Elamo-Dravidian

languages

The Elamo-Dravidian language family is

a hypothesised language family that links
the Dravidian languages of India to the
extinct Elamite language of ancient Elam
(present-day southwestern Iran). Linguist
David McAlpin has been a chief
proponent of the Elamo-Dravidian
hypothesis.[1] According to McAlpin, the
long-extinct Harappan language (the
language or languages of the Indus
Valley Civilization) might also have been
part of this family. The hypothesis has
gained attention in academic circles, but
has been subject to serious criticism by
linguists, and remains only one of several
scenarios for the origins of the Dravidian
languages.[note 1] Elamite is accepted by
scholars to be a language isolate,
unrelated to any other known language.[3]
 Elamo-Dravidian
(obsolete)

Geographic South Asia, West Asia

distribution

Linguistic Proposed language family

classification

Subdivisions Elamite
Dravidian

Glottolog None

Linguistic arguments
According to David McAlpin, the
Dravidian languages were brought to
India by immigration into India from
Elam, located in present-day
southwestern Iran.[4][5] McAlpin (1975) in
his study identified some similarities
between Elamite and Dravidian. He
proposed that 20% of Dravidian and
Elamite vocabulary are cognates while
12% are probable cognates. He further
claimed that Elamite and Dravidian
possess similar second-person pronouns
and parallel case endings. For example,
the term for mother in the Elamite
language and in different Dravidian
languages like Tamil is amma.[6] They
have identical derivatives, abstract
nouns, and the same verb stem+tense
marker+personal ending structure. Both
have two positive tenses, a "past" and a
"non-past".[7]
Georgiy Starostin criticized McAlpin's
proposed morphological
correspondences between Elamite and
Dravidian as no closer than
correspondences with other nearby
language families,[8] while Bhadriraju
Krishnamurti regarded them to be ad hoc,
and found them to be lacking
phonological motivation.[9] Similar
criticsms are stated by Kamil Zvelebil
and others.[9] Furthermore, Elamite is
generally accepted by scholars to be a
language isolate, unrelated to any other
known language.[10][11][12]

Renfrew and Cavalli-Sforza have also

argued that Proto-Dravidian was brought
to India by farmers from the Iranian part
of the Fertile Crescent,[13][14][15][note 2] but
more recently Heggarty and Renfrew
noted that "McAlpin's analysis of the
language data, and thus his claims,
remain far from orthodoxy", adding that
Fuller finds no relation of Dravidian
languages with other languages, and
thus assumes it to be native to India.[2]
Renfrew and Bahn conclude that several
scenarios are compatible with the data,
and that "the linguistic jury is still very
much out."[2]

Proposed cultural links

Apart from the linguistic similarities, the
Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis rests on the
claim that agriculture spread from the
Near East to the Indus Valley region via
Elam. This would suggest that
agriculturalists brought a new language
as well as farming from Elam. Supporting
ethno-botanical data include the Near
Eastern origin and name of wheat (D.
Fuller). Later evidence of extensive trade
between Elam and the Indus Valley
Civilization suggests ongoing links
between the two regions.

The distribution of living Dravidian

languages, concentrated mostly in
southern India but with isolated pockets
in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan
(Brahui) and in Central and East India
(Kurukh, Malto), suggests to some a
wider past distribution of the Dravidian
languages. However, there are varied
opinions about the origin of northern
Dravidian languages like Brahui, Kurukh
and Malto.[16] The Kurukh have
traditionally claimed to be from the
Deccan Peninsula,[17] more specifically
Karnataka. The same tradition has
existed of the Brahui.[18][19] They call
themselves immigrants.[20] Many
scholars hold this same view of the
Brahui[21] such as L. H. Horace Perera
and M. Ratnasabapathy.[22] Moreover, it
has now been demonstrated that the
Brahui only migrated to Balochistan from
central India after 1000 CE. The absence
of any older Iranian loanwords in Brahui
supports the connection. The main
Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary,
Balochi, is a Western Iranian language
like Kurdish.[23]

Archaeogenetics
According to genetic studies, the Brahui
population has high prevalence (55%) of
western Eurasian mtDNAs and the lowest
frequency in the region (21%) of
haplogroup M* but it is common (∼60%)
among the Dravidian-speaking Indians.
So the possibility of the Dravidian
presence in Baluchistan originating from
recent entry of Dravidians of India should
be excluded. It also shows their maternal
gene pool is similar to Indo-Iranian
speakers. The present Brahui population
may have originated from ancient Indian
Dravidian-speakers who may have
relocated to Baluchistan and admixed
with locals; however, no historical record
supports this. So it is suggested that
they are the last northern survivors of a
larger Dravidian-speaking region before
Indo-Iranian arrived. This would, if true,
reinforce the proto-Elamo-Dravidian
hypothesis.[24]

Notes
1. Renfrew and Bahn conclude that
several scenarios are compatible with the
data, and that "the linguistic jury is still
very much out."[2]
2. Derenko: "The spread of these new
technologies has been associated with
the dispersal of Dravidian and Indo-
European languages in southern Asia. It is
hypothesized that the proto-Elamo-
Dravidian language, most likely originated
in the Elam province in southwestern Iran,
spread eastwards with the movement of
farmers to the Indus Valley and the Indian
sub-continent."[15]

Derenko refers to:

* Renfrew (1987), Archaeology and
Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European
Origins
* Renfrew (1996), Language families and
the spread of farming. In: Harris DR,
editor, The origins and spread of
Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, pp.
70–92
* Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, Piazza (1994),
The History and Geography of Human
Genes.

References
1. Southworth, Franklin. "Rice in
Dravidian" . Springer. Retrieved 22 March
2014.
2. Heggarty, Paul; Renfrew, Collin (2014),
"South and Island Southeast Asia;
Languages", in Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul,
The Cambridge World Prehistory ,
Cambridge University Press
3. Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology,
Technology, and Ethics. Oxbow Books.
p. 34.
4. Dhavendra Kumar (2004), Genetic
Disorders of the Indian Subcontinent ,
Springer, ISBN 1-4020-1215-2, retrieved
2008-11-25, “... The analysis of two Y
chromosome variants, Hgr9 and Hgr3
provides interesting data (Quintan-Murci
et al., 2001). Microsatellite variation of
Hgr9 among Iranians, Pakistanis and
Indians indicate an expansion of
populations to around 9000 YBP in Iran
and then to 6,000 YBP in India. This
migration originated in what was
historically termed Elam in south-west
Iran to the Indus valley, and may have
been associated with the spread of
Dravidian languages from south-west Iran
(Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). ...”
5. David McAlpin, "Toward Proto-Elamo-
Dravidian", Language vol. 50 no. 1 (1974);
David McAlpin: "Elamite and Dravidian,
Further Evidence of Relationships",
Current Anthropology vol. 16 no. 1 (1975);
David McAlpin: "Linguistic prehistory: the
Dravidian situation", in Madhav M.
Deshpande and Peter Edwin Hook: Aryan
and Non-Aryan in India, Center for South
and Southeast Asian Studies, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor (1979); David
McAlpin, "Proto-Elamo-Dravidian: The
Evidence and its Implications",
Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society vol. 71 pt. 3, (1981)
6. The Cambridge History of Iran 2 by I.
Gershevitch p.13
7. David McAlpin, "Toward Proto-Elamo-
Dravidian", Language vol. 50 no. 1 (1974);
David McAlpin: "Elamite and Dravidian,
Further Evidence of Relationships",
Current Anthropology vol. 16 no. 1 (1975);
David McAlpin: "Linguistic prehistory: the
Dravidian situation", in Madhav M.
Deshpande and Peter Edwin Hook: Aryan
and Non-Aryan in India, Center for South
and Southeast Asian Studies, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor (1979); David
McAlpin, "Proto-Elamo-Dravidian: The
Evidence and its Implications",
Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society vol. 71 pt. 3, (1981)
8. Starostin, George (2002). "On the
genetic affiliation of the Elamite
language" (PDF). Mother Tongue. 7: 147–
170.
9. Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. The Dravidian
Languages . Cambridge University. p. 44.
10. Roger Blench, Matthew Spriggs (eds.)
(2003), "Archaeology and Language I:
Theoretical and Methodological
Orientations", Routledge, p.125
11. Roger D. Woodard (ed.)(2008), "The
Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia,
Egypt and Aksum", Cambridge University
Press, p.3
12. Amalia E. Gnanadesikan (2011), "The
Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the
Internet", John Wiley & Sons
13. Cavalli-Sforza (1994), p. 221-222.
14. Namita Mukherjee; Almut Nebel;
Ariella Oppenheim; Partha P. Majumder
(December 2001), "High-resolution
analysis of Y-chromosomal
polymorphisms reveals signatures of
population movements from central Asia
and West Asia into India" (PDF), Journal
of Genetics, Springer India, 80 (3): 125–
35, doi:10.1007/BF02717908 ,
PMID 11988631 , retrieved 2008-11-25,
“... More recently, about 15,000–10,000
years before present (ybp), when
agriculture developed in the Fertile
Crescent region that extends from Israel
through northern Syria to western Iran,
there was another eastward wave of
human migration (Cavalli-Sforza et al.,
1994; Renfrew 1987), a part of which also
appears to have entered India. This wave
has been postulated to have brought the
Dravidian languages into India (Renfrew
1987). Subsequently, the Indo-European
(Aryan) language family was introduced
into India about 4,000 ybp ...”
15. Derenko (2013).
16. P. 83 The Quest for the Origins of
Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration
Debate by Edwin Bryant
17. P. 18 The Orāons of Chōtā Nāgpur:
their history, economic life, and social
organization by Sarat Chandra Roy, Rai
Bahadur; Alfred C Haddon
18. P. 12 Origin and Spread of the Tamils
By V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar
19. P. 32 Ideology and status of Sanskrit :
contributions to the history of the Sanskrit
language by Jan E M Houben
20. P. 45 The Brahui language, an old
Dravidian language spoken in parts of
Baluchistan and Sind by Sir Denys Bray
21. Ancient India; Culture and Thought By
M. L. Bhagi
22. P. 23 Ceylon & Indian History from
Early Times to 1505 A. D. By L. H. Horace
Perera, M. Ratnasabapathy
23. J. H. Elfenbein, A periplous of the
‘Brahui problem’, Studia Iranica vol. 16
(1987), pp. 215–233.
24. Quintana-Murci, Lluís; Chaix,
Raphaëlle; Wells, R. Spencer; Behar, Doron
M.; Sayar, Hamid; Scozzari, Rosaria;
Rengo, Chiara; Al-Zahery, Nadia; Semino,
Ornella (2004). "Where West Meets East:
The Complex mtDNA Landscape of the
Southwest and Central Asian Corridor" .
The American Journal of Human
Genetics. 74 (5): 827–845.
doi:10.1086/383236 . PMC 1181978  .
PMID 15077202 .

Further reading
Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The
Dravidian Languages. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-
77111-5.
 McAlpin, David W. (2003). "Velars,
Uvulars, and the North Dravidian
Hypothesis". Journal of the American
Oriental Society. 123 (3): 521–546.
JSTOR 3217749 .
McAlpin, David W. (2015). "Brahui and
the Zagrosian Hypothesis". Journal of
the American Oriental Society. 135 (5):
551–586.
doi:10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.3.551 .

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