Where are we Indians from?

The story of our origins in 10 bullet points

India is a country that has fascinated people since times immemorial. It continues to be an enigma and a subject of immense discussion and debate. One such debate is all about our origins- who are we exactly? Where have we come from? And how is it that we all relate to each other and to the people in the world?

I found some answers in a book called Early Indians. The story of our origins is eye-opening and fascinating, and something that each one of us needs to learn about.

To summarise learnings from a book that draws heavily on evidence and detailed investigative work in fields spanning genetics, linguistics, and archaeology is a tall order.

I shall leave out the details and optimize it so you can, within 5 minutes, take away some big ideas and go down the rabbit hole of reading further if it blows your mind sufficiently. Let’s go.

1. We’ve all come from Africa. When I saw “we”, I’m not just referring to modern Indians. I literally mean ALL of us. All humans on the planet, yes. We’re all descendants of early modern humans who came out of Africa and spread all across the world. This migration began somewhere around 70-80 thousand years ago, and these early humans (‘humans’ here will refer to Homo Sapiens) walked across the Middle East and then reached India around 65,000 years ago. These First Indians began inhabiting the Indian subcontinet, and are our earliest known ancestors.
   

2. As we know, agriculture began around 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Iraq) and gradually spread. The earliest known group in the Indian subcontinent who were experimenting with these agricultural techniques gradually led to the emergence of Harappan civilization, sometime around 7000 BC. Various studies reveal that the Harappan people were a mixture of Iranian agriculturists and the First Indians.
   

3. Around 2000 BC, people from the Eurasian steppe who spoke the early Indo-European languages migrated to India and mixed with the people of the Harappan empire. These people, known as the Aryans, came from the area that we today call Ukraine and Russia. At the same time, the Harappan empire had already crossed its heydays and was facing a period of decline due to an extended drought. There could be other factors at work and we don’t know if the Aryan migration was violent, but it’s possible that they brought some form of plague which would only have accelerated the empire’s demise.
   
   

   
   

4. The Aryans mixing with the Harappans is what resulted in Ancestral North Indians (ANIs), who are the forefathers of most North Indians today. Many Harappans, who were moving (or had already moved) southward and eastward during that phase of decline, mixed with the First Indians, resulting in Ancestral South Indians (ASIs). All modern Indians belong to these two groups.
   

5. The Harappan script, despite centuries of effort by various experts, has still not been cracked. Linguistic evidence indicates that the Harappan language came from an earlier version of Elamite (spoken in the Iranian region of those days) and led to the emergence of Proto-Dravidian scripts! Some fascinating detective work has gone into drawing parallels from word comparisons, interpreting the meanings of Harappan seals, and mapping structural similarities to arrive at this conclusion. Additionally, it has been found that the Harappan pastoralists must have introduced these languages as they moved southwards, which have morphed over time into languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada.
   
   Think about the implications- South Indian languages existed much before the arrival of Sanskrit! And secondly, it was the Harppans who were speaking an early form of South Indian languages and their southward migration is what led to their eventual development (to their current forms) adoption in South Indian states! But where did Sanskrit come from? That answer is even more fascinating.
   

6. Apparently, the language that these Aryans spoke was actually a primitive form of what would later evolve into Sanskrit! Such a conclusion has irked many folks who couldn’t stomach the fact that the language we consider to be so pure, so Indian and the very foundation of ‘our culture’ actually came from these Aryans. But then one must remember- we possess some of the genes of those very Aryans. These Eurasian genes are more predominant in some of us and lesser in some others- but that is what genetic studies suggest. Many have tried a different approach- by proposing that the Harappans were the original Vedic people but even these theories have been dead ends.
   

7. Now that you know we’re all a mixture of so many different people from different continents and time periods, let me throw in another intriguing fact. Wed don’t just share our genes with all these other Homo Sapiens. We also share ~2% of our genes with the Neanderthals! Some people like the Melanesians and Papuans share 6% of their genes with Denisovans- another class of our cousins who were unfortunately driven into extinction. We’re not even ‘pure’ Sapiens, leave alone any other romantic ideas like pure Indians or pure <Insert community name>
   

8. This and the next few points will cover some fascinating facts that have emerged as a result of everything we’ve discussed so far. A lot of our cultural elements have been derived from the Harappans. The empire may have slowly declined after 2000 BC but the people and culture didn’t- as we know, they moved southward and a large number of their customs are familiar to us today. Kullad, the humble lota, worshipping the peepul tree, houses built around courtyards, sindhoor, dice, bullock carts, pottery, bangles- these are all things we’ve inherited from our Harappan ancestors!
   

9. Russian archaeological sites show that their rituals (like animal sacrifice, burials, and ceremonies) bear an uncanny resemblance to those described in our earliest known religious text- the Rigveda. Genetic studies provide another accompanying clue- the highest presence of the Eurasian genes (belonging to the Steppe people in question) are found more prominently in the Brahmin lineages compared to other castes- and it’s not surprising that these Brahmins were the early guardians of these religious texts as well as Sanskrit!
   

10. So here’s the conclusion: we’re a multi-source civilization that began when fearless pioneers walked from Africa and settled here 65,000 years ago. We share our genetic lineage with them, as well as with a bunch of people from different parts of the world. Our cultural heritage is a mishmash of various influences over the centuries, including those of the Huns, the Mughals, and the Britishers. We’re all Indians, and we’re all migrants.
    

Let that sink in. And let that remind us all that in a world where all of us ultimately have the same origin and are a product of numerous cultures that have and continue to influence each other, divisions of region, religion, caste, and race should never dictate how we treat others.

Let these facts help us transcend the imaginary and misguided divisions foisted upon us, and let us build a world free of hatred and full of love and compassion for all beings.