Although generalisation is difficult, the economic importance o f cattle was not paralleled by their use as a motif on craft objects such as painted … - Jim G. Shaffer

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

Linguistic reconstructions have a reputation of scientific validity based on the study of existing languages (written and non-written). However, linguistic reconstructions based upon supposed rates of linguistic change are the archaeological equivalents of estimating absolute chronology from the depth of deposits. There are simply too many intervening cultural and historical variables to permit any great degree of cross-cultural accuracy. In archaeology, such methods were replaced when better aids to cultural identification, such as radiocarbon dating, became available. Linguistic reconstructions for the area are no longer independently supported by the archaeological data, and even if one is reluctant to disregard these reconstructions completely, the present data nonetheless suggest critical reevaluation of earlier interpretations.

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. "