Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.34

c12.34

The remaining skulls from the Harappā Culture include one (from a burial which may be later than the main occupation of Mohenjo-daro) of a person of typically Mongolian type – by no means surprising, of course: the type has been present in China since Upper Palaeolithic times – and certainly one, perhaps as many as four, which were short-headed and comparable with the so-called Alpine type. This physical type is represented at Sialk as a small proportion of the population during periods II, III, and IV, and its origin has been much discussed; but these round-headed folk may have their origins in an Upper Palaeolithic survival, with reduced head and face size, and parallel to the emergence of the specialized round-headed Mongoloid form. The Sialk evidence suggests that such cranial types may also occur in the Iranian plateau in the third and fourth millennia B.C. The Indian skulls are more likely to be related to a physical type probably indigenous, if rare in Western Asia, than to afford evidence of racial movement from the west towards the valley of the Indus at this time. There is a related short-headed element in the Indian population today, scattered through many regions, and some anthropologists would include in this group the Brahuis of Baluchistan, though others regard them as the result of a mixture between Proto-Australoid and Mediterranean types. In general, however, the Alpine types tend to have a lighter pigmentation than these races, with abundant body hair and a roundish face with strong nose.