Okay, Internet, I need to do some research on the Aryan Migration.

Did you mean Naaazis?

No, I did not.

Here are some articles about Naaazis.

I want information about ancient Indian history.

Here’s some articles about how Modi is a Naaazi.

*incoherent cry of frustration*

Ahem. Well, it seems I’ll be working with a reduced set of resources on this one. As mentioned in the previous hypothesis article, I’m trying to improve my understanding of the subcontinent, starting with the ancient history. This ran into the gaps in the available information, and an almost mendacious approach to data interpretation by the ‘experts’ in the field. This particular second hypothesis came to mind while I was listening to a review of arguments about resolving an apparent contradiction in the available evidence, but there was one possibility that was glaring in how pointedly it was not even addressed, even to give it an offhand dismissal. As though mentioning it was itself anathema.

As I listened to the various pieces of information presented and the rebuttals of the most contrived explainations, the more I was convinced that the hypothesis which shall not be mentioned was a better fit to explain the apparent contradiction.

Since I already mentioned them in the introductory skit, this is about Aryans. Their popular association with some unpleasant people has, I believe, led to a desire in academia to minize or delete them, even if unconsciously. I’m going to stick to what I’ve been able to suss out in a factual manner, but I admit my sources have been constained. Also, I may use ‘India’ in the pre-partition sense to refer to the subcontinent, this is not meant to lead to confusion.

So, why am I talking about Aryans? It has to do with language and culture. In India there are two main language families. The Dravidian languages are spoken in the south and in an exclade in western Pakistan. The Indo-European languages are spoken across the north. As with all language boundaries, the dividing line is messy across the middle of the subcontinent. The Aryans are the people attributed with bringing the Indo-European language family into India, and are said to have migrated from the northwest across to the Ganges delta, which is the core of the distribution of Indo-European languages in India today.

So why is this article a Harappan Hypothesis? Well, there are a bunch of data points which come into play. I’ll list them.

1: Harappan civilization sites are the oldest known cities in India, located along the Indus, Sarasvati and Ganges river valleys

2: From the material culture and architectual elements uncovered thusfar, there is remarkable continuity with later Indian civilization from the Harappan foundations.

3: The earliest Harappan sites are dated to older than 3000 BC.

4: The currently accepted estimate for the Aryan migration is between 1500 and 1000 BC.

This has led some to use this reduced data set to conclude that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking peoples later overrun by the Aryans. Only this ignores the apparent contradictions I was referencing earlier. These have to do with the Vedas. The Vedas are Hindu scriptures written in Sanskrit which form a significant element of that religion. They also contain descriptions of ritual, geography, and historical allegory which fit very clearly into the setting of north India.

That bit about Sanskrit matters. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, associated with the Aryans, and the composition of the Vedas is attributed to the Aryans. And here’s where we get into the extended data set.

5: The geography of the Vedas does not fit any other region outside of north India, and many of the rivers mentioned by name are still called by the same names today, in the same general layout.

6: The rivers of the region are unstable, leaving behind multiple paleochannels. The shifting of these rivers has resulted in the Sarasvati drying up between 2000 and 1800 BC after its tributaries moved to drain into the Indus and Ganges instead.

7: Many Harappan sites are located along the dry paleochannels of the Sarasvati.

8: The Rig Veda praises the Sarasvati as a great and mighty river running from the mountains to the sea, while later passages reference the place where the Sarasvati disappears among the sands, indicating the Vedas were composed while the Sarasvati flowed and while it was drying up.

9: There is no archeologial evidence of a disruptive material culture moving across north India between 1500 and 1000 BC.

10: There is no agreement on what Aryan material culture looked like. Different experts have put forth different sets of artifacts as exemplars, but there is no consensus from person to person, with collections being contradictory and mutually exclusive.

11: Late Harappan sites begin to appear in the Ganges valley around 1800 BC, and lead to the start of urban centers in that region.

12: I found offhand references to Iron being associated with the Aryans, but could not locate more definitive statements. So while I will mention the discovery of evidence of Iron smelting in the Ganges starting around 1800 BC, it is an ambiguous data point.

13: The genetic data is ambiguous, leaving no insights, but also not indicating a sudden influx of a different population.

14: What skeletal remains we have do not show a noticeable change in attributes at any time. Note, skeletal remains are not extensively found.

So, what does this extended data set tell us? Well, the academicians I’m miffed at pointedly shied away from drawing particular conclusions that struck me as obvious. I got the impression that they wanted the Harappans to be a Dravidian people, but that would have required contrivances. It would have meant that when the Aryans arrived they would have to have abandoned almost all of their own culture to the point of not even decorating their pottery in a manner different from the resident Harappans, yet still caused everyone around them to adopt the language they brought along, recording the religious hymns of the locals in an Indo-European tongue.

This just doesn’t strike me as rational. When you have an influx of new people you get results along a spectrum from overt replacement of the local culture with the newcomers to complete assimilation into the local culture by the newcomers. But most of the time you get a hybridization. What you don’t get is a complete adoption of the local culture by the newcomers, except for a complete retention of their language which is adopted by the locals.

So, my hypothesis is thus – The traditional estimate of 1500-1000 BC for the Aryan migration is wrong, and the Harappans are the Aryans. The expanse of their civilization – stretching along the Indus, Sarasvati, and Ganges basins – matches. They moved from west to east, an outlier in Asian migration patterns. They resided in the landscape of the Vedas at the time they had to have been composed. And lastly, they had one last eastward migration at around 1800 BC where they entered the Ganges region, bringing iron close to when the Aryans traditionally were held to do so [citation still needed].

With the falsification of one data point that is an estimate whose origins I can’t even find, the facts fall into a neat and cohesive alignment. It’s just one that people don’t like.