How tenable is Aryan invasion/migration theory? Few tweets on the ancient populations.

THREAD.

The Sintashta culture of the steppes near the Ural mountains is considered by Indo-Europeanists as the home of Indo-Iranians aka the 'Aryans' who were common ancestors of Indic and Iranian speakers. This culture is dated as early from 2400 BCE at max.

From various Sintashta settlements. the population estimates of Sintashta culture at max was around 8200 as per Alan Johnson https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33561584.pdf

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/95407104.pdf Many Sintashta settlements only had few hundred people on average as per Denis Sharapov, at max it reached around 1000.

Kohl also has same opinion on Sitanshta population. The population was around few hundreds.

The northern and central Kazakhstan during the bronze age also had around 7000 estimated population at max. This zone was under the Andronovo culture, succeeding earlier Sintashta culture. This culture too is considered as representing spread of Aryans.

So let us combine the Sintashta and Andronovo population, 8000+7000 = 15000. Let us consider higher population by giving it another 10000, including population of south Kazakhstan, so it will be around 25000.

Even this combined population is not even half of the estimated population of a single city of Harappa. As per Harappan archaeologist JM Kenoyer, the city hosted from 60000-80000 population during it's peak.

Keep in mind there were other large and urbanized Harappan cities like Mohenjo Daro, Ganweriwala, Rakhigarhi, Dholavira etc which hosted similar number of population. The total population of Harappan civilization during mature period is said to be in millions.

So how did the few thousand people from the steppes manage to change the entire culture of Harappan region and other regions of northern India? Obviously not all of the 25000 steppe people moved into India as per AIT.

Some split off and reached Iran and some stayed back. So the steppe movement would've been only limited to few thousand people. This small population would've created no big impact on native Harappan population.

In fact it is clear from genetics that there was no large scale population movement from steppe into India. Even 100+ DNA samples from late bronze age-early iron age Swat valley only contain around 20% steppe admixture, while overwhelmingly they had native ancestry.

Narasimhan states even this is through female line instead of a male dominant invasion, considering only 2-3 male samples out of 44 turned out to be patrilineal R1a Y DNA.

The earliest evidence of R1a from Swat valley is from 1000-800 BCE, that is already iron age in India. This is too late to date Aryan movements and the date of the early Vedic scriptures.

So in sum, there indeed was a population movement from steppes, but it was limited to few thousand people, that too female oriented, compared to millions who inhabited Harappan regions.

Surely by late Harappan times many people moved to Gangetic region and built iron age Ganga civilization. But many still stayed back in former regions in northwest as per Harappan archaeologist JM Kenoyer.

We know what happened to the Mitanni Aryan elites in West Asia. They ruled over local Hurrian population, but never managed to impose their Aryan culture on natives. They soon perished.

Even in historical times there were many movements of steppe people like Scythians, Yuezhi/Kushanas, Hephthalites etc into India. But none of them ever managed to change the native culture, rather they inevitably adopted the native culture and absorbed into it.

So we should not speculate about any large steppe invasion into India during 1700-1000 BCE, the supposed date of Aryan invasion. The movement was never like a full fledged military invasion like during later medieval era, but was rather a movement of limited number of people.

They too would've got assimilated into local Harappans of Sarasvati-Sindhu region instead of imposing their culture on natives. Even today, modern Indians have much more overwhelming Harappan ancestry than steppe related one.