Abstract
The concept of an Indo-European or Indo-Aryan group of peoples has played a prominent role in interpretative studies of Old World history and archaeology. For almost 200 years, scholars and quasi scholars have attributed the linguistic, cultural, and racial affiliations of very disparate groups to a common Indo-Aryan heritage. In such widely seperated areas as Europe and India, many significant cultural changes recorded for the first and second millennia b.c. are attributed to an influx, or invasion, of Indo-Aryan peoples who shared a common cultural base and who were responsible for important socioeconomic and linguistic changes in the areas they invaded. In the framework of European prehistory, the analytical importance of these Indo-European or Indo-Aryan intrusions has been replaced somewhat by the current emphasis on ecological reconstruction and indigenous cultural development, although invasion or migration explanations are still found (e.g., Gimbutas, 1973).
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Shaffer, J.G. (1984). The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality. In: Lukacs, J.R. (eds) The People of South Asia. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-5001-7_4
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