Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From

by Tony Joseph

What about Indo-European languages that today dominate the region that once belonged to the Harappan Civilization? Could not these languages have been spoken there during the Harappan period? We will come to that in chapter 4, but briefly, the generally accepted chronology for the spread of Indo-European languages around the world puts their arrival in south Asia only after 2000 BCE, when the Harappan Civilization was already in decline. This has been strongly supported by recent genetic studies based on ancient DNA which suggest that Steppe pastoralists, who took Indo-European languages to Europe, reached India only in the Late Harappan period, bringing with them an early version of Sanskrit and related cultural concepts and practices such as ritual sacrifices. Many of these practices and beliefs are reflected in the Vedas, especially the earliest one, the Rigveda. The newly arrived Indo-European-language speakers called themselves ‘Aryans’. What all of this means is that the Harappan Civilization had nothing to do with the ‘Aryans’ or Sanskrit or the Vedas, and was pre-‘Aryan’ or pre-Vedic. We will discuss this further in the next chapter.