Thread by @tjoseph0010

This full-page article was published exactly 3 years ago in The Hindu. And the response was almost instantaneous: it was shared about 100,000 times on Facebook. It also became the most read story for The Hindu that year.
thehindu.com/sci-tech/scien…

Amidst all the positive responses, there were also 12-odd articles that were published in a range of Rightwing publications that tried to, as they said, “debunk” the story. Half of these were published just one platform – and you can imagine which one! 😊

This ‘little-known Malayali journalist’ ate up a lot of their time.

https://twitter.com/tjoseph0010/status/945367997648060416?s=20

Why is there such opposition to scientific findings from those outside academia? Read 👇& watch 👇
The attempt is to erase our history of a shared, mixed civilizational heritage & assign it to 1 group, to the exclusion of all others

indianexpress.com/article/opinio…

In the years since the article was published, 2 major ancient DNA studies have reconfirmed the migration from the Central Asian Steppe between 2000 and 1500 BCE that brought Indo-European languages to India.
Links to the 2 studies:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
scholar.harvard.edu/files/vagheesh…

Here is a thread and a story on what the studies mean:

https://twitter.com/tjoseph0010/status/1169735520462626816?s=20

thehindu.com/society/histor…

Here is an interview with V. Narasimhan, lead author of ‘The Formation of Human Populations in South & Central Asia,’ co-authored by 117 scientists. Note the map showing the migrations and the spread of Indo-European languages around the world
podcastaddict.com/?id=80871393

Here is an interview with Prof. David Reich, well-known population geneticist and author of ‘Who We Are and How We Got Here’, on the two studies and what they mean for South Asian prehistory:
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/s…

The Hindu article was written when I was more than half-way into my 6-year-research that resulted in ‘Early Indians’, published in December, 2018. The book was received well by readers & the academic community from around the world. See the thread:

https://twitter.com/tjoseph0010/status/1076017866313515010?s=20

In the one and a half years since the book was published, it has gone into many reprints and won 3 awards: the Tata Lit Live Book of the Year; the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize & the Atta Galatta-BLF Award for Best Non-Fiction.

“The success of Tony Joseph’s ‘Early Indians’ published by Juggernaut was the biggest and most pleasant surprise, since that means that more people are interested now in reading about history, civilization and culture.”
hindustantimes.com/more-lifestyle…

It was also counted among the Best Non-Fiction Books of the Decade by The Hindu:
thehindu.com/books/best-non…

The core message of the recent findings about population formation around the world is that all large population groups today are mixtures of multiple mass migrations that happened in historic or prehistoric times. South Asia is no exception.

What shaped Indian population are 4 mass migrations in prehistory: from Africa, from Iran/northwestern India, from East Asia & from the Central Asian Steppe. We created a unique civilization that owes its origins to diverse migration streams that happened over thousands of years.

So if you have not read the book yet, now is a good time to do so! 🙂

Just now: the book is now going into its 11th reprint.