Prehistoric migration

An Antipodean Raj

Genetic evidence suggests that, four millennia ago, a group of adventurous Indians landed in Australia

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Oldest known port[jetty] known to the world till date is located at LOTHAL in Gujarat-India, the southern most post of Indus valley settlements.LOTHAL is dated 2500BC.May be the ship or ships mentioned in the article,sailed off from this port.
Harappans [ neither Dravidians nor Aryans but evolved Indians or Hindus ]were city builders and were also sea farers.Eventually the evidence will emerge that establishes outward migrations in small and big waves from India to all corners of the world.


Doesn't this proves a few things:
1. Though Indian introduced gene pool they didn't introduce Hinduism. So does this question existence of Hinduism at that time? or says Hinduism was a non Dravidian religion at that time
2. If these people were Dravidian's they didn't introduce the skill of city building or other advanced culture of Indus civilization. Which proves that Indus Valley was not a Dravidian culture. So effort to link it to Brahmi script or proto Dravidian language is waste of effort

naveen.kumar in reply to gruffles

There's no need for data when one can observe such things within own family(dark skinned and light skinned siblings in the same home). Caste and skin color are not equivalent - only pure white Europeans have the habit of confusing the two. Indians come in varied colors that depend more on local migration history, altitude and distance from equator than on caste, religion etc etc. Caste was a feudal social order where people took the job of their forefathers. You don't need to be black or white or yellow or pink to be a hereditary farmer or trader or butcher. It's the hereditary job that mattered. Infact even the name of some castes were decided in that manner e.g. "Lohar" for 'Blacksmith' ; 'badhai' for 'carpenter' etc etc.

In any case, caste hierarchy and any discrimination based on caste was banned by the Constitution right after the british left. Affirmative actions ( 50% reservation in higher education institutions and public services for instance)have been put in place to help traditionally educationally & socially backward castes stand up. The days of hereditary 'warriors', 'priests', 'money-lenders' are up. So no point beating a dead horse now.


If the Indians got to Australia that long ago it doesn't look like their genes had much influence on the Aborigines does it ? I mean, is it just me, a layman, that Aborigines seem to have a definite tendency to look more like Negroid Africans than sub-continent Indians ?


Note to author: Tandoori ovens and chapatis belong to Indo-Aryan culture, and not Dravidian. A surprisingly lazy oversight. in reply to indica

Very interesting. The world was a much smaller village before globalism and as such people from the same village often look similar. Certainly even within Europe - some people have a look where you can often guess where they are from - but the world is losing that as it integrates.

As you've suggested the next obvious step is to use the science language to analyse native Australian languages. However its effectiveness is sometimes limited - generally to the introduction of new technologies (which of course had no local lexicon).

Devils Advocate_1 in reply to BHARAT.P.

[Bharat reply to 22nd, 06:43
India is missing out here]
It is not too late yet. History has NOT ended in the 1990's as some silly people thought.
I would rather want to see Indians taking the land of Australia than having them remaining in the hand of the whites.

James776 in reply to naveen.kumar

You're right, but to be fair to those confused Europeans, there is probably a weak-to-moderate correlation between caste and skin colour, especially when you control for those factors you mentioned (e.g. distance from the equator). A high-caste South Indian may be darker than many medium-caste North Indians, but he or she is most likely lighter-skinned than a low-caste South Indian. How many times have you seen a light-skinned "Untouchable"?

Yes, India actually has very generous provisions for affirmative action but still a good percentage of those university places, government jobs etc. are not taken up. Awareness of these opportunities, and ability to take advantage of them, is very low in rural areas (and India remains very rural). Caste discrimination is outlawed, but ask a Scheduled Tribes kid who just graduated from college and is having trouble getting an apartment in the city because higher-caste landlords are unwilling to lease to them how he feels about that. You'll realise that the sceptre of the caste system still holds at least a little sway.

YgorC.S. in reply to bennedose

I think they are referring to places where people still speak Dravidian languages, while the rest of India speaks Indo-Aryan languages. The genetic ancestrality of Indians may be mostly "native", dating back to many thousands of years, though there are also significant genetic evidences of Indo-European admixture, but culturally it is almost undeniable that India was probably mostly Dravidian until the Indo-Aryans started to conquer more and more lands and spread their cultures further, and the language is the main result of that expansion. That would explain the fact a few pockets of Dravidian-speaking territories are found in the North, while in the South they are totally dominant. The Indo-Aryans probably came from Central Asia and, thus, were victorious mostly in the North (Pakistan and Northern India).


Regardless, there is evidence to suggest indigenous Australians of some description have existed on the continent for closer to 100,000 years.

Macabe Lawufll in reply to MySetDancer

thats kind of wrong too, because India is a united continent - 28 countries, 30 languages and 10 religions united in ONE country called INDIA.

.... something Europe is trying to do just now ... which as a south-asian in europe, have my doubts about .. Do NOT compare european racism (amongst your own european countries) to the Indian Caste System ...

As I said, the caste system is like a CLASS, poor / rich. It's not based on skin colour, there are MORE Darker high caste priests.

and guess what, im not indian..

Adam Onge

What about the (almost extinct) original inhabitants of the Andaman islands: Sentinelese, Onges, Jarawas ?

Macabe Lawufll in reply to KPATOΣ

There are more Higher Caste dark southern-indians DARK .. than light skinned north-indians. get it ?
Dark South Indians = More Higher Castes...
Light North Indian = Less Higher Castes...
so for the 100th time.. the caste system is NOT the european equivalent to RACISM.. its more classicism.



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