Revisiting the Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of South Asia: Old Philological Narratives Vs. New Evidence-Based Model

This paper re-evaluates the ethnolinguistic prehistory and peopling of South Asia by contrasting traditional philological hypotheses with multi-disciplinary evidence from archaeogenetics, Bayesian glottochronology, and paleoanthropology. While traditional "Old Narratives" relied on historical-comparative reconstructions and speculative migration waves, modern "New Narratives" establish absolute biological timelines and verifiable population movements. A central focus of this empirical revision is the archaeological record of hunter-gatherer cultures in the Sub-Himalayan region, particularly within the Arjun Khola valley (Dang), where Lower and Middle Paleolithic stone tool industries reflect deep Pleistocene human occupation. Integrating these archaeological findings with recent archaeogenetic discoveries, this study traces the genetic lineage of the indigenous Kusunda people of the Arjun Khola area—along with other isolated groups like the Nihali and Burushaski—back to the earliest Homo sapiens arrivals from the initial Out-of-Africa coastal migration (~60,000–50,000 BP). As direct descendants of the subcontinent's original hunter gatherer stratum (represented by the Ancient Ancestral South Indian or AASI lineage), the Kusunda predate the post-Harappan genetic bifurcations, agricultural demic expansions, and subsequent linguistic migrations of Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman populations. By examining the persistence of traditional foraging lifestyles and the unique linguistic profile of the last Kusunda speakers residing in the Arjun Khola region near Lamahi, this paper highlights them as an invaluable living relict of South Asia's pre-Neolithic language and culture landscape.