Indo-Aryan migration

Proto-Indo-Iranians

Scholars commonly accept the identification of the Andronovo-Sintashta-Petrovka culture (ca. 2200 BC–1600 BC) as Indo-Iranian, i.e. ancestral to both Indo-Aryans and Iranians. Proto-Indo-Iranians are usually identified with the Sintashta-Petrovka culture of Russia and Kazakhstan. It is there that the earliest chariots are found. The follow-up Andronovo culture and BMAC correspond to the earliest phase of the rapid expansion that would reach into the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau, Afghanistan, and the Indian Subcontinent.

Asko Parpola (1988) has argued that the Dasas were the "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran" living in the BMAC and that the forts with circular walls destroyed by the Vedic Aryans of the Rigveda were actually located in the BMAC. Other scholars have argued that cultural links between the BMAC and the Indus Valley can also be explained by reciprocal cultural influences uniting the two cultures.

Other scholars have argued that the Andronovo culture cannot be associated with the Indo-Aryans of India or with the Mitannis because the Andronovo culture took shape too late and because no actual traces of their culture (e.g. warrior burials or timber-frame materials of the Andronovo culture) have been found in India or Mesopotamia. The archaeologist J. P. Mallory (1998) found it "extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India" and remarked that the proposed migration routes "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" . The evidence disputing this argument, is both linguistic and archaeological (for linguistic arguments, see e.g. Hans Hock in Bronkhorst & Deshpande 1999)