DNA research finally destroys decades of Indian / Aryan migration debate
Posted On: Sep 30th, 2017 at 11:29
India
I have to say this is quite extraordinary news.
The migration of humans into, out of, and within India, has been hotly debated for a very long time. Despite the fact I am certain “civilisation” started with the Indus Valley culture, I have not been involved too much in the migration debate, simply because it’s a complicated story with many chapters. What I am certain of, though, is the Sanskrit language – the forerunner of modern-day Hindi – arrived / started somewhere in Northern India. DNA evidence is now proving beyond doubt the Sanskrit language arrived in India with the arrival of the Aryans, and this occurred as the Indus Valley civilisation started to collapse. The latter part of that evidence is extremely important because the Indus Valley culture have a part to play in the story in a big way. I had certainly always assumed the Indus Valley culture would have been a part of the Sanskrit language story, but it seems they were not. This would also explain why the Indus Valley script has never been deciphered, because it was a separate language from the Indo-European group that gave us Sanskrit. The Indus Valley language is long extinct, and since it has no comparisons in modern-day Indian languages, it’s proving almost impossible to decipher it.
Since the article can be read and I don’t need to add to the immense detail within it, I would like to focus attention on the Indus Valley, as many questions now arise. Since the Indus Valley culture collapsed and the Aryans arrived bringing Sanskrit, what happened to the language of the Indus Valley people? The DNA evidence suggests they simply disappeared, or at least scattered so far and wide that the people who left had to adopt the languages of other cultures existing in the areas they lived, including modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Let’s not forget the Indus Valley culture covered an area so vast it’s almost impossible to imagine, hence why the question of what happened to all of those people and their language now becomes even more important.
For that reason an element of caution arises over the DNA evidence, despite the fact it appears to be so conclusive there are no alternatives. DNA evidence is notoriously suspect the further back in time we travel. The immense size of the Indus Valley culture beggars huge questions over what happened to them if Sanskrit was brought in and replaced them and their own language. There is no evidence of warfare whatsoever, and only climate change in the form of shifting Indus river channels gives any evidence as to their disappearance. Now we have a new player – a huge migration of Aryans into the Indus Valley, bringing a new language, culture, and practically wiping out the old. But since no warfare seems to have ensued and the Indus Valley people were forced to move to different locations due to natural causes then there is a huge chapter missing in this story. We must now question the timing of the Aryan migration – at the time the Indus Valley culture was dissolving and disappearing altogether. Did they arrive filling in a void that was being left? That doesn’t make sense because those people would have to encounter the same climate changes the Indus Valley people were experiencing. Again, there is no evidence of any warfare anywhere in the Indus Valley – they didn’t even have weapons! – so warfare can be ruled out. So we now must ask – what is the connection between the Aryan migration and the end of the Indus Valley civilisation? This is now one of the biggest questions of history.
