A new book reconstructs the history of the Indian peoples from where it really began: Africa

Where does one begin to tell a story that spans many thousands of years, a story whose origins are obscured by stubborn mists that will not lift and enduring myths that will not shift under the weight of ages of telling? Where does one begin unravelling the history of India and its peoples?

There have been many beginnings in the telling of the story depending on who told it, when and why. Different yardsticks have been used: myth, bias, selective readings and interpretations. Stripped of all this, there is and can be only one beginning. Today, a host of disciplines and technologies, many of them recent developments, are being applied to uncover and write the history of India and Indians. The story they tell begins in Africa. Indian history, or to be more precise, the history of Indians begins in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

Stone tools tell remarkable stories of the evolutionary history of our hominid and hominin1 ancestors and of the world they inhabited. Buried in the earth of India’s deep south, in Tamil Nadu, is one such story sculpted in hard stone many millennia ago.

What has climate change got to do with Indian history? A lot, if not everything.

We humans are all of...

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