The Ethnic composition of the earliest strata of human beings in South India is a vexing problem

The Ethnic composition of the earliest strata of human beings in South India is a vexing problem. It would be difficult to identify the racial stock to which the Paleolithic! Man belonged.

A complete skeleton of those times has not yet been discovered in South India. A fossil skeleton of a pygmy man discovered in 1935 is taken to represent the Negrito type. This type is found in the entire belt stretching from Africa to the Andaman’s.

In the earliest stages of human history in peninsular India it is almost certain that this type inhabited the region. In the Anaimalai hills and in a few other isolated localities in the j Tamil country we come across Kadars and Pulaiyars who might belong to this racial stock.

Anthropologists attest to similarities in certain social factors of the Semangs, a Negrito people of Malaya and the Kadars of South India. The megaliths of Brahmagiri suggest an Australoid type and another indicating meso-cephalic (middle headed, i.e., intermediate between the long headed and the short headed) and flat-nosed.

Thus, it is a combination of Australoid and armenoid elements. But these occur in the extreme northern fringes of South India. The proto-australoid element to a limited extent occurs among the Kurumbas, the Kadars etc.

But the dominant element among the Dravidian speaking people who are clearly the majority in the South Indian population is a proto-mediterranean element. This is indicated by long narrow head and face, medium nose and dark-brown hair.

As the Dravidians had arrived in South India before the neolithic stage there is continuity in the racial composition and undoubtedly Adichchanallur evidences the proto-mediterranean stock.

Another element called the mediterranean is detected among the Kallars and the Telugu Brahmins. Either this element was an independent arrival in India in late neolithic times or was an evolution from the proto-mediterranean which had arrived earlier. The occasional occurrence of a short headed type in parts of Maharashtra and the Telugu country has also been noticed.

This variety is supposed to consist of the Alpine and the Armenoid types. The latter was evolved in South West Asia. The dominant Armenoid type is found mostly among the Tamil speakers. The fact that this type could not have arisen in South India makes a theory of external homeland for the Dravidian speakers a necessity. Some scholars have held that the Armenoid in India was the consequence of an early migration from Iran.

The characteristic of round headedness among the Tamils is not an isolated feature but overland can be traced to the Iranian plateau through Gujarat. These connections go to add significance to the cultural similarities between the earliest inhabitants I of north western and south western Iran on the one hand and the Dravidian speakers of South India on the other.

We do not come across the alpine-armenoid element in Kerala which has to be explained by supposing that this group came to Tamilnad through Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Sind overland and not by sea. This can also explain the occurrence of Brahui as an isolated pocket of Dravidian linguistic group in Baluchistan.

This however cannot mean that the Dravidian speakers did not reach South India directly overseas from the eastern mediterranean. The occurrence of Brahui can be explained by supposing that the Dravidians came to South India keeping close to the western coasts both when they were coming by land and by sea.

There is also the proposition that Dravidian was not spoken by considerable bodies of persons outside the area of their present occurrence. One major racial element which is significant by its absence in South India is the Mongolian.