Browncast Episode 66, ancient India and DNA with Vagheesh Narasimhan

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on LibsyniTunesSpotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

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This show is an interview with Vagheesh Narasimhan. The two papers are freely available at his website. Many of the papers mentioned are at the Reich lab website (free). We do mention a Southeast Asia ancient DNA paper that is from the Willerslev group.

I do recommend The Horse The Wheel and Language. It’s a little out of date but take it seriously, not literally.

Kushal Mehra’s interview with Niraj Rai worth a listen.

An article on the reception to the research within India.

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Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

What to say, my questions were not asked again? Thanks for the efforts but it was under my expectations:

 Almost nothing about Europe (no data about spreading genes within Europe?). The oldest and the most advanced civilisations in the world – Vinca and Lepenski Vir (Iron Gates) not mentioned at all. It is a surprise considering that D.Reich (+121) wrote paper last year about Lepenski Vir (Iron Gates).
 All about languages was patchy and unconvincing. Romans spread Indo-European languages??? Latin? From which language Latin originated? What about 5-8000 years before them?
 Not source model for Yamnaya? Why not try Vinca? And what’s happened that people from Yamnaya started their trips in two opposite directions? Which genes were traveling?
 ‘Steppe’ people were spreading Indo-European languages? (does this mean – Serbian speaking tribes were spreading Serbian language?)
 The term Slavic (and Balto-Slavic) did not exist at Yamnaya and thousands years after Yamnaya time.
 Mediterranean people with little ‘steppe’ speak non-Indo-European languages (Greeks?)
 Good (Helio’s) question about I2 in Swat Valley, it seems caught him by surprise. I already said that it was one of crucial information. Let have a look one more time the I2 maps and think if I2 came from Swat (i.e. SA) to Europe or from Europe to Swat (i.e. SA)

https://www.quora.com/Does-the-I2A-haplogroup-stand-for-the-South-Slavic-gene

https://www.slavorum.org/haplogroup-i-reason-why-southern-slavs-are-taller-from-west-and-east-slavs/

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago

Thank you for asking my question. BTW deeply hurt that you struggled with my name , considering that i am the namesake of the greatest living Bengali of the 21st century. 😛

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago

One surprise and one ready to be discovered stuff i think going forward

Surprise: That the people of Swat(which Razib thinks as perhaps non Indo aryan) have degree of Andamense DNA. To think that Andamenese imprint is that far North West is fascinating.

Going forward: How did the Steppe folks totally circumvent BMAC folks without being stopped or overwhelming them is a big mystery

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

LOL, I was just thinking the Aryans and Dravidian calling a truce after their epic battle, and at the party , the Aryan is like “Hey didn’t we just pass through those beautiful gardens (up in Swat), on our way to Punjab” and the Dravidian is like “What ! lets conquer that shit together” and they just reversed their car (chariot, if you want)

INDTHINGS
INDTHINGS
5 years ago

Vagheesh tries to argue against an Aryan Invasion in the most bizarre of ways (the material culture we excavate being mostly similar pre and post Aryan). This is to be expected. The Aryans were steppe barbarians. They weren’t literate and had no material culture to speak of other than their Indo-Aryan oral traditions. Why would we expect farming techniques and architecture to change by the arrival of people who new neither how to farm nor had probably ever set food in a building?

If we excavated the material culture in China pre and post Mongol Invasion, would we see much difference? Nope. This is the general trend seen when steppe peoples conquer more advanced civilizations.

Jaydeepsinh Rathod
5 years ago
Reply to  INDTHINGS

Yup, the Indo-Iranians were steppe barbarians. They migrated from the steppe and assimilated into existing advanced Harappan people and left no trace of their migration into the archaeological record.

Let us see how hard reality punctures this fantasy.

The PIE had vocabulary for agriculture and included terms for barley and wheat & likely millets. There is no
evidence for agriculture east of Urals until late into the 2nd millennium BC and it reached there from the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor likely from Southern Central Asia – BMAC.

Yet, the Indo-Iranian barbarians when in South Asia were using agricultural terms of PIE origins and not those derived from the agriculturally much advanced Harappans whose main diet incidentally was based on barley and millers with minor use of wheat. How did this miracle take place ?

How did the steppe barbarians who had not much history of agriculture not only managed to preserve PIE terms of agricultural vocabulary through their migration across the steppe but also managed to impose those terms on the massive Harappan civilization who had millennia of agricultural practices behind them ?

Well ofcourse handwaving it will make this problem go away. The Steppe migration of Indo-Iranians is ofcourse revelation from the almighty. What more proof do you need ?

INDTHINGS
INDTHINGS
5 years ago

Many barbaric steppe peoples had words for farming or buildings, despite not being able to do those things at all. Again, this is normal.

Also, the Aryans didn’t “preserve agricultural terms across the Steppe”. Any agricultural terms they had were adopted from their contact with BMAC, then, after the Indo-Iranians and Indo Aryans split, the Indo-Aryans again picked up some agricultural terms from the IVC.

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

My two cents is that the whole study does not negate or add anything to the AIT/AMT as the study itself (as vagheesh says) is about a case who lived in the Harappan age. Already AMT folks say that whatever migration /invasion happened it only happened after the Indus age.

The migration could have happened (or did not happen) , or anything could have happened, after that, and the study can’t determine that since its outside the time period of the study. But puzzlingly he says in the very next sentence a big thumbs down to aryan invasion theory.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

A lot of people are uncomfortable with the invasion description. Especially if you are from a Tamil Brahmin background in the south.

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

BTW wouldn’t you say Hrithik is perfect example of how the Sintashta people would have looked like (pigmentation wise) 😛

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

I agree with the invasion description wholeheartedly. These were horse and chariot warriors conquering the civilization that created yoga.

But I’m not surprised that Vagheesh and others want to downplay the invasion aspect, especially after taking their backgrounds into account.

Deep Bhatnagar
Deep Bhatnagar
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

@Razib Since you are Pro Invasion because you believe that 10% is large enough impact to warrant that but let me ask how much of Aryan genes aka R1a do we find from the earliest Aryan Indian samples & how many among all Indian samples are aryans ? How much of it came in one go ? While some of it might have been from Invasion but can we conclusively say that all of it came from Invasions ?

Do you agree with Indian Left-wing’s conclusion of – Indo aryans destroying a Greater magadha imposing Vedic ritualism as well as casteism over the society ?

Also what was the state of endogamy among Pre-steppe civilizations do we have any data about that ? What about the papers from South India that attest to the prevalence of Endogamy well before arrival of Aryans or Steppe people ?

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/caste-system-an-indigenous-invention-in-south-india/article4290662.ece

Then there is also problem with people who don’t want to see how languages in that region could have evolved by affecting each other & such effects can not happen without proximity of these languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substrata_in_the_Vedic_language

Lastly Genetics also suggest a periods where Human societies were constantly changing their modes of survival – Hunter-Gatherer, Farmer to regional states and all these changes are big enough to change human societies in various fundamental ways & so when focus is only on proving Invasion all these other factors gets overlooked.

I have even shared few research papers which showed how state formation & emergence of new techniques were creating closely nit communities similar to feudal Europe which later became Castes in India.

Shash
Shash
5 years ago

“Yet, the Indo-Iranian barbarians when in South Asia were using agricultural terms of PIE origins and not those derived from the agriculturally much advanced Harappans whose main diet incidentally was based on barley and millers with minor use of wheat. How did this miracle take place ?

How did the steppe barbarians who had not much history of agriculture not only managed to preserve PIE terms of agricultural vocabulary through their migration across the steppe but also managed to impose those terms on the massive Harappan civilization who had millennia of agricultural practices behind them ?”

Elites’ nomenclature for something being replaced by local nomenclature. Why is that even surprising? We see it all the time, for example, with Norman-French words replacing Anglo Saxon ones in post-1066 England.

I think, the Indo-Europeans being on the periphery of agricultural societies long enough to develop their own words for things like barley even without having advanced agriculture of their own, and then their elite culture taking over the post-IVC world makes those convolutions straight forward.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

Excellent, there is a total confusion now. Aryans did not exist but if they existed, they were next door Iranians (just to preserve the illusion of OIT, even ‘I.’ did not exist at that time) plus, primitive barbarians who came and enforced their language (after successfully did the same gig in Europe), mythology, brought the first draft of Rig Veda in oral form, knowledge of metallurgy (got this in steppes?), iron weapons and jumped straight into Mahabharata. Can we now remove this silly ‘European’ (or replace with ‘Iranian’) from ‘Indo-European’? Do we know now what were their name, language, mythology, (god forbid, at least one ‘steppe’ toponym?) and genes of the ancestors of 150 million Indians to declare that 200 years Aryans dilemma is resolved and to finally move on?
Do we also know now when and why cow worshipping started? Is this related to these stinking, blue-eyes barbarians?

Atheist Mallu
Atheist Mallu
5 years ago

I am quite convinced the Sintashta where Indo Aryans. They knew early Rigveda were Indra was the main God. How do we know that? The early Rigveda was know by Mitanni (Syria) and India round about the same time (1500BC). Looking at the map this could only happen if the Sintashta where Indo aryan and migrated both south west and south east.

The Volga river which cuts through Sintashta territory could be the Saraswati river. Because rigveda mentions the mighty Saraswati empties into a sea, and also empties into a desert. Only the Caspian sea can explain both these statements.

While the Sintashta were migrating east the Indo Iranians split off and moved southwards. While the Indo Aryans moved west towards Altai and and down the IAMC, and into the Tarim Basin. The Indo Aryans then went down the eastern edge of the Tarim instead of following IAMC to BMAC.

India (baltistan) is only 100kms south of the south eastern edge of the Tarim Basin. That is the route taken by Indo aryans completely by passing BMAC straight into India.

Most probably the route they took is what is now known as the karokaram highway.

Here is one possible theory that explains it all. Though a lot more data is required to prove it.

Atheist Mallu
Atheist Mallu
5 years ago
Reply to  Atheist Mallu

Should read “Indo Aryans moved east towards Altai”

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago
Reply to  Atheist Mallu

The Saraswati for all practical purposes is the dead river in Haryana, which empties in the sea ( Arabian- through Indus) as well as desert (Thar). To think that somehow the other 5 rivers described are real and you just throw a random river in the midst of your stanza (as if the other 5 are not enough) seems to be odd.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Saurav

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarasvati_River

The Helmand river in Afghanistan also has the same historical name. In Iranian dialects the S become H (e.g. Asura -> Ahura).

Why did the Arya descended people in both Iran and India name two different rivers by the same name?

Which was the original Saraswati river?

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

The main problem still remains. The Saraswati river (in the text), remains in conjunction with the other rivers (which are real) , and not independently as its in the case of Ganga for example. Its does not occupy a bigger place than Ganga (or even Yamuna) for that matter EVEN in the text. Its disappearance has lend itself to its mystery and importance. Yes, both the rivers could have been named similarly , just like in rest of India you have water bodies named after Ganga.

If the Sarasvati river is the one in Afghanistan, why are we not hearing cogantes of the other rivers in Afghanistan in the text. Dont you think it as odd, to have 5 real rivers and suddenly you just pick a river from your original homeland and transpose it alongside the other 5 (then why not transpose other stuff as well?) . If transpose it why treat it just like any other river (if its your homeland river) and not give it an elevated position as Ganga has?

INDTHINGS
INDTHINGS
5 years ago
Reply to  Saurav

Sarasvati in the Vedas almost certainly refers to the Hakkar-Gaggar. Quite likely this name was borrowed from an earlier river in Aryan consciousness, either from Afghanistan or Eurasia.

DaThang
DaThang
5 years ago
Reply to  Atheist Mallu

Nah I am pretty sure that Krasnoyarsk/Andronovo were the proto-Indo-Aryans. They have the evidence of cremation on their side. Sintashta on the other hand was likely just proto-Iranian. So the proto-Indo-Iranians would have been the common ancestors from which the Sintashta and the Andronovo people formed over time.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago
Reply to  Atheist Mallu

Excellent comment, I have some complementary data, will write soon.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

Previous comment was for Atheist Mallu. Indentation does not work.

sbarrkum
5 years ago

Milan

Use “ ” whats between quotes. That gives space may need many for significant indenting.

For many paragraphs use <blockquote> and close with </blockquote>

vasistha
vasistha
5 years ago
Reply to  Atheist Mallu

@atheist mallu
Talageri clearly shows that the Indo Aryan words (proper name prefixes, suffixes, etc) in mitanni are all words from the late Mandalas and completely missing (not a single instance) from the early family Mandalas. This can be proven to be wrong, but no one has.

Hence Mitanni has to be late or post late RV stage. It cannot be during old RV era or pre RV era. Therefore, the date of late RV era is pushed to near 2000bc (As Kassites got Indo Aryan cultures around 1750bc, Mitanni got it around 1500bc).

Therefore the Sintashta/andronovo migration has nothing to do with Vedic culture. The old RV Mandalas are probably in the early 3rd mill BCE, late RV period around 2000bce. The chariots are a late RV era technology, and you see chariot burial in sanauli around 2000bc. All fits.

Slapstik
Slapstik
5 years ago

I cannot get over the biggest thing in this podcast, that IA immigration / invasion (take your pick based on your modern day biases!) into the Indian subcontinent had nothing to do with BMAC.
This puts into question the whole model of BMAC incubation of Indo-Iranian and shared linguistic substrate (including gods like Indra etc) between Indic and Iranian branches being linked to this culture. Indo-Aryans just plainly bypassed it.
Iranian uncles may have occupied this area later – which we know from the deep E Iranic heritage of this area, but our forefathers never did. What did they do? ko addhA veda, kah iha pravocat?

Mohan
Mohan
5 years ago
Reply to  Slapstik

Maybe some of them didn’t bypass it at all while others did. Maybe one Aryan tribe integrated into and took leadership of the BMAC… another tribe that came afterwards didnt, instead they fought the first tribe, defeated them and then moved further on south. The first group who did mix with the BMAC became proto-zoroastrians and the second group that didn’t became the vedic aryans. Explains the asura/deva differences between zoroastrian and vedic literature quite nicely as well. So one group that went to Iran has BMAC ancestry and the second one that came to South Asia doesn’t.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

But they supposedly took the soma/haoma from BMAC, but didn’t take any genes?

I means its possible. Most south asian muslims don’t have substantial middle eastern muslim ancestry.

Mohan
Mohan
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

Soma/Homa could have been a steppe thing from even before BMAC… maybe the first group brought it into the BMAC to begin with. They just modified it in ways that the second group didn’t approve of or vice versa. That’s one of the themes in the rgveda right… Indra hates the asuras/dasas who live in concetric fortresses and do the soma ritual the wrong way so he smites smashes them yada yada yada etc…

Numinous
Numinous
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

If soma/haoma is ephedra, it has to be a BMAC/Eastern Iran thing (that’s the climate for it.)

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

Sarmatians were a large Serbian speaking tribe.

Numinous
Numinous
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

defeated them and then moved further on south

Why would they do that?

Scorpion Eater
Scorpion Eater
5 years ago
Reply to  Slapstik

“I cannot get over the biggest thing in this podcast, that IA immigration / invasion …. into the Indian subcontinent had nothing to do with BMAC.”

Me too. Absence of BMAC genetic imprint on Indian population is a major incongruity. In fact this brings a confusion to BMAC’s linguistic identity itself. If BMAC didn’t have much steppe in them, then how can they be Indo-Iranian speakers, as generally thought.

Mohan
Mohan
5 years ago

“did scythians and sarmartians do soma/homa?”

According to the wikipedia entry on soma they did – apparently attested to in Cyrus’ time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyrgians).

And I should also clarify my earlier combination of Asura and Dasa. They are not necessarily the same. Asura are also Arya but Dasa aren’t. Some scholars say Dasa could refer to the Dahae confederecy – another central asian group operating in the neighbourhood. who knows…

I’m more interested in your thoughts on the phenotype of the rakhigarhi woman. Any ideas?

DaThang
DaThang
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

>I’m more interested in your thoughts on the phenotype of the rakhigarhi woman. Any ideas?

I too would be interested in this. IDK if she had the A5 allele for fair(er than medium) skin. Also did she have an intact skull? Based on what I know they don’t release a lot of anthropological data now a days so IDK if there is any way for us to know about her cephalic, facial, orbital indexes. I know that a recent IVC era grave (with one male and a female) had a very long type of a skull which reminded me of a certain group of skulls excavated from both previous IVC sites and pre-Sumerian Ubaid sites. It could probably help us paint a picture of what pre-mixture Iran HGs looked like.

Saurav
Saurav
5 years ago

I just have a feeling that the next paper from Rai,Shinde et all is on “indigenous” R1A1. That will be a shit storm ????

DaThang
DaThang
5 years ago

It would have been interesting if someone actually had a tentative model of how the late Vedic and Upanishads could have come from a combination of an IE (Andronovo) and a non-IE (perhaps IVC) source. I can at best throw the idea around without much content. I don’t think that anyone has as of yet tried to deduce the non-IE source by picking away the IE content of the very late Vedas and the Upanishads to see some kind of (albeit incomplete) skeletal structure of the non-IE input tradition/philosophy.

Mohan
Mohan
5 years ago
Reply to  DaThang

The Upanishads are much later and far more sophisticated than the Vedas providing commentary on core modern Hindu concepts like reincarnation, Atman/Brahman, nature of God universe, reality, and other deeply philosophical musings. Definitely the product of a settled civilization and not the hymns of a nomadic pastoral group.

People have done exactly what you suggested. Indeed it’s quite apparent that the agamas and agamas tradition are non-vedic and non-IE.

Also in general you can basically take away gods and deities that have cognates in other IE cultures and what is resultant is likely the non-IE source from the IVC and other cultures/tribes of India.

A clear example is the deity/God Shiva worshipped in the form a lingam – something the rgveda detests but later scriptures adopt.

The chief IE deity Indra is pretty much reduced to irrelevancy by the time of the Upanishads. He’s depicted as drunken and incompetent and needing help.

It’s tough to make clear distinctions and really suss out things definitively however as the language is still Sanskrit and therefore IE.

DaThang
DaThang
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

@Mohan: I was thinking more so about the non-IE philosophical input. I might be wrong about this, but in the audiobook of Will Durant’s “The story of India” I recall hearing that in the early Vedas the afterlife was like a glorious union with deities instead of reincarnation. So that (a notion of reincarnation) could be one example of a non-IE influence perhaps? Once again- do correct me if I am wrong with my assertions.

Mohan
Mohan
5 years ago
Reply to  DaThang

I wouldn’t disagree with that. It’s certainly not a concept I’ve seen in any other IE culture.

DaThang
DaThang
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

@Razib
Caesar spent a great amount of time in Gaul and is one of the best preserved accounts of the Druids from an author who was in Gaul.[7] However, although Caesar provides what is seemingly a first-hand account, much of his knowledge of the Druids is not from personal experience, but rather the hearsay of others and is regarded as anachronistic.[7] Caesar based some of his account after that of Posidonius, who wrote a clear and well-known account of the Druids in Gaul.[7] Caesar provides his account of the Druids as a means of sharing his knowledge and educating the Roman people on the foreign conquests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico#The_Druids

Why did the audiobook mention the unity with deities then? I will have to look back into it and the early Vedas as well. I will get back to this discussion when I am done with that. Until then, feel free to post more information from your side of the discussion.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Mohan

I recommend everyone to read the Rig Veda, and then compare with the Avesta and later scriptures like the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita.

It then become abundantly clear what is Indus and what is Steppes.

sbarrkum
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

Rig Veda as a free pdf

I downloaded this. Seemed a slightly better font/format
https://archive.org/details/rigvedasanhitac00websgoog/page/n83

This is the complete Rig Veda in English. The core scriptures of Hinduism are the four Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharvana. Each of the four Vedas has four parts: Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads. Yet usually when you see a book called “Rig Veda”, it just means the Rig Veda Samhita. That’s what I intend to remedy with this document; this is the complete Rig Veda with Samhita, Brahmanas, Aranyaka, and Upanishad portions.

One more thing: each Veda comes in multiple Shakhas or recensions. The Rig Veda used to have 21 Shakhas, but now only two Shakhas survive: the Bashala Shakha and the Sakala Shakha. What is presented here is the Sakala Shakha’s version of the Rig Veda. I created it by putting together Ralph T.H. Griffith’s translation of (the Sakala Shakha’s version of) the Rig Veda Samhita with Arthur Berriedale Keith’s translations of the Aitareya Brahmana and Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rig Veda. (The Aitareya Upanishad is contained in the Aitareya Aranyaka.) I would have made it in the Bashkala Shakha as well, by combining the Bashkala Shakha’s version of the Rig Veda Samhita with the Kaushitaki Brahmana and Shankhayana Aranyaka of the Rig Veda, but as far as I know there’s never been an English translation of the Bashakala Shakha’s version of the Rig Veda Samhita.
https://archive.org/details/rigvedacomplete

VijayVan
5 years ago
Reply to  sbarrkum

The latest English translation of Rig Veda done few years ago is available on academia.edu

The Rigveda
The Earliest Religious
Poetry of India
Translated by
Stephanie W. Jamison
and
Joel P. Brereton.

A Russian translation by Elizarenkova is also fairly recent.

Griffith’s translation is more than 120 years old.

Mohan
Mohan
5 years ago

Interesting article. Reincarnation in Indian philosophy is extremely well documented and we can reliably time it to at least the time of the Buddha (5th bce) whereas this account seems to occur later and is attested second hand.

There isn’t something like a chandogya upanishad in any other IE culture in the same time frame that the chandogya was composed (8 or 7th century bce). Things like Greek and Roman philosophy come a bit later and even they’re not exploring similar content from a religious perspective.

Maybe a better example is something like yoga which is very well attested and is certainly not present in other IE cultures…

Francesco Brighenti
Francesco Brighenti
5 years ago

@Razib
“did scythians and sarmartians do soma/homa?”

The Saka Haumavarga probably did. Hauma = Indo-Aryan Soma, while the reconstructed Proto-Indo-Iranian root *Huarg- here means ‘turn around, lay around (sthg).’ If Old Persian varga- here means ‘twist, tear out from the ground’, then the Saka Haumavarga were ‘Hauma twisters/collectors’; yet the most widely accepted proposal is that of Karl Hoffman, who translates Haumavarga as ‘laying Haoma-plants around (the sacred fire). See at

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/haumavarga

Francesco Brighenti
Francesco Brighenti
5 years ago

OTOH, archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi thought that the Saka Haumavarga learned to use the ritual hallucinogenic beverage haoma/soma from the local settled population of Bactria-Margiana (the descendants of the BMAC folk?).

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

RE: Soma

Wiki: “Soma is a Vedic Sanskrit word that literally means “distill, extract, sprinkle”, often connected in the context of rituals. There has been much speculation about the most likely identity of the original plant. Traditional accounts with unbroken continuity in India, from Ayurveda and Siddha medicine practitioners and Somayajna ritualists undoubtedly use “Somalata”.

Candidates that have been suggested include honey, mushrooms, psychoactive and other herbal plants.

Irish Times: “Mead is the world’s oldest alcoholic drink, made by fermenting honey in water. Also known as the nectar of the gods, honey wine or ambrosia, it immediately conjure up images of battles, goblets and chieftains. Mead was popular with Vikings, Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans alike. Mead was associated with immortality and otherworldly powers, often featuring in Greek ceremonies due to its symbolism and the magic that it represented. In England, mead was seen as medicinal, with a potent infusion of herbs in the sweet mead.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>> I mentioned earlier that Sarmatians (or Sarbatians) were a Serbian tribe.
Soma (or Šoma) is a Serbian word meaning alcoholic drink (gin) of bad quality. It is also the name for the residue after alcoholic distillation. Mead (in Serbian – Medovina) is ancient Serbian alcoholic drink made from honey. It has been known for thousands of years. Honey in Serbian is MED. This word was borrowed from Serbian language and used in more than 40 languages including many SA languages and English. I recently wrote a comment and found that some languages in India have this word while in other (e.g. Tamil, Telugu) they use different word for honey. Malayalam, Kannada, Sinhala, Punjabi (maida), Bangla (madhu), Kazakh, Kyurdish, etc have the word MED.

MED is also a root for – medicine, medication, medal, etc.

Vasistha
Vasistha
5 years ago

Interestingly, Talageri – who I didn’t care about much till a week back, hypothesized a migration from IVC west to Mitanni post 2000bc carrying IA names. This is now looking possible with the 11 Iranian and Central Asian Indus periphery sample Discovery. iVc people were continously moving west between 3000 and 2000bc.
Asian elephants in Syria circa 1800bc & the paper on human aided zebu migration to near East are also evidences in Talageris favour.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
5 years ago

Aryan Integration Theory by Razib Khan

“The ~30% is a rough floor on their “Indo-Aryan” ancestry, because by the time the Indo-Aryans arrived in South Asia they may have been less than 100% “steppe”, accreting (sic?) Iranian-like ancestry which has affinities to the IVC peoples.”

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/09/12/the-aryan-integration-theory-ait/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

The geneticist working in this field including David Reich are basically ASSUMING the steppe homeland hypothesis. Here in this video Koenraad Elst dissects this with precision. The steppe hypothesis in untenable on LINGUISTIC grounds. Iranian and Greek have too much in common to have divulged for thousands of years as required by the steppe hypothesis. Archaeology has already rejected it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kD6hDx1gk4

Now geneticists have been called to the rescue. If 20 or 30% ancestry from here and there can explain language migrations Indo Aryan languages would be 30% Indo European, 30% Dravidian and what not. Unfortunately, linguistics does not work in this fashion.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
5 years ago

For those who actually understand linguistics

https://www.academia.edu/36998766/Five_waves_of_Indo-European_expansion_a_preliminary_model_2018_

See section 3 below written by a trained linguist Igor Tonayen Belayev

Iranians do not have a word for fire based on the most common roots “agni” or *pur/pahuur. Instead they have a totally different word Athar that is found in no other IE language except Sanskrit (athari=flame.). So if indeed the “Indo Iranians” have been migrating together for thousands of years from where ever, it would mean that the Iranians totally forgot their words for fire and proceeded to invent an entirely new word for such as basic thing required for human survival as manipulation of fire. More over, athari makes its appearance during the late Vedic times. The only logical conclusion then is Iranians were the LAST ones to separate from the common IE stock in South Asia after all other groups had left.

Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
5 years ago

Koenraad Elst at his best::

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kD6hDx1gk4

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