Chariots, Genetics and the Aryan Invasion Theory
This past month of June has been pretty important for Indian history buffs. The recent spate of excavations done by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the study of ancient DNA led to a few important discoveries.
First, artifacts of a 4000-5000-year-old civilization were unearthed in Odisha, showing that the Copper Age civilization in India was more widespread than previously thought. This was followed by what could be one of the most significant discoveries in the past century when archaeologists found a burial pit found with a chariot at Harappan sites in Sanauli, Uttar Pradesh. And lastly, the much-awaited DNA study of the skeletal remains at Rakhigarhi, Haryana showed that there were no Central Asian traces, throwing one more nail in the coffin of the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) propagandists.
The above discoveries are really exciting to me and many others who follow this discourse closely. However, there was hardly any mention of these among my friends or my social circle, and very minimal coverage (with some exceptions) even in the media.
It made me wonder why more people aren't excited or invested in these findings. Most people reading this post are probably wondering the opposite - What is the big deal? So what if we found some ancient ruins, or disproved some theory? What is the AIT anyway? Who cares about our past, it's the present which matters!
If these are some questions you're asking or are interested to know the answer to, read on.
The basics
In an ideal world, all people are fair, unbiased, and in pursuit of the truth regardless of its consequences. Unfortunately, such a world doesn't exist. The one we live in is in fact quite the opposite - full of biases, deceit, and atrocity literature with the careful aim to subdue and subjugate a people, race, ethnicity and even entire countries, in order to take control of their civilizational narrative. This might sound very dramatic and Bond-like, but I am trying to drive home the point that it is a very real and pertinent issue.
What does one achieve by doing this?
A person's identity is defined by who he is and where he comes from. Taking control of one's civilizational narrative effectively means they control the identity, image, and consciousness of its people. Put simply, if I tell you who you are, and what your history and past is, then that is who you will believe yourselves to be. As the adage goes, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth".
India, in particular, has been the subject of all these elements and many more for a few centuries now, and the primary driving force has largely been the "West". While the extent and scope of this infiltration and its consequences is beyond the confines of this blog, I will elaborate on one of the main "Breaking India" propaganda - The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT proposes that a group of tribes/migrants from Central Asia came to the Indian subcontinent around 2000-1500 BCE on horses and effectively overthrew the existing civilization at the time to establish a more advanced and sophisticated society, replete with a new and improved language, customs and traditions, which later spread all over India. Furthermore, this theory has also been used to propose that the original inhabitants of the country were pushed down to the southern part of India, causing an Aryan/Dravidian divide. This has been propagated so effectively through various means - school and college textbooks, western scholarship with a distorted interpretation of scriptures, politics, entertainment and public policymaking.
Genetics, Archaeology, and Technology
This brings us back to the findings I talked about at the beginning of this article and why they are important. Over the years, with the improvement in technology and methods of analysis and new fields like genetics coming into play, AIT has been completely decimated and research in these fields are actively dispelling other myths as well.
Take for example the DNA study of skeletons in Rakhigarhi which show that Harappans lived here from the Neolithic times and had direct links with eastern Iran and no Central Asian "invasion" occurred. The prevailing assumption was that since the Avesta (religious texts of the Zoroastrians) and Vedas (religious texts of Indic people) had similarities, they had to have been given by a common "superior" link who imparted their language, structure, and culture. However, the new evidence shows us there is no need for such an explanation. It also fits in quite consistently with existing evidence, including David Reich at el paper which shows old links between Indic and Iranic people.
Conclusion
There are a couple of important takeaways that I'd like the reader to take from this post. First, while it has been proven that the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is a hoax, I do not dismiss that migrations between Central Asia and the subcontinent happened. Since the advent of Homo-sapiens and even before there have been migrations back and forth between different continents, and it is very different from the racist and propagandist ideas of AIT. Many AIT propagandists now use the more acceptable term Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) to give their ideas more validity, and it lies upon us to distinguish this from the genuine theories and evidence about the migrations.
Second, genetics, archaeology, and linguistics cannot by themselves conclusively prove anything, nor can they be mapped onto each other. Language doesn't necessarily spread through genes, and artifacts don't necessarily prove the existence of language. They need to be corroborated by other sciences in order to come to a more acceptable and verifiable mapping of our ancestry. The best approach is to keep ourselves updated with the findings and read reliable sources for the interpretation of these findings.
Lastly, we need to take a proactive effort in disseminating this knowledge and at the same time actively call out the propagandists from causing further divide and damage. We gained independence 70 years ago, but colonization of our minds is still an active phenomenon. One of the questions I wanted to address was why learning about our history is important. One, it is the only way we can effectively counter the breaking India forces and two, it is how we will get to narrate the story of India from our own perspective and not from a foreigners viewpoint.
When every other nation gets to tell their own civilizational story, why should we, the greatest civilization of them all in my opinion, not do the same?
First, artifacts of a 4000-5000-year-old civilization were unearthed in Odisha, showing that the Copper Age civilization in India was more widespread than previously thought. This was followed by what could be one of the most significant discoveries in the past century when archaeologists found a burial pit found with a chariot at Harappan sites in Sanauli, Uttar Pradesh. And lastly, the much-awaited DNA study of the skeletal remains at Rakhigarhi, Haryana showed that there were no Central Asian traces, throwing one more nail in the coffin of the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) propagandists.
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| The chariot found at the excavation site at Sanauli, UP (© News18) |
The above discoveries are really exciting to me and many others who follow this discourse closely. However, there was hardly any mention of these among my friends or my social circle, and very minimal coverage (with some exceptions) even in the media.
It made me wonder why more people aren't excited or invested in these findings. Most people reading this post are probably wondering the opposite - What is the big deal? So what if we found some ancient ruins, or disproved some theory? What is the AIT anyway? Who cares about our past, it's the present which matters!
If these are some questions you're asking or are interested to know the answer to, read on.
The basics
In an ideal world, all people are fair, unbiased, and in pursuit of the truth regardless of its consequences. Unfortunately, such a world doesn't exist. The one we live in is in fact quite the opposite - full of biases, deceit, and atrocity literature with the careful aim to subdue and subjugate a people, race, ethnicity and even entire countries, in order to take control of their civilizational narrative. This might sound very dramatic and Bond-like, but I am trying to drive home the point that it is a very real and pertinent issue.
What does one achieve by doing this?
A person's identity is defined by who he is and where he comes from. Taking control of one's civilizational narrative effectively means they control the identity, image, and consciousness of its people. Put simply, if I tell you who you are, and what your history and past is, then that is who you will believe yourselves to be. As the adage goes, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth".
India, in particular, has been the subject of all these elements and many more for a few centuries now, and the primary driving force has largely been the "West". While the extent and scope of this infiltration and its consequences is beyond the confines of this blog, I will elaborate on one of the main "Breaking India" propaganda - The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT proposes that a group of tribes/migrants from Central Asia came to the Indian subcontinent around 2000-1500 BCE on horses and effectively overthrew the existing civilization at the time to establish a more advanced and sophisticated society, replete with a new and improved language, customs and traditions, which later spread all over India. Furthermore, this theory has also been used to propose that the original inhabitants of the country were pushed down to the southern part of India, causing an Aryan/Dravidian divide. This has been propagated so effectively through various means - school and college textbooks, western scholarship with a distorted interpretation of scriptures, politics, entertainment and public policymaking.
Genetics, Archaeology, and Technology
This brings us back to the findings I talked about at the beginning of this article and why they are important. Over the years, with the improvement in technology and methods of analysis and new fields like genetics coming into play, AIT has been completely decimated and research in these fields are actively dispelling other myths as well.
Take for example the DNA study of skeletons in Rakhigarhi which show that Harappans lived here from the Neolithic times and had direct links with eastern Iran and no Central Asian "invasion" occurred. The prevailing assumption was that since the Avesta (religious texts of the Zoroastrians) and Vedas (religious texts of Indic people) had similarities, they had to have been given by a common "superior" link who imparted their language, structure, and culture. However, the new evidence shows us there is no need for such an explanation. It also fits in quite consistently with existing evidence, including David Reich at el paper which shows old links between Indic and Iranic people.
The chariot finding is even more interesting. For a long time, the AIT propagandists have taken the supposed lack of existence of horses in Harappan times (on the contrary there was plenty of evidence for this as explained in this post by Michel Danino) to draw a false equivalence that the Harrapan era was pre-Aryan, and the Vedic era was Aryan since the Vedas mention the word for horse, "ashva" at least 200 times. The absence of life-like chariots during the Harappan civilization was considered as further evidence that horse-drawn chariots were part of the Aryan invasion. The chariot finding effectively destroys these theories, with the preliminary understanding being that it was horse-drawn and a "lookalike of the ones found in its contemporary cultures like Mesopotamia".
The genetic evidence is very recent but highly significant in helping to ascertain the origins of our ancestors. Given its nascency, it has also been subject to wide-ranging interpretations which again need to be carefully scrutinized to make sense of. A report authored by Niraj Rai, head of the Ancient DNA lab at Lucknow’s Birbal Sahni Institute for Palaeosciences, and co-authored by Harvard geneticist Vagheesh Narasimhan et al, mapping the genetic ancestry of the Harappans for the first time ever is due later this month, no doubt set to open a further can of worms.
Conclusion
There are a couple of important takeaways that I'd like the reader to take from this post. First, while it has been proven that the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is a hoax, I do not dismiss that migrations between Central Asia and the subcontinent happened. Since the advent of Homo-sapiens and even before there have been migrations back and forth between different continents, and it is very different from the racist and propagandist ideas of AIT. Many AIT propagandists now use the more acceptable term Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) to give their ideas more validity, and it lies upon us to distinguish this from the genuine theories and evidence about the migrations.
Second, genetics, archaeology, and linguistics cannot by themselves conclusively prove anything, nor can they be mapped onto each other. Language doesn't necessarily spread through genes, and artifacts don't necessarily prove the existence of language. They need to be corroborated by other sciences in order to come to a more acceptable and verifiable mapping of our ancestry. The best approach is to keep ourselves updated with the findings and read reliable sources for the interpretation of these findings.
Lastly, we need to take a proactive effort in disseminating this knowledge and at the same time actively call out the propagandists from causing further divide and damage. We gained independence 70 years ago, but colonization of our minds is still an active phenomenon. One of the questions I wanted to address was why learning about our history is important. One, it is the only way we can effectively counter the breaking India forces and two, it is how we will get to narrate the story of India from our own perspective and not from a foreigners viewpoint.
When every other nation gets to tell their own civilizational story, why should we, the greatest civilization of them all in my opinion, not do the same?
Great writing as always Abhi
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