Elamite

[Guillaume JACQUES]

[ moderator translated from base64 encoding ]

| Bernard Sergent -- a proponent of the idea that
| Harappan-Indus was Dravidian -- in "Genesis of India" (1997) apparently also
| takes the position that the isoglosses cited by McAlpin can be explained
| "through contact rather than common origin."

You did not read his book.

Sergent rejects the communis opinio that Harappa was dravidian, following
Elfenbein 1987 who showed that all the aryan-looking loanwords in Brahui, the
only dravidian language as far north as pakistan, are from baluchi, a language
that we know came late in this region. This suggested brahui was not a remnant
from earlier northern dravidians, but a wandering people that ended up far
north.

Sergent suggests Harappa might have been burushaski (he has good reasons for
it), but on the whole we don't have enough proofs: if Harappan was indeed
burushaski, we would expect a burushaski substrate in Vedic, which seems not to
be the case (see Michael Witzel's online paper, 'substrates in old indo-aryan')

Guillaume