Introduction
This language family is common in India and surrounding areas. It has a long rich history. Linguists have tried to connect it to different language families, but were unable to. Dravidian people are wonderful!!!! They created yoga and many other amazing things.
History
There are anywhere from 70 languages in this family and 24 subfamilies. Over 200 million people speak these languages. Tamil is the oldest written language of the Dravidian language family. It is almost 2,000 years old!!! 66 million people speak Tamil. Written Kannada have been around for 1600 years. Different castes have different dialects. Telugu is the third most spoken language in India. The written form of it been around for over 1400 years. There are several non-literary Dravidian languages. Some Southern Dravidian languages are spoken by the ancient tribes.
Complexies
Dravidian languages are agglutinative. It word order is subject, object, then verb. It has nouns, adjectives, verbs, and indeclinables. It has 4 different genders: male-nonmale, female-nonfemale. Verbs can be be positive or negative.
Relationship to Other Languages (Families)
There were linguists that believed Dravidian languages were related to Elamite languages. Elam and the Indus Valley traded with each other. Iranian farmers moved in to India millennia ago. They are the some of the ancestors of the Dravidians. Dravidians languages have similarities to Korean and Uralic languages, but that may be a happenstance.
Dravidian Peoples
Dravidians have a African origin they may have originated in Sudan or the Sahara. I was told they eat African food and speak African languages by a Dravidian man. There is similar prehistoric artwork in Sudan and the Indus Valley.
They helped create Hinduism. A lot of the Hindu deities are Dravidian. Shakti and Kali are Dravidian deities. They are prominent deities in Hinduism. Goddesses worship was popular among the Dravidians because they were matriarchal. The Bhakti movement was created by them. They created murtis. Murti is a statue that contains the energy of a entity. Hero stones are murtis that that contain the energy of great warriors. Sati stones are murtis of women who are martyrs. The Tamil have there own religion. They worship Murugan and Shiva. The king of the Tamil was seen as divine. Ancestors of Dravidians created the Indus Valley Civilization and yoga. They created indoor toilets, sewers, houses, measurements, art, farming, written language, buttons, etc. The caste system was started or co-oped 2,000 years ago. Prior to this, people of different tribes and races mixed together in large degree.
Conclusion
This language family is 4500 years old!!! It had a written language for close to 2,000 years. It has 24 sub-families and 70 languages. These languages have unique features and the have similarities with languages from other families. Dravidian people have a African origin and they come from Iranian farmers mixing with prehistoric Indians. They help create Hinduism by adding ideas and deities to it. They were very technological in prehistoric times.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_folk_religion
https://www.harappa.com/content/indus-and-dravidian-cultural-relationship
Technology of the Indus Valley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_and_discoveries_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation
https://study.com/academy/lesson/dravidian-languages-origins-family.html
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7007-8-15/comments
https://www.shh.mpg.de/870797/dravidian-languages
http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2013/07/how-old-is-proto-dravidian/
http://arutkural.tripod.com/tolcampus/drav-african.htm
https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/unraveled-where-indians-come-from-part-1/
https://blackhistory938.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/the-dravidians/
https://www.academia.edu/412952/Are_Dravidians_of_African_Origin
https://www.academia.edu/1898466/The_genetic_unity_of_Dravidian_and_African_languages_and_culture
