Prehistoric migration

An Antipodean Raj

Genetic evidence suggests that, four millennia ago, a group of adventurous Indians landed in Australia

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Note to author: Tandoori ovens and chapatis belong to Indo-Aryan culture, and not Dravidian. A surprisingly lazy oversight.


a/ I am inclined to agree with a friend who states that indians are simply dark skinned europeans

b/ I disagree aboriginals look negroid - i can quite believe the glacial emmigration from india via landbridges over many generations

they collected some extra genes en route

but are not too dissimilar to indians

Not all may knowm but the aborigines were more sophisticated than mostly assumed

Tancient trepang - sea slug - trade w/ china etc

internal trade routes for farmed eel

they didnt wnt for much as they lacked little

they had the best life in the world at the time - i envy them - still do

funny, smart, fit ...

but grog & drugs have taken a terrible toll. They have been forced to adapt to a very foreign way - literacy for one

I was recently astonished to hear ~most dont speak english


I am proud to say my dog is ~25% dingo - kelpie etc

Fantastic dogs

Its stands to darwinian reason you wont find one smarter.


“Grandpa Was A Deity” (2011) & “Genesis of Genesis” (2012) place the arrival in Australia to the Biblical Flood era – when man (those we know as the Hebrew-Aryans) spread across the globe. Arpachshad, the son of Shem was born in Hebrew Year 1660, or 2104bce. The calculated 2217bce equates to the birth of Shem (2202bce) who is actually mentioned – along with his two brothers – three years earlier (when Noah is 500).

As more scientific evidence emerges, there is more evidence that the Bible Calendar reports the migration of Hebrew-Aryans with their connection to Stonehenge and the other megalithic circles

This is NOT a religious thing! As the two books illustrate, the Aryan-Hebrew population -- defined 1900 years ago by the Jewish Historian Josephus -- was describing its own history and phrasing it in terms of recognized local mythology. The beauty is, they got the dates as accurately as they could -- while also using those dates to define an accurate astronomical calendar which dates to the era of Stonehenge. We still need a Mayan connection (there are research papers with DNA indicators of Hg-R1a but no specific detailed studies).


Well all people with blue eyes are descendants of one female living 6000-10000 years ago.So we may be talking about a dozen Indians marooned on Australia 2000+ years ago with technology the natives weren't capable of absorbing back then.Ocean faring ships and bronze.Most died out like the Viking colonies on North America and maybe a few survived and were assimilated.

This obviously warrants further research.The biggest hurdle is that the IVC script is yet to be deciphered.

I seriously think there should be a $ 1 million X prize for archeology as well..


Bloody Indians were always ahead of the Whites.... No wonder the whites did not like us!!!!

Best wishes

Kishore Nair from Mumbai


Oldest known port[jetty] known to the world till date is located at LOTHAL in Gujarat-India, the southern most post of Indus valley settlements.LOTHAL is dated 2500BC.May be the ship or ships mentioned in the article,sailed off from this port.
Harappans [ neither Dravidians nor Aryans but evolved Indians or Hindus ]were city builders and were also sea farers.Eventually the evidence will emerge that establishes outward migrations in small and big waves from India to all corners of the world.

augwhite in reply to Safronite

The current record-holders for pottery are two sites in China and one in Japan, all about 15000 BC.

There was some very interesting work about 20-30 years ago that suggested regular commerce between the Indus Valley Civilization and Bahrain. I'm not sure what happened to the idea (sadly, that particular research team lost political traction); but, if true, it would make a Harappan maritime presence at least plausible.


Doesn't this proves a few things:
1. Though Indian introduced gene pool they didn't introduce Hinduism. So does this question existence of Hinduism at that time? or says Hinduism was a non Dravidian religion at that time
2. If these people were Dravidian's they didn't introduce the skill of city building or other advanced culture of Indus civilization. Which proves that Indus Valley was not a Dravidian culture. So effort to link it to Brahmi script or proto Dravidian language is waste of effort


I see that there is a tool in genetics to chalk out, in rough outline, pre-historic movements of human groups. Wonderful.

As someone familiar with both Southern India and Australia to some degree, first nation Australians have always reminded me of dravidian speakers and others native to Southern India - in terms of bodies, eyes AND language.

Many aboriginal languages have words that sound like Tamil words. More intriguing, the words may be gognates - that is refer to the same or similar objects and events. This needs further research by experts.

As per Indus Valley Civilisation and its reach, I believe there is evidence that it had spread into Southern India in terms of artifacts, metallurgy and, perhaps, denoting numbers through objects - but so far no indus valley cities have been dug out of any place in Southern India.

Thus, in my view, sea worthy ships could have been built in the Eastern coasts of India, based on Indus Valley designs, able to sail as far as Australia.

Incidentally, I think not just one ship-load of Indians could have left such a lot of evidence discernible after 4,000 years!! We would never know the full story, but I do not think it was some odd Indian ship caught in a storm, washing up in the northern shore of the Australian continent.

Finally, since the point has been made by some bloggers above, the evidence for any conflict or specific wars in India between Indo-Aryans and Dravidians is nil. But, there is clear evidence of co-existence and inter-marriage. Even today, you could see people as far West as southern Afghanistan who look the same as Southern Indians.

What became known as Hinduism, is composed, largely, of the main practices of the Dravidian speaking communities of India. However, the philosophy and the great epics were, perhaps, championed by Indo-Aryan groups. in reply to indica

Very interesting. The world was a much smaller village before globalism and as such people from the same village often look similar. Certainly even within Europe - some people have a look where you can often guess where they are from - but the world is losing that as it integrates.

As you've suggested the next obvious step is to use the science language to analyse native Australian languages. However its effectiveness is sometimes limited - generally to the introduction of new technologies (which of course had no local lexicon).


Just be thankful that it wasn't some Chinese who made it to Australia 4000 years ago -- otherwise Beijing would be sending gunboats into Sydney harbour by now

"What? You never heard of 伟大的南部大奖? It means Great Southern Jackpot in our language - now give it back!"

Devils Advocate_1 in reply to sanman

[sanmanJan 22nd, 02:24

It was the whites "who made it to Australia 4000 years ago" either. So, why are they have they taken over the land that do not belong to them.


Now, you can go and claim the prize from your "superior European race" masters for successfully blaming the Chinese for THEIR crimes on their behave:

Devils Advocate_1 in reply to jennifersuzuki 0 mins ago

[jennifersuzukiin reply to Simon 31st, 00:03
sorry to pour cold water on the subject, but I do agree with Mike Tyson Ironman that Nanjing Incident and Comfort women issues have been exaggerated and used as a propaganda tool by the communist China to demonize Japan, and although perhaps some chinese prostitutes did serve Japanese soldiers out of poverty, it is the case that most of them did it willingly.]


Not at all. It is the Nipponese who made up the "A-Bombing issue" to demonise the "superior European race". The so-called "victims" of the A-bomb attacks on Japan were willing victims hired by Unit 731 and the "superior European race" to test the effect of A-bombing on live humans. These "victims" served as test subjects out of greed and got what they wished. Not even your "cold water" could help to ease their A-bomb sunbath sores.

[ As an anecdote, I remember the last time I went back to Japan, I saw many--many, many--chinese prostitutes and korean prostitutes in Japan working voluntarily and this was back in 2009. And I think the whole comfort women misunderstanding have been similarly constructed--that they were mere prostitutes working for the Japanese army. As a Japanese woman, I have no pity for them nor do I have any sympathy for them.]
"As an anecdote", there is no need for any Nippon man to want the service from prostitutes at all-- There are, obviously, "many--many, many" Nipponese mothers:


Devils Advocate_1 in reply to sanman


I am sure that "As a Japanese woman", you will have a lot of sympathy for your own Nipponese/half-Nipponese sons and do so "voluntarily". I don't even try to have "pity" on these Nipponese fathers and mothers, sons and daughters for their twisted morality. In fact, I am having fun by making fun of them. ;-D, ;-D, ;-D..

[And even if some of the accounts of atrocities were true, since war is always aggressive--forgive me to intrude my very personal understanding and view--must not we forget that they deserved it for being an inferior race? We Japanese understand that we are inferior to European race, and as a Japanese woman I never complain to my master who is superior to me; similarly I find the asian race to be inferior to the Japanese race, and therefore whatever that Japanese did do to an inferior race was and should be justified. As a matter of fact, German philosopher Nietzsche actually once listed the Arabs, Romans, Germans, Japanese as the examples of noble races for their ability to kill, rape, and torture. Is it perhaps not then the right of the noble race to dominant the inferior race such as the Jews and Chinese? And is it perhaps not the case that an superior race or nation such as America ought to dominate the less superior race and nation? As a Japanese national living in America with an American boyfriend, I do not find any objection to be dominated by Americans and I find the natural order of universe to be one of domination and submission; it is right for America to be Master of Japan and it was right for Japan to be Master of Asia. Thus the natural order of universe was and has always been.]
Thanks for you very Honest exposition, which merely confirms what I always knew about the psychology/mentality of the Nipponese. The Nipponese are indeed inferior to the "superior European race"-- You are the living proof.


However, the other Asian peoples are NOT-- The Chinese were the first to prove that in Korean, then the Vietnamese did that again in Vietnam, and Afghans did the same again in Afghanistan, etc, etc. It might indeed be "right for America to be Master of Japan" but neither Uncleland or Japan can prove that they capable of being the "Master of Asia".


Therefore, what the "German philosopher Nietzsche actually once listed" merely proves that the Romans, Germans, Japanese are animals rather than true Humans. The Romans and Germans, at least, have now shown their capability to return to their human roots. For examples, the Germans have made the denial of the Holocaust a crime in their country. The Nipponese have not and have repeatedly shown their animalistic nature day after day. Animalistic Nipponese are indeed INFERIOR to Homosapiens-- They lack the ability to "seek truth from facts" and to change their mentality and behaviour accordingly.

The world owes you and Mikey for revealing the true inner nature of the Nipponese. Frankly, if it were just me who told such truths about the Nipponese on the TE forums, I would merely be dismissed an anti-Japanese "racist".


Devils Advocate_1 in reply to bazooo

[Bharat reply to 22nd, 06:43
India is missing out here]
It is not too late yet. History has NOT ended in the 1990's as some silly people thought.
I would rather want to see Indians taking the land of Australia than having them remaining in the hand of the whites.


Regardless, there is evidence to suggest indigenous Australians of some description have existed on the continent for closer to 100,000 years.


The 2217 BC date is probably *not* good to a century or two. This kind of genetic evidence is not particularly good at generating absolute dates. To compute absolute dates, it is necessary to make assumptions about some combination of generation time, mutation rate, host population size, initial migration size, and selective neutrality. To take an easy example, if the generation time assumption is an arguably more realistic 25 years, rather than 30, the absolute age becomes about 1500 BC. A typical study of this sort, for this time period, would have error bars of plus or minus 1500 years or more (there's usually a very long tail into older dates, but fairly abrupt cut-off of younger dates). Perhaps this study has unusually good data, but genetic data on Australians has historically been sparse and unrepresentative.

david Wineberg

I think India should claim Australia as a territory. It's only fair.

Adam Onge

What about the (almost extinct) original inhabitants of the Andaman islands: Sentinelese, Onges, Jarawas ?

guest-lamiooi in reply to Adam Onge

Who is the "original inhabitants" of the Andaman Islands? The homo sapien species is 200,000 years old, which makes your that a few centuries of living on a land (but not a few decades to 1 century as the Rohingya and Indians have lived in Myanmar) entitles one ethnicity to claim ownership to the land racist and illogical.
But then again, I didn't expect anything better coming from a Burmese who hates Indians and Rohingya because of their dark skin color!


The map that displays "Dravidian regions" in India perpetuates the same error that was made by 18th century linguists by assuming that Dravidians are a separate race from Aryans. Modern genetic studies have shown that there is no separate Aryan or Dravidian race, but there is a great variation in genes among Indians indicative of population that were among the first "out of Africa" people. It is likely that one such subset of genes from south India match up with Australian Aborigines. But as far as genetics goes, according to recent papers, Indian genes tend to match the genes of other Indians more than those of either Europeans or Australian Aborigines.

YgorC.S. in reply to bennedose

I think they are referring to places where people still speak Dravidian languages, while the rest of India speaks Indo-Aryan languages. The genetic ancestrality of Indians may be mostly "native", dating back to many thousands of years, though there are also significant genetic evidences of Indo-European admixture, but culturally it is almost undeniable that India was probably mostly Dravidian until the Indo-Aryans started to conquer more and more lands and spread their cultures further, and the language is the main result of that expansion. That would explain the fact a few pockets of Dravidian-speaking territories are found in the North, while in the South they are totally dominant. The Indo-Aryans probably came from Central Asia and, thus, were victorious mostly in the North (Pakistan and Northern India).


If the Indians got to Australia that long ago it doesn't look like their genes had much influence on the Aborigines does it ? I mean, is it just me, a layman, that Aborigines seem to have a definite tendency to look more like Negroid Africans than sub-continent Indians ?

It's more useful to compare human populations using genetic differences rather than differences in appearance, like hair texture. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a book on the pitfalls.

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza pioneered the reconstruction of ancient migrations by using genetic markers, long before today's sophisticated DNA methods became available. Now, new findings are coming frequently and bringing some surprises. People with dogs on their ships? I think the Polynesians brought dogs, pigs, and chickens as far as Hawaii.

James776 in reply to guest-laaomiw

I'm from the far south of India (i.e. the "Dravidian" parts). There are lot of people here who look more like negroid Africans than sub-continent Indians; in fact, many of the tribal people (or those who were tribal until maybe ~200 years ago) are classified as being Negroid peoples. These are in fact considered the "native" South Indians; the more "Indian" looking ones are those of us with more Indo-Aryan admixture.


While south India had a prospering and continuous business relationship with SE Asia (current Indonesia etc.) for hundreds of years and were able to establish "Indian" religion as dominant, how come the genetic strains are not found in SE but all the way over in Australia? (Contrary to popular belief, south India has a great history un-eclipsed by north India prior to British Raj.) Is it because most of the people in Asia didn't believe in 'dominating' other cultures and were purely interested in business? Or is it that the culture is SE Asia is purely organic and similarity to that of India is coincidental? If prosperous South Indians didn't try to 'colonize' foreign lands and cultures and instead tried to adapt, what proof is that there presence in Harappa isn't the same case? What proof is behind the 'belief' that Aryans came and drove away south Indians from Harappa, beside the racist thinking that Aryans (north Indians/upper caste), coming from West and with fairer skins were 'obviously' superior and drove away 'naive Dravidians'.

Genetics shows us facts. History is only its interpretation. Genetics will not rewrite history unless it is contradictory. Here, it is not. What a poor way to end the article.

Macabe Lawufll in reply to cubancigar11

There are more Higher Caste dark southern-indians DARK .. than light skinned north-indians. get it ?
Dark South Indians = More Higher Castes...
Light North Indian = Less Higher Castes...
so for the 100th time.. the caste system is NOT the european equivalent to racism.. its more classicism.

nosouthwest in reply to cubancigar11

I think this is because the researchers doing genetic tests of SE Asia may not know the history of the region. Many ethnic groups SEA countries actually arrived in recent times (1000 years ago) from southwest China, like the Thai and Burmese. But I bet you can find genetic evidence of Indians in minority groups in those countries.

naveen.kumar in reply to gruffles

There's no need for data when one can observe such things within own family(dark skinned and light skinned siblings in the same home). Caste and skin color are not equivalent - only pure white Europeans have the habit of confusing the two. Indians come in varied colors that depend more on local migration history, altitude and distance from equator than on caste, religion etc etc. Caste was a feudal social order where people took the job of their forefathers. You don't need to be black or white or yellow or pink to be a hereditary farmer or trader or butcher. It's the hereditary job that mattered. Infact even the name of some castes were decided in that manner e.g. "Lohar" for 'Blacksmith' ; 'badhai' for 'carpenter' etc etc.

In any case, caste hierarchy and any discrimination based on caste was banned by the Constitution right after the british left. Affirmative actions ( 50% reservation in higher education institutions and public services for instance)have been put in place to help traditionally educationally & socially backward castes stand up. The days of hereditary 'warriors', 'priests', 'money-lenders' are up. So no point beating a dead horse now.

James776 in reply to naveen.kumar

You're right, but to be fair to those confused Europeans, there is probably a weak-to-moderate correlation between caste and skin colour, especially when you control for those factors you mentioned (e.g. distance from the equator). A high-caste South Indian may be darker than many medium-caste North Indians, but he or she is most likely lighter-skinned than a low-caste South Indian. How many times have you seen a light-skinned "Untouchable"?

Yes, India actually has very generous provisions for affirmative action but still a good percentage of those university places, government jobs etc. are not taken up. Awareness of these opportunities, and ability to take advantage of them, is very low in rural areas (and India remains very rural). Caste discrimination is outlawed, but ask a Scheduled Tribes kid who just graduated from college and is having trouble getting an apartment in the city because higher-caste landlords are unwilling to lease to them how he feels about that. You'll realise that the sceptre of the caste system still holds at least a little sway.

Macabe Lawufll in reply to -

Well, you stand next to a BLONDE, blue eyed person in a job interview and your somewhat DARKER complexion will likely to fail you the job... so make your own suggestion about racism in EUROPE not india ... I think the Neanderthals in europe created the 'european' dynamic ..


A recent media report in India, about racism in Australia talks about how a white lady asks an Australian of Indian descent to 'go back to your country'. Given this research report, I wonder who should be asked to go back.

KPATOΣ in reply to Manavendra

Foreign students being roughed up anywhere (which is what was mostly beaten up in the Indian press) is regrettable but it is laughable for Indians, qua Indians who still maintain a caste system, to suggest that racism is a significant feature of Australian life. It is true that a good number of Indians, unlike Chinese, lodge in the poorer suburbs to the west of the big cities like Sydney and Melbourne. Sadly the problems, such as they are, are a matter of class. Un- or under-employed youths in those areas are all too likely to pick on lone students going home at night from their part-time jobs. The chances are too that the assailants will be of Somali, Sudanese or other African background to name only the least likely refugees to assimilate quickly. In Brisbane recently there was conflict between Aborigines and Islanders (the reports didn't make clear whether they were Melanesians or Polynesians) many of whom, at least Polyinesians, would come to Australia via New Zealand.

Macabe Lawufll in reply to KPATOΣ

Dark South Indians = More Higher Castes...
Light North Indian = Less Higher Castes...
so for the 100th time.. the caste system is NOT the european equivalent to RACISM.. its more classicism.

Macabe Lawufll in reply to MySetDancer

thats kind of wrong too, because India is a united continent - 28 countries, 30 languages and 10 religions united in ONE country called INDIA.

.... something Europe is trying to do just now ... which as a south-asian in europe, have my doubts about .. Do NOT compare european racism (amongst your own european countries) to the Indian Caste System ...

As I said, the caste system is like a CLASS, poor / rich. It's not based on skin colour, there are MORE Darker high caste priests.

and guess what, im not indian..

roadkill612 in reply to KPATOΣ


if anyone in india had bothered to ask, it wasnt anglo skips causing the problems, it was other ethnic groups even more racist than indians

I lost a lot of what respect i had for india over that

any rubbish is publishable.



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