Sure, it's convenient and gives a reference point, but Davies' thing is that it's a bit misleading to do so. Back on track, this was NOT an Indian civilization tens of thousands of years ago. This might be a precursor to the Dravidian peoples, but this was a civilization that existed where India WOULD be.
They apparently existed in the region called India. So until they are named, people are referencing them as an Indian civilization. Much like you would call a prehistoric, unnamed civilization African if they were found in Africa, or European if they were discovered in Europe, and so on.
Indian isn’t referring to the culture (they are hunter gatherers...they have little to do with modern culture of any sort) but the geographical region they are discovered in.
After all, the people who we now call Native Americans, besides not being unified in culture or origin or time of migration very much at all such that a singular term like that is not accurate anyway, started migrating to the western hemisphere about 7 - 15000 years before Amerigo Vespucci was born.
Remember, these arguments are from a historian's / archaeologist's viewpoint. I am sure they dramatically prefer the academic designations for various cultures.
They certainly didn't call themselves 'native americans'. That's a label we slap on them post-facto.
Which is why I like the way in Canada they are referred to as “First Nations.” It describes a reality in terms that feel less politically loaded or geographicalally misguided than others.
We still call the Cherokee nation the Cherokee nation, that's their own name, and when we have them we use them, but what's the point of removing all contextual information from the casual observer's view? So they can go to Wikipedia and search and go "ahh, they use to live in what's now Canada?" Lol.
This is why we don't call Harappa and Mohenjadaro ancient "Indian" civilization, though they provenly existed in the region that's today the country of India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_people
And I didn't say these people were Dravidian, I said they might be the pre-cursors to the Dravidian people - which is also probably doubtful. I guess I should have said 'People who would now be called Dravidian' ?
uh, what? care to elaborate?
Sure, the Aryan Invasion/Migration theory is too simplistic but nevertheless, there is a clear dicotomy.
N.B. Ancestral South Indian and Ancestral North Indian are testing used in genetic studies to sidestep the use of loaded/controversial terms like Aryan and Dravidian.
My personal take, for what it's worth, there was no mass scale migration and North and South Indians are the same people. However, there was a lot on influx/migrations/invasions in North from rest of Asia and farther, which led to genetic mixing and the deviations that we see.
No, that's a common misconception. The majority of people with Dravidian heritage now live in Southern India but there's no "literal" meaning where Dravidian means Southern India. There's ample archaeological and linguistic evidence that Dravidian populations and languages were endemic as far north as what is now geographically Iran.
Except for the literal Sanskrit meaning of Dravida which refers to Southern India.
No, it doesn't refer to any geographical location. I urge you to go check your Sanskrit dictionary. http://sanskritdictionary.com/?q=dr%C4%81vi%E1%B8%8Da
(mostly) today, true, but these traces appear to far far predate the arrival of indo-aryan genes, languages and memes.