Indo-European studies

[Anastasios Helios]

I was reading the histories of the Armenians and encountered this line:

These assimilated foreign families were predominantly of Indo-European (Aryan) origin, such as Iranians, Alanians, Greeks and Romans.

Is Aryan really a synonym with Indo-European? Here that word is rather taboo and is only correctly used when referring to Indo-Iranians. For example the Tokharians called themselves Arya and the word means noble in Sanskrit or whatever. There is no reference to Germans, Romans, Kelts, or Greeks ever calling themselves that so...using it in the sense of Indo-Europeans as a whole sounds a little like Hitler-talk.

Also...one of the few connections Greeks and Romans have to the original Indo-Europeans is linguistic and that can only tell us so much. Scholars oftentimes forget the importance of the non-Indo-European Etruscans, Tyrrhenoi, and Minoans to the development of Greco-Roman civilization. It can be argued that influence from these civilizations far outweighs any contributions from Indo-European invaders that obliberated the cultures of the unwarlike natives