Dravidians from Africa/not Europe

[Clyde A. Winters]

On Sun, 9 Mar 1997, Steven Schaufele wrote:
 
>
> In response to Clyde Winters' remarks about the ethnic affinities of
> South Indians, i don't think anybody contests that, in terms of physical
> anthropology, they are closely affiliated with certain African groups.
> What's this got to do with language?  We all know that linguistic
> affiliation has no necessary connection with biological affiliation.
> Nowadays, the English language counts members of all ethnic groups among
> its speakers; that doesn't change the fact that it's historically (and
> glossagenetically) a Northwestern European language, a Low-German dialect
> of the Indo-European family.  Suppose some near-universal cataclysm wipes
> out all English-speaking communities outside of Australia & New Zealand.
> Will our descendants conclude therefrom that, since these regions were
> settled from Southeast Asia and, possibly, indirectly Africa, that
> English must be either a Southeast Asian or an African language in its
> origin?
 
 This would be highly unlikely because we would probably use oral
tradition and comparative linguistic methods to show that English could
not have originated in these areas. If such an event did occurn the
English speakers would more than likely adopt the languages of the
"native" people since much of their culture would probably change as a
result of being separated from the major centers of Western culture. It
seems that in this event English woulf be recognize as a substratum
language.
 >
> It should also be borne in mind that there is a Dravidian island along
> the Afghan/Pakistani border.  I've usually understood that this datum
> could be used to support a hypothesis that the Dravidian family was
> originally indigenous to the Indus Valley area, that in late prehistoric
> times expanded into the Indian subcontinent, overwhelming whatever
> languages were used by the local population (which in whole or in part
> had come from Africa) before being in turn overwhelmed in much of the
> northern half of the subcontinent by invading Indo-European speakers.
 
 The archaeological data fails to support this view. The work of B.B. Lal,
makes it clear that the red-and-black ware common to the Indus Valley
dwellers and the South Indians appear to have originated in Africa. This
along with the evidence for a genetic relationship between Dravidian
languages and African languages indicate that the Dravidians did not
originate in the Indus Valley or Iran.
 
   It would appear that while Dravidian elements remained in the Indus
Valley after the decline of the Harappan ciivlization, other elements
migrated southward into India, while Tamilian speakers moved into North
Asia and Southeast Asia. The Dravidian traditons, and linguistic evidence
indicate that the Tamilian speakers migrated from Southeast Asia down into
South India.
 
> Not that i'm necessarily promoting such a hypothesis, but i don't know of
> a great deal of evidence on the subject one way or another..  My point is
> that it is not usually a very good idea to build an argument for the
> linguistic affiliation of a certain ethnic group on the basis of its
> undeniable *physical* affinities.
 
 
This theory is not based on physical affinities, it is based on the
archaeological and linguistic evidence that point to Africa as the
original home of the Dravidian speakers.
 
 
C.A. Winters