Ancestral Dravidian languages were possibly spoken by many in Indus Valley civilisation, says study

The paper by Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay seeks to resolve a crucial part of this perennial puzzle of South Asian prehistory.

A recent publication has provided crucial evidence that Ancestral Dravidian languages were possibly spoken by a significant population in the Indus Valley civilisation. The paper titled “”, by Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay was published earlier this month in a Nature Group of journal - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 8, Article number: 193 (2021). This study seeks to resolve a crucial part of this perennial puzzle of South Asian prehistory, through establishing the certain existence of ancestral Dravidian language(s) in the Indus Valley civilisation. In the absence of any deciphered written documents of Indus Valley civilisation, there are no direct ways of identifying Harappan languages. Thus, the only feasible starting point is to find certain proto-words whose likely origin in Indus Valley civilisation gets confirmed through historical and linguistic evidence, whereas archaeological evidence indicates that the objects signified by those proto-words were prevalently produced and used in the Indian Valley civilisation.