@RustyCrab @Nepiant
They weren't. Aryans are a mythological proto-race from which real people of that region supposedly originated. Of extraterrestrial origin and not having been under the sun, their skin was presumably white, but due to breeding with… who-knows-whom, became darker with time, but this is all a myth — pseudoscience and Nazi twist of it is particularly inconsistent.
In modern science it's not used to refer to any real ever existing ethnic group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan#Contemporary_scholarship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migrations
@Hyolobrika @RustyCrab @Nepiant
They used to refer to themselves like that, but more in a cultural context.
Check out the link that I've posted — the term indeed was in use at some point, but since then it mostly got superseded with Proto-Indo-Iranian, Aryan is still used in cultural and linguistic context, but it's no longer used to refer to any ethnicity.
@Hyolobrika @RustyCrab @Nepiant
Try clicking "Indo-Aryan" in the article you've linked: "Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent" — it's about the language rather race, genetics and all that.
Sure, the Nazi thing might be in part a reason for why the term is no longer used — but I think it's mostly to prevent people from assuming wrong things and picking up outlandish ideas without digging deeper into the subject.
@Hyolobrika @RustyCrab @Nepiant
From what I remember since the days of my digging into Avestan stuff, Aryan was even used to refer to nobility — because they didn't have to be in the sun much and could afford having more pale skin 😅
But as far as I know, these are still just hypotheses of different levels of scientific credibility.
