Srinagar, Sept. 23 -- Picture someone standing beside an ancient river, holding a chipped piece of quartzite. There are trees, open land and the river around them. Cities, roads, farms and temples are far away. The land has no name.

The person watches the trees for animals and looks for a safe place to stay. We know little about who they were. The stone they left behind tells us they were here.

This person wrote nothing, and the silence sets a trap for anyone who wants to call them the first Indian.

Across South Asia, archaeology has recovered stone tools, animal remains and other traces of early human activity, although the evidence varies sharply from site to site.

Those same materials say nothing about a name, a dialect, a god or a...