A new book challenges the link between ancient Indian society and the Vedas

Where do we actually come from and who were our ancestors? This has always been a loaded question. The answers are sometimes creation myths and sometimes narratives driven by bigotry and racism. But as science has advanced, it has started throwing up more definitive answers and some of those may be unpalatable.

This book takes a dispassionate look at the implications of a series of recent genetic studies that prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the Aryans were latecomers to the subcontinent. It will rouse the ire of Hindu supremacists who base claims of India’s cultural exceptionalism on an assumption that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of the subcontinent, and believe that a “pure” Indian society must be based on Vedic and Brahminical norms. Indeed, many of them use “invader” as a cuss word, targeting Muslims and Christians as latecomers and tribals as mlecchas.

The story of human migrations has been transformed by recent advances in genetics, and by the ability to extract ancient DNA and rapidly carry out genomic studies. Coupled with modern linguistic analysis and archaeological evidence, this has led to massive changes in our understanding of how populations have intermingled.

Joseph (disclosure: he’s a former boss and we remain on good terms) has been tracking developments in this space for many years. As he says, an early fascination with Harappa gradually led to a broader interest in the origins of Indians. He lays out an accessible explanation of the basic science and then stitches together a compelling narrative that cites those studies to explain why India, and indeed the world, is what it is.

Genetics has advanced to the point where scientists can state certain things with near certainty through DNA analysis. Mitochrondial DNA is (almost always) completely contributed by the mother. The Y chromosome in males is completely contributed by the father.

Every human being currently alive can trace his or her ancestry back to “Mitochondrial Eve”, an African woman, who is our common ancestor. Scientists can examine genetic mutations and figure out roughly how long ago they occurred. By comparing whole genomes of different populations and of current humans with ancient humans, it is also possible to estimate when certain genes were introduced to a population. It is possible to judge if the new genes came from the male line or the female. Many stunning deductions have followed as these techniques have been refined and genetic databases have expanded to incorporate larger samples.

 Meanwhile, linguistic experts can figure out how modern languages evolved with loan words, and they can reconstruct likely ancestor or proto-languages. Archaeologists can compare tools, artefacts, food habits, burial customs, ornaments,  rituals, and so on to judge how cultures influenced each other.

Tied together, this has led to an entirely new understanding of migrations and intermingling.  Sometime in the last 80,000 years, a small group of Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa. Their descendants eventually wiped out, or subsumed, earlier archaic human species and ended up dominating the world.

The subcontinent has always been a huge population centre. Modern humans — Homo Sapiens — arrived there perhaps 65,000 years ago. Archaic humans — Paleolithic tool users who belonged to strains that went extinct — were present at least 350,000 years ago. Homo sapiens then took over. At the same time, sapiens moved into Europe and the Steppes of Central Asia and Russia. They also crossed into America via what is now the Bering Straits. The genetics of those populations diverged. 

Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From; Author: Tony Joseph; Publisher: Juggernaut; Pages: 288; Price: Rs 699

 

By 7000 BCE, there was agriculture and animal husbandry in Mehrgarh (Pakistan). The Harappan civilisation circa 2700 BCE was descended from those early settlers. Ancient DNA from three individual members of that population were analysed in a Central Asian study where they were obvious outliers. These ancient Indians possessed a genome that contained Ancestral Indian genes and genes in common with some Iranian pastoralists. They did not possess Steppe-dweller genes.

Recent genetic studies at Rakhigarhi (Haryana), which took place after this book was written, confirmed that Harappans don’t have Steppe dweller genes. Modern Indians do have Steppe-dweller genes, which seem to appear only around 2000 BCE. Moreover, a higher concentration of Steppe-dweller genes seem to be found in North Indian genomes. Even more conclusively, the percentage of Steppe-dweller genes was higher among Brahmins and other high-caste North Indians. The possibility that the migration occurred the other way can be ruled out because modern Steppe dwellers don’t have ancestral Indian genes.

When David Reich of Harvard’s genetic lab co-authored a study with Lalji Singh and Kumarasamy Thangaraj of Hyderabad’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, they realised that this was culturally explosive because it confirmed the Aryan Invasion Theory. 

They decided to soften the political impact by renaming the groups, Ancestral South Indian (ASI) and Ancestral North Indian (ANI).

Every modern Indian, with the possible exception of isolated Andamanese and Nicobarese tribes, has a mix of ASI and ANI genes. There seems to have been more or less free intermingling of groups between 2000 BCE and about 100 BCE when mixing seems to have frozen. After that, endogamy (marrying only within community) became the norm, implying that is when the caste system took hold. As a result, Reich points out in his seminal Who We Are, India now consists of a very large number of small populations that are contiguous but genetically distinct.

Archaeological evidence and linguistics research suggests that the Harappans spoke a proto-Dravidian language and they migrated south abandoning their cities due to drought. The Aryans remained pastoral nomads for hundreds of years. The absence of the horse, venerated by the Aryans, from the Harappa culture further buttresses the hypothesis that the Harappans were not Aryans. There’s also evidence that, after initial resistance, the Aryans adopted some Harappan norms, such as the veneration of phallic symbols and holy trees.

Science, therefore, suggests that the modern Indian is a syncretic mixture of genes and cultures. As Joseph puts it, the base of the Indian pizza is ASI and ANI, with a very complex sauce of cultures and religions. That metaphor is somewhat tortured but the rest of the book is engaging and lucid. The end-notes are copiously detailed.  Read it and follow up on the citations if you want to learn more about yourself and your ancestors.