Title: Early
Indians – The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From
Author: Tony Joseph
Publisher: Juggernaut, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9789386228987
Pages: 262
Two
terms that refer to linguistic groups are widely misunderstood in India and
taken to be racial denominators that split the country into two demographic
zones in the north and the south. We know them as ‘Aryan’ and ‘Dravidian’. The
former is broadly associated with the north and the latter with the south, more
commonly in the state of Tamil Nadu. Scholars are divided on the issue of
paternity of the Harappan Civilization (2500 – 1900 BCE) that marked the
foundation of later socio-religious development in India. A few scholars argue
that Harappa was made possible by Aryan effort and the Vedic literature was
composed there. Dravidian scholars indignantly claim that the Harappan culture
was a Dravidian one which was destroyed by the Aryans who then set the inhabitants
on an exodus to the south. Literary, archeological and epigraphic evidence
could not break the stalemate even now. This book comes up with genetic data to
finally decide what is what. Tony Joseph is a columnist and contributor to
leading newspapers and magazines. He is also a former editor of Businessworld’.No formal training in
history or archeology is mentioned in any of the personal introductions of the
author found online.
Joseph banks on the recently
acquired ability of scientific establishment to successfully extract and
analyse DNA from ancient fossils and map its genome. This helps to compare it
with modern DNA and find out the era in which they diverged genetically. It has
also produced some truly astounding conclusions. It is gratifying to learn that
DNA evidence is conclusive that humans originated in Africa and all of them now
living outside that continent are descendants of a single population of
migrants who moved out of Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago. A group among
them reached India too and the author calls them ‘First Indians’. They mixed
with later entrants but serve as bedrock of genetic ancestry to all modern
Indians. But there are closer direct descendants to them, with little mixing
with later societies. The Onge tribe in Little Andamans, numbering about 100
souls, is the closest relative of the First Indians. However, the author
suggests to Indians a simple method to physically view the other descendants of
the First Indians – look at a mirror. Genetic data brings to light more
interesting facts about the ancestry of modern Indians. 70-90 per cent of
people in the current Indian population originated from a single woman among
the First Indians who arrived 65,000 years ago, while only 10-40 per cent can
trace their descent to a single man in that society. This means that most of
the later migrations were sexually biased towards the male.
India witnessed further migrations,
but the author identifies the influx of Iranian agriculturists from the Zagros
Mountains in 7000-3000 BCE as the first notable wave after the event that
happened 65,000 years ago. These people (Joseph calls them Dravidians)
introduced the art of agriculture in India. The earliest agricultural
experiment took place in a 200-hectare area in the remote village of Mehrgarh in Balochistan
around 7000-2600 BCE. The next wave occurred in the interval 2000-1000 BCE.
Multiple waves of steppe pastoralists calling themselves Aryans from central
Asia brought Indo-European languages and new cultural practices to south Asia.
If the author is to be believed, these two migrations account for the ancestry
of 95 per cent of the modern Indian population. Scientific studies repeatedly
show that the genetic imprint of the First Indians is carried by all castes and
tribes of the country in all regions and all linguistic groups. This is unique
to India in the world. The author is careful not to antagonize powerful public
opinion. Instead of using misnomers like Aryan and Dravidian, he uses
expressions such as Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and Ancestral South Indians
(ASI) where in fact he should have plainly stated that we are the result of the
admixture of the First Indians and West Eurasians seen in varying percentages
among the two groups.
This book upholds the scholarly
consensus that Aryans did not destroy the Harappan Civilization. During
1900-1300 BCE, in the Late Harappan period, the civilization declined and
eventually disappeared. This was primarily due to unusually long spells of
drought probably caused by changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulations.
This severely affected other civilizations in Egypt, West Asia and China as
well. The prolonged drought ultimately made monsoonal rivers go dry or become
seasonal, affecting habitability along their courses. There is no archeological
evidence that the Aryans destroyed the Harappan Civilization. On the other
hand, there are ample indicators that they merged into it. This is clear from
the reducing discrepancy between the Vedic texts and Harappan Civilization over
time. The later the Vedic text, there is more likelihood of finding connections
to Harappan cultural heritage. The author also lists out a few examples. In
another section, he argues that after 2000 BCE, when the Late Harappan
Civilization was already in decline, steppe pastoralists who took Indo-European
languages to Europe reached India bringing with them an early version of
Sanskrit and related cultural concepts and practices such as ritual sacrifices.
These newly arrived Indo-European language speakers called themselves Aryans
(p.142).
Contrary to the claims of the
Dravidian political movement that they are the original inhabitants of India,
this book affirms that they too have come to India as migrants, but a few
millennia before the Aryans did. Dravidian languages show clear linguistic
affinity to the Elamite language spoken in ancient Iran. This book makes a
delightful comparison of ten common words in Proto-Elamite and modern Dravidian
languages which are strikingly similar. Joseph surmises that a band of herders
from southern and central Zagros region migrated to south Asia as speakers of
the Proto-Elamite language sometime after 7000 BCE, mixed with the First
Indians and this new, mixed population sparked an agricultural revolution in
the north-western region of India and then went on to create the Harappan
Civilization over the next few millennia (p.136). Hence it is definitely
Dravidian.
The author makes a cursory analysis
of the caste system and arrives at a year in which it solidified with an
exercise that is mostly conjecture. Aryans originated in the Eurasian steppes
around 2500 BCE as seen by the presence of haplogroup R1a among the ancient DNA
collected from these regions. Many Indians still carry this unique variation in
their DNA. This R1a group is reported to be having about twice as high an
incidence rate among Brahmins than other lower castes. Genetic studies show
extensive admixture between different Indian populations between 2200 BCE and
100 CE. This is indicative of exogamy and absence of endogamous castes. The
mixing came to an abrupt end sometime around 100 CE. It is guessed that a new
ideology, which had gained ground and power, imposed on the society new social
restrictions and a new way of life, possibly in the aftermath of the dissolution
of the Mauryan Empire. The caste system had arrived in this way and the author
mocks that it cut the country into ‘tukde tukde’
(pieces), borrowing the vocabulary of television news channel discussions in
2018.
The book’s content is very logically
argued and pleasing to read. However, it relies too much on genetics research
papers that have not yet received wide acceptance. Joseph himself admits that
such papers often show contradictory findings (p.11). He also concedes that
even in the most professional of settings, personal preferences can play a part
in how research findings are interpreted (p.11). Judging from the author’s
remarks in the book, it is fairly evident that he has built an edifice that
harbours his pre-existing convictions on the genetic development of Indian
populations. The research that had gone into the text does not appear to be so
deep, as some best seller books such as Harari’s Sapiens are listed as references and material for further reading.
All in all, this book is a good effort to buttress the left-liberal outlook of
Indian history. It is by no means impartial.
Rating: 3 Star
No comments:
Post a Comment