Samatha Mathew | 07 October 2019
Dr Shinde opened his talk with a mention of the previously published studies from his group in Science and Cell journals. The studies had challenged the pre-existing norms about the history of Indian civilizations. He elaborated that the identification of human settlements in the city of Rakhigarhi, Haryana (one of the five major cities of the Harappan civilization), and the DNA analyses of the excavations have substantiated against the Indo-Aryan invasion theory. It was difficult for their team to isolate DNA from Rakhigarhi excavations due to the climatic conditions that prevent proper preservation of the biological material. After consulting with international experts, Dr Shinde's group was successful in isolating DNA from skulls excavated at Rakhigarhi. The comparative analysis of the DNA with nearly 3000 samples showed that Harappan ancestry can be traced in all major South Asian communities. According to their previous studies published in The Cell, the Harappan genome lacked Steppe or Iranian ancestry. This contradicted the Aryan invasion theory and further challenged the Anatolian hypothesis. These findings stress that agricultural practices were invented and practised independently by Harappans, and were not contributed by migrating Iranians. Harappans also migrated to Central Asia, after which reciprocal movements may have occurred. Their findings lay a foundation that Harappans and Vedic people are the same, and that Vedic knowledge is indigenous and not a product of Indo-Aryan invasion. Harappans spread across the Indian subcontinent, received raw materials from within India and outside, and accumulated wealth by returning finished goods. Harappans practised yoga as established by statues discovered at these sites, another contribution by Vedic people. From yet another Harappan city of Mehrgarh, Pakistan, evidence was found for indigenous cultivation of wheat and barley and advancement of technology in terms of pottery and jewellery. Rakhigarhi has currently replaced Mohenjo-Daro as the biggest Harappan city yet discovered. The greatest contribution of Harappans to contemporary history is city planning and this could be well visualised in the settlements discovered at Rakhigarhi. About 40 burial sites were excavated and various studies performed including anthropological examination, paleoparasitology, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA analysis, craniofacial reconstruction, etc. No kind of diseases could be identified in these Harappan samples, suggesting they had a healthy and hygienic lifestyle. The fact that Rig Veda has descriptions of cities found across the Saraswati river basin, provides additional proof that Vedic people were Harappans and not Aryans.
The talk was followed by an interaction session. Queries were raised regarding the known element of European ancestry identified in Indian DNA, and maybe the current sample numbers described by Dr Shinde's study were not representative enough to draw sufficient conclusions. Dr Shinde responded that more samples needed to be assayed, but the current study provides the proof that Vedic people were indeed Harappans. This does not negate the fact that other migrations or invasions after the Vedic era may have occurred. In his talk, he also disputed Wheeler's theory which suggested Harappans were killed in war by migrating Aryans. He concluded that investigation of skeletons suggests an endemic or flooding (by Saraswati) that might have caused massive wipeout of Harappans and not war or invasion. There was further discussion on how Harappan scripts could be related to the primitive scripts of current Indian languages. Dr Shinde commented that written Harappan scripts could not be directly correlated to present day scripts as there are still gaps in evidence linking Vedic era to modern Indian culture.
The talk summarised the evidence from Rakhigarhi, against a much-debated Indo-Aryan invasion theory. This opens up an opportunity for Indian scientists to further shed light on the genetic affinities and distinctions among Indian communities concerning the Vedic ancestry. The recent study Shinde et al., 2018 was published in PLOS ONE journal: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192299
Samatha Mathew is a graduate student at the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. The views expressed are personal.