Early ‘Aryans’ and their neighbors outside and inside India

ABSTRACT

Data from archaeology, linguistics, population genetics, and from early Vedic texts, which deal with religion, mythologyand rituals, have to be assembled and closely compared in order to gain a comprehensive picture of the early ‘Aryans’. Suchinterdisciplinary dialogue is necessary in order to establish areas of overlap of data. This paper attempts to indicate awestern Central Asian origin of the Indo-Aryan speakers, in the steppe belt near the Urals, from where they moved, via theInner Asian Mountain belt and Bactria, into India. Their gradual migration entailed acculturation with previous populations,their languages and cultures.