The last full-blown Ice Age started around 24,000 years ago, reached its peak around 18,000–20,000 years ago and then warmed up. From 14,000 years ago, the ice sheets were melting rapidly, the sea-levels were rising around the world and weather patterns were changing. The Persian Gulf began to fill up 12,500 years ago. 19 Around 7500–8000 years ago, the Gulf Oasis was completely flooded. One wonders if this event is remembered as the Great Flood in Sumerian and Biblical accounts.
The Persian Gulf people would have been pushed out in waves by rising seas and desertification. Recent archaeology does suggest a spike in new habitations on higher ground appearing around 7500 years ago. 20 We also see growing evidence of maritime activity. A small clay replica of a reed boat and depiction of a sea-going boat with masts from this period have been found in Kuwait. In other words, by this time we are dealing with a Neolithic population capable of farming, domesticating animals and building boats. Some groups would have made their way into Central Asia, taking advantage of warmer temperatures. Others would have made their way into Europe where earlier migrations had already pushed out the Neanderthals. By this time, groups from South East Asia had already established themselves in China and the warmer climate would have allowed them to expand. Modern Chinese are now thought mainly to be descendants of the South East Asians group with inputs from people coming via Central Asia.
Meanwhile, what was happening along the Indian coastline? We know that the Indian coastline also moved several kilometres inland to roughly approximate what we would now recognize. Does this account for the fact that the Indians too have their own account of the Great Flood? According to this ancient legend, Manu, the king of the Dravidas, was warned by the god Vishnu about the flood. So he built a large ship and filled it with seeds and animals. Vishnu, in the form of a fish, then towed it to safety. Manu and the survivors are then said to have rebuilt civilization. The parallels with the story of Noah are obvious.
While the sea moved inland all along the coast, computer simulations suggest that there were two places where very large land masses were inundated. One was where we now have the Gulf of Khambat (Cambay), just south of the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat. The other land mass extended south from the Tamil coast and would have included Sri Lanka. Were there large human populations living in these areas at the time of the floods? It is very difficult to tell since the sites are under water.
In 2001, however, marine archaeologists identified two underwater locations in the Gulf of Khambat that seem to be remains of large settlements that would have been flooded 7500 years ago. 21 There is still a great deal of controversy over the exact nature of these discoveries but, if true, these findings would be truly remarkable. Since I have not personally examined the evidence, I reserve my judgement for the moment. Still, it would be reasonable to say that the changes in weather patterns and the sharp rise in sea-levels must have caused significant displacements in Neolithic populations during this period.
It is often argued that migrant Neolithic groups from the Persian Gulf area took the knowledge of farming to other regions. There is indeed evidence that some of the first crops to be farmed systematically in the subcontinent, around 7000 BC in Mehrgarh, Baluchistan, were West Asian species such as wheat and barley. Thus, it used to be thought that Indians learned to farm from West Asian migrants and only later managed to domesticate local plants such as eggplant (brinjal), sugarcane and sesame. 22 More recently, however, researchers have uncovered evidence that Indians may have independently developed farming, including the cultivation of rice. If there were large urban settlements off the Gujarat coast, they too surely knew how to farm. Was farming developed by the people who lived in the submerged cities and was the technology then carried by refugees to the interiors? Or, were there parallel innovations in different places? We are still learning a lot of things about this period, and it remains a developing story.
Whatever the truth about the submerged cities and the invention of farming, we know for sure that India supported a fairly large human population by the end of the Neolithic age. Who were these people? How are they related to present-day Indians? 23
WHO ARE THE INDIANS?
Till the early twentieth century, it was believed that India was inhabited by aboriginal stone-age tribes till around 1500 BC when Indo-Europeans called ‘Aryans’ invaded the subcontinent from Central Asia with horses and iron weapons. Indian civilization was seen as a direct result of this invasion. Although the date was entirely arbitrary and not backed by any textual or archaeological evidence, this theory appeared to fit the pattern of later Central Asian invasions as well as explain certain linguistic similarities between Indian and European languages. Most importantly, it was politically convenient at that time as it painted the British as merely latter-day Aryans with a mission to civilize the natives.
This theory, however, had to be drastically revised when remains of the sophisticated Harappan civilization were discovered. They proved that Indian civilization clearly predated 1500 BC. Oddly, the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ was not thrown away. It was now argued that a people called the Dravidians (supposed ancestors of modern-day Tamils) created the Indus cities and that these cities were destroyed by the invading Aryans. This theory too ran into trouble. There is virtually no archaeological or literary evidence of such a large-scale invasion. As we shall see, the Harappan cities did not suddenly collapse but suffered a slow decline as a key river dried up and environmental conditions deteriorated.
Just by looking around, it will be obvious to anyone that India is home to a bewildering array of castes, tribes and language groups. Some of these groups came to India in historical times—Jews, Parsis, Ahoms, Turks to name a few. However, there are also many populations that have lived in the country for a very long time. Further complicating the picture is the fact that there has been a great deal of internal migration over thousands of years. So, where a group is found today may be very different from where it originated. Over the centuries most groups have mingled and yet a few have retained their unique identity to this day. In isolated pockets such as in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and in the North-Eastern states there are still tribes that have remained separate from the mainstream since prehistoric times.
Given this multiplicity, it is very difficult to generalize about the ethnic origins of all Indians. Nonetheless, twenty-first-century genetic studies provide some clues about how the Indian population came to resemble today’s complex milieu. This too is an evolving area of study, but we are getting some sense of the broad contours.
The first thing that should be clear from the outset is that there are no ‘pure’ races. With the possible exception of some tiny isolated groups, the vast majority of Indian tribes, castes and communities are a mixture of many genetic streams. This merely confirms what we can all see—that Indians come in all shapes, sizes and shades—and these can vary quite a lot even within the same family. Nevertheless, some patterns of genetic distribution are discernible.
The first clue came with a 2006 study that India’s population mix has been broadly stable for a very long time and that there has been no major injection of Central Asian genes for over 10,000 years 24 . This means that even if there had been a large-scale influx of so-called Indo-Europeans, it would have taken place more than 10,000 years ago, long before iron weapons and the domestication of the horse. Similarly, the study suggests that the population of Dravidian speakers has lived for a long time in southern India and the so-called Dravidian genetic pool may even have originated there.
More recent studies have added colour to these discoveries. A study led by David Reich of Harvard Medical School, published in Nature in 2009, suggests that the bulk of the Indian population can be explained by the mixture of two ancestral groups—the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) and the Ancestral North Indian (ANI). 25 The ASIs are the older group and are not related to Europeans, East Asians or any group outside the subcontinent. The ANIs are a somewhat more recent group and are related to Europe
ans.
Not surprisingly, Ancestral North Indian genes have a larger share in North India and account for over 70 per cent of the genes of Kashmiri Pandits and Sindhis. However, it is interesting that ANI genes have a large 40–50 per cent share even in South India and among tribal groups of central India. Indeed, there is no ‘pure’ population of Ancestral South Indian. The only populations without a large ANI input live in remote places like the Andaman Islands. Incidentally, there are also no pure ANIs.
There may be a temptation to equate the ANI–ASI data to the old Aryan–Dravidian racial theory. One should be careful doing this for a number of reasons. First, the ANI and the ASI are not ‘pure’ races in the nineteenth-century sense. Rather, they are merely different genetic cocktails that each contain many strands. Second, the terms Aryan and Dravidian are not just about genetic ancestry but carry strong cultural connotations. While the ANI genes are more widespread amongst speakers of Indo–European languages and the ASI genes in Dravidian-language speakers, there is a tendency to extrapolate this to cultural innovations of much later times. For instance, the people called Aryans are usually linked to the Vedic tradition while the Dravidians to the Sangam literary tradition. This is not meaningful to the ANI–ASI framework because we are dealing with genetic mingling that started well over 10,000 years ago, a lot earlier than the Vedic tradition, Sangam literature or the Harappan civilization. 26 We are dealing with small bands of hunter–gatherers and early farming communities rather than the thundering war-chariots, iron weapons and fortified cities that are said to have been part of an Aryan–Dravidian rivalry.
In other words, after thousands of years of mixing, Indians are most closely related to each other and it is pointless splitting hair over who is more Aryan and who is more Dravidian. The story of Manu, the Indian Noah, sums up the genetic findings surprisingly well. He was said to have been the king of the Dravidians prior to the flood but is repeatedly mentioned in the Vedic tradition as an ancestor!
A word of caution: India is a large and diverse country and there are many communities that will not fit a simple ANI–ASI framework. In the country’s north-east and along the Himalayas, for instance, we find large genetic inputs from Tibeto–Burmans. In historical times alone we know of genetic inflows of Arab, Ahom, Turk, Jewish, Iranian and European extract. The deliberate North–South axis of the ANI–ASI approach should not be expected to explain all genetic variation across the country. It is merely the starting point of a very interesting line of study that could not only explain our pre-history but also provide key tools for next-generation medicine. One point, however, is clear—that Indians are a mongrel lot who come in all shapes, sizes and complexions. Genetics has merely confirmed what we can all see.
Of course, the genetic links of North Indians to some Europeans and Iranians corroborates linguistic linkages that were discerned in the nineteenth century. Most of the evidence is centred around a gene mutation called R1a1 (and more specifically a sub-group R1a1a). 27 This gene is common in North India and among East Europeans such as the Czechs, Poles and Lithuanians. There are smaller concentrations in South Siberia, Tajikistan, north-eastern Iran and in Kurdistan (that is, the mountainous areas of northern Iraq and adjoining areas). Interestingly, however, the gene is rare among Western Europeans, western Iranians and through many parts of Central Asia. In other words, we are dealing with R1a1a population concentrations that are separated by vast distances from each other. How did they get there?
A study by Peter Underhill et al published in 2010 in the European Journal of Human Genetics found that the oldest strain of the R1a1a branch was concentrated in the Gujarat-Sindh-Western Rajasthan area, suggesting that this was close to the origin of this genetic group. European carriers of R1a1a also carried a further mutation, M458, that is not found at all in their Asian cousins. 28 Since the M458 mutation is estimated to be at least 8000 years old, the two populations appear to have separated before or during the Great Flood. Thus, the genetic linkages between North Indians and East Europeans are best explained by the sharing of a distant common ancestor, perhaps from before the end of the last Ice Age. We do not really know why the Asian and European branches separated, although it is tempting to assume that it had something to do with climatic changes.
Note that the most common lineage in Western Europe is R1b. This is related to R1a1 and possibly also originated in the Persian Gulf area but the two lineages separated a long time ago—probably during or before the last Ice Age. Compared to R1a1, India has relatively low concentrations of R1b. My interpretation is that we are dealing with two major genetic dispersals occurring from the Persian Gulf-Makran-Gujarat region at different points in the climatic cycle—one occurred at the onset or during the last Ice Age with R1b carriers heading mostly west, and another occurred around the time of the Flood involving R1a1 carriers.
The genetic and cultural links between North Indians and eastern Iranians are due to the second dispersal but possibly with additional inputs from a later migration of some lineages north-westward from India. 28 As we shall see in the next chapter, there is reason to believe that some Indian tribes moved westward to Iran and beyond during the Bronze Age. In addition, cultural linkages could have been kept alive by trade. The spread of Indian culture to South East Asia in ancient times and, more recently, the accelerated popularity of the English language in the post-colonial period show that one does not need either conquest or large-scale migration to drive linguistic and cultural exchange. The reality of complex back-and-forth linkages make it very difficult to decode history using the linguistic layers. This may explain why traditional timelines based on linguistics were far shorter than those being suggested now by genetics and archaeology.
CASTES OR TRIBES?
There is one further insight that genetics hints at—the dynamics of India’s caste system. India is not unique in having developed a caste system. Through history we have seen different versions of the caste system in Japan, Iran, and even in Classical Europe. What is remarkable about Indian castes is their persistence over thousands of years despite changes in technology, political conditions, and even religion. The system has even survived centuries of strong criticism and opposition from within the Hindu tradition.
It was once thought that the caste system had something to do with the Aryan influx and the imposition of a rigid racial hierarchy. However, as geneticist Sanghamitra Sahoo and her team have shown: ‘The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities’. 30 Genetic studies suggest that Indian castes are profoundly influenced by ‘founder events’. Roughly speaking, this means that castes are created by an ‘event’ when a group separates out and turns itself into an endogamous ‘tribe’. Over time this process leads to a heterogeneous milieu of groups and sub-groups, sometimes combining and sometimes splitting off. The result is that, despite centuries of mixing, we do not have a unified population but a complex network of clans. This is a good description of the messy ‘Jati’-based social system that exists to this day
Genetics also tells us that there is no real difference between groups that we differentiate today as ‘castes’ and ‘tribes’. As India’s leading geneticist, Dr. Lalji Singh puts it, ‘It is impossible to distinguish castes and tribes from the data. This supports the view that castes grew directly out of tribe-like organizations during the formation of Indian society. The one exception to the finding, that all Indian groups are mixed, is the indigenous people of the Andaman islands …’ 31
In order to appreciate the messiness of the Jati system of castes, note the distribution of the R1a1 genetic haplogroup, the genes many Indians share with Eastern Europeans. 32 Their distribution in India across region and caste is telling. It is present in high concentration among high-caste Brahmins of Bengal and Konkan as well as in Punjabi Khatris, but it also shows up in tribes such as the Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh. In other words, a Chenchu tribesman is closely related to an upper-caste Bengali ‘bhadralok’ and a
blond Lithuanian. You never know where you will bump into relatives. A paper published in the Journal of Human Genetics in January 2009, argues that the R1a1 lineage probably originated in India. The study argues for ‘the autochthonous origin of R1a1 lineage in India and a tribal link to Indian Brahmins’. 33 Thus, we may well be dealing with a particularly successful Neolithic clan that branched out in different directions and whose descendants experienced very different fates.
There is a difference between the genetic reality and the rigid and strictly hierarchical ‘Varna’ system of castes described in the Manusmriti (Laws of Manu). The Manusmriti is often used by scholars as the framework to understand the phenomenon of castes. It now appears that the formal ‘Varna’ based caste system described in the text is a scholarly abstraction that may never have existed in reality. 34 Instead, what we have here is a very flexible and organic milieu consisting of Jatis that can adapt easily to changing times by allowing for evolving social equations. For instance, the system can spontaneously create new castes whenever new groups need to be accommodated. Similarly, groups can be promoted or demoted in status according to prevailing social conditions. This fits what we know from historical experience—including the formation of the warrior Rajput caste in the medieval period. In the past, these groups vied with each other to move up the pecking order. Today we have the opposite situation where they vie to be classified as ‘backward’ in order to benefit from affirmative action. The logic of collective action is the same.
Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography Page 3