Who are the indo-aryans?

Answer 1

The usual term is Indo-European or just Aryan and it refers to all those languages (not ethnicity) sharing a common ancestry. These include the Germanic (such as English), Celtic, Greek and Latin (Romance) language groups. The Aryans WERE a people with a common spoken language inhabiting the Steppes of the Caucassus from about 4500BC. The many tribes united after Zoroaster wrote his 'hymn', and they swept South into India where their written script was used as the basis for Sankskrit and the Prakrits of modern India (Gujarati, Hindi...). They created the Caste System with themselves as the high cast. Those who migrated South-West were/became the Persians and the Medes, united under Darius I they conquered Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Responsible for deporting conquered people to other parts of their empire, best known being the Jewish exile to Babylon ('where we wept when we remembered Zion' Psalm 137). In response to Nietche's and others' dicoveries in philology, which were only made into a racial issue by the Nazis, Persia changed it's name in 1935 to Iran to reflect it's Aryan heritage; Iran and Aryan being the same root word. references: 'Empires of the Word' - Nicholas Ostler: Harper Collins, London 2005 'The Great Transformation' - Karen Armstrong: Grove Atlantic Books, London 2006.