Kenneth A. R. Kennedy

Kenneth Adrian Raine Kennedy (June 26, 1930 – April 23, 2014) was an anthropologist who studied at the University of California, Berkeley. He was Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology and Asian Studies in the Division of Biological Sciences at Cornell University. Among his areas of interest have been forensic anthropology and human skeletal biology. He died in Ithaca, New York on April 23, 2014.

• [Kenneth A.R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data:] “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.”
  • K.A.R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49. On p.42, Kennedy quotes the suggestion that “not only the end of the [Harappan] cities but even their initial impetus may have been due to Indo-European speaking peoples”, by B. and F.R. Allchin: The Birth of Indian Civilization, Penguin 1968, p. 144. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• [Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan)101 culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India:] “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.... What the biological data demonstrate is that no exotic races are apparent from laboratory studies of human remains excavated from any archaeological sites.... All prehistoric human remains recovered thus far from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypically identifiable as ancient South Asians.... In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture.
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?” in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy,

• Kennedy also refers to a “biological continuum [... with] the modern populations of Punjab and Sind,” agreeing in this with earlier skeletal studies by several Indian experts, who had found little difference between Harappan skeletons and present-day populations in those regions (also in Gujarat).
  • as quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Skulls, Aryans and Flowing Drains,” in Harappan Civilization – a Contemporary Perspective, ed. Gregory L. Possehl (1st ed., New Delhi: Oxford & IBH, 1982), p.291.

• Both Gobineau and Chamberlain transformed the Aryan concept, which had its humble origins in philological research conducted by Jones in Calcutta at the end of the eighteenth century, into the political and racial doctrines of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
  • Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines Kennedy, Kenneth A.R. ‘Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?’ Vol. 1, in The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia: Language, material culture and ethnicity Vol 1 of Indian philology and South Asian studies , by Kenneth A.R. Kennedy. Walter de Gruyter, 1995.

• How could one recognize an Aryan, living or dead, when the biological criteria for Aryanness are non-existent?
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?” in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy,.,p. 61.
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009

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Kenneth A. R. Kennedy