#
Before you listen to this episode of The Scene and the Unseen, I have a recommendation for
#
Do check out Pulya Baazi, hosted by Saurabh Chandra and Pranay Koteswane, two really good
#
Kick-ass podcast in Hindi, it's amazing.
#
What does it mean to be Indian?
#
India as a nation state has existed for just over 70 years and that's a blip in time.
#
Our culture, our civilization as we call it, has existed much longer than that and humans
#
for even longer than that.
#
It seems short-sighted to make that nation state the focus of our identity and it's
#
equally short-sighted, in fact, to base our identity on any other circumstance of our
#
birth, like our ethnicity or religion or caste.
#
Those also haven't been around for too long and are far more fluid than we realize.
#
If you think of your identity as an atomized individual who is a product of chance and
#
circumstance, that's part of the truth right there, but if you see yourself also as connected
#
to the past, a small part of something much bigger and older than yourself, then you need
#
to go a little further back than 70 years or a few hundred years or even a few thousand
#
You need to read Tony Joseph's book, Early Indians.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Barma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
#
I've spoken to historians on the show before and chatted about history, but the furthest
#
back I've gone is a few hundred years.
#
My guest today, the author Tony Joseph, will take us back tens of thousands of years.
#
Early Indians is a book that answers many important questions about our species, particularly
#
Where did humans come from?
#
When did they get to India?
#
Who are the original Indians, if such a term applies?
#
Who were the Harappans?
#
Whose descendants are we?
#
Are North Indians and South Indians different from each other in some fundamental way?
#
Are tribals lesser than our city dwellers?
#
Some of these are questions of politics, but all of them can be answered only by science.
#
But in the last few years, literally in this decade, there have been radical advances in
#
a number of sciences that now answer these contentious questions.
#
And Tony's remarkable book reveals all.
#
As does this episode, so keep listening, I'll begin my conversation with Tony after a quick
#
Like me, are you someone who loves fine art, but can't really afford to have paintings
#
by the artists you like hanging on your walls?
#
Well, worry no more, head on over to indiancolours.com.
#
Indian Colours is a company that licenses images of the finest modern art from some
#
of the best artists in India and adapts them into objects of everyday use.
#
These include wearable art like stoles and shrugs, home decor like cushion covers and
#
table runners and accessories like tote bags.
#
This allows art lovers to actually get fine art into their homes at an accessible price
#
and artists get royalties on sale, just like authors do.
#
What's more, Indian Colours now has an exciting range of new products, including fridge magnets
#
with some stunning motifs and salad bowls and platters made of mango wood.
#
Their artists include luminaries like Babu Xavier, Vazvo X Vazvo, Brinda Miller, Dilip
#
Sharma, Shruti Nelson and Pradeep Mishra.
#
They accept bulk orders for corporate and festival gifting, but even if you want to
#
buy just for yourself or a friend, head on over to indiancolours.com, that's Colours
#
And if you want a 20% discount, apply the code IVM20, that's IVM for IVM Podcast, IVM20
#
for a 20% discount at indiancolours.com.
#
Tony, welcome to the Scene in the Unseen.
#
Thank you very much, Amit.
#
It's a pleasure to be here.
#
Tony, two very close friends of mine, whom I both adore and admire and almost revere,
#
Devang Shu, Dutta and Niranjana Roy have mentioned to me that you gave them their first job and
#
that makes you for me an almost mythical figure, like you are an early Indian in my eyes.
#
Tell me a little bit about your career.
#
I'm really glad that I did so and I was glad then that I did so and I'm glad that looking
#
back that we work together.
#
And that was a time when I was in business standard with the brief to start a feature
#
section a day, that's about, you know, a pull out full section.
#
And that involved every day of the week and build the team that will pull it off.
#
So we had things ranging from smart investor on stock markets to the strategist on management.
#
This is early to mid 90s.
#
And you had to find people for that to staff this.
#
And you needed people who are really, really bright, because you needed to go into new
#
areas that had not been covered in the and you can't get the talent from existing newspapers
#
because many they had not been looking at these areas in the way that we intended to
#
look at these areas and cover them.
#
So we might as well use this opportunity to break, bring in new talent into journalism.
#
And it is absolutely amazing experience.
#
I think the people that I worked with in business standard and later on in business world also.
#
And those were really outstanding teams and a pleasure to work with.
#
When did you actually start as a journalist?
#
Like what brought you into journalism?
#
There's like, you know, when I was growing up in the 80s, the common view about journalists
#
is key, they failed at everything else.
#
Indian even a doctor, even a cello journalism.
#
What brought you into journalism?
#
Journalism has always been, what shall I say, an attraction for me, because I think the
#
idea of engaging with public ideas on public mind has been exciting.
#
So the place that I joined us for first was a newspaper called Newstime as a newspaper
#
that was began for the first time by the inaudible group in Hyderabad.
#
I would have been all of 21 years old.
#
So I started as a trainee with a stipend of 600 rupees a month.
#
And it was fascinating that it was a completely new paper.
#
Then that would become a late motive for all of the rest of my career because I would have
#
always worked with one year exception, always worked in places which were either starting
#
up or were already there, but we are going through a complete rejuvenation or a complete
#
And that's when you actually learn the innards of a process or a profession or of a system
#
because you can see things being put together or being pulled apart.
#
You always work in places that are completely settled.
#
Your pace of learning is much, much lower.
#
So yeah, I started at Newstime in Hyderabad.
#
Then I was with India Today in Delhi for a year.
#
Then I joined Economic Times where I was featured when I left in 1991.
#
Then I was with Business Standard from 1991 till 1998, I think.
#
And then I was with Business World as editor for about eight years in all, with a break
#
So you know a young journalist starting out today has the advantage of the internet.
#
He can read the best journalism in the world.
#
He can see back issues of the New Yorker, the New York Times, whatever.
#
But back then when you're starting out in the 80s, who were sort of your journalistic
#
models and how did your ideas of best practices and what benchmarks to aim for evolve over
#
Like who were your early heroes, for example, and how did that change?
#
When I joined India Today at that point of time in 1987, I mean at that point of time,
#
that is the most highly valued, it's the most important news magazine at that point of time
#
and had made a large impact and a very good team.
#
And I was starting out as a copy editor on their team and it was a very good place to
#
be to learn from the rest of the team as well.
#
When you were in economic times, you again, that was a period when you are starting out,
#
when you were learning to change this place from inside out because you're starting your
#
features pages in a newspaper that had never forget about features.
#
They had never even knew worked on an anchor news or anything other than just essentially
#
plain vanilla news stories that are mostly come out of government announcements.
#
So working with staff who had been in that kind of an environment with the same staff
#
and to try and bring out completely new, those were learning.
#
So I think these were periods when you are learning from your peers, your bosses and
#
what you're doing yourself.
#
All that changed when I was in business standard, when you're starting those sections, because
#
that's when you realize that each of those sections, when you went into, you did not
#
have models which you could pick from anywhere in the country because nobody was doing anything
#
of that quality that he could say, I want to beat that or I want to.
#
You perforce had to look at the best models in the world and then look at what trade-offs
#
did they make that you don't want to make and what different kinds of trade-offs do
#
you want to make for the audience and the market that you're in.
#
So if you're looking at stock markets, for example, you will look at Barron's, you would
#
look at many other publications like if you're looking at building the strategist, the Harvard
#
Business Review and the McKinsey Quarterly.
#
So there are a whole range and the management books that are globally well accepted.
#
So in each of those areas that we got into, this was when it became clear or for the really
#
clear that your benchmarks have got to be global.
#
And since then, it has been like that to answer, since I have been in multiple areas all the
#
time, I would stay with the smart investor for about six months, start the team and then
#
move on to starting the next section, which is the strategist, which is management, again,
#
build the team and then move on.
#
So what you were considering as your competition or model to beat depends on which areas that
#
And when did you move on from journalism?
#
You know, the entrepreneurship bug bit me at some point of time.
#
And I was looking at for a way of building something that is related to media.
#
And in around 2001, we did start a company, I co-founded a company with two, three others,
#
which would work with media companies abroad to create, edit and design their products.
#
But I mean, things didn't work out exactly the way that we planned because the market
#
Media, print media, especially in the West, went through the kind of radical destruction
#
of value that we have rarely seen in any industry.
#
So they themselves removed most of their editing staff.
#
So many of the work that we were planning to get became, our assumptions became untenable.
#
So that's, but you could say this was an entrepreneurial break or a period, but it was still related
#
to media and not outside of it.
#
And sort of coming to your book now, kind of early Indians, how did you start getting
#
interested in this subject?
#
I have always been interested.
#
It's not that I had a greater interest in history per se, but prehistory for some odd
#
reason, which I still can't fully understand.
#
The Harappan civilization, for example, has always had a great hold on me and ever since
#
And these were also things that, because this is not about chronology, who did what, because
#
the very fact that you cannot know the names of the people in prehistory because there
#
are no documents or the places.
#
I mean, the definition of prehistory is before writing starts here.
#
And therefore you're dealing with actual issues because to me, what is frustrating in history
#
is that there are too many people and too many specific issues and specific concern
#
When you don't have any of those things, you're dealing with pure issues.
#
It's not talking about perspectives.
#
It's about what really happened here.
#
So some of the questions that were on my mind, which has always been the case, is who were
#
Where did they come from?
#
And why did it take more than a thousand years, imagine this, more than a thousand years for
#
cities and urbanism itself to rise up again in the subcontinent?
#
It strikes you if you haven't been to Dholavira in Gujarat, please go one day.
#
It's one of the major Harappan centers.
#
The most distinctive Harappan city in India today.
#
And it's a stunning site, you know, most of the superstructure has already been destroyed.
#
So you can only see the substructure, the foundations.
#
But even seeing that, you can see the robustness with which these places were built.
#
And you should see the scale of the ambition, you know, there's a large stadium with stands
#
for people and you can imagine what could have been going on there.
#
But that scale of ambition and the sturdiness with which things are built, the huge reservoirs
#
that are built, and then you realize that this was, would have been around 2600 BCE.
#
And you have to wait till the Mauryans arrive, you know, nearly a thousand five hundred years
#
later to see structures of that scale ambition again.
#
So these were questions that did not have good answers to, they were suppositions.
#
So, around six years ago, I decided that it would make sense to try and look at the Harappan
#
questions in detail and see where we are compared to where we were then.
#
And what all the relevant disciplines today based on current research has to say on the
#
I thought I would be able to write a big story or a cover story somewhere on the Harappans.
#
And I started going to all these sites, Tolavida, Lothal in Gujarat, Rakhi Kadhi in Haryana.
#
How did it feel to see all these places?
#
Because for someone who's not aware of the context or the history, it will just be ancient
#
But you are actually going there with a sense of what it was and what the ambition behind
#
it was and how old it all is.
#
And how was the experience?
#
Oh, it's absolutely stunning.
#
And the visit to Tolavida, I would say, of all the places, I visited a lot of places.
#
I have been to other prehistoric places in India, which are not related to Harappan civilization,
#
but that happened later.
#
But the visit to Tolavida was really moving because at that point of time, it was not
#
yet, when I visited, it was not yet fully clear.
#
Are these people our ancestors or did they people who came from somewhere and disappeared?
#
Now we know, of course, that they are.
#
To stand there and see the work that had been done and the streets that had been laid out,
#
because you can see the streets, right?
#
And when you can see the streets, you can almost see, even though they're not there,
#
you can almost see the people walking down there.
#
Usually it projects itself onto your mind.
#
So it was a very, very moving experience.
#
Lothal is a port city and yeah, it also is, it's as much smaller than Tolavida, but a
#
Rakhi Kadi, there is nothing much to see because whatever has been excavated, they haven't,
#
they filled it up again and to preserve it, I think, but there's nothing much to see.
#
But it is still interesting to go there and imagine that this place, there used to be
#
a thriving civilization, the best of its time.
#
And the interesting thing is you said that you sort of got interested in this again about,
#
you know, six, seven years ago.
#
And that's around the time that the science was also evolving at a rapid pace.
#
In fact, if I may quote from your book, quote, just to get a sense of the speed at which
#
things have moved, consider this.
#
When work on this book began six years ago, we did not know who were the people of the
#
Harappan civilization or where their descendants had gone, but now we do.
#
Six years ago, we did not know how much of our ancestry we owed to the original out of
#
Africa migrants who reached India about 65,000 years ago, but now we do.
#
Six years ago, we did not know when the caste system began, but now we can zero in on the
#
period with a fair degree of genetic accuracy.
#
These are just a few examples that demonstrate a rapidly improving understanding of prehistory
#
and not just with regard to India.
#
And what you go on to describe in the pages of your book, and I'd urge all the listeners
#
to read it for themselves, but what you go on to describe is a sort of a revolution in
#
the science, not just in like one field of it, but you have looked at like six or seven
#
different disciplines here to kind of come to the conclusions that you've come to, which
#
is now the new evolved understanding of what exactly happened.
#
And I had absolutely no idea all of this has happened till I read your book, to be honest.
#
So tell me a little bit about what has happened in the science.
#
When I started on this six years ago, I wasn't aware of the revolution that is happening
#
with population genetics.
#
I wasn't, I was barely conscious of the fact that there is something called population
#
genetics that might be relevant to the area that you're looking at.
#
I was going through sites.
#
I was talking to archeologists who had excavated them.
#
I was talking to historians.
#
I was talking to epigraphies who had looked at the script, was talking to philologists
#
who might have something to say about what the old texts have to say about these things.
#
So I was going through all the traditional disciplines, which they themselves had progressed
#
during the last few decades that one had not been following it.
#
So it was quite interesting to see how far we had come.
#
And so it's only about two, three years into the research, then you start understanding
#
that hey, a lot of new interesting information is coming from a new field that you had not
#
been focused on, which is called population genetics.
#
And they were using understanding of the genome of present day populations, mostly initially
#
to work out affinities between different population groups.
#
And that is absolutely interesting to the question of who were the herpents.
#
So then I started reading the papers and getting in touch with the world's leading experts
#
in India and outside and discussing with them their work and what they were finding and
#
how it has been changing.
#
And during this process, what you realized also is that population genetics is itself
#
is a science that is proceeding at a very fast rate.
#
It is introducing new ways of analyzing and the cost of doing linear analysis.
#
It almost seems like it's not incremental, it's exponential.
#
That's how it felt to me.
#
I think all disciplines go through that at some point of time, right?
#
Maybe automotive technology does that, then it stabilizes.
#
I think all disciplines in their life has a period when it is ramping up very rapidly
#
in terms of its understanding and tools that it uses.
#
So population genetics went through that phase in the last four or five years.
#
So, and then in the last two, three years, what has happened is that they started using
#
ancient DNA, that is DNA from people who lived thousands or tens of thousands of years ago.
#
And then the whole game changed because now you can not only understand affinities between
#
populations, now you can answer the question who moved where and when.
#
And that is dramatic, right?
#
Because that answers the most basic questions about prehistory of people movements that
#
And these have answered questions, not just in South Asia, they've answered questions
#
of population formation in Europe, in the Americas, in Australia, in every part of the
#
So India is just one part of the new understanding of prehistory and how populations formed across
#
To finish it, it just happened to be looking at these issues when a new sense happened
#
to be there providing the answers.
#
So it was serendipitous, you could say in that way.
#
You've got a very complicated and nuanced discussion in your pages of population genetics
#
and I'll just urge everyone to read, it can't possibly be summed up, I took those pages
#
very slow to kind of make sure I could understand all of that.
#
But the basic thing is that if you are, for example, trying to now go back in history
#
and tell all those grand stories, like you said, without perspective, just what happened,
#
where did we come from, where did we move, what were the patterns of migration?
#
All of that can be told through genetics because through each generation you have those imprints
#
coming down and you can go back in history and figure out all of that exactly.
#
Is that a correct summation?
#
Yes, because of mutations that happen over time and mutations are carried on through
#
successive generations.
#
Not everybody has the same mutations.
#
You can't find affinities between people who carry the same kind of genetic fingerprints
#
That's one way of, I think, you know, my book explains it in much more detail.
#
That's one way of describing how it is possible to look at different populations and see genetically
#
without anything else, just their genomes to see who, which populations are related
#
to which populations and to what extent.
#
For example, we now know that all populations outside of Africa came from a small subset
#
of the African population that moved out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.
#
This is a genetic discovery, the genetic discovery based on the huge understanding of the genetic
#
diversity of existing human population around the world in Africa and outside of it.
#
And we know that all of the people outside of Africa come from a very small subset.
#
And these are all generically called out of Africa migrations.
#
That first one migration out of which people went out to populate all of the rest of the
#
world is called the out of Africa migration.
#
And this happened around 70,000 BCE and then you talk about how around 65,000 BCE or 60,000
#
BC, you have India being inhabited by these migrants from Africa, whom you describe as
#
So tell me a little bit more about, you know, how we get this kind of knowledge and what
#
are the kind of patterns of migration across the world during this time from out of Africa?
#
The out of Africa migration now we have, now you need to use archaeology and other disciplines
#
also to arrive at a rough dating of how people went to arrive at different continents.
#
For example, we know that the earliest modern humans or homo sapiens to reach the Americas,
#
that was the last major continent to be occupied by modern humans, was only about 16,000 years
#
We know that Australia, and this is by archaeological evidence, we know that Australia was occupied
#
by modern humans at least by around 59,000 years ago.
#
And that Southeast Asia was occupied by modern humans at least by around 63,000 years ago.
#
So if you know that the first out of Africa migration happened around 70,000 years ago
#
using genetics and some amount of climatic possibilities at that point of time.
#
And you know that they reached Australia around 59,000 years ago, then it is reasonable to
#
assume that they were in India by around 65,000 years ago.
#
I think the people who moved on from India went across to Southeast Asia, East Asia,
#
Japan, India, sorry, China, and they also went across to Australia.
#
And the best understanding is that there is one stream of out of Africa migrants who went
#
up what is today Pakistan into Central Asia, and then west, and they might have another
#
group that went even across West Asia into Europe.
#
We know that the earliest signs of modern humans in Europe is around 45,000 years ago
#
So that's the very rough sketch of the peopling of the world.
#
Yeah, and the other interesting thing is that we weren't the, I mean, those out of Africa
#
migrants weren't the first humans here that, you know, I mean, we are all of course, homo
#
sapiens, which are the only surviving human species left, but there were various other
#
human species across the world.
#
And what I kind of found fascinating was where you mentioned that homo sapiens in Africa,
#
if you look at the evidence, they did not really intermingle with other humans, but
#
everywhere else they went, they intermingled.
#
For example, to quote again from your book, quote, all non-African homo sapiens today
#
carry about 2% Neanderthal genes in their DNA.
#
Some of us like the Melanesians, Papuans and Aboriginal Australians also carry three to
#
six percent Denisovan DNA.
#
Because of the genetic inheritance, we may call them our ancestors, but it is perhaps
#
more reasonable to see them as our evolutionary cousins with whom homo sapiens did dally.
#
It only means that the Neanderthals were present in Europe and Denisovans were present in Central
#
Asia and those regions and we partied with them and we partied with them.
#
But it doesn't mean that they, if Neanderthals were not in Africa, they couldn't have mixed
#
But there were many more species of homo species in Africa than in outside of Africa.
#
So it is a given that they would have mixed.
#
In fact, the beginning of the modern human himself would have been as a result of multiple
#
mixtures between different species of the homo species.
#
So it is just that in Africa, you would not see evidence of mixing with Neanderthals or
#
Denisovans because they were probably not in Africa.
#
They were in those regions and the out of Africa migrants came across them when they
#
immigrated out of Africa and they did mix with them, must have mixed with them pretty
#
early for all of us to have around 2% Neanderthal ancestry.
#
Marvelous and through all these years, like before we sort of come to modern times of
#
7,000 BC, which is going to be our next stop, but before we come there through all this
#
time, how were these human migrations and the evolution and the dominance of homo sapiens
#
affected by things like geography and geology and weather?
#
Very, very significantly.
#
I think since when we talk about prehistory, we are talking about such large spans of time
#
and we are usually used to speaking about, you know, decades or centuries, et cetera,
#
in which case, you know, climates and these don't change all that much.
#
So this is a radical shift that takes place when you're discussing prehistory that you
#
have to because that's a predominant formation of and affects human behavior.
#
For example, when many of the population movements, how do humans or even animals or mammals move
#
from one place to another?
#
What is it that drives it?
#
One of the things that drives it is, you know, dramatic climate changes.
#
During the glacial ages, since almost all of the water is locked up in ice sheets, there's
#
very little evaporation, much less evaporation happening.
#
And so glacial ages are very arid.
#
So quite apart from the fact that a lot of the world will be covered in ice sheets, even
#
other parts that are not covered in ice sheets, there's very great aridity.
#
So places that would have been earlier luxurious and thriving with life and greenery would
#
go back to being deserts.
#
And when it warms up again, then you see there are new lush pastures where there were deserts
#
earlier and you would then see animals moving in there because there's a new territory for
#
And when animals or cattle move in, you can also see their predators and humans and everybody
#
That's what makes one of the earliest historic movements of people or even the out of Africa
#
migrations would have been shaped by these changes in climates in various ways.
#
And sometimes it may not be in ways that we imagine.
#
It might be in counterintuitive ways also because if there is greater aridity, it may
#
mean they have to move to new areas in search of food.
#
So this has to be taken into account when any specific question of the prehistoric period
#
is being taken into account.
#
And my book talks about how around 35,000 years ago in the Indian subcontinent, why
#
there is evidence that there is something dramatic happened.
#
The climate deteriorated, modern humans started using because they were in competition with
#
the previous who would have been for the same kind of remaining refuges that are there that
#
are usable for most species.
#
We can see them using, relying more and more on advanced weaponry such as microlithic stools,
#
which are usually associated with modern humans and not with the 35,000 BC they were using.
#
Microlithic tools, which can be used for spears, arrows, blades and things like that.
#
And you can see genetic evidence says that their population increased actually during
#
So you can see the climate deteriorating, conflicts arising, modern humans using, relying
#
more on new technology that they have introduced and they're succeeding widely and their population
#
expanding during a period by 20,000 BCE.
#
Scientists say that it's likely that South Asia and the Indian subcontinent was the center
#
of modern human population.
#
So next time somebody says, you know, we are the largest population or one of the largest
#
centers, it's nothing new.
#
We have always been one of the largest centers or if not the center of modern human populations.
#
And in fact, that might apply to earlier homospecies too.
#
This region has been very, very good for the homospecies.
#
This is indeed where the party is.
#
We'll take a quick commercial break, which in terms of geological time will get over
#
Hello everybody, welcome to another awesome week on the IVM Podcast Network.
#
If you aren't following us on social media, please make sure that you do.
#
We're IVM Podcasts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
#
Just a couple of notes upfront.
#
One is that we're still running our listener survey.
#
That's ivmpodcast.com slash survey.
#
The survey is only going to run till the end of the week.
#
So if you want a chance to win that awesome mug that we're giving out, please make sure
#
that you fill out that survey.
#
Also, I wanted to put out a quick reminder that if you're enjoying what you're listening
#
to, please take a screenshot of what you're listening to, tag us on Instagram and we'll
#
put that in our story so that everybody else can see what you're listening to.
#
Also, please don't forget to put in a comment on Cyrus says Cyrus is joined by a lawyer
#
Umber Rana, who talks about his family's army background, how jingoism is detrimental to
#
patriotism, the no authority cases in his law practice and how he addresses them on
#
That's on the IVM Network.
#
On episode two of our new foreign policy show, states of anarchy, Humphrey talks to Dave
#
Salvo and Brett Schaeffer about Russian hacking in the US elections on how to citizen Meghna
#
and shares are joined by comedian and satirist Ashish Shakya to discuss chapter nine on public
#
On the sponge podcast, Umbi explains why it is consequential to set expectations on a
#
realistic level and then slowly elevate them.
#
On Shunya one founder of IOPO, Chirag Kriplani joins Sheila Ditya to talk about the growing
#
Indonesian tech startup culture.
#
On Gara Tantra, Saryu and Alok are joined by expert Venkat Anand to discuss the influence
#
of social media in the coming elections and how it has changed the playing field.
#
And with that, let's continue on with your show.
#
Coming back to the scene in The Unseen, I'm chatting with Tony Joseph about his book Early
#
Indians and some really old times.
#
Let's get a little more modern now.
#
Let's come all the way to 7,000 BC.
#
And around 7,000 BC is where you talk about a place in Balochistan called Mehergarh.
#
Why is Mehergarh significant?
#
Well, Mehergarh is hugely significant because it changed earlier assumptions about the Arabian
#
civilization about how it began, assumptions that Arabian civilization was just offshoot
#
of the Mesopotamian civilization.
#
Now we know that it is not so, it has a long history before the civilization began.
#
Mehergarh is the first place where you can see the earliest beginnings of agriculture
#
that sustained itself over a long period of time.
#
There's another region called Lahore Deva in Ganga plain in UP today, where they have
#
around 7,000 BC, again, evidence of people, first Indians experimenting with harvesting
#
of wild cereals, if not cultivation of wild, it could have grown into cultivation of cereals
#
also, but we don't have full evidence.
#
But in any case, that did not develop into a full-fledged rice based, this was rice that
#
they were harvesting agriculture in.
#
And would some of this have come about because the climate also was appropriate to sort of
#
right around the time after the glacial age ended around 12,000 years ago, and the climate
#
started warming up, you can see, hopefully modern humans across the many parts of the
#
world were experimenting with various ways of agriculture.
#
So it is not that it just began in one place and spread everywhere, people in different
#
parts of the world were experimenting with different things.
#
Some wouldn't have succeeded, some would have succeeded, some would have succeeded for a
#
long time and then disappeared.
#
So many things have to come in place for it to sustain itself over a long period of time.
#
So we know that Mehergarh is one of those places, starting from around 7,000 BC, we
#
can see that there is a settlement and we can see that they are doing farming, they
#
are cultivating cereals, barley, wheat, we can see they are domesticating animals.
#
Initially they don't have pottery and later on around 6,000 BC, they start having, you
#
can see how the initial pottery is, it's put together with bitumen, you see.
#
So we can almost see the civilization starting up from earlier, the earliest phases they
#
are depending on, you know, wild animals, for example, as time goes on, you can see
#
it's domesticated from the remains of their feasts that you can see, their dependence
#
on domesticated animals goes up dramatically.
#
So Mehergarh gives you a very good understanding of how a new way of living is dramatically
#
different from the earlier hundagadra life to crude in the Indian subcontinent and spread
#
across the entire northwestern region from over a period of time, ultimately, of course,
#
leading to the Harappan civilization because without going through the phase of agriculture
#
and the surplus that it produces, you can't imagine a civilization rising and agricultural
#
revolution in that part of Indian subcontinent led to the Harappan civilization that followed.
#
And you know, obviously, when we look back on history or prehistory, there's always a
#
benefit of hindsight, everything seems inevitable, but if you were to sort of simulate the starting
#
of an agricultural revolution, you are going to eventually proceed in exactly the way history
#
seems to have proceeded in this case, because you'd logically assume that because of agriculture,
#
you have a lot more surplus time for the people that finds expression firstly, in cultural
#
ways, such as you point out through the beginning of pottery and also myth making narratives,
#
all of that stuff that happens later.
#
And it also finds expression in urbanization.
#
And that also takes a period of time, but eventually you will expect to see cities develop,
#
you'll expect to see cultures develop, myths and narratives develop, language developed,
#
all of it kind of is completely logical.
#
And that's exactly how it works.
#
So it's almost seems as if once you have the climate changing after the glacial age, a
#
meharghar is inevitable and from there, eventually, a Harappan civilization is inevitable.
#
There are lots of important troubles, there are lots of luck, so to say, that is needed
#
for this to happen in that way, for example, there is nothing that says the moment you
#
take to agriculture that your productivity will be high enough for you to have not everybody
#
to have to work at farming, and some people can be employed in building statues and other
#
things and not everybody has to be working.
#
So productivity has to be high.
#
And there has to be enough food produced by not the 100% of the population, but only a
#
smaller percentage of the population so that the rest of the people can do other things.
#
So it is not always possible that you have such productivity.
#
For example, you know, in Southeast Asia, there are people have been farming taro and
#
other tuba, other around for a very long time, but that does not lead to the kind of productivity
#
So it's kind of the survivorship bias had played at these are the guys who did well
#
and sort of expanded and became a civilization.
#
So now we can look back and draw these conclusions.
#
No, it depends on what kind of cereals you had.
#
For example, we know that wherever cereal cultivation and that, I mean, not always some
#
So what kind of things were possible for you to domesticate and cultivate in the region
#
that you were in is a significant factor in saying how successful it came to be.
#
It is possible that the earliest rice varieties that we had were not productive enough and
#
that it had to be hybridized with a newer variety, which happened, we now know from
#
recent research, the Indica variety got hybridized with the Japunica variety of rice around 4000
#
roughly years ago in India.
#
And it's possible that led to a huge increase in productivity.
#
So some of these are developments that you can't foresee.
#
And so that's why you did not have a rice-based civilization possibly because it was not.
#
And you also need to for the civilization to take off initially, it's not just agriculture.
#
You have to have an agricultural package of multiple crops along with a package of domesticated
#
So all of these things you have to has to be available for you to be using them.
#
And it's not possible that all regions have it.
#
In some regions, you may not find the exact solution to the problem.
#
But yes, but broadly it is correct.
#
Once you have productivity happening and it's also important that there has to be institutions
#
that can take that productivity and use that productivity to direct labor to other activities
#
Which would also be a sign of the evolving culture, I guess.
#
My book goes into in detail on how it happened in Uruk, the first city.
#
And the fascinating thing is that it happened initially because there had to be, I mean,
#
the book, it's a long story.
#
But the interesting thing is that when the productivity starts going up, what you see
#
is not increasing prosperity, not that people's homes start growing bigger or that they have
#
You can see they stay as they have always been.
#
But there is one thing whose size and opulence does increase as productivity increases.
#
And those are the temples, the cigarettes, and which shows you what was the institution
#
that was coordinating the activities necessary to bring out higher productivity, including
#
building canals and having new ways.
#
And therefore, who was appropriating a lot of the surplus while also providing some of
#
the surplus into the building of new kinds of cities or organizations.
#
So you have some insight into how that...
#
The elites with their false religions.
#
So the journey from Mehergarh to Harappa is like 4,400 years approximately, as you say
#
in your book, 7,000 BC to 2,600 BC.
#
And we know the Harappans lasted from about 2,600 BC to 1,900 BC.
#
Tell me a little bit about Harappa.
#
I mean, what kind of a civilization was it?
#
First thing, it was the largest civilization of its time, which we do not often realize.
#
As big as Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations put together, both in terms of area and in
#
terms of the number of people, of the population.
#
Today in terms of area, it would be about one third the size of India that is today.
#
And it had a fair degree of standardization in its mature phase across a large number
#
The kind of seals it had, the kind of language that may have been used because that's still...
#
My book talks about what the language could have been.
#
The imagery on the seals that we talk about, the way the cities were built.
#
So there are a lot of similarities and the size of the bricks, the weights that were
#
So you can see lots of things that have been standardized across that large region.
#
And mind you, this is before there is modern communication, transport, any of these things.
#
It's quite mind boggling to think about how that was accomplished over in that period.
#
And one of the striking things about the Harappan civilization is that, especially when you
#
consider it with the Mesopotamian civilization, with which we had always had strong trade
#
and other contacts, we were always in contact.
#
But despite that, the differences are so striking.
#
In the Harappan civilization, there are no large statues of kings and there's nobody
#
deified as kings of... no temples as well.
#
So even the sculptures that we have from the Harappa, you would be surprised at how small
#
When you actually see them, that's not the image that you had, you thought they were
#
They're actually quite small.
#
And another striking thing again, and there are no images of human on human violence except
#
for one seal somewhere, which shows a woman being flanked on two sides with two men who
#
are with their spears angled at each other.
#
Which has multiple fascinating interpretations you mentioned in your book.
#
So except that seal, there is no imagery of human on human violence.
#
There is human on animal violence, human on superhuman, all kinds of things, which is
#
quite unlike other civilizations like in West Asia, where you can often see wars being and
#
conquests all being, you know, valorized and displayed in imagery.
#
We don't have royal burials, which are full of, you know, some king has been buried along
#
with huge amounts of treasures and things like we don't.
#
The burials are very, very, very, not very surprising.
#
There are some personal, you know, possessions and that may include some jewelry also and
#
some food for their after journey, I suppose.
#
And so that's it, which is stunning, which is, it is not that, especially considering
#
the fact that a lot of the jewelry in the Mesopotamian civilizations were jewelry that
#
were built or made in the Harappan civilization and then sent there.
#
So it is not that we do not, we knew we were actually making money from it.
#
We just didn't think it made sense for it to be buried in the royal chambers.
#
So these are just some of the differences between the uniqueness of the civilization
#
and just as there are no large temples or ostentatious palaces and burials, but you
#
do see such investments going into public conveniences, which you do not see in other,
#
in the West Asian civilizations.
#
For example, the sewage system, the roads, the facilities for visitors to cities from
#
water and, you know, so all of that.
#
My book describes in detail.
#
So there is a lot more attention and money has spent on public conveniences than on private.
#
So it's, that's our tradition.
#
And it also fascinates me that at that point, they must have evolved traditions of governance
#
and so on, which took a long, long time to actually re-emerge in the Indian subcontinent.
#
So it's not just in terms of the scale of the cities and the city planning and the ambition
#
of all of that, that took a long time to re-emerge, but they very obviously could not have done
#
this without evolved systems of governance.
#
And if you don't have big temples and gods and all that, then, then it's like a republic
#
If you assume that the lack of symbols means temples were not the authority structures
#
that got all these things together, then who were it?
#
Yeah, it's a surprising thing, but there was an interesting point that was made by one
#
of the historians, which my book also talks about is that if you go to one of the palaces
#
of the, of the Travancore Royals, it does not really look like a palace, it looked like
#
So it's possible that we may not recognize a palace or a temple in the, but that's unlikely,
#
Which would also then, if that is the case, be a cultural value that pass through the
#
genes because the Travancore Royals would in a sense be descendants of the Harappans.
#
So tell me about the Harappans, where did they come from?
#
Like are they from West Asia?
#
What is the, what's the role of the early Indians in this?
#
So to say who are till this point, the original inhabitants, what's going on here?
#
My book calls the people who came out of Africa, migrants who arrived here around 65,000 years
#
ago and their descendants as the first Indians.
#
The Harappans are a mixture of first Indians and West Asians who arrived from roughly
#
the sagros region of, of Iran around 9,000 years ago or earlier.
#
And they mixed with the first Indians who may have already been experimenting with agriculture
#
in places like Mehergarh for all you know.
#
But this mixed population, it is clear that they catalyzed the agricultural transition
#
across the entire region and then laid the foundation.
#
So we now know the clear answer to who were the Harappans, the Harappans were a mixture
#
of the first Indians and West Asian agriculturists who moved in here around 9,000 years ago.
#
And population genetics absolutely establishes that now.
#
This is based on ancient DNA evidence, which again talks in detail, which look, which shows
#
that the Harappan civilization, this was the mixture of the Harappan civilization.
#
And I understand this is the finding that is coming from the Thakigadi DNA, which is
#
yet to be published as well.
#
And given that the Harappan script has yet to be deciphered, as you pointed out, you
#
know, in this age of computers and AI and all, it's probably only a matter of time.
#
But given that it's yet to be deciphered, what assumptions can we make about their language
#
and the possible successes to that language?
#
What is really surprising is that even before the Harappan civilization, forget about the
#
new discoveries, even before the Harappan civilization was discovered, anyone knew that
#
there is such a thing as the Harappan civilization, there has been suggestions by linguists of
#
links between Dravidian languages and the language of the Elamite, which is today an
#
extinct language, but which was spoken by in Elam, which is near in the Zagros region
#
of Iran and close to the Mesopotamian region.
#
And that these two languages are much in common is an idea that predates the discovery of
#
the Harappan civilization.
#
And, but there's no way you can prove it.
#
It has always been papers written.
#
These languages link like this in these areas.
#
Now what we have found is that first the archeological discoveries in Mehergarh and the Jaric, who
#
is the archeologist who led the discoveries in his paper, which my book quotes, talks
#
about the similarities, the surprising similarities between Mehergarh and regions of Zagros region
#
in Iran, where also archeologists had found early settlements and the similarities are
#
stunning in terms of the house designs, in terms of the first pottery that is made, you
#
know, with bitumen and things like that.
#
So there is a range of similarities between the two, which he is surprised he talks about
#
in his, in his, so archeologically now, linguistically, there has always been a suggestion of a link.
#
Archeology has linked Mehergarh with Zagros region of Iran and now genetics has gone further
#
and said there is indeed migration of people from the Zagros region of Iran, roughly that
#
region of West Asia into India and who mixed with the, with the first Indians to form the,
#
so you have now evidence from multiple places of links between these two regions.
#
And as we know that the Indo-European languages arrived in India only much later, around in
#
the period between 4,000 to 3,000 years ago.
#
So what is likely to happen in the language of the Harappans in that period?
#
There are two, three things that one can possibly say.
#
One is that this two large region, it couldn't happen even today in that region, there are
#
So it couldn't happen in one language, it must happen in multiple languages.
#
But it is possible that there was still one dominant language because there is uniformity
#
Seals have writings and those writings are in a particular way.
#
They don't change radically.
#
If a script is used to, you know, used for one language and then used in another language,
#
like the Harappan script has been used in, it is used in West Asia, for example, in trading
#
and things like that, you can see the sequence of words changes because it's a different
#
language across the sites of the Harappan sites, the sequence is consistent.
#
So it suggests that there is at least for trading purposes, so at least for administrative
#
purposes, there is some kind of language that is used as common.
#
Now what language that could be, it's a civilization that survived for 700 years and it has to
#
have left a significant mark on the Indian culture.
#
And the language that could fit the bill is the revered languages, which are today spoken
#
by about 20% of the people of India and which is also linked to Brahvi language, which is
#
today spoken by the Brahvi in the Northwestern parts of, which is in today in Pakistan.
#
So the idea that Elamite and Dravidian are linked has now been revived in the light of,
#
it comes back with much stronger force in the light of new discoveries of that link
#
So the first time that these suggestions were made, that there are similarities between
#
the two languages, they were dealt with skepticism for multiple reasons.
#
One of the reasons being that the earliest proto-Dravidian suggests not Harappan like
#
cities, but more like herding situations.
#
But that's not surprising.
#
If you assume that the earliest introduction of Dravidian languages, as we discussed earlier,
#
the people who came from Zagros region to Harappa were not necessarily agriculturists,
#
but were herders who were, who may have been exposed to the developing culture of agriculture
#
in Mesopotamia, but were themselves nomadic herders.
#
So if they came, some of them might have settled down to agriculture and then went on to create,
#
but even now there are nomadic, Brahvi themselves are nomads and pastoralists.
#
So there are not all the people who came may have settled down to farming and then went
#
on to create the Harappa.
#
Some of them may have been pastoralists and it is possible that it is pastoralists who
#
brought Dravidian languages of Harappa down to South India first.
#
The common assumption that the Harappan languages or Dravidian languages reached India after
#
the Harappan civilization fell apart and they moved down South need not be the case.
#
It is possible that it is this pastoralists who brought down and we have evidence from
#
Archeobotany and other things of the, of how the, how the first agricultural package, which
#
includes both millets and pulses and a domesticated animal.
#
The domesticated animals was brought in into South India from the North.
#
So it is possible that it is this pastoralists brought in, brought it in into the South and
#
that is the first bringing of the Dravidian languages into South India and it might have
#
been pastoral at that time.
#
So I'm saying many of the old questions that challenged the idea of a Dravidian language
#
in Harappan may now have new answers based on new findings as well as possibilities like
#
that that have now become evident.
#
So before we get to the Aryan migration, which happens after this, just to kind of sum it
#
up some of the story of the link between Mehergarh and Harappa all the way to South India and
#
obviously what we are now beginning to realize is that South Indians in a sense are the descendants
#
They came South and the story really is that you have these pastoralist migrants from West
#
Asia, from Zagros and so on coming, perhaps settling in Mehergarh where agriculture starts
#
and that starts booming and there are various experiments and then you probably have a,
#
like you said, luck being involved in the perfect storm of circumstances and from that
#
cities evolve and productivity goes up, cities evolve, cultures evolve and so on and so forth
#
and eventually of course the Harappan civilization, as we know, lasted between 2600 and 1900.
#
But even while it was on and perhaps after its decline, you have all of those guys coming
#
down and settling in South India and there is evidence of that genetically.
#
Of course, it's pretty much confirmed through archaeology and all that it's there and now
#
you're saying that even linguistically there is coming to be the strong belief that the
#
modern Dravidian languages like Tamil, Malalem and so on originated from there.
#
Yeah, I would make some, when the Harappan civilization started declining, people moved
#
And it was already by then a mix of Zagrosian and early Indians you're saying, right?
#
And they've moved both, they're moving from Northwestern India, right?
#
So moved east to what is today North India and south to what is today South India.
#
So in a sense, the Harappans are ancestors to both North Indians and South Indians, both
#
in a genetic sense and in a cultural sense because they carried with them many practices,
#
beliefs of the Harappan traditions with them to both these regions.
#
The only difference is that they would have brought their languages also to both these
#
regions, North India as well as South India, but later migrations of Indo-European language
#
speaking people from Central Asia overly or displaced, there was a language shift that
#
happened in North India from Dravidian languages to Indo-European languages.
#
That shift did not happen in South India where the language still continues.
#
So the difference between North India and South India is that in as regards to Harappan
#
is that the linguistic heritage of Harappa is with the South Indians, but the cultural
#
and genetic heritage of the Harappans are both in the South and in the North.
#
In a sense, the Harappans are in many ways the glue that holds us together in because
#
it has left such an imprint on the cultural practices today because if you build houses
#
around courtyards today, that's the way houses were built in the Harappan tradition.
#
So many, many factors that you today take for granted, we may not realize that they
#
actually come from the imprints that have been left behind by the Harappan civilization.
#
If many of the things that we today see as continuities between different parts of the
#
region could owe their beginnings to what people did in the Harappan civilization.
#
In fact, as you pointed out, even Sanskrit and even some of what we know as a Vedic culture
#
has imprints of Harappan civilization in it, you've detailed some of it in your book.
#
Let's talk about the Aryan migrations now.
#
It is clear that, I mean, there is this term called Indo-Proto-European and you kind of
#
know that there is a much commonality between, for example, that set of languages which come
#
from Sanskrit and the European languages and until recently there were sort of two schools
#
of thought and there were people who would say that, hey, the migration could have happened
#
It isn't necessary that they came here or maybe it originated here and we went there.
#
But as you point out in your book, the new science has decided that question decisively.
#
Tell me a little bit about that.
#
The new science is ancient DNA, but before ancient DNA, there's a simple way to answer
#
Indo-European languages, the family of languages are spread from Iceland to India.
#
India forms the easternmost area in which Indo-European languages are spoken.
#
There's no community of people towards the east of India that speaks Indo-European languages.
#
So how did the language come to be spread as it is?
#
For India as well as for any other region, the only answer is either somebody else brought
#
it in there or it went from this region to the rest of the world.
#
Those are the only two answers.
#
Now if it went from India to the rest of the world, there should be a signal of that movement
#
Something you should be able to see, remember we are talking about even today, we know that
#
the ancestry of all Indians, almost all populations carry 50 to 65% of first Indian ancestry.
#
No matter where in the caste hierarchy you are, no matter what language you speak, no
#
matter which region you inhabit, you are likely if this applies to most Indian population
#
groups, you have to carry between 50 to 65%.
#
And much more in the case of the Andaman residents who as you pointed out are probably the purest
#
So that is the ancestry of the first Indians.
#
So if there was indeed a large migration that took these languages from India to the rest
#
of the world, you should see a trail of first Indian ancestry going from India to the rest
#
But we know that first Indians are by and large, they don't have close relatives anywhere
#
Because the people who went, their descendants who went on to populate the rest of the world,
#
you know 65,000 years, that happened so long ago that they are no longer close relatives
#
because they spread apart so long ago.
#
So today if you ask any geneticist, he would say first Indians ancestry is South Asian
#
and it doesn't have to have close relatives outside.
#
Now there is an exception to this rule that proves the case.
#
The exception is that of a community called Roma who were earlier called Gypsies.
#
Everybody knows that the Roma came from India around 1500 years ago.
#
They spread from India with Northwestern India and then spread out.
#
And there are millions of them today in Europe as well as in the Americas.
#
So if you and the recent studies that have been done on the DNA of the Roma shows that
#
their empty DNA or mitochondrial DNA suggests that they do.
#
The signal of the first Indian is their haplogroup called M2, which is the most common haplogroup
#
And that signal is there.
#
But this is an exception.
#
They couldn't have spread into European languages to the rest of the world because that that
#
happened only in 1500 years ago, roughly in historical time, not pre-historical.
#
So this is a strong instance, one strong reason to say that out of India is untenable.
#
The theory that Indo-European languages went from out of India to the rest of the world
#
is untenable because there is no evidence to support it.
#
The second factor is that out of India has always in recent times has been an angry retort
#
to suggestions of this is how Indo-European languages spread, but it has never been fleshed
#
out into a single, there's not a single paper that says this is how it happened.
#
This is the period when it happened.
#
This is the roots that they took and this is how they spread across the rest of the
#
There is no scientific paper that lays out the case for out of India.
#
It is always been a single retort, rhetorical answer to the idea that this is how the Indo-European
#
languages spread across the world.
#
Now what has happened in recent times is that there has, ancient DNA has proved that a significant
#
movement of people from Central Asian steppe into Europe around 5,000 years ago and into
#
South Asia around 1,000 years later, around 4,000 years ago, between 4,000 and 3,000 years
#
And this is what carried Indo-European languages into both regions.
#
Today, there are multiple answers to this.
#
From the different disciplines.
#
From the different disciplines between archaeological similarities and the spread of the languages
#
And to the fact that today when you look at steppe ancestry among Indians, you will see
#
that it is much higher, it's elevated levels as one of the studies puts it, recent studies.
#
Steppe ancestry is elevated in those groups of people who have been traditional custodians
#
So I think there is a multiplicity of evidence with suggesting the link between the spread
#
of migrations into both Europe and into South Asia and the languages that they carried.
#
That's a perfect fit for the kind of distribution of this family that we see across the world.
#
So continue the story for me, we have Harappa between 2600 and 1900, and then there is decline.
#
I mean, firstly, what are the possible causes of the decline and what happens after that?
#
And secondly, you have the Aryan migration coming in sort of from the top.
#
And how is all of that playing out?
#
You know, there was an earlier assumption that the earliest version of nobody has used
#
the Aryan invasion theory for at least many, many decades is the straw man, which has been
#
put up by those who did not like to accept the idea that there has been migration.
#
But when there was Aryan invasion theory was spoken about in the very early, you know,
#
during when the Harappan civilization was discovered, because then the assumption was
#
that what caused the decline was the arrival of the Aryans.
#
When I was in school, I was distinctly, I remember I was taught the Aryan invasion theory.
#
So this was when they came about that they destroyed civilization and that was the earliest
#
that cause of the civilization decline of the civilization.
#
But this is this statement made by the head of the Indian Archaeological Survey, then
#
a Britisher who said Indra stands accused.
#
He himself withdrew that statement later saying that that's not the evidence because for different
#
reasons for reasons such that the dating of the Vedas were much later.
#
So they couldn't have come around the time when so for a variety of reasons.
#
But the person who made the acquisition himself attracted it and there has been no archeological
#
evidence to support that the sites of the Harappan civilization were destroyed by invading
#
And for many years now, the evidence has been accumulating that it's a long drought that
#
caused the decline of not just Harappan civilization, but many other civilizations around the same
#
To the extent that the there is now a new age is being defined my book talks about it
#
is called the Meghalayan age Meghalayan age because the proof for this long drought was
#
discovered from you know, from geological formations in Meghalaya, but it's being called
#
a Meghalayan age to describe this new period that began with a long drought.
#
So it's not clear that it is climatic factors that were the major factor, major cause of
#
the decline of the Harappan civilization though other things as is always the case other things
#
might have added to it later on, including migrations as possible.
#
So yeah, and then, you know, once the Aryan comes as also besides the genetic interminglings
#
as cultural interminglings, like you pointed out, you know, a lot of Harappan culture is
#
reflected in what we call Vedic culture and assumed to be you know, something pure that
#
originated out of itself sui generi as it were, but there are influences of Harappa
#
there are influences of Harappa on the language Sanskrit itself.
#
Yes, the earliest versions of Sanskrit that we have as already has what is called retroflex
#
consonants in it like ta, na, these are consonants, these are sounds that you have to make by
#
curling your tongue and striking your palate.
#
And this is retroflex consonants are not there in other Indo-European language families,
#
but even in Persian, which is the closest that you can find, but it is there in Sanskrit
#
in the earliest Sanskrit.
#
So how, why is it there?
#
It is there because retroflex consonants have been a common factor across many earlier South
#
Asian languages, including Dravidian.
#
So it's clearly a sign of the influence on the earliest Sanskrit that we have that it
#
has retroflex consonants that other Indo-European languages mostly do not have.
#
There might be one or two exceptions, but by and large they don't have.
#
And the striking thing is even Persian doesn't have.
#
And if you look at, and my book says that there is a disconnect between the Harappan
#
civilization and what its concerns and images were and the earliest texts, Vedic texts such
#
And over time you can see that that disconnect disappears such as give me, give me some example.
#
For example, take the case of the Rig Veda speaks poorly of philist worshipers, Shishnadeva
#
and it doesn't want those people to be associated or come anywhere near Lord Indra.
#
And they really dislike them, but there is evidence archaeologists have excavated places
#
like Thaulavira, for example, talks about how there is significant evidence of philist
#
worship, not just in Thaulavira, but in other Harappan cities as well.
#
So that's a disconnect, disconnect between what the Rig Veda says and what you can see
#
as the practice in the Harappan civilization.
#
But that disconnect goes later because that's not the objection to philist worship is not
#
something that sustains that goes away.
#
You can see in the Harappan civilization, you can see many images or even one seal,
#
which is so strikingly similar to a yogic position.
#
We don't know whether it was a yogic position, but you can't deny the fact that it is, it
#
sounds very familiar to you.
#
And not only the seal, there are also many other small artifacts which remind you of
#
But in the earliest parts of the Vedic test, there's no mention of yoga.
#
But by the time you come to the later parts, later compositions, you can see clear evidence
#
So there are multiple levels at which you can see like it happens everywhere.
#
You can see that there is an interminkling of cultures.
#
There's adoption, there's adaption, both happening as the newcomers mingle with the already existing
#
settled populations of the Harappans in the area.
#
So you have to see the Indian culture as draws from multiple, it doesn't come from a single
#
source as we have often imagined.
#
It comes from multiple sources.
#
It has put together just as genetically, we are a combination of four major prehistoric
#
migrations that happened.
#
There are other migrations too, but nothing left us beginning print as these four migrations.
#
Which are these four just two?
#
The out of Africa, the West Asians that we talked about, there's a third one, which
#
we haven't talked about, which is there's a migration from East Asia that happened around
#
4,000 to 3,500 years ago, which brought Austroasiatic languages such as Khasi, Mundari, et cetera,
#
which are spoken by tribals in central India and Eastern India.
#
India actually has four major large language families.
#
Of course, Indo-European, which is spoken by three-fourths of the people, Dravidian
#
languages, Austroasiatic languages, and Tibeto-Burman languages.
#
This is not including the Andamanese languages, which are a separate one.
#
There are also one or two isolates.
#
So of this, the four Indo-European, Dravidian, Indo-European we spoke about, Dravidian we
#
spoke about, Austroasiatic is came from East Asia, Tibeto-Burman obviously is a part of
#
the language family that also came as part of migration, but it's a very small population
#
in smaller than even the Austroasiatic.
#
And what was fascinating and very apt to me and even moving is your use of the pizza analogy
#
where you describe sort of India as, you know, to think of it as a pizza, just can you expand
#
Yeah, it came quite accidentally when a friend of mine who knew what I was writing on wanted
#
to know how I would describe his state's population as a mixture of what and what.
#
So it was in the context of trying to explain it to him that the pizza analogy came to me
#
that, but when I thought about it, I thought, you know, this is just a, this doesn't sound
#
I am sure I'll be able to find a better metaphor later on, but as it stands, I had never been
#
able to find a metaphor.
#
It's a fantastic metaphor.
#
How could you find something better?
#
So the base of the pizza is the, are the first Indians or the first Indian ancestry that
#
forms 50 to 65% of the ancestry of most Indian population groups that came 65,000 years ago
#
from, that came 65,000 years ago.
#
And this is a striking, which we did not know earlier.
#
In fact, we used to ask out of African migrants, where did they go?
#
It is true, of course, that you can see them in the Andaman Islands who did not mix with
#
people as all of us did.
#
But the first answer to the question is look in the mirror, 50 to 65% of the ancestry of
#
most Indian population groups first comes from the first Indians.
#
It also shows that how wrong it is for anyone to think as we often think that the tribals,
#
for example, are somehow very different and from the rest of the population, not true.
#
If we share, if the rest of the population shares most with anyone else, that's where
#
the tribals, the tribals are us, us in inverted commas.
#
But the point is that's the, so it's the wrong impression.
#
So the first Indians are the foundation, are the base of the Indian Pisa.
#
That's what is unique about us because there's nothing else like this anywhere else in the
#
So if you want to say what's unique, what makes us, anyone else look at Indians and
#
say he is an Indian, I mean Indian, I use in the entire South Asian context.
#
This is the base that makes it who is an Indian.
#
So I mean, base, not, I mean, I'm exaggerating, it's all of the rest.
#
So on the foundation is laid the, the sauce and what's the sauce?
#
The sauce is the Harappans.
#
Because the Harappans, when the civilization declined, they spread across, across the pizza,
#
both North India and South India.
#
They are the ancestors of both.
#
And so that's the sauce that has spread all over the pizza.
#
And then there is the cheese, the idea, and they're not spread uniformly.
#
They're spread more in the North, less in the South, but they are there everywhere.
#
So that's the, that's the cheese you could say.
#
Then there are the toppings, which is both the Austro-Asiatic and the Tibetan government
#
and all the others who came later, who may not have left a large imprint on our demography,
#
but are still makes the pizza what it is.
#
It will taste very differently if those toppings were not there.
#
So, so that's the Indian population.
#
And you know, the other large and very welcome and gratifying conclusion of all of the science
#
is that there is no such thing as races or racial purity or any of that.
#
All of that is just conceptual nonsense because we are all completely mixed.
#
Conceptual nonsense born out of a need to, people have an innate need to create identities
#
and they need, you know, classifications and things to create those identities that will
#
set them apart from other identities.
#
But the reality is that the more you closely look at them, they are not black and white
#
All populations are combinations.
#
You cannot find a population that is not a combination unless you suddenly find that
#
hey, there is this population in Amazon forest somewhere who hasn't been in touch with anybody
#
Well, it can't be 50,000 in the Amazon, it has to be less than 16,000.
#
So I'm saying somewhere you find that there is an out of Africa population that hasn't
#
mixed with anyone forever.
#
And then you can say, yeah, and there might be very different, there must be a pure race.
#
But other than that, all populations are mixes multiple times.
#
And one of the amazing things that is now clear is that one of the strong objections
#
of people when you say Indians is a result of four major population migrations is because
#
they think that's why are you taking picking out India and you know, why are you portraying
#
India some peculiar case where there is multiple migrations is not true.
#
This is true of all parts of the world.
#
This is true of all parts of the world.
#
Europe has seen its populations.
#
In fact, we have been less affected by migrations than other parts of the world.
#
Because most of the parts of the world in Europe, for example, the first hunter gatherer ancestry
#
Because there have been, there have been at least two major migrations that completely
#
changed the demography of Europe.
#
So you'd say that their pizza doesn't really have a base per se.
#
New base because new migrants that the old base is gone or reduced to single digits except
#
in North Europe, where there is a much larger percentage of their Northern Europe has a
#
much larger percentage of, of their hunter gatherers.
#
So Europe has seen at least two major migrations, first around 9,000 years ago from West Asia
#
again, not from the same region as Zagros, but from Anatolia that went into taking farming
#
And then around 5,000 years ago, the same guys or close to the same guys who came here
#
who went into Europe, taking Indo-European languages, horse riding, chariot driving,
#
masters of metallurgy, the new, the step pastoralists who went and either mixed with the existing
#
Neolithic farmers in Europe to some extent and replace them to a large extent.
#
That's the story of Europe.
#
America, we know that even before the Europeans came in, European story is a different one.
#
Even before the Europeans came in, there were at least three major migrations from Asia
#
that populated the Americas as they are.
#
In East Asia, we know that there are at least two major migrations that changed the entire
#
demography of East Asia.
#
One of those bringing is what brought in Austroasiatic languages to India.
#
The other one brought Austro-Nation languages to many parts of the Pacific islands.
#
So repeated mass migrations that changed demography is not specific.
#
It's not a specialty of South Asia.
#
In fact, it is true of most regions in the world.
#
In Central Asia, for example, it would be difficult to keep track of the number of times
#
the migrations have changed the demography of the region.
#
Possibly the most fascinating chapter in your book for me was actually the epilogue
#
where you sort of move on from the science and you look at some of the really new findings
#
and you raise questions with them, which you don't necessarily want to answer or go out
#
of your way to answer, but it's important that those questions are being raised.
#
One of those questions is about caste, where, like you point out, the new science shows
#
that the caste system really solidified around 100 CE.
#
As you say, it is not at all inevitable in a cultural sense that it was going to turn
#
out that way because within Hinduism, there were other competing traditions like Charvakas
#
and Lokayukta, which were much more based on rationalism and not so hierarchical and
#
But nevertheless, the caste system came about.
#
So what's the kind of evidence through which we know this that it became so endogamous
#
and what are the consequences of this?
#
Yeah, as you said, the new information that we have now, which we did not have earlier,
#
I mean, before two years ago, is that endogamy, which is a distinguishing mark of the caste
#
system, of people marrying within their community, did not begin until about 100 CE.
#
And that between, genetics also says this, between around 4,000 years ago and the beginning
#
of the common era, that's almost for 2,000 years, right?
#
From 2,000 BCE to 100 CE, around 2,000 years, there was significant mixing between different
#
That's also a finding in the country of the kind that has never been seen before or later.
#
Just imagine all that happened.
#
So if you were to ask yourself, what is the most tumultuous period in the history of our,
#
of this region, there would be no doubt about what that period was.
#
It is around 2,000 BCE to 100 CE.
#
Think of all that happened, a long existing civilization that had thrived in its mature
#
formula for 700 years, went away, the Harappan civilization slowly, but definitely went away.
#
A new migrants came from East Asia, bringing a new set of languages and perhaps new farming
#
Another set of migrants came from Central Asia, bringing warlike, bringing into new
#
languages who are dominant and there's a language shift that happens in Northern India.
#
And in this midst, there is a major mixing between different population groups that is
#
going on that is unheard of any, at any point of time.
#
Because yet remember that by 4,000 years ago, all the four major population groups that
#
would form the foundation, that would form the Indian demographic, they are all in.
#
And for 2,000 years, there's significant mixing that leaves no one untouched.
#
Today if you take the most remote tribal population, you would still find that he carries the ancestry
#
of multiple populations.
#
So that's the extent to which the mixing happened because 2,000 years is a very long time.
#
We were the party capital of the world.
#
The only people who escaped it were the Andamanis because they're actually physically cut off
#
from the rest of the mainland and they don't know what is going on there.
#
But this suddenly comes to an end around, not suddenly, it may have happened over a
#
period of time, but around 100 CE, it comes to an end.
#
And this is counterintuitive, right?
#
Because you can easily imagine people who are, you know, so far decided to stay separately
#
deciding one day, hey, this is silly, let's start mixing.
#
It is far more difficult to imagine people who have been freely mixing for 2,000 years
#
almost, and then suddenly decided, hey, this doesn't make sense, let's stop mixing.
#
The horse has already bolted, right?
#
When you think it like that, you realize that, and you also realize that this takes away
#
the suggestion that the caste system began with the arrival of the ideas, right?
#
It's just a 2,000 year difference.
#
Then you realize that this is more a political development than a religious development,
#
though with the Kavit, that it's often difficult to distinguish politics from religion.
#
But even today, but it suggests that it's a political, caste is a political development
#
more than a religious development.
#
And it has, doesn't have enough genetic reasoning behind it because we are already a, that's
#
why Ambedkar is right when he says there is no difference between the Dalits and the others
#
because yes, we are a mixed population.
#
So what caused this new political ideology to come into the front in around 100 CE?
#
We do not have clear answers.
#
So my book only says these are ways to, we need to farm or research to answer these questions,
#
but we have some initial things to go by.
#
And one of the things is, is what you can see in the text as a tension between Aryavarta
#
and Malaysia or things that are not part of Aryavarta.
#
And mind you, both these regions are inhabited by the Arya or people who call themselves
#
Arya and Indo-European language speaking people.
#
Still the people of a particular region who call themselves Aryavarta find people of the
#
other region who are Arya and who are Indo-European language speaking, not really part of Aryavarta.
#
The best argument that we can, possible reason that we can find is that there are differences
#
of social attitudes and conservatism and ideas about social mixing between different parts
#
of the Arya who came into India that they were not all of the same mind.
#
We already know this to some extent because our texts themselves talk about multiple groups
#
and conflicts between groups.
#
So it is wrong to think of one monolithic group of people with the same ideas and same
#
approach to life in general and to how societies should be structured coming into the country.
#
There are multiple groups, they had multiple beliefs and ways of approach, somewhere more
#
conservative, somewhere to use current terminology, more liberal.
#
And it is likely that the more conservative approach to social life was dominant in what
#
is called Aryavarta, which is in the confluence in the area between the Ganga and the Yamuna.
#
And the areas outside of that confluence are regarded as Malaysia by who asked this question,
#
which is the land of the Aryavarta, Aryas and defines it in this way.
#
So the area outside of the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna, which would include parts
#
of what would later come to be known as Magadha, is actually where the next is the center of
#
the second urbanization that happens.
#
It's a place where the new religions arise, Buddhism and Antijainism, which do not accept
#
many rituals and practices of the earlier religion.
#
And it's also where the next empire comes from.
#
So if you assume that there is a tension between these two regions, by around 100 CE, you have
#
the only conclusion that you can arrive at, is that this tension was resolved in one way
#
with the victory of one, victory meaning one opinion of how the society should be structured
#
and organized, gaining over the other side on how it should be.
#
The dominance of that one cultural strand and the, you know, this continued almost enforced
#
endogamy in a sense has interesting consequences.
#
I want to quote this passage from David Reich's book, Who We Are and How We Got Here, which
#
you know, you've quoted in your book and that's also a great book, quote, people tend to think
#
India with this more than 1.3 billion people is having a tremendously large population.
#
And indeed many Indians as well as foreigners see it this way.
#
But genetically, this is an incorrect way to view the situation.
#
The Han Chinese are truly a large population.
#
They have been mixing freely for thousands of years.
#
In contrast, there are few, if any Indian groups that are demographically very large
#
and the degree of genetic differentiation between Indian jati groups living side by
#
side in the same village is typically two or three times higher than the genetic differentiation
#
between Northern and Southern Europeans.
#
The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations, stop quote.
#
And this is in a sense very disturbing just as a picture of where we are today because
#
this is not just true in a genetic sense, a large number of small populations.
#
And this is the result of the last 2000 years.
#
We have a history that is much larger.
#
And as I put it, yeah, it is disheartening to read that.
#
And but the way I see it is that we have to realize that this was not inevitable.
#
This was not the way we are going.
#
Even after all of the elements of the Indian population groups were in, this was not the
#
So what happened around 100 CE has to be seen as something, as a political development.
#
And if it is a political development that happened around then it is, it can be pushed
#
back and can be seen to be different.
#
When you say pushed back, I'm not talking about laws and things like that.
#
That has already been done culturally, but I'm saying our basic understanding.
#
Because our basic understanding of how this population, how we are put together hasn't
#
And that's what I hope this book will change, that our basic understanding of what who we
#
are has to change for this miss, for this reality to change also, that endogamy has
#
And the cost is much too, one of the costs we already know because we talk about it,
#
because a division like this prevents people from reaching to the heights of their competence
#
and to how far they can go.
#
Because if you're saying birth determines to a large extent where you can go, we are
#
saying no to a lot of people not, I mean the human cost is incalculable, I mean there's
#
The second part is equally important, which may or may not realize all the time, is that
#
it's important for people, any community, especially in a locality, societies progress
#
and progress fast when they take common action to the benefit of everybody.
#
But if the structures are even within villages are such that it is difficult to take common
#
action that would benefit everybody because there are so many divisions, then that's a
#
whole lot of positive things that we are saying no to.
#
And so the cost of this, we have to realize only then will I think we will get to reversing
#
this in a significant way.
#
It's distressing to see how often you still practice various research that is done in
#
marriage practices and things like that still shows that it's a very dominant trend and
#
It's embedded in our culture now, no matter what the laws might say.
#
Speaking of current modern politics, why do these new findings get so much pushback?
#
Even you have been told so often on Twitter, for example, for these, you know, why does
#
Why do people in politics have a stake on whether the Aryans came this way or that way?
#
What is the original Indian culture?
#
What is the role of the Vedas?
#
Why does all of this matter?
#
I mean, I imagine that look, we are in the 21st century and it should not matter.
#
All of this is just of academic interest, but no, but these are like life political questions.
#
And it's also interesting to note that I know I consistently talk about four large migrations
#
and nobody has any problems with three of them.
#
There's nobody raises an objection to saying, no, we did not come from out of Africa.
#
Nobody says, no, there was no Tamil is not related to Ilam, Ilam, we came from here.
#
There's nobody saying any objection to any of the first three migrations.
#
The only objection is to only one of them, the idea migration.
#
And the reason I think it's born out of a misunderstanding that our civilization is
#
single source and it is from is the ideas, the Vedas, the Sanskrit.
#
And if you say that came from that was the result of a migration, then you're saying
#
all of our culture is imported.
#
Because the book argues is that our civilization is a mixture of multiple influences.
#
The higher up and civilization is as much is an earlier source is the first source if
#
you can say, or at least an earlier source of Indian civilization, which has left a large
#
imprint on our culture.
#
The area Sanskrit Vedic tradition is a very important constituent of the Indian civilization,
#
but it is not the earliest or the only one.
#
So you do not need to be horrified if you say like other migrations, the idea also came
#
as migrants about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago.
#
The second factor is that there is an assumption that if you say they brought into European
#
languages, then you're saying the Vedas and the Sanskrit, you know, all came from imported
#
in flat pack, you know, and then recombined after opening the package.
#
The Sanskrit and the Vedas, almost all of it is the result of interaction with people
#
who are already settled here.
#
And that's not something that is foreign.
#
That's how all of our things are.
#
It is a mixture of different traditions, different ancestries, different stories.
#
So these two things have to be, these fears have to be taken out of the picture, but that's
#
only part of the problem.
#
The other part of the problem is not out of these fears, but as the British historian
#
Hobbes Baum said, the historian is to nationalists, but the opium makers or poppy growers are
#
They provide the raw material that the market needs.
#
The market for nationalism needs an idea of identity creation, requires myths about who
#
we are and what we are.
#
And there are myths that are more appealing for political purposes than there are myths
#
that are not that appealing to political purposes or reality that is not appealing to political
#
So I think what this book tries to do is that until now we did not have solid scientific
#
data and evidence to give clear answers to our prehistory, which is essentially where
#
the fundamental questions about the formation of our population lie.
#
So I hope that discussions about our population formation and therefore everything else that
#
follows will begin to be based on actual scientific data and findings rather than myths, fancies
#
and caricatures of reality.
#
I find it bizarre that there are some nationalistic narratives that are so simplistic that they
#
place value judgments on what came earlier or what originated here or what came from
#
I mean, it doesn't matter.
#
We are from Africa and we are all basically a khichri and your book in that sense by summing
#
up the dramatic advances that science has made in the last six years, both gave me a
#
lot of joy and a lot of hope.
#
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
#
I really liked this conversation.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, take my word for it.
#
The book is far deeper and more insightful.
#
So head on over to your nearest bookstore online or offline and pick up a copy of early
#
Indians is published by juggernaut.
#
So you can also read it on the juggernaut app.
#
They have some funky annual deal I've taken where you pay some small annual amount and
#
can then read all the books on their apps.
#
And if you want to follow Tony on Twitter, his handle is at T Joseph zero zero one zero
#
at T Joseph zero zero one zero.
#
You can follow me at Amit Verma A M I T V A R M A and you can browse past episodes of
#
The Scene in the Unseen on sceneunseen.in and thinkprakati.com.
#
Thank you for listening.
#
How aware do you think you are of your laws and rights?
#
Do you look up to laws when you are caught up in situations?
#
Do you know what your rights are when you're stuck somewhere bad?
#
Well, here's a show that can help you move an inch closer to being aware of what your
#
Tune into Know Your Kanun with me, Amber Rana.
#
This is a podcast meant to answer all your law related queries.
#
Catch Know Your Kanun every week on the IVM website or the app or anywhere you get your
#
Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Don Bradman and now Cyrus Brocha.
#
Okay, probably not in the right company.
#
I mean, Don Bradman is Australian, but it's called Cyrus Says, a wonderful show about everything.
#
Find the show on the IVM podcast app, IVMPodcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
