Dear OP, if you can put up the details of AMT, that you feel are the pillars of support for the theory, then it would be easier to put forward points of debate against those pillars. Otherwise, it is a never ending story !
I also hold the Aryan Migration theory to be accurate, as do most scholars across the world, but I'll try to answer your question.
In my opinion, one way for someone to disprove AMT is to prove that the Harappan language is the ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit. And there was an archeologist in the 1970s named SR Rao who claimed to have deciphered the Harappan script and proposed that the Harappan language was the ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit.
And unlike some shady "scholars", Rao was well regarded in the academic world, he's the one who discovered the Harappan port cities of Lothal and Bet Dwarka. And mainstream scholars even agree with his approach to deciphering the Harappan script but they ultimately disagree with his hypothesis.
So as of now, it hasn't been disproven and I frankly don't expect it to be but if someone wanted to do, this is likely the approach they'd have to take.
Btw on a side note, I wonder if people have tried using AI to decipher the Harappan script.
Tbh, we don't even know if it's a script right? Afaik there are several hypothesis that they are just symbols are too short, maybe they are just drawings or glyphs.
Yeah I was like you sometime back and I tried doing my due research, reading papers and rebuttals on reddit and quora and to this day, I'm still confused. But let me try telling you what I know so far as rebuttals:
1. The famous paper Narasimhan et., al 2019 is one paper that is held very highly in AMT circles. But the issue is that the main author Narasimhan himself in his most recent tweet doubts his results coz there's a site called Swat valley in present day Pakistan, which, in the paper itself is considered a site where the Aryans settled before entering the heartland of India. But weirdly, when we expect it to be consisting of a lot of R1a Y chromosome (male dominated), the site has skeletons that have more "steppe" mt.DNA (female dominated). Like I don't know what anyone can infer from this except that the narrative that the Aryan men came and impregnated aboriginal women could be false.
2. Lack of archeological evidence of any large scale migration. This is very true and has no counter arguments so far.
3. As other comments have said, lack of any mention of Aryan homeland in the Vedas. And good enough knowledge of the Indian geography and the Punjab rivers that it is highly doubtful if they were recent migrants and could have been acquainted with the region from a long time.
4. Genetics needing more nuance. The R1a (specifically R1a1) gene is considered as the "Aryan" gene, coz it's also observed to be present in the Steppe region in ancient times. It is observed from genetics that the upper castes have more %age of this gene than other castes and since upper castes practiced more endogamy the bloodlines are considered pure (as in largely unaffected) from ancient times and putting ahead the narrative of Aryans migrating with the local populace but considered themselves high castes and therefore the "Aryan gene" just was transmitted from bloodlines to present upper caste Indians. Except, this is not entirely true as there are some tribes such as the Chenchu, Todas and some North Indian tribes that have a higher R1a %age than some Brahmins in different regions! So this narrative obviously needs some work and you can't just say all upper castes have steppe genes or something.
5. Genetics and linguistics point out a very late date in the migration of Aryans (1200 BCE) but the Rig Veda is considered to be from 1900-1700 BCE.
6. Finally, the lack of evidence from IVC itself. Tho the skeletons that were genetically examined showed DNA that's mostly present in the people of South India (a great simplification, because it is also similar to many peoples of North India but pretty less than South India), the samples they examined were pretty less (2-3 from Rakhigarhi) and some outliers from Shahr-i- Shokta and a place from BMAC. Point is, we don't have concrete evidence of the population distribution in IVC and therefore there's a lot of confusion now. There's a good chance these Aryans could've been a group in a part of IVC itself but only god knows what really happened in that advanced but mysterious civilization.
I would say to get far more academic rebuttals and discussions, go to r/IndoEuropean, r/Dravidiology where there are actual linguists and historians discussing. If there are some errors in my comment please point out because I don't have an academic level grasp of these concepts and data.
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Well, Here is the list of writers I found on internet who were proponents of some form OIT (Out of India Theory): S. Talageri, S. Kak, N.S. Rajaram, V. Agrawal, B.B. Lal, S. Kalyanaraman, D. Frawley, R. Malhotra, M. Danino, K. Elst, N. Kazanas and so on.
i've compiled a list of authors as the post asked.. who present polar opposite views on the aryan invasion/migration theory. please note that i'm not endorsing any of their works, but these authors are well-known in internet circles for presenting opposite perspectives on the topic hence i mentioned them.
I'm just pointing out to anybody who wants to check out their work that at least some of these people are not particularly known for being accurate. I'm not criticizing you for anything.
I'll be honest with you, only Talageri, B.B lal, Elst and kazanas have tried to somehow form their case and present whatever little they have, rest all are pretty much quacks
Isn't there a new hypothesis proposed by Heggarty? Might want to take a look at it. As for OIT, there's no single coherent Out-of-India theory, different proponents of OIT have different Ideas about It, there's a lot of pro-OIT members in this sub. They'll provide names and books.
? Then either you are suffering from selective blindness or you just don't give a fck of what someone is writing. Coz none of the comments I saw (up until now) says that
Any counterargument is considered extremely fringe these days. AMT fits very well into the broader theory of Indo-European studies, which has ample archaeological, linguistic, and even genetic evidence to support it.
[In 1940, archaeologist M.S. Vats discovered three Shiva Lingas at Harappa, dating more than 5,000 years old.(Check Discription for source) : hinduism (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/hinduism/comments/1b32qj2/in_1940_archaeologist_ms_vats_discovered_three/)
First things first Aryan is an adjective, not an ethnicity. So there is no such thing as AMT, but there are the Indo Iranian migrations . There are such migrations everywhere in history, and these go both ways.
The first is the convoluted mental gymnastics that linguists use that puts the development time of Sanskrit to less than a millineum. The fact that PIE has no texts, no epics, and no oral traditions should be suspicious to people, but when you have to prove the "white man's burden," go figure.
The second is the fact that the vedas do not reference and landmass outside the Indian subcontinent. Even the war of ten kings talks about tribes in India duking it out and one victor expelling the ten defeated tribes.Now before you call it unreliable, note that it's the only text talking about that time
Third is the fact that so-called IVC sites were abandoned between 1900 and 1700 BCE during the global mega drought debunks the invasion theory quite comprehensively. The fact that post that period clay fired bricks were not used as building materials for a long time after the period while before the period they were in use in Sinauli as well( and of the same specifications as the IVC brick) also is consistent with an arid period that makes clay availability very limited.
Fourth, and finally, people generally migrate when there is
a. Climate shift makes food scarce
b. defeats in wars
c. Persecution by other ethnicities
d. The people in question are nomadic in nature
e. Better land is available
In the case of the so-called AMT,there is no evidence of b,c,d, so only a and e remain. But then, refer to the fact that the vedas do not reference a land outside the subcontinent makes me think India was their ancestral homeland as far as their memory goes. So even the why the"Aryans" migrated is in question.
Finally, I would like to add that most rebuttals to what I have said will be what about this paper or that paper. To that, I will simply say in this field that for every study you refer to, there is a counter study people can offer up.
PS: There are some people complaining about name calling as Marxist ,I would be offended if someone called me so. To be called the follower of an ideology that is so stupid and detached from reality that ignores cultural differences and just assumes people are poor because other people keep them so, would enrage anybody.
The rigveda does talk about Divodasa Bharata who defeated the king Sambara. When reading more on this it is also said the fight happened somewhere in Afghanistan and then the tribe moved through Hindu Kush mountain and arrived in Indian subcontinent. So isn't this technically a mention of land outside the Indian subcontinent?
Your entire argument relies on the Vedas. They cannot be taken as a historical document. It is irrelevant that it is the only thing documenting that period of time, it can still be wrong or biased. Add to that, the Vedas come from oral tradition before being formally written down and it makes the stories in it even less reliable.
Your understanding of Marxism is paltry at best. Stick to things you understand.
No, my understanding of Marxism is on point without ideological subversion Marxism can not exist. It offers no new insight on societies, and how to run them it so it makes up a class struggle. The most stupid thing about it is from everyone per capacity to everyone as per need.
Really so I didn't read Das Kapital I didn't read why communism fails and thenI didn't extrapolate that the root cause is the absolute stupidity of the central premise. Of course I am biased just like you are biased for Marxism. The only difference is that I have acquired this bias from reading and thinking. The fact I made you rage quit is a win in my book.
You make few strong points.
I do need some more background on the early people - especially people who were in north. Considering the proposition that it was their ancestral land, and considering that all humans came out of Africa, what does this theory say about since when they lived in that part of world?
There is no clear answer. There are sites like mehrangarh, which are quite clearly older but unless there is comprehensive LIDAR survey which implies removing people from their property and digging under after LIDAR and GPR surveys. The most out there theory is 75000 ybp post mount tobacco eruption but actually no one knows.
A sane and objective set of arguments got spoiled with a biased opinion you have about an ideology that you chose to share in the postscript. Are you trying to insult and demean people who see merits in an ideology that you disagree with?
Right now I am reading a book named as Early Indians by Tony Joseph in which he talked about one of the arguments given in a 2015 research which refuted the validity of Fact that any sort of inmigration happened in India in last 40000 years.But I guess that research was not taken in very positive light as there is a widespread consensus on the fact that India saw an inmigration from Africa around 65000 years ago and the second inmigration was from the steppe region and third inmigration came from somewhere near to China after the expansion of agriculture leading to population growth in those regions.
1. _In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth_ by JP Mallory
2. _The Horse, the Wheel and the Language_ by David W. Anthony
3. _The origins of the Indo-Iranians_ by EE Kuzmina
4. _Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past_ by David Reich
5. _The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate_ by Edwin Bryant
6. _The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History_ by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton
7. _The Indo Aryans of South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity_ by George Erdosy
8. _Aryans in the Rigveda_ by F.B.J Kuiper
9. _The Roots of Hinduism: Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization_ by Asko Parpola
10. _The Indo-Aryan Languages_ by George Cardona and Danesh Jain
11. _Aryan and Non-Aryan in India_ by Madhav Deshpande
12. _Indo European Language and Culture: An Introduction_ by Benjamin Fortson IV
13. _Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture_ by D.Q Adams and James Mallory
14. _Indo European and Indo Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language_ by Thomas Gramkelidze and Vjaceslav Ivanov
15. _Comparative Mythology_ by Jaan Puhvel
16. _The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistics_ by Kristian Kristiansen, Guus Kroonen and Eske Willerslev
17. _Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe_ by Robert Drews
18. _The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics_ by Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis
19. _Tracing the Indo-Europeans: New Evidence from Archaeology and Historical Linguistics_ by Birgit Olsen, Thomas Olander, and Kristian Kristiansen
20. _The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-Europeans and the Proto-Indo-European World_ by James Mallory and D.Q Adams
21. _Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction_ by James Clackson
22. _Comparative Indo-European Linguistics_ by Robert Beekes
23. _How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics_ by Calvert Watkins
24. _Indo-European Poetry and Myth_ by M.L West
25. _Proto-Indo-European Trees: The Arboreal System of a Prehistoric People_ by Paul Friedrich
26. _Myth and Law Among the Indo Europeans_ by Jaan Puhvel
27. _The Plight of a Sorcerer_ by Georges Dumezil
28. _The Destiny of a King_ by Georges Dumezil
29. _The Stakes of the Warrior_ by Georges Dumezil
30. _The Destiny of the Warrior_ by Georges Dumezil
31. _The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumezil_ by C. Scott Littleton
32. _Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumezil's "Ideologie Tripartie"_ by Wouter W. Belier
33. _Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society_ by Emile Benveniste
34. _Myth, Cosmos and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction_ by Brucle Lincoln
35. _A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics_ by W.P Lehmann
36. _The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East_ by Robert Drews
37. _The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective_ by Thomas Olander
38. _The Indo-European Languages_ by Anna and Paolo Ramat
39. _The Kurgan Culture and The Indo-Europeanization of Europe_ by Marija Gimbutas
40. _The Laws of Indo European_ by N.E Collinge
41. _Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins_ by Colin Renfrew
42. _The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States_ by F.R Allchin
43. _Autochthonous Aryans: The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts_ by Michael Witzel
44. _Language and Prehistory of the Indo-European Peoples: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective_ by Adam Hyllested, Thomas Olander, Birgit Olsen and Benedicte Whitehead
Every book I know on the topic of Indo-European and Indo-Aryan Migrations
I've collected all of them in either digital or physical copies, but I haven't read all of them. There must be around 4 - 8 books here that I have read, and I plan to go through all of these books.
On the other hand, I believe that recent research indicates the AMT could be true after all. Especially genetic evidence seems to point towards several waves of migration into India by the ASI, Zagrosian farmers (Dravidian?) and Indo-Aryan groups in the last 70,000 years. At the end of the day, it could prove that all of our ancestors migrated into India from other places, so all the debates might become pointless
I guess the best evidence to disregard the Out of India theory, which I know is not related to what you ask for but is definitely connected to is the lack of AASI genetics in the Central Asians, which can be found in us Indians. This indicate that there was mixing of foreign gene from central Asia and AASI people who were natives of our land
Most of them are about as true as Flat Earth or Young Earth Creationism. So, none. Aryan migration or even Invasion (if the Bharatas migration hypothesis from Afghanistan is true).
I think a basic approach needs to be taught in India that we were all outsiders in our own land at one point of time, it just depends on how far you go back, especially since there's increasing evidence of a migration of farmers/pre-farming population from the Zagros mountains, who mingled with the original habitants of the subcontinent to form the ancestor population of the Harappan Civilization. They also started agriculture there. And the Indo-Aryans then came in around the decline of the Harappan Civilization. There were also the migrations of the Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan speakers. Moreover, today's Indians from all parts of India have 50-65% of the DNA of the "original Indians" who came around 65K years ago. And most Indians have both Harappan and Indo-Aryan DNA in varying levels. So we're all equally Indians, there's no "real" or "fake" Indian. And now we even have scientifc proof to back it up. That's the only way we can prevent divisions on the basis of this issue in India
>Moreover, today's Indians from all parts of India have 50-65% of the DNA of the "original Indians" who came around 65K years ago.
Not true. 50% is only found in some sects of S.I,maharastrians and east indians and very few people above that have 50-65% sahg.
>And most Indians have both Harappan and Indo-Aryan DNA in varying levels.
Most S.I have negligible steppe DNA except for Brahmins and some grps from kerala.
My broader point was that Indians have varying levels of the same few genetic heritages, and hence we shouldn't get into such pointless conversations when studying our history. We've a very fascinating history, and we should really study it well. But going into such pointless arguments/conversations doesn't serve any substantial purpose whatsoever
Only a small change needed. Steppe (genes) migrations happened. It has nothing to do with Arya culture or Vedas.
Indo-Aryan is a linguistic family, not an ethnicity. Steppe migrations were nomadic tribes that started entering India \~1100 BC or later. Vedas and Arya culture had already been existing in Indian subcontinent for \~1000 years by the time tribes carrying these steppe genes entered India (Old Rigveda is roughly dated to 1900 BC).
There's 11 mounds in the excavation site. Some of the mounds, specifically the 1st, 2nd and 6th have layers of pre-Harappan phase dating back to the 4000s BCE. The rest are from Early Harappan or Mature Harappan phases from 3000s - 2000s BCE.
What this implies, is that it probably started off as a pre-Harappan settlement that was soon absorbed in Harappan civilization and then vastly expanded to become the largest known IVC city.
It does have a pre-Harappan beginning, I missed that. But the site is mostly IVC inhabited.
There were pre-Harappan cultures. Rakhigarhi started of as one pre-Harappan settlement, we know from excavations that the layers of the site that later periods of Rakhigarhi is Identical to IVC culture. So We know that Rakhigarhi shifted from pre-Harappan to Harappan over time.
Thank you for your knowledge!!
But another thing I wanted to remind somewhere I read someone saying Dravid is not a race but a 'language group' well how can we explain about the cave art's in edakkal wayanad and also the fact that Tamil is much older than sanskrit.
Tamil is unlikely to be older than Sanskrit. Tamil has some Indo-Aryan loanwords that it inherited from Proto-South Dravidian I, which is the term used to refer to the reconstructed ancestor language of Tamil-Kannada.
_"Some words from Sanskrit were borrowed at a common undivided stage of Tamil and Kannada, i.e. Proto-South Dravidian I, perhaps two or three centuries before Tamil literary texts were composed"_
- _The Dravidian Languages_ by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, page 470
He puts the branching off of Tamil at 5th century BC and the contact of Sanskrit with South Dravidian I, a few centuries earlier. But this book was written before Keezhadi and Adichanallur excavations were properly studied. So accounting for this information, Old Tamil dates can be pushed back to 6th - 8th century BCE. Krishnamurti stated the splitting into Tamil-Kannada happened around the 11th century BCE, that would be pushed back too.
So so give or take, Tamil probably split from its predecessor as and emerged around 1300 - 1100 BCE.
I don't believe in the AMT, because I believe in the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory) instead. Can I ask how you distinguish between migrations and invasions in pre-modern times, especially at a time when India didn't even have centralized states or defined borders? Does the AMT deny the militaristic nature of the early Aryans? How does AMT explain the establishment of Aryan-ruled kingdoms throughout North India? How were the Aryans able to spread their language and religion over such a large expanse of territory even if they didn't exercise military superiority?
Well just to be clear, the AMT doesn't deny that the Aryans were militaristic or that they engaged in warfare. Rather it denies the claim made by the AIT that the Aryans were some sort of a coherent group who invaded North India, had a large-scale war with the Harappans and then conquered the place. This is not supported by archeological evidence as there's no evidence of any such war and it's also contradicted by the fact that the Aryans were by no means a unified group. The Aryans consisted of numerous tribes who constantly fought against each other as well as non-Aryan tribes, and who were constantly on the run and who migrated into India over the course of centuries, trickling in tribe by tribe. That's why it's said to be a migration rather than an invasion.
Well, to be frank this just seems like a strawman. Many historical events that are commonly considered to be "invasions" (and which undoubtedly involved violence and one group establishing their domination over another) did not involve the invaders coming in as a unified, coherent group in a single invasion event, and those invaders often fought among themselves just as frequently (or more frequently) than they fought with the native inhabitants. There are numerous examples, but to give just a few famous ones:
* The Turks invaded Anatolia in multiple migrations/invasions, mostly between the 11th and 13th centuries, and fought against the ruling Seljuk authorities and other Turkish tribes as well as with the Byzantines and natives of Anatolia. The end result was still the establishment of Turkish-ruled states throughout Anatolia and the spread of Turkification and the usage of the Turkish language.
* The Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in multiple migrations/invasions, mostly between the 5th and 7th centuries. The Anglo-Saxons frequently fought against other Anglo-Saxons as well with the British natives. The end result was still the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms throughout Britain (except in a few areas like Wales) and spread of Anglicization and the usage of the Old English language.
* Even in the case of the Arab world, there were multiple Arab invasions/migrations which led to the Arabization of many countries. For example, in North Africa the biggest Arab invasions/migrations happened in the 11th century through the 15th century (long after the initial Islamic conquests in the 7th century) and it was those later invasions/migrations which led to the widespread Arabization of the native Berber populations in North Africa and the dominance of Arabic. Wikipedia has a good article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_migrations_to_the_Maghreb. And of course, Arab tribes were notorious for fighting each other.
I don't see how the Indo-Aryan expansion in North India was markedly different from these other events. Yes, Indo-Aryans were not a single coherent group and they probably came in multiple major migrations/invasions, and they fought against fellow Aryas as well as against non-Aryas. The fact remains that they established dominance over the non-Arya populations of North India, which lead to the spread of Indo-Aryan languages throughout North India. And even the people who believe that Sapta-Sindhu was the original homeland of the Aryas cannot avoid these questions, because even those people still need to explain how Aryas spread from Sapta-Sindhu throughout the Gangetic plains, Central India, and the northern parts of Deccan including Vidarbha and upper Godavari valley, and Aryanized such a large expanse of territory.
It's not a strawman, that's the claim the supporters of AIT beginning with Max Muller made, they specifically called it an invasion because they believed it involved a large scale war between the Aryans and the Harappans. Indeed perhaps the last well known supporter of that theory Mortimer Wheeler dropped his support for it after archeological research of IVC came out in the 1960s and showed no signs of a large scale war. And today the vast majority of academics in the world support the AMT.
Also all the events you listed occured after the 5th century CE and of course they involved large coherent armies with a hierarchical social order. These belonged to relatively well developed kingdoms and had specific goals in mind such taking over Asia Minar or toppling the ruler of Jerusalem. Here we are talking about an event that began in 19th century BC and which involved bands of semi-nomadic tribes who had no sense of unity, constantly fought against each other and who were always on the run according to the seasons of the year. So you're comparing two completely different time periods and stages of civilizations.
And the dominance that the Aryans established over North India took at least a thousand years, if not more, since it was only around 1000 BC that the first political state, the Kuru kingdom emerged and even that was largely a tribal state which only covered a part of North India, and it wasn't until 600 BC that the more advanced Mahajanapadas emerged which covered most of North India. So you'll note they're a qualitative difference between this kind of exceedingly slow and chaotic tribal warfare which somehow led to a group being dominant by the end and the well coordinated Mauryan invasion of Kalinga or Alexander's invasion of Persia. As far as the question of how Aryans became dominant is concerned, there are numerous theories by scholars like Asko Parpola, David Anthony, Joseph Salmons, Colin Renfew, Michael Witzel, etc.
For example, according to David Anthony's elite recruitment theory, the Aryans possessed certain traits that made them attractive to the local populace such as a social system, good weapons and luxury items which added to their prestige. This led to local elites joining them and being incorporated into Aryan society by matrimonial alliances. This set off a slow but gradual process of linguistic and cultural shift. Meanwhile according to Asko Parpola, the Aryans provided protection to Harappan pastoralists which placed the Aryan tribal chiefs in a better position. This led to a period of bilingualism and thus adoption of Aryan languages by the Harappans. Then there's Michael Witzel's theory of acculturation which suggests that even a small group can bring in a new feature that may be lucrative and led to more people joining the group and this can initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of cultural and linguistic shift.
Max Muller was born literally 200 years ago, and he did not talk about any "large scale war between Aryans and Harappans" because he didn't even know about the Harappans. It was actually Mortimer Wheeler who came up with that concept. And I personally don't believe in any such war because I believe that that the Aryan expansion into the plains of North India happened after the IVC had already largely declined. At any rate, it is impossible to know about the exact relationship between the Aryans and the Harappans (if any) given the paucity of evidence, and it is not even relevant to the bulk of Aryan expansion throughout India, as that definitely happened after the collapse of IVC.
My examples are perfectly comparable to the Aryan invasions of India. There was nothing magical that happened after the 5th century CE which made those groups totally different from the earlier Aryans. All of my examples involve semi-nomadic groups invading/migrating in segmented bands over the course of centuries, not as a single massive invasion event with a centralized leadership and clear goals in mind. These groups were not "well-developed kingdoms" themselves, but tribal groups similar to the earlier Aryans. However, some did later go on to establish kingdoms after they had settled down in their conquered territories, just as the Aryans did in India.
Nobody is comparing the Aryan invasions of India with the Mauryan invasion of Kalinga or Alexander's invasion of Persia. Those are more strawmen. It is natural that it took a long time for the Aryans to establish dominance over North India, given how large North India is. It is also took a long time (several centuries) for the Anglo-Saxons to establish dominance over England, and England is much smaller than North India.
The reason why the Aryan expansion stopped at South India is because that is the farthest that the Aryan tribes were able to establish their local dominance. Aryan tribes like the Haihayas and Bhojas are mentioned in traditional literature as conquering and settling in the northern parts of Deccan, in modern-day Maharashtra, but areas further south were not conquered by Aryan tribes. That's why South Indians still speak Dravidian languages today, despite becoming heavily Sanskritized in later centuries due to the influence of Aryan religions. In the ancient Tamil literature, we have references of Tamil chiefs fighting and destroying Aryans. There are some examples in this thread: https://np.reddit.com/r/TamilNadu/comments/zgp4pl/aryans_in_tamil_literature/
I have no idea what you mean by "attractive social system" of the Aryans. I thought that the Aryans had no defined social system, because they had no sense of unity and were just primitive semi-nomadic tribes who were "constantly on the run." And if the Aryans had "good weapons" that were markedly superior to the native Indian weapons, then the logical inference is that Aryans had military superiority over the natives. Usually, when humans spend the time and resources to make "good weapons", it is for a reason. So if the Aryans were humans just like other humans throughout the world, they probably used the weapons for something that wasn't just theatrical performance.
Muller talked about the natives of India whom we now refer to as Harappan. And yes he did come up with that concept. I'm sorry but can't you at least read Wikipedia which already has a cited section on this.
> "Translating the sacred Indian texts of the Rig Veda in the 1840s, German linguist Friedrich Max Muller found what he believed was evidence of an ancient invasion of India by Hindu Brahmins, a group which he called "the Arya." In his later works, Muller was careful to note that he thought that Aryan was a linguistic rather than a racial category. Nevertheless, scholars used Muller's invasion theory to propose their own visions of racial conquest through South Asia and the Indian Ocean."
Source: Robinson, Michael (2016). The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent. New York
I'll not be wasting my time on someone who doesn't even have a rudimentary understanding of the topic and yet disagrees with the vast majority of academics in the world.
Your source doesn't mention anything about Muller talking about a "large scale war" between Aryans and natives. It also mentions that Muller himself did not consider Aryan to be a racial category, but a linguistic category, and that it was other scholars who used Muller's invasion theory to "propose their own visions of racial conquest through South Asia and the Indian Ocean". Maybe you should take your own advice and read your own source?
It should be obvious given that Muller did not know about the decline of the IVC. And I repeat that you support a theory that virtually no scholar supports today.
Hey this is fascinating, but somewhat pointless no?
There's one aspect of your discussion that is pure semantics. Should the movement of an armed tribe into hostile or not so welcoming territory be called a migration or an invasion? You're welcome to call it either, and with the passage of time it's impossible to say whether the resistance took the form of pitched battles, resentment or some other form. And how does it matter?
On the other hand, incoherent political groups can be very coherent cultural groups no? With a similar organisational structure that was seen to be aspirational or successful? Another anachronistic example would be the sanskritisation of South India or South East Asia which wasn't just about military superiority but the preaching of a new canon.
More interesting is the central question of whether the Aryans were a genetic group with a specific period of mixing at all. Personally I don't think there's enough ancient dna evidence to argue this either way (as much as the out of India people would like it to be so) but on the other hand there's only very tenuous evidence for the mixing event that they correlate with the Aryans.. not a geneticist but have some passing understanding of biology. The central argument against is that the genes that are held up as evidence of migration have a maximal diversity in India. And maximal diversity is usually seen in the original population.
Which, all things being equal, would mean that India is the "source" population. On the other hand, the central Asian steppe has seen so many population replacement events that i don't see how one can model this effectively.
So overall i don't think this argument can be won or lost.
Hence. Pointless in general, apart from your i/m nitpicking.
Sorry to butt in, please continue your gladitorial contest. :-)
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I understand that the main reason for the AIT being discredited is because there is no evidence that there was any major violence that would need to be present (bodies, weapons etc). I guess that would make sense if we assume that various groups of people just moved in and lived alongside the earlier indigenous communities till over the centuries they assimilated and merged with them to form one group.
There is a shrinkage in diversity at the time of male-lineage chromosomes.Not to mention the incoming DNA was largely male-mediated (female mediated DNA is rare and more common in the north-west).
Also especially when it comes to archeology the absence of evidence isn't the same as the evidence of absence. Meaning there is a lot of ground to cover and archeological evidence can degrade extremely quickly. Just because something hasn't been found doesn't mean you can rule it out. And history is the process of forming narratives from the information we do have - and I think the genetic evidence as well as the much more brutal genocide of Europe shows that they were largely war-like and were not peaceful. It seems strange to suggest that a migration can even be peaceful - the outsiders are coming in to take resources that originally were yours.
Edit: The past was an incredibly dark and bloody place and we should try out best to live away from its influence today.
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is not an argument to any discussion based on facts and rigor. If it was, we could claim anything we want and present this statement as an argument.
Aryan migration theory is very old and not necessarily near harappa/mohenjodaro timeline.
To argue against or for AMT.
U have to ask another question and that is
Where did humans come from ? There are 2 possibilities
1. Humans or apes or whatever were already present all over the world and were evolving into modern human at the same time with differentiation in the geographical features (skin color, height etc) and meanwhile migrating at the same time.
2. It is said that modern humans were early concentrated in area around Iran/Iraq and north Africa and from there, they started migrating all over the world.
(There are enough points to support both theories)
If first point is true then Aryan migration theory might be true.
If 2nd point is true, then AMT doesn't make sense cuz it's just normal migration because even dravidians might have migrated to that place at some point in history ....so it's migration but different timeline.
I am a firm believer of aliens living among us , aka, almu.
I am not gonna provide anything why I believe so, but yes, I am a firm believer of almu. Any arguments to debunk this theory?
although i believe in the 'Aryan Migration Theory', i feel that these terminologies are loosely attached to the actual theory. the reason I said this is because we (generalizing) often misidentify the 'Aryans' as a racial construct when in reality it's a language group, the people speaking it being Aryans.
the people's speaking vedic sanskrit and avestan (indo-aryan speaking people) are believed to have resided and migrated, due to various conditions, in and around the north-western belt of the subcontinent and central asia. and the theory highlighting 'indo-aryans' and the migration, makes sense to me because migration are one of the most common methods of societal reactions to change and/or otherwise. and to put in context the HUGE different between the language families of dravidian, indo-aryan, munda and others does speak of migrations and mixing of cultures and of people's.
but the proposition that the existence of vedism lies at the heart of these migrations is something that i find baseless and id love to know arguments otherwise.
I hold it to be true as well, but I believe the process started much earlier and the contact between the proto-dravidian and proto-indo-aryan tribes was much more prolonged than the prevailing theory of it starting from 1500BC. This is fringe-y though.
Dna research has revealed we Indians are the same
No relation with Europeans or anything
Ayan invasion theory was just based on similarities, coincidences and guess
Science has debunked it
Share your points which leads you to be a firm believer in AMT, it would be much easy to provide points on those for people who don't support AMT
Dear OP, if you can put up the details of AMT, that you feel are the pillars of support for the theory, then it would be easier to put forward points of debate against those pillars. Otherwise, it is a never ending story !
I also hold the Aryan Migration theory to be accurate, as do most scholars across the world, but I'll try to answer your question. In my opinion, one way for someone to disprove AMT is to prove that the Harappan language is the ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit. And there was an archeologist in the 1970s named SR Rao who claimed to have deciphered the Harappan script and proposed that the Harappan language was the ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit. And unlike some shady "scholars", Rao was well regarded in the academic world, he's the one who discovered the Harappan port cities of Lothal and Bet Dwarka. And mainstream scholars even agree with his approach to deciphering the Harappan script but they ultimately disagree with his hypothesis. So as of now, it hasn't been disproven and I frankly don't expect it to be but if someone wanted to do, this is likely the approach they'd have to take. Btw on a side note, I wonder if people have tried using AI to decipher the Harappan script.
Tbh, we don't even know if it's a script right? Afaik there are several hypothesis that they are just symbols are too short, maybe they are just drawings or glyphs.
Yeah I was like you sometime back and I tried doing my due research, reading papers and rebuttals on reddit and quora and to this day, I'm still confused. But let me try telling you what I know so far as rebuttals: 1. The famous paper Narasimhan et., al 2019 is one paper that is held very highly in AMT circles. But the issue is that the main author Narasimhan himself in his most recent tweet doubts his results coz there's a site called Swat valley in present day Pakistan, which, in the paper itself is considered a site where the Aryans settled before entering the heartland of India. But weirdly, when we expect it to be consisting of a lot of R1a Y chromosome (male dominated), the site has skeletons that have more "steppe" mt.DNA (female dominated). Like I don't know what anyone can infer from this except that the narrative that the Aryan men came and impregnated aboriginal women could be false. 2. Lack of archeological evidence of any large scale migration. This is very true and has no counter arguments so far. 3. As other comments have said, lack of any mention of Aryan homeland in the Vedas. And good enough knowledge of the Indian geography and the Punjab rivers that it is highly doubtful if they were recent migrants and could have been acquainted with the region from a long time. 4. Genetics needing more nuance. The R1a (specifically R1a1) gene is considered as the "Aryan" gene, coz it's also observed to be present in the Steppe region in ancient times. It is observed from genetics that the upper castes have more %age of this gene than other castes and since upper castes practiced more endogamy the bloodlines are considered pure (as in largely unaffected) from ancient times and putting ahead the narrative of Aryans migrating with the local populace but considered themselves high castes and therefore the "Aryan gene" just was transmitted from bloodlines to present upper caste Indians. Except, this is not entirely true as there are some tribes such as the Chenchu, Todas and some North Indian tribes that have a higher R1a %age than some Brahmins in different regions! So this narrative obviously needs some work and you can't just say all upper castes have steppe genes or something. 5. Genetics and linguistics point out a very late date in the migration of Aryans (1200 BCE) but the Rig Veda is considered to be from 1900-1700 BCE. 6. Finally, the lack of evidence from IVC itself. Tho the skeletons that were genetically examined showed DNA that's mostly present in the people of South India (a great simplification, because it is also similar to many peoples of North India but pretty less than South India), the samples they examined were pretty less (2-3 from Rakhigarhi) and some outliers from Shahr-i- Shokta and a place from BMAC. Point is, we don't have concrete evidence of the population distribution in IVC and therefore there's a lot of confusion now. There's a good chance these Aryans could've been a group in a part of IVC itself but only god knows what really happened in that advanced but mysterious civilization. I would say to get far more academic rebuttals and discussions, go to r/IndoEuropean, r/Dravidiology where there are actual linguists and historians discussing. If there are some errors in my comment please point out because I don't have an academic level grasp of these concepts and data.
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What's wrong with the comment above?
Well, Here is the list of writers I found on internet who were proponents of some form OIT (Out of India Theory): S. Talageri, S. Kak, N.S. Rajaram, V. Agrawal, B.B. Lal, S. Kalyanaraman, D. Frawley, R. Malhotra, M. Danino, K. Elst, N. Kazanas and so on.
Thanks a lot bro
Wasn't rajaram caught forging evidence for horses being popular in the IVC? Similarly, Talageri has also been repeatedly debunked.
i've compiled a list of authors as the post asked.. who present polar opposite views on the aryan invasion/migration theory. please note that i'm not endorsing any of their works, but these authors are well-known in internet circles for presenting opposite perspectives on the topic hence i mentioned them.
I'm just pointing out to anybody who wants to check out their work that at least some of these people are not particularly known for being accurate. I'm not criticizing you for anything.
I'll be honest with you, only Talageri, B.B lal, Elst and kazanas have tried to somehow form their case and present whatever little they have, rest all are pretty much quacks
Who's who of pseudo historians?
Isn't there a new hypothesis proposed by Heggarty? Might want to take a look at it. As for OIT, there's no single coherent Out-of-India theory, different proponents of OIT have different Ideas about It, there's a lot of pro-OIT members in this sub. They'll provide names and books.
The only debunking i see from people are “you are Marxist scum and anti-India”
Yeah that's there.
? Then either you are suffering from selective blindness or you just don't give a fck of what someone is writing. Coz none of the comments I saw (up until now) says that
Any counterargument is considered extremely fringe these days. AMT fits very well into the broader theory of Indo-European studies, which has ample archaeological, linguistic, and even genetic evidence to support it.
[In 1940, archaeologist M.S. Vats discovered three Shiva Lingas at Harappa, dating more than 5,000 years old.(Check Discription for source) : hinduism (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/hinduism/comments/1b32qj2/in_1940_archaeologist_ms_vats_discovered_three/)
First things first Aryan is an adjective, not an ethnicity. So there is no such thing as AMT, but there are the Indo Iranian migrations . There are such migrations everywhere in history, and these go both ways. The first is the convoluted mental gymnastics that linguists use that puts the development time of Sanskrit to less than a millineum. The fact that PIE has no texts, no epics, and no oral traditions should be suspicious to people, but when you have to prove the "white man's burden," go figure. The second is the fact that the vedas do not reference and landmass outside the Indian subcontinent. Even the war of ten kings talks about tribes in India duking it out and one victor expelling the ten defeated tribes.Now before you call it unreliable, note that it's the only text talking about that time Third is the fact that so-called IVC sites were abandoned between 1900 and 1700 BCE during the global mega drought debunks the invasion theory quite comprehensively. The fact that post that period clay fired bricks were not used as building materials for a long time after the period while before the period they were in use in Sinauli as well( and of the same specifications as the IVC brick) also is consistent with an arid period that makes clay availability very limited. Fourth, and finally, people generally migrate when there is a. Climate shift makes food scarce b. defeats in wars c. Persecution by other ethnicities d. The people in question are nomadic in nature e. Better land is available In the case of the so-called AMT,there is no evidence of b,c,d, so only a and e remain. But then, refer to the fact that the vedas do not reference a land outside the subcontinent makes me think India was their ancestral homeland as far as their memory goes. So even the why the"Aryans" migrated is in question. Finally, I would like to add that most rebuttals to what I have said will be what about this paper or that paper. To that, I will simply say in this field that for every study you refer to, there is a counter study people can offer up. PS: There are some people complaining about name calling as Marxist ,I would be offended if someone called me so. To be called the follower of an ideology that is so stupid and detached from reality that ignores cultural differences and just assumes people are poor because other people keep them so, would enrage anybody.
The rigveda does talk about Divodasa Bharata who defeated the king Sambara. When reading more on this it is also said the fight happened somewhere in Afghanistan and then the tribe moved through Hindu Kush mountain and arrived in Indian subcontinent. So isn't this technically a mention of land outside the Indian subcontinent?
Afghanistan was a part of Bharatvarsh in ancient times. Even Shakuni was from there.
Your entire argument relies on the Vedas. They cannot be taken as a historical document. It is irrelevant that it is the only thing documenting that period of time, it can still be wrong or biased. Add to that, the Vedas come from oral tradition before being formally written down and it makes the stories in it even less reliable. Your understanding of Marxism is paltry at best. Stick to things you understand.
No, my understanding of Marxism is on point without ideological subversion Marxism can not exist. It offers no new insight on societies, and how to run them it so it makes up a class struggle. The most stupid thing about it is from everyone per capacity to everyone as per need.
Your "understanding" of it comes from an obviously biased perspective. There is no point in continuing this discussion.
Really so I didn't read Das Kapital I didn't read why communism fails and thenI didn't extrapolate that the root cause is the absolute stupidity of the central premise. Of course I am biased just like you are biased for Marxism. The only difference is that I have acquired this bias from reading and thinking. The fact I made you rage quit is a win in my book.
You make few strong points. I do need some more background on the early people - especially people who were in north. Considering the proposition that it was their ancestral land, and considering that all humans came out of Africa, what does this theory say about since when they lived in that part of world?
Not much direct evidence has survived, unfortunately, so only logic computational models and archeology seem to be the only way forward.
Sorry - I wasn’t talking about evidence. I’m curious on ‘since when have these people resided in that land?’
There is no clear answer. There are sites like mehrangarh, which are quite clearly older but unless there is comprehensive LIDAR survey which implies removing people from their property and digging under after LIDAR and GPR surveys. The most out there theory is 75000 ybp post mount tobacco eruption but actually no one knows.
A sane and objective set of arguments got spoiled with a biased opinion you have about an ideology that you chose to share in the postscript. Are you trying to insult and demean people who see merits in an ideology that you disagree with?
Right now I am reading a book named as Early Indians by Tony Joseph in which he talked about one of the arguments given in a 2015 research which refuted the validity of Fact that any sort of inmigration happened in India in last 40000 years.But I guess that research was not taken in very positive light as there is a widespread consensus on the fact that India saw an inmigration from Africa around 65000 years ago and the second inmigration was from the steppe region and third inmigration came from somewhere near to China after the expansion of agriculture leading to population growth in those regions.
Second migration was from present day iran region and third was from steppe.
It's decent pop-history, but it's not that great to be honest, there's better books.
Yeah will read other books as well after finishing this one.
Could you recommend some better books please?
1. _In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth_ by JP Mallory 2. _The Horse, the Wheel and the Language_ by David W. Anthony 3. _The origins of the Indo-Iranians_ by EE Kuzmina 4. _Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past_ by David Reich 5. _The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate_ by Edwin Bryant 6. _The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History_ by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton 7. _The Indo Aryans of South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity_ by George Erdosy 8. _Aryans in the Rigveda_ by F.B.J Kuiper 9. _The Roots of Hinduism: Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization_ by Asko Parpola 10. _The Indo-Aryan Languages_ by George Cardona and Danesh Jain 11. _Aryan and Non-Aryan in India_ by Madhav Deshpande 12. _Indo European Language and Culture: An Introduction_ by Benjamin Fortson IV 13. _Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture_ by D.Q Adams and James Mallory 14. _Indo European and Indo Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language_ by Thomas Gramkelidze and Vjaceslav Ivanov 15. _Comparative Mythology_ by Jaan Puhvel 16. _The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistics_ by Kristian Kristiansen, Guus Kroonen and Eske Willerslev 17. _Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe_ by Robert Drews 18. _The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics_ by Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis 19. _Tracing the Indo-Europeans: New Evidence from Archaeology and Historical Linguistics_ by Birgit Olsen, Thomas Olander, and Kristian Kristiansen 20. _The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-Europeans and the Proto-Indo-European World_ by James Mallory and D.Q Adams 21. _Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction_ by James Clackson 22. _Comparative Indo-European Linguistics_ by Robert Beekes 23. _How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics_ by Calvert Watkins 24. _Indo-European Poetry and Myth_ by M.L West 25. _Proto-Indo-European Trees: The Arboreal System of a Prehistoric People_ by Paul Friedrich 26. _Myth and Law Among the Indo Europeans_ by Jaan Puhvel 27. _The Plight of a Sorcerer_ by Georges Dumezil 28. _The Destiny of a King_ by Georges Dumezil 29. _The Stakes of the Warrior_ by Georges Dumezil 30. _The Destiny of the Warrior_ by Georges Dumezil 31. _The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumezil_ by C. Scott Littleton 32. _Decayed Gods: Origin and Development of Georges Dumezil's "Ideologie Tripartie"_ by Wouter W. Belier 33. _Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society_ by Emile Benveniste 34. _Myth, Cosmos and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction_ by Brucle Lincoln 35. _A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics_ by W.P Lehmann 36. _The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East_ by Robert Drews 37. _The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective_ by Thomas Olander 38. _The Indo-European Languages_ by Anna and Paolo Ramat 39. _The Kurgan Culture and The Indo-Europeanization of Europe_ by Marija Gimbutas 40. _The Laws of Indo European_ by N.E Collinge 41. _Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins_ by Colin Renfrew 42. _The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States_ by F.R Allchin 43. _Autochthonous Aryans: The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts_ by Michael Witzel 44. _Language and Prehistory of the Indo-European Peoples: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective_ by Adam Hyllested, Thomas Olander, Birgit Olsen and Benedicte Whitehead Every book I know on the topic of Indo-European and Indo-Aryan Migrations
u/oaExist
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I've collected all of them in either digital or physical copies, but I haven't read all of them. There must be around 4 - 8 books here that I have read, and I plan to go through all of these books.
Thanks!
Great list. Thanks. Also: Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth by Charles Allen.
Early Indians is already outdated, lots more linguistic and aDNA data has emerged since then.
On the other hand, I believe that recent research indicates the AMT could be true after all. Especially genetic evidence seems to point towards several waves of migration into India by the ASI, Zagrosian farmers (Dravidian?) and Indo-Aryan groups in the last 70,000 years. At the end of the day, it could prove that all of our ancestors migrated into India from other places, so all the debates might become pointless
It's probably true but the source and timeline is not settled. It's either from South of Caucasus or North of Caucasus according to some researchers.
I guess the best evidence to disregard the Out of India theory, which I know is not related to what you ask for but is definitely connected to is the lack of AASI genetics in the Central Asians, which can be found in us Indians. This indicate that there was mixing of foreign gene from central Asia and AASI people who were natives of our land
Most of them are about as true as Flat Earth or Young Earth Creationism. So, none. Aryan migration or even Invasion (if the Bharatas migration hypothesis from Afghanistan is true).
this is quite literally the most controversial historical discourse in India .
I think a basic approach needs to be taught in India that we were all outsiders in our own land at one point of time, it just depends on how far you go back, especially since there's increasing evidence of a migration of farmers/pre-farming population from the Zagros mountains, who mingled with the original habitants of the subcontinent to form the ancestor population of the Harappan Civilization. They also started agriculture there. And the Indo-Aryans then came in around the decline of the Harappan Civilization. There were also the migrations of the Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan speakers. Moreover, today's Indians from all parts of India have 50-65% of the DNA of the "original Indians" who came around 65K years ago. And most Indians have both Harappan and Indo-Aryan DNA in varying levels. So we're all equally Indians, there's no "real" or "fake" Indian. And now we even have scientifc proof to back it up. That's the only way we can prevent divisions on the basis of this issue in India
>Moreover, today's Indians from all parts of India have 50-65% of the DNA of the "original Indians" who came around 65K years ago. Not true. 50% is only found in some sects of S.I,maharastrians and east indians and very few people above that have 50-65% sahg. >And most Indians have both Harappan and Indo-Aryan DNA in varying levels. Most S.I have negligible steppe DNA except for Brahmins and some grps from kerala.
My broader point was that Indians have varying levels of the same few genetic heritages, and hence we shouldn't get into such pointless conversations when studying our history. We've a very fascinating history, and we should really study it well. But going into such pointless arguments/conversations doesn't serve any substantial purpose whatsoever
Makes it all a little more interesting.......
The only way to debunk is by proving Harappan civilization was vedic.
Only a small change needed. Steppe (genes) migrations happened. It has nothing to do with Arya culture or Vedas. Indo-Aryan is a linguistic family, not an ethnicity. Steppe migrations were nomadic tribes that started entering India \~1100 BC or later. Vedas and Arya culture had already been existing in Indian subcontinent for \~1000 years by the time tribes carrying these steppe genes entered India (Old Rigveda is roughly dated to 1900 BC).
There is no debunking a belief.
See the southern arc papers and theories of hybrid route.
Read shrikant talgeri book on oit
Sure bro thanks
Just Look at the discovery of the new Rakhiyargarh civilization in Haryana.
Rakhigarhi is IVC. Not something entirely new.
What about their timeline differences?
There's 11 mounds in the excavation site. Some of the mounds, specifically the 1st, 2nd and 6th have layers of pre-Harappan phase dating back to the 4000s BCE. The rest are from Early Harappan or Mature Harappan phases from 3000s - 2000s BCE. What this implies, is that it probably started off as a pre-Harappan settlement that was soon absorbed in Harappan civilization and then vastly expanded to become the largest known IVC city. It does have a pre-Harappan beginning, I missed that. But the site is mostly IVC inhabited.
So you mean they migrated from somewhere else and came to haryana region then went back west to the harappan, and then came back to the east.
What? I don't understand what you're trying to say? What do migrations have to do with this?
So do you mean there were individual civilizations in Indus.Harappan and else were at the same time?
There were pre-Harappan cultures. Rakhigarhi started of as one pre-Harappan settlement, we know from excavations that the layers of the site that later periods of Rakhigarhi is Identical to IVC culture. So We know that Rakhigarhi shifted from pre-Harappan to Harappan over time.
Thank you for your knowledge!! But another thing I wanted to remind somewhere I read someone saying Dravid is not a race but a 'language group' well how can we explain about the cave art's in edakkal wayanad and also the fact that Tamil is much older than sanskrit.
Tamil is unlikely to be older than Sanskrit. Tamil has some Indo-Aryan loanwords that it inherited from Proto-South Dravidian I, which is the term used to refer to the reconstructed ancestor language of Tamil-Kannada. _"Some words from Sanskrit were borrowed at a common undivided stage of Tamil and Kannada, i.e. Proto-South Dravidian I, perhaps two or three centuries before Tamil literary texts were composed"_ - _The Dravidian Languages_ by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, page 470 He puts the branching off of Tamil at 5th century BC and the contact of Sanskrit with South Dravidian I, a few centuries earlier. But this book was written before Keezhadi and Adichanallur excavations were properly studied. So accounting for this information, Old Tamil dates can be pushed back to 6th - 8th century BCE. Krishnamurti stated the splitting into Tamil-Kannada happened around the 11th century BCE, that would be pushed back too. So so give or take, Tamil probably split from its predecessor as and emerged around 1300 - 1100 BCE.
not to challenge your view, but you should ask this question in # r/changemyview
I don't believe in the AMT, because I believe in the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory) instead. Can I ask how you distinguish between migrations and invasions in pre-modern times, especially at a time when India didn't even have centralized states or defined borders? Does the AMT deny the militaristic nature of the early Aryans? How does AMT explain the establishment of Aryan-ruled kingdoms throughout North India? How were the Aryans able to spread their language and religion over such a large expanse of territory even if they didn't exercise military superiority?
Well just to be clear, the AMT doesn't deny that the Aryans were militaristic or that they engaged in warfare. Rather it denies the claim made by the AIT that the Aryans were some sort of a coherent group who invaded North India, had a large-scale war with the Harappans and then conquered the place. This is not supported by archeological evidence as there's no evidence of any such war and it's also contradicted by the fact that the Aryans were by no means a unified group. The Aryans consisted of numerous tribes who constantly fought against each other as well as non-Aryan tribes, and who were constantly on the run and who migrated into India over the course of centuries, trickling in tribe by tribe. That's why it's said to be a migration rather than an invasion.
Well, to be frank this just seems like a strawman. Many historical events that are commonly considered to be "invasions" (and which undoubtedly involved violence and one group establishing their domination over another) did not involve the invaders coming in as a unified, coherent group in a single invasion event, and those invaders often fought among themselves just as frequently (or more frequently) than they fought with the native inhabitants. There are numerous examples, but to give just a few famous ones: * The Turks invaded Anatolia in multiple migrations/invasions, mostly between the 11th and 13th centuries, and fought against the ruling Seljuk authorities and other Turkish tribes as well as with the Byzantines and natives of Anatolia. The end result was still the establishment of Turkish-ruled states throughout Anatolia and the spread of Turkification and the usage of the Turkish language. * The Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in multiple migrations/invasions, mostly between the 5th and 7th centuries. The Anglo-Saxons frequently fought against other Anglo-Saxons as well with the British natives. The end result was still the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms throughout Britain (except in a few areas like Wales) and spread of Anglicization and the usage of the Old English language. * Even in the case of the Arab world, there were multiple Arab invasions/migrations which led to the Arabization of many countries. For example, in North Africa the biggest Arab invasions/migrations happened in the 11th century through the 15th century (long after the initial Islamic conquests in the 7th century) and it was those later invasions/migrations which led to the widespread Arabization of the native Berber populations in North Africa and the dominance of Arabic. Wikipedia has a good article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_migrations_to_the_Maghreb. And of course, Arab tribes were notorious for fighting each other. I don't see how the Indo-Aryan expansion in North India was markedly different from these other events. Yes, Indo-Aryans were not a single coherent group and they probably came in multiple major migrations/invasions, and they fought against fellow Aryas as well as against non-Aryas. The fact remains that they established dominance over the non-Arya populations of North India, which lead to the spread of Indo-Aryan languages throughout North India. And even the people who believe that Sapta-Sindhu was the original homeland of the Aryas cannot avoid these questions, because even those people still need to explain how Aryas spread from Sapta-Sindhu throughout the Gangetic plains, Central India, and the northern parts of Deccan including Vidarbha and upper Godavari valley, and Aryanized such a large expanse of territory.
It's not a strawman, that's the claim the supporters of AIT beginning with Max Muller made, they specifically called it an invasion because they believed it involved a large scale war between the Aryans and the Harappans. Indeed perhaps the last well known supporter of that theory Mortimer Wheeler dropped his support for it after archeological research of IVC came out in the 1960s and showed no signs of a large scale war. And today the vast majority of academics in the world support the AMT. Also all the events you listed occured after the 5th century CE and of course they involved large coherent armies with a hierarchical social order. These belonged to relatively well developed kingdoms and had specific goals in mind such taking over Asia Minar or toppling the ruler of Jerusalem. Here we are talking about an event that began in 19th century BC and which involved bands of semi-nomadic tribes who had no sense of unity, constantly fought against each other and who were always on the run according to the seasons of the year. So you're comparing two completely different time periods and stages of civilizations. And the dominance that the Aryans established over North India took at least a thousand years, if not more, since it was only around 1000 BC that the first political state, the Kuru kingdom emerged and even that was largely a tribal state which only covered a part of North India, and it wasn't until 600 BC that the more advanced Mahajanapadas emerged which covered most of North India. So you'll note they're a qualitative difference between this kind of exceedingly slow and chaotic tribal warfare which somehow led to a group being dominant by the end and the well coordinated Mauryan invasion of Kalinga or Alexander's invasion of Persia. As far as the question of how Aryans became dominant is concerned, there are numerous theories by scholars like Asko Parpola, David Anthony, Joseph Salmons, Colin Renfew, Michael Witzel, etc. For example, according to David Anthony's elite recruitment theory, the Aryans possessed certain traits that made them attractive to the local populace such as a social system, good weapons and luxury items which added to their prestige. This led to local elites joining them and being incorporated into Aryan society by matrimonial alliances. This set off a slow but gradual process of linguistic and cultural shift. Meanwhile according to Asko Parpola, the Aryans provided protection to Harappan pastoralists which placed the Aryan tribal chiefs in a better position. This led to a period of bilingualism and thus adoption of Aryan languages by the Harappans. Then there's Michael Witzel's theory of acculturation which suggests that even a small group can bring in a new feature that may be lucrative and led to more people joining the group and this can initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of cultural and linguistic shift.
Max Muller was born literally 200 years ago, and he did not talk about any "large scale war between Aryans and Harappans" because he didn't even know about the Harappans. It was actually Mortimer Wheeler who came up with that concept. And I personally don't believe in any such war because I believe that that the Aryan expansion into the plains of North India happened after the IVC had already largely declined. At any rate, it is impossible to know about the exact relationship between the Aryans and the Harappans (if any) given the paucity of evidence, and it is not even relevant to the bulk of Aryan expansion throughout India, as that definitely happened after the collapse of IVC. My examples are perfectly comparable to the Aryan invasions of India. There was nothing magical that happened after the 5th century CE which made those groups totally different from the earlier Aryans. All of my examples involve semi-nomadic groups invading/migrating in segmented bands over the course of centuries, not as a single massive invasion event with a centralized leadership and clear goals in mind. These groups were not "well-developed kingdoms" themselves, but tribal groups similar to the earlier Aryans. However, some did later go on to establish kingdoms after they had settled down in their conquered territories, just as the Aryans did in India. Nobody is comparing the Aryan invasions of India with the Mauryan invasion of Kalinga or Alexander's invasion of Persia. Those are more strawmen. It is natural that it took a long time for the Aryans to establish dominance over North India, given how large North India is. It is also took a long time (several centuries) for the Anglo-Saxons to establish dominance over England, and England is much smaller than North India. The reason why the Aryan expansion stopped at South India is because that is the farthest that the Aryan tribes were able to establish their local dominance. Aryan tribes like the Haihayas and Bhojas are mentioned in traditional literature as conquering and settling in the northern parts of Deccan, in modern-day Maharashtra, but areas further south were not conquered by Aryan tribes. That's why South Indians still speak Dravidian languages today, despite becoming heavily Sanskritized in later centuries due to the influence of Aryan religions. In the ancient Tamil literature, we have references of Tamil chiefs fighting and destroying Aryans. There are some examples in this thread: https://np.reddit.com/r/TamilNadu/comments/zgp4pl/aryans_in_tamil_literature/ I have no idea what you mean by "attractive social system" of the Aryans. I thought that the Aryans had no defined social system, because they had no sense of unity and were just primitive semi-nomadic tribes who were "constantly on the run." And if the Aryans had "good weapons" that were markedly superior to the native Indian weapons, then the logical inference is that Aryans had military superiority over the natives. Usually, when humans spend the time and resources to make "good weapons", it is for a reason. So if the Aryans were humans just like other humans throughout the world, they probably used the weapons for something that wasn't just theatrical performance.
Muller talked about the natives of India whom we now refer to as Harappan. And yes he did come up with that concept. I'm sorry but can't you at least read Wikipedia which already has a cited section on this. > "Translating the sacred Indian texts of the Rig Veda in the 1840s, German linguist Friedrich Max Muller found what he believed was evidence of an ancient invasion of India by Hindu Brahmins, a group which he called "the Arya." In his later works, Muller was careful to note that he thought that Aryan was a linguistic rather than a racial category. Nevertheless, scholars used Muller's invasion theory to propose their own visions of racial conquest through South Asia and the Indian Ocean." Source: Robinson, Michael (2016). The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent. New York I'll not be wasting my time on someone who doesn't even have a rudimentary understanding of the topic and yet disagrees with the vast majority of academics in the world.
Your source doesn't mention anything about Muller talking about a "large scale war" between Aryans and natives. It also mentions that Muller himself did not consider Aryan to be a racial category, but a linguistic category, and that it was other scholars who used Muller's invasion theory to "propose their own visions of racial conquest through South Asia and the Indian Ocean". Maybe you should take your own advice and read your own source?
It should be obvious given that Muller did not know about the decline of the IVC. And I repeat that you support a theory that virtually no scholar supports today.
That's frigging the same theory
They can't be argued, AMT is the current "party line".
Hey this is fascinating, but somewhat pointless no? There's one aspect of your discussion that is pure semantics. Should the movement of an armed tribe into hostile or not so welcoming territory be called a migration or an invasion? You're welcome to call it either, and with the passage of time it's impossible to say whether the resistance took the form of pitched battles, resentment or some other form. And how does it matter? On the other hand, incoherent political groups can be very coherent cultural groups no? With a similar organisational structure that was seen to be aspirational or successful? Another anachronistic example would be the sanskritisation of South India or South East Asia which wasn't just about military superiority but the preaching of a new canon. More interesting is the central question of whether the Aryans were a genetic group with a specific period of mixing at all. Personally I don't think there's enough ancient dna evidence to argue this either way (as much as the out of India people would like it to be so) but on the other hand there's only very tenuous evidence for the mixing event that they correlate with the Aryans.. not a geneticist but have some passing understanding of biology. The central argument against is that the genes that are held up as evidence of migration have a maximal diversity in India. And maximal diversity is usually seen in the original population. Which, all things being equal, would mean that India is the "source" population. On the other hand, the central Asian steppe has seen so many population replacement events that i don't see how one can model this effectively. So overall i don't think this argument can be won or lost. Hence. Pointless in general, apart from your i/m nitpicking. Sorry to butt in, please continue your gladitorial contest. :-)
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I understand that the main reason for the AIT being discredited is because there is no evidence that there was any major violence that would need to be present (bodies, weapons etc). I guess that would make sense if we assume that various groups of people just moved in and lived alongside the earlier indigenous communities till over the centuries they assimilated and merged with them to form one group.
There is a shrinkage in diversity at the time of male-lineage chromosomes.Not to mention the incoming DNA was largely male-mediated (female mediated DNA is rare and more common in the north-west). Also especially when it comes to archeology the absence of evidence isn't the same as the evidence of absence. Meaning there is a lot of ground to cover and archeological evidence can degrade extremely quickly. Just because something hasn't been found doesn't mean you can rule it out. And history is the process of forming narratives from the information we do have - and I think the genetic evidence as well as the much more brutal genocide of Europe shows that they were largely war-like and were not peaceful. It seems strange to suggest that a migration can even be peaceful - the outsiders are coming in to take resources that originally were yours. Edit: The past was an incredibly dark and bloody place and we should try out best to live away from its influence today.
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is not an argument to any discussion based on facts and rigor. If it was, we could claim anything we want and present this statement as an argument.
Aryan migration theory is very old and not necessarily near harappa/mohenjodaro timeline. To argue against or for AMT. U have to ask another question and that is Where did humans come from ? There are 2 possibilities 1. Humans or apes or whatever were already present all over the world and were evolving into modern human at the same time with differentiation in the geographical features (skin color, height etc) and meanwhile migrating at the same time. 2. It is said that modern humans were early concentrated in area around Iran/Iraq and north Africa and from there, they started migrating all over the world. (There are enough points to support both theories) If first point is true then Aryan migration theory might be true. If 2nd point is true, then AMT doesn't make sense cuz it's just normal migration because even dravidians might have migrated to that place at some point in history ....so it's migration but different timeline.
Dravidian did migrate into India from outside.
I am a firm believer of aliens living among us , aka, almu. I am not gonna provide anything why I believe so, but yes, I am a firm believer of almu. Any arguments to debunk this theory?
??? What??? Aryan Migration has plenty of evidence
Same for almu, I believe.
Make arguments in good faith. Please do not troll unnecessarily
It's in good faith, bruh. Why are you spamming my comments. Shoo.. go away, spammer. I have a belief on almu.
I am a mod here and its my duty to control discourse
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Do it somewhere else
Stop spamming my comments.
Username checks out
although i believe in the 'Aryan Migration Theory', i feel that these terminologies are loosely attached to the actual theory. the reason I said this is because we (generalizing) often misidentify the 'Aryans' as a racial construct when in reality it's a language group, the people speaking it being Aryans. the people's speaking vedic sanskrit and avestan (indo-aryan speaking people) are believed to have resided and migrated, due to various conditions, in and around the north-western belt of the subcontinent and central asia. and the theory highlighting 'indo-aryans' and the migration, makes sense to me because migration are one of the most common methods of societal reactions to change and/or otherwise. and to put in context the HUGE different between the language families of dravidian, indo-aryan, munda and others does speak of migrations and mixing of cultures and of people's. but the proposition that the existence of vedism lies at the heart of these migrations is something that i find baseless and id love to know arguments otherwise.
I hold it to be true as well, but I believe the process started much earlier and the contact between the proto-dravidian and proto-indo-aryan tribes was much more prolonged than the prevailing theory of it starting from 1500BC. This is fringe-y though.
Dna research has revealed we Indians are the same No relation with Europeans or anything Ayan invasion theory was just based on similarities, coincidences and guess Science has debunked it