| Myth of Aryan Invasion Update 2005 - Page 3 | | Print | |
| Written by David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva) | |||||||
Page 3 of 5 Older Patterns: India and Southeast Asia and Human Populations A third important point of natural history is that this movement of populations out of Southeast Asia at the end of the last Ice Age reflects an even older pattern of movements. According to recent science and genetics, modern man arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago and from there spread first into India and Southeast Asia by a coastal migration. 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. India has long been a focal point of this movement from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. 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 sixty metres since the last Ice Age. So a movement out of India and Southeast Asia has been occurring for tens of thousands of years. But the movement after the end of the last Ice Age was the most crucial for current human populations. Geneticists like C. Cavalli-Sforza and S. Oppenheimer have noted that settlers in the coastal regions of India were the source (‘inocula’) for the population of India. Some of them later migrated northwards and westward to populate Europe. This is the exact reverse of the various migration-invasion theories (like the Aryan invasion) advanced by linguists and anthropologists who sought to derive Indians and their civilization from Central Asia, Eurasia or even Europe. See for example, Eden in the East by Stephen Oppenheimer (2003), London: Constable. This is discussed in more detail in later chapters. Hindu View of Time and History The Hindu idea of earlier Manus (humanities) and earlier kalpas or world-ages, such as we find in Puranic literature, may reflect memories of these earlier phases of mankind prior to what our current culture recognizes as history. This Hindu connection to prehistoric phases of the human species may be responsible for the Hindu idea of an eternal tradition of truth (Sanatana Dharma), and its recognition of cyclic movements of human civilization over many tens of thousands of years, such as we find in Puranic Yuga cycles. From the standpoint of modern science, this ‘Hindu view of time’ better reflects the movement of natural history that is marked by cycles and cataclysms over long time periods. This is in contrast to western historical models that follow a linear and progressive model of history, culture and religion towards some sort of heaven or utopia, based upon a limited time horizon of about five thousand years that stands apart from nature’s cycles and often tries to oppose them. As we move into a more ecological age and gain a greater respect for natural history, we must reformulate our cultural history accordingly, which will take us more in the direction of this Hindu view of time, humanity and the universe. |