Colin Renfrew on Indo-Aryan migrations

“Certainly the assumption that the Aryas were recent ‘immigrants’ to India, and their enemies were ‘aborigines’, has done much to distort our understanding of the archaeology of India and Pakistan.”

“When Wheeler speaks of ‘the Aryan invasion of the Land of the Seven Rivers, the Punjab’, he has no warranty at all, so far as I can see. If one checks the dozen references in the Rigveda to the Seven Rivers, there is nothing in any of them that to me implies invasion: the land of the Seven Rivers is the land of the Rigveda, the scene of the action. Nothing implies that the Aryas were strangers there. Nor is it implied that the inhabitants of the walled cities (including the Dasyus) were any more aboriginal than the Aryas themselves... Despite Wheeler’s comments, it is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley civilization.”