.^: Thule Tradition 200BC to 1600AD & Aryan Race

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Tradition

The Thule Tradition, which lasted from about 200 BC to A.D. 1600, developed around the Bering Strait, and are the prehistoric ancestors of the Inuit who now live in Northern Labrador.^[1] Thule culture was first named as described by Therkel Mathiassen, following his participation as archaeologists are cartographer of the Danish Fifth Expedition to Arctic America in 1921-1924. He excavated sites on Baffin Island and northwestern Hudson Bay region, which he considered to be the remains of a highly developed Eskimo whaling culture, which had originated in Alaska and moves to Arctic Canada approximately 100 years ago.^[2] There are three stages in development leading up to Thule culture; they are Okvik/Old Bering Sea, Punuk, Birnirk, and then Thule culture. This group of peoples have been referred to as “Neo-Eskimo” cultures, which are differentiated from the earlier Norton Tradition.^[2]

There are several stages of the Thule tradition: Old Bering Sea Stage, Punuk Stage, and Birnirk Stage. These stages represent variations of the Thule Tradition as it expanded over time. The Thule Tradition replaced the Dorset Tradition in the Eastern Arctic and introduced both kayaks and umiaks, or skin covered boats, into the archaeological record as well as developed new uses for iron and copper and demonstrated advanced harpoon technology and use of bowhead whales, the largest animal in the Arctic.^[3] and spread across the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. It is the most recent “neo-Eskimo” culture.

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Old Bering Sea Stage 200 BC to 500 AD[edit]

The Old Bering Seas (OBS) stage was first characterized by Diamond Jenness, on the basis of a collection of deeplypatinated decorated ivory harpoon heads and other objects dug up by natives on the St. Lawrence and Diomede Islands.^[2] Jenness identified the Bering Sea culture as a highly developed Inuit culture of northeastern Asiatic origin and pre-Thule in age.

A Strong maritime adaptation is characteristic of the Thule, and the OBS stage, and then can be seen in the archaeological evidence. Both Kayaks and umiaks (large skinned boats) appear in the archaeological record for the first time.^[3] The toolkits of the people of the time are dominated by polished-slate rather than flaked-stone artifacts, including lanceolate knives, projectile heads, and the ulu transverse-bladed knife. The people also made a crude form of pottery and there was much use of bone and antlers to use as heads on harpoons, and the make darts, spears, snow goggles, blubber scrapers, needles, awls and mattocks, also walrus shoulder-blade snow shovels.^[3]

There are many important innovations that emerged that allowed hunting to be more efficient. Harpoon mounted ice picks were used for seal hunting, as well as ivory plugs and mouthpieces for inflating harpoon line floats, which enabled them to recover larger sea mammals when dispatched. These people relied heavily on sea and walrus for subsistence. It is easy to pick out OBS technology because of the artistic curvilinear dots, circles, and shorter lines that were used to decorate their tools.^[3]

The chronological relationship between the Okvik and Old Bering Seas cultures has been the subject of debate and remains largely undecided, based mainly on art styles. Some consider it to be a distinct culture pre-dating Old Bering Sea, but the close similarity and overlapping radiocarbon dates suggest Okvik and Old Bering Sea are best considered as roughly contemporaneous, with regional variants.^[2]

Punuk and Birnirk Stages ca AD 800 to 1400[edit]

The Punuk stage is a development of Old Bering Sea stage, with distribution along the major Strait islands and along to shores of the Chukchi Peninsula. The Punuk culture was initially defined by Henry Collins in 1928 from a 16’ deep midden on one of the Punuk Islands. Later excavation on St Lawrence Island confirmed Jenness’s ideas on the Bering Sea culture, and demonstrated a continual cultural sequence on the island from Old Bering Sea, to Punuk, to modern Eskimo culture.^[2]

Punuk is differentiated with Old Bering Sea through its artifact styles and house forms, as well as harpoon styles and whale hunting. Punuk settlements were larger and more common than earlier villages. They were subterranean, square of rectangular dwellings with wooden floors. The house was held up by whale jaw-bones, and covered in skins, sod and then snow. These house were nicely insulated, and would have been only visible to the occupants.^[4] (If you want to see a reconstructed 3D image of the house, and more information on life for a Thule person, click on this link:http://www.glenbow.org/thule/?lang=en&p=outside&t=enhanced&s=3-4&mi=1 )

Whaling has a greater emphasis in the Punuk stage. Hunter would use umiaks and kill whales in narrow ice leads as well as in the open sea in the fall. Open sea whaling required skilled leadership, teams of expert boatmen and hunters, and the cooperation of several boats. The whaleboat captain, the umialik, is still a prominent position in Arctic communities today.^[3]Chipped stone tools were replaced by ground slate, ivory winged tolls were largely replaced by tridents, and iron-tipped tools were used for engraving. Harpoon styles became simpler and more standardised, as did Punuk art. The Punuk developed their methods of hunting that led to the creation of armor made from bone as well as the technology of the bow and arrow.as well, bone plated wrist guards, the reinforced bow, bird bola, heavy ivory net sinkers, and blunt tipped bird arrows appeared in the Punuk stage.^[2]

Birnirk culture is best known along coastal northern and western Alaska. There are three phases of Birnirk culture: Early Birnirk, Middle Birnirk, and Late Birnirk. These phases were primarily distinguishable by gradual changes in harpoon head and arrow styles. Harpoon heads were more often made of antler, rather than ivory, and were characterized by medially-placed, trifurcated spurs during Early Birnirk, bifurcated in Middle Birnirk, and single-laterally-placed spurs in Late Birnirk.^[2]

The Birnirk people used many of the same hunting methods and technology as Punuk and Old Bering Sea, but there was no art. There is very little evidence of tool or weapon decoration. The little art that was present in the Birnirk stage was limited to spiral and concentric motifs on clay pots with bone paddles.^[3] they did use sledges, of the same basic design as were later used with dog teams. Birnirk people were sea-mammal hunters who engaged in fishing and whaling.^[3] Birnirk houses were square shaped, with walls constructed of horizontal longs and single or double posts in each corner. Sleeping areas were at the back of the dwelling and were either built up or at floor level. No interior hearths were found the house ruins, although heavily encrusted and fire-blackened pottery vessel fragments suggest extensive use of open fires.^[2]

Classic Thule AD 1100 to 1400[edit]

During this time, eastern Thule spread out throughout the high arctic and into the south. Thule people were living along the Hudson Strait coasts, in the Hudson’s Bay region, and on the shores of the Foxe Basin, along the mainland from the Mackenzie Delta to Melville Peninsula. The term “Classic Thule” was originally coined by archaeologist Alan McCartney in regards to the population that existed between AD 1100 and 1400. The Thule people still lived in semi-subterranean winter houses, b tint he summer moved into skin tenets, the edges held down by circles of stone. The Thule were using iron long before European contact. In the west it was used in small quantities for carving knives and for engraving other tools. The source of the iron came from both meteoric resources as well as trade from the Norse expansion and was used in the creation of projectile points through a process called epi-metallurgy which made stronger, harder, more efficient points. The metal enabled the Thule people to work with more materials to make more wood and bone tools. The only problem they faced was a lack of a steady supply of metal. The Thule were clever with technology. Reports on classic Thule sites lists a myriad of artifacts used for hunting.^[3] Classic Thule did not place much emphasis on art. There were slight artistic details on household things such as combs s but it was very simple, linear designs featuring people without appendages, animals, or symbols that represented the human ties with the supernatural world.

Post Classic Thule AD 1400 to European Contact[edit]

Post Classic Thule tradition existed from AD 1400 up until European contact in areas where whales were not as prevalent so there is an increase in evidence of other means of subsistence, such as caribou, seal and fish. These settlements show a more gradual settlement of less whales and using more subsistence strategies from the west. The redistribution of the Thule people reflects the population pressures of the Classic Thule, but the climate played a more important role. The onset of the “Little Ice Age” that occurred between AD 1400 and 1600 which limited the use of boats and amount of whales present in the area. This shortened the season for open-water whale hunting. By the 16th century, umiak and kayak whale hunting had ceased in the High Arctic. By AD 1600 the people had moved on and abandoned the High Arctic due to the severe climate changes.^[5] The Thule Eskimos who lived near open water were not as affected by the decrease in temperature.^[6] It was during this time that local groups such as the Copper Inuit, Netsilingmuit, and Inglulingmuit emerged.

Thule Expansion into the West and Eastern Arctic[edit]

Between AD 900 and AD 1100 the Thule Tradition spread westward. The efficiency of housing was improved as they spread to the west and hunting methods were improved due to the use of dog sleds, umiaks, and kayaks. This enabled the hunters to travel further to hunt and follow the migration of the large game and sea mammals. After AD 1000 the practice of using polished slate for tool making continued to spread to the Aleutian Islands. The methods of pottery making also spread and replaced the Norton tradition in Southern Alaska.^[7] There were differences between the areas to which the tradition migrated. Houses in the more eastern region were more above ground and round with stone platforms to sleep on. The shape and support for the buildings came from whale bones. Eastern populations preferred soapstone domestic items instead of pottery and developed the use of dogs to pull sleds.

Sometime around the beginning of the 2nd millennium, Thule people began migrating east.^[3] As western Thule peoples settled the northern and western coasts of Alaska, other Thule groups migrated eastward across the Canadian Arctic as far as Greenland. Prior to A.D. 1000, the central and eastern Canadian Arctic were occupied by people of the Dorset Culture. Within a few centuries, Dorset culture was completely displaced by Thule immigrants from the west. Evidence of contact between Dorset and Thule peoples is scarce and the nature of the Dorset/Thule succession remains poorly understood.^[2]

Thule culture was first identified in the Eastern Arctic by interdisciplinary researches of Danish scholars between 1921 and 1924. A team of anthropologists, archaeologists and natural scientists compiled a massive description of the Canadian Arctic on the fifth Thule expedition.^[1] Therkel Mathiassen added upon their research and claimed that the tradition had started out in Alaska, and that Thule hunting was based on the dog sled, the large skin boat and the kayak which enabled them to range over a much greater hunting territory, participate in widespread trade, and transport heavier loads. Mathiassen was right about his hypotheses and even mapped out the Thule migration and interaction with Greenland.^[3]

There are many different theories as to why the Thule moved out of the Bering Strait. One is the cultural/ecological model developed by R. McGhee. The ideas is that the first Thule families to move, followed groups of bowhead whale, which were an important source of food, fuel and raw materials.^[4] The onset of the Neo-Atlantic climatic episode, a warming trend which occurred between A.D. 900 and 1200 in the northern hemisphere, resulted in the lengthened season of open water along the North Alaskan Coast, and an extension of the summer range of bowhead whales into the Beaufort Sea and father east into the Canadian Archipelago.^[2] Like other whale species, bowheads tend to avoid ice-chocked channels and passages because of the possibility of entrapment and death. The warming of the time, may have reduced the extent and severity of pack ice, allowing bowheads and their Thule predators to expand eastward.^[4]

Another theory is that warfare in Alaska or a desire to seek out new resources of iron for making tools such as knives may have encouraged people to move eastward.^[4] Archaeologists have used the distribution of early Alaskan-style harpoon heads to track the routes taken by Thule people. One route follows the Beaufort Sea coast and Amundsen Gulf, entering the High Arctic via Parry Channel and Smith Sound. A second route led the Thule south, along the western coast of Hudson Bay.^[4]

Tools[edit]

The different stages of the Thule Tradition are distinguished by their different styles of making tools and art. The later stages, Punuk and Birnirk, have greater representation in the archaeological record and are said to have spread further and lasted longer than their predecessor, the Old Bering Sea Stage.^[8] The Thule people are well known for their technological advances in transportation and hunting techniques and tools. The harpoon played a very significant role in whaling and the Thule people made several types of harpoon points out of whale bone. They also made inflated harpoon line floats to help them hunt larger prey.

Subsistence[edit]

The Classic Thule tradition relied heavily on the bowhead whale for survival because bowhead whales swim slowly and sleep near the water‘s surface. Bowhead whales served many purposes for the Thule people. The people could get a lot ofmeat for food, blubber for oil that could be used for fires for light and cooking purposes, and the bones could be used for building structures and making tools. The Thule people survived predominantly on fish, large sea mammals and caribou outside of the whaling communities. Because they had advanced transportation technology they had access to a wider range of food sources. There is superb faunal preservation in Thule sites due to a late prehistoric date as well as an arctic environment. Most of the bowhead artifacts were harvested from live bowhead whales.^[9] The Thule developed an expertise in hunting and utilizing as many parts of an animal as possible. This knowledge combined with their growing wealth of tools and modes of transportation allowed the Thule people to thrive. . They whaled together where one person would shoot the whale with the harpoon and the others would throw the floats on it and they all transferred the whale to land to butcher it together to share with the entire community. Their unity played a significant role in the length of time they thrived in the Arctic.

Thule Sites and Projects[edit]

There are several major archaeological research projects that have been conducted on the Thule culture including theTorngat Archaeological Project, Somerset Island, The Clachan site, Coronation Gulf, Nelson River, Baffin Island, Victoria Island, the Bell site, Devon Island- QkHn-12, and the Cape York projects.

-----------http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule

Modern use[edit]

A municipality in northern Greenland (Avannaa) was formerly named Thule after the mythical place. The Thule People, the predecessor of modern Inuit Greenlanders, were named after the Thule region. In 1953, Thule became Thule Air Base, operated by United States Air Force. The population was forced to resettle to Qaanaaq, 67 miles to the north^[35](76°31′50.21″N 68°42′36.13″W only 840 NM from the North Pole).

Southern Thule is a collection of the three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, one of which is called Thule Island. The island group is a part of the British overseas territory of the United Kingdom and uninhabited.

The Scottish Gaelic for Iceland is "Innis Tile", which means literally the "Isle of Thule".^[36] Ultima Thule was the title of the 1929 novel by Henry Handel Richardson, set in colonial Australia.

Additionally, Thule lends its name to the 69th element in the periodic table, Thulium.

Ultima Thule is also the name of a location in the Mammoth Cave system. It was formerly the terminus of the known-explorable southeastern (upstream) end of the passage called "Main Cave," before discoveries made in 1908 by Ed Bishop and Max Kaemper showed an area accessible beyond it, now the location of the Violet City Entrance. The Violet City Lantern tour offered at the cave passes through Ultima Thule near the conclusion of the route.

Popular Culture[edit]

Thule is used in Hal Foster's work, Prince Valiant, as the homeland of the titular character.

Nazi "Aryan" Thule[edit]

Nazi occultists believed in a historical Thule/Hyperborea as the ancient origin of the Aryan race. Much of this fascination was due to rumours surrounding the Oera Linda Book "found" by Cornelis Over de Linden during the 19th century. The Oera Linda Book was translated into German in 1933 and was favored by Heinrich Himmler. The book has since been thoroughly discredited. Professor of Frisian Language and Literature Goffe Jensma wrote that the three authors of the translation intended it "to be a temporary hoax to fool some nationalist Frisians and orthodox Christians and as an experiential exemplary exercise in reading the Holy Bible in a non-fundamentalist, symbolical way."^[37]

The Traditionalist School expositor Rene Guenon believed in the existence of ancient Thule on "initiatic grounds" "alone". According to its emblem, the Thule Society was founded on August 18, 1918.^[38] It had close links to the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP), later the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, the Nazi party). One of its three founding members was Lanz von Liebenfels (1874–1954). In his biography of Liebenfels (Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab, Munich 1985), the Viennese psychologist and author Wilhelm Dahm wrote: "The Thule Gesellschaft name originated from mythical Thule, a Nordic equivalent of the vanished culture of Atlantis. A race of giant supermen lived in Thule, linked into the Cosmos through magical powers. They had psychic and technological energies far exceeding the technical achievements of the 20th century. This knowledge was to be put to use to save the Fatherland and create a new race of Nordic Aryan Atlanteans. A new Messiah would come forward to lead the people to this goal." In his history of the SA (Mit ruhig festem Schritt, 1998), Wilfred von Oven, Joseph Goebbels' press adjutant from 1943 to 1945, confirmed that Pytheas' Thule was the historical Thule for the Thule Gesellschaft.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race

The Aryan race was a racial grouping commonly used in the period of the late 19th century to the mid 20th century to describe peoples of Indo-European Eurasian heritage. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or subrace of the larger Caucasian race.^[1]

While originally meant simply as a neutral ethno-linguistic classification, from the late 19th century onwards the concept of the Aryan race has been used by proponents of ideologically-motivated racism and white supremacism such as in doctrines of Nazism andneo-Nazism. Aryanism developed as a racial ideology that claimed that the Aryan race was a master race.

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Origin of the term

Main article: Aryan

The earliest epigraphically-attested reference to the word arya occurs in the 6th century B.C. Behistun inscription, which describes itself to have been composed "inarya [language or script]" (§ 70). As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage, the arya of the inscription does not signify anything but "Iranian".^[2]

The region Aria as depicted byWaldseemuller in 1507

The term Aryan originates from the Sanskrit word ārya, in origin an ethnic self-designation, in Classical Sanskrit meaning "honourable, respectable, noble".^[3]^[4]

In the 18th century, the most ancient known Indo-European languages were those of the ancient Indo-Iranians. The word Aryan was therefore adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian peoples, but also to native Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the Romans, Greeks, and the Germans. It was soon recognised that Balts, Celts, and Slavs also belonged to the same group. It was argued that all of these languages originated from a common root—now known as Proto-Indo-European—spoken by an ancient people who were thought of as ancestors of the European, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan peoples. The ethnic group composed of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their modern descendants was termed the "Aryans".

This usage was common in the late 19th and early 20th century. An example of an influential best-selling book that reflects this usage is the 1920 book The Outline of History by H. G. Wells.^[5] Wells wrote about the accomplishments of the Aryan people, stating how they "learned methods of civilization" while "Sargon II and Sardanapalus were ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia and Syria and Egypt". As such, Wells suggested that the Aryans had eventually "subjugated the whole ancient world, Semitic, Aegean and Egyptian alike".^[6] In the 1944 edition of Rand McNally’s World Atlas, the Aryan race is depicted as being one of the ten major racial groupings of mankind.^[7] The science fiction author Poul Anderson (1926–2001), an anti-racist libertarian of Scandinavian ancestry, in his many novels, novellas, and short stories, consistently used the term Aryan as a synonym for Indo-Europeans. He spoke of the Aryan bird of prey which impelled those of the Aryan race to take the lead in developing interstellar travel, colonize habitable planets in other planetary systems and become leading businessentrepreneurs on the newly colonized planets.^[8]

The use of "Aryan" as a synonym for "Indo-European" or to a lesser extent for "Indo-Iranian", is regarded today by many^[who?] as obsolete and politically incorrect^{[citation needed]}, but may still occasionally appear in material based on older scholarship, or written by persons accustomed to older usage, such as in a 1989 article in Scientific American by Colin Renfrew in which he uses the word "Aryan" in its traditional meaning as a synonym for "Indo-European".^[9] However, the term Indo-Aryan is still commonly used to describe the Indic half of the Indo-Iranian languages, i.e. the family that includes Sanskrit and modern languages such as Hindi, Urdu and Bengali.

19th-century physical anthropology

Main article: Caucasian race

Indo-Aryan migration

Main article: Indo-Aryan migration

Occultism

Theosophy

Mme. Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered theSpiritualist phenomena.

Main article: Root race

The Theosophical movement, founded by Helena Blavatsky andHenry Olcott at the end of the nineteenth century, took inspiration from Indian culture, in this case, perhaps, from the Hindu reform movement the Arya Samaj founded by Swami Dayananda. Blavatsky argued that humanity had descended from a series of "Root Races", naming the fifth root race (out of seven) the Aryan Race. She thought that the Aryans originally came from Atlantis and described the Aryan races with the following words:

"The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis."^[27]

Blavatsky used "Root Race" as a technical term to describe human evolution over the large time periods in her cosmology. However, she also claimed that there were modern non-Aryan peoples who were inferior to Aryans. She regularly contrasts "Aryan" with "Semitic" culture, to the detriment of the latter, asserting that Semitic peoples are an offshoot of Aryans who have become "degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality."^[28] She also states that some peoples are "semi-animal creatures". These latter include "the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China." There are also "considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc."^[29]

Despite this, Blavatsky's admirers claim that her thinking was not connected to fascist or racialist ideas, asserting that she believed in a Universal Brotherhood of humanity and wrote that "all men have spiritually and physically the same origin" and that "mankind is essentially of one and the same essence".^[30] On the other hand, in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky states: "Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence."

Blavatsky connects physical race with spiritual attributes constantly throughout her works:

"Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do".^[31]

"The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The 'sacred spark' is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily -- owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction -- fast dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent".^[32]

According to Blavatsky, "the MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the "narrow-brained" savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had".^[33]

She also prophesies of the destruction of the racial "failures of nature" as the future "higher race" ascends:

"Thus will mankind, race after race, perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups -- the failures of nature -- will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind".^[34]

The second subrace of the Fifth or Aryan root race, the Arabian, is regarded by Theosophists as one of the Aryan subraces. It is believed by Theosophists that the Arabians, although asserted in traditional Theosophy to be of Aryan (i.e., Indo-European) ancestry, adopted the Semitic language of the people around them who had migrated earlier from Atlantis (the fifth or (original) Semite subrace of the Atlantean root race). Theosophists assert that the Jews originated as an offshoot of the Arabian subrace in what is now Yemen about 30,000 BC. They migrated first to Somalia and then later toEgypt where they lived until the time of Moses. Thus, according to the teachings of Theosophy, the Jews are part of the Aryan race.^[35]

Samael Aun Weor published a book in 1967 retitled in 2008 The Doomed Aryan Race in which he asserted that the Aryan "Root Race" is doomed to be destroyed by hydrogen bombs unless the people of the Aryan race learn tantric yoga.^[36]

Ariosophy

Main article: Ariosophy

Guido von List (and his followers such as Lanz von Liebenfels) later took up some of Blavatsky's ideas, mixing her ideology with nationalistic and fascist ideas; this system of thought became known as Ariosophy. It was believed in Ariosophy that the Teutonics were superior to all other peoples because according to Theosophy the Teutonics or Nordics were the most recent subrace of the Aryan root race to have evolved.^[37] Such views also fed into the development of Nazi ideology. Theosophical publications such as The Aryan Path were strongly opposed to the Nazi usage, attacking racialism.

Aryanism

Nazism

Further information: Nazism and race

Adolf Hitler.

The ideology of Nazism was based upon the conception of the Aryan race being a master race. The Nazi conception of the Aryan race arose from earlier proponents of a supremacist conception of the race as described by racial theorist figures such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. The Nazis were divided on some parts of the constitution of the Aryan race.

Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther identified the Aryan race in Europe as having five subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic.^[38] Günther applied a Nordicist conception that Nordics were the highest in the racial hierarchy amongst these five Aryan subtype races.^[38] In his bookRassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), Günther recognized Germans as being composed of all five Aryan subtypes, but emphasized the strong Nordic heritage amongst Germans.^[39] He defined each racial subtype according to general physical appearance and their psychological qualities including their "racial soul" - referring to their emotional traits and religious beliefs, and provided detailed information on their hair, eye, and skin colours, facial structure.^[39] He provided photographs of Germans identified as Nordic in places like Bedan, Stuttgart, Salzburg, andSchwaben; and provided photographs of Germans he identified as Alpine and Mediterranean types, especially in Vorarlberg, Bavaria, and the Black Forest region of Baden.^[39] Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler read Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes that influenced his racial policy, and with Nazi backing, Günther attained a position in the anthropology department at the University of Jena in 1932 where Hitler attended Günther's inaugural lecture at Jena.^[40]

Günther distinguished Aryans from Jews, and identified Jews as descending from non-European races, and particularly what he classified as the Near Asian race (Vorderasiatische) more commonly known as the Armenoid race, and said that such origins rendered Jews as fundamentally different and incompatible with Germans and most Europeans.^[41] This association of Jews with the Armenoid type had been utilized by Zionist Jews who claimed that Jews were a group within that type.^[42] He claimed that the Near Eastern race descended from the Caucasus in the fifth and fourth millennia BC, and that it had expanded into Asia Minor and Mesopotamia and eventually to the west coat of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.^[41] Aside from ascribing Armenians and Jews as having Near Eastern characteristics, he ascribed them to several other contemporary peoples, including: Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Iranians.^[43] In his work Racial Characteristics of the Jewish People, he defined the racial soul of the Near Eastern race as emphasizing a "commercial spirit" (Handelgeist), and describing them as "artful traders" - a term that Gunther ascribed as being used by Jewish racial theorist Samuel Weissenberg to describe contemporary Armenians, Greeks, and Jews.^[41] Günther added to that description of the Near Eastern type being commercially spirited and artful traders, that the type held strong psychological manipulation skills that aided them in trade.^[41] He claimed that the Near Eastern race had been "bred not so much for the conquest and exploitation of nature as it was for the conquest and exploitation of people".^[41]

Hitler's conception of the Aryan race explicitly excluded the vast majority of Slavs from being part of the master race, regarding Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic influences.^[44] The Nazis because of this declared Slavs to beuntermenschen (subhumans).^[45] Exceptions were made for certain Slavs who were deemed to have sufficient Aryan characteristics.^[46] Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master".^[47] Hitler declared that because Slavs were subhumans that the Geneva Conventions were not applicable to them, and German soldiers in World War II were thus permitted to ignore the Geneva Conventions in regards to Slavs.^[48] Hitler called Slavs "a rabbit family" meaning they were intrinsically idle and disorganized.^[49] Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had media speak of Slavs as primitive animals whom were from the Siberian tundra who were like a "dark wave of filth".^[50]^[51]The Nazi notion of Slavs being inferior was part of the agenda for creating Lebensraum ("living space") for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe that was initiated during World War II under Generalplan Ost, millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into conquered territories of Eastern Europe, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed, or enslaved.^[52] Nazi Germany's ally the Independent State of Croatiarejected the common conception that Croats were primarily a Slavic people and claimed that Croats were primarily the descendents of the Germanic Goths.^[53] However the Nazi regime continued to classify Croats as "subhuman" in spite of the alliance.^[54] Nazi Germany's policy changed towards Slavs in response to military manpower shortages, in which it accepted Slavs to serve in its armed forces within occupied territories, in spite of them being considered subhuman, as a pragmatic means to resolve such manpower shortages.^[54] Hitler often doubted whether Czechs were Aryan or not, he said in his table talk "It is enough for a Czech to grow a moustache for anyone to see, from the way the thing droops, that his origin is Mongoloian.^[55] After the occupation of Poland, most Poles were regarded as untermenschen to be used by Germany as manual labourers.^[56] The question of whether Italians were Aryan enough was questioned by the Nazi racial theorists, Hitler viewed northern Italians as strongly Aryan but not southern Italians. The Nazis viewed the downfall of theRoman Empire as being the result of the pollution of blood from racial intermixing, claiming that Italians were a hybrid of races, including black African races. Hitler even mentioned his view of the presence of Negroid blood in the Mediterranean peoples during his first meeting with Mussolini in 1934.^[57]

German Interior Ministry official Albert Gorter drafted an official definition of the Aryan Race for the new Civil Service Law that included European Aryans and Asian Aryans of the subtype race known as Irano-Afghan.^[58] However Achim Gerke revised Gorter's draft of the Civil Service Law by removing such contemporary Asian people from the definition of the Aryan race, as they were considered too foreign to be connected with the Aryan Race as in Europe.^[58]

The idea of the Northern origins of the Aryans was particularly influential in Germany. It was widely believed that the "Vedic Aryans" were ethnically identical to the Goths, Vandals and other ancient Germanic peoples of the Völkerwanderung. This idea was often intertwined with antisemitic ideas. The distinctions between the "Aryan" and "Semitic" peoples were based on the aforementioned linguistic and ethnic history. A complete, highly speculative theory of Aryan and anti-Semitic history can be found in Alfred Rosenberg's major work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Rosenberg's account of ancient history, melded with his racial speculations, proved to be very effective in spreading racialism among German intellectuals in the early twentieth century, especially after the First World War.

Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within Aryan societies, and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruction of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall by proto-Nazi theorists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a master race, which was narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by other sub-races of the Aryan race. They worked to maintain the purity of this race through eugenics programs (including anti-miscegenation legislation,compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutionalized mentally ill as part of a euthanasia program).

Heinrich Himmler (the Reichsführer of the SS), the person ordered by Adolf Hitler to implement the Final Solution, or The Holocaust,^[59] told his personal masseur Felix Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryanscripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about what he was doing – he felt that like the warrior Arjuna, he was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions.^[60]

Italian Fascism

Main article: Italian Fascism and racism

Benito Mussolini.

In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race".^[61]^[62] In this speech Mussolini was referring to Italians as being the Mediterranean branch of the Aryan Race, Aryan in the meaning of people of an Indo-European language and culture.^[63] Italian Fascism emphasized that race was bound by spiritual and cultural foundations, and identified a racial hierarchy based on spiritual and cultural factors.^[63] While Italian Fascism based its conception of race on spiritual and cultural factors, Mussolini explicitly rejected notions that biologically "pure" races existed though biology was still considered a relevant factor in race.^[64]

Italian Fascism strongly rejected the common Nordicist conception of the Aryan Race that idealized "pure" Aryans as having certain physical traits that were defined as Nordic such as blond hair and blue eyes.^[65] The antipathy by Mussolini and other Italian Fascists to Nordicism was over the existence of what they viewed as the Mediterranean inferiority complex that they claimed had been instilled into Mediterraneans by the propagation of such theories by German and Anglo-Saxon Nordicists who viewed Mediterranean peoples as racially degenerate and thus in their view inferior.^[65] Mussolini refused to allow Italy to return again to this inferiority complex, initially rejecting Nordicism.^[65]However traditional Nordicist claims of Mediterraneans being degenerate due to having a darker colour of skin than Nordics had long been rebuked in anthropology through the depigmentation theory that claimed that lighter skinned peoples had been dipigmented from a darker skin, this theory has since become a widely accepted view in anthropology.^[66] Anthropologist Carleton S. Coon in his work The races of Europe (1939) subscribed to depigmentation theory that claimed that Nordic race's light-coloured skin was the result of depigmentation from their ancestors of the Mediterranean race.^[67]

In the early 1930s, with the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany with Führer Adolf Hitler's emphasis on a Nordicist conception of the Aryan Race, strong tensions arose between the Fascists and the Nazis over racial issues. In 1934, in the aftermath of Austrian Nazis killing Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, an ally of Italy, Mussolini became enraged and responded by angrily denouncing Nazism. Mussolini rebuked Nazism's Nordicism, claiming that the Nazis' emphasizing of a common Nordic "Germanic race" was absurd, saying "a Germanic race does not exist. ... We repeat. Does not exist. Scientists say so. Hitler says so."^[68] The fact that Germans were not purely Nordic was indeed acknowledged by prominent Nazi racial theorist Hans F. K. Günther in his book Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922) ("Racial Science of the German People"), where Günther recognized Germans as being composed of five Aryan subtype races: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, and East Baltic while asserting that the Nordics were the highest in a racial hierarchy of the five subtypes.^[39]

By 1936, the tensions between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany reduced and relations became more amicable. In 1936, Mussolini decided to launch a racial program in Italy, and was interested in the racial studies being conducted by Giulio Cogni.^[69] Cogni was a Nordicist but did not equate Nordic identity with Germanic identity as was commonly done by German Nordicists.^[70] Cogni had travelled to Germany where he had become impressed by Nazi racial theory and sought to create his own version of racial theory.^[71] On 11 September 1936, Cogni sent Mussolini a copy of his newly published book Il Razzismo (1936).^[69] Cogni declared the racial affinity of the Mediterranean and Nordic racial subtypes of the Aryan race and claimed that the intermixing of Nordic Aryans and Mediterranean Aryans in Italy produced a superior synthesis of Aryan Italians.^[70] Cogni addressed the issue of racial differences between northern and southern Italians, declaring southern Italians were mixed between Aryan and non-Aryan races, that he claimed was most likely due to infiltration by Asiatic peoples in Roman times and later Arab invasions.^[69] As such, Cogni viewed Southern Italian Mediterraneans as being polluted with orientalizing tendencies.^[69] Initially Mussolini was not impressed with Cogni's work, however Cogni's ideas later entered into the official Fascist racial policy several years later.^[69]

In 1938 Mussolini was concerned that if Italian Fascism did not recognize Nordic heritage within Italians, that the Mediterranean inferiority complex would return to Italian society.^[65] Therefore in summer 1938, the Fascist government officially recognized Italians as having Nordic heritage and being of Nordic-Mediterranean descent and in a meeting with PNF members, and in June 1938 in a meeting with PNF members, Mussolini identified himself as Nordic and declared that previous policy of focus on Mediterraneanism was to be replaced by a focus on Aryanism.^[65]

The Fascist regime began publication of the racialist magazine La Difesa della Razza in 1938.^[72] The Nordicist racial theorist Guido Landra took a major role in the early work of La Difesa, and published the Manifesto of Racial Scientists in the magazine in 1938.^[73] The Manifesto received substantial criticism, including its assertion of Italians being a "pure race", as it was viewed as absurd.^[73] La Difesa published other theories that described long-term Nordic Aryan amongst Italians, such as the theory that in the Eneolithic age Nordic Aryans arrived to Italy.^[74] Many of the writers took up the traditional Nordicist claim that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was due to the arrival of Semitic immigrants.^[74] La Difesa's writers were divided on their claims that described how Italians extricated themselves from Semitic influence.^[73]

The Nordicist direction of Fascist racial policy was challenged in 1938 by a resurgence of the Mediterraneanist faction in the PNF.^[75] By 1939, the Mediterraneanists' advocacy of a nativist racial theory that rejected ascribing the achievements of the Italian people to Nordic peoples.^[75] This nativist racial policy was prominently promoted by Ugo Rellini.^[75] Rellini rejected the notion of large scale invasions of Italy by Nordic Aryans in the Eneolithic age, and claimed that Italians were an indigenous people descended from the Cro-Magnons.^[76] Rellini claimed that Mediterranean and Nordic peoples arrived later and peacefully intermixed in small numbers with the indigenous Italian population.^[76]

In 1941 the PNF's Mediterraneanists through the influence of Giacomo Acerbo put forward a comprehensive definition of the Italian race.^[77] However these efforts were challenged by Mussolini's endorsement of Nordicist figures with the appointment of staunch spiritual Nordicist Alberto Luchini as head of Italy's Racial Office in May 1941, as well as with Mussolini becoming interested with Julius Evola's spiritual Nordicism in late 1941.^[77] Acerbo and the Mediterraneanists in his High Council on Demography and Race sought to bring the regime back to supporting Mediterraneanism by thoroughly denouncing the pro-Nordicist Manifesto of the Racial Scientists.^[77] The Council recognized Aryans as being a linguistic-based group, and condemned the Manifesto for denying the influence of pre-Aryan civilization on modern Italy, saying that the Manifesto "constitutes an unjustifiable and undemonstrable negation of the anthropological, ethnological, and archaeological discoveries that have occurred and are occurring in our country".^[77] Furthermore the Council denounced the Manifesto for "implicitly" crediting Germanic invaders of Italy in the guise of the Lombards for having a "a formative influence on the Italian race in a disproportional degree to the number of invaders and to their biological predominance".^[77] The Council claimed that the obvious superiority of the ancient Greeks and Romans in comparison with the ancient Germanic tribes made it inconceivable that Italian culture owed a debt to ancient Aryan Germans.^[77] The Council denounced the Manifesto's Nordicist attitude towards Mediterraneans that it claimed was "considering them as slaves" and was "a repudiation of the entire Italian civilization".^[77]

Neo-Nazism

The sun wheel has been used as a symbol of the Aryan race by some neo-Nazis.

Since the military defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies in 1945, some neo-Nazishave developed a more inclusive definition of "Aryan", claiming that the peoples of Western Europe are the closest descendants of the ancient Aryans, withNordic and Germanic peoples being the most "racially pure." ^[78]

According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, many neo-Nazis want to establish anautocratic state modeled after Nazi Germany to be called the Western Imperium. It is believed this proposed state would be able to attain world domination by combining the nuclear arsenals of the four major Aryan world powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia under a single military command.^[79]

This proposed state would be led by a Führer-like figure called the Vindex, and would include all areas inhabited by the "Aryan race", as conceived by Neo-Nazis. Only those of the Aryan race would be full citizens of the state. The "Western Imperium" would embark on a vigorous and dynamic program ofspace exploration, followed by the creation by genetic engineering of a super race called Homo Galactica. The concept of the "Western Imperium" as outlined in the previous three sentences is based on the original concept of the Imperium as outlined in the 1947 book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics by Francis Parker Yockey as further updated, extended and refined in the early 1990s in pamphlets published by David Myatt.^[80]^[81]^[82]

Tempelhofgesellschaft

A neo-Nazi esoteric Nazi Gnostic sect headquartered in Vienna, Austria called the Tempelhofgesellschaft, founded in the early 1990s, teaches a form of what it calls Marcionism. They distribute pamphlets claiming that the Aryan race originally came to Atlantis from the star Aldebaran.

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