DNA Study in India: Founded by Two Distinct Peoples

Talk about politically explosive! Oh my! You can just see what's coming - and the argument about the "Aryan" invasion of India will continue with new vigor... Article from newkerala.com Indian ancestry revealed in massive study London, Sep 25 : The largest ever DNA survey of Indian heritage has revealed that the population of India was founded on just two ancient groups that are as genetically distinct from each other as they are from other Asians. The findings of the study, conducted by a group of top international geneticists, have strong implications for health and medicine, and reveal important new information on caste in India. The study shows that most Indian populations are genetic admixtures of two ancient but genetically divergent groups, which each contributed around 40-60 percent of the DNA to most present-day Indians, Nature magazine reported Wednesday. One ancestral lineage - genetically similar to Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European populations - was higher in upper-caste individuals and speakers of Indo-European languages such as Hindi, the researchers found. The other lineage was not close to any group outside the Indian subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman islands, says the study conducted by a team led by David Reich of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lalji Singh of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. Nature said that although India makes up around one-sixth of the world's population, it has been "sorely under-represented" in genome-wide studies of human genetic variation. The Indian Genome Variation database, launched in 2003 to fill the gap, has so far studied only 420 DNA-letter differences, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in 75 genes. In sharp contrast, the study reported by Nature has probed more than 560,000 SNPs across the genomes of 132 Indian individuals from 25 diverse ethnic and tribal groups dotted all over India. The researchers also found that Indian populations were much more highly subdivided than European populations. But whereas European ancestry is mostly carved up by geography, Indian segregation was driven largely by caste. "There are populations that have lived in the same town and same village for thousands of years without exchanging genes," said Reich. The authors of the study said the new genetic evidence refutes the claim that the Indian caste structure was a modern invention of British colonialism. "This idea that caste is thousands of years old is a big deal," said Nicole Boivin, an Oxford University archaeologist. "To say that endogamy (the practice of marrying within a caste, community or tribe) goes back so far, and that genetics shows it, is going to be controversial to many anthropologists." The study also suggests that Indian populations, although currently huge in number, were founded by relatively small bands of individuals - a finding that has clinical implications. "There will be a lot of recessive diseases in India that will be different in each population and that can be searched for and mapped genetically," Reich said. "That will be important for health in India."

"Aryan" Race Fight Continues in India

I've been reading about this endless fight for years. Here's more fuel to add to the fire: From SahilOnline.com (Reflection of the Truth) [Hmmm....] Aryan race did not exist, claims Suryanath Kamath S.O. News service, Monday, 14 July 2008: Bangalore: “Indus Valley civilisation and Vedic civilisation are not two different civilisations but the former was only an urbanised version of the latter,” historian Suryanath U. Kamath said here on Sunday. Dr. Kamath, former Director of Karnataka State Gazetteer, was speaking on “Ancient India: Overseas Connections” organised as a part of Mythic Society's centenary year celebrations. Refuting the existence of Aryan race or an invasion by them, he said: “The Vedas speak of a war between light and darkness which was wrongly interpreted by European scholars as a war between light-skinned and dark-skinned people. The term Dravida means 'inhabitants of Tamil Nadu' and not a race, and the term Aryan means 'noble'.” On the Indus Valley civilisation, he said: “There are factual evidences of a river that ran parallel to the west of the Sindhu and this was home to the Vedic civilisation but [river] dried up around 1900 BC which brought an end to the civilisation.” Dr. Kamat spoke extensively about the Indian trade connections with Persia and Rome during the Indus Valley civilisation. “There is a Roman settlement in Puducherry, established for commercial activities around 2,000 years ago. Romans had a penchant for Indian perfumes, diamonds and garments and in return, there was a constant flow of gold into India,” Dr. Kamat said. [Yes - but 2000 years old is a far cry from 4000 years old - the point is - what, exactly? Does a pattern of later trade across a wide area presuppose that the same was true 2000 years before? This may very well be the case, but it certainly isn't stated in the article and cannot be implied from what IS stated there]. He said: “Indian seamen had knowledge of sea routes much before the Western sailors could have, and [they] were also well versed in ship building as we can find description of ships in the Rig Veda. “This is proved by the fact that various artefacts of Harappan civilisation were found in countries as far as Rome and Mexico,” Dr. Kamat said. [No evidence cited to support artifacts in Mexico and Rome; Rome, I can believe but Mexico? When and where?] Dr. Kamat said that the Indian connection with foreign lands was not just limited to trade but also extended to culture. “South-East Asian countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines are largely influenced by Indian culture and we can see such influence in Buddhist Stupas and Hindu temples in these countries,” Dr. Kamath said. [Harappan civilisation existed, according to conventional dating, from about 2600 BCE to about 1900 BCE, and collapsed on itself for reasons that are still in dispute; those people went - somewhere, they didn't all just die off, there's no evidence for massive deaths and burials of the remains as far as I'm aware. That suggests that the surviving Indus/Harrapans migrated out of the areas where the rivers dried up. However, what is the relative timing of the civilizations in these neighboring countries? And does the author mean to imply that those civilizations are a direct result of a supposed mass exodus from a collapsed Indus/Harrapan civilizations?] *********************************************************************************** If you think race relations in the United States are a sticky wicket, you should spend some time reading about race relations in India under the guise of this "Aryan invasion" stuff. As far as I am aware, generally speaking, lighter skinned peoples populated and continue to populate the northern part of the Indian continent; darker skinned peoples populated and continue to populate the southern part of India. And never the twain shall meet...