*at least as large as the largest non-South Asian cities.

This is important in another way. Occasionally someone will say that the pre-iron age prehistory of south Asia was Urban, and I have seen arguments of it starting from 7000 BC because grain exploitation goes back to 7000 BC to 8000 BC in northern south Asia. This is a bad argument. Its like saying near eastern Urbanism goes back to 20,000 years ago because grain exploitation started back then.

Between 7000 BC and 3300 BC, I don’t think that the most populous sites in south Asia were as populous as the most populous sites of Levant, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Both as a group an individually. Meaning that the peak of Levant in that period was more populous than south Asia’s peak population center, same with Anatolia and the same with Mesopotamia. Instead, south Asia’s pre-bronze age development was unique in that it was mostly rural which suddenly exploded into an unprecedented urban phase between 3300 and 2600 BC which culminated in cities which were at least as large as the largest south Asian cities of the time and were built in a different and more organized manner. I would further say they were cleaner than their Mesopotamian counterparts. Utterly unlike people of the middle east who were so used to urbanism that they seemingly didn’t take the incentive to make cities like that because they were used to relatively more organic and in some ways dirtier cities that they had known for thousands of years before the bronze age.

We N-Indians understand DN as much as S-Indians understand N-Indian politics.

When thapar made that statement AIT was mostly used against Indian civilization rather than hindutva. In the following decades the non hindutva camp has come around thinking that AIT is perhaps the only thing which can dent hindutva ( which they are wrong but still…)

Thapar ideology and scholarship clash at this point. AIT is a convenient weapon but her scholarship doesn’t allow it to embrace it whole heartedly like Daniyal or Joseph did. Especially when her priors has been Pooh pooing the same theory.

At least you got the book. I ordered it because Razib apparently had a chapter in it and it never arrived. Eventually I had to cancel it through Amazon.

Anyways – nice content. I’m waiting for the day we finally address DIT – Dravidian Invasion Theory – how the dravidian people conquered southern India while pushing out the space for tribal people.

True – and well put I think.
But I didn’t want to make claims about DN when I only understand it superficially.

Its a good book though. She has delved into politics but I like her writings (ignoring the glaring politics).
She makes the claims of DasiPurta Brahmins as the Arya integrating with natives and bringing up non Arya leaders like Brbu, Balbhatu etc etc.
Anyways the book wasn’t worth the money spent – but still a good read