New DNA research paper sheds light on proto-Dravidian and Indus Valley Civilization genetics.

Disclaimer

Please note I am a dentist — not a geneticist — and I do not claim formal expertise in this field. I have a long-standing interest in history and look to archaeogenetics as one of the best tools available for addressing some of the most enduring questions about South Asian origins and identity.

Credit is due to the many researchers, bloggers, and science communicators who have made this field accessible — including Razib Khan (whom I haven’t met, though he happens to be a fellow Bengali), whose writing first inspired me to engage deeply with these questions.

 

I first got into Ancient Indian DNA space when the research from the Rakhigarhi woman’s DNA was published shedding light on IVC genetics for the first time. Prior to that Indian society had no idea how to scientifically answer questions like whether the “Aryan-Invasion” was real.

And if it was real didn’t the Indus Valley civilization prove the “Dravidians” were the superior culture builders and the Aryans were the barbarians?

If they spoke Dravidian languages, did it mean they looked South Indian and after the invasion they were all somehow transplanted into the actual South of the peninsula while the Indus region was taken over by… White people??

These were the faint ideas that filled my mind and it was due to the work of some of these excellent pioneers in the genetics field (Shinde, Narasimhan, Reich and Razib) that I went down the rabbit hole.

At some point as more research came out about the Indus people, about the genetics of the caste system, there seemed to sprout the idea dimly apparent but growing – that Dravidians themselves as a language group may not be native to India.

Now I wasn’t completely sold. Like many of you I wonder why it can’t be the other way around.

Why did neolithic Iranians have to come into India – why can’t it be that neolithic northwest Indians went to the Iranian plateau? I don’t have all the answers, and it’ll take a while for all the questions to be settled. Till then I try to keep my biases in check and follow the research.

A paper came out in Nature in October shedding light on the possible genetic basis to the origins of the Dravidian language family.

Novel 4400-year-old ancestral component in a tribe speaking a Dravidian language | European Journal of Human Genetics

 

The researchers sampled a small tribe – the Koraga from Southern India speaking a Dravidian language.

Now we all know the main cline of Indians come from Steppe, Indus farmer and AASI in the literature.

New finding from this paper: Proposed fourth ancestral component — which they call “Proto-Dravidian” ancestry — found in the Koraga, which branched off around 2,400 B.C.

The origin of this ancestry seems to lie in the region between the Iranian plateau and the Indus Valley before the arrival of Indo-European languages. It persists in diluted form in many South Asian communities (not just in the tribal population) today, especially Dravidian speaking ones.

 

The researcher purport this may provide support to the Elamo-Dravidian language family hypothesis, which would provide a common source of languages for all populations derived from Neolithic Iranians back to one of the centres for the invention of farming in the Zagros.

 

 

What does the imply about the ancestry of the IVC people, what language they spoke and their ancestry?

What does it imply about the so-called “Indus farmer” component of Indian ancestry?

 

The Indus farmer as one of the three key sources of Indian ancestry was thought to represent the core ancestry of the IVC. This study with the Koraga finds a distinct 4,400-year-old branch of the main N.Iranian and not identical to the core “Indus Farmer”, and genetically closer to Dravidian rather than Indo-Aryan populations.

There might have been two (or multiple) Iranian-related influxes into the subcontinent:

• An earlier, associated with Neolithic spread of agriculture (≈ 7000–5000 BCE → the IVC base population),
• a later sub-branch (~2400 BCE) that corresponds to this “Proto-Dravidian” ancestry.

So, the IVC population may have contained multiple Iranian-related sub-lineages, one of which could have seeded the Proto-Dravidian gene pool that persisted in southern India.

The 4,400-year-old date inferred for the Proto-Dravidian ancestry roughly matches the mature-to-late IVC period (2600–1900 BCE).

While genetics can’t “prove” a language, the chronological and geographical overlap adds circumstantial weight to the idea that the language(s) of the IVC were Dravidian or Proto-Dravidian in nature.

 

Wasn’t the mature period of the IVC already in full swing 4,400 years ago?

The Indus Civilization wasn’t a single static population—it extended from Baluchistan and Sindh up to Haryana and Gujarat, and its regional sub-populations may have had slightly different genetic mixtures.
Local differentiations could easily occur within that 700-year mature phase.

So the “Koraga-like” branch could represent:

• a southern or interior offshoot of the broader IVC population, or
• the southernmost fraction of IVC peoples who moved into peninsular India as the civilization urban centres declined (post-1900 BCE).

 

What does it suggest about Brahui or Burushaski or Nihali languages; the three “mystery” languages?

 

Brahui – the case is strengthened for this language to be a relict of an IVC-era language and not a recent back migration from South to North as these speakers genetically have the same ancestral components of the Indo-Aryan speakers around them rather than what you would expect from recent migrants of the South. This paper’s findings are in line with the current theory.

 

Burushashki – Fits a scenario where it could descend from a pre-Indo-Aryan, pre-Dravidian language of the upper Indus region — maybe a branch of the same broad macro-family that included IVC languages.

– may preserve a northern dialect of the IVC-era linguistic landscape — an (adopted) sister, not daughter, to Proto-Dravidian which survived in a mountain redoubt while Indo-Aryan took over the plains.

 

Nihali – may descend from one of these pre-Munda, pre-Dravidian forager populations, preserving fragments of a Mesolithic or Neolithic substratum language.

This fits with the new study’s timeline:

• the IVC-Dravidian connection crystallized after 2600 BCE,
• but eastern and central India already had long-established hunter-gatherer cultures with minimal Iranian-farmer input.

Nihali probably represents a pre-agricultural linguistic substrate, not Dravidian or IVC-derived at all — more of an AASI linguistic survivor.

 

The roots of what became Jati

I won’t go too in depth as the field here is still a lot of theory – this paper taken with Narasimhan (2019) and Shinde (2019) finds that at least 4,400 years ago IVC was already a genetically distinct and relatively stable mix of Iran-related farmer ancestry + South Asian forager ancestry, with internal substructure.

 

• Significant regional genetic variation between different Indus sites

 

• Long-term persistence of ancestry profiles — meaning mixing across the entire IVC zone was not completely random.

 

Does that mean “caste”?

 

Not strictly in the Vedic sense with Varna, Jati as far as we can see but it could mean that:

• There were endogamous or semi-endogamous groups within the IVC.
• These groups likely corresponded to occupational, regional, or lineage divisions, rather than religious varnas.
• The cultural habit of limiting marriage circles could therefore be much older than the Indo-Aryan social codes that later memorialized it as varna–jati.

• The original social boundaries may be linked to earlier pre-agriculture tribal or kinship identities maintained during a period of early urbanization and collaboration.

 

• We know from the paper: 50,000 years of evolutionary history of India: Impact on health and disease variation – India has long been a reservoir for human DNA – old groups are preserved alongside but separate from the new… far longer than other subcontinents where homogenization and genetic drift cause their disappearance.

 

Implications for later social evolution

In evolutionary terms:

• The practice of endogamy seems to have deep roots in South Asia — perhaps beginning in or before the IVC.
• The Aryan period did not invent endogamy but likely fusing it with their own social stratifications (priests, warriors, commoners).
• The caste system, then, can be seen as a fusion of IVC-era social boundaries with Indo-Aryan ideological frameworks.

 

This paper does not settle the origins of the Dravidian languages or linguistic identity of the IVC.

It’s my first article so if people want to share feedback – please feel free and keep it respectful – thanks. If there is interest I have more ideas planned like the history of endogamy in South Asia and the intersection across culture, politics and identity from the perspective of a second generation Indian (West Bengal) Australian.

Warm Regards,

Dr Rajorshi