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RE: Book Review: "Tibetan Nation," by Warren W. Smith

in #review3 years ago

Archaeology is something I've read more than a few volumes about, and genetics is not. Ergo I'll have to read up on this before I can give an educated commentary on the implications of your links. Admittedly, the only logical migratory path of Indo-Europeans to Tibet would be by way of the Tarim Basin to the north. It is possible that at some point an Indo-European tribe from the north insinuated themselves as the ruling class on the Plateau and superimposed their language over the existing one, but I digress.
My point was not so much to emphasize the theory that they are of Indo-European descent but to say, as a side-note, that there is a marked distinction between Tibetan and Chinese cultural lineage, with very little evidence that the two share even a common ancestor. A great deal of the evidence presented by Smith comes from Christopher Beckwith's the Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, which I presume was the same source you were referring to.
As for Archaeological and Anthropological evidence that the Tibetans are the descendants (or rather, an offshoot) of the Qiang, Smith cites E.G. Pulleybank and Karl Jettmar.

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I've only ever read one Beckwith book: 'Empires of the Silk Road'
So, could have been there or on Gene Expression (gnxp.com). The guy who writes it reads & quotes a lot.
Anyway, just a minor point..