Book Review: Early Indians

Early Indians
  -- Tony Joseph

I am always interested in knowing "How are we here?", rather than "Why are we here?". As today's science can't answer the second question, I am not even interested in reading stuff that tries hard to explain it. Early Indians falls in the category of books that help in answering the first question - How did we get here, where did we come from? 

The attempt to explain The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From takes help from largely three different scientific disciplines - Archeology, Genetics, and Linguistics, which in turn use various other disciplines to analyse data and draw some conclusions. Archeological excavations expose various artefacts that include human and animal skeletons, tools used by them, and sometimes whole cities.  Carbon dating of these artefacts gives an idea about their age.  Genetics helps in understanding the lineage of various populations. Y-chromosome and mtDNA play major role in discovering lineages. Y-chromosome(passed by father and only father) helps in finding paternal lineage, while mtDNA(passed by mother and only mother) helps with maternal lineage. Using these two, connections can be established, practically among entire world population. Linguistics helps with missing part of the puzzle - various languages and connections among them. 

The author takes help from these three disciplines, and explains the population history of current India. He highlights four important phases in Indian history. The first humans, that arrived around 70,000 years ago from Africa. They can be called the First Migrants in India (Onge of Andaman Islands may be the direct descendants of these first Indians). It took another 60,000 years for them to start farming. Around the same time, farming started in a few other places in the world, with Zagros (today's Iran) being a prominent one. Second prominent migration into India is of Agriculturalists from Zagros, who together with the first migrants became the First Farmers. This is around 9000 BCE. 

It took another 7000 years(~2000 BCE) for this farming population to create the great Harappan Civilisation (Indus Valley Civilisation) - the third phase, which is in today's Pakistan, the most advanced civilisation of its time, contemporary to another advanced civilisation in Mesopotamia. Though the script used by Harappans is not deciphered yet, based on the analysis of derivatives of their language, historians call it Proto-Dravidian, an ancestor of Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam - spoken by around 20% of Indians today). Harappan civilisation went extinct in a few hundred years. Some of them moved south in India, mixed with the first Indians to give rise to ASI - Ancient South Indians. Around the same time(~ 1000 BCE), another event happened - probably the most controversial (due to today's politics in India), The Last Migration into India - by The Aryans, the Steppe Pastoralists from Eurasia. Aryans mixed with Harappans to give rise to ANI - Ancient North Indians. That's the last mix of genome. Today's Indian population can clearly be identified as successors of ANI & ASI.

Vedic civilisation is created after the last migration, which is post-Harappan. A few prominent things that are part of Vedic culture (Rigveda, the first veda to start with) - like Horse and elaborate sacrificial rituals are conspicuous by their absence in Harappan Civilisation. A few rivers that are discussed in Rigveda (like river Sarasvati) also gave some pointers to ascertain the time of its composition. Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages (Spoken by around 70% of Indians today) are also born after the last migration or along with it. Around the same time Steppe Pastoralists moved west as well. That also explains the spread of Indo-European languages. 

Though Greeks, Huns, Parsis, Arabs, Mughals, Dutch, Portuguese, French and finally British entered India, post Aryans, the genome mix didn't happen. There is also a brief discussion in the book about the potential origin of caste system, that probably kept endogamy going.

Though it sounds like an over simplification of 70,000 years of history, it definitely gives a good perspective, and a death blow to narrow-minded and prejudiced views, that large part of today's India is suffering from. I never understood the point of Identity, and the pride around it. The insight, that one can get from this kind of books, would only make one more averse to concepts like Identity. And, it's for better!

And, one line takeaway would be - We are all migrants here! :-)