STUDY RAISES THREE KEY QUESTIONS, GIVES ANSWERS

QWere beginnings of agriculture in north-western India helped along by the spread of agriculturists from western Asia, or did western Asian crops such as barley and wheat spread to south Asia without the accompaniment of migration? Iranian agriculturists must have been in the Indus Valley at least by 4,700 to 3,000 BC. But there is evidence of the beginnings of agriculture in the north-western parts of the subcontinent much earlier. This could either mean that agriculture began locally without migrating agriculturists from Iran; or it could mean that Iranian agriculturists were in the region much earlier but the mixing between the two groups happened later. This will be definitively answered when the study based on ancient DNA from the Indus Valley site of Rakhigarhi in Haryana is released.

QWho built and populated the Indus Valley civilisation? Were they migrants from western Asia? Or were they indigenous hunter-gatherers who had transitioned to agriculture and then urban settlements? Or were they Vedic Aryans? The Indus Valley Civilisation was peopled by an admixed population of Iranian agriculturists and South Asian hunter-gatherers.

QWas there a significant migration of pastoralists from the central Asian Steppe to south Asia who brought with them Indo-European language and culture and who called themselves Aryans? If there was, when did that happen? The Indus Valley Civilisation was likely built and populated by a mixed population of Iranian agriculturists and south Asian huntergatherers; pastoralists of the south-eastern Steppe moved into South Asia in the second millennium, bringing with them IndoEuropean language and culture; the mixing between the Steppe people and people of the Indus Valley Civilisation caused the emergence of the Ancestral North Indian population; and the mixing between the Indus Valley people and the South Asian hunter-gatherers formed the Ancestral South Indian population.

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