The Peopling of Indonesia

I am republishing this post because I have significantly reworked the genetics of the Indonesians. Instead of being mostly Austronesians from Taiwan, I now say they are mostly related to an ancient Melanesian Dai group from SE China that came 10-20,000 years ago. This group imposed itself on the original people, who were Papuans.

Later, Austronesians came through, leaving languages but only some genes. The Indonesian type was formerly generalized throughout SE Asia from 2-4,000 years ago and is known as an Ancient SE Asian. This type is primarily Mongoloid but has strong Australoid elements.

The breakdown of Indonesians is approximately 70% Ancient Dai (Melanesian), 15% Austronesians from Taiwan (probably mostly Paiwan and Ami) and 15% Papuan.

The ancient Dai appear to have undergone the same progression towards Mongoloid as occurred with Melanesians throughout Inland SE Asia. In island SE Asia (Melanesia) and the East of Indonesia, this progression was much less complete, so people still have strong Melanesian elements. The degree to which some Melanesians resemble Negritos is rather striking.

To sum up, the new data indicates that most Indonesians are not related primarily to Taiwanese aborigines as originally thought. Instead they are related to Daics from far SE China who left their homeland during post-glacial flooding that occurred after 18,000 years ago. Only 20% of the Indonesian line comes from recent (past 4,000 years) Taiwanese aborigine immigrants.

The prehistory of Indonesia is an interesting question, but it is little studied.

Typical Indonesian men. The one on the left looks very Chinese, or Filipino. The one on the right looks a little different. Indonesians are dark, but the place is right on the equator, so this is to be expected.

Human sites have been found as far back as 33,000 years in the far east Maluku Islands (or Moluccan Islands), but these people are normally referred to as Melanesians. Actually, I think that they were Papuans. Very early man, Homo Erectus, has been found in the islands dating way back.

A multiregional theory has been suggested for the evolution of man in Indonesia, China and maybe other areas. This theory has been rejected, however there may be some continuity in China with older forms dating back 120,000 years or so. The Chinese, the Japanese and now the Indonesians all want to say they came from a different monkey.

The theory is also very popular with White Nationalists who are extremely insulted by the idea of being descended from African Blacks. In Indonesia and China, these ideas have more to do with the spread of idiotically antiscientific nationalist-based theories than anything else.

In Indonesia, the nation's top archaeologist deliberately destroyed bones of Homo Florensis recently in spite over the rejection of his pet theory, that the Homo Erectus relative that lived in modern times are just modern humans who are microencephalic. This theory seems crazy, but is making the rounds in peer-reviewed journals nevertheless.

Nationalism and science has never worked well, with some particularly gruesome results especially in the past century. Florensis is a tiny midget of an early man who is a different species from us. They may have lived up until 600 years ago but the hard evidence so far shows they lived until 13,000 years ago at the latest. I believe they lived until the arrival of the Europeans. It is possible some may yet exist to this day.

There are a lot of questions about whether or not Florensis and locals bred in. Some of the locals are very short and some even think they may have Florensis like features, though the question of inter-species breeding makes little sense. Locals say that the Little People are their ancestors.

The Little People would come to their villages and hide in the forest watching them. Locals would leave food for the Little People in baskets and the Little People would come when no one was around and take the food - they were described as very shy. It is amazing that such a primitive man could live in such proximity to modern Homo without genocidal results.

In the past, contacts between more modern civilizations and more primitive ones usually had genocidal results. Examples include Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Africa, the Americas, Siberia, and probably other places.

Before Florensis, there is Java Man, who dates back possibly to 2 million years. It is due to the prominence of Java Man that the Indonesian "scientists" have indulged in their childish and petty behavior. Actually, the Indonesian case above is more complicated than that - the destroyer of the skulls is the grand old man of Indonesian archeology and he cannot be touched.

There are a number of younger archaeologists there who think the man is an old fool, which he is, but no can do a thing about him.

The question of Homo Erectus being put aside, we now turn to the development of modern Homo in Indonesia. Here, very little is known for some reason, but we do have that 33,000 yr old find in the Malukus. These people are called Melanesians for lack of a better word, but it also appears that there were cultural contacts with Australians across the straights. I believe that a better term for these early people is Papuans.

At this time, Melanesians were probably generalized all throughout SE Asia.

Sometime around 10-15,000 years ago, these Papuans populate most of the Mulukus. The nature of the aforementioned contacts with the Australians, genetic or otherwise, is not known, but that such early modern man had such excellent boats is stunning. Much is made by racists of the primitiveness and low IQ's of Aborigines.

However, we should note the profound cultural achievement it took to make those boats to get to Australia in the first place. But we had great boats when we first left the African Horn at Somalia and Djibouti, went to Yemen and moved along the coast all the say to SE Asia, stopping along the way in Iran, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, New Guinea, Melanesia and Australia.

There is a chain of Negritos in every one of these places, probably the last remainders of the first modern men that left Africa 60-70,000 years. In Australia, the Negritos went to Aborigine Major Race; in Papua, they went to the Papuan Major Race, in Melanesia to the Melanesian Minor Race. However, recent data suggests that the Melanesian race is extremely diverse, so it may have to be re-evaluated.

Some analyses show Melanesians clustering fairly close to Papuans, yet others show Papuans as a vast major race, tied with Aborigines as the most diverse on Earth after Africans. They are also some of the furthest away from Africans.

Whites are more closely related to Africans than Papuans are, yet everyone from Afrocentrists to White Nationalists wants to say Papuans are Black people. In the North, they went on to form the early basis for all members of the Asian Macro-race today.

The standard history is that some unknown Melanesians, about which we know little, were the original inhabitants of Indonesia. Recent research sheds some light on the genesis of these Melanesians.

Turner, a specialist in teeth, using dental morphological traits, hypothesized that two migrations originated from central China about 20-30,000 YBP (years before present).

One group, the Sinodonts, expanded northward into China, Siberia and across the Bering land bridge to the New World. The second group, the Sundadonts, moved southward into Southeast Asia and Indonesia, and later through Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

This is probably the group that gave rise to the Melanesians.

But the picture is more complicated than that.

Indonesians were settled independently by ancient Dai. These Dai came from from Hainan and Guangxi in far southern China about 10-20,000 YBP. They may have left due to rising sea levels that flooded their lands. The ancient Dai must have looked like Melanesians.

The people most closely resembling the ancient Dai are the Taiwan aborigines. It is true that the Indonesians do not much resemble the Taiwan aborigines genetically, and their genetic structure in general is quite a bit different from Filipinos.

However, this study does not explain how Indonesians came to speak Austronesian languages obviously derived ultimately from Taiwan.

It is clear to me that when the Austronesians pushed through Indonesia several thousand years ago, the locals adopted the Austronesian tongues of the Austronesian colonizers, abandoning whatever tongues they were speaking at the time (I figure Papuan languages).

Recent tests indicate that the Indonesians derive 71% from the ancient Dai, 14% from the Taiwan aborigines (Austronesians) and 15% from Papuans. This study looks at Y chromosomes. 10-20,000 years ago, these ancient Dai went from Hainan and Guangxi (their homeland) to Taiwan to become the Taiwan aborigines and also on to Indonesia in two separate waves.

They probably genetically swamped and colonized the native peoples, who were probably Papuans.

Today, only the Malukus identify as Melanesians, despite the fact that there are Melanesians on Alor and in other places. On Timor, Sumba and Flores, there are people who are at least part-Melanesian who do not really identify as Melanesian. Some of these people are up to 80% Melanesian, as in Alor.

The standard history of the rest of the islands, such as Sulawesi, Sumatra, Bali is that Austronesians came 4,000 years ago and pushed the native Melanesians to the east. However, this standard history must be wrong. Instead of pushing Melanesians east, they bred in with them.

Most Indonesian is an example of a race that used be common all through SE Asia, including Vietnam - the Ancient SE Asian Race. This race was widespread throughout SE Asia 2-4,000 years ago. It is a Mongoloid with considerable Australoid admixture.

Tsunami victims in Aceh on Sumatra. They are quite dark as you can see, but that is probably a pigmentation process to enable females to store folic acid for pregnancy in order to give birth to viable infants. Protection against sunburn is an interesting theory, but sunburn, even melanoma, does not kill you.

They are members of the Island SE Asian Race, along with the Balinese pictured below. Like the Balinese, they may have an origin in part with the Paiwan aborigines of Taiwan.

The Sumba and probably all of the other Lesser Sunda Islands are inhabited by people who are a mixture between Austronesians from Taiwan and native Melanesians - Ancient SE Asians, as described above. Timor also has Papuans and Polynesians. Early man arrived on Timor as early as 40,000 years ago. These people must have been Papuans.

The Mulukus such as Babar and Ambon are inhabited by mixtures of Austronesians from Taiwan, Papuans in the case of Ambon and Melanesians in the case of Babar.

4,000 YBP, the Austronesians arrived in Indonesia from Taiwan. Mostly, these were the Ami, but there is a possibility that other Taiwanese aborigines were also, in particular, the Paiwan.

These were the Austronesians, the greatest mariners of all time, who settled Philippines, Indonesia, coastal New Guinea, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. There are even said to have moved into mainland SE Asia, particularly Malaysia. In that case, they probably went to Sumatra first and then moved across the water to Malaysia.

These Indonesian Muslim women praying look very much like Malays. It is not known where they are from. They may be members of the Malay Race found on Java and Borneo in Indonesia described at the end of the post.

They even seem to be a major component of the Vietnamese. Everywhere they went, the Austronesians brought a cultural revolution with them, often upgrading existing cultures, certainly so in the case of New Guinea.

Austronesians arrived in Indonesia at least 4,000 years ago by boat, probably from the Philippines, where they already probably had a mature settlement. However, the Austronesian show up in Timor as early as 5,000 years ago, so 4,000 years BP may be too late.

Next, at least on Timor, and probably throughout Indonesia, a wave of proto-Malays moved through. A group settled Bali 5,000 years ago who may have been proto-Malays. Proto-Malays are also important in the settlement of the Philippines and Malaysia.

The proto-Malays who settled in the Philippines were said to be short and very hairy. The hairiness is odd for people living in a hot climate. If this description is true, I suggest that the proto-Malay may have been an Ainu-like people, the proto-NE Asians. A Southern origin is possible for the Ainu. The pre-Ainu, the Jomon, are said to have origins in Thailand 18,000 years ago. They got on boats and sailed to Japan.

These hairy proto-Malays may have been related to the pre-Jomon in Thailand long ago. Proto-Malays show up in the Philippines over 5000 years BP, before the arrival of the Austronesians. The proto-Malays who settled the Philippines and Indonesia are said to have had an origin in South China and inland SE Asia.

However, in Malaysia, the proto-Malay are said to have been created in Malaysia 3000 years ago as Austronesians bred in with existing Senoi, an Australoid or Negrito like people. The Proto-Malays are poorly understood, and some of what is said about them is contradictory.

Austronesians show up in Sulawesi, Java, the Mulukus and Borneo 3,500 years ago. Austronesians moved from Borneo to Sumatra 2,500 years ago, and from there up into Malaysia to become a component of the Malay Race.

A beautiful woman on Samosir Island on Sumatra. She may be a Toba Batak, who are members of the Micronesian Race. Unless I am hallucinating, I think that many Micronesians look something like this. A possible explanation is that the Batak are the remains of those Austronesian-Melanesian mixes who populated Polynesia and then left Polynesia to populate Micronesia, but the situation is quite confused.

In the background is one of the famous Toba Batak bark houses. She is in traditional dress. Note the resemblance to a Filipina.

The Batak, like the Sea Dayak of northern Borneo and the Nesiot and Igorot of the Philippines, are linked to the first Austronesian wave out of Taiwan 5,000 years ago. This group is also linked to the Paiwan tribe on Taiwan.

A cultural revolution in Indonesia called Đông Sơn was paralleled by similar developments throughout SE Asia. This culture was centered in the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam and northward in southern Kwangzi and Kwangtung of China, while being generalized throughout Indonesia, showing up about 3,000 years ago. Originally, the Đông Sơn were said to be Austronesians, but the latest thinking is that this is an ancient Tai group.

Wet-rice cultivation spread throughout the islands with Đông Sơn, but the native Melanesians were already engaging in wet-rice cultivation an incredible 10,000 years ago, making Indonesia one of the earliest sites for agriculture on Earth.

The Đông Sơn culture was developing in Vietnam from 2,200-2,800 YBP.

The Đông Sơn kept buffaloes and pigs, fished, grew rice and, in a clue to their Austronesian nature, sailed in long dugout canoes. An Iron Age people, they utilized metallurgy to make fine bronze objects, including drums and figurines.

Racially, the Đông Sơn peoples belonged to Indonesian or Ancient Southeast Asian group - a Southern Mongoloid with strong Australoid elements (Cuong, 1996).

Đông Sơn also had elements of Dai culture from Yunnan and Laos, Khmer culture of Cambodia, Tibeto-Burman culture, and the prehistoric Plain of Jars culture in Laos. So all of these elements from mainland SE Asia and Southern China went into the stew that became Indonesian culture.

Now, Indonesians are members of either the SE Asian Major Race, the Oceanian Major Race or the Papuan Major Race. For the most part, they seem to be some sort of a mixture between ancient Daic Melanesians and Austronesian Chinese (Taiwanese).

Haplogroups C, E and F in Figure 1 here, seem to have a southern origin. These strains are apparent on a minor scale in Java, Borneo and Sulawesi. But in Southern Borneo, they reach levels up to 40%. Haplogroups G, H and L are also associated with Taiwan, the Philippines and to a lesser extent South China.

L is clearly the Ami of Taiwan but G and H are less well-understood. This paper suggests that they have a southern (Melanesian) genesis, but that does not make much sense. H is present at high levels in the Taiwanese Atayal, Bunum and Paiwan, and G is present at high levels in the Bunum and the Paiwan. G is at even higher levels in Javans.

Some beautiful, typical, Indonesian women with the usual phenotype. Note the resemblance with Thais, Filipinas, and possibly Khmers. I believe that these women may be Balinese, but correct me if I am wrong. If so, they are members of the Island SE Asian Race that may have its origins in the Paiwan aborigines of Taiwan.

On a principle coordinates map here (Figure 4), Indonesians cluster close to Filipinos, the Ami of Taiwan and Southern Chinese.

That paper, referenced in the several paragraphs above, may be downloaded on this site here.

Indonesians today constitute several races. Papuans and Melanesians were mentioned above. The Toba Batak are Micronesians, but how they ended up in northern Sumatra is a mystery.

Indonesians on Java and northern Borneo are members of the Malay Race, also found in Malaysia. Indonesians from Sumatra, Bali and the Sea Dayak of northern Borneo, along with the Paiwan aborigines from Taiwan, are members of the Island SE Asian Race.

The Sea Dayak are also linked anthropologically with the first wave of Austronesians out of Taiwan 5,000 years ago, along with the Nesiot and Igorot in the Philippines. The suggestion is that the first wave of Austronesians may have been related to the Paiwan tribe.

This clustering is odd, and suggests that the Paiwan, in addition to the Ami, may have been among the Austronesian seafarers who populated Indonesia.

Click to view details. Map showing the Paiwan, Atayal, Bunum and Ami aborigines of Taiwan. The Paiwan seem to have a relationship with the Sea Dayak of North Borneo, the Balinese, and the Sumatrans. This indicates that the Paiwan, located on the lower right on the map, may have helped to settle Indonesia as Austronesians along with the Ami who are usually associated with Austronesians. Note that both the Paiwan and the Ami were properly positioned to colonize island SE Asia.

The Indonesians of Sulawesi, the Lesser Sundas and Borneo are members of the mainstream Indonesian Race.

References

Capelli, C., Wilson, J.F., Richards, M., Stumpf, M.P.H., Gratrix, F., Oppenheimer, S., Underhill, P., Pascali, V.L., Ko, T.M., and Goldstein, D.B. (2001). A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania. American Journal of Human Genetics 68:432-443.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., P. Menozzi, A. Piazza. (1994). History and Geography of Human Genes . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cuong, N.L. 1996. Anthropological Research on Đông Sơnian Skeletons (in Vietnamese). Hanoi.

Li H, Wen B, Chen SJ, Su B, Pramoonjago P, Liu Y, Pan S, Qin Z, Liu W, Cheng X, Yang N, Li X, Tran D, Lu D, Hsu MT, Deka R, Marzuki S, Tan CC, Jin L. 2008. Paternal Genetic Affinity Between Western Austronesians and Daic Populations. BMC Evol Biol. 8(1):146.

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000). The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution. Available on this blog here.

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A North-South Chinese Mix Cline in SE Asia?

A question from the comments about the Are SE Asians Australoids? article:

Aren't Khmer a little more Australoid than people in Vietnam (at least Northern Vietnamese), most Thai, and Laotians? There seems to be a clear cline in Southeast Asia, the areas bordering China seem to have more NE Mongoloid Admixture than those of the Malay archipelago and the Khmer. I'm basing this on appearance and not genes, which you pointed out, rightly so, as being misleading.

This question keeps popping up because so many folks are convinced, based primarily on appearance, that many SE Asians are part-Australoid.

First of all, the Vietnamese, Filipinos, Thai and Khmer are all quite close to the Southern Chinese genetically. Of these, believe it or not, the Filipinos are possibly the closest of all. The Vietnamese are also very close, but I don't have any figures. Both the Filipinos and the Vietnamese are very close to the coastal Southern Chinese of Fujian and Guangdong Province bordering the Taiwan Strait.

Next come the Thai, Lao and the Khmer. These groups are much closer to the Southern Chinese than Malays or Indonesians. All of them are about the equidistant from the Southern Chinese. Filipinos are much closer to the Southern Chinese than these three groups.

The Thai and Lao are primarily a Southern Chinese group called the Tai that came down into that area in a massive wave about 800 years ago. To some extent they bred in with whatever people were already there. This Tai group came from Yunnan.

The Vietnamese are very closely related to the Southern Chinese. A huge wave of Southern Chinese poured into Vietnam 2,200 years and bred in with existing people. This group came from the Taiwan Strait - the area north of Vietnam along the coast.

The Khmer came down into the area possibly 5,000 years ago with the first wave of Austroasiatics. They also came from Southern China, probably Yunnan once again, but longer ago than their neighbors the Thai, Lao and Vietnamese. The Austroasiatics are considered to be some of the original people of the SE Asia.

The Zhuang of South China are probably the purest relatives of the original Austroasiatics. They came from Central China (possibly originally as the Dai) to Yunnan about 5,000 years ago. One line went to the Zhuang in Guangxi in Southwest China and another line went to the modern Tai-Dai in Yunnan.

Also, the Khmer bred in much more than their neighbors with people from India who came about 1,500 years ago. So, the Khmer contain more of the original Austroasiatic group and less of recent Southern Chinese mixture than the Thai, Lao and Vietnamese. This accounts for their appearance.

Filipinos are closer to Southern Chinese (Guangdong) than any of the groups above except maybe Vietnamese. They are also very close to Taiwan aborigines. Most people have a hard time understanding this because they look so different from most Southern Chinese. But there are Chinese from around Fujian and Hong Kong who look quite dark and, to my mind, SE Asian-looking.

Malays are Taiwan aborigines in large part (Austronesians), and are also are made up of Southern Chinese who came down 4,000 years ago as Austroasiatics.

The Austronesians came through the Philippines, down into Borneo and Sumatra and then up into Malaysia about 2,000 years ago. The Malay do have some Papuan genes, but so do the Southern Chinese and the coastal Vietnamese. Once again, the Malays have less recent Southern Chinese admixture and more archaic Southern Chinese admixture (Austronesian and Austroasiatic).

Malays also definitely have Australoid ancestors in the Semang, the proto-Malay and the Senoi, although we can't see it in their skulls or much of it in their genes.

The Indonesians in the Center and East of the country have quite a few Melanesian Australoid genes, but the ones in the West have almost none. The ones in the West appear to be Taiwanese aborigines similar to Filipinos.

It's really a common fallacy that there is such a cline in SE Asia, with folks becoming more Australoid and less Chinese as you go south. What there is is that in some places, you find more recent Southern Chinese mixture and towards the South, you get more archaic Taiwanese and archaic Southern Chinese mixture.

A modern Southern Chinese woman from Chengdu Province. Isn't she beautiful? God I love this kind of woman. It's possible she may use some sort of skin whitener to make her skin look more white, or she may just stay out of the sun. White skin has been highly valued for a long time, and my blogging colleague Dragon Horse (feel free to check him out - he's smart as Hell) notes that it had been highly valued long before Chinese even knew much about Europeans.

In other words, Chinese were not trying to look like White Europeans - they hardly even knew who they were. A preference for lighter skin was simply an independent development in China based on their own considerations and values. Many will look at this woman and say she has a NE Asian facial type. Well, that may be so, but Caucasians are closer to NE Asians than she is as a Southern Chinese. The genetic distance between Southern Chinese and Northern Chinese is vast.

We only find a few Australoid genes in SE Asians and even then only in Southern Chinese, coastal Vietnamese and Malays. Skull-wise, nothing exists, except that the Senoi of Malaysia do have Australoid skulls.

I guess people say this based on appearance. There is a SE Asian native type characterized most prominently by Malays, Khmer, Filipino, Western Indonesians, etc. that people think looks a bit primitive, and they associate that with Australoids.

Really it's just a native indigenous development, although it does seem to represent a more archaic type - either archaic Taiwanese or archaic South Chinese - and has nothing to do per se with Australoids.

Recall however that the whole region slowly transitioned from Australoid types to modern SE Asian types about 5000 years ago, and that's later than most groups. Maybe that is what people are seeing. But there's nothing we can measure in genes or skulls.

Thai, Lao and Vietnamese don't have any NE Asian mixture that we can see. There is a Southern Chinese look that can resemble Northern Chinese, but the two groups are very far apart. Even Southern Chinese don't have much northern mixture, but there are some groups that are more northern than others.

The Wa (Va) of Yunnan and Burma are about 50-50 Northern and Southern Chinese, and the Hmong have more Northern Chinese than other Southern Chinese groups.

A Hmong woman. We have a huge Hmong population here in the Central Valley. By and large, they are good people and I like them a lot. The Hmong are interesting among Southern Chinese in that they have more Northern Chinese than most of the rest of the Southern Chinese. They also have a unique genetic line going back up to 42,000 years (!). It's pretty incredible that some sort of proto-Hmong have been evolving for that long.

The website I got this off described Hmong as partly Australoid, but I think that's silly. They are saying this by looking at the faces and saying that the face looks somewhat Australoid. The Hmong are probably less Australoid than that Chengdu woman above.

I find some of these Hmong women, like this one, to be really beautiful. They definitely look different. They have round, moon-shaped faces, and short, stocky, bodies. Character-wise, they are very Chinese-like.

Their IQ in the US is only 82.5 (lower than US Blacks) but that must be due to language difficulties. Their verbal IQ was insanely low, while their performance IQ was quite high. The Hmong have also been living like hillbillies for centuries, so there is probably a lot of potential for Flynn Effects in the US. That's a traditional costume she is wearing.

Caucasians are closer to Northern Chinese than Southern Chinese are.

A classic NE Asian, in this case a Manchu woman. What's interesting is that these people are genetically very close to Caucasians (while Southern Chinese are extremely distant). They don't have any Caucasian genes, but when we plot them on graphs, their genetic structure is quite close to Caucasians. The Caucasians that they most resemble are Northern Turkics such as some of the people in the Altai and the residents of the Stans.

They are part of what I call an Asian-Caucasian Divide, where these two great races are so close that it is often hard to tell which category to throw them into. This divide ranges from Turkey through the Stans, to Mongolia and out to Chukotka.

I can't see much difference in phenotype between her and the Southern Chinese beauty above, but maybe folks who understand Asian phenotypes better can see these things. These people are also quite close genetically to Amerindians. Koreans, Japanese and NE Chinese are all quite genetically close, although I guess they mostly hate each other and would not want to believe that.


A Tajik man. Boy, does he look Jewish or what? These people are quite closely related to NE Asians and also to Northern Indians. They are closest to Iranians. A very interesting people, they are thought to be the original Aryans. Funny how Aryans White Power types go back to Aryan dudes who look like nice Jewish boys. Wonders never cease.

People base so much popular anthropology on superficial appearances, but that's not really scientific.

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An Apologetics For Zionism

This comment was left on my site by a fellow who called himself "Apologist for Zionism". He makes some very interesting points on here. We have dealt with his notion that every ethnic group deserves a state on this blog previously. Non-territorial nations certainly do not deserve a state at all, unless someone wants to donate one to them.

These comments are interesting because in many ways they are straight of out of Theodor Herzl himself. Herzl has been accused by anti-Zionists of being a Jewish anti-Semite, and he was a serious critic of the Jews. He felt that Jews and Gentiles could not live together and he felt that the fault was equally divided between the two groups.

He originally favored Jewish assimilation, but after the Dreyfus Affair in France in the late 1800's (this shocked many people because they thought that anti-Semitism in France was history by this time) he changed his mind and figured that the only way forward was for Jews and Gentiles to live in permanent separation.

He noted that when Jews did well, they become very successful businessmen and aroused the envy and wrath of the Gentiles, and when they sank into poverty, they bred radicals like rabbits.

When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; and at the same time, when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse. Herzl, Der Judenstaat, 1896, p.91.

The commenter points out that many early Zionists were socialists who felt that one of the problems of the Jew was that he had gotten out of touch with the land itself (however, Jews were forbidden to own land for most of their stay in Europe). To cure this defect, these socialist Zionists supported a sort of back to the land thing that would get Jews' hands dirty and make them into salt of the Earth again.

The question of whether or not nations have carrying capacities for Jews is most interesting, but I don't even want to go there. The author suggests that the US is presently reaching such a capacity.

Another very successful minority similar to Jews is the Overseas Chinese. There have been some pogroms against the Overseas Chinese, but it's nothing compared to what Jews have been through. Only about 3% of the population, they control about ~70% of the economies of, say, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Now, no group of people, no matter how kind-hearted or progressive, is going to put up with that kind of bullshit for long, and there is no way that the Overseas Chinese work 23 times harder or are 23 times smarter than Indonesians or Filipinos. At the outside, perhaps they are 3.5 times more intelligent than Indonesians or Filipinos. This would entitle them, with 3% of the population, to ~10% of the wealth, not an insane 70%.

The problem with capitalism is that in amasses such insane fortunes in the hands of small groups who frankly have not earned it due to either their genes or their harder work. In so doing, capitalism virtually guarantees endless racial conflict.

There are differences between Jews and Overseas Chinese. The Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, keep out of politics, and are not endlessly meddling in the cultural and political affairs of the nation - they just focus on making money. Jews focus on making money too, but they can't seem to help trying to change society, a habit that arouses mountains of anti-Semitism.

This is an interesting comment:

In fact, some theorists and historians even believe that it was the general emancipation of the Jews in the early-to-mid 19th Century that led to the Industrial Revolution in The West and the consequent rise of modern industrial-capitalism, which Jews also played and still played a large part in.

The countries in Europe where Jews had the most political and economic freedom, especially England and Germany, were also the first to industrialize on a large scale...coincidence?

That paragraph is most interesting, and led another commenter to rebut that Jews were never a part of industrialization in Germany and Britain; instead they were associated in Britain anyway with finance capital. The commenter then said he was reading a book by a guy named William Engdahl, A Century of War.

Engdahl is no anti-Semite, but he felt that the predominance of finance capital in Britain led to colonial adventures instead of building up domestic industry, to the eventual detriment of Britain. He then noted that in the 1920's and 1930's, German products were said to be better than British products.

I don't know about Jewish emancipation leading to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and Germany, but I believe that Jews played an essential role in the development of capitalism itself.

I also don't agree with the "German socialist" viewpoint that Hitler later picked up - along with Israel Shamir - that the Jews are a virus-like people, a race of rootless cosmopolitans without ties to the blood and soil and without loyalty to the nation, as the German capitalists supposedly had.

It's my understanding that in the 1920's, many top German capitalists, including factory owners, were Jews. Jews are now heavily involved in industry here in the US. Jews do not limit themselves anymore to finance capital, and they are not very big players in it anymore anyway, as it all seems to be taken over by multinational banks in the US, Europe and Asia with few to no Jewish connections.

The role of the Jews in finance capital in the past was quite large (they almost controlled European banking from ~1850-1930 or so).

The big players in the UK 110 years ago were not Jews but a couple of cabals, one centered around a man named Cecil Rhodes. This cabal also had ties to top UK universities like Oxford and Cambridge.

They went to the top boys schools like Eaton. They were active in colonialism and in groups such as the Oriental Society. They actually formed secret societies. It's true that Lord Rothschild was a member (at the periphery) of one of these secret societies, but he seems to have been the only Jew.

I really doubt that the dominance of finance capital (=Jewish money) in the UK 110 years ago is what led to colonial adventures. This group centered around Rhodes was very much into colonialism, and Britain was a huge industrial power in those days, mostly due to her Navy and her colonies.

Britain ruled the world from 1588 (the defeat of the Spanish Armada - and also the first stirrings of English nationalism - one of the first manifestations of classic European nationalism) all the way up until about 1935, when air power, notably German, successfully challenged British sea and colonial power.

German products have always been better than British products, especially fine machinery. I doubt the superiority of German fine machined products over such British products has much to do with Jewish money. There was plenty of Jewish money floating around Germany around that time too.

This cabal around Rhodes, I believe, continues to run The London Times to this very day, or at least they did in the mid 1960's.

At this point, the Jews are in Israel and they are not leaving. Radical Palestinians want to throw out every Jew who came after 1916 (The Balfour Declaration was in 1917). As a settler-colonist myself whose ancestors were still stealing Indian land for our settler-colonial project as late as 1873 in California (see Modoc Wars), this sort of thing makes me really uneasy.

Any settlement to the conflict in the Holy Land must take into account the safety of the Jews already there. I would hate to see a situation similar to Iraq where maniacal insurgents are running around slaughtering Jews at will and setting off car bombs and killing 100-200 Jews at a time. Arabs are Arabs, and I don't think Palestinians and Iraqis are all that different, except one comes from the Levant and the other from Mesopotamia.

I'm also not sure that Jewish-led industrialization in Germany (assuming it is a fact) led to the alienation and impoverishment of the rural people and the rise of Nazi blood and soil German ethnic nationalism, but it's a complicated question to be sure. The followers of the Nazis were mostly petit bourgeois, lower middle class office workers and the like. Rural dwellers were not so supportive.

Zionist Apologist writes:

Every ethnic group has a right to a state. It's a shame that the Jews had to steal Israel, but at least they have a place to call home now. Imperialism is unfortunately a part of humanity's dark history -- and we now have to deal with the dark consequences.

A homeland for Jews (whether in Israel or wherever else) is the ONLY WAY to 'heal' the Jews, and it'll take many generations. I'm sure you've heard the oft-repeated phrase [paraphrasing]: "Diaspora is the disease, and Israel is the cure."

The Zionists were considering places like Uganda or Argentina early on, and places like those would have been a better choice than Israel in the long run since the Jews would have then been able to develop an agricultural base economy, which is the root of a settled and stable nation-state.

However, those places were very rural and undeveloped and hence probably wouldn't have been successful (as the Jews saw many of their 'agricultural colony' experiments in Argentina and Africa and the USA and Canada collapse in dismal failure).

I have noticed that Ashkenazi Jews have a definite inability to settle anywhere in any substantial numbers that hasn't already been fairly heavily settled or where they don't have access to a nearby network of fellow Jews.

It is telling as well that the early Zionist ideals of hard work, agricultural and manual labor, and other mainstays of key Zionist doctrines are now being filled by imported (!) labor (often Asian or Arab) since so many Israelis 'dislike' that kind of work and all want to be lawyers and doctors and professors and journalists and bankers (surprise, surprise) rather than just another cog in Israeli society.

Israel is even having problems with their military draft now. But, you see, THE WHOLE POINT of the Zionist experiment was for Jews to become cogs in a stable Jewish society instead of always being the perpetual Jewish 'Other' in the societies of foreign peoples.

The Zionists also noticed that sometimes Jews tended to take advantage of often-times gullible non-Jewish peoples because of their general intelligence and capacity to facilitate commerce, and they wanted to fix that too.

In fact, some theorists and historians even believe that it was the general emancipation of the Jews in the early-to-mid 19th Century that led to the Industrial Revolution in The West and the consequent rise of modern industrial-capitalism, which Jews also played and still played a large part in.

The countries in Europe where Jews had the most political and economic freedom, especially England and Germany, were also the first to industrialize on a large scale...coincidence?

The problem with this, though, is that this Jewish-inspired industrialization tended to slowly choke the lifestyle and economic systems of the rural/agrarian people of those countries who obviously weren't Jews, thus leading to resentment (antisemitism) - hence the Nazi doctrine of "blood and soil" and their desire to eventually resurrect the German peasantry in the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe.

I have also noticed that every nation has a sort of Jewish 'carrying capacity,' i.e. it is unable to manage, hold, or absorb Jews in very large numbers until antisemitism starts to break out (for instance, history shows that antisemitism in Germany grew very quickly as more and more Jews from Eastern Europe fled to Germany and Western Europe trying to escape poverty or antisemitism or whatever).

And in some ways I think that the saturation point may be close to being reached in North America.I must say that an island nation might actually be best for Jews, as long as it could be mostly self sufficient. As Ezra Pound once said in one of his infamous WWII radio broadcasts: "Sell 'em Australia."

References

Herzl, Theodore. 1896. The Jewish State. New York: Dover Publications reprint in 1988. Originally published, 1946, New York: American Zionist Emergency Council, edited, original translation by Slyvie d'Avigdor revised by Jacob M. Alkow.

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