Caste in India 2 Mar 2010 3 Quarks Daily has an excellent essay on the evolution (cultural, of course) of the Varna and Jati system in India. This is often referred to by westerners as “the” caste system. Politics Religion Social dominance Social evolution
Religion A god is born 14 Oct 2009 In 1502, an indigenous princess was born named in Spanish María de la Onza, or “Mary of the Jaguar”. She has become a mythological figure, and her name contracted to María Lionza, and she is the senior deity of a trinity of gods worshipped in rural regions near Caracas in… Read More
Accommodationism Accommodating science: Astronomy 27 Feb 201427 Feb 2014 If science and religion do conflict, what are the points of conflict that have occurred? These tend to have arisen in historical contexts as the science evolved. I shall consider five sciences and how religion has responded to them: astronomy, or cosmology, geology, evolutionary biology and biology in general, medicine,… Read More
Its rather nice. Hierarchy when it is flexable does resolve problems and tension. Perhaps why it has been around for so long. When it becomes rigid it cannot fuction effectivly. Social tension increases, the lines become even more rigidly drawn between competitive social groups. Culture that is shared particularly material artifacts that may be used by all members of an ethnos will be made to look distinct. At times of tension they will start to bare ethnic markers and symbols. Diffrence has a high value under such circumstances. But it is in part I think an understanding of ethnicity and how it is used to negotiate and change identity that is playing out in modern India. As it certainly is in other parts of the world as understanding and cultures evolve. Just as it has always done. As the subject of ethnology did in the mid. 19th cen. when it found it’s methodology and first spoke in the ethnological socities of London and Paris into a sea of considerable noise. Some shamless flag waving for ethnology but it is an important subject I think.
The Indo-Aryan Theory has been quite rigorously disproven with genetic evidence. They occupants of the Indian sub-continent are all from the same original source. The Indo-Aryan theory is just another product of racist Europeans deciding that White people had to have started all great civilizations. It’s no different from the theories that used to propose that the ruins in Africa where from ancient European colonists and not native ancestors. It’s just Nazi science, pure and simple.