Famed freedom fighter, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, was of the belief that the Aryans of India were originally from the Arctics and that they had to migrate southwards circa 8000 BCE to escape the last ice age. He put forth this view in a 500 page tome titled, The Arctic Home in the Vedas.
Tilak, who was a teacher of mathematics in his younger days, based his theory on passages in the Vedas and the Zend Avesta. These passages dealt with the positions of various stars and Tilak reasoned that such stellar formations could only have existed when viewed from the vicinity of the North Pole. He subsequently tracked the progress of the tribes through Europe and Asia as they looked for a new home.
The book was completed by 1898. But it found a publisher (in Poona) only in 1903.
