Indian Ethnicity: Dravids


Figure 1.--An important Dravidian people in the southern India are the Tamils. Thgey are also found in northern Sri Lanla which of course is located in the Tamilpopulated area of southern India. This photograph of Tamil children taken in 1886. Jotice that while the children are darked skinned, but do not have other African features. his suggests that the ASI population acquired dark skin independently of Afruican origins. Source: University of Cambridge.

The second major Indian ethnic group is Dravidian (about 25 percent). The Dravidian people, some scgolars prefers 'peoples') are a diverse groups of people who natively speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Today they dominate southern India and tend to be darker skined than the Indo-Aryans from northern India. There is no definite information as to the ancient domain of the Dravidian ethnic groups and language. Other modern Dravidian peoples are found in central India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. They are belkieved to have like the Indo-Aryans emigrated into the Subcontinent although their origins are not well established. It is also not clear when this migration took place, although it clearly proceeded the Indo-Aryan invasions. The ethnicity of the Indus Valley people is unclear, although many believe that they were Dravidians. While issues of India ethnocity are highly controversial, one clear development is that there was over time a great deal of mixing between the Aryans and Draviduans. Thus many Dravidiuand speak the Indo-Aryan languages. Another complication is that while Dravidins tend to have dark skin, they do not commonly have other haracteristic African features (kinky hair, wide noses, anf large lips). This suggests not only mixing with the Indo-Aryans, but also central Asian origins. A recent DNA study comparing Indo-Aryans and Dravidians in 25 different Indian groups were analyzed. Thge researchers found strong evidence that modern Indians (both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian groups) are a hybrid population descending from two post-Neolithic, genetically divergent populations. They called them Ancestral North Indians (ANIs)' and Ancestral South Indians (ASIs). [Reich, Et. al.] The researchers concluded that the Andamanese Islanders are an ASI-related group before mixing with the ANI. [Note: We had thought that the Andamese who do have African features like the Australian aborignnes were a ethnic remant of the first migration out if Africa so this is a toiopic we are still looking into.] This helps to provide some chronological parameters. The peopling of the Islands thus must have occurred before the mixing of the ANI-ASI began, perhaps before the ANI group arrived in large numbers. The ANI-ASI mixing has not been precisely dated and of course was an extended process. Estimates range from 1,500 BC - 800 AD exist. This would include the chronologicalperiod in which the Indo-Aryan conquest of the Subcontinent occurred. The largest modern Dravidian groups are the Telugus, Tamils, Kannadigas, and the Malayalis. There are also a number of small Dravidian groups, including the Tuluvas, Gonds and Brahui.









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Created: 3:50 AM 6/18/2012
Last updated: 3:50 AM 6/18/2012