Bridging The World

"Gondwana 96 m BC: What if continental drift sequence hadn’t happened? Would India be part of Australia?" (Outlook,August 23, 2004.)

May be. Or may be not.

But Indians might be Australians, Australians might be Americans and so, Indians would be Americans.

Is your head spinning like the globe?

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When Christopher Columbus sailed onto the American soil, he thought that he had reached the Indian shores.He had called the Native Americans "Indians", a name that still lingers on.

It took nearly a century of research and debate to arrive at the plausible conclusion that the originalAmericans had arrived from Asia. "Paleo-indians" or "Old Indians" might have reached NorthAmerica some 13,000-14,000 years ago when sea levels were much lower. It is thought that they might havewalked across land ‘bridges’ in the "Beringia" area, which is now the Bering Straits that separatesSiberia from Alaska. The new arrivals would have then migrated and spread across the American landmass.

The oldest Native American skull, discovered and dated by Archaeologists, is 9000 years old.

Silvia Gonzalez, a Mexican scholar from John Moores University in Liverpool, at the annual meeting of theBritish Association for the Advancement of Science dropped an archaeological bombshell earlier last month(September 6th 2004). She disclosed her discovery in Mexico and California of much older skulls and theirpossible origins. She said that carbon dating on a well preserved female skull had revealed the ‘head’ tobe12,700 years old. Silvia further traced evidence to show that the first migration was into the Pacific Coastof America (Baja California) from Australia through Japan and Polynesia.

DNA testing is underway to corroborate this heady claim.

Britain's Natural Environment Research Council is funding this project as well as 10 other projects thatfocus on diet, dating and dispersal of people down the millennia in the face of climatic changes.

These researches may give the world of Anthropology a new map to be drawn to explain the peopling of theearth.

Social Anthropologists have always been fascinated whenever similarities in social customs appeared betweengeographically separated communities. Take the case of cross-cousin marriages (a cross-cousin is the child ofone’s mother’s brother or father’s sister). The fact that they occur in many Indian communities, inseveral Australian Aboriginal communities as well as a few Native American tribal communities have beendiscussed and debated for long (I am excluding Africa from this piece for the sake of brevity).

A scientific thread to unite these continentally separated communities was what was lacking all along. Thefemale DNA extracted by Silvia Gonzalez might just prove to be the mother of all migratory DNAs.

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If America was first peopled by Australians, then who were the original Australians?

During the Ice Ages, Gondwanaland was a huge mass in which India and Australia were neck and neckneighbors besides others. The Continental Drift pushed them apart. However, for thousands of years the twolands could be reached through ‘bridges’ in the Indian Ocean when the ocean levels were much lower.

The globe’s orientation in the region was such that this critical area was named after Gondwana.The very name Gondwanaland is derived from the name of one of the ancient tribes in India, the Gonds.The Gonds had ruled over the area of "Gondwana" in South Central India around Maharashtra, Madhya Pradeshand Andhra Pradesh from the 15th century to the mid 18th century when they were overthrown by the Muslims andthe Marathas. In public memory, however, the Gonds came into prominence when Verrier Elwin, the BritishAnthropologist, married a Gond woman.

The Aborigines are considered to have migrated into the Australian continent around 40,000 years ago.Research reveals that the Australian Aborigines could have possibly migrated from the Indian land. The Mundasfrom the Bengal region (today’s Bangladesh) and the Veddas from the Tamil region (today’s Sri Lanka) areperhaps the original Aborigines of today’s Australia. This ‘Proto-Dravidian’ ancestry of the AustralianAborigines is generally accepted.

One of the consorts of the Hindu God Murugan is Valli. He is believed to have wooed and wed her in dramaticfashion, and their love story is recounted with great passion in Tamil lore. Valli is considered to be theadopted daughter of a Vedda chief, Nambi Raja.

While on the topic of ‘Dravidian’ influence on Australian Aborigines, it is interesting to note thatthe Aboriginal Flag has a black half while the other half is red and in the center of the flag is a brightyellow sun. I am sure the DMK party would be proud of their ‘originality’. The DMK flag’s sun is risingwhile the Aboriginal sun is fully blown (Will the party spend their time talking about the sun setting inAmerica now?).

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Christopher Columbus wasn’t fully wrong after all.

Indians can cross continental bridges.

Further, ancient Indians did believe that the world was one large family, didn’t they?

G. Sujatha is a Social Anthropologist from the University of Madras. She now lives in Sydney, Australia.