The image of Indo-Aryans as nomadic, conquering warriors, driving chariots, may have been a vision that Europeans had, and continue to have, of their… - Jim G. Shaffer

...thus there is no “Vedic night” separating the prehistoric/protohistoric from the early historic periods of South Asian culture history. These data reinforce what the site of Mehrgarh describes - an indigenous cultural continuity in South Asia of several millennia.

In both instances, the Indo-Aryan concept was never subjected to rigorous validation beyond the field of historical linguistics. Linguistic reconstructions were used to interpret archaeological materials, which in tum were used to substantiate the original cultural reconstructions. It was not until the mid-20th century that archaeological data were independently used to examine the validity of the Indo-Aryan concept.

These emerging connections and relationships in the northern South Asian arch­aeological record indicate no significant cultural discontinuities.