According to Robert Winston 140,000 years ago, or 138,000 BC the African branch of the Homo Heidelbergensis is dying out. It is a period of glaciations -an ice age-and there's very little rain in Africa. This creates the conditions for accelerated natural selection. According to Winston only the most fit and resourceful survive. And in this time of accelerated natural selection Homo sapiens is born.
This species is distinguished from Homo Heidelbergensis by the presence of imagination as attested by the existence of buried ostrich eggs which were used for preserving water in a drought. Arguably, these were found at the same time and is evidence for the dawn of man: the wise ape.
Then, around 110,000 years ago - that's 108,000 BC - the Ice Age ended and rains returned to Africa. From this time onwards Homo sapiens radiated outwards from Africa coming into contact with Neanderthal in Europe, and perhaps other hominid species of the Homo genus in the rest of the world.
But how does all this relate to the discussion of Hinduism, the Indus Valley civilization, Dravidians, and the Aryan Migration Thesis? Well, it has to do with indigenous Australians, or aboriginals. The earliest human remains in Australia called Mungo Man date to 38,000 BC, and aboriginals may have been in Australia from as far back as 125,000 years ago - that's 123,000 BC.
Apparently, they got there by island hopping on boats. There are other aboriginals in Papa New Guinea. But what does this all mean? This means that dark-skinned Homo sapiens radiating throughout modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Borneo, and Papa New Guinea, all the way to Australia. Basically, colonizing the known world very soon after the origins of Homo sapiens in about 138,000 BC.
So, it's almost undeniable that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India. Also, that the similarities between Dravidians and aboriginal Australians suggest that there is a very good chance that they are highly related. So, it is not at all certain, or a foregone conclusion that the Indus Valley civilization was an Aryan civilization.
It's very, very likely that the first inhabitants of the Indus Valley River basin were Dravidians. And the culture of the Indus Valley and later the civilization is one that was built by Dravidians who had called the Indus Valley River their home and settled there.
It's also very likely that the continuity of Indo-Aryan with Indo-European is highly suggestive that the Aryan Migration Thesis is correct. That is, that the Aryan culture was not indigenous to the Indus Valley civilization. And, if the religion of the Indus Valley civilization was Hinduism, then, it is very likely that Hinduism is a Dravidian and not an Aryan religion.
Furthermore, with regard to the Persian people also commonly known as the Iranian people, they are the linguistic kin of the Aryan people. Indo-Aryan includes Hindi and Persian languages. The point is that this is the same group of people – linguistically - that occupy the lands of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north India.
After this brief prelude it becomes possible to ask much more interesting questions such as: is Hinduism the technology of meditation? And is it this technology which is the hallmark of Hinduism instead of a specific language or culture? If the hallmark of Hinduism is meditation, and if meditation is a technology of a settled people, it's very likely that Hinduism was indigenous to the Indus Valley civilization and not the Aryan culture, which was nomadic.
