This Article First Appeared in The Hindu On Dec 15, 2023
There is so much to enjoy in Aryans, Charles Allen’s last book. For one, the drama it brings to prehistory — those otherwise long millennia that seem only to lead, at glacial pace, to the ‘real’ history of people and places we recognise. In Allen’s evocative telling, these are centuries filled with action and adventure: from the tectonic effects of a mutation, 4,000 years ago, that allowed some humans to digest milk — and thus unlock a potent new source of energy — to the shifting of great rivers, the flooding of vast plains, the catastrophes we dread today as our climate changes, that exist already at a great distance.