/or subsidized the FLQ movement during the 60s and 70s.

Yes he did say that. However most of the violence was Pierre Trudeau rounding up separatists and jailing them though they broke no laws. Shock and proof are two different things.

R54,

Separatists kidnapped and killed a British diplomat along with Quebec's deputy premier, Pierre Laporte. The FLQ were also detonating mailbox bombs in the Anglo neighbourhood of Westmount. They were most certainly breaking laws and endangering lives.

My best friend;s grandmother is from St. Pierre. Even after living in Nova Scotia for 60 years, she still has the Frenchest accent you can possibly imagine.

From what I gather, the culture there hasn't really changed much as remains closely tied to France. Certainly, a good many people from the islands have migrated, particularly to Nova Scotia, and Halifax has a decent community of them.

My best-friend's grandmother living in NS for all of those years has meant that a lot of her friends and family have come to visit off and on, so I've met quite a few of them.

If you've never heard of the mummies of the Tarim Basin, it is an interesting read. They were found in the Uyghur republic, which is currently a part of China. They are 2,000 to 3,000 years old and are Indo-European, not Mongolian or Chinese. Their clothing and artifacts appear to be Celtic. They wear tartan plaid clothes that are related to tartan plaids found in Austria.

The earliest mummies are European; later mummies are Eurasian and much later mummies are Asian, so you can see that the migration into the area started from the west, but as time went on, more in-migration came from the East.

What I find interesting is that Otzi, the 5,000 year old mummy found in the Alps, had tattoos along the areas of modern Chinese acupuncture points. He had arthritis, so it would make sense that he may have had those tattoos placed to treat his arthritis.

We think of acupuncture as a treatment developed in China. But seeing that 5,000 year old Otzi was an arthritis sufferer with tattoos along acupuncture points, and that Europeans with tartan clothing lived in the Tarim basin 3,000 years ago, it is possible that Europeans introduced acupuncture to China. The Europeans may have later lost the knowledge, necessitating it be reintroduced to the west from China thousands of years later.

Or there was 5000 year old trade routes between Europe and Eastern Asia.

It amazes me just how much ancient peoples traveled in their short lives.

Thanks, R36 and R51. I can't take credit for "Uighur, please", however, R51. It was from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, I think. What is a coincidence was that I posted this thread, then was channel surfing immediately thereafter, and saw "The Man Who Would Be King", with Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer, on TCM, which portrays the Kalash people. I think I first saw something about them on 60 Minutes or one of those television magazines years ago, and they popped into my head a few days ago, so I decided to start this thread.

OP, I think you,re fabulous.

Thanks, R60. I think you're tremendous.

Up for the Uighurs.

I didn't realize that there were 16th century Spanish settlements in the Carolinas.

I was always aware of the Spanish exploration and settlements in Florida and, just this week, there is a series of stories about recent archaeological digs that show one of the encampments of Hernando de Soto's army in 1539.

A very Islamophobic culture. Completely unacceptable.

More Uighurs, please?

Obama is 55% Caucasian.

You mean his daddy's people had been fucking Brits?

It is thought that there are no "pure" Ainus left, many having intermixed with the Japanese. It is also thought that a number of Japanese have Ainu ancestry. I had read an article in Time a number of years ago that theorized that many Native Americans descend from similar stock as the Ainu as during the ice age there was migration along the Kurile and Aleutian Islands down into North America. The Ainu language is nearly extinct and I am not sure if Japan makes any provision for its study in schools attended by Ainu children. For many of the American posters here you need look no further than your own back yard as many Indian reservations can be found in most states, even east of the Mississippi.

R16 is right- the indigenous Japanese didn't look all that "Japanese". The same holds true for other areas VERY often.

Once again racism rears its ugly head a the DL.

Just because someone isn't well known doesn't mean you can class them as a lesser race.

Once again smug and arrogant judgmentalism by a pompous ass rears its ugly twat a (sic) the DL.

Your didactic and needlessly literal interpretation needs to be shoved back to where it came from, Missy. We don't cotton to pissy PC "Say it like this" mouth breathers around here.

Look up "lesser," you dolt.

I'm fascinated by the Cagats. They were treated as despised minorities in Europe for centuries, and yet they didn't form a genuine or identifiable ethnic type"--they were just from families identified as Cagats. They were treated horribly--often forced to enter churches only through a specially low designed doorway so they would have to stoop.

Sorry: I meant "cagot," not "cagat."

The cagats produce a bunch of Latin band leaders

[r20], the actor Patrick Wilson is Melungeon, and he has the same characteristics of your friend. Last time I talked to him, it was before the information that came out late spring that the Melungeons did not have Middle Eastern roots as previously thought. I'm working with him again at the end of the month, so it'll be interesting to see his view on the new info. The new info that they're descended from sub Saharan African explains the bubble butt that he has.

Ramapough Mountain People, also known as "Jackson Whites." They're an insular group of people who dwell in the mountains outside of NYC. They have African, Native American and Dutch ancestry and speak a creole called Jersey Dutch.

Up, up with Uighurs! Ya meet 'em wherever ya go!

Up, up with Uighurs! They're the best kinda fols we know!

If more Uighurs were for Uighurs,

(All Uighurs ev'rywhere!)

There'd be a lot less Uighurs to worry about,

And a lot more Uighurs who care!

And many of the Ramapough Mountain people have Dutch surnames r76. I had read somewhere that some of their Indian ancestors were among the Canarsees who "sold" Manhattan to the Dutch. Many of the black ancestors were escaped or freed slaves and many white ancestors were escaped indentured servants, misfits and outlaws.

I'm a Datalounger. I hate Asians. Uighurs are a "lessor race." But that's OK. It's only bad to insult blacks or any guy who's hot.

[quote]lessor

Have at it, bitches!

By the time Alexander the Great got to the region around Afghanustan/Pakistan, his army and all the tradesmen and craftsmen who followed it, were composed of thousands of people and tribes not strictly Macedonian.

So to say there are people in these isolated places who claim to be descendants from Alexander and his armies, is very possibly true. The Macedonians by then, composed a very small part of his forces.

He did encourage his officers and top commanders to intermarry, and even offered dowries to his soldiers to marry among members of the Persian empire, made up of many different peoples, but most Macendonian soldiers, except the ones he settled in his new cities, refused to intermarry, were strictly Macedonian, very resistant to exposure to new culture, and wanted to go back to Greece.

These were practically in open rebellion towards him by the time he reached Pakistan. In some of the histories about his travels, they speak of three fertile areas in that region where the people were peaceful, welcoming and just wanted to be left alone, not fighters to be recruited to his armies.

The original inhabitants of New Zealand were South Americans. They were displaced by Polynesians who called themselves Maori. Australian aboriginals are African.

It's kind of funny that gypsies were outcasts in Europe since European languages are mostly derived from Sanskrit.

There weren't any ancient astronauts. Just people, boats, tools and pack animals. People got around in the ancient world

[quote] People got around in the ancient world

I know I did.

R86=Madonna

I meant to sign that, R87.

"Genetic analysis reveals their exclusive affinity with Asia, despite having coloring that reminds foreigners of Europeans."44

Say whaaaat?

How can Kalash be affiliated with Asia, when they speak one of the most archaic, extant Indo-Aryan languages?

My mom and her family were from a smaller group of seagoing Yupik eskimoes that split from northern Alaska probably a few hundred years before Europeans settled in southern Alaska. Their unmodified language, Sugstun, is distinct from surrounding tribes, and can be understood by the Yupik (many hundreds of miles to the north) people today.

I believe "kayak" is a Sugstun word.

A shout to the Yazidis. Keep on fighting! Syria is your land, too!

The Ainu were always marginal, and are not the "true indigenous" people of Japan. The Jomon were, and were there for over 30,000 years. They are widely believed to be Austronesian speakers---possibly Islanders, much like Filipinos less the Malay (majority inflence), Spanish, and indigenous "negrito" genes.

Japanese glamorize the "Jomon" influence and period, because they think of it as a contributing factor in what sets them apart from China (which is much more diverse than Japan, but distinctively "Chinese"), and Korea (also different---the Koreans like to believe that the several Mongol invasions resulted in a lot of mixing, in addition them taking up cattle rearing, but that might just be fantasy).

The Yayoi, believed to come from the Korean Peninsula 3000 years ago, were the newcomers. They introduced rice farming and sedentary lifestyles, but adopted other aspects of Jomon culture, such as the pottery-making.

Japanese culture and phenotypes are a harmonious blend of both Jomon and Yayoi influence.

Dandies

Bump

Y'awl some straight up geniuses in this thread, so, does that mean the Gays are really smart, or is it the Jewish gays, or just the Jews, or none of the above.

The Euskaldunak (Basques) are fascinating people, and the men can be very sexy!

Mifune Toshiro was of Ainu descent. I think the name "Mifune" is probably Ainu in derivation-- it is an unusual name in Japanese.

Ainu u!

What would be interesting is if any of you bitches belong to any of these groups?

I'm not anything but I once sucked off a leprechaun (see photo).

What's the most obscure minority you've had sex with?

Sentinelese

the basques, man. how come their language isn't related to any other known languages?

R103:

The people of Tangier Island, Virginia, Smith Island, Maryland, and the "Hoi Toiders" of North Carolina's Outer Banks speak similar English dialects that developed in isolation. They all sound somewhat like the Cornish dialect in England.

The Kurds are not exactly lesser known, but they are a large "stateless nation" occupying multiple states: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria.

also who the hell were the scythians? are we ever going to find out?

i like a good mystery

Wow, some of these Kalashi men are babes

Exhibit 2

Exhibit 3

And one more of first guy

The tattooed Kalinga people of the Cordilleras of Luzon, Philippines. Fierce.

I visited the gorgeous town of Bautzen in Germany a few weeks ago, capital of the slavic Sorb minority (they call that town Budyšin themselves). I spent two days there but unfortunately I didn't hear anyone speaking the language in public. One of the trademarks of their language is that they're one of the last languages who still use the so-called "dual". That means that they have a special word that describes just two of something. Let's take chairs, for instance - in English we have the word "chair" (used to describe just one chair) and the word "chairs" (two or more chairs). But languages like Sorbian have a special word that describes just two chairs. Sounds kind of romantic, no?

Living well over 100 years is very common among the Hunza of No Pakistan.