Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

MY TAKEAWAY IS THAT THE LOSS OF THE HRAPPAN CIVILIZATION WAS EQUIVALENT IN DAMAGE TO THE MUSLIM CONQUEST.

(China was wise to build her walls. We must imitate her leadership.)

J R Updated Feb 4

The first peoples in India were Austro-Asiatics who arrived 50,000 years ago. Their journey started in East Africa in what is Ethiopia.

These are the same peoples living in the Andaman Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the Australian Aborigines.

These peoples were able to use canoes and fishing to navigate the coastal waters and settled along islands from India to Australia – and their populations can be found along those islands today.

Proto-Dravidians developed in India over about tens of thousands of years through the admixture of Austro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Tibeto-Burmese DNA.

They became an advanced urbane civilization based on agriculture and maritime trade, which was the largest by both land area, economy, and population in the ancient world.

They formed the Indus Valley Civilization and later migrated to South India, and also South-East Asia.

During this time, India continued to experience immigration from outside lands, and analysis of the Mehargh population shows that the from 7000 BCE to 2500 BCE the population had changed.

As the Indus Valley were expert sea farers, and the early Austro-Asiatics were sea farers, my postulatation is that the proto-Dravidians had originated from the Austro-Asiatics.

The Vedic Aryans on the other hand were land based, using the horse and chariot, metal working, and cattle husbandry. They originated from the central Eurasian steppe and came by way of Afghanistan to India.

Even earlier then them, it is believed there was a migration Westward to Europe of the proto-Indo-Europeans, and the Vedics share many similarities linguistically, culturally, and religiously with Slavs, Celts, Greeks, and other early European peoples. This includes clans led by chiefs and priests/druids, soma and potions, nature worship, as well as common root words.

Along the way, they left some of their cousins in Afghanistan. These cousins would become the Zorastrians, moved to Iran and formed the Persian Empire.

The Zorastrians are more recently related to the Vedics and have even more commonalities like ritual fire, which Vedics called Yagna and Zorastrians called Yazna. Soma which the Zorastrians called Haoma, etc.

However, the Zorastrians adopted a dualistic monotheism and discarded nature worship. They also added many ideas of their own innovation that are believed to have been borrowed by or influenced the Abrahamic religions including resurrection, good and evil, Satan, and armageddon – these concepts don’t exist in the Eastern religions.

The Vedics kept everything of their past and added to it, eventually adding dualism, non-dualism, and qualified non-dualism into what would become the philosophy of Yoga.

This philosophy of Yoga is believed to take its roots from the ancient Dravidian religion but developed further until it was distilled into a goal of immortality through Self realization which was to realize through union of absorption (Yoga) that the Universe comprised of two principles, a male principle, the transcendent formless God which was pure mind, pure existence, and pure bliss (sat chit ananda), and shakti or energy the female principle which through Maya or the capacity for dimensionality formed the entire Universe and gave birth to time and causality (karma). Through this realization, the small soul (jiva), can realize its identity with an absolute existence that is outside of time and therefore not subject to impermanence or decay, and through the purification of desires in the heart escapes the cycle of birth and death. Although the soul is immortal, due to it’s ignorance (avidya), at death its desires will lead it to take birth again and again, in various lokas (planes of existence), as per its deeds and merits which form the basis of future thoughts and actions (also karma).

Free will exists but is not fully exercised because the soul is not entirely free from its causal nature.

Therefore all beings take birth as a result of desire, except the perfected beings or divine incarnations (Avatars), which take birth with full knowledge of their divine nature for a higher purpose.

This in a nutshell was the culmination of the Vedic philosophy that occurred by around 700 BCE.

The Rig Veda’s later books start to delve into this area, but the earlier books are properly in the realm of nature worship.

The Rig Veda makes few references to sea faring, but regularly refers to chariots, cattle, horses, and metal work.

The frequency of their vocabulary references tells us their cultural milieu. They were aware of the ocean and the ships, but it was not an integral part of their daily life.

However, sea faring was an integral part of the Dravidian way of life, and this is also why we suspect they are the original founders of the Indus Valley Civilization – which relied extensively on sea trading with Mesopotamia.

Today studies have show that Indians, even isolated tribal populations, have a mix of DNAs from every part of the world notably Austro-Asiatic, Indo-European, and Mongoliod with a spectrum of variations between regional populations.

The chronology seems to indicate that the mature civilization of Indus Valley was weakened by weather changes, especially drought and the decline of major rivers that were glacier fed. These glaciers formed in the last ice age that ended around 10,000 BCE and held in the Himalayas vast stores of water. As they retreated, they fed glacial streams and rivers, which gave steady supply of drinking quality water to the Indus river basin, that was further enriched by the monsoon rains.

The Himalayas are huge and glaciers appear to have provided water for several thousand years but eventually the rivers start to dry up, and the entire way of life that depends on them is now facing uncertainty with droughts becoming common and many cities being abandoned. Some key cities remain but only a fraction of what existed before.

At this time, the nomadic Vedics arrive and are attracted by wealth of the Indus cities and appear to be in a conflict.

The Vedics have the advantage of the horse and the archer. The Indus Valley had no horses but they may have had the ass or donkey. The horse does not appear in any seal – although there is one disputed seal that could be a small horse.

The Vedic hymns describe chargers, coursers, steeds very frequently – large, fast and powerful horses. If Indus Valley was the same as the Rig Vedics, they would have had many artifacts of horses. Whereas many animals are found, horse is notably absent.

The horse is originally from the central Eurasian steppe, so it would make sense that the people coming from that area have the horse before anyone else.

After taking over these cities, the Vedics seem to realize that the Indus Valley was very advanced, and have soon adopted their ideas and philosophy.

By the time, we get into the late Rig Veda, they are no longer roving barbarians seeking spoils and treasure, but have mellowed out quite a bit.

They have now adopted and integrated with the Indus religion and culture. Also, they may have taken Dravidian wives. The later Rig Veda starts to show the pre-cursors of Upanishadic thinking.

The creation hymn Nasadiya Sukta – considered to be one of the newest hymns – is a completely different form of thinking than the incantations of the early Vedic hymns.

This is so different that we have to suspect these ideas are coming from the proto-Dravidian religion and have developed further similar to the Hellenistic syncretism that occurs 500 years later.