North by Southeast

Dr. Shubhash Kak

Advances in genetics have made it possible to trace ancient migrations. It is now generally accepted that modern man arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and from there spread first into India and Southeast Asia by coastal migration that probably included some boat crossings. There are several estimates of the time when this spread into India took place. According to the geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer, settlements in India appear about 90,000 years ago. From India there were later northeastern and northwestern migrations into Eurasia and the Far East.

The “Out of Africa” theory has superseded the earlier multiregional model according to which the Europeans, the Asians, and Indonesians arose independently in different parts of the world. There is overwhelming evidence that archaic lines --- such as Neanderthals in Europe --- simply died out, and the specific characteristics of the different races is not a consequence of a mixing of the regional and modern populations but rather of adaptation to unique climatic conditions.

Microevolution, as in the mutations of the mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother) and the Y chromosome (inherited from the father), helps us trace and connect populations across time and region. When the random mutations are calibrated one has a genetic clock. The clock can be validated in a variety of ways; for example, by using the knowledge of when the potato plant spread around the world from its Andean origin. Even without historical evidence related to the spread of the potato plant, a scientist can deduce the Andean origin of the plant from the fact that there exist many varieties of it in Peru and just a few lines in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Given the genetic clock and the distance between the DNA of the European and the current Peruvian varieties, one can estimate the period the plant was taken to Europe.

The new findings turn on its head the previous view of the origin of Indians. The earlier view, popular in Indian history books, was that the Indian population came in two waves from the northwest around four or five thousand years ago, displacing the earlier aboriginals, descendents of regional archaic groups.

The new view is that subsequent to the rise of modern mankind in Africa, it found a second home in India, which is the point of migration for the populations of Europe, North Africa, China and Japan. The migrants in India slowly adapted to the wide climatic conditions in the sub-continent (from the tropical to the extreme cold of the Himalayan region) leading to the rise of the Caucasoid and the Mongoloid races.

A recent paper in the journal Science reporting on the analysis of the DNA of the Orang Asli, the original inhabitants of Malaysia, confirms this view. According to it a single migration out of Africa took the southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australasia. At this time Europe was too cold for human habitation. About 50,000 years ago, when deserts turned into grasslands, an “Out of India” migration populated the Near East and Europe, another migration went northeast through China and over the now submerged Bering Strait into the Americas. This agrees with the earliest known modern human sites of the Near East (45,000 years ago) and Europe (40,000 years ago).

It is likely that the earliest sites on the coastline that were occupied by the first migrants are now under water, since sea level has risen more than 60 metres since the last Ice Age. This widespread inundation is likely to be the basis of the flood myths that are common to all ancient cultures.

This view not only changes our understanding of the peopling of India, but also of Southeast Asia. For some time the academic view was that the Polynesians and the Indonesians were latecomers into their lands from China. The new view is that the habitation of Southeast Asia is almost as old as that of India and Australia, and the Chinese, as also the Japanese, are relative latecomers into northeast Asia.

Dental anthropology provides important clues in the retracing of ancient migrations. The Indian type of teeth is called Sundadont, and it is also found amongst Southeast Asians, Micronesians, and Polynesians. Contrasted from Sundadonty is Sinodonty (dental features that include shovel-shaped incisors, single-rooted upper first premolars, triple rooted lower first molars and other attributes), the degree of which is seen to increase as one travels north through the Mongoloid populations of mainland East Asia, and it is seen in extreme in the Americas. The South Asian origin of the pure-blood Ainu inhabitants of Japan is confirmed from their Sundadonty.

The Kennewick Man

The Kennewick Man, a 9,300 year old skeleton was discovered in 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River near the Washington town of Kennewick. The skeleton was caught in a controversy because the Native American groups did not wish the body of an ancestor to be dishonored. On the other hand, there was much interest to study the skeleton further because its features were very different from that of the typical north Asian type from which the Native Americans are descended.

Scientific study has shown that the Kennewick Man represents the Indian (South Asian) type. The skull is long and narrow and the teeth are of the Sundadont type. This should not be extrapolated to mean that the Kennewick Man actually came from the Indian subcontinent. But it confirms the spread of the Indian type all over the ancient world, from which it was displaced by later adaptations to different climates.

Language families

When the theory of the Aryan invasions into India is replaced by an “Out of India” viewpoint, one can readily explain regularities in languages that are spread widely. Linguists see connections between India and languages that extend to distant lands. Thus the Indo-Pacific family covers the languages of the Australian aborigines and the Papuans, the Austro-Asiatic cuts across from India to the Pacific (the Munda in India, the Thai, and the Vietnamese), and the Dravidian has connections with the Altaic (Japanese, Korean, and the Turkic).

Within India, the connections between the structure and vocabulary of the north and the south Indian languages indicate much internal migration of people. The genetic evidence indicates that the Dravidian languages are the more ancient, and the Aryan languages evolved in India over thousands of years before migrants carried them westward to Europe. The proto-Dravidian languages reached northeast Asia through the sea route. If Aryan evolved out of proto-Dravidian, the attempt of the linguists to construct a pure proto-Dravidian vocabulary is in all probability wrong.

The idea that the development of the Aryan languages took place in India explains how a variety of such languages are to be found in the sub-continent. Both the so-called kentum and satem language families are represented: Bangani is kentum, it is found in the Himalayan region; and languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi, and Assamese are satem.