Paul Manansala has just pointed out an interesting paper on the
genetic make-up of India:
> http://www.genome.org/cgi/reprint/13/10/2277
The interesting point for us is that the paper suggests that the
original population of India was Austro-Asiatic speaking, adding
support to the notion of a Para-Munda substrate in Vedic Sanskrit.
"Sociocultural and linguistic evidence indicates (Risley 1915; Thapar
1966; Pattanayak 1998) that the AA tribals are the original
inhabitants of India. Some other scholars have, however, argued that
tribal groups speaking DR and AA languages have evolved from an older
substrate of proto-Australoids (Keith 1936), whereas the TB tribals
are later immigrants from Tibet and Myanmar (Guha 1935). Our
findings strongly support the hypotheis that AA tribals are the
earliest inhabitants of India."
AA = Austro-Asiatic, not Afro-Asiatic.
DR = Dravidian
TB = Tibeto-Burman
Richard.