This blog here is full of tons of comparisons between Himalayan (Himachal Pradesh), Caucasus (Dagestan), and European (Russian, Serbian, and French, among others) culture that happen to be "astonishing"!
I've already discussed this avenue of "historiography", which consists of pointing to vague artistic similarities as evidence of shared dissent, but let's smash it some more because who doesn't love beating a dead horse?
R5 starts in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
This is an interesting finding… As one day I happened to google Dagestan and its culture, I found out striking similarities it had with my own Himachali customs and pristine culture. So, I thought it will be useful to share.
Oy, cultural "purity" is hard to measure but that belongs more in /r/badsocialscience. If by purity you mean a lack of outside influence, that's not exactly true since Himachal has been invaded by Indian Muslims, Nepalis, and later Brits. The capital of Himachal Pradesh is the purely Indo-Iranian city of Shimla, which was most definitely not the summer capital of the British Raj from 1863 to the 1940s and which most definitely is not full of English Tudor architecture.
Let’s start with geography. Dagestan or Respublica Dagestan forms the Northern Caucasus region and is located in the southern part of Russsia. It has several ethnic groups in which Russians form a minute part but still the lingua franca of the region remains Russian. The languages of Dagestan are Caucasian, Turkic and Iranian languages.
No history here, at least not anything incorrect.
Now let’s come to the cultural aspects of Dagestan. Dagestan has a very rich cultural heritage. It is famous for its jewellery, pottery and carpets. Its carpets are famous because of its proximity to Persia and as we all know that Persian carpets have been famous since ages. In fact in Dagestan, handmade rugs are the most valuable things in the household. In some area within Dagestan, they can even be traded for a few horses and in some of the others it is considered necessary for a new bride to weave a carpet all by herself.
Don't know enough about this so skipping, although it sounds very outdated.
And quite similar, rather almost identical is the colour scheme and design pattern of the Himlayan rug as you can see below.
Those rugs aren't very similar, but skipping because /r/badarthistory.
Another striking similarity comes in the form of clothing. In both the regions women use a very similar head scarf to cover their heads. In fact even the manner in which that headscarf is worn over the heads is also very similar. The heavy jewellery worn by the bride during wedding is also quite identical. It is not much difficult to draw analogy between the jewellery design and the use of silver as the predominant metal in ornaments. Below are some of the pictures of Dagestani women wearing their ornaments and native dresses. In the first pic as you can see there are coins on the headdress of the lady. It is a custom in Dagestan to have more and more coins on the headdress because more the coins, wealthier the bride’s family.
A few things to note:
1) Dagestan is a predominantly Muslim region and has been for hundreds of years. Muslim women around the world often wear headscarves. A shared origin that implies cultural connection is unlikely.
2) Headscarves have evolved somewhat independently in many cultures, including France, indigenous South America, and among both men and women in a variety of cultures.
Now have a look at the Himalayan dresses and traditional ornaments …….
A bunch of these aren't even headscarves, much less recognizably "Dagestani" ones.
In many of the pictures above, you can see the coins in Himalayan jewellery too. The intricate patterns but similar designs show too much in common. But below is one of the strangest and my favourite set of similarities. FOOTWEAR. Dagestani footwear, I mean their traditional footwear has the same colour and the design pattern as the Himalayan home slippers. The first picture below shows Dagestani footwear and the second one shows the Himalyan footwear.
A lot of those have similar patterns and colors to Amerindian textiles, but that doesn't necessarily imply a shared origin. Note: be careful about what you call "Navajo print"; thanks to lawsuits, many retailers must call it 'Aztec print' or 'Native print' instead.
The astonishing similarities may be attributed to similar geographical conditions in the two regions. Moreover, the region around Dagestan which is the Central Asian part, is said to be the origin of Aryan race and it is believed that the inhabitants of Himalayan regions were Aryans.
R5: "Aryan race". Just kidding, but this is doubly bad. In terms of a genetic "race", such a thing doesn't exist, and genetically speaking there are a huge number of clusters that are found in "white" and "Indo-Aryan" peoples, not one clear white race:
The yellow here represents a cluster found in the Indo-Iranian Kalash of Pakistan.
Gray is found in both Indo-Iranian and Dravidian peoples of India.
Purple is found in the northern Middle East, the Caucasus, and parts of Pakistan.
Blue is found in Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic) people, both "black" (like Jewish and gentile Ethiopians) and "white" (like Bedouin and Druze). It also is found in large numbers in the Indo-European Armenians and almost every European ethnic group.
Black is probably the most classically "white" cluster, found at about 80% in Scandinavians and about 40% in Mediterraneans.
TL;DR: Race doesn't exist; out of the first 13 genetic clusters found in a large multi-continent sample, five are associated with "Aryan" peoples.
If you're talking about linguistic homeland, you're still probably wrong. There are three competing theories as to the homeland of the Indo-European languages (which include Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and most European languages as well as Armenian). None of them begin in Dagestan.
There are many speculations about this but let’s move on to traditions.
In Dagestan, as well as in countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, livestock is very vital part of the people’s lives. Similar trend can be seen in the Himlayan region,where livestock plays an important role in the survival. Traditional animals in Russian region are camels and horses, whereas in Himalayas these are mainly cow, sheep, goats and yaks. One of the surprising things is that Yak is considered the holy cow of the cold regions, still it is slaughtered for meat and quite similar is the trend in Russia and its former states.
Livestock herding is a very common pattern of living throughout the Old World, and the use of livestock says nothing about cultural origins. Even the Incas, completely isolated from Old World civilization, used livestock.
On further research, I found out that not only were the Russian dresses and customs similar to Himalayan culture. But other European adjoining nations too had a very similar dressing. Have a look at this Serbian woman.
The rest of the article is just more "they dress similarly/have similar folk dances, and that might not be coincidence!" fluff.
ここには何もないようです