Dravidians from Africa/not Europe

[Clyde A. Winters]

   In recent posting to this list various authors have suggested that the
Dravidians came from Europe or the North. This is highly unlikely, it
would appear that the Dravidians originated in Middle Africa and migrated
to the Indus Valley and India sometime after 3000 B.C.
 
     The Dravidians came from the Sahara before it became a
desert. Affinities exist between Nubia ware and pottery from Ennedi and
Tibesti.
 
     These Saharan people were round-headed ancient Mediterranean
type. They were often referred to as Cafsa or Capsians; a group of people
not devoid of negroid characteristics according to J Desanges.(11) Wyatt
MacGaffey, claims that the term "Mediterranean" is an anthropological
euphemism for "Negro".
 
     The boats of the Saharan people are similar to those found on
ancient engravings of boats in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Many of
the boats found in the eastern desert of Egypt and among the Red Sea
Hills show affinities to Mesopotamian models.
 
     S.N. Kramer in <The Sumerians>, claimed that Makan was Egypt, Mekluhha
was Nubia-Punt, and the Indus Valley was Dilmun. Today Dilmun is believed to
be found near Arabia. But the archaeological evidence suggest that the
Indus Valley which was settled by Dravidian speakers was the source of
the lapis lazuli , which made Dilmun famous .(2)
 
    Archaeological research has confirmed that cultural interaction existed
between the contemporary civilizations of the 4th and 3rd millenia B.C.
Extensive trade routes connected the Proto-Dravidians of the Indus
Valley,  with  African people in Egypto-Nubia, and the Elamites and
Sumerians. P. Kohl discovered that vessels from IVBI worshop at Tepe
Yahya, have a uniform shape and design. Vessels sharing this style are
distributed from Soviet Uzbekistan to the Indus Valley, and Sumerian,
Elamite and Egyptian sites. (2) In addition, we find common arrowheads at
Harappan sites, and sites in Iran, Egypt, Minoan Crete and Heladic Greece.
 
    It appears that the locus for this distribution of cultural
traditions and technology was the Saharan-Nubian zone or Kush. This would
explain why the Sumerians and Elamites often referred to themselves as
"ksh". For example the ancient Sumerians called their dynasty "Kish". The
words "kish", "kesh"  and "kush" were also names for ancient Nubia-Sudan.
 
     The Elamites also came from Kush. According to the classical writer
Strabo, Susa the centre of the Elamite civilization was founded by
Tithonus, king of Kush.
 
    B.B. Lal has shown conclusively that the Dravidians came from Nubia
and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty.(3)
They both used a common black-and-red ware (BRW) which Lal found was
analogous to ceramics used by the megalithic people in India who also
used analogous pottery signs identical to those found in the corpus of
Indus Valley writing. (4)
 
     Singh believes that this pottery spread from Nubia, through Mesopotamia
and Iran southward into India.(5) The earliest examples of this BRW date
to the Amratian period (c4000-3500 B.C.). T
 
     This same BRW was found at the lowest levels of Harappan sites at Lothal
and Rangpur. After 1700 B.C. This ceramic tradition spread southward into
megalithic India.(6)
 
     Dilmun was an important source of lapis lazuli. If the Indus Valley
civilization was Dilmun as hypothesized by Kramer, it would explain the
control of the Harappans/ or Dilmunites of this important metal.
 
     The Indus Valley people spoke a Dravidian language.(7) The Harappans
controlled the lazurite region of Badakhshan, and the routes to the tin
and copper fields of central Asia.(8)
 
     The major city of the Harappans/Dilmunites in the lapis lazuli
region was Shortughai. Francefort believes that many lapis lazuli works
were transported to Iran and Mesopotamia from Shortughai.(9) The BRW at
Shortughai is typically Harappan.
 
     When we put all of this evidence together we must agree that there
were connections between the Dravidian and African people. The evident
linguistic connections between Uralic and Dravidian are probably the
result of the Dravidian migrations into Central Asia and contact with
Uralic speakers during this proposed period.
 
 Footnotes
 
     (1)C.B. Rawlinson, "Notes on the early history of Babylon", <Jour.
Royal Asiatic Society > (First Series) 15, p.230.
     (2). Philip L. Kohl, "The balance of trade in the mid-Third
millenium BC", <Current Anthropology>, 19 (1978), pp.463-492.
     (3)B.B. Lal, "From megalithic to the Harappan: Tracing back the
graffiti on pottery", <Ancient India>, 16 (1960).
     (4)B.B. Lal, "The only Asian mission in threatened Nubia", <The
Illustrated London Times>, 20 April 1963.
     (5) H.N. Singh, <History and Archaeology of Black-and-Red Ware>,
Delhi, 1982.
     (6) C.A. Winters, "The Dravido-Harappan Colonization of Central
Asia", <Central Asiatic Journal>, 34 (1-2), pp.120-144.
     (7) C.A. Winters, "The Dravidian language of the Harappan script",
<Archiv Orientalni>, (1990).
     (8) B. Brenjes, "On Proto-Elamite Iran", <Current anthropology>, 24
(2) (1984), pp. 240-.
     (9) Henri-Paul Franceport, "La civilisation de l'Indus aux rives de
l'Oxus", <Archeologie>, (Decembre) p.50.
     (10) Ibid., p.49.
     (11) J. Desnages, "The Proto-Berbers". In <General History of
Africa> vol.2, (Ed.) by G. Mokhtar (Heinemann Educational Books, London)
p.25.
 
C.A.Winters