The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) says that a set of invasions of people(s) from Central Asia around 3500-3200 years ago, first introduced the Indo-European (IE) language family to India. Since the archaeological record does not show any discontinuity (e.g., as is evident in parts of Europe where an invasion did take place), sometimes AIT is moderated to AMT (Aryan Migration Theory), and instead of outright conquest and extermination, elite dominance is the mechanism by which the large native population utterly forgot its original language and place-names.
Please note, 4600-3900 years ago is the "mature period" of the Saraswati-Sindhu civilization; and per AIT/AMT this civilization is not of the IE family; and so the postulated period of invasion/migration cannot be pushed back very much in time. That is, if for example, an IE incursion occurred 4200 years ago, it would no longer be AIT/AMT. The linguistic basis of the AIT/AMT theory also suffers if the incursion is pushed back in time. For example, the Indo-Aryan words found in the written records of the Mitanni (a people of Northwestern Syria, eastern Anatolia) date to 1400 BC, and were, per AIT, part of the expansion of Indo-Aryan speakers into India. (BTW, if you examine it closely, "Indo-Aryan" is simply a fancy and obscuring word for archaic Sanskrit.)
The counter-narrative to AIT/AMT is OIT (Out-of-India Theory). OIT, I think covers a wide gamut of possibilities, but the basis of it is:
1. The Saraswati river that was an abundant river in the time of the Rg Veda, as mentioned there, is the same Saraswati river whose dried up course is described in the Mahabharata; the Mahabharata river corresponds to the dried river-bed along whose banks the vast majority of Saraswati-Sindhu civilization sites have been found - very much more than along the Indus. Hence the "Saraswati-Sindhu" rather than "Indus" civilization.
2. If the above is valid, then IE speakers were in India while the Saraswati still flowed, and that throws AIT/AMT out-of-whack. And then the initial seeds of the IE language might have been spread by migrations out of India much before 4000 years ago. Nothing precludes round-tripping, of course.
Anyway, there's also an increasing amount of genetic evidence and more to come (Indian populations have been vastly undersampled, most of the studies having people from Pakistan or Gujarat as representative of the whole of India). And according to Prem Kumar, "There is Genetic Evidence against the Aryan Invasion Myth".
The Indian population is a mixture of two ancestral populations, termed ANI and ASI. Except for some isolated tribes in the Andaman islands, everyone else in India is a mixture of these two. A diagram from one of the papers is shown below. This shows a family tree, but not the time depth. Other papers claim to establish that the Europe-ANI split is at least 12,500 years old. The ASI-ANI split is theorized to have arisen 60-55,000 years ago. The great volcanic eruption of Toba in Indonesia, some 75,000 years ago, has left deep deposits of ash in parts of India; it is theorized to have greatly depopulated India. Incursions of new peoples, some 55000 years ago led to ASI. With that background, you can read Prem Kumar's article.
Please note, 4600-3900 years ago is the "mature period" of the Saraswati-Sindhu civilization; and per AIT/AMT this civilization is not of the IE family; and so the postulated period of invasion/migration cannot be pushed back very much in time. That is, if for example, an IE incursion occurred 4200 years ago, it would no longer be AIT/AMT. The linguistic basis of the AIT/AMT theory also suffers if the incursion is pushed back in time. For example, the Indo-Aryan words found in the written records of the Mitanni (a people of Northwestern Syria, eastern Anatolia) date to 1400 BC, and were, per AIT, part of the expansion of Indo-Aryan speakers into India. (BTW, if you examine it closely, "Indo-Aryan" is simply a fancy and obscuring word for archaic Sanskrit.)
The counter-narrative to AIT/AMT is OIT (Out-of-India Theory). OIT, I think covers a wide gamut of possibilities, but the basis of it is:
1. The Saraswati river that was an abundant river in the time of the Rg Veda, as mentioned there, is the same Saraswati river whose dried up course is described in the Mahabharata; the Mahabharata river corresponds to the dried river-bed along whose banks the vast majority of Saraswati-Sindhu civilization sites have been found - very much more than along the Indus. Hence the "Saraswati-Sindhu" rather than "Indus" civilization.
2. If the above is valid, then IE speakers were in India while the Saraswati still flowed, and that throws AIT/AMT out-of-whack. And then the initial seeds of the IE language might have been spread by migrations out of India much before 4000 years ago. Nothing precludes round-tripping, of course.
Anyway, there's also an increasing amount of genetic evidence and more to come (Indian populations have been vastly undersampled, most of the studies having people from Pakistan or Gujarat as representative of the whole of India). And according to Prem Kumar, "There is Genetic Evidence against the Aryan Invasion Myth".
The Indian population is a mixture of two ancestral populations, termed ANI and ASI. Except for some isolated tribes in the Andaman islands, everyone else in India is a mixture of these two. A diagram from one of the papers is shown below. This shows a family tree, but not the time depth. Other papers claim to establish that the Europe-ANI split is at least 12,500 years old. The ASI-ANI split is theorized to have arisen 60-55,000 years ago. The great volcanic eruption of Toba in Indonesia, some 75,000 years ago, has left deep deposits of ash in parts of India; it is theorized to have greatly depopulated India. Incursions of new peoples, some 55000 years ago led to ASI. With that background, you can read Prem Kumar's article.
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Guest · 461 weeks ago
Nor is it correct that there is no archaeological horizon between the IVC and the Vedic culture. The horse has a central role in Vedic culture, but no history in the IVC, and it was domesticated in Central Asia. The IVC built on massive scale, but early Vedic culture was pastoral and built little.
Also, the Mitani were neither Indic nor did they speak Indo-European. Their texts do include an Indic text written by a chariot instructor imported from India who wrote in his native Indic tongue (not Mitani).
macgupta 81p · 461 weeks ago
2. G. Lucotte http://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/the-major-...
"We have refound in our samples the clear distinction initially established by Pamjav et al. [21] between Indian Z93 populations and European Z280 populations: all our South Asian populations are Z93, while almost all our European populations are Z280. Datations show that the Z93 Pakistano-Indian group is the most ancient (about 15,5 K years); in Europe, the Eastern populations are the most ancient (about 12,5 K years) and the Northern ones the most recent (about 6,9 Kyears)."
Of course, Lucotte could be misdating things. There is another paper that dates Z93 to 5800 years ago - but on examination it is based on a sample of 6 or such.
Here's a 2009 paper placing the origin of R1a1* in India: http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/v54/n1/full/jhg...
(Swarkar Sharma et. al.).
3. There is no archaelogical horizon in the sense that as the Saraswati dried up or whatever else happened, there is no sign of an abrupt change or intrusion, as e.g., has been found in Europe. There is what can be considered to be an evolution of the artifacts found. As an example for Sind, http://new-indology.blogspot.com/2016_03_01_archi...
4. Yes, the Mittani were not Indic and they did not speak Indo-European. I think Prem Kumar knows that. But Indra, Varuna and the twin Ashwins appear in a treaty of theirs. And if the horse-training instructor Kikkuli was imported from India instead of from somewhere between the Steppes and the border of South Asia, you've already undermined a key tenet of AIT.
Guest · 461 weeks ago
The Mitanni empire undoubtedly post-dated the first IE cultures in India, whether autochthonous or otherwise. Also, although the Mitanni spoke Hurrian, a non IE language, their rulers were thought to be Indo-Iranian in origin.
R1a1 is ancient (15 kyr?), whatever its origin, but R1a1a2b2 (Z93) is a more recently descended variant.
Guest · 458 weeks ago
macgupta 81p · 458 weeks ago
"Of the 1693 European R1a-M417/Page7 samples, more than 96% were assigned to R1a-Z282 (Figure 2), whereas 98.4% of the 490 Central and South Asian R1a lineages belonged to hg R1a-Z93 (Figure 3), consistent with the previously proposed trend. Both of these haplogroups were found among Near/Middle East and Caucasus populations comprising 560 samples."
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v23/n1/full/ej...
What is to be explained is how some Steppes R1a-M417 population so neatly sent R1a-Z282 to the west and R1a-Z93 to the east. (Z282 and Z93 are immediate or almost immediate descendants of R1a-M417 per Figure 1 at the link above).
The only way coming to mind right now is tiny founder effects, and they had to have reached their European and Indian destinations when the populations they joined were still pretty small, which pushes this more into the past.
The paper also says "However, early urbanization within the Indus Valley also occurred at this time and the geographic distribution of R1a-M780 (Figure 3d) may reflect this." R1a-M780 is a descendant of Z93 and so if the early urban Indus Valley Civlization has R1a-M780 already, then the genetic story is totally at odds with the linguistic story.