Yeah, the 20th c claim that the Aryans were indigenous is just anachronistic nationalist (and isolationist) agitprop.
IndoEuropean languages have no common word for large bodies of water (IOW, each language borrowed a word from whatever locals they found when they first saw the sea); added to the fact that some odd practices described in their own ancient literature have been found only in archaeological contexts in Central Asia, and used plants that only grow there, it’s no coincidence that the Aryan invasion of India (also found in their own ancient literature) came down out of the central Asian highlands — just as Alexander the Great did later, and in fairly recent times, the Muzzies.
The Indus Valley scripts of the Harappan civ, though still unread, appear to have been used to record an agglutinative language (Sumerian, or something related, is a possibility, as the Sumerians themselves came from the east, by their own account), and there’s no sign of the all-important horse — all-important to the Aryans, that is. IOW, regardless of the colonization pattern of the Harappans (recent study has shown the northwestern sites are not older, but newer), the Aryans came from Central Asia. :’)
Right.
What I find bizarre is that many Indians are passionate about the issue. They get really, really upset if anyone suggests that Europe and India may have both gotten their dominant languages from a Central Asian source. Meanwhile nobody in Europe or America seems to be in the least offended by the possibility. I just don’t understand why Indians find the idea offensive.
There were many, many invasions of India from the north and northwest. Alexander and the Moguls were just two of the best known.
India, by ancient standards, was wealthy and fertile. Tribes and nations stuck in Central Asia or Afghanistan had major incentives to raid or invade down onto the plains.
But those already living in the plains had little or no incentive to move up into the much harsher conditions of the mountains and deserts. So they didn’t, except for some empires that conquered parts of Afghanistan and thereabouts with the idea of stopping the raids and invasions. Which never worked for long.
“...the Aryans came from Central Asia.”
Yeah, that’s what I was taught at university, too. Genetics and microbiology has changed all that in the interim, especially in the subcontinent of India.
Glad you brought up the Sumerians, as they are an interesting group. Fifteen thousand years ago the entire Persian Gulf was dry land and that dry land extended for dozens of kilometers out towards the Indian Ocean, past the present Straight of Hormuz, past today’s nation of Oman, and out into the Gulf of Oman.
The continental shelf along the Indian Ocean was broad enough and furthermore, ice free, allowing travel along its great length. Since the future Australian aborigines travels by boat to Australia 40,000 years ago, no doubt travel by boat existed across the Indian Ocean, which explains why drowned pyramids can be found off the Maldives Islands, the southern tip of India, ziggurats in ancient Sumeria, and of course pryramids in present-day Egypt.
So much water was locked up in ice that much of the world’s sea level was three hundred to four hundred feet lower than todays’ sea level. Many of the areas most comfortable to humans back then would have been found around the Indian Ocean and particularly where today’s ‘drowned’ Indonesian archipelago, back then dry land, exists today. Becasue it took so long for the much of that sea level to gradually rise - between 15,000 to 8,000 years ago - entire populations had time to migrate.
The Aryans, if they ever really existed as a singular population, are ‘johnny-come-lately’ in terms of migratory groups.
The remains of stone cities can be found off the coastlines of India. Pyramids have been sighted underwater around the Maldives Islands. Our western-oriented archaeological experts have a hard time getting their minds around just how ancient the human civilizations around the Indian Ocean just might be, because they’ve been closely examining past human populations who were surviving on the edge of wildernesses up north.
We’re just beginning to recognize that large ancient populations lived in the Brazilian river basin and that the “Rain Forest” isn’t as timeles, enduring and primevil as greenies would wish it to be.
Here’s something for you to ponder: there is a breed of horse known today as the Akhal-teke. It is the single oldest horse breed in the world and is the source for most refined horse breeds in existence today. This breed or type of horse is found in the tombs of the ancient Scythians and all across the steppes into western Mongolia. It is a highly refined appearing horse (two of the three founding stallions of the Thoroughbred Horse used for racing were Akhal-tekes) and was used as a war horse not just of the Turkomen tribes in Central Asia, but the ancient Greeks and Egyptians depicted this horse on friezes pulling war chariots thousands of years ago. The remains of this ancient horse never appear anywhere in Pakistan nor India; in Persia, yes. Never in India or the Indus River basin.
So, how did the Aryans move out of Central Asia and across India if it wasn’t on horseback?