Jim G. Shaffer Quotes

The academic investment in this hypothesis [i.e. AIT] is so great that the distinguished scholar Colin Renfrew (1987) opts to distort the archaeological record rather than to challenge it... The South Asian archaeological record reviewed here does not support Renfrew's position or any version of the migration / invasion hypothesis. Rather, the physical distribution of sites and artifacts, stratigraphic data, radiometric dates and geological data can account for the Vedic oral tradition describing an internal cultural discontinuity of indigenous population movement.

At present, the archaeological record indicates no cultural discontinuities separating PGW from the indigenous protohistoric culture. That is, PGW culture represents an indigenous cultural development and does not reflect any cultural intrusion from the West, that is, an Indo-Aryan invasion. Therefore, there is no archaeological evidence corroborating the fact of an Indo-Aryan invasion.

Shaffer (1993) refers to one set of data that undermines this simplistic portrayal of an apparent devolution and re-evolution of urbanization, which "has nearly become a South Asian archaeological axiom" (55). Although there appears to have been a definite shift in settlements from the Indus Valley proper in late and Post-Harappan periods, there is a significant increase in the number of sites in Gujarat, and an "explosion" (300 percent increase) of new settlements in East Punjab to accommodate the transferal of the population.

Most prior interpretations attributed significant cultural developments, except early hunting-gathering adaptations, to external factors such as ethnic intrusions or invasions, diffusing ideas and technologies developed outside the region, usually in the West. Current information, however, suggests that these earlier, still persisting interpretations cannot explain the cultural complexities now found in the archaeological record.

Pollen cores from Rajasthan seem to indicate that by the mid-third milennium BC, climatic conditions of the Indus Valley area became increasingly arid. Data from the Deccan region also suggests a similar circumstance there by the end of the second millennium BC. Additionally, and more directly devastating for the Indus Valley region, in the early second millennium BC, there was the capture of the Ghaggar-Hakra (or Saraswati) river system (then a focal point of human occupation) by adjacent rivers, with subsequent diversion of these waters eastwards. At the same time, there was increasing tectonic activity in Sindh and elsewhere. Combined, these geological changes meant major changes in the hydrology patterns of the region. These natural geologic processes had significant consequences for the food producing cultural groups throughout the greater Indus Valley area. Archaeological surveys have documented a cultural response to these environmental changes creating a “crisis” circumstance...

However, in South Asian studies the concept of an Indo-Aryan invasion continues to be the main explanation for the cultural history of that region. The importance of these invasions is linked to the persistent opinion that the Indo-Aryan invaders were the authors of early Vedic (Sanskrit) literature, which is viewed as the foundation for all subsequent' 'Indian civilization. "

We have already noted that the scholarly paradigm of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in conflating language, culture, race, and population movements has continued, with historical linguistic scholars still assiduously attempting to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-European language and attempting to link that language to a specific “homeland,” in order to define population migration away from that seminal geographic base

While lacking fullest data, there is a growing consensus that the Harappan culture originated as a result of local cultural developments. "Mesopotamian" inventions are not needed to explain it.

It is now clear that the Oxus Civilisation played a major role in the socio-­economics and politics of the late third and early second millennia bc, extending far and wide across Central Asia, and exchanging and/or having contact with populations living in a number of other regions.

That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of South Asia (ie. the Vedic tradition) are now converging has significant implications for regional cultural history. A few scholars have proposed that there is nothing in the 'literature' firmly placing the Indo-Aryans, the generally perceived founders of the modern South Asian cultural tradition(s), outside of South Asia, and now the archaeological record is confirming this. Within the context of cultural continuity described here, an archaeologically significant indigenous discontinuity occurs due to ecological factors (ie. the drying up of the Sarasvati river). This cultural discontinuity was a regional population shift from the Indus Valley, in the west, to locations east and southeast, a phenomenon also recorded in ancient oral (ie. Vedic) traditions. As data accumulates to support cultural continuity in South Asian prehistoric and historic periods, a considerable restructuring of existing interpretive paradigms must take place. We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on South Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and antisemitism. Surely, as South Asian studies approaches the twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal.

A diffusion or migration of a culturally complex ‘Indo-Aryan‘ people into South Asia is not described by the archaeological record.

Lacking fullest data, there is, nonetheless, a growing consensus that Harappan culture is the result of indigenous cultural developments, with no “Mesopotamian” people or diffusions of Western inventions, by whatever means, needed to explain it.

Despite the early misgivings of some scholars about such a correlation between language and race and the circular nature of many of the arguments, the concept of a common linguistic, cultural, biological, and historical heritage linking European and Indian peoples became internationally accepted as more fact than theory. Based on linguistic reconstructions, the prehistoric to historic chronologies of Europe and India were interpreted as reflecting various invasions of Indo-European or Indo-Aryan peoples who possessed a common cultural heritage, albeit remote. For Europe, this concept ultimately resulted in the disaster of the Third Reich, whereas in South Asia, the concept of Indo-Aryan peoples played a quite different cultural role.

The discovery of extensive nonceramic occupations associated with early domesticates at Mehrgarh, dated to pre-6000 B.C. (Jarrige and Meadow, 1980). This site clearly establishes the antiquity of humans in the Greater Indus Valley and, therefore, provides the chronological depth, making plausible the hypothesis that the domestication of plants and animals and the rise of civilization"in the Indus Valley was an indigenous cultural process.

The existing interpretative discussions postulating large-scale human “invasions” simply do not correlate with the physical, archaeological, or paleoanthropological, data.