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Alexander the Great's long-lost Greek descendants in Pakistan?
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

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Recently, sensational news and documentary reports have studied the obscure Kalash tribe of northern Pakistan (the Hindu Kush) that claims descent from the Greek settlers of Alexander the Great's empire. Many have been puzzled by their light features, green eyes, and "European looks," although this has been intensely debated. Some have been anxious to claim that these are ethnic Greeks in Asia. This article analyzes the tribe's culture, racial physiognomy, rituals, and traditional origin myths. It also overviews the historical process of Alexander's conquests in the region and his foundation of the longstanding Greek cultural legacy that may explain whether or not the Kalash are of Greek genetic roots or not. If you have any perspectives, theories, or information you would like to add, feel free to notify us. Read our article on the 3,800-year-old Europoid mummies of China for a similar topic.

Background on the demographics and genetics of eastern Central Asia

Understanding the genetics and physiognomy of the region can help determine whether or not the debated Kalash's Greek roots are reality. All across the Pamir mountain range and the Hindu Kush – from the eastern fringe of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to western China and Kyrgyzstan – there is an unusual frequency of recessive genes that greatly discern from the traits of the dominant racial groups in the region (Turkic, Mongol, Uyghur, Irano-Pashtun, North Indian, and Tajik). Many small populations in the rural area in Tajikistan (the Pamir region) and the Luristan regon between Afghanistan and Pakistan have blue or green eyes, and have lighter hair. Although their overall physiognomy and skull structure only seldom differ, the presence of these recessive traits has been studied by anthropologists indefatiguably. They have been described as "white," "European," and "Europoid" even though there has been no proven genetic, cultural, or historical connection to European races or Europe itself at all. The Kalash may simply be one of these non-European peoples with light "European" features. Considering that most European genetic groups do not have light hair and green eyes, this makes it exceptionally difficult to claim a European descent for these peoples or especially from the Greeks, who have dark features. Also consider that many modern-day Macedonians refuse to believe that Alexander the Great of Macedon was even Greek at all, but smply Macedonian (see our analysis with videos here). As is evident, this is a very difficult issue with much incendiary debate.

Notice the proximity of northeastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. The far north of Pakistan is the Hindu Kush, the Pamir mountains including Tajikistan and its surroundings, and the dotted-line circle in northern India on the right is Muslim Kashmir.

The Kalash tribe's culture and myths, descendents of Alexander?

The Kalash tribe of this article live on the Afghan-Pakistan border between the abstract regions of Nuristan and Chitral, a heavily tribal region both with adherents to the rigid Islam for which the area has become famous as well as traditional tribal religions. The remote territory is often called “Kafiristan” by scholars and locals due to their perceived adultertation of or apostacy from the dominant manifestation of Islam in north Pakistan (“kafir” is the Muslim and Arabic term for infidel). Many locals and scholars consider that the tribes of the region, including the Kalash, are all related as the "Nuristani" ethnic group of Nuristan province (meaning "Land of Light"). The term "Land of Light" likely refers to the ancient title employed by early Aryan, Iranian, and Tajik peoples as being the noble people borne of light. Some have claimed that the Nuristanis -- and thus the Kalash -- were called "People of Light" because of their adoption of the true of Islam, but this theory is rather fanciful considering that many (including the Kalash) are infidel polytheists.

The name of the tribe, Kalash, means “wearers of black,” although they wear an eclectic array of bright and dark colors, especially for festivals. There is common use of cowrie shells on dresses of women, a trait common among ancient or primitive peoples as an expression of wealth or clan affiliation. They are described as the only pagans (polytheists – many gods) in Pakistan and the surrounding Hindu Kush, since the Buddhists, Manichaeans, Jewish Khazar merchants, and Hindus had long been displaced or forcibly converted by the jihad of the Ghorid, Ghaznavid, Delhi/Lodi, Timurid, and Mughal sultanates since the 10th century. They have unique cultural professions and rituals of their own, such as winemaking (of course, forbidden or haraam in Islamic jurisprudence), elaborate sewing and textiles, and shoemaking. They have a strange ritual of sending teenage boys into the harsh forest terrain for nearly a year and, if they survive, they can have their way with any number of women during the duration of the ritual. Obviously, this is highly heterodox in comparison with the dominant moral and religious ethos of Pakistan, but it surely is not a notably Greek tradition either. There is little gender segregation unlike their Muslim neighbors, who eat, sleep, pray, and work separately. They have intense funeral and mourning rites in which women dance in circles, sacrifice goats and cattle, feast, and drink. They apparently seldom eat meat, in part derived from the inordinate expense of forfeiting livestock in this wickedly poor and desolate region. Alcohol is integral in their religious life, as it was in the Greek culture and cults of Dionysus as well pre-Islamic Iranian culture. They apparently reject eating or slaughtering chickens, even claiming that introducing poultry into Kalash society would intimate their extinction, and they have criticized Muslims for doing just that [1]. The women wear headdresses, scarves, and veils, and the men often wear headcoverings, kufis (Islamic skullcaps), and Islamic-derived garb. Women remove their headscarves when in mourning, likely to signify emptiness and absence. It seems that, having been divorced from the hegemony suffered by adjacent tribes and equally divorced from their possible Greek roots (if indeed they are Greek), they are now in all respects their own sociocultural identity and heritage. Today numbering less than 4,000 by some estimates [1], deforestation, overdevelopment, terrorist attacks by Mujahidin against these kafirs, high mortality, and conversion make many presage that this society is close to extinction, and that the strictly Islamic qualities of Pakistan (especially the North West Frontier) stifle their independent cultural and religious survival. The danger that results from being among the only polytheist in a fervently conservative Muslim country like Pakistan perhaps suggests that there are far more Kalash than reported, many having either forgotten or abandoned their roots either with conversion to Islam or assimilation into the dominant social culture.

From Gettyimages.com.

From Gettyimages.com.

From Gettyimages.com.

From Gettyimages.com.

From Gettyimages.com.

From telegraph.co.uk.

The Kalash tribes' myths of an Alexandrian origin, and possible roots

Classifying the Kalash is difficult because of the region's legacy of demography exchange and foreign hegemony. Mixing, although uncommon because of the antagonism between the new invaders and their conquered subjects and the very remote geography of the Kalash people, further complicates defining these people as ethnic Greeks. Their blue and green eyes may simply be a result of rare and isolated recessive genes that have been known by geneticists to occur due to isolated genetic parentange and even inbreeding and mutation. Light eyes, sometimes present among Turks and Iranians but seldom among Greeks, are not enough to define them as Greeks or related to any European race. The vast majority of Greeks (even in Greece) tend to have very dark hair, brown or hazel eyes, and olive skin. It is difficult to describe them as being Greek when their genetic features are uncommon in Greece but more common in the local region among Pamirians and Tajiks.

Kalash foundation myths describe their progenitor and founder as a "horned-god" and an equestrian conquerer with demon horns. Alexander was sometimes depicted in writings, imagery, and numismatic evidence to have donned a dual-horned helmet with red tassels (although this is often highly exaggerated). This is significant in tracing their lineage to Alexander and his conquering army. Perhaps their claim of “descent” from Alexander the Great and “his army” originally referred to soldiers conscripted in Alexander's campaign after his conquests in Iran, regardless of their race. The Kalash may mean that they descend from the political legacy of Alexander's empire (as most of Eurasia did for many centuries) rather than descending from Alexander's Greek settlers themselves. They were surely aware of the dominant hegemon with his horned helmet in the region.

A sensationalized helmet of Alexander with two feather horns, noted in Kalash culture (from the film "Alexander")

One useful tool that some scholars have emphasized in determining the Greek ancestry of the Kalash is their religion. However, there is no appearance of Greek gods under different names. The location of the Kalash dictates that it could have been imported from other local cultures or merged to form a distinct Kalash tradition that has nothing to do with Greeks. There is firstly a great emphasis on dualism (light/good and darkness/evil) that is surely influenced by the Buddhist, Manichean, and Zoroastrian heritage of the region stretching from Tajikistan to Kashmir under Iranian hegemony. The Kalash apparently divide their worldview into a system of male and female realms, and gendered aspects of reality and life ruled over by gods and goddesses. The Kalash worship nature, animals, and spirits. None of these religious qualities seem to derive from original Greek religion of Alexander. No Zeus, Hera, Apollo, or Athena. No titans and Promethian myths. Of course, the Kalash as possible Greek settlers could easily have invented and adopted their own religion by drawing from eclectic local inspirations. Therefore, religion fails to be a good litmus for determining an Alexandrian and Greek link. The modern religious mysticism of the Kalash may simply be a blend of the Greco-Kushan Buddhist tradition and Zoroastrian/Manichean dualism that evolved into its own new form after the jihad of invading Muslim sultanates abolished Buddhism and destroyed nearly all temples and statues of the Buddha in India. There is much influence from the more core tenets of Hinduism or its Vedic predecessor that came to India in the 2nd millennium BCE via the Aryan invasion. Belief in Indra and emphasis on the bull/cow are present, revealing links with Iranian and Vedic tradition. The Kalash emphasis on fertility rites, nature, statues, and gendered gods is common to the Vedic, Hindu, Mahayana Buddhist, and Manichean traditions that dominated the region throughout history.

It would seem that the Kalash are simply yet another one of many unique and disparate tribes found throughout Central Asia, the Pamirs, and the Kush with what are abstractly described as "European" features. Many of these settled in the region with Alexander's expansion, many with the Turkic and Hunnic conquest. Many are simply Iranians with recessive eye color genes who spread east via early Persian conquests. Almost certainly, they are not Greek or migrants from Europe, nor are any of the “white” tribes of Central & South Asia, the Pamirs, or the Hindu Kush. Blue eyes and light-brown hair in Tajikistan and the Tarim Basin of China does not translate to European immigration or invasion.

Historical background on ethnic Greek expansion into Central Asia

The imaginary Silk Road trade routes stretching from Constantinople to Kashmir and Damascus to Samarqand and China mean that an eclectic array of religions, languages, and small ethnic minorities traversed the vast Asian territory for millennia. Small Greek commercial and colonial communities were known to have settled and traded as far away as Afghanistan and thus the Pamir and Nuristani regions where the Kalash "Greeks" may live. But the dominant Greek cultural, political, religious, and linguistic legacy in the region only began with the world-conquerering campaigns of Alexander the Great.

In the 4th century BCE, Alexander the Great led the Greeks and Macedonians against Achemenid Persia, obliterating the Shah Darrius' armies at Gaugamela before he was assassinated by his own satrap Bessus. By conquering Persia -- the largest empire the world had ever known -- Alexander subdued a realm including Egypt, the Levant (Arabia), Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus, Anatolia, Greece proper, Afghanistan, most of Central Asia (Sogdiana), and half of Pakistan to the Indus River before his armies were brutally repelled at India. After he died of debated causes, his empire immediately collapsed into independent warring monarchies dominated by ethnic Greek sovereigns who officially promoted the Greek language, culture, settlement, Greek education, and religion. The largest in Asia was the Seleucid kingdom. In 260BCE, the Seleucid satrap (governor) Diodotus broke off in Afghanistan to create the foundations of a resplendent Bactrian kingdom which would later become a focal point of the transmission of Buddhism to the world. Whilst the rest of the Alexandrian Greek successor states in east Asia would fall to the Iranian Parthians and other invading tribes, Greek Bactria (Afghanistan) would endure as an evident Greek legacy for centuries. Even after the remaining Greek monarchy had been destroyed and absorbed into the empire of the possibly blue-eyed and red-haired Buddhist Tocharians (see our article), the native Irano-Bactrian language of the succeeding Buddhist kings was written in the Greek alphabet. Foreign ethnic Greek travelers were able to communicate in Greek as late as 44AD and get a Greek-based education, 190 years after the ethnic Greek hegemonic minority ruling caste had been dismantled [2]. The Greek cultural and religious legacy endured for centuries before being subsumed under the conquests of other cultures, especially the Parthian Iranians, eastern Huns (Hepthalites), and the Guptas.

There is no proof that the Kalash tribe analyzed in this article is in any way connected with this transmission of Greek culture and genetics. They were surely incorporated into the legacy of Alexander's Greek conquests as the whole region was. Therefore, the Kalash's myths of the horned-god Alexander most certainly means that the Kalash simply passed down oral tales of Alexander's conquests in the region rather than implying any genetic connection to the Greeks or Europeans. It must also be remembered that much of his army, especially in Asia, was not Greek or European at all, but consisted of Iranian and other minorities.

(Click to enlarge) Alexander the Great's empire.

The Buddhas of Kushan in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Destroyed by the Mujahidin.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is a historian and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies (language and history), am presently working for my Masters in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate. I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles of native European and immigrant minority identities. See my staff entry for more information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

-Images that lack an EHL watermark are not our property. If no link is provided, we were unable to locate the original owner. If you find that your property has been used, feel free to notify us. Many of these images are found on blogs and different sites that obviously did not travel to Pakistan themselves, and they fail to cite the original photographers. If you have found the owner or believe that this was improprly taken from your website, please notify us so we can give credit.

-Getty Images

-Telegraph.co.uk

-Keay, John. India: A History. New York: Grove Press, 2000.

[1] Maureen Lines: http://www.telegraph.co.uk - "Titan of the Kalash"

[2] Ostler, Nicholas. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. Page 258.