New Indology

About India and Central Asia

2011-11-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

In the Wikipedia entry about the Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a, so popular among the fans of Indo-Europeans, something has recently changed. We find acknowledged the fact that, notwithstanding various studies suggesting a South Asian origin, still there is a resistance by some researchers:

“R1a and R1a1a are believed to have originated somewhere within Eurasia, most likely in the area from Eastern Europe to South Asia. Several recent studies have proposed that South Asia is the most likely region of origin. But on the other hand, as will be discussed below, some researchers continue to treat modern Indian R1a as being largely due to immigration from the Central Eurasian steppes.”
Below, about the South Asian origin hypothesis, we read:

“A survey study as of December 2009, including a collation of retested Y-DNA from previous studies, concluded that a South Asian R1a1a origin was the most likely proposal amongst the various uncertain possibilities.^[2]

On the other hand, other recent studies such as Zhao et al. (2009) continue to treat R1a in modern India as being at least partly due to immigration from the northwest associated with Indoeuropean languages and culture. One argument for this, as stated for example by Thanseem et al. (2006), is that this is implied by the uneven distribution pattern of R1a between castes and regions. Higher castes and more northerly Indian populations are considered to be more directly descended from the populations who brought Indoeuropean languages to India, and they tend to have higher levels of R1a than lower castes, and more southerly populations, while tribal castes and non Indoeuropean speaking groups tend to have the lowest frequencies of R1a. In order to explain exceptions to this pattern, these authors propose that R1a in India is also partly due to earlier movements of people from central Asia.”

Then, I decided to see this study of Zhao et al., which I did not know. The title is Presence of three different paternal lineages among North Indians: A study of 560 Y chromosomes. It concerns only North Indians, and two particular categories of North Indians: Brahmins and Muslims. We read in the introduction:

"India occupies a unique stage in human population evolution because one of the early waves of migration of modern humans was out of Africa, through West Asia, into India (Cann 2001). More recently, about 15 000–10 000 years before present (ybp), when agriculture developed in the Fertile Crescent region that extended from Israel through Northern Syria to Western Iran, there was an eastward wave of human migration (Renfrew 1989; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). It has been postulated that this wave brought the Dravidian language into India (Renfrew 1989). Subsequently, the Indo-European (Aryan) language was introduced into India from the Iranian plateau approximately 4000–3000 ybp, where this language was probably brought by pastoral nomads from the Central Asian steppes (Renfrew 1989). Therefore, linguistic evidence suggests that West Asia and Central Asia were two major geographical sources contributing to the Indian gene pool."

So, we find the 'postulate' of the arrival of the Dravidians with agriculture from West Asia, and the 'probability' of Indo-Europeans as pastoral nomads from the Central Asian steppes. These old theories (supported here by a publication of Renfrew, accepted as authority for unknown reasons), become at the end 'linguistic evidence' which can even suggest the major sources of the Indian gene pool. This entails that linguistic speculation can give some proof about the origin of the major part of the Indian gene pool, which is not justified.

Another significant passage:

"Furthermore, it has been reported (Cordaux et al. 2004) that the Y lineages of Indian castes are more closely related to Central Asians than to Indian tribal populations, suggesting that Indian caste groups are primarily the descendants of Indo-European migrants."

Thus, it is taken for granted that this connection means that the members of Indian castes come from Central Asia (and not that there could also be some movement from India to Central Asia), and there is an equation Central Asians=Indo-Europeans, but what do we know of the languages of Central Asia in the II millennium BC and before? Presently, many men belonging to the Hg R in Central Asia speak Turkic languages, as is acknowledged by the study itself:

"Haplogroup R reflects the impact of expansion and migration of Indo-European pastoralists from Central Asia, thus linking haplogroup frequency to specific historical events (Sengupta et al. 2006). Haplogroup R is widely spread in central Asian Turkic-speaking populations and in eastern European Finno-Ugric and Slavic speakers and is less frequent in populations from the Middle East and Sino-Tibetan regions of northern China (Karafet et al. 1999; Underhill et al. 2000)."

It is really strange that the fundamental study by Sengupta is cited to support the idea that Hg R reflects a migration of Indo-European pastoralists from Central Asia, since the main thesis of that study is that Central Asian impact in South Asia is really limited (italics are mine):

"The ages of accumulated microsatellite variation in the majority of Indian haplogroups exceed 10,000–15,000 years, which attests to the antiquity of regional differentiation. Therefore, our data do not support models that invoke a pronounced recent genetic input from Central Asia to explain the observed genetic variation in South Asia. R1a1 and R2 haplogroups indicate demographic complexity that is inconsistent with a recent single history. Associated microsatellite analyses of the high-frequency R1a1 haplogroup chromosomes indicate independent recent histories of the Indus Valley and the peninsular Indian region. Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus and with significant genetic input resulting from demic diffusion associated with agriculture."
"The pattern of clustering does not support the model that the primary source of the R1a1-M17 chromosomes in India was Central Asia or the Indus Valley via Indo-European speakers. Further, the relative position of the Indian tribals (fig. 6), the high microsatellite variance among them (table 12), the estimated age (14 KYA) of microsatellite variation within R1a1 (table 11), and the variance peak in western Eurasia (fig. 4) are entirely inconsistent with a model of recent gene flow from castes to tribes and a large genetic impact of the Indo-Europeans on the autochthonous gene pool of India. Instead, our overall inference is that an early Holocene expansion in northwestern India (including the Indus Valley) contributed R1a1-M17 chromosomes both to the Central Asian and South Asian tribes prior to the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The results of our more comprehensive study of Y-chromosome diversity are in agreement with the caveat of Quintana-Murci et al. (2001, p. 541), that “more complex explanations are possible,” rather than their simplistic conclusion that HGs J and R1a1 reflect demic expansions of southwestern Asian Dravidian-speaking farmers and Central Asian Indo-European–speaking pastoralists."

So, even the 'postulate' of the West Asian 'agricultural' origin of Dravidians is refuted by Sengupta's study, which appears to accept without discussion the traditional theory about the coming of Indo-Europeans, but gives no genetic support for it. Actually, this 'early Holocene expansion in northwestern India' could have something to do with the diffusion of Indo-European languages, in connection with the emergence of agriculture, which is placed in the Early Holocene (see here). The only thing said about an origin of the Hg R out of South Asia is this:

"The phylogeography of the HG R*-M207 spans Europe, the Caucasus, West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia; therefore, the hypothesis that there is an HG R*-M207 expansion locus central to all these regions is both plausible and parsimonious. This is consistent with our observation that HG R*-M207 is observed at a maximum of 3.4% frequency in Baluchistan and Punjab regions, whereas, in inner India, it is 0.3%."

So, it can even be that all Hg R comes from North-western South Asia. More recently, a study by Firasat et al. (2007), R* has been found in 10.3% (10/97) of a sample of Burusho (speakers of an isolated non-IE language, Burushaski), 6.8% (3/44) of a sample of Kalash, and 1.0% (1/96) of a sample of Pashtuns from northern Pakistan.
But Zhao's study appears to ignore all this, and finally asserts:

"we suggest that Central Asia is the most likely source of North Indian Y lineage considering the historical and genetic background of North India (Karve 1968; Balakrishnan 1978)."

So, it seems that publications of the '60s and '70s give us the final authority on the genetic background of North India.

Now, we do not want to deny genetic differences between castes and tribals, but there are other explanations. Castes developed in the agrarian civilization of Northern India (and present Pakistan), and then spread with Brahmanism to Eastern and Southern India. So, it is to be expected that Hgs more connected with Western and Central Asia like J and R are more frequent in castes than in tribals.

J because it is originally connected with West Asian agriculturists, and R because it is probably connected with agriculturists, pastoralists and metal-workers from North-western South Asia and maybe also Afghanistan, which is an ancient area of Neolithic and rich in R1a.

And if some Turks of Central Asia have a high frequency of R1a, it can be because of the migrations of Iranians and Tocharians in those regions from the South and West. Turks arrived later from North-Eastern Asia, with some Mongolic features which are not a legacy of R1a, and mingled with the previous Indo-European speakers.

I would like to add another note about the relation between India and Central Asia. It has been generally thought that horse came to India from Central Asia, where it was firstly domesticated 5500 years ago in Kazakhstan. But a very recent discovery in Arabia can change the picture. In the site of Al-Magar in Central Arabia archaeologists have found remains of a Neolithic civilization dated back to 9000 years ago (see here, cfr. here). In that site, there are many images, drawn and sculpted, of the horse.

One is this, aroung 1 m. in length, with possible signs of harness. A cave drawing appears to show a man riding a horse. The shape of these horses reminds the famous Arabian horse... now, Indian horse breeds like Marwari and Kathiawari are akin to Arabian horses, and there is an interesting detail which was noted by Rajaram (I am not a follower of Rajaram, but useful remarks are always welcome): Vedic horse (see RV I.162.18) has 34 ribs, differently from the average Central Asian horse, who has 36 ribs. Now, what is not observed by Rajaram, as far as I know, is that the Arabian horse has typically 17 pairs of ribs (see here). Moreover, horse in Indian mythology comes from the ocean, and at Ajanta we find a picture with horses brought in a ship (see here). So, maybe the first horses came to India directly from Arabia and not from Central Asia, at least in the 3rd millennium BC, when they appear in Harappan sites (often near the coast)...

How Deep are the Roots of Indian Civilization?

2011-03-31T08:39:00.000-07:00

On the 18th of March, at the National Archives in New Delhi, a lecture was delivered by Michel Danino on ‘The Lost Sarasvati, from River to Goddess’, speaking also about the archaeological sites of the Sarasvati Valley. This lecture is included in a series entitled "Ancient Civilizations", which is so presented:

"This Series of 12 lectures on the ancient civilizations of the world will be held at the National Archives over a 12 month period in collaboration with National Archives and UNESCO.
Eminent Indian and foreign scholars will cover aspects of ancient India and the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and other ancient cultures.

In the last 20 years many developments have taken place in the study of ancient civilizations. DNA, carbon dating and linguistic as well as reinterpretation of existing evidence by a new generation of scholars have overturned our dearly held beliefs of Aryan invasions and/or immigrations and point to a much older, indigenous civilization than previously thought.
The Vedic Tradition probably influenced Egypt and Mesopotamia, the spread of Buddhism influenced cultural developments in S.E Asia, Tibet, China and Japan. Vedic Sanskrit still influences the Indo European cultures all over the world.

This series introduces the views of newer scholars in the field with thought provoking, sometimes revolutionary ideas on our common past."

It is another important sign that something is moving in the idea of Indian past, also at an official level.

Still in New Delhi, Chanakyapuri, in November there was an interesting international seminar on “How Deep are the Roots of Indian Civilization? An Archaeological and Historical Perspective” (see here the abstracts). It was organized by the Draupadi Trust in collaboration with the Indian Archaeological Society, which publishes the important journals Puratattva and Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology.

In the seminar took part some of the greatest names of Indian or South Asian archaeology, like B.B. Lal, R.S. Bisht, M.Tosi, Jim G. Shaffer, Purushottam Singh and D.K. Chakrabarti, and some of the most important authors of the 'indigenist school' like Shiva Bajpai, again Michel Danino, N. Kazanas, Bhagwan Singh and S. Kalyanraman.

One of them, Shiva Bajpai, Professor Emeritus of History at the California State University, has written a significant sentence at the end of his abstract about Sapta Sindhu:

"We are now at the threshold of correctly writing the new history of early India-South Asia and, by extension, providing the basis for a new approach to the larger Eurasian Aryan question."

Another significante passage is found in the abstract of the archaeologist K.N. Dikshit:

"The legacy of the Harappan Civilization appears to be extremely dominant in the field of ideological foundations of the civilization. The mass of oral traditions and Vedic literature, which form part of our present-day civilization also appear to be the major legacy of the Harappan civilization. We have to, therefore, make some serious efforts to correlate the archaeological and literary evidence in order to work out the Harappan Legacy. The excavations of Harappan cemeteries at Farmana (Shinde 2009) and Sanauli (Sharma et. al. 2003-04) are pointers in this direction."

He probably alludes to the fact that Harappan cemeteries correspond with Vedic descriptions (see my post on Farmana).

Another interesting paper is that of Purushottam Singh about "Early Archaeology in the Gangetic Plains", where we find a description of the different phases of the settlements in the Ganges Valley, and some particularly significant remarks. One is that "Chalcolithic cultures were firmly established in around 2500 B.C. in the Sarayupar plain and by 2000 B.C. in Bihar", and that with the Chalcolithic, there is a dramatic increase in the number and size of the sites. Moreover, it is said that social stratification has been 'suspected' already during the Mesolithic period. About funerary rituals, it is observed:

"The burials of the Mesolithic sites of Pratapgarh provide ample evidence of belief in the after-life, but no such evidence is forthcoming from the Chalcolithic sites. The only evidence is that of the post-cremation pit-burials from Sonpur and Chirand which indicates that this custom was prevalent in some parts of Bihar but this evidence is missing on the other sites. The absence of burials in the Chalcolithic levels indicates that the method of cremation for the disposal of the dead body, which became the principal mode in the later–day Hindu society, had its roots in the Chalcolithic culture."

About the domesticated animals, it is said that at the site of Tokwa (Mirzapur District, U.P.) buffalo, domestic pig, sheep and domestic ass were found in addition to cattle and goats (you can find also the article online). The presence of sheep and asses is a sign of clear influences from the west, but it can be explained through the arrival of a new people or through trade. On the other hand, it is said about cultivated plants: "The archaeo-botanical remains from Jhusi, Malhar, Imilidih, Narhan and Senuwar have been studied in quite a great detail. This study indicates that by about 7000 B.C. almost all cereals, pulses and oil seeds which form the staple food of the present–day inhabitants of the Middle Ganga plain were grown in this region." I find this observation quite impressive, since it suggests that there was not the arrival of a new agricultural civilization since 7000 B.C. A specific study (by A.K. Pokharia et al.) can be found online (see here, cp. this article), it is focused on the site of Jhusi, at the confluence of Ganges and Yamunā, in the same area as the early city of Pratiṣṭhāna, the capital of Yayāti (see MBh V.112.9), one of the first kings of the Lunar dinasty and father of the founders of the five Janas. On the basis of radiocarbon dates, "the Neolithic culture at Jhusi is dated to the 7th–6th millennium BC, though the beginning of the culture may be pushed back to the later half of 8th millennium BC" (p.566). The first date of the Neolithic level at Jhusi is 7477 BC.

About the vegetable species which were found at the site it is said:

"Rice, horse-gram and green-gram of Indian origin, were grown in the warm rainy season. Barley, breadwheat, dwarf wheat, field-pea, lentil, grass-pea and linseed of near-eastern complex were grown in the winter season. The evidence of barley (H. vulgare), bread-wheat (T. aestivum) and other winter crops along with summer crops like rice (O. sativa), etc. from early levels of Jhusi indicate that possibly the area was in cultural contact with the original home of winter crops right from the early phase of the Neolithic culture."

In the above lists, there is an inaccuracy: dwarf wheat (Triticum sphaerococcum) is indigenous to Northwestern India (see here), it was present in 4000 BC in Mehrgarh and was typical of the Indus civilization (see this passage). It is not clear from the article if it was already present in the earliest levels of Jhusi, but we can suppose it came later after it was developed in Baluchistan (cp. this passage from a book on the history of agriculture in India). Bread-wheat (Triticum aestivum) comes from Transcaucasia or Southwestern Caspian (see here), and barley has probably two centers of domestication: one in the Fertile Crescent and one between the Zagros, Turkmenistan and Mehrgarh (see this article).

Actually, it seems that the Neolithic of Jhusi is almost contemporaneous with Mehrgarh (according to S.P. Gupta, there is a radiocarbon date for period IA of Mehrgarh 8215-7215 BC), as if the cultivators of barley and wheat from Baluchistan arrived very early into the Gangetic plain, mingling with the local rice cultivators (rice is the most important cereal at Jhusi, but there are also a lot of lentils, and lentils are of Near Eastern origin, see here).
We can suppose that the area of Jhusi was already part of a net of cultural interaction including Northwestern India, which became the realm of the five Janas of the 'Lunar race'. More in the east, in the Sarayupar plain, we have wheat, barley and lentils only in the third millennium BC (see the article on Lahuradewa), after millennia of rice cultivation. Lahuradewa is in ancient Kosala, and this can be a sign that the 'Solar race' ruling over this kingdom was connected with the ancient rice civilization of the middle Gangetic plain. This eastern culture came into contact with the western Harappan civilization, as Purushottam Singh observes:

"The radiocarbon dates from the Neolithic-Chalcolithic sites of the Middle Ganga plain have conclusively proved that these cultures were a younger contemporary of the Harappa culture. Here the natural question arises as to whether the Chalcolithic people were in contact with this mighty city-civilization. The discovery of more than one hundred tiny beads of steatite from the Neolithic deposits at Imilidih Khurd and Lahuradewa and several steatite beads from Chirand provide an indication of such a contact, but this remains to be firmly established by further research. This link between two cultures is further buttressed by certain pottery types like the dish-on-stand which occurs on several sites like Lahuradewa, Narhan and Chirand."

Moreover: "The discovery of well established village cultures based on the cultivation of two crops a year by rotation method in eastern U.P. and Bihar demonstrates an uninterrupted cultural continuity uninfluenced by any external stimuli from c. 2500 B.C. in the Sarayupar plain and c. 2000 B.C. in Bihar. This discovery has exploded the popular theory that this part of the country was “aryanised” by clearing dense forests only around the eighth to seventh century B.C. as proposed by some scholars while giving a historical explanation of the Videgh Mathava legend of the Satapatha Brahmana." Then, if this region was 'aryanised', it was around 2500-2000 BC. But it is also possible that they already spoke a language similar to the western language, and we can observe that the names of the eastern rivers Gaṅgā and Sarayu appear to be Indo-Aryan names. Purushottam Singh writes:

"That the Neolithic-Chalcolithic of the Middle Ganga plain are non-Harappans and non-Aryans is generally accepted on all hands. The contributions of these pioneers in the making of Indian culture are too many to be enumerated. However, the question remains as to whether we can give a name to these people. It is suggested that they could be Vratyas and Kikatas who are forefathers of the present-day tribal population of the Vindhyas and the Chotanagpur plateau. The term 'Vratya' was possibly a collective name given to a group of people whose way of life was different from those who claimed to be Aryans. As the primitive people of India they seem to have contributed much to the growth and development of Indian culture. They differed from the Vedic Aryans and developed their own system of thought and culture."

It is true that Āryāvarta in the Dharmasūtras is west of kālakavana (probably near Prayāga, therefore around the site of Jhusi), but also, according to another view, between Ganges and Yamunā: this does not mean that the language out of these borders was not Indo-Aryan. Apparently they were not 'Ārya' because they did not follow the orthodox Vedic customs developed under the Bhāratas, but the tradition does not say that the 'Solar race' of Ikshvāku in Kosala was part of a wholly different civilization. Aikshvāku kings are cited in the Vedas, even among the royal Rishis.
At the end of his abstract P. Singh adds an anthropological observation:

"It has been suggested that these first farmers may be tribals like the Kikatas of the Rigveda who have been said to be relying more on pastoralism. They seem to have abandoned their habitations by the fourth millennium for reasons not known to us. In this context it may be pointed out that the earliest settlement at Mehrgarh (Pakistan) belonging to the 6th millennium (Stage I consisting of Periods I-II, Neolithic) has been found to have some biological affinity with those in the Ganga Valley. This observation of biological anthropologists is significant and needs further probe."

If this is true, there are two possible (simplified) explanations: both the inhabitants of Mehrgarh and of the Gangetic valley were indigenous or both were of western origin. Now, in India there are Y-chromosome haplogroups of clear Near Eastern origin: those belonging to the J2-M172 clade.
But if J2a-M410 comes clearly from the Near East (for instance cp. this table and this table, both based on the same dating system), a particular branch of J2 present in India, J2b2-M241, seems to have a different history.

In the map above, taken from an important genetic study by Sengupta et al., we can see that J2b2 has a high frequency and variance south of Nepal, around Sarayu and Ganges. Sengupta notes that "numerous Mesolithic sites have been observed in this region." The calculated age of this Hg in India is 13.8±3.8 KYA. Almost the same as J2*-M410/M158 (13.7±2.9 KYA). And, according to this map, the highest variance of J2b2 in India is 0.43. Sengupta himself writes that in Southwestern Asia the variance is 0.33, and in Turkey 0.24. In a study of 2008 by Battaglia et al., following the same estimates as Sengupta, the age of J2b2 in Turkey is 10.13.4 (see here), and it remarks: "Although Hg J-M241 shows high variance in India, its place of origin is still uncertain." Another study, of 2007, by Yong et al. says: "J2e1–M241 (Cinnioglu et al. 2004; Shen et al. 2004), which was reported in 0.96% Turkish males (Cinnioglu et al. 2004), 5.22% in India, 2.27% in Pakistan (Sengupta et al. 2006), 6.49% in Nepal Kathmandu and 1.5% Nepal Newar (Cadenas et al. 2006). These distributions suggest the origin of J2e1–M241 may reside within or near the Indian subcontinent. This suggestion is now further supported by the concentration of J2e1 AMELY null among ethnic Indian." (J2b2 is here called J2e1, quotation found here). A study by Fornarino et al., published in 2009, reports that the Tharus near the Eastern border of Nepal have a frequency of J2b2 of 8.1%.
Then, it seems that the origin of J2b2 is to be traced in the J2 people settled in the plain between India and Nepal, where the ancient rice cultivation probably caused a population growth and a consequent diffusion of the new haplogroup.
Summing up, if the estimates of Sengupta are right, the J2 people arrived from the Near East into South Asia already before agriculture, in the Mesolithic period. They could even be the Natufian gatherers of wild cereals, searching for new lands because of overpopulation or of the aridity caused by the Younger Dryas. In this context, the Gangetic Valley was certainly more humid and warm than the Near East, and rich in wild rice.
On the other hand, if we accept that such estimates are too high, it can also be that the J2 clade arrived with farmers from the Fertile Crescent (particularly J2a, which is often connected with the diffusion of the Neolithic) which settled in Baluchistan, in the Vindhyas and in the Gangetic Valley, but since wheat, barley and animal husbandry reached Lahuradewa only in the 3rd millennium BC, this should be the period of their arrival into this area, apparently too late for the area of the highest variance of J2b2 in India. It is possible that the new crops and animal husbandry were brought by contacts with the Harappan people.

However, in both cases they could develop a common language, probably born from a fusion of Near Eastern and local languages, which became the ancestor of Indo-Aryan. Subsequent trade contacts reinforced this common language, which could act as the linguistic medium of the Indo-Gangetic tradition. This hypothesis is not the same theory as the one that Renfrew proposed: I do not think that the Near Eastern farmers were already Indo-European speakers, because the first traces of IE languages in the Near East appear in Anatolia in Assyrian documents of the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Around the Fertile Crescent, we have Semitic (Afroasiatic) languages like Akkadian, and quite isolated agglutinative languages like Hattic, Hurrian, Sumerian and Elamite. We do not know which language used the first farmers who arrived into Baluchistan, but I suspect they spoke a kind of Afroasiatic, because this linguistic family is connected with the spread of agriculture and pastoralism and it shares with Indo-European the system of inflection of roots made of two or three consonants and probably also some roots (the theory of a relation between IE and Semitic or Afroasiatic has a long history, see here). Indo-European dialects could develop after the arrival of the 'Afroasiatic' farmers into the Indo-Iranian area during the Neolithic, and later it could spread towards Europe through the R1a1 people which was indigenous to South Asia, and also, we can add now, through the J2b2 people, which is found with the highest frequency among Albanians (more than 14%) and which is also found among Greeks, Italians and Slavs (see this figure).

Then, we do not speak of an Indo-European invasion of India, but we should admit from the genetic evidence that Near Eastern populations entered into South Asia, during the Mesolithic or the Neolithic, probably bringing the 'agricultural revolution' and new cultural influences. On the other hand, Indian influences could reach the Near East during the Harappan age or earlier: date palms from Baluchistan reached Sumer already in the 4th millennium BC, also Indian sesame became part of Sumerian agriculture, and zebu (Bos indicus) appears in Mesopotamian archaeology, in the northern part particularly during the 2nd millennium BC (see here), when and where we have the impressive appearance of the Indo-Aryan rulers of Mitanni. And what is funny, is that the kingdom of Mitanni, between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, is placed exactly in the region where agriculture first began, around Karaca Dağ (the mountain where are the wild ancestors of einkorn and emmer), and the early Neolithic sites of Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori and Tell Abu Hureyra. This could be the original homeland of the ancestors of the first farmers of Baluchistan, the J2 people...

Ancient DNA from Europe can give new clues about the Indo-European question

2011-01-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

In a previous post about genetics, I reported the discovery of a European branch of Y-DNA haplogroup R1a (named R1a1a7) which is "virtually absent in Asia", showing as impossible a recent migration to South Asia. In that study by P.A. Underhill, there was the hypothesis that this genetic group expanded in Europe during the Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture, but it also noticed "a remarkable geographic concordance of the R1a1a7-M458 distribution with the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Corded Ware (CW) cultures of Europe that prospered from ca. 5.5-4.5 KYA BP" (cp. the map above). It is then cited the finding of the burial in Eulau, Germany, belonging to the Corded Ware cultural horizon, dated around 2600 BC, because it gave for the buried males the haplogroup R1a (see the article by W. Haak Ancient DNA, Strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age). It is also interesting that the Corded Ware culture has been ascribed to Indo-Europeans by many scholars, probably for its area and since it is associated with wheeled vehicles, horses and metals:

"...Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic may possibly be traced back to the Corded Ware horizon of north, central and eastern Europe." (The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Oxford Linguistics) - J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, 2006, p.452, Oxford University Press)

Moreover, if we look at the variance of R1a1a7 (also in the map above), Poland appears as the place of origin, and the same is found for the CW culture: "Corded Ware ceramic forms in single graves develop earlier in Poland than in western and southern Central Europe. The earliest radiocarbon dates for Corded Ware come from Kujavia and Małopolska in central and southern Poland and point to the period around 3000 BC. Carbon-14 dating of the remaining central European regions shows that Corded Ware appeared after 2880 BC" (see here). Thus, a consistent picture seems to emerge from archaeology and genetics. However, the calculated age of R1a1a7 (before 8000 BC in Poland) suggested a connection with the Mesolithic or Linearbandkeramik periods.
But now we could have a counter evidence from another study, published in the November 2010 issue of PLoS Biology, Ancient DNA from European Early Neolithic Farmers Reveals Their Near Eastern Affinities, by the same W. Haak of the study about Eulau. This has revealed the genetic identity of ancient individuals belonging to the Linearbandkeramik culture, including a previous work on this archaeological horizon and a new analysis of skeletons from Derenburg in Germany (Harzkreis); it is mainly based on mitochondrial DNA, but also on chromosome Y. The results tell us that most of this agricultural people had a Near Eastern origin (see maps).

In the map above, you can see the genetic distance of modern populations from the mitochondrial data from Derenburg. The nearest populations are evidently in present Iran and Kurdistan. As we know from an important study by Metspalu and Kivisild, Iranian mtDNA is very different from Indian or South Asian DNA; Western Iran, also for the Y-DNA, is very similar to other Near Eastern countries, and Northern Iran has a strong influx from Anatolia (see the article by Regueiro). The presence of R1a1a is stronger in Southern and Eastern Iran (see also the article by Wells, that observes: "the population of present-day Iran, speaking a major Indo-European language (Farsi), appears to have had little genetic influence from the M17-carrying Indo-Iranians").

About mitochondrial haplogroups it is said in the study:

We found nine modern-day population pools in which the percentage of these haplotypes is significantly higher than in other population pools (p>0.01, two-tailed z test; Figure 1; Table S4): (a) North and Central English, (b) Croatians and Slovenians, (c) Czechs and Slovaks, (d) Hungarians and Romanians, (e) Turkish, Kurds, and Armenians, (f) Iraqis, Syrians, Palestinians, and Cypriotes, (g) Caucasus (Ossetians and Georgians), (h) Southern Russians, and (i) Iranians. Three of these pools (b–d) originate near the proposed geographic center of the earliest LBK in Central Europe and presumably represent a genetic legacy from the Neolithic. However, the other matching population pools are from Near East regions (except [a] and [h]), which is consistent with this area representing the origin of the European Neolithic, an idea that is further supported by Iranians sharing the highest number of informative haplotypes with the LBK (7.2%; Table S4).

About Y DNA haplogroups:

The Y chromosome hgs obtained from the three Derenburg early Neolithic individuals are generally concordant with the mtDNA data (Table 1). Interestingly, we do not find the most common Y chromosome hgs in modern Europe (e.g., R1b, R1a, I, and E1b1), which parallels the low frequency of the very common modern European mtDNA hg H (now at 20%–50% across Western Eurasia) in the Neolithic samples. Also, while both Neolithic Y chromosome hgs G2a3 and F* are rather rare in modern-day Europe, they have slightly higher frequencies in populations of the Near East, and the highest frequency of hg G2a is seen in the Caucasus today. The few published ancient Y chromosome results from Central Europe come from late Neolithic sites and were exclusively hg R1a. While speculative, we suggest this supports the idea that R1a may have spread with late Neolithic cultures from the east.

So, we can suppose that R1a arrived with the Corded Ware culture, which was an important cultural change in Europe. After the Near Eastern population which had already colonized the Balkans, the Corded Ware people found in Eulau came from the East, bringing the new 'Indo-European' culture. Interestingly, the mitochondrial haplogroup of the mother in the family buried in Eulau was K1b, which "has uniquely been reported in two modern Shugnans of Tadzhikistan" (Dienekes' quotation). Wells reports 23% of R1a1a for Shugnans, and 68% for their neighbors Ishkashimis (living both in the upper Oxus valley). They speak both an Iranian language, and they live in the cradle of Iranian culture, mentioned in the Avesta. We can suppose that the Oxus valley was an ancient seat for the R1a1a people coming from South Asia, and that they spoke an Indo-European language. From Central Asia they should have moved to the Kurgan area in Ukraine, and from there to Central Europe. Another R1a1a people went eastward up to the Tarim Basin (see here) and another to the Andronovo area near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia (see here). But we know that they all had their ultimate origin in western South Asia, and their expansion in Eurasia seems to be dated particularly in the metal age, since all these cultures knew metals. As recognized by some scholars, calculated ages of R1a1a appear as too high, and the archaeological record can help us to correct them. According to this picture, we can see the Neolithic of the Indus-Sarasvatī basin and probably of the adjoining 'Iranian' regions as the source of the Indo-Europeans, which developed so many prehistoric and historical civilizations of Europe and Asia.

An Indian origin for Western Law and Civilization?

2010-12-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

Recently I received a message from Robin Bradley Kar (here on the right), Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Illinois, about an article written by him “On the Origins of Western Law and Western Civilization (in the Indus Valley)” (see here the abstract with free download of the full paper).

I have read it, and I find it really rich and stimulating, including philosophy of law, history, linguistics, anthropology, Indo-European studies and also interesting references to the ‘Oriental Renaissance’ of Schwab and the practice of meditation as a part of the Indo-European heritage which should be recovered. The basic thesis of Prof. Kar is expressed in the following sentences (pp.2-3):

“The basic story that Western Civilization finds its origins in ancient Greek, Roman and Hebrew culture […] has rarely—until recently—been questioned in the West. […] There is nevertheless a deep sense in which this story is incomplete, and even potentially misleading. This article—along with its sequels—argues that if we are genuinely interested in understanding our origins, in a way that will shed light on why the West has exhibited such distinctive capacities for large-scale human civilization and the rule of law, then the story we commonly tell ourselves starts abruptly in the middle, and leaves out some of the most formative (and potentially transformative) dimensions of the truth. Western Law and Western Civilization are not just the outgrowths of three particularly creative cultures, which straddled the transition from human prehistory into human history, and developed in either Southeastern Europe or the Near East. Rather, the West is descended from a much deeper cultural tradition, which extends all the way back to some of our first human forays out of hunter-gatherer modes of subsistence and into settled agricultural living. The tradition in question began not in Greece, Rome, or Israel, however, but rather in the Indus Valley—which is a region that spans the Northwestern portions of the Indian subcontinent. Our failure to know this about ourselves has limited our self-understanding in critical respects, and has prevented us from realizing useful aspects of our traditions—including, in some cases, aspects that make them work so well for large-scale human civilization.”

The historical basis of these theories lies in this fundamental idea (p.74):

“Of particular importance will be the following core proposition: from some time before 4500 BC until approximately 1900 BC, the Indus Valley river system played the most central, the most significant, and the most enduring focal point for the prehistoric expansion of the Indo-European linguistic family, and also for the prehistoric development of several key Indo-European cultural innovations, which have made these groups particularly well adapted to transitioning into and sustaining large-scale societies with the rule of law.”

It seems that Prof. Kar will support this proposition with archaeological and linguistic data in the next article, but already in this article he proposes a model about the genesis of the language families from the major river systems, which is quite convincing. In this model, the Indo-European family has been developed around the Indus river system (including the Sarasvatī river), during the Harappan civilization (p.25 and p.28):

“although some dialects of Proto-Indo-European were probably already spoken in a number of adjacent areas, the socio-cultural developments in the Indus Valley further stabilized these dialects and helped them to spread even further over several millennia.
In the process of becoming one of the very first major world civilizations, the Harappans also developed a range of important cultural innovations that were specifically adapted to the maintenance of large-scale human civilization. […] the Harappan Civilization did not vanish without a trace. To the contrary, its cultural effects are everywhere present, and indeed even dominant, in the modern world, due to the distinctive traditions that it passed on to the various branches of the Indo-European language family.”

We should wait for the next article in order to judge the validity of this thesis, but I am already convinced that we should support the idea of the Harappan civilization as an ‘Indo-European’ creation. And that we should look with deep interest at a theory which sees in the ancient Indian civilization a source of the European civilization.

More on genetics: a possible proof of migration from India to Europe

2010-06-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

I have found online the already cited article of the American geneticist P.A. Underhill (et alia) on the genetic group R1a at the site http://www.scribd.com/doc/23322591/Underhill-Et-Al-2009-Separating-the-Post-Glacial-Coancestry-of-European-and-Asian-Y-Chromosomes-Within-Hap-Lo-Group-R1a

The little map in red colour here presented shows the calculated age of the haplogroup R1a1a-M17 in different Eurasian regions. It appears clearly that the most ancient area comprehends Sind and Gujarat. In the article, it is said: “Analysis of associated STR diversity proﬁles revealed that among the R1a1a*(xM458) chromosomes the highest diversity is observed among populations of the Indus Valley yielding coalescent times above 14 KYA (thousands of years ago), whereas the R1a1a* diversity declines toward Europe where its maximum diversity and coalescent times of 11.2 KYA are observed in Poland, Slovakia and Crete.” Moreover: “Also noteworthy is the drop in R1a1a* diversity away from the Indus Valley toward central Asia (Kyrgyzstan 5.6 KYA) and the Altai region (8.1 KYA) that marks the eastern boundary of signiﬁcant R1a1a* spread”.

So, on the basis of this calculations we arrive at the conclusion that a South Asian population spread first towards Europe and later towards Central Asia. Then, there is not an ancient migration from Europe to South Asia, or from Central Asia to South Asia, but the opposite.

If we want to connect R1a1a with the Indo-Europeans, and this is always tempting, because this haplogroup seems to be the only one which associates together with significant frequencies Indo-Aryans, Iranians, Anatolians, Greeks, Slavs, and Germanic peoples (less Romance and Celtic speakers), we should admit that the origin of Indo-Europeans is in South Asia, and not in Eastern Europe. Here, we find a mutation of the haplogroup, called R1a1a7:

“In Europe a large proportion of the R1a1a variation is represented by its presently identiﬁed subclade R1a1a7-M458 that is virtually absent in Asia. Its major frequency and relatively low diversity in Europe can be explained thus by a founder effect that according to our coalescent time estimation falls into the early Holocene period, 7.9±2.6 KYA. The highest regional date of 10.7±4.1 KYA among Polish R1a1a7 carriers falls into the period of recolonization of this region by Mesolithic (Swiderian and subsequent cultures) settlers. […] It should be noted, though, that the inevitably large error margins of our coalescent time estimates do not allow us to exclude its association with the establishment of the mainstream Neolithic cultures, including the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), that ﬂourished ca. 7.5-6.5 KYA BP in the Middle Danube (Hungary) and was spread further along the Rhine, Elbe, Oder, Vistula river valleys and beyond the Carpathian Basin.” Then, the R1a1a people in Eastern Europe could be connected with the Neolithic revolution in this area.

The antiquity of this subclade and its absence in Asia shows also that there was no migration from Europe to Central Asia in recent times: “Although the R1a1a* frequency and diversity is highest among Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers, the subhaplogroup R1a1a7-M458 frequency peaks among Slavic and Finno-Ugric peoples. Although this distinction by geography is not directly informative about the internal divisions of these separate language families, it might bear some signiﬁcance for assessing dispersal models that have been proposed to explain the spread of Indo-Aryan languages in South Asia as it would exclude any signiﬁcant patrilineal gene ﬂow from East Europe to Asia, at least since the mid-Holocene period.”

The mid-Holocene period is around 6000 years BP, that means that after 4000 BC we cannot suppose a migration from Europe to Central Asia and South Asia, and this refutes all the theories supposing that the Kurgan people of the Pontic region went to Afghanistan during the Bactria-Margiana civilization (III-II mill. BC) and then to India (II mill. BC).

On the other hand, the migration of R1a1a people from South Asia to Europe appears as much earlier than the supposed spread of Indo-European languages, before the Bronze Age, during the Mesolithic or Neolithic period. Then, if we connect R1a1a with the Indo-European speakers, we have to antedate this spread, and we have also to see much of the Neolithic Europe as already Indo-European, reversing Gimbutas’ theory of Old Europe but keeping the concept of a Paleolithic non-Indo-European presence, differently from the Continuity theory of Alinei and Costa. However, not all the R1a1a in Europe is R1a1a7, then maybe we cannot rule out later migrations of people with haplogroup R1a1a from Asia to Europe, bringing a new language: we have examples of migrations into Europe of Iranian peoples like Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, and of the Indian Gypsies, also in historical times.

The wonder that was Dholavira

2010-05-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

This image is one of the beautiful products of computer graphics found in the Japanese website

http://pubweb.cc.u-tokai.ac.jp/indus/english/2_4_03.html, under the supervision of R.S. Bisht, the director of the excavations of Dholavira, Harappan site in Gujarat. An interview of him can be seen on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjlY-1VfC_g

And here is a beautiful Indian documentary on Dholavira and its environment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_QME61uUWw&NR=1.

I remember the long way to Dholavira, through the Great Rann of Kacch, the grey-white salt wastes, and finally the arrival to the island of Khadir, the walk through the fields, the generous hospitality of the peasants. The day after, I saw the site in the early morning, impressed by the magnificent reservoirs, by the stone columns, by the dimensions of the town. It is certainly the most spectacular Harappan site in India, and it deserves the long and difficult travel. But beyond the impression, there is something concealed in the mathematical measures of Dholavira: already R.S. Bisht noticed that the ratio 5:4 of the castle and the city walls corresponded to that of Vedic altars in the Śulbasūtras. And Michel Danino has deepened the question, revealing complex mathematical relations and finding correspondences also in the Vāstu Śāstras: you can see the paper at:

http://www.iisc.ernet.in/prasthu/pages/PP_data/paper1.pdf.

He also remarks that the unit of measure of Dholavira is equivalent to 108 units of Lothal, as in Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra we read: “108 angulas make a dhanus (meaning a bow), a measure [used] for roads and city-walls....” We can also observe that in the description of the ideal cities in the Vāyu Purāṇa it is said that measures like aṅguli and dhanu were introduced in the Tretā Yuga when cities were built for the first time. Moreover, those cities had to be rectangular, oriented East-West or North-South, like the Harappan towns.

Such a continuity between Harappan and historic India is confirmed also by a study by two Italians: the indologist Prof. G.G. Filippi and the geo-archaeologist Dr. B.Marcolongo, who have studied the archaeological Early Historic site of Kāmpilya, observing that its plan coincided with that of Dholavira (Filippi (G.G.), Marcolongo (B.): 1999, Kāmpilya, Quest for a Mahābhārata City, New Delhi, see article on http://atimes.com/ind-pak/DC21Df02.html). On the continuity of the concept of city between Harappan and Early Historic periods, there is also the beautiful recent work (2008) of the Russian scholar P.A. Eltsov: From Harappa to Hastinapura. A Study of the Earliest South Asian City and Civilization. Eltsov does not take a definite position in the debate about the Vedic-Harappan relationship, but he acknowledges a common cultural tradition between the two periods, like in Kenoyer's concept of Indo-Gangetic tradition.

A voice from Greece for a New Indology

2010-04-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

There is one interesting site, made by an interesting Greek institute, Omilos Meleton (http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/en/indology_en.asp),

where are collected articles and letters by Kazanas (the director of the institute), Michel Danino and others. Particularly interesting for me are the paper about the "Mainstream Model", which suggests "that “fresh thinking” on all matters of Indian proto-history is absolutely necessary", and the letters of Steve Farmer and Aklujkar about the conference in California on 'Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization' which I mentioned in a previous post.

Farmer's letter seems to show that there is a sort of academic league centered on Michael Witzel against the critics of the Aryan Invasion Theory, who are heavily ridiculed with the typical American 'bon ton', or easily demonized as followers of political 'Hindutva' agendas. Quo usque tandem, we would say quoting Cicero's oration against Catilina: "till when" the supporters of AIT will go on with these tactics and prejudices and superiority complex?

What is an 'Aryan'?

2010-03-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

The explorer A.C.L. Carlleyle wrote in 1879:

We British Europeans are Aryans, and far more pure and genuine Aryans than the Hindus, and no talk of the Hindus can alter our race [...] It is the Hindus who have altered and deteriorated, and not we! The Hindu has become the coffee dregs, while we have remained the cream of the Aryan race. [...] The Hindu has become a sooty, dingy-coloured earthen pot, by rubbing against black aborigines rather too freely; and he consequently pretends to despise the white porcelain bowl.

(cited by D.K. Chakrabarti in The Battle for Ancient India. An Essay in the Sociopolitics of Indian Archaeology, New Delhi 2008)

It is really paradoxical that many European thinkers, after having adopted the concept of ‘Aryan’ from the Sanskrit and Avestan traditions, came to believe that Europeans (British, Germans, Italians, French) were the real Aryans, certainly more than the Indians, because the Aryans are white and blonde, and Indians are evidently mixed with a dark race…

But all this speaking of an Aryan race appears as an obsession of the modern Europeans, substantially ignored by those who actually used the term ārya-, which in India meant ‘noble’, indicating Brahmins, Kṣatriyas and Vaiśyas, the educated people who had access to the Vedas, to Sanskrit language, and were consecrated by the Vedic rites. The birth in a certain lineage was important, but that ‘nobility’ was certainly also a cultural fact, and it was not a matter of skin colour. We have two great ‘Āryas’ of the tradition which are called ‘Kr̥ṣṇa’, which means ‘black’: the famous king of the Yādavas and divine teacher of the Gīta, and Vyāsa, the Brahmin who collected the Vedas, named Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana. In the Vedas, Āryas are opposed to Dāsas, which means ‘servants’, or to Dasyus, which is more specifically used for ‘barbarians’; in the Purāṇas we find them opposed to Śūdras, wich means, again, ‘servants, labourers’. This opposition was also ethnic, as many tribes outside the confines of the ‘Āryāvarta’ (situated in North India between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas), were considered Dasyus or Śūdras, but without distinction about the skin colour: also Iranians (Pahlavas) and Greeks (Yavanas) were considered as degenerated Kṣatriyas. I do not know, but I imagine that a similar conception was applied to the Englishmen, provoking the reaction of Carlleyle…

Outside of the Vedic tradition, in Buddhism, ārya was even applied to the ‘four noble Truths’ taught by the Buddha, and to those ‘Noble ones’ who could see them, irrespective of their social origin. In the Mahāyāna teachings, the same qualification is given to those who can see directly the ultimate reality, the profound ‘emptiness’ of phenomena. In those contexts, really the race was not taken into consideration, because ārya is there a spiritual status to be attained.

A bit different is the situation in the Avesta of Iranians, because there ‘Airya’ indicates clearly a people different from ‘Tuiryas’ and others, and was used as a name of the Iranians. The Vendidad, an Avestan text which has an important geographical introduction, also speaks of the ‘Airyanəm Vaējō’, which can mean ‘land of the swift rivers of the Aryans’, but which has been interpreted by Darmesteter (1898) as the ‘seed of the Aryans’ (http://www.avesta.org/vendidad/vd1sbe.htm).

It is described as an ideal land where the progenitor Yima collected the creatures, included the best specimens of the humans, to save them from a terrible winter (cp. also the interesting page http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/location.htm). This myth seems to have suggested a new myth in the first Europeans discovering this literature…

In fact, when the Europeans, in the nineteenth century, began to familiarize with the Sanskrit and Avestan traditions, they were in a colonialist and positivistic frame of mind, they were inclined to see all in terms of biological races, and of the superiority of the white race… Previously, ethnic, social and religious differences were more important, and the East was seen as the origin of civilization and wisdom (also the Christian religion came from Asia), but in the nineteenth century they saw everywhere the supremacy of the white Europeans, and they were induced to think that this was due to a racial, intrinsic superiority. Moreover, they had to justify somehow their dominion. The concept of ‘Aryan’, with its meaning of ‘noble’, attracted their minds, it became an enticing title of nobility, which they interpreted in a racial sense, because that apparently was the only way in which they could conceive it. Not only, the new great powers, after the initial colonial supremacy of Spaniards and Portuguese, were Great Britain, France and Germany, whose peoples were characterized by more Nordic features, and by a descent from Germans and Celts. Such ancient peoples were traditionally considered as uncivilized barbarians (from the Greek and Latin point of view), but through the identification of Aryans with Nordic Europeans, they could become the best and original specimens of the ‘Aryan race’. Since they could not claim an ancient civilization, they had to justify their supremacy on the base of the mere racial identity.

The first important theorist of this Aryan race was the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau (here on the left), who, at the middle of the XIX century asserted that the "master race" were the Northern European "Aryans", who had remained "racially pure". Southern Europeans (including Spaniards and Southern Frenchmen), Eastern Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterners, Iranians, Central Asians, Indians, he all considered racially mixed, degenerated through the miscegenation, and thus less than ideal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan).

He was a Catholic, but evidently influenced by the Positivistic biological attitude, which deeply influenced also the theorists of esotericism, like the founder of theosophy, Blavatsky, who saw the Aryans as the Fifth Race, coming from Atlantis and superior to the Semites, or Edouard Schuré (here on the right), who in his Les grands initiés (1899) displays a history of mankind based on four races: red, black, yellow and white, coming from four different continents. The white race came from Europe, developed the Aryan civilization in Iran, and went to invade India, where the “pure conquering race of the Aryans found itself between other races very mixed and much inferior, strange crossbreeding of yellow and red types, which for a thousand subtle gradations descended to black.” The French esotericist compares the Hindu civilization to a mountain with, at the base, the ‘melanic’ race, source of ardent passions, on the top the ‘pure Aryans’, with their moral sense and sublime metaphysical aspirations. So, we find the race connected with moral and spiritual values, without explaining the reason for such a connection.

After these simplistic racist speculations, the theories of an Indian Pandit, Lachhmi Dhar Kalla, expounded in 1930 (when in Germany the Nazi ideology was spreading) in his The Home of the Aryas, appear as much more enlightened. He sustained that the original homeland of the ‘Aryas’ (meant mainly in a linguistic sense), for various reasons (the most original being that of the unity of Vedic and Proto-Indoeuropean accent) was the Northwestern Himalaya. In the conclusion (pp.106-7) he states that the Aryas in the past have always supported a synthesis with the races they met: in India they gave us the concept of Bharata Varsha, the united India of all races (also Dravidians and Mundas) and in the West they united with non-Aryan races (the European natives) and they elevated them to the level of their culture. For the future of India, he prospects a union also with the ‘Semitic cultural groups’ (represented by Muslims and apparently also by Christians), union which he calls Neo-Hindustan. At the end, he embarks on a panegyric of the unifying action of the Aryas:

After centuries of work, the Aryas have now prepared the world for such a larger unity of mankind by creating a common mentality in different races through the diffusion of the Aryan language in distant parts of the world. [...] We must thank the ancient Arya, the 'Indo-European' man, who thus long ago laid the foundations of the unity of the East and the West, and took the fire of his civilization to every home he could find.

We see here how the concept of ‘Arya’, indicating the Indo-European but carrying an idea of nobility, could be used in a non-racist sense, affirming a cultural superiority which does not bring to self-segregation, but to union with other races and cultures. Today even such a cultural exaltation of Indo-Europeans appears as dangerous and inacceptable (besides, Kalla himself states that he does not want to ignore the cultural value of Semites and Chinese), but the call for a culture shared by the Indo-European speakers can still be valid, as an ancient bridge between some peoples of the East (Indians and Iranians) and many peoples of the West.

Particularly valid seems to me the idea that Indo-Europeans melted in the West with non-Indo-European local peoples (why natives should always be black or red?), including the Brits, who genetically are very far from the genetic scenery of Indians, Iranians, Slavs and Balts.

So, since these peoples, on a linguistic basis, are the nearest to Proto-Indo-Europeans, the Brits, also from Carlleyle’s racial point of view, do not result exactly as "far more pure and genuine Aryans than the Hindus". On the other hand, how could the imperialists grant the colonized and ‘Easterners’ the honour of representing the people of the ‘Noble Ones’?

Archaeological discoveries and Vedic traditions

2010-02-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

The last March, an important archaeological discovery has been divulged: near the village of Farmana, Haryana, India, where excavations were already carried out in 2008 by an Indo-Japanese team (I was there in March 2008 thanks to my friend Shungo Kameyama), it has been discovered a burial site with 70 graves, of the Mature Harappan Period
(http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/003205.html ).

The typical traits of these burials are a rectangular form and a NW-SE orientation. The director of the excavations, Prof. Vasant Shinde of Deccan College, Pune, asserts in an interview: "All the graves are rectangular - different from other Harappan burials sites, which usually have oblong graves", but, according to S.P. Gupta, in Disposal of the Dead and Physical Types in Ancient India (Delhi 1972), p.75, in Harappan cemeteries the body was buried in 'oblong pits' which, when more carefully dug, "assumed rectangular shapes". Apparently, the graves of Farmana belong to this category. Shinde adds: "The site shows evidence of primary (full skeleton), secondary (only some bones) and symbolic burials, with most graves oriented northwest-southeast, though there are some with north-south and northeast-southwest orientations as well. The variations in burial orientation suggests different groups in the same community".

Now, I would like to make a comparison with what Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa XIII.8.1.5 says (I use here Julius Eggeling’s translation given on the excellent site http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbr/sbe44/sbe44113.htm#fr_1132 :

Four-cornered (is the sepulchral mound). Now the gods and the Asuras, both of them sprung from Pragâpati, were contending in the (four) regions (quarters). The gods drove out the Asuras, their rivals and enemies, from the regions, and, being regionless, they were overcome. Wherefore the people who are godly make their burial-places four-cornered, whilst those who are of the Asura nature, the Easterns and others, (make them) round, for they (the gods) drove them out from the regions. He arranges it so as to lie between the two regions, the eastern and the southern, for in that region assuredly is the door to the world of the Fathers: through the above he thus causes him to enter the world of the Fathers; and by means of the (four) corners he (the deceased) establishes himself in the regions, and by means of the other body (of the tomb) in the intermediate regions: he thus establishes him in all the regions.

As it can be seen, the burial is oriented towards south-east like the greatest part of the graves in Farmana. S.P. Gupta (ibidem) speaks generically of a north-south orientation for the Harappan burials, with the head northwards, but here in Farmana we have something even more specific, coinciding with the Vedic conceptions expressed in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. This text should be placed, according to my chronology, after 1300 B.C., but it can surely preserve unchanged traditional conceptions, like that of the association of the south-eastern region with the world of the Fathers (which in other Vedic passages is more simply associated with the southern region). Not only: according to ŚBr.XIII.8.1.9, the north-western region is the direction of ‘the living ones’ (jīvānām).

It is not finished here: when I visited the site of Farmana in 2008, I also went to a flat field in the near countryside, where the archaeologists had found some traces of burials (I imagine that that was the place of the subsequent discovery): through a local student who knew English, I asked the peasants if the ground was salty, and they said that it was actually so. I made this question because a study on the cemetery of the Harappan site of Kalibangan, by A.K. Sharma, The Departed Harappans of Kalibangan (New Delhi, 1999), p.104, observed that the ground of the cemetery has a high percentage of salt, and that this corresponded to what the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa said, in XIII.8.1.14:

He makes it on salt (barren) soil, for salt means seed; the productive thus makes him partake in productiveness, and in that respect, indeed, the Fathers partake in productiveness that they have offspring: his offspring assuredly will be more prosperous.

Then, it seems that there are strong elements to prove the uniformity with the Vedic tradition of these ancient Indians of 2600-2200 B.C. Now we wait with interest the results of the analysis of the DNA of the bones, carried out in Kyoto: it should belong mainly to the Ancentral North Indian type, and if the chromosome Y showed a R1a1a haplogroup, that would exclude the opinions attributing this haplogroup to external Indo-Aryans coming in the II mill. B.C., and would make more acceptable the identification of the Harappans with an 'Indo-European' people.

P.S.: there is a recent publication about the Farmana burial site (as you can see in http://www.kkagencies.co.in/index.php?p=sr&Uc=4197799805467478335 or http://easternbookcorporation.com/moreinfo.php?txt_searchstring=17317 ).

An interesting document of the importance of the Farmana site not only for the cemetery is given by Steve Farmer in this message after a conference in Japan: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/12573 This opens the question of the regional characters of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, which - I find - harmonize with the traditional division of the five tribes… but this is another story…

Signs of the Transition

2010-01-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

http://nalandainternational.org/IndusConference/indusconference.htm

One of the signs of the advent of a ‘new Indology’ is a recent international conference held on 21-22 February 2009, at the Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles) entitled “The Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilizations: A Reappraisal” (link and image above), with some of the most important names of the Indian archaeology from India and the USA: S.R. Rao, R.S. Bisht, Kenoyer and Shaffer. Moreover, there was an expert of the question of the Aryan invasion like E. Bryant and also a Greek scholar, Kazanas, one of the few Westerners criticizing the invasion theory and the official chronology of the Vedas.

What is particularly interesting in this conference is its opening to positions regarded as heretical by the academic establishment (also in the US); then it gives some hope for an authentic debate and for the Great Transition which various hints suggest as being underway: from the old paradigm to a new one, no more based on the aprioristic theory of the Aryan invasion or migration into India.

(On the base of this conference a volume is going to be published on the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization, where also a contribution of mine - dealing with a new chronology of the Rigveda and a comparison between archaeology and Indian historical tradition - has been unexpectedly invited; it is already completed and accepted, now waiting for the editing)

One of the driving forces of the Transition is surely Koenraad Elst, Belgian scholar who has written, inter alia, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, a book which I found in the library of the “Scuola Normale Superiore” of Pisa six years ago, and which opened to me a new world in the field of South Asia, leading to a real conversion from the ‘invasionism’ to a new perspective. He has a blog where I found also the recension of the last book of Talageri, (http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2009/01/great-book-about-great-book.html) one of the most militant authors of the new Indian wave of ‘indigenism’ or OIT (Out of India Theory, in the synthetic label dear to Elst), that is the theory supporting the Indian origin of all the Indo-European peoples. I bought the book and read it (almost totally…) and it is really more sophisticate than the previous ones, but similar to his The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (Delhi 2000). One of the pros of Talageri is his systematic method, and his results in the comparison of Rigveda and Avesta are quite remarkable, but I do not agree with all his views (particularly the identity Anu-Iranians and Druhyu-Europeans). Anyway, his engagement in the research of the historical truth as an outsider (he has no academic training) should be taken into account by a new Indology.

The contribution of recent genetic research to the reconstruction of Indian past and identity

2010-01-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

A new genetic study, made by scientists based in India and the United States, has revealed that the Indian population descends from two main components: Ancestral South Indians, arrived in the subcontinent around 65000 years ago, and Ancestral North Indians, arrived around 45000 years ago. The northern component is akin to Central Asian, Middle Eastern and European populations, whereas the southern one appears originally very different from Ancestral North Indians ("is as distinct from ancestral north Indians and East Asians as they are from each other"), even if during the millennia it has widely mingled with their descendants, creating the present Indians.

The presumed Aryan invasion of the II millennium B.C. is eclipsed by these data, and the origin of castes is identified in endogamous usages emerged from local tribes, and not from foreign invasions:

Another finding is that the castes and tribes in the country are not systematically different. "(The study) supports the view that castes grew directly out of tribal-like organisations during the formation of Indian society," said Kumarasamy Thangaraj, another CCMB scientist. Singh said the castes grew directly out of tribal set-ups during the formation of Indian society.
Some historians had argued that caste in modern India was an invention of colonialism in the sense that it became more rigid under colonial rule, but the "results indicate that many current distinctions among groups are ancient and that strong endogamy (matrimony within one's own isolated group) must have shaped marriage patterns in India for thousands of years".

(http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_indians-are-one-people-descended-from-two-tribes_1292864)

In an article on the Times of India (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/Indian-scientist-set-to-change-world-history/articleshow/5301655.cms) we find some other interesting assertions made by Prof. Singh in a conference in Varanasi at the beginning of December:

Saying that Indian population was made up of many populations that have varied genetic compositions, he also added recent studies on DNA linkage indicated an invisible thread (trait) that bounded the Indian population comprising populations of other countries in the sub-continent including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, believed to have originated almost 33,000 years ago.
"The study is on to trace the ancestors of Ancestor North Indian (ANI) population, while the ancestors of Ancestor South Indian (ASI) population has been already traced," he said. "Ongee and Jarva species have been established to be the ancestors of ASI population while DNA matching has found resemblance of East African population with Kurumbha species in Kerala and Raghuvanshi of West Bengal," he added.
"We are looking for DNA from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir to trace the origin of ANI population and once that is established, we would be in a position to indicate the movement of ANI population towards European countries that would change the face of world history," he said.

Here you can read another popular article about the same research:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Aryan-Dravidian-divide-a-myth-Study/articleshow/5053274.cms

Here is the page of the scientific article with the abstract:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/nature08365.html

And here you can find freely available supplementary information:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/extref/nature08365-s1.pdf

Another recent study, by Sharma et al., published exactly one year ago on the Journal of Human Genetics (http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/v54/n1/abs/jhg20082a.html), is also concerned with the origin of castes and particularly of Brahmins. It says:

"The observation of R1a* in high frequency for the first time in the literature, as well as analyses using different phylogenetic methods, resolved the controversy of the origin of R1a1*, supporting its origin in the Indian subcontinent. Simultaneously, the presence of R1a1* in very high frequency in Brahmins, irrespective of linguistic and geographic affiliations, suggested it as the founder haplogroup for the population. The co-presence of this haplogroup in many of the tribal populations of India, its existence in high frequency in Saharia (present study) and Chenchu tribes, the high frequency of R1a* in Kashmiri Pandits (KPs—Brahmins) as well as Saharia (tribe) and associated phylogenetic ages supported the autochthonous origin and tribal links of Indian Brahmins, confronting the concepts of recent Central Asian introduction and rank-related Eurasian contribution of the Indian caste system."

That means that the traditional theory of the external origin of Indo-Aryans with their priests, the Brahmins, holders of the sacred Vedic language, is not supported by the genetic research. The haplogroup R1a1 (R1a1a in Underhill's classification, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R1a1#cite_ref-6), characterized by the mutation M17, has been associated to the Indo-Europeans, and an outdated theory placed its origin in Ukraine, that is in the Kurgan area, apparently supporting Gimbutas' theory. But in India not only we find this haplogroup exceptionally frequent in Brahmins (72.22 % in West Bengal Brahmins), but also quite frequent in tribals like Saharia (Munda speakers, 28.07%) and Chenchu (Dravidian speakers, 26.82%). The highest known variance of R1a1* among Kashmiri Pandits (0.52), is a sign that in this population it is older than in the other ones object of study.

In this image you can see the frequency of R1a1a (old R1a1) according to Underhill et al., showing the high concentration of this haplogroup in South Asia and in Eastern Europe, which appears as a second source of diffusion of this haplogroup, and possibly of the related Indo-European languages.
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ejhg2009194a.html

Here is the map (from the cited Sharma's study) of the diversity within the R1a1* haplogroup, clearly showing the maximum in Kashmir and Northern India, thus suggesting the origin of the haplogroup from this area. Here is possible to compare the data about the variance and connected age of the haplogroup in different populations:
http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/v54/n1/fig_tab/jhg20082t3.html#figure-title

Why a new Indology?

2010-01-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

Because Indology is in a period when a change of paradigm is required. The traditional theory of the Aryan invasion and the related chronology are challenged by the new archaeological picture of South Asia, by the discoveries in the field of genetics, and by the new Indian school of indigenism applied to the Vedic literature. Instead of defending the old paradigm, it would be better to elaborate a new one, open to continual revision, but based on the following points:

1) The theory of an Aryan invasion of South Asia has no definite grounds in literature, archaeology, anthropology and genetics.

2) The traditional chronology of the Vedas is not justified, but purely hypothetical, and we should try to reconstruct a new chronology on a valid basis.

3) The Harappan civilisation is to be considered as related to the Vedic civilisation, since the area, and partly the period, are the same.
4) The recent studies in the field of archaeology and anthropology reveal continuity in the Indian prehistory and protohistory.
5) We should give more attention to the Indian historical tradition, following in F.E. Pargiter's footsteps.

That means that we must rethink many ideas about Aryan and pre-Aryan, all the connected racist myths as well as the simplistic division between cultural elements derived from the Aryans and from the pre-Aryans. That also means that we must rethink the relationship between the Indian culture and the other Indo-European cultures and we must investigate if South Asia can be the cradle of the Indo-European languages.

This ‘new Indology’ which rises obviously does not claim to cancel the ‘old Indology’, based on the ‘invasionist’ scenario, because certainly it does not lose all its validity, since fortunately it was not only dealing with the Aryan invasion. But we should accept that we cannot continue to affirm and spread the old paradigm as if it were a natural truth, as if nothing had happened in the knowledge of the Indian past. Change requires effort and maybe correction of what we have stated in the past, but it is the law of the world, of science, and a fascinating challenge.