page_title: Peopling of India
section_title: Indo-Aryans
hierarchical_section_title: Peopling of India / Indo-Aryans
caption_attribution_description: English: Indo-European expansion 4000–1000 BC, according to the Kurgan hypothesis. Even within the Kurgan hypothesis, there is considerable uncertainty, mainly depending on assumptions about the w:Tocharians, the w:Corded ware culture and the w:Beaker culture. The central purple area is supposed to show early w:Yamna culture (4000–3500 BC); the dark red area could show expansion to about 2500 BC, and the lighter red area expansion to about 1000 BC.
context_page_description: The peopling of India refers to the migration of Homo sapiens into the Indian subcontinent. Anatomically modern humans settled India in multiple waves of early migrations, over tens of millennia. The first migrants came with the Coastal Migration/ Southern Dispersal 65,000 years ago, whereafter complex migrations within south and southeast Asia took place. West Eurasian hunter-gatherers migrated to South Asia after the latest Ice Age, but before the onset of farming. Together with a minor number of ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers they formed the population of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
  With the decline of the IVC, and the migration of Indo-Europeans, the IVC-people contributed to the formation of both the Ancestral North Indians, who were closely related to west Eurasians, and the Ancestral South Indians, who were predominantly descended from ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers who were distantly related to the Andamanese.
context_section_description: In the second millennium BCE people from the Sintashta culture migrated through Bactria-Margiana Culture and into the northern Indian subcontinent (modern day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal). The Indo-Aryan migrations started in approximately 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia. 
  The Proto-Indo-Iranians, from which the Indo-Aryans developed, are identified with the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BCE), and the Andronovo culture, which flourished ca. 1800–1400 BCE in the steppes around the Aral sea, present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The proto-Indo-Iranians were influenced by the Bactria-Margiana Culture, south of the Andronovo culture, from which they borrowed their distinctive religious beliefs and practices. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800–1600 BCE from the Iranians, whereafter the Indo-Aryans migrated into the Levant and north-western India.
  Lazaridis et al. (2016) notes that the demographic impact of steppe related populations on South Asia was substantial and forms a major component in northern India. Lazaridis et al.'s 2016 study estimates 6.5–50.2 % steppe related admixture in all modern South Asians with higher caste and Indo-Aryan speaking groups having more steppe admixture than others.
caption: Scheme of the theoretical Indo-European migrations, of which the Indo-Aryan migrations form a part, from c. 4000 to 1000 BCE according to the Kurgan hypothesis.
  * The magenta area corresponds to the assumed Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture) and the subsequent Yamna culture.
  * The red area corresponds to the area which may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to c. 2500 BCE.
  * The orange area to 1000 BCE.[71]
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