 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Tony Joseph and we are going to discuss his book, The Early Indians, which actually throws light on who we are and also what kind of shall we say history do we have as people, not the written history which is much shorter but actual history of the people of the subcontinent. Tony, what made you write this book because you are not somebody who is either from history, archaeology or genetics. The three things you really discuss here. I was always fascinated for some odd reason by the higher up in civilization ever since I heard about it. And it's not that I had great interest in history in particular, but the higher up in civilization it really captured my imagination. And when I had time on my hands some six years ago, I thought I would try and understand and try to answer three questions which had never really been answered, which is who were the harrapins, where did they disappear and why did it take more than a thousand years after their civilization declined for cities to an urbanism itself. Second urbanization to come up. That was the first urbanization, the second urbanization I think. So, then I started going to all the higher up in sites in Dholavira, Lothal, Gujarat, in Rakhikadi, in Haryana, then following that up visits with archaeologists, historians, linguists, epigraphists who have all done work on the higher up in civilization. But you didn't go to Mohanjidar or Harappa in West Partica. I had tried that earlier but they never gave me the visa. So I had to do that without that. So then you realize that you really can't answer the questions about the harrapins unless you went back thousands of years earlier because it is very clear from the archaeological record that the harrapin civilization rose naturally out of the agricultural revolution that happened in northwestern India. In fact it's also quite interesting the archaeological work done by Pakistani scholars who talked about the growth of the city as it arises in different layers. It's clear there's a continuous growth that takes place, as you were saying, with agrarian developments that are taking place around it. So the question of who were the harrapins naturally evolved into who were the first farmers which naturally evolved into, you can't really answer that unless you ask the question who were the first Indians. So gradually the scope of my work expanded enormously from who were the harrapins to who are us Indians and somewhere along the line you've discovered. Or South Asians, shall we say. Yeah, Indians is used in this book in its old sense, not in its subcontinental sense. And then you realize that a lot of new findings were coming from a field called population genetics which I had not paid enough attention to six years ago. Then you started following that up which took an enormous amount of time to fully get on top of it. So that's how it began. That's also interesting because the genetics, the population genetics that you're talking about has been there say from 90s even earlier looking at blood groups and so on. But the refinement really comes with actual genetic information. But that also was relatively shall we say weak because you could only look at certain locations of change and you couldn't really look at the whole genome. And the recent advances have been of course not because of archaeology or history but because of other reasons that you can sequence the whole genome. Absolutely. And that has made the whole thing far more shall we say elaborate and far more sophisticated in its analysis. Exactly. So how does the whole genome sequencing and how does it relate to the latest findings? In which case we talk really of the right papers which were also in Europe, talked about Europe and then also about the subcontinent. I think the whole genome sequencing did take our understanding a whole lot farther than we knew earlier. For example, the 2009 paper clearly said that North Indians are far more closely related to West Eurasians, that is West Asians, Central Asians, Europeans than South Indians are. But it could not really answer the question, but how did this relationship come about? Did the North Indians move to these West Eurasian places or did they come to India? There's no way that the science, even whole genome sequencing of living populations could solve that problem. That's where the next really major advancement came in, which is ancient DNA. RQ genetics as it is called. That's right. It is DNA of people who lived thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. If you were to explain how that changed, let's say in Delhi, we have an archaeological site from where we have collected DNA from a level that is about 4,000 years old. And you see that there is no West Asian ancestry there. But from a level that is 3,000 years old, you do see there is West Asian ancestry. Then it is a clear conclusion that in this site, there has been a new influx of West Asian ancestry. And this has changed our understanding of prehistory across the world. And this is an important point. It's not just the clarity about our understanding of prehistory is not specific to India. It's happening all across the world. In fact, the interesting part of the close parallels that you see between the European, shall we say, expansion and the two expansions. One is of agriculture and agricultureists. And the other expansion is from the steps population. Those who control the horses and probably the chariots and therefore could use it for war. And this, the two influxes also seem to show also its marks in shall we say the subcontinent. So there is both cases. You see an ancient population and these two influxes that takes place, it changes the genetic composition. That's right. In Europe, as you said, we know that in the last 10,000 years, the population went through two major periods of churn. First when agricultureists or farmers from West Asia. Anatolian. Yeah, Anatolian or what is today called Turkey. They moved into Europe, either replacing or mixing with existing hunter-gatherers. And then again, 5,000 years ago when central Asian step pastoralists, what they call Yamnaya, moved into Europe. Then again, replacing or mixing to some extent with the existing farmers as well as the remaining hunter-gatherers. So now we know that that's the European population. Laxi, Euro, this thing, that part of the Caspian sea, that part of the central Asian steps as it were. That's right. But I think we today, because of ancient DNA, we today have a much more cohesive understanding of how global populations everywhere were formed. I would say that we now know that there are, you know, migrations happen all the time in all the places. But as somebody has said, people have feet, only trees have roots. Right. But that doesn't help you understand. So how do you make, is there a method to understanding this? There is. We know from all the discoveries that happened in the recent past that the world population was essentially formed by four classes of migrations. All of which had global impact and all of which were driven by global forces, by which I mean that we, when we look back today, we can understand why those migrations happened at that time and why they were so major. For example, the first one is, of course, the out-of-African migrations which everyone knows about, which is that around 70,000 years ago. Africans, a small group, a subset of the Africans moved out of Africa into, and then populated the entire world. The recent examples seem to show that they have had earlier also people moving out, but they don't survive with the genetics of the population today. Yeah. So probably the successful one is 70,000 years old. That's correct. But earlier DNA is still there in some form or the other with the Neanderthal population. That's correct. There might have been. I mean this is the argument of, if you look at, if you ask the archaeologists about when did the world get populated, you will get a different answer from when you ask geneticists. And that's understandable because they're answering different questions. Archaeologists are answering the question of when they're looking at evidence left behind by modern humans and then answering the question when did the first modern humans arrive. Geneticists are answering the question, when did our direct ancestors arrive? Those are slightly different questions and that explains the difference in this. The lineage that we come from, that's genetic signature. That is what we trace back to the 70,000 years back. That's right. So earlier things may not have left behind a lineage that is today visible in the population. Or very minor signatures because Neanderthal signatures is also theirs. Yeah, but they are not modern humans. But yeah, there is intermixing that happened with other homo-lineages, definitely. But like that, they might be, in the future we may detect what shall I say, lineages from earlier modern humans, which today we can't, it's possible. So this is the first migration and the global force that was behind it, we could say, climatic factors and which determine not just human migration but migration of all animals. The second migration is more interesting. But before that, as the out of Africa migrants were peopling the whole world, between about 70,000 years ago and around 16,000 years ago, which is when they reached the Americas, that's the period that the expansion took place. But in between this long period, there was a glacial period that intervened, which meant that many of these population groups were separated from each other and developed along slightly different parts, accumulating minor genetic differences. It's important to know that even today all modern humans share 99.9% of DNA. The argument is that the genetic diversity among the entire human population is less than that of a troop of baboons or a troop of chimpanzees in Africa. That's the difference of lineages that we have, almost entirely a common lineage. So when the glacial period ended, what you see is that modern human populations in various parts of the world are experimenting with agriculture and some of those are successful, some are not, some are successful but are not sustainable, some are sustainable but are not very advantageous like the people in the Pacific Islands or in Southeast Asia who were among the first to start experimenting with agriculture, but they had locally available materials, only yams and tubers, which are not very productive. But those early modern human groups who were lucky enough to be in locations where they could domesticate cereals, wheat, barley, rice, et cetera, they were very productive and these are the Chinese, the Indians, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians. They all started agriculture which boomed and the natural result of modern humans taking to agriculture was a boom in population and incomparable to the rate at which hundagadra populations grow and the natural result of those that boom in population was migrations and these migrations affected all of the world in every region. The migrations resulting from agricultural expansion, the first agricultural transition. Coming back to this, one was the Anatolian one that we talked about. The other one is the one coming to Southeast Asia from the Zagros Mountains in Iran. That's the second level of, second set of migrations, taking place roughly at the same time which comes into Southeast Asia. That's correct. We also know, for example, a little later, because China probably took to agriculture in a major way a little later, we also know that a major migrations that happened from China to that affected all of Southeast Asia and even us to some extent. So the second set of class of migrations which we could call the farming related or Neolithic migrations are a major force that shaped global populations. So the Neolithic farmer migrations. Yes. Now there is a third class of migrations which happened when some modern human population groups, as we discussed earlier, master the horse and also to some extent the art of metallurgy which gives them both mobility and an ability to move into new areas that had not been and conquer them. So this is something that affected again global populations across a vast region of Eurasia from Iceland to Europe, to Central Asia, to West Asia, to India, to China. So this is what you would say is a third class of migrations. You could tentatively call it Bronze Age migrations or horse related. Of course related because Bronze Age is already there with the next stage of the Neolithic farmers in Harappa or in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, Babylon and so on. That's right. You could say mobility is the key part. Mobility and war is the key part. Because these were pastoralists who were not city dwellers and we have seen again and again people who are militarily mobile whether it's the Mongols or shall we say the Europeans and the ships who then are able to overthrow more settled empires based on more urban, shall we say, population. There is some disagreement over to what extent even though there is greater evidence of burials of men who have great wounds and have great battle axes with them which are all new in Europe as a result of pastoral migrations into Europe even then I would say there are disagreements on how violent it was and how gradual and over a period of time it happened. That's a matter of details for the historian. But the point is mobility is a new element with the horse that we see and we see the expansion of this population over a vast land. Almost all of curation. It's not very different from the Mongol expansion much later. Genghis Khan's descendants are the most genetic signatures of the highest number is from Genghis Khan. That is not explained by agriculture or civilization but essentially what would be called elite dominance. So this is the third class of migrations you could say. All these three happened broadly in what you could call prehistory or before most human population troops had taken to writing. But the fourth class is equally important and that we are all aware of, very keenly aware of because we or our parents or our grandparents have been affected by it which are colonial migrations. This is when some modern human population troops mastered how to travel the seas in a very fast manner, invented steamships and conquered faster... We'll park that discussion for a separate time. I would just... No. So you have these four classes of migrations. When you come to India you see that the last one is immaterial to us because it didn't affect our genetic composition in any which manner because the numbers were small. Which is the revenant of the colonial... Culturally, yes. When I say that not... Yeah, not genetically but culturally. So what I want to say is that out of these four classes of migrations as far as Indian genetic composition is concerned we need to concern ourselves with only the first three. Only the first three. Now this obviously has made a huge... come up against a huge resistance shall we say of those who have talked about Akhanda Bharat, Pune Bhumi and Hindus being the ancient people, Aryan civilizations having risen only from India and gone out. So all of that which I will call Hamburg history has been... which has been demolished time and again by archaeological evidence linguistic evidence, historical linguistic evidence now is again substantiated by the genetic prehistory that we have been discovering. Particularly what you talked about the archaeological history. So how do you see your reaction to your book from those quarters? See, this is very amusing because what we know is that all of the large population groups in the world are the result of mixtures and the result of migrations whether it's... you're talking about the Europeans, the Americans, the Japanese the Australians, there's no large population group in the world that is not a result of major migrations that happened in prehistory. You know Todi, the other thing they talk about if there is any pure group it is bound to die out because hybrid is what survives much better. That's right. And if there is any group that can claim to be pure you can be certain that is some group that is so far out in some very isolated part of the world which has never had contact with the rest of the world. The idea of race itself has gone out of fashion. The idea of pure groups or populations that were soyambhu or what you could call self-autogenerated all those ideas have been discarded. We are all mixtures of populations and there is nothing specific, there is nothing peculiar or surprising about the fact that Indian population is also like other populations a result of major migrations that happened in the past. It's only the supremists of different varieties with that white nationalist or Darian nationalist here what we call also the Hindu nationalist or Hindutvaadis they are the ones who are contesting that there is the history of the human race is the history of migrations and mixtures. If you will give me a little time I would like to tackle this at some depth. Their arguments essentially is based on emotive arguments saying the idea of, they don't have problems any of the other three migrations they have problem with only one migration which is the central Asian steppe migration which brought Indo-European languages and who call themselves the idea. Their objection to this has been that on the one hand that this is something that makes the idea of Indian migration was proposed by the westerners or the British to make themselves superior and say that they brought civilization to India but this is absolutely wrong because we had a civilization the largest in the world both by area and by population which is the Haripan civilization before the idea arrived. So to suggest that anyone who proposed the idea migration theory is suggesting that civilization was brought to India by that migration is wrong. That's not true. If at all, in fact it's the other way around. Our civilization, it took more than a thousand years for a second urbanization to happen after the idea arrived. So the argument is actually in the rivers altogether. The other point is that the idea migration the idea of the idea migration it was made because it makes the Europeans feel superior in some way. This is wrong. Now we know that the Europeans and South Asians are both equally recipients of migrations that happened from the central Asian step. And earlier from West Asia. Earlier from West Asia. It doesn't put anybody on a superior base even if you assume the false assumption that being the source of migration somehow it puts you on a higher pedestal which is ridiculous in any case. In any case nobody is talking about your step's population being superior. Anyway, either Europe or South Asia. So the superiority inferiority argument is utterly baseless. But that's not all. Then they say the idea of the idea migration has been meant to divide the people. Now this is utter nonsense because what do we know now? We now know from genetic evidence that the Harrapins were the ancestors of both North Indians and South Indians because they moved. Once the civilization declined they moved both east towards what is today North India and south towards South India. So the Harrapins civilization is the common heritage of both. And so this is not divisive. We also know that today that almost all population groups in the country carry 50 to 65% of their ancestry from the first Indians that is out of African migrants who reached here 65,000 years ago. What does that show you? Much higher proportion among the women. That's right. What does that show you? It shows that the tribals which many of the rest of the population so far used to consider as somewhere very, very different from us are actually the closest relatives by far that the rest of the Indian population has. They are their blood relatives and there's nobody they are more closely related to than the tribals. Is this divisiveness? So the idea that the idea of idea migration or the recent discoveries are more divisive has no basis whatsoever. So if you remove one by one all of the arguments that are put against idea migration, then what are you left with? So the arguments that they are putting forward is not really the reason for the opposition to the idea of migrations and the shaping of the Indian population. Then there must be some other reason that is really not spelled out that is why there is opposition to the idea of migration. And what could that be? Let's think about it. When we say that it is multiple migrations that form the Indian population like all other populations in the world what that means is that our culture is a mixture. Is a result of mingling between people who came to this land at different points of time especially for major migrations that happened in prehistory. Four because the first one out of African migrants then from West Asia and the third one which we haven't discussed which is the result of agricultural expansion happening from China which brought Austro-Asianic languages to India and they changed the demography of Southeast Asia and finally those languages reached India too these are Kasi and Mundari etc. So these four migrations shaped our culture. So what which means you cannot it is false and baseless to look at Indian culture as flowing from a singular source which is the idea of Vedic Sanskrit. There is something even more fundamental basically if you say that those who brought the Vedas are from outside then you have the problem that Muslims are not invaders any different from the Vedic people and that is really the problem that Hindus have been Islam both come from outside if that is so then this whole argument about India being the the Pune Bhubi of the Hindus and the primordial land of the Hindus then comes into question it is nationalism what is to be called the blood and race version of nationalism which is what they are really talking about using religion only as a shall we say a marker race is a marker for this I would agree with you but I would still think it is the earlier argument of what is our culture that is more fundamental this point is a little to you but not to them because for their concern the only issue is getting the Muslims to be declared as invaders that is only purpose of that argument that is true because in a broader sense it also means once you accept this what science says it also means that you have no basis to look at migrations as as something negative that is how all world populations formed exactly so that is a mixture people are mixture so what you are propounding is what the correct or shall we say the more inclusive view or the more scientific view of migration should be what they are propounding is an ideological view of the Indian nation and in this unfortunately science has no role that is right and unfortunately for them that is right increasingly science as well as earlier historical record, archaeological record shows essentially the same thing absolutely agree with you the scientific evidence goes against the political project of dividing people into insiders and outsiders exactly so that is the issue that is right I hope Tony that you will come here again and explain later developments which are which are take place the Rakhigari archaeological evidence has still to come out officially that is right so we are still waiting for the paper but we know that the Rakhigari which was does not show any shall we say steps in nature is a clear indicator that this is the ancient substratum of what you call the Harappan people and that is predating the central Asian example absolutely it was a pleasure talking to you thank you Tony hope to see you more more of you in news click very gladly this is all the time we have for news click today do keep watching news click and also do visit our website