antropogenesi dell'uomo indiano e A.I.T

[Felix (POL)]

Vorrei riprendere il dibattito sul'AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory), emerso a più riprese in vecchi 3D (se qualcuno riesce a ripescarli, posti qui il link).
A mo' di spunto di riflessione, propongo un capitolo di un libro che combina argomentazioni antropologiche (anche di antropologia fisica), archeologiche, storiche e linguistiche.
Tratto da "UPDATE ON THE ARYAN INVASION DEBATE", by
KOENRAAD ELST, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi. Il testo completo del libro è in: http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/

________________________________

4. Miscellaneous aspects
of the Aryan invasion debate



4.9. THE EVIDENCE FROM PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

4.9.1. Continuity between castes


Half a century ago, Dr. Ambedkar surveyed the existing data on the physical anthropology of the different castes in his book The Untouchables. He found that the received wisdom of a racial basis of caste was not supported by the data, e.g.: “The table for Bengal shows that the Chandal who stands sixth in the scheme of social precedence and whose touch pollutes, is not much differentiated from the Brahmin (…) In Bombay the Deshastha Brahmin bears a closer affinity to the Son-Koli, a fisherman caste, than to his own compeer, the Chitpavan Brahmin. The Mahar, the Untouchable of the Maratha region, comes next together with the Kunbi, the peasant. They follow in order the Shenvi Brahmin, the Nagar Brahmin and the high-caste Maratha. These results (…) mean that there is no correspondence between social gradation and physical differentiation in Bombay.”70


A remarkable case of differentiation in skull and nose indexes, noted by Dr. Ambedkar, was found to exist between the Brahmin and the (untouchable) Chamar of Uttar Pradesh.71 But this does not prove that Brahmins are foreigners, because the data for the U.P. Brahmin were found to be very close to those for the Khattri and the untouchable Chuhra of Panjab. If the U.P. Brahmin is indeed “foreign” to U.P., he is by no mean . s foreign to India, at least not more than the Panjab untouchables. This confirms the scenario which we can derive from the Vedic and ItihAsa-PurANa literature: the Vedic tradition was brought east from the Vedic heartland by Brahmins who were physically indistinguishable from the lower castes there, when the heartland in Panjab-Haryana at its apogee exported its culture to the whole Aryavarta (comparable to the planned importation of Brahmins into Bengal and the South around the turn of the Christian era). These were just two of the numerous intra-Indian migrations of caste groups.


Recent research has not refuted Ambedkar’s views. A press report on a recent anthropological survey led by Kumar Suresh Singh explains: “English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. ‘Biologically and linguistically, we are very mixed’, says Suresh Singh (…) The report says that the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (…) The sons-of-the-soil theory also stands demolished. The Anthropological Survey of India has found no community in India that can’t remember having migrated from some other part of the country.”72 Internal migration accounts for much of India’s complex ethnic landscape, while there is no evidence of a separate or foreign origin for the upper castes.


Among other scientists who reject the identification of caste (varNa) with race on physical-anthropological grounds, we may cite Kailash C. Malhotra:


“Detailed anthropometric surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions. On the basis of analysis of stature, cephalic and nasal index, H.K. Rakshit (1966) concludes that ‘the Brahmins of India are heterogeneous and suggest incorporation of more than one physical type involving more than one migration of people’.


“A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra on whom 18 metric, 16 scopic and 8 genetic markers were studied, revealed not only a great heterogeneity in both morphological and genetic characteristics but also showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes. P.P. Majumdar and K.C. Malhotra (1974) observed a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to OAB blood group system among 50 Brahmin samples spread over 11 Indian states. The evidence thus suggests that varna is a sociological and not a homogeneous biological entity.”73

4.9.2 Family traits


This general rejection of the racial basis of caste does not exclude that specific castes stand out in their environment by their phenotypical or genotypical characteristics. Firstly, any group that goes on breeding endogamously for generations will have “family traits” recognizable to the regular and sharp observer, at least to a statistically significant extent. This does not mean that these family traits (rarely distinctive enough to be called “racial” traits) are in any way the reason why one caste refuses to intermarry with another caste, as you would have in the case of racial discrimination.


Secondly, intra-Indian migrations have taken place so that certain caste groups stand out by retaining the physical characteristics of their source region’s population for quite a few generations. Thus, the Muslim invasions chased some Rajput castes from western India to the Nepalese borderland, and some Saraswat Brahmins from Kashmir to the Konkan region; geneticists ought to be able to find traces of that history.


It is well-known that the Brahmin communities of Bengal and South India originated in the physical importation of Brahmin families by kings who sought accession to the prestigious Vedic civilization and wanted to give extra religious legitimacy to their thrones. These Brahmin families were brought in from northwestern India where, for obvious geographical reason, people are whiter and closer to the European physical type than in Bengal or the South. (Even so, due to intermarriage and the incorporation of local priesthoods, numerous Brahmins in South India are simply black.) Apart from Brahmins, numerous other caste groups throughout India have histories of immigration, putting them in environments where they differed in genetic profile from their neighbours, e.g. the Dravidian-speaking Oraon tribals of Chotanagpur recall having migrated from Maharashtra along the Narmada river.


The Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra are often mentioned as a caste that stands out by its physical type. Their slightly more “Nordic” build and the occurrence of blue eyes among them look like the perfect evidence for the theory that the Brahmins are the descendents of the Nordic Aryans who invaded India in 1500 BC. In fact, it is only during the initial Islamic onslaught that the Chitpavans migrated from the Afghan borderland to their present habitat.


Nevertheless, the Chitpavan case shows that sometimes, such distinctive family traits do coincide with the difference between the higher or lower incidence of the distinctive traits of the white race, esp. the low pigmentation of the skin or, in this case, the eyes. The difference between castes can in some cases be expressed in terms of the respective distances between their average characteristics and those of the European type. And this is only to be expected given the basic fact that India is a large country with great variation in physical type and lying in the border zone between the major races. The rich biological variety in the Indian chapter of the human species is due to many factors, but so far the Aryan Invasion has not been shown to be one of them.

4.9.3. Mixing of castes


The genetic differential between castes has recently been confirmed in a survey in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.74 The main finding of the survey, conducted by human-geneticists Lynn B. Jorde (University of Utah) and Bhaskara B. Rao and J.M. Naidu (both with Andhra University), concerned the role of inter-caste marriages: men stay in their castes, while women sometimes go and live with a man from another, mostly higher caste. In spite of the definition of caste as an “endogamous group”, the fact is that there has always been a marginal mixing of castes as well. Likewise, even outside the marital framework, upper-class employers (in any society) have made passes at their maid-servants, while prostitutes got impregnated by their higher-class clients, all producing mixed offspring.


Factoring all these marginal mixed-caste births in, the cumulative effect over centuries is that the castes have mixed much more than the theory of caste would lead you to expect. Over many generations, this mixing had to lead to a thorough genetic kinship even between castes of very divergent origins. Given these known sociological facts, the scientists naturally found that genetic traits in the male line (Y chromosome) are stable, those in the female line (mitochondrial DNA) considerably less so. Because inter-caste marriages are mostly between “neighbouring” castes in the hierarchy, the genetic distance between highest and lowest is about one and a half times greater than that between high and middle or between middle and low.


However, none of this requires a policy of racial discrimination nor an Aryan invasion into India: the known history of internal migrations and the general facts about relations between higher and lower classes in all societies can easily account for it.75 Moreover, the observed differences between Indian communities are much smaller than those between Indians collectively and Europeans (or Africans etc.) collectively. A provisional table of the genetic distance between populations shows that North-Indians and South-Indians are indeed very close, much closer than “Aryan” North-Indians and “Aryan” Iranians are to each other.76


Both sides in the debate should realize that this evidence can cut both ways. If an Aryan or other invasion is assumed, this evidence shows that all castes are biologically the progeny of both invaders and natives, though perhaps in different proportions. Conversely, if the genetic distance between two castes is small, this still leaves open the possibility that the castes or their communal identities can nonetheless have divergent origins, even foreign versus native, although these are obscured to the geneticist by centuries of caste mixing.

4.9.4. Tribals and “Caucasians”


The one important general difference between two parts of the population is that between a number of tribes on the one hand, and some other tribes plus the non-tribals on the other. V. Bhalla’s mapping of genetic traits shows that the latter category roughly belongs to the Mediterranean subgroup of the Caucasian race (though by the superficial criterion of skin colour, it can differ widely from the type found in Italy or Greece). incidentally, the term Caucasian as meaning the white race was coined in 1795 by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who believed that the Caucasus region, particularly Georgia, “produces the most beautiful human race”, and that it was the most likely habitat of “the autochthonous, most original forms of mankind”.77 Thus, the typically Caucasian Rhesus-negative factor is “conspicuous by its absence” in the Mongoloid populations of India’s northeast, but the non-tribal populations “show a moderately high frequency of 15% to 20% but not as high as in Europe” of this genetic trait.78


Bhalla lists a number of specific genes which are characteristically strong or weak in given racial types, and finds that they do define certain ethnic sub-groups of India, esp. the Mongoloid tribals of the northeast, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, and the Australoids in the remaining tribal pockets of the south. Everywhere else, including in many tribal areas, the Mediterranean type is predominant, but the present battery of genetic markers was not able to distinguish between subtypes within this population, much less to indicate different waves of entry.


In fact, no “entry” of these Mediterranean Caucasians can be derived from the data, certainly not for the post-Harappan period. According to an older study, they were present even in South India in 2,000 BC at the latest: “The evidence of two racial types, the Mediterranean and the Autochthonous proto-Australoid, recognized in the study of the skeletal remains from the neolithic levels at Brahmagiri, Piklihal, Tekkalakota, Nevasa etc., seems to suggest that there was a thick population consisting mainly of these two races in South India around 2000 BC.”79


The Caucasian race was present in India (like in Europe and the Kurgan area) since hoary antiquity. Kailash Malhotra reports, starting with their geographical spread today: “The Caucasoids are found practically all over the country, though the preferred habitats have been river valleys and plains.”80


In the past, the Caucasian presence was also in evidence: “Although a large number of prehistoric sites have been excavated in India, only a few of them have yielded human osseous remains (…) None of the pre-Mesolithic sites have yielded skeletal material; the earliest remains are around 8,000 years old. An examination of the morphological features of skeletons from sites of the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and iron age periods reveals the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in all the periods, the absence of Mongoloids, and the existence of at least two types of Caucasoids, the dolichocephals and the brachycephals (…) The skeletal evidence thus clearly establishes the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in India for at least 8,000 years.”81


All that can be said, is that the population of India’s northeast is akin to that of areas to India’s north and east, that of the southeast to that of countries further southeast, and the bulk of the Indian population to that of areas to India’s west. Probably a large demographic expansion from India’s northwest to the east and south took place during and at the end of the Harappan period (2,000 BC). It is logical to infer that the populations of the Mediterranean type were more concentrated in the northwest prior to that time; but it does not follow that they came from the outside. India’s northwest simply happened to be the easternmost area of Caucasian habitation, just like India’s northeast happens to be the frontier of the Mongoloid type’s habitat.


For politically correct support in denying the racial divide between tribals and non-tribals, we may cite the Marxist scholar S.K. Chatterjee, who dismissed the notion of distinct races in India, be they Aryan, Dravidian, Mongoloid or Austro-Asiatic. He called the Indian people a “mixed people, in blood, in speech and in culture”.82


Though the Christian missionaries have been the champions of tribal distinctness, Christian author P.A. Augustine writes about the Bhil tribals: “The Bhils have long ceased to be a homogeneous people. In the course of millennia, various elements have fused to shape the community. During their long and tortuous history, other aboriginal groups which came under their sway have probably merged with them, losing their identity. One can see a wide range of physical types and complexion. The variation in complexion is very striking indeed, ranging between fair to quite dark-skinned (…) There is no consensus among scholars on the exact ethnic character of the Bhils, They have been alternatively described as proto-Australoid, Dravidian or Veddoid.”83 The same racial “impurity” counts for most Indians, tribal as well as non-tribal. While not by itself disproving the Aryan invasion, it should prove even to invasionists that all Indians are descendents of both indigenous and so-called invader populations.

4.9.5. Language and genetics


While it is wrong to identify a speech community with a physical type, it is also wrong to discard physical anthropology completely as a source of information on human migrations in pre-literate times. Lately, findings have been published which suggest that, for all the racial mingling that has taken place, there is still a broad statistical correlation between certain physical characteristics and nations, even language groups.


Thus, the percentage of individuals with the Rhesus-negative factor is the highest (over 25%) among the Basques, a nation in the French-Spanish borderland which has preserved a pre-IE language. Other pockets of high incidence of Rh-neg. (which is nearly non-existent among the Bantus, Austroloids and Mongoloids) are in the same part of the world: western Morocco, Scotland and, strangely, the Baltic area, or apparently those backwater regions least affected by immigrations of the first Neolithic farmers (from the Balkans and Anatolia), the Indo-Europeans, and in Morocco also the Arabs.


Another European nation which stands out, at least to the discerning eye of the population geneticist, is the Sami (Lapp) population of northern Scandinavia: when contrasted genetically with the surrounding populations, the Sami genetic make-up “points to kinship with the peoples of North Siberia” eventhough they now resemble the Europeans more than the native Siberians.84 This confirms the suspicion of an Asian origin for the Uralic-speaking peoples of which the Sami people is one.


Where a small group of people have spread out over a vast area and lived in isolation ever since, as has happened in large parts of America in the past 20,000 years, genetic differentiation and linguistic differentiation have gone hand in hand, and the borderline between genetic types usually coincides with a linguistic borderline: “Joseph Greenberg distinguishes three language families among the Native Americans: Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. (…) According to Christy Turner of Arizona University, Native American dental morphology indicates three groups, which coincide with Greenberg’s. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza from Stanford investigated a variegated set of human genes. His results equally point in the direction of Greenberg’s classification.”85


Linguistic difference between populations may coincide with genetic differences; and likewise, linguistic mixing may coincide with genetic mixing. A perfect illustration is provided by Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-Apartheid struggle and belonging to the Xhosa nation. His facial features are more Khoi (Hottentot) than Bantu, and his language, Xhosa, happens to be a Bantu language strongly influenced by the Khoi-San (Hottentot-Bushman) languages, most strikingly by adopting the click sounds. In this case, genetic mixing and linguistic mixing have gone hand in hand.


However, in and around the area of IE expansion, a notorious crossroads of migrating peoples, the remaining statistical correlation between genetic traits and language groups is less important than the evidence for the opposite phenomenon: languages spreading across genetic frontiers. In India, the only neat racial division which coincides with a linguistic borderline is between the mainland and the Andamans: though so-called Negrito features are dimly visible in the population of Orissa and surrounding areas, the pure Negrito type is confined to the Andamans, along with the Andamanese language group. For the rest, in India, like in Central Asia or Europe, i.e. in areas with lots of migration and interaction between diverse peoples, genetic and linguistic divisions only coincide by exception.


Thus, the Altaic languages are spoken by the Mongolians, eponymous members of the Mongoloid race, and by the Turks, who have mixed so thoroughly with their Persian, Armenian, Greek and Slavic neighbours that they now belong to the Caucasian race. The Hungarians are genetically closer to their Slavic and German neighbours than to their linguistic cousins in the Urals. India being the meeting-place (or rather, mixing-place) of Mongoloid, Caucasian and Austroloid racial strands, it is naturally impossible to identify the speakers of the different Indian language-groups with different races.


Asked whether there are “concordances between genetic data and languages”, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, the world’s leading population geneticist, explains: “Yes, very much so. Our genealogical tree [of genetic traits] corresponds remarkably well with the table of linguistic families. There are a few exceptions e.g. the Lapps, genetically rather European, have preserved the language they spoke in their Siberian-Uralic homeland. The Hungarians, similarly, speak an Uralic language while being predominantly European. In the late 9th century AD, the Magyar invaders in Hungary, then called Pannonia, imposed their language on the natives. (…) What counts from a genetic viewpoint, is the number of invaders relative to the natives. As the Hungarians were not very numerous, they left only a feeble genetic imprint on the population.”86 So, the replacement of native languages by those of less civilized but stronger invaders is a real possibility (it is also what the Greeks did to the Old Europeans), though it becomes less probable in proportion to the size and the cultural superiority of the native population.


The reason why the replacement of native languages by the languages of genetically distinguishable invaders remains relatively exceptional, is this: “In a traditional culture, language is transmitted vertically from parents to children, just like the genes. But in some conquests or in civilizations with schools, there is also horizontal transmission and substitution of languages. The Romans organized schools in their part of Europe and thereby managed to replace the native languages by their own. But this type of phenomenon is relatively recent. In 90% of its history, mankind consisted of hunter-gatherers speaking tribal languages. That is why the genetic tree has preserved a strong concordance with the linguistic tree.”87


A typical example are the Basques: “The Basque language is the direct descendent of a language which must have arrived along with modem mankind, say 30,000 years ago. It is [in Europe] the only pre-Indo-European language which has been preserved. Why? Probably because the Basque people had a very strong social cohesion. Genetically too, the Basques are different. They have mixed very little. All the other Europeans have lost their original language and adopted an Indo-European language.”88


So, the Basques are both biologically and linguistically the straight descendants of Old Europeans. Most other Europeans are biologically the progeny of the non-IE-speaking Old Europeans, with some admixture of the Asian tribes who originally brought the IE languages into Europe. These immigrants may have differed somewhat from the average European type, into which their smaller number got genetically drowned over the centuries. Linguistically, most non-Basque (and non-Uralic) Europeans are the progeny, through adoption, of the IE-speaking invaders.

4.9.6. The original “Aryan race”


Is there anything we can say about the ethnic identity of the nomads or migrants who spread the early IE languages, if only to help physical-anthropologists to recognize them when found at archaeological sites? Competent authorities have warned against the “semi-conscious prejudices on original genetic characteristics of the Indo-Europeans: they are supposed to be blond and blue-eyed”.89 This prejudice has even been reinforced recently by the discovery of blond-haired mummies of presumably IE-speaking people in the Xinjiang province of China.90


The fact that the IE speech community includes people of diverse race, from the dark-skinned Sinhalese to the white-skinned Scandinavians, definitely implies that the spread of the language cannot be equated with the spread of a racial type. Languages can and do migrate across racial boundaries. That the IE languages crossed racial frontiers during their expansion accords well with established perspectives on the spread of IE, e.g. by I.M. Diakonov:


“These expanding tribes met local, poor and hungry sparser populations, often consisting of hunters and cattle-breeders. The migrants started to merge with the local population, giving them their language and cultural achievements. But in some cases, the local population may have been larger in numbers than the migrants. In some historical situations the language of the minority, if it was widely used and understandable on a vast territory, could be accepted as lingua franca, and later as the common language, particularly if it was a language of cattle-breeders (cf. the examples of the Semites and the Turks). The area of the newly created population became itself a centre of population spread, and so on. Bloody conquests could take place in some instances; in others it was not the case, but the important thing to realize is that what migrated were languages, not peoples, although there had to be at least a handful of users of the languages, though not necessarily native speakers.”91


On the other hand, the fact that the PIE-speaking community must have been a fairly small ethnic group, living together and marrying mostly within the community, implies that they must have belonged collectively to a fairly precisely circumscribed physical type. Even if you throw together people from all races, after a few generations of interbreeding they will develop a common and distinctive physical type, with atavistic births of people resembling the pure type of one of the ancestral races becoming rarer and rarer. Therefore, in the days before intercontinental travel and migrations, a speech community was normally also a. kinship group (or, in strict caste societies, a conglomerate of kinship groups) presenting a fairly homogeneous physical type.


During the heyday of the racial theories, a handful of words in Greek sources were taken to mean that the ancient Indo-Europeans were fair-haired and had a tall Nordic-looking build. In Homer’s description, the Greek heroes besieging Troy were fair-haired. The Egyptians described the “Sea Peoples” from the Aegean region (and even their Libyan co-invaders, presumably Berber-speaking) as fair-haired. The Chinese described the Western (Tokharic) barbarians likewise.


However, the incidence of Nordic looks was not necessarily overwhelming. In classical Greek writings, the Thracians and Macedonians (most notably Alexander the Great), whose language belonged to an extinct Balkanic branch of the IE family, are mentioned as being fair-haired; apparently most Greeks were by then dark enough to notice this fair colour as a trait typical of their “barbaric” northern neighbours. The Armenians have a legend of their own king Ara the Blond and his eventful personal relationship with the Assyrian queen Sammuramat/Semiramis (about 810 BC), who is known to have fought Urartu (the pre-IE name of Armenia, preserved in the Biblical mountain name Ararat). The use of “the blond” as a distinctive epithet confirms the existence of fair-haired people in Armenia, but also their conspicuousness and relative rarity.


All this testimony, along with the Xinjiang mummies and the presence of Nordic looks in the IE-speaking (Dardic/Kafiri) tribes in the Subcontinent’s northwestern valleys, does suggest a long-standing association between some branches of the IE family and the genes which program their carriers to have fair hair and blue eyes. These traits give a comparative advantage for survival in cold latitudes: just as melanine protects against the excessive intake of ultraviolet rays in sunny latitudes, lack of melanine favours the intake of ultraviolet. This segment of the sunrays is needed in the production of vitamin D, which in turn is needed in shaping the bones; its deficiency causes rachitis and makes it difficult for women to birth - a decisive handicap in the struggle for life. The link between northern latitudes and the light colour of skin, hair and eyes in many IE-speaking communities only proves what we already knew: IE is spoken in fairly northern latitudes including Europe and Central Asia. Yet, none of this proves the fair-haired and blue-eyed point about the speakers of the original proto-language PIE.


Suppose, with the non-invasion theorists, that the original speakers of IE had been Indians with dark eyes and dark hair; then, according to I.M. Diakonov: “if this population had migrated together with the languages, blue-eyed Balts could not have originated from it. Blue eyes, as a recessive characteristic, are met everywhere from Europe to the Hindu Kush. But nobody can be blue-eyed if neither of his/her parents had blue-eyed ancestors, and a predominantly blue-eyed population cannot originate from ancestors with predominantly black eyes.”92


This allows for two possible scenarios. Either the PIE speakers were indeed blue-eyed and fair-haired: that is the old explanation, preferred by the Nazis.93 Or the blue-eyed people of Europe have not inherited their IE languages from their biological ancestors, but changed language at some point along the genealogical line, abandoning the pre-IE Old European language of their fair ancestors in favour of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic etc., based on the language of the invaders from Asia. The latter scenario would agree with I.M. Diakonov’s observation: “The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles’ migration of the tribes themselves.”94


That this is far from impossible is demonstrated by the Turks who, after centuries of mixing with subdued natives of West Asia and the Balkans, have effectively crossed the racial borderline from yellow to white. But against using this Turkish scenario as a simile for the story of IE dispersal, one could point out that some eastern Turkic people, such as the Kirghiz and the Yakut, are still very much Mongoloids. However, far from forming a contrast with the IE state of affairs, this makes the simile more splendid: if IE spread from a non-white to a white population, it also remained the language of numerous non-whites (though technically “Caucasians”), viz. the Indians. On the Eurasian continent, South-Asians still constitute more than half of the wider IE speech community; the Indian Republic alone has more IE speakers than the whole of Europe.


It is perfectly possible that the PIE language and culture were developed after a non-white group of colonists from elsewhere settled among and got racially immersed in a larger whitish population. As we saw in our speculations about IE-Austronesian kinship and about Puranic history, it is at least conceivable that Aryan culture in India started after “Manu” and his dark-skinned cohorts fled the rising sea level by moving up the Ganga and settling high and dry in the upper Ganga basin, whence their progeny conquered areas to the northwest with ever whiter-skinned and lighter-haired populations: the Saraswati basin, the upper Indus basin, the Oxus riverside, the peri-Caspian region. By the time these Indian colonists settled in eastern Europe with their Kurgans, their blackness had been washed off by generations of intermarriage with white people of the type attested by the Xinjiang mummies. (Likewise, their material culture had been thoroughly adapted to their new habitat, hence de-indianized.)


So, it is perfectly possible that the Aryan heartland lay farther to the southeast, and that, like eastern Europe in the later 5th millennium BC, the Panjab area a few centuries earlier was already a first area of colonization, bringing people of a new and whiter physical type into the expanding Aryan speech community which was originally darker. While the Panjabi is physically very similar to the European, the Bihari, Oriya or Nepali is markedly less so, and yet it is possible that he represents more closely the ultimate Proto-Indo-European.

4.9.7. The race of the Vedic Aryans


As for the Vedas, the only ones whom they describe as “golden-haired” are the resplendent lightning gods Indra and Rudra and the sun-god Savitar; not the Aryans or Brahmins. At the same time, several passages explicitly mention black hair when referring to Brahmins.95 These texts are considerably earlier than the enigmatic passage in Patanjali describing Brahmins as golden- or tawny-haired (piNgala and kapisha).96 Already one of Patanjali’s early commentators dismissed this line as absurd. To the passage from the grammarian Panini which describes Brahmins as “brown-haired”, A.A. Macdonnell notes (apparently against contemporary claims to the contrary): “All we can say is that the above-mentioned expressions do not give evidence of blonde characteristics of the ancient Brahmans.”97 Considering that Patanjali was elaborating upon the work of Panini, could it have anything to do with Panini’s location in the far northwest, where lighter hair must have been fairly common?


On the other hand, demons or Rakshasas, so often equated with the “dark-skinned aboriginals”, have on occasion been described as red- or tawny-haired (also piNgala or kapisha, the same as Patanjali’s Brahmins).98 Deviating from the usual Indian line that all these demon creatures are but supernatural entities, let us for once assume that they do represent hostile tribals racially distinct from the Vedic Aryans. In that case, reference can only be to certain northwestern tribals, among whom fair and red hair are found till today, indicating that they at least partly descended from a fair-haired population. If the Vedic Aryans were dark-haired and migrated from inside India to the northwest, these odd coloured hairs may have struck them as distinctive.


In modern Anglo-Hindu publications, such as the Amar Chitra KathA religious comics, Rakshasas are always depicted as dark-skinned, a faithful application of the AIT. Yet, there are instances in Vedic literature where “blackness” is imputed to people whom we know to have had the same (if not a lighter) skin colour than the Vedic Aryans: the Dasas and Dasyus, as Asko Parpola has shown, were the Iranian cousins and neighbours of the Vedic Aryans. Physical (as opposed to metaphorical) blackness or more generally skin colour was never a criterion by which the Vedic Aryans classified their neighbours and enemies; that precisely is why we have no direct testimony on the Vedic Aryans’ own skin or hair colour except through a few ambiguous, indirect and passing references.

4.9.8. Evidence of immigration?


A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola): “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”99 The inflow which they do find, around the turn of the Christian era, is apparently that of the well-known Shaka and Kushana invasions.


Kenneth A.R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data: “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.”100


Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan)101 culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India: “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”102


And so, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, one of the great pioneers of the AIT, may be right after all. Indeed, even he had remarked that “the anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappa remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day.”103 If anything Aryan really invaded, it was at any rate not an Aryan race.


There are no indications that the racial composition and distribution of the Indian population has substantially changed since the start of the IE dispersal, which cannot reasonably be placed much earlier than 6,000 BC. This means that even if the IE language is imported, as claimed by the AIT, the IE-speaking people in India are nevertheless biologically native to India. Or in practice: the use of the terms “aboriginal” and “indigenous” (AdivAsI) as designating India’s tribals, with the implication that the non-tribals are the non-indigenous progeny of invaders, has to be rejected and terminated, even if the Urheimat of the IE languages is found to lie outside India.


One of the ironies of Indian identity politics is that those most vocal in claiming an “aboriginal” identity may well be the only ones whose foreign origin has been securely established. The Adivasi movement is strongest in the areas where Christian missionaries were numerously present since the mid-19th century to nourish it, viz. in Chotanagpur and the North-East. Most tribals there speak languages belonging to the Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan families. Their geographical origin, unlike that of IE which is still being debated, is definitely outside India, viz. in Southeast Asia c.q. in northern China.


The Tibeto-Burmese tribals of Nagaland and other northeastern statelets are among India’s most recent immigrants. Many of those tribes have entered during the last millennium, which is very late by Indian standards. As for the Munda tribes in Chotanagpur, it is not even certain that the ancestors of the present tribes are the authors of the attested Neolithic cultures in their present habitat. In H.D. Sankalia’s words: “It is an unanswered but interesting question whether any of the Aboriginal tribes of these regions were the authors of the Neolithic culture.”104 Those who want to give the Austro-Asiatic peoples of India a proud heritage, will find more of it in China and Indochina than in India, e.g. in the Bronze age culture of 2300 BC in Thailand.


On the other hand, biologically the Indian Austro-Asiatics (unlike the Nagas) are much closer to the other Indians than to their linguistic cousins in the east. Exactly like the Indo-Aryans in the Aryan invasion hypothesis, they are predominantly Indian people speaking a foreign-originated language: “Whereas the now Dravidian-speaking tribals of Central and South India can be considered to be descendents of the original inhabitants of India, who gave up their original languages in favour of Dravidian, Tibeto-Chinese speaking tribals (Northeast India) and Austro-Asiatic speaking ones (East India) immigrated into India since ancient historical times. Most likely they came in several waves from Southern China (Tibeto-Chinese speakers) and from Southeast Asia (Austro-Asiatic speakers) respectively. Without doubt these immigrating groups met with ancient Indian populations, which were living already on their migration routes, and thus one cannot exclude some cultural and also genetic contacts between immigrants and original inhabitants of India, at least at some places.”105


In the case of Indo-Aryan, by contrast, its speakers have obviously also mixed with other communities, but its foreign origin has not been firmly established.

4.9.9. Conclusion


We may conclude with a recent status quaestionis by archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of Wisconsin University at Madison: “Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.”106


We repeat that physical anthropology is going through rapid developments due to the availability of new techniques, and we don't want to jump to conclusions in this moving field. But we notice that whatever new technique is applied and from whichever new angle the question is approached, it has so far consistently failed to yield evidence of the fabled Aryan Invasion..




Footnotes:


70Dr. Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, vol.7, p.301.


71Dr. Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, vol.7, p.301, with reference to G.S. Ghurye: Caste and Race on India, London 1932.


72N.V. Subramaniam: “The way we are. An ASI project shatters some entrenched myths”, Sunday, 10-4-1994.


73K.C. Malhotra: “Biological Dimensions to Ethnicity and caste in India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, Manohar, Delhi 1992, p.65. Reference is to H.K. Rakshit: “An Anthropometric Study of the Brahmins of India”, in Man in India #46; and P.P. Majumdar & K.C. Malhotra: OAB Dynamics in India: A Statistical Study, Calcutta 1974.


74Pallava Bagla: “Study shows caste system has changed genetic makeup of Hindus. Studying 200 men in AP, Indo-US team finds that lower castes have over the years become ‘genetically different’ from upper castes”, Indian Express, 18-10-1998. See also the subsequent critical editorial: “Questionable enterprises. DNA and caste can make a deadly combination”, Indian Express, 22-10-1998, which points out that the study merely confirm what observers of caste relations had known all along.


75Thus, Kancha Ilaiah (Why I Am Not a Hindu, Samya/Bhatkal & Sen, Calcutta 1996) offers a description of the differences in life style between upper castes and Shudras, with the declared intention of getting the reader indignated at the injustice and absurdity of the typically Hindu castle system. Yet, his testimony unwittingly shows just how similar Hindu caste inequality is to the social inequality in other societies, e.g. Ilaiah’s repeated observation that women are more controlled in upper castes and more assertive and free in lower castes is or was just as true for Confucian China or the feudal and bourgeois societies of Europe.


76Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza: “Genes, Peoples and Languages”, Scientific American, November 1991.


77Quoted in Simon Rozendaal: “Ras - wat is dat eigenlijk?”, Elsevier, 14-10-1995.


78V. Bhalla: “Aspects of Gene Geography and Ethnic Diversity of the People of India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, P.51-60; specifically p.58.


79B. Narasimhaiah: Neolithic and Megalithic Cultures in Tamil Nadu, Sundeep Prakashan, Delhi 1980, p.195:


80Kailash C. Malhotra: “Biological Dimensions to Ethnicity and Caste in India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, p.63.


81Kailash C. Malhotra: “Biological Dimensions to Ethnicity and Caste in India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, p.63.


82S.K. Chatterjee: Indianism and Indian Synthesis, Calcutta 1962, p.125.


83P.A. Augustine: The Bhils of Rajasthan, Indian Social Institute. Delhi 1986, p. 2-3.


84Hilde Van den Eynde: “Genetische kaart van Europa tekent oorlogen en volksverhuizingen”, De Standaard (Brussels), 20-7-1993.


85Hilde Van den Eynde: “Biologen en archaeologen moeten Amerikaanse taalknoop doorhakken”, De Standard (Brussels), 3-8-1990; see also Joseph H. Greenberg & Merritt Ruhlen: “Linguistic Origins of Native Americans”. Scientific American, November 1992.


86Interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, 23-1-1992.


87Interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, 23-1-1992.


88Interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, 23-1-1992, emphasis added.


89T.V. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov, in Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1985/1-2, p. 182.


90See e.g. the fall/winter 1995 issue of Journal of Indo-European Studies, almost entirely devoted to the Xinjiang mummies.


91I.M. Diakonov: “On the Original Home of ther Speakers of Indo-European”, Journal of Indo-Europen Studies, 1-2/1985, p.92-174, specifically p. 152-153.


92I.M. Diakonov: “On the Original Home of the Speakers of Indo-European”, Journal of Indo-Europen Studies, 1-2/1985, p. 153-154.


93Related with details and undisguised favour by Alian de Benoist: Les Indo-Européens (Nouvelle Ecole no. 49, Paris 1997), p.47.


94I.M. Diakonov: “On the Original Home of the Speakers of Indo-European”, Journal of Indo-Europen Studies, 1-2/1985, p.153-154.


95Atharva-Veda 6:137.2-3 is a charm, for making “strong black hairlocks” grow, apparently on the heads of bald or albino or greyed people. Paramesh Choudhury (The Aryan Hoax, p. 13) also mentions Baudhayana’s Dharma-Sutra 1:2, “Let him kindle the sacrificial fire while his hair is still black”, also cited in Shabara’s Bhasya on Jaimini 13, as instances where Brahmins’ hair is off-hand assumed to be black.


96Patanjali: Mahabhashya (comment on Panini) 2:2:6.


97Quoted from his A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary by Paramesh Choudhury: The Aryan Hoax, p. 13.


98E.g. Mahabharata: Adiparva 223, describes a Rakshasa as red-haired, as pointed out by Paramesh Choudhury: The Aryan Hoax, p. 13. He also mentions that Ravana’s sister Surpanakha is described by Valmiki as having pingala eyes, but remember that Ravana’s family is described as a Brahmin family immigrated in Lanka from northern India.


99Hemphill & Christensen: “The Oxus Civilization as a Link between East and West: A Non-Metric Analysis of Bronze Age Bactrain Biological Affinities”, paper read at the South Asia Conference, 3-5 November 1994, Madison, Wisconsin; p. 13.


100K.A.R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49. On p.42, Kennedy quotes the suggestion that “not only the end of the [Harappan] cities but even their initial impetus may have been due to Indo-European speaking peoples”, by B. and F.R. Allchin: The Birth of Indian Civilization, Penguin 1968, p. 144.


101Note that many scholars assume an (albeit somewhat irregular) etymological kinship between GandhAra and the Greek word Kentauros, meaning a horse-man. The rough terrain of Afghanistan was unfit for chariot-riding and required horseback-riding. To people from countries unfamiliar with horses (as India must have been in some pre-Vedic age, and as Mesopotamia was until the 2nd millennium BC), horseborne men must have looked like strange creatures with a human head and torso and a equine body; indeed, that is what the Aztecs thought when they first saw Spanish cavalrists. Could the concept of a kentaur date back to the early days of horse domestication when the first riders made such an impression on people from a region bordering on Afganistan and whence the Greeks originated?


102K.A.R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49.


103M. Wheeler: The Indus Civilization, Cambridge University Press 1968, p.72, quoted in K.D. Sethna: The Problem of Aryan Origins, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi 1992 (1980), p.20.


104H.D. Sankalia: Indian Archaeology Today, Delhi 1979, p.22.


105H. Walter et al.: “Investigations on the variability of blood group polymorphisms among sixteem tribal; populations from Orissa, Madhya Prades and Maharashtra, India”, in Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie, Band 79 Heft 1 (1992).


106J.M. Kenoyer: “The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India”, Journal of World Prehistory, 1991/4. Interestingly and fortunately, Kenoyer was until recently misinformed about the political connotations of the Aryan question, as I noticed during a conversation with him on 20 October 1995 in Madison, Wisconsin. Labouring under the assumption that the Bharatiya Janata Party is a "fascist" party, proud of Nordic Aryan origins and disdaining the dark-skinned Indian natives, he thought he was taking a bold stand against the BJP by refuting the AIT. If he had known that the BJP shares the dislike of most Indian patriots for the AIT, he might have been more subdued in his advocacy of a non-AIT scenario, esp. considering the extreme politicization (in an anti-BJP sense) of Indology in the USA.

http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch49.htm

[Felix (POL)]

The ethnic components of the builders of the Indus valley civilization and the advent of the Aryans

Author: G.D. Kumar, Director, Anthropological Survey of In
Filed: 11/8/2002
Source: Journal of Indo-European Studies. Volume 1, Number

Evidence of the physical type of the population of the Indus Valley civilization is fairly plentiful. The identification of the incoming Aryan population is more difficult, despite the availability of literary evidence concerning their appearance.


The Indian subcontinent is rich with archaeological sites from the early phase of human civilization. The discovery of skeletal remains in mounds, cemeteries and other ancient sites has shed a new light on the physical types of the archaic population of the remote past. Our study concerns the extent to which the skeletal remains and associated cultures help to determine the ethnic composition of the builders of the Indus Valley civilization and serve to identify the advent of the Indo-European or Indo-Aryan people.

The problem of the original home of the Aryan-speaking people, and of their settlement in Iran and India, has given rise to many divergent opinions. Archaeological and linguistic evidence shows the Aryan culture to have arisen from a common parental tradition and indicates different stages of development in several geographical regions. However, recent discoveries made in the Ukraine, in the basins of the Dnieper and Donets rivers, bring out the fact that pre-Aryan cultural developments were continuous in this area throughout the Mesolithic, early Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. The physical type of the Neolithic people of this forest-steppe area has been attributed to the descendants of an East European, Upper Paleolithic, Proto-Europoid Cro-Magnon type identified with the Neolith-ic-Chalcolithic culture, (called 'Dnieper-Donets') dating from the fifth and fourth millennia B.C. (Telegin, 1968). The basic anthropological features of the population, as derived from the study of cranial remains and limb bones recovered from the Minussinsk or Andronovo Kurgan (Gorosschenko 1900), Anau (Mollison, 1908), Afanasiev (Bunak and Debets, 1960), and Kara Suk (Debets, 1932), in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, were predominantly those of a long-headed, tall-statured people with narrow aquiline noses (and a more gracile and considerably more narrow leptoprosopic face than the massive Cro-Magnon people of the Dnieper Basin) closely akin to the Europoid, Eurasian 'Kurgan' people identified by Gimbutas as the prototype of the Indo-European speaking peoples (Gim butas, 1963).

From an ethnogenetic and biological point of view it may therefore be asserted that the original core or nucleus of the Indo-European race is apparently located among the 'Proto-Europoid' (Kurgan) or 'Southern Europoid' peoples (Chebok-sarov 1951) of the Great Europoid race which is widely distributed in the Central Eurasian plain. Leaving this origina homeland, it is believed that some Indo-Europeans migratec to the south-east where we find evidence of their presence from skeletal remains recovered from Tepe Hissar in Northern Iran and Tureng Tepe (Wulsin, 1932) in the Turkoman steppe. These eastern descendants of Indo-European stock kept moving southwards until they crossed the Jaxartes and entered the fertile lands of Sogdiana (Zezenkova, 1953). From Sogdiana their way lay across the Oxus into Bactria (Vahlika). After a long stay in Bactria, Indo-Aryan elements crossed the passes of the Hindukush and descended along the Kabul River Valley to settle in the Indus Valley.

The Aryan invasion of the Indus Valley, following the decay of the Harappan culture, is accepted on the basis of the evidence of the Vedas, the earliest sacred books of the Hindus. This Vedic literature consists of a number of hymns which were probably composed before 1000 B.C., and were passed down from Brahman teachers to their pupils from generation to generation. Mainly addressed to Indo-European gods such as indar and Agni, they praise the 'Arya' or Aryans as a people endowed with superior qualities, more skilled in the arts and the warfare than others around them, and seem to describe them as possessing fair skin and fine features.

Indeed, the literary evidence of the physical features of the Indo-Aryan people describes the Brahmans as Gaura (white-skinned) and pingalh Kapilakesh (yellow or red-haired). The Patanjali commentaries on Paninis (VI, 1115) and other writings refer to chestnut-hair and grey-eyes, and evidently portray the Aryan population as blond Nordics migrating into India between 1500-150 B.C.

The Aryans believed that they were descended from Manu, which is cognate with modern English 'man', but excluded the Dasas from this lineage. The earliest Aryan race in India, known as Manava, was divided into two branches — the eastern branch, descended from Manu's son Karaku, which occupied the kingdoms of Ajodhya and Videha and still later Vaisali, and a western branch, descended from Manu's son Saryati, which occupied Arta. The people described as the western Manavas of Anarta are believed to have been the Iranians.

Many of the hymns in the Rigveda (1. 51. 8) refer to the battles between the Aryan tribes against the Dasas or Dasyus, the indigenous aboriginal people, and Indra is described as Purandara, the destroyer of cities and fortified walls, suggesting that the Aryans may have destroyed the walled cities of Har-appa and Mohenjo-daro. The Dasas, or Nisadas, arc described as short-statured, dark-skinned people with ugly, noseless faces, who speak an alien tongue, and who are phallus worshippers without moral or religious principles. Thus the Rigveda presents a picture of pre-Aryan strongholds in the Indus Valley occupied by non-Aryan folk, and of their destruction by the invading Aryan tribes.

Concerning the physical type of the pre-Aryan Indus Valley population, we possess considerable evidence. Archeological finds at Amri, Kot Diji, Rana Ghundai and Kalibangan in Central, North and Southern Baluchistan and Rajasthan suggest that the earliest pre-Harappan settlements were situated in the uplands of Baluchistan and Afghanistan. Some of these date from the beginning of the third millennium B.C. (Kot Diji) and others from an earlier period (Amri, Rana Ghundai). Their relation to the origin and development of Harappan civilization, which flourished in the period between 2500 and 1800 B.C., is little understood, but one gets the impression that the mature Harappan imposes itself on the long established pre-Harappan settlements, and it is possible that they constituted the source from which, around the end of the fourth millennium B.C., the major expansion of the Neolithic-Chalcolithic urban way of life took place, colonizing the great alluvial valley of the Indus and its tributaries.

Pre- and post-Harappan skeletal and associated cultural remains have been recovered from various ancient sites ranging from Gujrat, near the coast of the Arabian Sea, to Rupar, at the foot of the Himalayas in the Simla hills. Alamgirpur in Uttar Pradesh, Kalibangan in Rajasthan and Pandu Raja Dhibi in West Bengal also reveal a widespread far-flung lateral extension of the Indus Valley civilization, spreading from the Western coast of India to the Northern Himalayas and even eastwards into West Bengal. Evidence of the physical features and morpho-physical ethnic components of the ancient population of the Indus Valley, prior to the advent of the Aryan-speaking people, is available from two sources, viz. the representations of anthropomorphic figures in stone, sculptures and casting, and — more reliably — from the skeletal remains unearthed from the sites.

Harappa is situated in the Montgomery district of the Pun- jab on the left bank of the river Ravi, a little north of the modern locality of Chenchawunchhe, now in West Pakistan. The site was first visited by Charles Massan in 1826, and sub- sequently by Alexander Cunningham in the year 1853-56. During the years 1926, 1934 and 1937-46, systematic excava- tions were carried out at Harappa by the Archaeological Survey of India. After partition, the site was further excavated by the Pakistani Government under the leadership of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, and more recently by Dr. George Dales (1965) of the University of Pennsylvania. Vats (1940) has dated the various areas and levels of excavation as follows: cemetery R. 37, Area G, and cemetery H are dated 4000-2750 B.C., Area F is dated 3500-2750 B.C., and Areas G and J around 3250-2700 4000-2850 B.C. respectively. Accompanied by seals, terracotta, pottery and phallic objects, the total of skeletal remains recov- ered belong to about 260 individuals, comprising 75 adult males, 92 females, 7 juveniles and 49 infants and children. These came mostly from cemetery R 37 and cemetery H, from open graves and funeral jars and from Area G and mound AB.

The site of Mohenjo-daro, the second important urban center of the Indus civilization, is located on the right bank of the Indus river, between Marr and Hatta in Sind (West Pakistan). It was first discovered by the late R. D. Banerjee in 1920, and was further excavated and studied by Sir John Marshall. Later on, during the years 1922 to 1931, Mackey (1938) excavated the sites. The excavations of Hargreaves and Vats (1940) yielded a .group of human skeletal remains of 14 individuals and the remains of six more were later found in the streets. The total collection of skeletons belonged to 42 adults of both sexes and few adolescents and children. During the year 1947, and after the partition of the Indian subcontinent, further excavations were conducted by the Pakistani Government, and more recently by the University of Pennsylvania. These yielded 5 skeletons in poor condition, which were ascribed to a middle period of Indus culture, circa 2000 B.C.

Chanhu-daro is regarded as the third important urban center of Indus Civilization, and was located on the left bank of the Indus river, southward of Mohenjo-daro in modern Patte in West Pakistan. During the years 1935-36, Mackey (1938) excavated the site, and discovered one skull, probably female, belonging to the Harappan culture, which was measured and studied by Krogman and Sassman (1948) who described it as a pronounced Proto-Mediterranean type.

In 1912, part of a very archaic skull was discovered near Sialkot in the Punjab and another near Agra, in Uttar Pradesh, on the bank of the Gumbhir river. The Sialkot cranium was excavated from a depth of two meters at the side of a deep trench, whereas the Agra cranium was discovered in the alluvial deposit of 35 feet in the bed of the river. In physical character both the crania are long-headed, having high vaults showing an affinity with the Mediterranean group. Sir Arthur Keith (1917) asserted them to be Aryo-Dravidian.

The Nal site, situated in Baluchistan, west of the Indus river and close to Afghanistan, was excavated by Hargreaves in 1925, and his work was subsequently continued by A. Stein. The remains of 13 skeletons were found in a very bad condition and only one adult skull was subjected to study, and measured by Sewell and Guha (1931). The skull was pentagonoid in contour possessing a high vault, high forehead, narrow face, massive worn out teeth, and showed an affinity with the longheaded Mediterranean stock. In shape and proportion it was closely allied to the Sialkot cranium and was asserted to belong to the Copper Age of about 3000 B.C.

In 1928, Stein's excavation at Shahi Tump in the Western Makran of Baluchistan yielded remains of three individuals of which two skeletons had skulls. Both the skulls were dolicho-cephelic and one which was in good condition seemed to possess a long narrow face and nose. This appeared to be of mixed Caspian or Nordic descent.

The 1939-51 excavations carried out by Fairservis (1956) in the Quetta area yielded a number of human skeletal remains belonging to the Islamic period. But, in addition, parts of an adult skeleton and of a child's skeleton were found, which have been dated at 2450 and 1650 B.C. respectively. The adult skull, which showed a little relief on the gla"bella, and belonged to the Harappan culture of Damb Saadat in the Quetta Valley, was measured by Riesenfeld (1956), who identified it as that of a young male.

The excavations of 1954-58, in the late Harappan site of Lothal at Saragwala, in the district of Ahmadabad in Gujrat State, yielded a number of human skeletal remains. Of them eight adult crania, four male and four female, have been studied and measured by Chatterjee and Kumar (1963). Calculated from the long bones it is believed that the living had a stature ranging between 1801 and 1632 mm. The majority of the crania were mesocephalic, akin to a Proto-Mediterranean 01 Mediterranean type, while the presence of a large-headed rugged type, akin to a Proto-Nordic, and a broad-headed element with a flat occiput, closely akin to a Alpine-Armenoid type, were in evidence.

On the basis of a detailed anthropological analysis of the metrical and morpho-physical characters of the crania and long bones of the skeletal remains of the Indus Valley region, viz. Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Chanhu-daro, Bayana, Sialkot, Nal Gedrosia etc., Chatterjee and Kumar (1963 a and b) revealed that the basic and major ethnic element of the Indus Valley was a long-headed Proto-Mediterranean or Mediterranean group. The type is characterized by a long or medium head associated with a moderately high vault having well arched cranial contours with a protruding occiput and a relatively long narrow face with a straight vertical forehead, of smooth and gracile appearance, well represented among 18 crania of Harappa and Group B of Mohenjo-daro. These are also more akin to Proto-Mediterranean or Mediterranean ethnic elements found among the Chalcolithic-Copper Age crania of Bayana, Sialkot, Nal Chanhu-daro and Lothal, as well as by similar types recovered from ancient remains at Tcpe Hissar, Mesopotamia, Ur, Alubaid Kish and Alishar. All arc comparatively closely related to the modern inhabitants of Anterior Asia from the Aegean Sea to the Indus Valley and up to Bengal.

Besides this element there was also a large-headed, rugged type, and a relatively less rugged, finer dolichocephalic type characterized by a tall stature (with an average 1674.48 cm. and 1545.61 cm. in males and females respectively), a large long head with a high cranial vault, strong brow ridges, a relatively long narrow face, a broad nose and heavy muscular features. Another less rugged dolichocephalic type, having a well arched narrow vault, a retreating forehead, a long narrow face associated with a well marked chin and fine leptorrhine nose and fine delicate features was well represented among seven male and two female crania excavated from Cemetery R 37 and Cemetery H at Harappa. This type is closely allied to Group A of Mohenjo-daro and to the Proto-Nordic ethnic elements found among the cranial remains of Tepe Hissar of early Iran, the Indo-Aryan Cemetery A of Kish (Kappers and Parr Leland, 1934) the Alishar Copper Age and Al-Ubaid of ancient Iraq. Contemporary representatives of this element are found among the present-day people of the Punjab, Afghanistan, and among higher caste people of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal.

Apart from these there were also a few representatives of a broad-headed element akin to an Alpino-Armenoid type, characterized by a broad or medium-sized head (sub-brachy-cephalic), a relatively globular-shaped cranial vault, a broadl face with a flattened occiput, a flat nose and a high forehead with well developed supraorbital ridges with the orbits sloping downwards which was noticed among a few crania recovered from the Cemetery H jar burial and the Mound area of Harappa. The type is more akin to the AIpine-Armenoid ethnic element represented among the cranial remains recovered from Mo-henjo-daro, Lothal and other contemporary elements found among crania of Tepe Hissar, Tepe Sialk (Arne, 1939) Kish, Alishar (Hittite and Bronze Age) as well as Boghazkoy of early Anatolia. This type is strongly represented among the present inhabitants of Western Gujrat and higher caste people of Bengal, Bihra, Orissa and South India.

Another low-headed dolicho-mesoccphalic type, akin to Veddoid or Proto-Australoid people, bearing primitive features such as a low retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges, a relatively broad flat nose depressed at the root and low and short orbits, was in evidence among a few crania discovered from Cemetery H Jar burial, Area G of Harappa. The type is closely allied to the Proto-Australoid element of Mohenjo-daro, to the Iron Age remains of Addittanallur (Chatterjee and Gupta, 1963), to Dravidoid elements of Piklihal (Ayer, 1960), and to the mixed Proto-Australoid-Mediterranean elements derived from cranial remains of Brahmagiri of Mysore (Sarkar, 1960) as well as to mixed Proto-Australoid-Veddoid-Negrito elements and non-Mediterranean Proto-Australoid components derived from the cranial remains recovered from Langhnaj in Gujrat, Nevasa, Tekkalakota, Chandoli, Tekwada. It is also allied to the pseudo-Australoid types of Tepe Hissar in early Iran and to other archaic Euro-African elements found among the cranial remains of ancient Iran, Kish A, (Buxton and Rice, 1931) of Iraq and Mesopotamia. This type is comparatively close to the present aboriginal population of Chota Nagpur, Madhya Pradesh, and to the pre-Dravidian people of South India.

The presence of primitive features, akin to Veddoid or Proto-Australoid ethnic elements, such as were found among the cranial remains of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Addittannallur and of primitive pre-Dravidian, Proto-Australoid and Veddoid elements mixed with Mediterranean components, gives an indication that a Dravidoid strain had entered India long before 2000 B.C. and that an early mixture between Proto-Mediterran-ean and Veddoid or Australoid elements took place in the Indus Valley and the Indian subcontinent, probably in the early Metal Age.

From the foregoing studies of the ethnic components it is evident that the population of the Indus Valley consisted of several elements, among which the long-headed Proto-Mediter-ranean or Mediterranean was dominant, being widely distributed among the early inhabitants of Western Asia from the Aegean Sea to the Indus Valley and Bengal. Both ethnically and culturally these represent a more or less homogeneous group, with a broad range of local types and variants (Cappieri, 1969).

The presence of long-headed, rugged and less rugged Proto-Nordic elements among the cranial remains of Harappa, the Mohcnjo-daro 'A' group, and similar elements found among the remains discovered from several Aeneolithic sites of the Near East and Middle East suggest that towards the close of the third or the beginning of the second millennium B.C. an ethnic upheaval occurred as a result of a large influx of so-called Indo-European or Indo-Iranian people, analogous to the Proto-Nordic steppe folk of the Aralo-Caspian region, thereby suggesting the infiltration of those peoples into the Indus Valley from Central Asia.

Recent studies of cranial remains from different sites in the Indus Valley, based on biometry and quantitative analysis, confirm that the population of the Indus Valley has remained basically more or less stable in basic morphophysical character and continues to constitute a composite homogeneous group (Dutta, 1972), characterized by certain variants attributable to Proto-Nordic, Proto-Mediterranean, or Mediterranean, Alpine-Armenoid and Veddoid/Proto-Australoid elements.

Unfortunately the archaeological evidence relating to the advent of the Indo-Aryan people is much less precise than the literary, and lacks clear hallmarks to identify the course of Aryan settlement. In North Baluchistan the evidence of a thick layer of burnt remains at Rana Ghundat (1946), Darbar Kot, and Shahi Tump (1931) cemeteries indicate violent destruction of the whole settlement between 2500-1800 B.C. and this can be surmised as the work of the newcomers from the West Similarly the ceramic evidence of painted Grey Ware (1950) at Harappa and on the Sarasvati and Drishavati rivers in Bikaner, which is marked as an early home of the Aryans, stratigraphi-cally equates itself with the advent of the Aryans before their entry into the Ganges-Yamuna plains.

In 1926, Childc suggested the possibility that the Cemetery H people were Aryans, on the basis of the burial positions in this post-Harappan cemetery, and in 1947 Sir Mortimer Wheeler produced a vivid picture of the advent of the Aryans, seeing them as overthrowing the Indus Valley cities, which may, however, already have been in decline. His evidence was based primarily on fortification of walls with bastions and gateways around a western mound designed as AB and concluded that the Cemetery H people were the Aryans. He pointed out that the presence of dead bodies, bearing signs of injuries, and of massacred men, women and children lying scattered in the street at Mohenjo-daro, implied the possibility of an attack by Aryan folk.

Following Wheeler's thesis, Robert Heine-Gcldern (1956) has also expressed the view that the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were probably destroyed by the invading Aryans between 1200-1000 B.C. He also asserted that the Aryans came from the south of the Syr Daria river around the fifteenth or fourteenth century B.C. It has also been pointed out by Dutta (1936) that there arc strong analogies between the Urn burials practized by the Vedic Aryans, as described in the Vedic Grhyasutras and the pot burials as evidenced from Cemetery H at Harappa. In conclusion, speaking about the racial affinities of the people of India, Guha (1931) remarked that it was possible that the large-headed strain with a high cranial vault, long face and prominent nose found at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa formed one of the constituents of a race whose advent into India appeared to synchronize with the arrival of the Aryans. The presence of Proto-Australoid elements among the remains of Mohenjo-daro also call to mind the Rigvedic references to Dasus or Nisadas aborigines.

During Vedic times these same Indo-Aryans appear to have overran the Punjab, then spread farther east in epic times — and in historical times pushed eastwards, even into Assam (1954). Today the basic ethnic strain of the Aryans thus permeates the populations of the Punjab, Kashmir and the North-West region of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, as well as the higher caste people of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal, as a result of miscegenation with the indigenous population.

[Felix (POL)]

http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/cesmg/peopling.html

PEOPLING OF INDIA

Madhav Gadgil and N.V. Joshi
Centre for Ecological Sciences
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore 560 012, India

U.V.Shambu Prasad
Centre for Research in Indo-Bangladesh Relations
107, Jodhpur Park (Ground Floor)
Calcutta 700068, India.

S.Manoharan and Suresh Patil
Anthropological Survey of India, Southern Regional Office
2963, Gokulam Road, Mysore 570002, India.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of contents
Abstract
Introduction
Role of innovations
Genetic affinities
Gene analysis reveals people radiating out of the Middle East and the Orient
Language families reveal ancestries and movements
Language and economy
Archaeolgical evidence
Horse and iron as pointers of heritage
A plausibile scenario
A segmented society
Acknowledgements
References

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments, suggestions, reprint requests to : madhav@ces.iisc.ernet.in OR cesnj@ces.iisc.ernet.in

Citation: Gadgil,M., Joshi, N.V., Shambu Prasad,U.V., Manoharan,S. and Suresh Patil 1997. pp.100-129. In: The Indian Human Heritage, Eds. D. Balasubramanian and N. Appaji Rao. Universities Press, Hyderabad, India.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract
We examine the demographic history of India on the basis of a new investigation of mitochondrial DNA base sequences of 101 Indians, in light of the recent synthesis of global genetic history of humans by Cavalli-Sforza and his co-workers. To this population genetic evidence we add fresh insights into linguistic and anthropological pattern based on the People of India project of the Anthropological Survey of India and a review of the pertinent archaeological evidence on waves of diffusion of technological innovations over the subcontinent. The Indian subcontinent has been populated by a series of migrations propelled by significant technological innovations outside India since the first major expansion of non-African Homo sapiens, probably around 65,000 years before present. The likely major migrations include (i) Austric language speakers soon after 65,000 ybp, probably from northeast (ii) Dravidian speakers around 6,000 ybp from mideast with the knowledge of cultivation of crops like wheat and domestication of animals like cattle, sheep, goats (iii) Indo-European speakers in several waves after 4000 ybp with control over horses and iron technology (iv) Sino-Tibetan speakers in several waves after 6000 ybp with knowledge of rice cultivation. A notable feature of Indian society is the persistence of thousands of tribe-like endogamous groups in a complex agrarian and now industrial society. In this society populations of dominant groups have continued to grow, while those of subjugated groups may have stagnated most of the time.

Table of contents

Introduction
India is a country remarkable for its diversity; biological and human. The biological diversity owes itself to the country's position at the trijunction of the African, the northern Eurasian and the Oriental realm; its great variety of environmental regimes, and its relative stability of biological production. It is this biological wealth that has attracted to the subcontinent many streams of people at different times, from different directions; bringing together a great diversity of human genes and human cultures. Whereas in other lands the dominant human cultures have tended to absorb or eliminate others, in India the tendency has been to isolate and subjugate the subordinated cultures, thereby augmenting cultural diversity. This tendency to nurture diversity has been favoured by the diversity of the country's ecological regimes [Gadgil and Guha, 1992].

People migrate because of pulls from their destination and pushes in their homeland, often propelled along by some technological advantage. Thus in 16th century Europeans came to India in search of spices, pushed out by the little ice age that had gripped Europe, equipped with superior seagoing vessels and guns. That migration is well documented and understood; but it is the many earlier ones that have brought to India the bulk of human genes and cultural traits. It is our purpose in this paper to elucidate what we can of these many earlier migrations.

Table of contents

Role of innovations
People have of course migrated out of India as well, but these out-migrations have been on a much smaller scale, and mostly over the last three centuries. This is related to the fact that India has never been the site of any significant technological innovations. A series of important innovations have, over the years taken place outside of India, innovations which have given an edge to people in control of these innovations, propelling major migrations [Habib, 1992].

In chronological order the most relevant of these include: (i) Evolution of symbolic language, probably by the first modern Homo sapiens, in Africa, perhaps around 100 kybp (kybp = thousand years before present);
(ii) Husbanding of wheat, barley, cattle, pig in the mideast around 10 kybp;
(iii) husbanding of rice, buffalo in China and Southeast Asia around 8 kybp;
(iv) Domestication of horse in Central Asia around 6 kybp;
(v) Use of iron in Anatolia around 5 kybp;
(vi) Use of stirrup for horse riding in Central Asia around 2 kybp;
(vii) Use of gunpowder in China around 2 kybp;
(viii) Use of canons and guns in war in Arabia in 15 th century

Our theme then is that these manifold innovations to the west, east and north of the Indian subcontinent have propelled many waves of people onto our land, giving rise to what is genetically as well as culturally the most diverse society in the world. There are diverse lines of evidence for these migrations - genetic, linguistic archaeological, anthropological. We will endeavour to draw on all these disciplines to reconstruct the story of peopling of India.

Table of contents

Genetic affinities
Genetically and culturally India is perhaps the most diverse country on the face of the earth. The most authoritative summary of genetics of human populations is provided by Cavalli-Sforza in his magnum opus, History and Geography of Human Genes [Cavalli-Sforza, et. al 1994]. He provides global maps of frequencies of 82 genes for 42 population aggregates of indigenous people covering the entire world. The 82 loci show the highest levels of heterozygosity, 0.35-0.37 for northwestern India, west Asia and continental Europe (Fig.1).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Parts of south and eastern India share slightly lower levels of 0.33-0.35 with Western China, Central Asia, Scandinavia an Northern Africa. The lowest levels of 0.21-0.23 occur in the New Guinea and Western Australia. Such genetic data is however rather limited, based on traditional markers such as blood groups. Modern genetic techniques have greatly added to the wealth of genetic information that may be obtained from a single individual by looking at the nucleotide base sequences themselves. Amongst the most variable of such sequences occur in two hypervariable regions of mitochondria, which are purely maternally inherited in humans. We have collaborated with Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues at Stanford Medical School to examine base pair sequences of 791 base pair lengths from the "D" loop region of mitochondrial DNA for 101 Indians [Mountain et al. 1995] (Fig.2).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of these 48 belonged to an upper caste group Haviks,and 43 to a scheduled caste group Mukris from the coastal Uttara Kannada District of Karnataka, 7 to a tribal population called Kadars from Kerala, and 3 to to other Indians involved in field collection of samples of scrapings of cheek cells and scalp hair roots. 86 of these 791 sites demonstrated some variation amongst Indians, it was also possible to compare 745 from amongst these 791 sites with published data on 187 individuals from Africa, Europe, China and other parts of Asia along with one Australian and one Afro-American individual [Vigilant et al., 1991]. Figure 3 is a neighbour joining tree based on this genetic data on 294 individuals.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tree has two distinct trunks rooted in M1 and M2. The first trunk includes 65 sequences; all !Kung, most pygmies, 10 other Africans and two Chinese; the second trunk includes 229 sequences including 11 pygmies, 55 other Africans and all the non-Africans with the exception of the two Chinese. It is evident then that the primary genetic differentiation of the human species is between Africans and non-Africans, with Indians intermingling with Europeans and Chinese.

The magnitude of base pair differences in these sequences can permit us to estimate the time elapsed since common ancestry. Figure 4 presents such a distribution for the two trunks of the phylogenetic tree.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evidently the group of 65 dominated by Africans with a mode around 17, are far more diversified genetically than the 229 primarily non-African sequences with a mode around 10. The time estimated to have elapsed since common ancestry of course depends on the mutation rate, which is probably somewhere between 10-5 to 10-6 for this hypervariable region of mitochondrial DNA. That gives us a range of 22 to 220 kybp for the first and 13.6 and 136 kybp for the second trunk. This is in conformity with the current view that modern Homo sapiens populations underwent a first expansion within Africa around 100 kybp, and a second expansion outside Africa around 65 kybp. The Homo sapiens peopling India are then a part of this second expansion around 65 kybp - an expansion that may have occurred in southern China [Ballinger et al., 1992] or in or close to the Indian subcontinent itself [Mountain et al 1995].

This data can also be used to construct a tree summarizing the relationship amongst the major human groups (Fig.5).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As expected this tree separates out Africans from non-Africans. Amongst the non-Africans the Europeans, Chinese and Indians are almost equally close to each other, being a little more separated from other Asians and New Guineans. The Indian population of today might then be surmised to have been put together by many ebbs and flows of people over the huge Eurasian continent.

Table of contents

Gene analysis reveals people radiating out of the Middle East and the Orient
To assess the patterns of these ebbs and flows, Cavalli-Sforza et al (1994) have examined the frequencies of 69 genes from 42 populations covering all of Asia. Any given population is then represented as a point in the 69 dimensional space. This information can be summarized with the help of a multivariate analysis technique called principal components. The first principal component for Asia explains 35.1% of the total variation in the gene frequency; the second principal component 17.7% of the variation (Figs. 6 and 7).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subsequent components explain relatively little. These two maps are most instructive. The first PC map suggests that genetic affinities amongst Asian populations decline with distance along an east-west axis. This is compatible with movements of people radially fanning out of mid-east; although it could also result from a westward movement along a very broad front in eastern Asia. In a similar fashion the second principal component is compatible with fanning out of people from southeast Asia and China, although it could also result from a major movement originating in the northernmost reaches of Asia.

In both these cases, the first explanation, namely fanning out of people from middle-east and from China and Southeast Asia is far more likely. These are known to have been two independent centres of origin of cultivated plants, the middle east being the earliest in the world around 10 kybp and China and southeast Asia a little later around 8 kybp. Cultivation permits substantial increases in population density. This numerical superiority as well as availability of stored grain and meat on hoof as a buffer permits agricultural people to expand into regions till then under hunting-gathering economy, replacing and absorbing the local populations and leaving definite genetic footprints. Excellent archaeological evidence from Europe provides conclusive evidence of such a process of a northward fanning out of farming people. It is then very likely that Asian populations today represent two major radiations of people out of two centres of origin of cultivation, one in the middle-east. the other in China and Southeast Asia. The Indian population too must have been profoundly influenced by these two migrations, one through its northwestern frontiers near Khyber pass in present day Pakistan, and the other through the northeast near the China - Myanmar-India border in Manipur. The first one appears to be more significant, since it explains twice as much of the total variation.

Table of contents

Language families reveal people's ancestries and movements
Humans not only transmit genes from one generation to the next, they also transmit cultural traits. Some of these are extremely conservative, being transmitted quite faithfully from parents to offspring. Foremost amongst these is language; children almost invariably acquire their mother tongue from their parents and other relatives. Language and other conservative traits such as practices relating to disposal of the dead are therefore excellent devices to trace historical changes. If this be so linguistic and genetic divergence ought to go hand in hand. To test this proposition, Cavalli-Sforza et al (1994) plot genetic distance amongst members of a human groups against the number of different languages spoken by members of the group (Fig 8).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The excellent correlation confirms our faith in languages as good markers for unraveling the ancestries and movements of people.

The languages of the world have been classified in a number of major families. There are of course a few which are stand-alone, which cannot be assigned to any family. Nahali, a tribal language of Central India and Burushaski, spoken by a small group of people on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan are two such. But all other languages of India, can be assigned to one of four major language families - Austric, Dravidian, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan. An excellent information base on the speakers of these languages is provided by the People of India project of the Anthropological Survey of India. This project involved assigning the entire Indian population to 4635 ethnic communities and putting together detailed information on each of them through interviews of over 25000 individual informants spread over all districts of India, along with compiling information from a variety of published sources [Joshi, et al., 1993]. This project records as the mother tongue the following number of languages of different families spoken by Indian ethnic communities:

Table 1
Global distribution


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Austric Southeast Asia, Eastern and Central India
Dravidian South and Central India, Pakistan, Iran
Indo-European Europe, West Asia, North, West and East India
Sino-Tibetan China, Southeast Asia, India bordering Himalayas
-----------------------------------------------------------------


It is reasonable to assume that speakers of these four language families represent at least four major lineages [Parpola, 1974]. The first question to ask is whether these language families developed within the country, or came in with migrations of people from outside the subcontinent. The geographical range of distribution of Austric, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan speakers is extensive; India harbours only a minority of the languages within these families. The geographical range of distribution of Dravidian languages is however restricted largely to India; there are only two outlying populations - Brahui in Baluchistan and Elamic in Iran. Dravidian languages might then have developed within India, others are less likely to have done so, for we have no evidence of any major technological innovations that could have served to carry speakers of those languages outside India.

Table of contents

Language and economy
We may look for evidence on how long the lineages speaking different language families have been in India in two different ways. Firstly we may examine the current levels of economic activities of the communities speaking those languages, and to compare them with levels of economic activities of speakers of other language families. The tribal communities of India continue to extensively hunt and gather as well as practice low input shifting cultivation. These communities are likely to have migrated to India relatively early, perhaps prior to the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry. Some tribal groups or other speak languages belonging to each of the four families. Korkus, Mundas, Santals, Khasis speak Austric languages; Gonds, Oraons Dravidian languages, Nagas and Kukis Sino-Tibetan languages and Bhils and Varlis speak Indo-European languages. (Figs. 9-12).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But it is amongst Austric speakers that all communities are exclusively tribals. Outside India also most Austric speaking communities practice very primitive technologies. This suggests that Austric speaking people may be the oldest inhabitants of India. They may be amongst the first group of Homo sapiens to have reached India, perhaps some 50-65 kybp. Since over 98% of Austric speakers today lie in southeast Asia, they may have entered India from the northeast.

Sino-Tibetan speakers of India also include many tribal groups, though they also include communities like Maites of Manipur valley practicing advanced agriculture. Their concentration is along the Himalayas; only one community of West Bengal has reached mainland India. Many of them report having moved into India from Myanmar or China within last few generations. They are therefore peripheral to the broader peopling of India.

The bulk of Indian mainland populations are Dravidian and Indo-European speakers. Both include communities at all economic levels from tribals to the most advanced cultivator, pastoral, trader or priestly groups. Many of the technologically less advanced amongst these communities such as Dravidians speaking Kanis of Kerala or Indo-European speaking Bhils of Rajasthan may have acquired these languages in more recent times through the influence of the economically more advanced mainstream societies. It is however notable that while there are several Dravidian speaking forest dwelling tribal communities such as Gonds or Oraons in a matrix of more advanced Indo-European speaking communities, there are no enclaves of forest dwelling tribal Indo-European speakers surrounded by more advanced Dravidian speaking communities. The tribal Indo-European speakers of south India are all nomadic communities such as Banjaras or Pardhis with known history of migration from Rajasthan to south India in recent centuries. This is strongly suggestive of Dravidians being older inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, having been pushed southwards, surrounded by or converted to Indo-European languages by later arriving Indo-European speakers [Lal, 1974; Rakshit and Hirendra, 1980].

One may then suggest the following sequence of migrations of these major language speaking groups into India: Austric-Dravidian-Indo-European. If this be correct, another interesting prediction follows. Austric languages having arrived in India earliest may show the most diversified vocabulary, Indo-European languages the least. To test this we have compiled words for universally used nouns such as mother, water, tree in severalAustric, Dravidian, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages. While a more objective analysis of the extent of such variation is under way, it appears true that Austric languages show the greatest and Indo-European the least divergence.

Table of contents

Archaeological evidence
While tool using Homo erectus populations have been in India for over 500 kybp, fossil human remains appear only after 45-50 kybp, associated with middle palaeolithic, or stone age tools [Agarwal, 1982; Agarwal and Ghosh, 1973; Agarwal and Ghosh, 1973; Agarwal and Kusumgar, 1974; Kennedy, 1980](Fig.13).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It has been suggested that these sites fall in two groups, the northern sites showing affinities with the Mousterian tool industries of Europe, while the southern sites show cultural antecedents in lower palaeolithic. This may reflect two separate streams of migration of newly expanding Homo sapiens populations; one coming into India from the northwest, the second from the northeast. One may surmise that the stream coming in from the northeast may have included early speakers of Austric languages.

The next important event on the Indian archaeological scene is the beginnings of cultivation of plants and use of pottery [Agarwal and Pande, 1977; Megaw, 1977; Vishnu Mittre, 1977; Jarrige and Lechevallier, 1973; Dani et.al, 1967; Vishnu Mittre, 1989] (Figs. 14 - 15).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cultivation of plants evidently reached India simultaneously, around 6 kybp from two different directions, from the two centres of origin in the mid-east and China and Southeast Asia. The steady advance beyond this stage seems however to have been primarily driven by the crop-animal complex derived from the mid-east, reaching the tip of southern India some 4000 years later around 2 kybp. The diffusion of pottery traditions, which arise in response to the need to store and cook grain shows similar evidence of the two influences from northwest and northeast, with the western influence predominating over much of the country. Thus the Black and Red Ware reflects western, while the Cordedware Chinese influence [Sankalia, 1977; Brice, 1977; Rao, 1965, 1969].

It is likely that the farmers entering India from the northwest passage were either Dravidian or Indo-European speakers; those entering the subcontinent from the northeastern passage may have been Sino-Tibetan or perhaps Austric speakers. If, as the linguistic evidence suggests Dravidian speakers entered India well before Indo-European speakers then middle-eastern farmers entering India from the northwest may have been Dravidian speakers. The remnants of related languages, Elamite and Brahui in Iran and Pakistan is consistent with such a migration of Dravidian speakers from mid-east to India.

Table of contents

Horse and iron as pointers of heritage
If this is true, then the Indo-European speakers must have come to India with some other major advantage. Two other technological innovations, known to have originated outside of India are excellent candidates. They are the domestication of horse, around 6 kybp on the shores of Black Sea in present Ukraine, and the use of iron, around 5 kybp in Anatolia in present day Turkey. Riding of horses or hitching them to carts greatly increases the mobility and the military or trading capabilities of a group. While cattle, sheep, goat, pig were all domesticated in mid-east around 10 kybp, the horse was domesticated 4000 years later in a separate centre in the Asian steppes. The most favoured theory of the spread of India-European languages today is that it was the language of these horse people who came to dominate Europe, west Asia and much of India over the next 4000 years. As a ruling class, they are believed to have imposed their language over Europe, without making any major genetic contributions to the populations. They may have wielded parallel influence in India.

The horse appears in archaeological records between 2000 to 500 years after the first appearance of cultivation of crops and husbanding of cattle, sheep, goat and pigs in different parts of India (Fig. 16).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Particular styles of burial appear to accompany the horse people. These burial styles show links with styles noted in Central Asian homeland of Indo-European speakers strengthening our belief in the possibility that the Indo-European speakers indeed made their way to India propelled by the advantage that the control over horses conferred.

The people associated with Vedic traditions and Sanskrit language definitely used horses, and may have been one group, though perhaps not the only group of Indo-European speakers to enter the subcontinent. These people also seem to have been associated with cremation as a method of disposal of the dead. Cremation is today the dominant mode amongst most Indo-European speaking communities of India, burial remains common amongst Dravidian speaking communities, especially those affected little by the process of Sanskritisation (Fig.17).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This also suggests that Indo-European speakers came to India after Dravidian speakers, probably associated with the use of horse and the practice of cremation.

It is also possible that it was the use of iron that conferred an important advantage to certain groups of people migrating to India; groups that may have included speakers of Indo-European languages. The archaeological evidence suggests that use of iron is not necessarily associated with that of the horse, and appears either later than or ahead of the former in different parts of the country (Fig.18 and 19).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is then likely that iron was brought to India by people other than horse people, people other than Vedic people. Indeed there may have been many waves of Indo-European speakers into India, waves that may have brought into the country different languages of that family. Thus some linguists believe that the present day Indo-European languages came to India in at least two distinct streams, the first stream bringing in languages related to Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Sindhi and Kashmiri and the second stream languages related to Punjabi, Hindi and Rajasthani [Gupta, 1979; Misra and Bagor, 1973; Stein, 1984; Jha, 1981; Parasher, 1992; Emmerick; Verma, 1971].

It is not at all clear whether the Harappan people spoke Dravidian or Indo-European languages. This civilization is contemporaneous with the first appearance of horse, most likely associated with Indo-European speakers in the archaeological record. It could therefore have been a Indo-European speaking civilization. But there is a greater possibility that it may have emerged out of the earlier Dravidian speaking communities of agriculturists. What seems more plausible is the equation of Dasas of Vedic people with the earliest, probably Austric speaking hunter-gatherers and Dasyus with the Dravidian speaking cultivating communities. It is notable that the Vedic people were engaged in a far more violent conflict with Dasyus; such conflict may relate to struggle over fertile land [Possehl, 1979].

Table of contents

A plausible scenario
There are then many still unanswered questions pertaining to how our subcontinent was peopled. But the most plausible scenario is the one depicted in Figs. 20-23.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The earliest migrants into India, perhaps 50 kybp may have been the Austric speaking Homo sapiens, with the advantage conferred by the mastery over a symbolic language. Their genetic footprints may be discerned in the trends evident in the 2nd P.C of the synthetic genetic map of Asia. The next major waves of migrations around 6 kybp may have been those of wheat cultivators from the middle east and the rice cultivators from China and south east Asia. The former are likely to have been Dravidian speakers and contributed to the trend evident in the 1st P.C. of the synthetic genetic map of Asia. the latter may have been Sino-Tibetan speakers who would have contributed further to the trend revealed by 2nd P.C. The latest major migration around 4 kybp may have included several waves of Indo-European speakers equipped with horses and iron technology.

These might have been the most massive migrations peopling India. Others have followed, largely from the west, through the Khyber pass on the northwestern frontiers of the subcontinent. These seem to have been propelled by superior weaponry, increasingly better control over horses and finally seagoing ships.

Such significant innovations may include some of the following. An important early development in weaponry was the composite angular bow which appeared in west Asia around 5 kybp. Bending through the length of the limb, releasing this bow string produced no kick leading to a smooth and accurate shot. The extremely long draw length of over 1 m led to a greatly enhanced cast. A crucial piece of equipment associated with control over horse is stirrup, which helps in balancing the rider and permits him to stand up to threw the lance. The earliest form of the stirrup was a string with two loops on either side for the rider's foot. The first known instance of iron stirrups comes from China in sixth century A.D. reaching Iran by 7th century, and arriving in India with Turkish warriors in 11th century. Another significant invention was the iron horse shoe first known from Siberia in 9th Century A.D., reaching India with Turkish warriors in 13th Century A.D. The gunpowder was invented in China around 100 A.D. and slowly reached Iran, Arabia and finally Europe with Mongols around 1400 A.D. It reached India with the arrival of the first Mughal emperor Babur who used it in the first battle of Panipat in 1526 A.D.(Fig. 24).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The early canons in India were made by welding together many iron rods. The Europeans introduced cast iron canons in the next century; these could fire more accurate and powerful volleys. The Europeans also developed superior ocean-going vessels from which canons could be fired by 16th century [Deloche, 1983; Habib, 1992].

These many developments taking place in China, Central Asia and finally Europe brought in many people, enjoying a military advantage (Fig. 25).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The number of people thus coming in were probably not very large, but they contributed immensely to the cultural diversity of the country by bringing in new languages, new forms of religion, and of course new technologies. Amongst these technologies was spinning wheel, apparently invented in China and brought to Europe by Mongols around 12th Century A.D. It seems to have reached India in 13th-14th Century and created a tremendous commercial potential for textile production in India. Similarly Indian agriculture too must have been greatly influenced by the introduction of the Persian wheel, first referred to by Babur in 1526-30 in his memoir Babur Nama.

With these many streams of Homo sapiens coming in to the country over 50,000 years or more, India has developed what Cavalli-Sforza calls an incredibly complex genetic landscape. Our mitochondrial DNA data on 101 Indians permits us to estimate the time to common ancestry of our people on the basis of the pairwise differences in the mitochondrial DNA sequences. These estimates of course, depend on the assumed value of mutation rates; but 65,000 years is close to a reasonable estimate for the modal value of 9 (Fig.26).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So the Indian population has been put together by people drawn from many different streams ultimately derived from the major expansion of non-African Homo sapiens around this time.

Table of contents

A segmented society
What the Indian population is remarkable for is the segmentation of this large population into thousands of endogamous groups. The People of India data recognizes 4635 such ethnic communities. Many of these are however clusters of endogamous groups with similar traditional occupations and social status. The actual number of endogamous groups is decidedly much larger, of the order of 50 to 60 thousand (Joshi, Gadgil and Patil 1993; Gadgil and Malhotra 1983). This persistence of tribe like endogamous groups, characteristic of hunter-gatherer-shifting cultivation stage all over the world, in a complex agrarian, and now industrial society of India is a unique phenomenon. It seems to be a result of a peculiarly Indian tradition of subjugation and isolation, rather than the worldwide practice of elimination or assimilation of subordinated communities by the dominant groups.

Our mitochondrial DNA studies provide some notable insights into the structure of this social mosaic. For this purpose we chose two communities, Haviks and Mukris from the same district of Uttara Kannada. Haviks are a Brahmin group well known for their skills at growing multi-storeyed spice gardens of cardamom, pepper and betelnut. They also perform priestly functions, and are today prominent in many white collar occupations. Their current populations is around 100,000 individuals concentrated in an area of about 20,000 km2. The Mukri, on the contrary are members of a scheduled caste, earlier treated as untouchables. Their current population numbers around 9000 individuals concentrated in an area of 2000 km2. They continue to indulge in substantial amounts of hunting, gathering and fishing to this date and serve as unskilled labour on Havik and other farms.

Figure 26 depicts the neighbour joining phylogenetic tree for 48 Haviks, 43 Mukris, 7 Kadars and 3 other Indians. Note that Haviks and Mukris, although they lie at opposite ends of the social hierarchy do not constitute two distinct trunks. Their sequences are intermingled suggesting past genetic exchanges, although these may have occurred well before the formation of the Indian caste society some 2000 years ago; indeed they may even derive from the time of common ancestry some 65 kybp, perhaps as a part of population expansion of non-Africans outside of India. But intermingled as they are, the Havik sequences form a distinctive star-like pattern with many short branches joining the centre, unlike the Mukri sequences which are bunched in a few clusters on long branches. The star like Havik pattern is suggestive of a history of population expansion, the clustered Mukri pattern suggests long history of a stationary population, or a population that has experienced several bottlenecks. This is further brought out in the distribution of pairwise mitochondrial DNA base pair sequence differences for the Havik and Mukri populations (Fig.27).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The unimodal pattern for Haviks is compatible with a history of population growth, the multimodal Mukri pattern with a history of population stationarity or bottlenecks.

Such differences in genetic structure suggestive of different population histories have been suggested from other human populations earlier, but never before for two population groups living together in such a restricted geographical locality as a single district of Uttara Kannada. This reflects the unique history of Indian population, with dominant groups like Haviks enjoying high levels of resource access and expanding in numbers and range, while subjugated populations like Mukris existed side by side with much more limited resource access and stagnant populations (Fig.28).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Such scenarios have probably characterized the Indian social mosaic for long, perhaps since the beginnings of cultivation and animal husbandry 6000 years ago. As groups with technologies conferring superiority in resource appropriation have migrated into and spread throughout India, they have subjugated other groups, restricted their resource access and permitted their continued existence, while the dominant groups have themselves grown in numbers and expanded in geographical range, perhaps dividing further into more endogamous groups.

This process of maintenance of large number of communities in isolation from each other has been accompanied by extreme specialization of occupation. It is perhaps this specialization of occupation that has prevented Indians from cross-fertilization of ideas and innovations, so that the Indian society has always been at the receiving end of technological innovations.

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to our co-investigators in the population genetic study, Joanna L. Mountain, Joan M. Herbert, Peter A. Underhill, Chris Ottolenghi, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza and Silanjan Bhattacharyya. We were greatly helped in the field work involved by Anindya Sinha, A. Maithili and Vijayakumari of Dr. Baliga College of Arts and Science, Kumta. Prema Iyer provided valuable assistance in investigating subsistence strategies of Haviks and Mukris in the field. M.D. Subash Chandran, K.M. Hegde, Nagu Mukri, Masti Mukri and many other friends from Uttara Kannada have also greatly helped us understand this society and its history. We are grateful to Dr. K.S. Singh and his colleagues in the Anthropological Survey of India for making the People of India data set available, and for many stimulating discussions. This work has been supported by grants from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India and from the Anthropological Survey of India.

Table of contents

References
1. Agarwal, D.P. (1971). The Copper Bronze Age in India. Delhi.

2. Agarwal, D.P. (1982). The Archaeology of India. London and Malmo.

3. Agarwal, D.P. and Ghosh, A. (1973). Radiocarbon and Indian Archaeology. Bombay.

4. Agarwal, D.P. and Kusumgar, S. (1974). Prehistoric Chronology and Radiocarbon dating in India. New Delhi.

5. Agarwal, D.P. and Pande, B.M. (ed.) (1977). Ecology and Archaeology of Western India. Delhi.

6. Allchin, B. and Allchin, R. (1988). The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

7. Allchin, F.R. (1963). India Neolithic Cattle-Keepers of South. Cambridge.

8. Badam, G.L. (1984). Holocene faunal material from India with special reference to domesticated animals. In Juliet Clutton-Brock and Caroline Grigson (eds.). Animals and Archaeology: Early Headers and their Flocks. Oxford. 339-353.

9. Ballinger, S.W., Schurr, T.G., Torroni, A., Gan, Y.Y., Hodge, J.A., Hassan, K., Chen, K.H. et.al (1992). Southeast Asian mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals genetic continuity of ancient mongoloid migrations. Genetics. 130, 139-152.

10. Banerjee, N.R. (1965). The Iron Age in India. Delhi.

11. Brice, W.C. (ed.) (1977). Environmental History of the Near and Middle East. London.

12. Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., Menozzi, P. and Piazza, A. (1994). The History and Geography of Human Genes, pp. 541. Princeton University Press, Princeton, and Genetic Maps, 518.

13. Chakrabarti, D.K. (1976). The beginning of Iron in India. Antiquity, 50, 114-24.

14. Dani, A.H. et al. (1967). Timargarh and the Gandhara grave culture. Ancient Pakistan, 3, 407.

15. Deloche, J. (1983). Geographical considerations in the localisation of ancient sea-ports of India. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 20, (4) 439-448.

16. Emmerick,R.E. Indo-Iranian Languages. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9, 438-57.

17. Gadgil, M. and Guha, R. (1992). This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi and University of California Press, Berkeley.

18. Gadgil, M. and Malhotra, K.C. (1983). Adaptive significance of the Indian caste system: an ecological perspective. Annals of Human Biology, 10, 465-478.

19. Goude, A., Allchin, B. and Hegde, K.T.M. Former exentsions of the Great Indian Sand Desert. The Geographical Journal, 139, 243-57.

20. Goudie, A.S. (1977). Environmental Change. Oxford.

21. Gupta, S.P. (1979). Archaeology of Soviet Central Asia and the Indian Borderlands. Delhi, 1.

22. Habib, I. (1992). Pursuing the history of Indian technology: Pre-modern modes of transmission of power. Social Scientist, 20, (2 and 3), 22.

23. Jarrige, J.F. and Lechevallier, M. (1973). Excavations at mehrgarh. In M. Taddei (ed.) South Asian Archaeology. 77, 463-535.

24. Jha, D.N. (1981). Relevance of Peasant state and Society to Pallava-Chola times. The Indian Historical Review. 8, (1 and 2), 74-94.

25. Joshi,N.V., Gadgil, M. and Patil, S. (1993). Exploring cultural diversity of the people of India. Current Science. 64, (1), 10-17.

26. Kennedy, K.A.R. (1980). Prehistoric skeletal records of man in South Asia. Annual Review of Anthropology. 9, 391-432.

27. Lal, P. (1974). The tribal man in India: A study in the ecology of the primitive communities. In M.S. Mani (ed.) Ecology and Biogeography in India. The Hague. 281-329.

28. Megaw, J.V.S. (1977). Hunters, Gatherers and First Farmers Beyond Europe. Leicester.

29. Misra, V.N. and Bagor. (1973). Late Mesolithic settlement in northwest India. World Archaeology, 5, 92-110.

30. Mountain, J.L., Herbert, J.M., Bhattacharyya, S., Underhill, P.A., Ottolenghi, C., Gadgil, M. and Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1995). Demographic history of India and mtDNA-sequence diversity. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 56, 979-992.

31. Parasher, A. (1992). Nature of society and civilization in early Deccan. Indian Economic and Social History Review. 29, (4), 437-477.

32. Parpola, A. (1974). On the protohistory of the Indian languages in the light of archaeological, linguistic and religious evidence: an attempt at integration. In Van Lohuizen (ed.) South Asian Archaeology, 73.

33. Possehl, G.L. (1979). Ancient Cities of Indus. New Delhi.

34. Rakshit, Hirendra K. (1980). Ethnohistory of the tribal population of middle India. Journal of Indian Anthropological Society, 15, 97-112.

35. Rao, N.M.S. (1965). The Stone Age Hill Dwellers of Tekkalakota. Ponna.

36. Rao, N.M.S. (1969). Excavations at Sangankollu. Ponna.

37. Sankalia, H.D. (1974). Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan. 2nd edn. Ponna.

38. Stein, Burton. (1984). Politics, Peasants and the deconstruction of feudalism in medieval India. The Journal of Peasant Studies. 12, (2 and 3), 54-86.

39. Verma, B.S. (1971). Excavations at Chirand. Puratattava. 4, 19-23.

40. Vigilant, L., Stoneking, M., Harpending, H., Hawkes, K. and Wilson, A.C. (1991). African populations and the evolution of human mitochondrial DNA. Science. 253, 1503-1507.

41. Vishnu-Mittre. (1977). India: local and introduced crops. In J. Hutchinson, G. Clark, E.M. Jope and R. Riley (eds.) The Early History of Agriculture. London.

42. Vishnu-Mittre. (1989). Forty years of Archaeobotanical research in South Asia. Man and Environment, XIV, (1), 1-16.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of contents
Back to Madhav Gadgil's Home Page

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------