Discovering India Anew reconstructs the history of Indian peoples, taking off from where the history of Indians really begins: Africa. Exploring their earliest journey out of Africa through the colonisation of South Asia by different genetic groups to the end of South Asia’s first urban civilisation, Harappa, and the arrival of the Indo-Aryans, the author asks a fundamental question: Who are we Indians?
The book draws on fields as diverse as archaeology, archaeobotany, palaeoanthropology, genetics, climatology, historical linguistics and literary sources to study the evolution of Homo sapiens and their dispersal across the globe, against the backdrop of global climate changes. It discusses the forager-farmer conflict and maps out a linguistic history of India. And much more.
Through an anecdotal narrative style, the author artfully opens new windows into our past, and highlights how the narrative told by myth and bias contrasts with the alternate history revealed by modern scientific investigations.
This astonishing story of human grit will fascinate scholars and researchers of history as well as the historically inclined, curious reader.