The Aryan and Dravidian races have always been at the foundation of a history of India. I have always been curious as to the real existence, history, and migration patterns of these supposedly different groups of people. Reading the history book that I mention in my post here only left me with more questions than answers.

The general idea in that book was that the Indian populace is composed of a mix of the Negrito, Mongoloid and Caucasian population. However, it leaves open to debate the question of who founded the Indus Valley civilization. I have found, while reading various articles on the internet that there appears to be a recent tendency to lean towards the Aryans as the original founders of the civilization - with the assumption that the Dravidians were a proto-Negrito race that did not have the cultural and technological advancement to found such an advanced civilization.

I also find a tendency to label the four southern Indian states (namely Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and TamilNadu), as predominantly containing Dravidian populations. The reasoning behind this line of thinking being, that these were the original Dravidian populations that were pushed to the South of India by the invading Aryan foreigners. In some aspects this could be true, considering the fact that Tamil is one of the few (if not only) Indian languages that has so few words borrowed from Sanskrit, and therefore lays its claim to be an older language than Sanskrit. Sanskrit itself is said to be the basis for the majority of other Indian languages. However, other sources have revealed that there appears to be a link between the Dravidian languages and those of Eastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea. This might indicate that this was the origin of the Dravidian population, or perhaps points to an exodus of the population westwards at the time of the Aryan invasion.

I do not believe that there is any clear delineation between an Aryan and Dravidian race, and the real picture is much more complicated than that. South Asia is a clear stopping point for migrations from Central Asia, the Fertile Crescent, and Eastern Europe. All I think we know for certain is that the proto-Negrito migration to Australasia went through South Asia. This would clearly indicate the existence of the Negrito population in India and South Asia at some point. The Mongoloid influx arrived much later from East/Central Asia since the Himalayas would have formed a natural barrier. However, the questions that remain are

• Where did the founders of the Indus Valley civilization come from?
• Where and why did they disappear? If they were invaded and/or displaced where did the invaders come from ?
• If there really were invaders, are these the Aryans that are spoken about? If so, does that mean that the Indus Valley civilization was a Dravidian civilization?
• If the Indus valley civilization was Dravidian, should we be using a language like Tamil to decipher the inscriptions and tablets from the civilization? Has this ever been attempted?
  

I would love to hear comments, personal opinions and pointers to historical sources on this subject. I get the feeling that people tend to sway this argument towards popular beliefs either for political gain, or reasons of racial superiority. I am also very surprised that we have no clear answer to this problem; though I expect that recent DNA(Y chromosome) and mtRNA(X chromosome) research might point us to clues to these migrations.

Most Indian Historian make an assumption of land migration. But, people in the south of India could have reached there by sea.

It is hard to believe that people trekked 1000's of miles to the south to escape invaders, who would have in all likelihood either killed or captured them.

Or what if evolution had led to human beings living in the South already?

On a personal note, I believe that there are many races out there and restricting them only to a combination of the three broad classifications - Negrito, Mongoloid and Caucasian - is flawed.    

I have considered the sea migration route, but I cannot think of where they might come from. It is possible that humans made small sea crossings on their way from South Asia to Australia - though I would suspect they preferred land bridges. The only two places that humans could have reached South India from would be either Egypt, or from the Middle East.

As for the three major races that are generally used for classification, I tend to look at them as branches of a tree that certainly get more complex as you follow them to the leaves.    

One theory advanced by the book Underworld is that Current sea level is much higher than in eons past.

This would suggest that human civilizations were forced to migrate inland from coastal areas...

And that clues to humanity's very ancient past lie under the ocean.

India specifically has a documented history which seems to be older than current acheoligical discoveries allow for.