Ethnic groups

Language

Religious non-leteracy in a literate culture

Folklore and folk music

Folk music and instruments

Settlement patterns

Life cycle

The inward looking society

AFGHANISTAN is not a self-contained ethnic unit, and its national culture is not uniform. Few of its ethnic groups are indigenous. All Pushtun, for example, are not Afghan citizen. Almost an equal number live in the Tribal Agencies and the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Tajik, Uzbak, Turkoman, and Kirghiz have their own Soviet Socialist Republics in the Soviet Union. Most inhabitants of the extreme western part of Afghanistan, geographically and culturally an extension of the Iranian Plateau, are simply Persian-speaking Farsiwan (also called Parsiwan or Parsiban) farmers. Baluch (or Baluchi, which usually refers to their language) live in the southwestern corner of Afghanistan, northwestern Pakistan, and southeastern Iran; several large groups also live in the Turkoman S.S.R.

The Brahui (Dravidian-speakers, often Australoid in appearance) live in the same general area as the Baluch. In Pakistan, the Brahui divide the Baluch of Kalat State into two major local groups.

Nuristani, Kohistani, Gujar, and other small groups of mountaineer sheep/goat herders, dairymen, and farmers occupy the rugged mountain zones of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistani Chitral. About 3,000 of the Chitrali Kafirs still practice a non-Muslim religion. The Wakhi-Pamiri groups overlap into the mountains of Pakistan, and the Barbari (Or Berberi) of eastern Iran probably have an Aimaq or Hazara origin.

Three physical types are present in Afghanistan: çaucasoid (mainly Pushtun, Tajik, Baluch, Nuristani), Mongoroid (mainly Hazara, Aimaq, Turkoman, Uzbak, Kirghiz), and modified Australoid (Brahui). Most Dravidiain-speakers (Dravidian is a major Indian language family) live south of the Narbada river in India. Mystery shrouds the comings and goings of the Bra2hui in Pakistan and southwestern Afghanistan. Either they were left behind when the Indo-Europeans invaded from the north in the second millennium B.C. (or earlier), or they filtered back after the situation somewhat stabilized. Many Work today as tenant farmers for the overlord Baluch in southwestern Afghanistan, but the Brahui in Kalat State (Pakistan) still prize their relative independence from outside interference.

Few Afghan groups maintain racial homogeneity outside the Pushtun areas of the south and east, and even there breakdowns appear on closer analysis (Debets, 1966c, 1970; Maranjian, 1958). Many groups have practiced miscegenation for centuries and composite communities exist in broad bands of ethnic gray zones. When long contact has existed between Caucasoid and Mongoloid groups, particularly in north Afghanistan among Tajik and Uzbak, red or blond hair, blue- or mixed-eye combinations occur in association with epicanthic folds and high cheekbones. Many darker-skinned Baluchi and Brahui also have blue, green, or mixed eyes.

Blondism, however, occurs at a high frequency among the more remote Nuristani and several regions I have visited in Nuristan exhibit at least 30 percent blondism (blue or mixed eyes, and blond or red hair combinations). Professor Debets recent (1965) research on the fringes of Nuristan indicate a great mixture with Mediterranean-Indian types, but a different situation exists in the central Nuristani area.