This is interesting, what or who do you think the people of the original indus valley civilization were ?Your theory is of 20 century not modern theory, Dravidian is indigenous language develop in south India - most famous https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahar–Banas_culture contemporary and adjacent to India valley civilization. Which resulted into https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malwa_culture and
Brahui language - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorwe_culture based around Gujrat which around 1000BC divided into two prominent culture of South and North indian https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_red_ware_culture.
Entirely Indo-Aryan India.
- Thread starter LetThemEatCake
- Start date
Kaushlendra pratap singh
Banned
Some Iranian, some from central asia some but majority scion of first migrate from Africa.
See around that era Sindhu valley and Thar desert was arable land which easily can support a million number of farmers, which can't be easily replaced by any new migration from central asia or Iranian plateau
Yes, that is a good possibility, one other main thing is that there is a theory that there was a river tgat dried up that led to the eventual decline and end if Indus valley civilization
Given how recent the split between Dravidian languages seems to be, the idea of a indigineous Dravidian population over large portions of India prior to 2000 BCE is untenable, Dravidian also spread when Indo-Aryan arrived.
The Iranian Neolithic connection/origin for Dravidian is also not particularly solid either so we could say Dravidian existed within India by 2000 BCE but was not a big community yet or at least its spread in Southern India did not happen yet.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
About 80% of the ancestry of the samples came from a lineage that split from Iranian HG between 10k to 20k years ago, they are not a direct evolution of a indigenous population that first came there.
The Iranian Neolithic connection/origin for Dravidian is also not particularly solid either so we could say Dravidian existed within India by 2000 BCE but was not a big community yet or at least its spread in Southern India did not happen yet.
No this is impossible, all of it:
An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers - PubMed
We report an ancient genome from the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). The individual we sequenced fits as a mixture of people related to ancient Iranians (the largest component) and Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers, a unique profile that matches ancient DNA from 11 genetic outliers from sites in...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
About 80% of the ancestry of the samples came from a lineage that split from Iranian HG between 10k to 20k years ago, they are not a direct evolution of a indigenous population that first came there.
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No problem, I'll help explain. Brahui is a Dravidian language in the Northern subcontinent, yes. But the way historical linguistics works is that the longer languages exist in working proximity with one and other, the more they take on features from the other, forming 'sprachbunds'. Literacy and writing, recent developments in the history of humanity, slow this process down immensely and help act as markers.
The entire Brahui gloss lacks any features linking them to the Iranian languages like Baloch that surround them. Epigenetic markers alongside this suggest that Brahui movements took place between 1000-1300 BCE from break off populations from and around Karnataka.
I know... I'm pursuing a BA in Indo-European studies. And my post never refuted the existence of an Indo-European family, so it's wierd your putting nationalistic labels on me. Hell, historians can even say that all Indo-Aryan languages have a small Dravidian substratum to them from the Rigvedic period, further confirming the migration theory.
My point is that it is likely that the Proto-Dravidian speakers were not really linked to the Indus Valley people linguistically. The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, a lynchpin of that theory, has been unpopular since the 80s. Some of my favourite Indologists like Parpola still cling to the theory but its lost traction otherwise due to new discoveries. And if you're referring to Dravidians as ifthey're genetically that different to people of the north, well ever since the Indo-European migrations and the constant march of time, that divide has only shrunk between ANI and ASI genetic groups.
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Regardless of the Dravidians, there is much to say regarding the Indus Valley Civilization. Most recent scholarship agrees that the Bronze Age trade expanse in Asia was greater than originally expected. Much of the purported similarities between Elamite and other tongues far to the east could be representative of the trading relations that Elam seems to have held after the early Bronze Age with Central Asia and the Indus Valley. The odd point for me, the Indus Valley would have been a relatively short lived agent in this series of events, yet the transit of trade in Asia continued without disturbance despite the disappearance and decay of the IVC. Whatever the IVC was, it was relatively inconsequential for the trade that was being conducted by peoples in Central Asia and the Iranian Plateau.
Agreed, especially if you consider that the IVC would have been sending luxury items, the only things aside strategic resources that were traded at such lengths during the Bronze Age. But I wouldn't term it as inconsequential as... consequential for a limited time. The Meluhhans had a trade post at Girsu after all. But any mass volume of trade is relegated to a period of roughly a century, just preceding the 4.2 kiloyear event. Preceding that you're definitely right, Meluhhan products were shipments of gold and carnelian artisanry and exotic animals.
This is what I was able to research as the most probable.
In terms of the research, what I have found the most accurate was of a multi-faceted wave of Indian people groups, with the last being a top-down cultural diffusion of nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia. The first wave to reach the Indian subcontinent was circa 50,000 years ago, a key branch in the great human migrations, these people had a “physiological profile most similar to modern Australian aborigines and New Guineans, are then taken to be the most representative of this ancient population, which has been labeled by geneticists as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI),”(Pillalamarri 2019). These people were primarily hunter-gatherers and had no use of both agriculture and metallurgy. The second wave was the one that would see the rise of agriculture in the Indian subcontinent, “Some farmers from western Iran, one of the homelands of agriculture, migrated east to the Indus Valley in modern Pakistan by 9,000-7,000 years ago, where they remained without further expansion for a few thousand of years”(Pillalamarri 2019). These wave of Iranian agriculturalists contribute most of the genome to South Asian populations and were responsible for the founding of the Indus Valley Civilization. This would be followed by a wave of Austro-Asiatic migrants “the original AASI-like inhabitants of Southeast Asia...[]...these rice farmers reached India around 4,000 years ago,” (Pillalamarri 2019). This would be followed by Indo-European nomadic pastoralists “group of Aryans spread southeast through the Hindu Kush range of Afghanistan into South Asia; these are the Indo-Aryans most prominently known in history”(Pillalamarri 2019). Arriving around 1500 BC, these Aryans would contrary to common belief, simply diffuse and eventually mix with the larger established agricultural populations. The reason for Indo-Aryan dominance may be as innocuous as factors like “elite dominance, it is not uncommon for smaller groups of warriors and rulers to spread their culture and language to larger settled groups, especially those bereft of leadership”. There is simply no evidence for the Aryan invasion theory of military force present in South Asian anthropology. A lack of both military conquest in the archaeological record “subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth Kennedy in 1994 showed that the marks on the skulls were caused by erosion, and not by violence (Bryant 159) and the fact that the Indus Valley civilization collapsed centuries earlier thoroughly discredits the Aryan-Dasyu Invasion Theory. Furthermore, “the dichotomy of Aryans/Dasyus apparently is a highly simplistic presentation of the fact. More and more recent investigations are now rejecting the earlier and more popular version of invading Aryan hordes”. This is further compounded by the lack of mention of caste in the Rigveda, one of the earliest documents relating to Hinduism composed in South Asia (Roy 443). It is these features that thoroughly discredits any invasion theory. The Aryans were an honorific for a diverse group of cultures and nomads that gradually integrated into Indian society over a period of years through a system of top-down cultural diffusion. The caste system, with its end in endogamy and sadly the proliferation of untouchability would become “fairly well-established that the system hardened particularly during the Gupta (320-550 CE) period” (Pillalamarri 2019). A minority opinion is present that argues the caste system became prominent only in and as a result of the British colonial era (Ghuman 2011). However, it is more likely in the Gupta Era that indigenous Indian tribes would join the society at the bottom of the caste system, with the growing strength of Brahminism that would lead to bigger and bigger social divides.
I gave the citations but if you ask for the sources I will oblige.
In terms of the research, what I have found the most accurate was of a multi-faceted wave of Indian people groups, with the last being a top-down cultural diffusion of nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia. The first wave to reach the Indian subcontinent was circa 50,000 years ago, a key branch in the great human migrations, these people had a “physiological profile most similar to modern Australian aborigines and New Guineans, are then taken to be the most representative of this ancient population, which has been labeled by geneticists as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI),”(Pillalamarri 2019). These people were primarily hunter-gatherers and had no use of both agriculture and metallurgy. The second wave was the one that would see the rise of agriculture in the Indian subcontinent, “Some farmers from western Iran, one of the homelands of agriculture, migrated east to the Indus Valley in modern Pakistan by 9,000-7,000 years ago, where they remained without further expansion for a few thousand of years”(Pillalamarri 2019). These wave of Iranian agriculturalists contribute most of the genome to South Asian populations and were responsible for the founding of the Indus Valley Civilization. This would be followed by a wave of Austro-Asiatic migrants “the original AASI-like inhabitants of Southeast Asia...[]...these rice farmers reached India around 4,000 years ago,” (Pillalamarri 2019). This would be followed by Indo-European nomadic pastoralists “group of Aryans spread southeast through the Hindu Kush range of Afghanistan into South Asia; these are the Indo-Aryans most prominently known in history”(Pillalamarri 2019). Arriving around 1500 BC, these Aryans would contrary to common belief, simply diffuse and eventually mix with the larger established agricultural populations. The reason for Indo-Aryan dominance may be as innocuous as factors like “elite dominance, it is not uncommon for smaller groups of warriors and rulers to spread their culture and language to larger settled groups, especially those bereft of leadership”. There is simply no evidence for the Aryan invasion theory of military force present in South Asian anthropology. A lack of both military conquest in the archaeological record “subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth Kennedy in 1994 showed that the marks on the skulls were caused by erosion, and not by violence (Bryant 159) and the fact that the Indus Valley civilization collapsed centuries earlier thoroughly discredits the Aryan-Dasyu Invasion Theory. Furthermore, “the dichotomy of Aryans/Dasyus apparently is a highly simplistic presentation of the fact. More and more recent investigations are now rejecting the earlier and more popular version of invading Aryan hordes”. This is further compounded by the lack of mention of caste in the Rigveda, one of the earliest documents relating to Hinduism composed in South Asia (Roy 443). It is these features that thoroughly discredits any invasion theory. The Aryans were an honorific for a diverse group of cultures and nomads that gradually integrated into Indian society over a period of years through a system of top-down cultural diffusion. The caste system, with its end in endogamy and sadly the proliferation of untouchability would become “fairly well-established that the system hardened particularly during the Gupta (320-550 CE) period” (Pillalamarri 2019). A minority opinion is present that argues the caste system became prominent only in and as a result of the British colonial era (Ghuman 2011). However, it is more likely in the Gupta Era that indigenous Indian tribes would join the society at the bottom of the caste system, with the growing strength of Brahminism that would lead to bigger and bigger social divides.
I gave the citations but if you ask for the sources I will oblige.
What modern theory? This is an old theory spread by the British in British occupation time period that spread the Aryan invasion theory which has time and time again been proven to be a hollow claim. Of course, there are Dravidians in Pakistan! What is so surprising about that? There are Aryans in South India as well but I don't see you claim the possibility of Aryans originating out of South India. Dravidians may have moved from South to North in the old days or they might have moved recently. What does that matter?
People language and culture have to pop out of Earth. Or do you believe that what you claim as the border between Asia and Europe is some alien place that spontaneously churned out people, languages and culture for no good reason? Some of the claims made by Indians about their origins may seem far fetched but pure archaeological and genetic mapping put Indian civilizations as the oldest in the world. Most of their medical and scientific texts depict star charts that show resemblance to the Earth's positions far back 6000-8000 years. Which means all their written works must have been orally transmitted for a long time before being written. We can't exactly put a date on it and say where and when it exactly originated. Now, recent Archeological finding of remnants of the mythical city of Dwarka dates it back to 3000BCE which is funnily enough close to Indus Valley Civilization. Considering Dwarka is heavily mentioned in the epic mythology of Hindu text Mahabharata the claims made by many Indian about their origins in the subcontinent may very well be true. We only know somewhat of Indus Valley Civilization and with the discovery of Dwarka, an island that is submerged in the sea with vivid remnants of an ancient city far more detailed in design there may be some credence to these claims. Simply because the Indian languages have similarities with Caucasian languages doesn't really prove much when archaeological evidence proves otherwise(at least modern finds point so, old ones support Aryan civilization arriving into the Subcontinent from Caucasia).
Yes, that's like how many people in the North though they are Dravidian/dusky, still speak Indo-Aryan languages.
He is referring to in more broader terms, north has much more Persian influence than the south
So essentially the only way for south to be Indo Aryan in culture is -
- A Pan Indian Empire like Mauryan or Guptas take control of south and have a common language of administration and script there, Sanskrit would be the language and Script can be anything like Brahmi, Gupta, etc
- The empire lasts for atleast around 4 to 5 centuries and has strong, stable and semi centralized rule across Subcontinent
- There is also more meritocracy and less caste based positions of power, allowing for more people from across the subcontinent, especially south to rise to power, but they adopt the new Indo Aryan culture
- Once the empire does collapse, The south now has a very Sanskritised And more specifically Indo Aryan cultured elite and aristocracy
- As such once the Sanskrit do become Prakrits and vernaculars, they are all Indo Aryan in Nature like Asssamese , Sindhi, Nepali or Odia
The culture of Sri Lanka is a good example. Aryans settled Sri Lanka in the 6th century BCE and have evolved a culture similar to OTL south India. An Indo Aryan south Indiawould have a similar culture to OTL modern day South India albeit with a few differences.
This doesn't make any sense, is the geography somehow going to make everyone there the same regardless of the very different historical trajectory?
The Burusho are a great example! Though the nature and antiquity of Burushaski as a language isolate is still under review, I personally am inclined towards either isolate or North Caucasian relation status, as proposed by J.D Bengston, it is likely that some form of Proto-Burushaski speakers may have been dominant around what is the Kabulistan and Swat regions. However even then West seems to be slightly off in putting them anywhere other than the most northern and western parts of the subcontinent. The vowel harmony in the language was incompatible with the IVC script (if it was so) in 4 separate permutations of logograms according to a 1996 study.
Honestly at this point scholarly consensus has that like Mesoamerica, the IVC peoples were a set of many culturally related and ethnically diverse city states united by common cultural features, filled by various language isolates/atleast unknown two language families. A more unsubstantiated opinion I hold is that atleast one of these might have been related to the BMAC language (which itself is unknown) given the amount of unknown substratum that Indo-Aryan languages possess that Iranic languages do not. Lubotsky got it the wrong way around in his 2001 paper, the Proto-Indo-Aryan doesn't have more substratum because it was the vanguard of the Indo-Iranian languages, Narasimhan et al.'s 2019 paper correlates strong genetic links between the two in northern IVC cities like Shortugai if not Rehman Deri and maybe even some in Harappa. There must have been some BMAC-affiliated languages natively spoken in the region for the substrate to be identifiably thrice as large.
Seems quite interesting.
Could you kindly post a bibliography of the most relevant studies of the matter? Plus something as introduction for the beginner?
If the Indo Aryan languages spread in the south of India during the 6th or 5th century BC, then the culture would be a good mix of dravidian and indo aryan culture. If you look at Maharashtra, the culture is heavily influenced by South India and not the northern states such as UP, Punjab or Rajasthan.