What Aryan Invasion?

Stephen Oppenheimer concluded by genetic studies that people moved into India from Africa initially and rest of the world population were descendents of this group. University of Cambridge researchers Michael Petraglia and Hannah James came to the similar conclusion by analyzing fossils, artifacts, and genetic data. So if there was a migration, it was from India to Europe and not the other way. Does this prove that there was no Aryan Invasion/Migration? While the above migrations happened about 85,000 years back, the theory of Aryan Invasion/Migration talks about what happened around 4000 years back. This is what Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, who has been excavating in the Indus city of Harappa has to say

The transition from one culture to the next was gradual as seen at Harappa, and there is no evidence for invasions by outside communities such as the so-called Indo-Aryans. Although some scattered skeletons were discovered in the later levels, they do not represent warfare or raiding, and there is no evidence that the site came to a violent end. [Decline and Transformation]

Now the BBC has updated their page on the history of Hinduism to reflect this. So why are some people still holding onto the invasion theory? A good answer comes from Suhag A Shukla, who was the legal counsel for the Hindu American Foundation in the recent California textbook controversy.

There is no evidence of any invasion or any war. Honestly, the people who have held onto the Aryan invasion theory, probably based their entire careers on that particular theory and have expounded that through their research, they have a vested interest in not seeing it disappear.['I am not for rewriting Hinduism']

---

Related posts:

1. Hostile Reactions In 2004, the Dover, Pennysylvania, school board decided to teach students an alternative to evolution called Intelligent Design.Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new...
2. Op-Ed in Pragati: Getting Objective about it (This article appeared in the June 2009 edition of Pragati) In January 2009, US network PBS telecast a documentary titled The Story of India. Hosted by Michael Wood,this six-part...
3. The Biblical Migration Theory The discovery of skeletons in Mohenjo-daro in 1920s led Sir Mortimer Wheeler to opine that Harappa was overthrown by invaders, inspired by the Vedic god Indra.[1] Now archaeology and...

---