Affirmations as emphatic as those voiced by the Allchins ensure that the search for the Aryan presence in linguistic and archaeological sources will … - Kenneth A. R. Kennedy

The presence o f Indo-European languages in South Asia is a fact. Vedic texts are indisputable sources o f Indian culture history. W hat is not certain is that: 1) specific prehistoric cultures and their geographical regions are identifi­able as Aryan; and 2) that the human skeletal remains discovered from reputed Aryan burial deposits are distinctive in their possession o f a unique phenotypic pattern marking them apart from non-Aryan skeletal series. What the biological data demonstrate is that no exotic races are apparent from laboratory studies of human remains excavated from any archaeological site, including those accorded Aryan status. All prehistoric human remains recovered thus far from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypically identifiable as ancient South Asians. Further­ more their biological continuity with living peoples of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the border regions is well established across time and space.

How could one recognize an Aryan, living or dead, when the biological criteria for Aryanness are non- existent? (Kennedy 1995: 61)... Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.... What the biological data demonstrate is that no exotic races are apparent from laboratory studies of human remains excavated from any archaeological sites.... All prehistoric human remains recovered thus far from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypically identifiable as ancient South Asians.... In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. (Kennedy 1995: 60, 54)

Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhära peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity. Evidence of demographic disconti­nuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 B.C. (a separation between the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 B.C., the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence o f demographic disruptions in the north­ western sector o f the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and den­tal anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.