Expert: Maria - 5/3/2005

Question
1.What is the origin of the Swastika which place did it come from originally.

2.People of which countries today are descent from the Aryan race. And since when did the Aryans give themsleves that identity of being Aryans. Are Europeans and mordern day white americans aryan descent?

3. Who are the Nordics is this a race of humans what are its origins.

Answer
Hi,

here are my answers.

1-The swastika dates back to prehistoric men  from the Mediterranean area to Asia Minor (ancient Troy, for example), the Far East, and  also to Central American Maya and Aztec.
In fact we find this pretty much universal symbol from the 4th. millennium  BC. onward in such diverse cultures as Greece, Egypt, Ancient Crete, Hittites, India, Tibet, China, Japan, Central American Maya and Aztec.
The ‘Swastika', a Sanskrit word, which means literally 'well being', was originally used as a good luck symbol, since it symbolizes the sun and its round shape (“Sun-Wheel”) as well as the sunshine.
Absolutely nothing to do with the distorted use that spread in Germany and elsewhere in the past century.
In fact the positive meaning of the symbol was subverted in the early twentieth century when it was adopted as the emblem of the National Socialist German Workers Party. This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. So the swastika was used as a convenient symbol to emphasize this false, mythical Aryan-German correspondence.



2-The Aryans (from the Sanskrit term arya, meaning "noble" or "lord") were originally a group of nomadic tribes, who were part of a great   migratory movement that spread in successive waves from Southern  Russia and   Turkmenistan during the 2d millennium BC  and penetrated India, Iran and finally  Europe throughout Mesopotamia and Asia   Minor.
Later, in modern times, i.e.  in the 19th century , they were named Indo-Europeans as from the Indo-European(Indo-Aryan)  tribes  derived almost  all of  languages in Europe (Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian, Gaelic, German,  English, etc.) as well as those of India and Iran.
We need  however point out that the term “Aryan" has been subject to racialist distortions, only in 19th and 20th century Western culture.
This usage tends to blur the Sanskrit meaning of 'noble' or 'elevated' with the idea of distinctive ancestral ethnicity marked by language distribution and then in this interpretation, the Aryan Race is both the highest representative of humanity and the purest descendent of the Proto-Indo-European population.

As for  your question about peoples of which countries today come from the Aryans, here they are: the Italians, the Greeks, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the Irish,  the Scots, the Germans,the Austrians, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Danes, the Swedes, the Norwegians,  the Russians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Poles, the Croatians, the Slovenians, the Serbians, the Czechoslovaks, the Albanians, the Montenegrins.In short all the peoples of Europe except the Hungarians and the Finns.
With regard to   the Europeans and modern day white Americans, they are of course direct  descendants  of the Aryans or Indo-Europeans, i.e. of those nomadic tribes who by the first half of the 2nd. millenium B.C.  arrived on the Iranian plateau and the Indian subcontinent whence they moved to Europe.In fact the Europeans are descendants  of the Aryans and  white Americans come from Europe.

3-The Nordics are simply part of the Indo-European peoples (also called Aryans).In fact their languages (Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish ) derive also from the Indo-European language group.

To conclude, please note that the Aryans were originally NOT a race, but merely a group of nomadic tribes that spoke the same language which later gave rise to many other languages in India, Iran and Europe.

Hope this can be helpful to you.
Have a nice day.
Maria