Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From is a 2018 nonfiction book written by Indian journalist Tony Joseph. His question was how did Harappan vanish? This made him want to know who they were, which made him think when the agriculture started and when did people come to inhabit in India? So he went back to 65 thousand years before.
The book relies on research findings from six major disciplines: history, archaeology, linguistics, population genetics, philology, and epigraphy, and includes path-breaking ancient DNA research of recent years. Each of them having a different story, and different starting point, because of different starting point. Example archaeology look at tools, while genetics look at modern human. By then people living during the time we find archaeology would have been wiped out.
The book discusses four prehistoric migrations in India. The first Indian's Out of Africa. the first farmers, the first urbanites - Harappa's and The last migrants The Arya's.
70000 years ago few hundred of Africa migrated out of Africa into the Arabian Peninsula, and they reached America around 16000 years ago defined by Climatic change.
Then when people started experimenting with Agriculture, not all were successful, Egypt Mesopotamia, India and China were lucky as they have wide variety of cereals to domesticate and they became farmers from hunter gatherers. There is a population explosion leading to migration, that leads to population concentration changing the demographic of the world with mastery of nature. It happened from West Asia and East Asia.
According to Joseph, Proto-Dravidian is related to the Elamitic language of Iran. Mastery of mobility with wheels, metals, from Central Asia moved to Europe and Asia, spreading Indo - European language.
All existing population are a mixture of previous migrations, which again is a mixture of previous migrations and so on.
Colonial migration, when people started moving in large numbers. It has virtually no impact on India. It mentions that "Aryan" culture was most likely the result of interaction, adoption, and adaptation among those who brought Indo-European languages to India and those who were already well-settled inhabitants of the region, and that Sanskrit and the Vedas developed in the Indian subcontinent.
By integrating diverse strands of evidence, Joseph provides a nuanced understanding of the complex migrations and interactions that have shaped the genetic and cultural landscape of the Indian subcontinent. 2000 years ago, Endogamy was in place. We all have common ancestor, cast system came into place 2000 years ago.
5th class of major migration today - difference in population growth and economic prosperity. This is related to climate as climate change can effect economic prosperity. We have to wait and see if it will change the world demographic.
Where reason and logic can't reach art can. We are all Indian's and we are all migrant's.
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