Let's begin with the first question of who were the people of the Indus Valley Civilization? What cults/religion(s) did they follow? What language(s) did they speak?
These questions even today still remain unanswerable.
However from what is so far known, they were not Indo-European, neither was their language(s).
Many Indian sources claim them to be be Dravidians or Elamites, the supposed close relatives of the Dravidians. The theory goes further to state that they were pushed south and scattered by Aryan invasions, which resulted in them being found in south India mostly and the Brahuis who are an isolated group of Dravidians.
This theory has been rejected by many Pakistani historians and archeologists. Some have claimed that the Brahuis are descendants of recent Dravidian nomads who came and settled in present-day Balochistan.
Other sources point more westward towards Iran, where the ancient Elamites lived.
Many have also rejected the presence of Dravidians in the Pakistan region and that the decedents of the Indus Valley are present-day Pakistanis.
Though I am no qualified expert, my research and understanding has led me to believe that the Indus Valley region/Pakistan has been a home to Dravidians or at least had a strong influence of Dravidian language/culture possibly going as far back as the time of the Aryan invasion(s).
Though lack of genetic evidence exists and the Haplogroup L maps show lack of Dravidian markers present in Pakistan (haplogroup L has been associated with Dravidians as opposed to the Haplogroup R found mostly in Indo-European speaking peoples), linguistic evidence still remains.
The presence of heavy Dravidian-sounding consonants in Indo-Aryan languages of Pakistan especially Sindhi, points only to a likely Dravidian origin. In fact, many in Pakistan mistake Sindhi for a Dravidian language because of it's sound.
Not only, Sindhi and Punjabi, but almost every Indo-Aryan language that I have heard being spoken (including my native Urdu/Undri) carry to a certain degree what appears to be Dravidian lexical influences.
Certain Pakistani linguists and historians had even hypothesized that the people of Pakistan could be Dravidians who adapted to Indo-European languages from the invaders.
Dravidian consonants in the Indo-Aryan languages of Pakistan represented in Perseo-Arabic script:
ٹ Letter name tay. Pronounced t'd
ڈ Letter name daal. Pronounced d'd
ڑ Letter name ray. Pronounced r'd
All the consonants listed are used in Dravidian languages.
Sindhi, Rajesthani, Punjabi, Bengali seem to use them a lot. They are hardly heard in Urdu in comparison, but still used occasionally.
In fact, no other branches in Indo-European that I know of use these consonants (and perhaps vowels).
Based on the location of Pakistan's Indo-Aryan languages about a thousand miles from South India, can the presence of these consonants be coincidental then?
This question only strengthens the theory of Dravidian presence in other parts of the subcontinent till a certain point.
Because no physical linkages have been found between Dravidians and the people of the Indus Valley (including anthropological findings by Proffessor Ahmed Hassan Dani), I have disagreed with the theory of the Indus Valley Civilization being Dravidian, but not ruled it out completely yet.
My personal theory is that the Indus Valley people were washed away by natural disasters. Evidence of this was found in Mohenjo-daro which was contained houses and people covered in mud.
Those who survived, were assimilated or destroyed by the Aryan invaders, since sources do state that evidence exists of battles between the IVC people and the Aryan invaders. Apparently pieces of weaponry and fossils are parts of this evidence.
With the IVC people gone, the Dravidians came and settled into the possibly uninhabited lands. When exactly or even approximately they came is hard to say.
Perhaps the land was already inhabited by a new race of IVC people and Aryans mixed together.
But with many historians also theorizing the Dravidians coming from more northward and small pockets still found in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the evidence of their presence in other parts of the region, outside of South India remains undeniable.
There has also been linguistic evidence pointing the Dravidians all the way far north of Asia towards regions around the Ural and Altay mountain regions.
Based on similar linguistic findings between Altaic and Dravidian, hypothetical links have been proposed. (People should remember these links are not proven in anyway and are only proposed based on evidence found so far).
A similar finding pointed a possible relationship to Finno-Ugric languages, a subfamily of the Uralic family. These are based on similar vocabulary and common grammar.
Grammatically speaking Uralic, Altaic and Dravidian languages are all considered agglutinative languages.
However, these theories suggesting a common origin or even a connection for the three mentioned language families still remain unproven.
Coming back to the possibility of Dravidian presence in Pakistan; the linguistic evidence remains.
Again the Dravidian consonants in the Indo-Aryan languages of Pakistan represented in Perseo-Arabic script:
ٹ Letter name t'day. Pronounced t'd
ڈ Letter name d'taal. Pronounced d'd
ڑ Letter name r'day. Pronounced r'd
There are also perhaps vowels in Indo-Aryan languages pronounced similarly to Dravidian languages as opposed to their first cousins the Iranic languages.
The absence of certain vowel pronunciations common to Iranic languages are absent in Indo-Aryan languages similarly in the case of Dravidian.
For example, the lack of near-open front unrounded vowel (A in English) /æ/ as in 'sack' is noticeably mostly absent in Indo-Aryan languages, as opposed to their Iranic cousins.
Noticeable Iranic languages like Pashto or Farsi can be found containing it and similar vowels and pronunciations absent in most Indo-Aryan languages.
As an example the Farsi word b-æ-t shoh for King whereas Urdu would be b-aa-t Sh-aah.
Or a clear Pashto pronunciation of the Urdu/Undri word for Sahab (Sa-h-aab) meaning Sir would be Sa-æ-h-æ-b.
Similarly, with the case of the pronunciation of O. In major Iranic languages like Farsi (Central Iranic) or Pashto (Eastern Iranic), O can be pronounced as an open back rounded vowel ('short O' in English). Or even the Shoh in B-æ-t Shoh.
This is not present in all the Indo-Aryan languages I've come across such as Sindhi, Punjabi or my native Urdu.
As an example 'Nadir' can be pronounced in Farsi and Pashto as N-o-dir, whereas in Urdu/Undri the pronunciation is flat Naa-dir.
Note: Iranic languages in Pakistan might use r'd d'd or t'd due to word borrowing from Indo-Aryan languages or even from Brahui.
While Iranic languages can use flat vowel pronunciations, Indo-Aryan languages cannot near-open front unrounded vowel pronunciation or so it seems.
These videos of Pakistani patriotic songs show the difference of vowel usage in Pashto (Iranic) and Urdu/Undri (Indo-Aryan). Even if you speak only one or neither of these languages, you will still be able to see the difference in vowel usage.
In the first video of a song in Pashto you can hear the pronunciation of word for world as "doonya" using oʊ close mid-rounded vowel:
In the case of Urdu it is rather different with the word for world in this video pronounced "dunya." Notice how the pronunciation is rather flat compared to the Pashto song:
Though the Pashto and other Iranic languages spoken in Pakistan have ٹ in their alphabetical system, I believe it was borrowed because other Iranic languages such as Farsi do not seem to contain it or similar sounds, plus ڈ or ڑ etc. are rarely used in Pashto.
This brings an interesting question that could argue against Dravidian impact on Indo-Aryan peoples and languages and the similarities being purely coincidental. Why do Indo-Aryan languages have similar pronunciations to Dravidian languages (some far less, while others much more), yet are related grammatically/genetically to their Iranic cousins which have none or no significant use of these consonants and vowels?
After thinking of this question, I had theorized for a while that the 'Aryan' invasion occurred in at least two separate waves. The ancestors of the Indo-Aryan speaking peoples of Pakistan and other parts of South Asia arrived first sometime between the 12th and 20th century BC.
They brought what became the Sanskrit language and then later on the modern Indo-Aryan languages. They settled around what at that time was a Dravidian majority area and co-existed with the Dravidians, exchanging aspects of language and culture with them and it is likely race mixing also took place. (though haplogroup maps do not show a high occurrence of Indo-European peoples breeding with the Dravids).
There are also plenty of words found to be shared between Sanskrit and Dravidian languages.
It was later on in a second wave(s) that the ancestors of Iranic speaking Pakistanis and others in the region came and settled in present-day Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.
By this time most of the Dravidian populations had moved further south with the exception of a few. This could be due to the possible pressure from the growth of the Indo-Iranic speaking populations or even enforced by the Indo-Iranics.
Nothing can be proven as of yet.
Only later did I find on Wikipedia that this two-wave theory of mine is shared by a Finnish professor Asko Porpala.
This could possibly explain how a common Indo-Iranic language family broke into Iranic and Indo-Aryan from centuries of geographic separation and exposure to other language families adding to the differences between the two.
Refer to the chart below: (click on images to enlarge)
Dravidian languages to my knowledge do not carry near-open front pronunciations of their vowels either; further evidence that the Indo-Aryans might have come before the Iranics and adapted to Dravidian pronunciations; forgetting their original use of vowels and some consonants which may have included similar or even the same pronunciations as their close Iranic relatives.
Readers will have noticed I have not mentioned the Dardic subfamily in this post and how it split from Proto-Indo-Iranic.
Though, I do not recall hearing a Dardic language ever spoken before, I have read somewhat on them. From all the sources I have read on them, I believe that the Dardic languages in their early form(s) arrived together or at least approximately around the same time era as the Indo-Aryan languages.
This is because a lot of sources I came across claim Dardic and Indo-Aryan languages to form a single subbranch in the Indo-Iranic family. Some linguists call the Indo-Aryan family "Indic" and put it next to Dardic inside Indo-Aryan.
Others call Dardic "Northern Indo-Aryan."
But many other linguists recognize it as a separate branch of it's own inside the Indo-Iranic family. There were additional sources that stated the absence of the consonants mentioned above earlier in this (and perhaps vowels) in languages like Kashmiri.
So because of some of those who bring it closer to Indo-Aryan, I then held the theory that the Proto-Dardic speakers came with or around the first wave of Indo-Iranic peoples and have a close linguistic proximity to Indo-Aryan languages than to Iranic languages.
The reason for the absence of Dravidian-like consonants in Dardic languages I theorized (remember these are just theories, not proven facts) is because while the Dards did come in the first wave(s) of the Aryan invasion, the remote mountainous regions they are found in today was where they settled, keeping them isolated from the Indo-Aryans and Dravidians further south.
This prevented Dravidian influence on their languages which also started to evolve separately in grammar from Indo-Aryan.
Genetically speaking as well, many sources I came across state people of Kashmir as having the highest frequencies of Haplogroup R1A in them, which means they mixed much less with other races. This further indicates a long term separation from their Indo-Aryan relatives and other people(s) of non-Indo-European descent in the region, save for a few tribes in the Northern Areas of Pakistan like the Hunza or the Baltistanis.
Haplogroup maps also attest to this, showing a higher frequency of R1A towards Northern Pakistan:
The first invasions by Indo-European (IE) speaking tribes could have started between the 17th and 15th centuries BC as most historians theorize who's decedents are today in Northern India belonging to Haplogroup R2.
The ancestors of modern-day Pakistanis seem to have arrived somewhat later in mostly likely at least two invasions one by the Indo-Aryans and second by the Iranics.
Refer to the haplogroup map below:
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If the scientists have the haplogroup tests correct, it clearly shows Pakistanis (Kashmiris included) being closer to Eastern European populations than to other South Asian ones.
It also could be that North Indians even came and settled into present day India without even entering the Indus Valley and disturbing the (possibly Dravidian) inhabitants there.
Those people were displaced somewhat later by later Aryan arrivals who's descendants are the modern Pakistanis.
This would be the only reasonable explanation as to why Pakistan has a much higher R1A frequency shared with eastern Europe while Northern India has mostly R2. R2 markers have been found in the Caucasus and Europe, but those are in small frequencies most likely due to migration and race mixing.
Indus Valley script tablets:
Linguists, archeologists and historians have been unsuccessful at decoding them, so it's unfair to claim it to be a Dravidian civilization or any other.
It also could be that these people who ever they were survived to witness the Aryan invasion(s) and lived to fight it.
Another possibility is a remainder of their dead language family is Burushaski, the language of the Hunza people, which survived due to the remote areas it's speakers settled in and managed to evade the various Aryan invasions. Because it is a language of non-Indo-European origin, it could be the remainder of the language family(s) of the IVC; though this theory of mine could be entirely wrong.
Only further research and evidence will bring us closer to the facts.
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