Ultra Cool writes:
There was a White tribe in China called Yuezhi, I think.
Turks. Almost Proto-Turkics. I think their descendants today would be best described as the Uighur people, who are ~1/2 White and 1/2 East Asian. However, a number of Uighur people, especially the women, look quite Caucasian. So I suppose these would be the farthest east of the Caucasians.
I have an 80 page paper on Turkic languages that is in line to be published in a book whenever they get around to publishing it. I believe that I discuss the Yuehzi in there, and if I am not mistaken, they were precursors of the the Uighurs or even better yet the Tocharians. If you want a truly White tribe in East Asia, the Tocharians would be your best bet. They have Tocharian mummies that have blue and green eyes and blond hair. They were found in China!
The Yuezhi were around ~2,000 YBP I believe. Most of the references we have to groups like that are from the Chinese. The Chinese were very helpful in that they developed a writing system early.
As a comparison, the earliest written Turkic we can find is the Orkhon Inscriptions (also very near China) which are these hard-to-decipher runic-type characters inscribed on stone pillars. I believe they have deciphered these inscriptions. So our attested Turkic only goes back to ~400 AD. Mongolic is even worse with earliest transcriptions ~1400 with Middle Mongolian. Tungusic is catastrophic with nothing at all written down other than transcriptions of the languages from early Russian settlers.
The Yukaghir have some odd Orkhon like inscriptions, but they are not Altaic. They are said speak an isolated language, but I think Yukaghir is related to Uralic.
With the lack of early attestations, you can see why Altaic is so hard to reconstruct and prove.
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Interesting. Elizabeth Wayland Barber wrote a very well researched book which was published in 1999 titled ‘The Mummies of Urumchi’; it deals with this and other related topics. In addition to this, the bibliography contains many excellent sources which are worth exploring and examining in greater detail.
‘I think their descendants today would be best described as the Uighur people, who are ~1/2 White and 1/2 Black’
I didn’t know they were half black…care to explain?
I’m sorry. That is a mistake. I somehow put Black in there when I meant to put East Asian.
The Uighur are part Tocharian and Sogdian (Iranic), the Proto-Turks learned to be horse riders with the Indo-Europeans and later the Mongols learned with the Turks.
“…the Tocharians would be your best bet. They have Tocharian mummies that have blue and green eyes and blond hair. They were found in China!…”
The most important thing about them is they wear plaid!
https://mathildasanthropologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/tocharian-tartan.jpg
Design from a Tocharian horse saddle blanket.
http://www.michaelbradley.info/images/naaassicropped.jpg
Damn those White people. Nazis from the beginning.
White is a culture specific term implying christianity & liberalism (church ban of arranged marriage). However, there were multiple Buddhist & Hindu Kingdoms there with many Brahmin monks marrying women from the area & settling in the Tarim Basin.
The Han emperor funded Turks to overrun the area in the 780s V.
Everyone has their own definition of White. The broad definition is more anciently potent and nearly all encompassing. You can always add European onto this. The Europeanist definition is fairly modern but can be potent as well. Europe added something new to the mix.
General Charles Gordon is a good example of a modern European White. Disgusted by Arab treatment of Sudanese. He tried to help free Sudanese slaves from Arab slavers, mowing many Arabs down with a Gardner gun from a rooftop before meeting his end. Selfless morality eventually became the essence of Whiteness.