bananarepublic
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I understand that. My first book on this ethnicity was The Pathans by Olaf Caroe, who was a great admirer of the Pakhtun. However, it is rather dated; I have not had an opportunity to catch up with the latest academic thinking about this subject.
In a sense. PIE was a reconstruction; nobody knows what it was originally. Indo-Iranian was represented soon after the divide by three and a half languages: Eastern, Central and Western Old Iranian, and Avestan. I am writing this from memory, and the nomenclature of the three branches may be wrong. From that point, there has been tremendous development of Iranian, through a middle period and a modern period to arrive at Modern Iranian.
The closest to PIE is thought to be Lett, spoken by the Latvians on the shores of the Baltic.
Fascinating. I wish I knew more. @WAJsal should know more, but I rarely see him nowadays.
Gilgit, not so much Baltistan, is a melting pot; as you said, sorting out the ancestry thread by intermingled thread is a major project for a whole team of DNA specialists, and I frankly doubt that they can succeed anyway.
Baltistan is a much simpler proposition.
Yes Baltistan has a very easy explanation, they were the early converts to Bhuddism and did adopt numerous traditions and practices from them. Later on when the Tibetan empire collapsed they became their own unique entity with a very interesting language and probably the most rich language in terms of literature in the region.
One thing that people dont realize is that before Buddhism the whole region was dependent on shamanism. Certain practices still clearly show that shamanism was intertwined into the socila fabric of the region.
Gilgit is an even more headbanger region at least a dozen of unique and standalone ethnicity with languages which are incomprehensible for the other and then the numerous social structures of those communities which range massively.