Why does he attack this group of Indians and allies himself to a group of marxists, like the editors of Frontline? A Professor of his standing ought … - Nikos Kazanas

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 Course of Sanskrit (in Md Greek) in which I actually concocted fictitious passages about the Aryans invading with chariots and subduing the natives who thought it prudent to accept them and cooperate! In 1987, I began to wonder about the AIT. In the same year I went to India and collected much material which took a few years to sort out and digest, since I had little acquaintance with Indian archaeology and early history. What became abundantly clear in the early 1990s (and filled me with incredulity) was the fact that there was no evidence whatever for any invasion (which by that time was becoming “migration”).

Sanskrit appears to have lost far fewer items and preserves much greater organic coherence than the other branches. This supports the general idea that Sanskrit is much closer to Proto-Indo-European and that, since this could only happen in sedentary conditions, the Indoaryan speakers of Sanskrit did not move (much) from the original homeland.

In summing up his extended survey of linguistic evidence Witzel tells us that the mode of the IA entry is "archaeologically still little traced"; it is, he states, securely traced in the texts (horses, chariots, religion etc) and from linguistics and possibly from future studies of the male Y chromosome (2001: 55-56). Here we have an attempt at falsification ("little" when in fact it is none) and wishful thinking. Neither horses and chariots nor linguistic phenomena, such as Witzel provides, prove any entry. They are interpretations of facts by a mind already colored by the AIT.