Aryan invasion debate

[Koenraad Elst]

Dear Mr. Samar Abbas,

When time permits, I'll study your data more closely.  For now:

1) "Out of Africa": I have never seen an argumentation against the AIT
(though there are other, non-AIT-related such argumentations, in India like
in the West) which denied the general theory of evolution of mankind,
including the African origin of mankind.  Sure, all Indians, including the
white Kashmiris and yellow Nagas and black Tamils, originated in Africa,
maybe 100,000 years ago or so.  I have no problem with that though I think
you are overconfident about its universal acceptance: B Sergent (PhD in
anthropology) at least argues that the non-African Homo Erectus has left
genetic traces in the xanthodermic race.  Not being a specialist, I'll
refrain from voicing an opinion on that; at any rate, all Indians ultimately
descend from inhabitants of the common homeland of mankind.  The whitish
type must have developed or "appeared" in northwestern India in the same
period as it did in Mesopotamia, which is in the same climate belt, long
before the date assigned to the Aryan invasion.  Though this type made up
most of the Indo-Aryan speakers in the Vedic age, I am not at all sure that
the original Proto-IE speakers belonged to this type.  The IE language
family has crossed racial frontiers on several occasions (regardless of
which homeland and original race one assumes), and may have already done so
in the pre-Vedic age.  Talageri posits an IE "invasion" in the Harappan area
coming from the Gangetic plain, which has a much less whitish physical type
of inhabitants; Some Tamils say Manu Vaivasvata came from South India and
sought refuge in the north from the rising post-Glaciation sea, so that he
was black but then mixed with the lighter people up there, thus creating the
mongrel race of Proto-Indo-Europeans, etc.

2) The Utah/Hyderabad research on genetics and caste: I've only seen the
brief report in the Indian press, which said, confirming many earlier
studies and what anyone can see with his own eyes, that upper and lower
caste Indians are much closer to each other genetically than either is to
any foreign population, e.g. Panjabi Brahmins (say, Arun Shourie) are closer
to Panjabi Chamars (say, Kanshi Ram) than the first is to the Iranian or the
second is to the African or even the South-Indian of any caste.  That is
also what Dr. Ambedkar had argued at some length.  However:

3) The Afro-Dravidian connection: apart from ultimate African origins at the
dawn of mankind, I have nothing against much more recent connections between
Africa and a section of the Indian population, notably the Dravidians.
Whether it is Murungu/Murugan, or the board game palankulli/manancal, or the
lexical and grammatical similarities between Dravidian and a number of Sahel
languages, or even genetic "isoglosses", I'll concede that Afro-Dravidian
connection gladly (though you'll have to cross swords with the Tamil
chauvinists about which was the country of origin).  It makes no difference
to the homeland question of IE.  Indeed, one of many possibilities is that
the Aryan-Dravidian encounter was one between Aryan natives and Dravidian
invaders.

Yours sincerely,
Koenraad Elst
http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/