Missing Links

New DNA evidence is making the story of India’s past clearer than ever

- Hartosh Singh Bal

At a seminar in Delhi in the first week of July, Vasant Shinde, an archaeologist and the vice chancellor of Pune’s Deccan College, said that in late September or early October, we should expect a paper that will significantly contribute to our understanding of ancient India. The paper will reveal the results of DNA tests on human skeletons uncovered at Rakhigarhi, Haryana, the most extensive of all Harappan civilisation sites, where excavations supervised by Shinde are still underway.

The DNA results should go some way towards settling the question of the genetic relationship between the people of the Harappan civilisation and the current population of the subcontinent. What the DNA tests reveal—say, if they show that the Harappans had a close genetic affinity to the Indo European language speakers who composed the Vedas, or to the Dravidian language speakers of the south—will not only shed light on the Harappans. It will also affect almost every question regarding the evolution of Indian civilisation after the decline of the Harappans—including the question of the possible migration of Indo-European speakers from outside the subcontinent into north-west India: the famous Aryan migration or invasion theory.