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| कर्ण (karNa), by @zdrava |
In my first post on this topic - 'The True source of steppe ancestry in modern Indians' - I laid out the genetic claim that the best source for steppe in Indians seems to be a sample from the Yaz II Iron Age culture site at Takhirbai 3, Turkmenistan (short name of the sample - TKM_IA), dated to approximately 850 BCE. Based on other archaeological, anthropological, epigraphic and literary evidence which also supported this claim, I proposed that only a post-1000 BCE movement of these 'proto-Śāka' people could explain the steppe ancestry present in modern Indians. The main reason to reject the view that steppe folks came to the core Vedic region (of Punjab, Haryana and East UP) around ~1500 BCE, and gave Indians the Vedic culture and Indo-European languages is the fact that absolutely no archaeological evidence exists to support such a big claim. This difference is important - a post-1000 BCE movement of Iranian-speaking proto-Śāka into India cannot bring the Vedic culture and language. Neither does it match the evidence from Rig Veda, which describes a pre-Iron Age life. Do read that article to understand all the evidence in support of my claim.
