The Dravidian people are a major collection of ethno-linguistic groups native to South Asia who primarily speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Today, they number around 250 million people, forming the vast majority of the population in South India, These includes speakers of south Indian languages - Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada. Dravidian Population - South India Genetic and archaeological consensus indicates that modern Dravidian emerged from a prehistoric mix. Around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago from Elam and migrated east via Susa, Balochistan, Punjab, and finally settling in Southern India. Here they mixed with aborigines, the native hunter gatherers and are classified as Ancient Ancestral South Indians. Tamil Couple - 19th Century Origin from Elam Elam Map The most well-known connection is the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, popularized by linguist David McAlpin in the 1970s. He argued that Elamite and Proto-Dravidian (the ancestor of Tamil) belonged to a ...