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Is there an ancient Indian influence in Australia?
So when we think about Australia,
we think about, especially when Indians think
about Australia, we think about cricket.
We think about the Australian cricket team
and we think about the people of Australia
as being European in origin
and essentially English speaking in origin.
So from the British islands.
So that's how we see the people of Australia.
The fact is that the European presence
in Australia dates back to the 1780s
or thereabouts, plus or minus 10, 15 years, okay?
So that's where European influence in Australia begins.
That's just how many years ago?
That's like 250 years ago or 300 years ago at most.
For most, for the entirety of its history,
Australia has been home to the indigenous Australian people,
the Australian aboriginal people
who have been present in Australia
for at least 60,000 years.
So these Australian aboriginal people
are the true natives of Australia.
They are the true owners of that land,
of that nation, of that continent.
And after the European occupation of Australia,
the Australian aboriginal people
were deprived of their rights.
They were marginalized and essentially
they were reduced to the margins of society.
Even today, they don't have too many rights.
They live on the fringes of society.
They have terrible conditions.
They have suffered lots of atrocities for centuries.
But these Australian aborigines
are the true natives of Australia.
Now, if we look at the genetics
of the Australian aboriginal people,
then we find a very interesting change
around 5,000 years ago.
So between 5,000 and 4,500 years ago,
a new genetic signature entered
the Australian aboriginal lineages.
And this is an Indian genetic signature.
So about 5,000 to 4,500 years ago,
the Australian aboriginal people
came in contact with Indians
who had somehow managed to reach Australia.
So let us take a look at the distance
between India and Australia.
This here is India,
and Australia is all the way far to the south.
That is thousands of kilometers.
So how would Indians have reached Australia
5,000 years ago?
So we're talking about the Harappan era
of Indian civilization.
That's when this contact happened.
And just to clarify, before I go back into the map,
to clarify, today, the indigenous people of Australia
have about 10 to 12% of Indian genetics.
So if you examine their DNA,
about 10 to 12% of it is Indian in origin.
And this change happened around 5,000 to 4,500 years ago.
And other changes also happened at that time.
The Australian wild dog, which is called the dingo,
also appears for the first time
in the Australian fossil record at the same time,
around 5,000 years ago.
And if you look at this dog, the Australian dingo,
it looks just like the Indian dog,
the standard-issue Indian dog
that you find on every street corner in India.
The brownish, yellowish dog, medium-sized, very intelligent.
That is exactly what the Australian dingo is.
So this DNA influx happened,
and the Australian dingo also appeared at the same time.
And at the same time, new tools appeared in Australia,
in the Australian fossil and archaeological record,
which were not present before that time.
So new tools, new technology also appeared around this time.
So there is unmistakable and undeniable hard evidence
that Indians traveled all the way to Australia
4,500 or 5,000 years ago,
and they assimilated in the Australian population,
left behind their genetics.
And their descendants are alive all across Australia today.
And the other thing to note is that
the Indian migrants to Australia
did not attempt to impose Indian culture and languages
upon the Australian people,
because you see none of that
in the Australian languages or culture today.
So they harmoniously assimilated
among the indigenous Australian people.
Now let's again go back to the map.
So take a look at how far Australia is from India.
So if you can see the pointer of my mouse,
the Indians who went there
would either have had to cross the Indian Ocean by sea,
which is an incredible naval journey,
or they would have had to go by foot or by other means
from present day Myanmar to Thailand to Malaysia,
jump across the ocean, the seas to Indonesia
through various islands,
and then cross over from Papua New Guinea
or from other parts of Indonesia into Northern Australia.
So either way, it's an incredible journey.
And we know that the people of ancient India
were great seafarers.
They had great naval technology.
The Rig Veda, the world's oldest literature,
which is around 8,000 years old at least,
makes references to ships with a hundred oars.
And we know very clearly that Indians had been traveling
across the seas for a very long time.
So it is not surprising to me
that ancient Indians were able to make this voyage,
this naval voyage all the way to Northern Australia,
and they have spread their genetics there.
So that is the story
of the ancient Indian influence in Australia.
It must have been an incredible journey.
There's a story that we have lost.
There's a piece of history,
a monumental piece of history that is now lost to us.
And we can use archeology and genetics
to reconstruct what happened, but it clearly happened.
Indians went all the way to Australia
almost 5,000 years ago.
So that is the story of the ancient Indian influence
in Australia 5,000 years ago.
I don't think anyone knows about this
because we are not taught about this.
