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

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). In this context, it is impressing to observe that in Tajikistan we also find striking parallels to the burial rituals followed by the Corded Ware culture, in the Vakhsh and Beshkent cultures: the bodies laid on their sides, hunched up, with arms bent at the elbow and legs at the knee, men on the right side, and women on the left side. In the Beshkent culture, the orientation is often east-west. Moreover, according to the anthropologist Carleton S. Coon, the skull type of the Corded Ware burials is very close to the present Irano-Afghan type.  
Shugnans and Ishkashimis 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, who developed so many prehistoric and historical civilizations of Europe and Asia. 

An Indian origin for Western Law and Civilization?

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

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

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

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'?

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

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…