India & Its NeighboursBook note
Early Indians
Description. A short description of a book from my bookshelf, not a review.
Joseph, a journalist, brings together recent research in ancient DNA, archaeology and linguistics to explain who the ancestors of today's Indians were. He describes the arrival of the first modern humans from Africa, the later migration of farmers from Iran, the Harappan civilisation, and the arrival of Steppe pastoralists in the second millennium BCE.
The book is clear and well sourced, and it treats a politically charged subject with care. Its central message, that Indians are a mixed population formed by several waves of migration, is grounded in the genetic evidence.
From the bookshelf · read 2019–2020