I see no reason to suppose that horse nomads are cognitively superior (or inferior) to agriculturalists. It seems you presume that a conquering people must be superior to a conquered people in every way, you even imply that pastoralists are more physically attractive, but there is no evidence to support this. The military advantages that nomadic societies enjoy (mobility, access to horses, ability to live of the land and thus to mobilize a large share of the male population, proficiency in war related skills such as hunting etc) are obvious and unrelated to IQ. You need no childish Gobineauism to explain it.
Is this what happened when the Mongols conquered China, when the Arabs conquered Egypt, when the Turks conquered Anatolia? Did societal complexity increase. Did IQ scores go up?
The farmers become experts at incorporating the incoming waves of Nobles without losing as much of their own identity
You speak as if this is a kind of alternative path for nomadic conquest to take, but as far as we can tell this is basically what always happens. The thin nomadic elite melts into the existing, and almost invariably more advanced, sedentary culture. Of course the real subject of this chapter is the Aryan conquests, conquests about which we can say very little. We know almost nothing about pre Aryan cultures and whether they were truly dim witted or not, they left no written records. I do not think they were any more dim-witted than the Song or the Byzantines. Nor do I see any reason to assume that Aryans were different from other pastoralist groups. More sophisticated cultures can succumb to less sophisticated ones, it has happened countless times throughout history.
In any case the Indo European conquest was obviously not the origin of civilization or high culture. The early cities of Mesopotamia, China, Egypt, the Indus Valley seems to have been built by indigenous agriculturalist cultures. These civilizations precede the development of sophisticated into European civilizations by millennia. If anything barbaric Aryans probably disrupted the development of civilization. Basing of a comment you seem to believe that the Egyptian elite was Aryan? This is not far removed from Aryans emerging from an ice moon. The suggestion of a kind of "eternal and natural" aristocracy descended from the Aryans is baseless, as are all of the inferences you make about the culture of these "nobles". Beauty, sophistication, intelligence and glory are not one and the same as power. Sometimes a beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent society gets subjugated by the 1000 bc equivalent of Hells Angels and that is just how it goes.
Since you are discussing history you should probably cite sources, preferably ones up to date with the latest scholarship.
p
I see no reason to suppose that horse nomads are cognitively superior (or inferior) to agriculturalists. It seems you presume that a conquering people must be superior to a conquered people in every way, you even imply that pastoralists are more physically attractive, but there is no evidence to support this. The military advantages that nomadic societies enjoy (mobility, access to horses, ability to live of the land and thus to mobilize a large share of the male population, proficiency in war related skills such as hunting etc) are obvious and unrelated to IQ. You need no childish Gobineauism to explain it.
Is this what happened when the Mongols conquered China, when the Arabs conquered Egypt, when the Turks conquered Anatolia? Did societal complexity increase. Did IQ scores go up?
You speak as if this is a kind of alternative path for nomadic conquest to take, but as far as we can tell this is basically what always happens. The thin nomadic elite melts into the existing, and almost invariably more advanced, sedentary culture. Of course the real subject of this chapter is the Aryan conquests, conquests about which we can say very little. We know almost nothing about pre Aryan cultures and whether they were truly dim witted or not, they left no written records. I do not think they were any more dim-witted than the Song or the Byzantines. Nor do I see any reason to assume that Aryans were different from other pastoralist groups. More sophisticated cultures can succumb to less sophisticated ones, it has happened countless times throughout history.
In any case the Indo European conquest was obviously not the origin of civilization or high culture. The early cities of Mesopotamia, China, Egypt, the Indus Valley seems to have been built by indigenous agriculturalist cultures. These civilizations precede the development of sophisticated into European civilizations by millennia. If anything barbaric Aryans probably disrupted the development of civilization. Basing of a comment you seem to believe that the Egyptian elite was Aryan? This is not far removed from Aryans emerging from an ice moon. The suggestion of a kind of "eternal and natural" aristocracy descended from the Aryans is baseless, as are all of the inferences you make about the culture of these "nobles". Beauty, sophistication, intelligence and glory are not one and the same as power. Sometimes a beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent society gets subjugated by the 1000 bc equivalent of Hells Angels and that is just how it goes.
Since you are discussing history you should probably cite sources, preferably ones up to date with the latest scholarship.
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