Subsequently I taught the AIT with the South Russian Steppe as the locus of dispersal of the Indo-Europeans (IE hereafter) for 18 years and I wrote a… - Nikos Kazanas

The Aryans, even according to the AIT, moved not into a vacuum but a region thickly populated by a people who may have been on the decline and moving eastward but who were also more numerous, more advanced in urbanized civilization and literate. Now, would the immigrants be in a position to give new names and would the natives accept them for their rivers? … I doubt it. When thousands of Greeks were forced out of Turkey in the early 1920s and immigrated into the Greek islands and the mainland, they formed new communities and often gave to these the names of their former habitats (eg New Ionia, New Smyrna, New Halkidona etc). This is as far as their “nostalgia” went. They did not rechristen nearby mountains, plains or rivers, but accepted the existing geographical nomenclature.

From a very long experience of reading, studying and teaching, of participating in Conferences and, in recent years, of editing articles for Journals (and, of course, private contacts and exchanges with scholars in many fields) I acquired the certainty that very few academics use their reason to the full and even fewer are, despite their vociferous protestations to the contrary, interested in truth.

First, it is the function of scholarship to establish and promote true knowledge so that our life be regulated by this – not prejudices, partisan views (even patriotic but false) or pet theories. Second, Indian (proto-)history must be restored and revalued in a correct time-frame.