While lacking fullest data, there is a growing consensus that the Harappan culture originated as a result of local cultural developments. "Mesopotami… - Jim G. Shaffer

It is singularly refreshing, against this dogmatic pursuit of what may be an unobtainable goal, to know there are South Asian scholars who “. . . do not believe that the available data are sufficient to establish anything very conclusive about an Indo-European homeland, culture, or people”

Given the meticulous archaeological efforts to identify culture patterns for the geographic areas described, and with the relative and radiometric chronologies established for the archaeological record, it seems that there is no “Vedic night” separating the prehistoric/protohistoric from the early historic periods of South Asian culture history. Rather, these data reinforce what the site of Mehrgarh so clearly establishes, an indigenous cultural continuity in South Asia of several millennia.

Taken together, the above traits establish that despite significant differences, urban developments in the Indus-Sarasvatī and Ganges regions do belong to ‘a single Indo-Gangetic cultural tradition which can be traced for millennia’; in the words of Jim Shaffer, ‘a continuous series of cultural developments links the so-called two major phases of urbanization in South Asia’, the Harappan and the historical. His conclusion is plain: ‘the essential of Harappan identity persisted’.