Indian ancestry revealed

Nature News ^ | 23 Sep 2009 | Elie Dolgin

[BGHater]

Don’t blame Whitey Ping.

‘One ancestral lineage — which is 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 subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal.’

&

‘This genetic evidence refutes the claim that the Indian caste structure was a modern invention of British colonialism, the authors say. “This idea that caste is thousands of years old is a big deal,”’

No kidding.

[martin_fierro]

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[Dysart]

Many moons ago ancient elders smoke em peace pipe with the paleface as mysterious spirits revealed.

[Pontiac]

This genetic evidence refutes the claim that the Indian caste structure was a modern invention of British colonialism,

I had no idea that anyone blamed the Indian Caste system on the British. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Every culture I have ever read about has always had some kind of class structure with taboos about crossing the line (at least once the culture rose above the tribal level).

Why would India be different?

[JimSEA]

This gives real support to the Indo-Aryan origin of the caste system and lets the British off the hook. I had been told that the spread of Buddhism was aided by its rejection of caste.

[mountainlion]

Marco Polo and Alexander the Great wrote of finding a tomb that had Hebrew inscription on it that led some to believe one of the sons of Adam was buried there.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"with taboos about crossing the line"

Some historians mistakenly believe that railroads were created for the transhipment of people and goods.

The real reason was so that the good people could be born on one side of the tracks, and the bad people on the other.

[hellbender]

The other lineage was not close to any group outside the subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal.’

This is very strange. The indigenous Andamanese are Negritos, who have peppercorn hair and some other traits (like steatopygia) which are remiscent of African Bushmen (Khoi-San). They look very different from any mainland Indians of today.

[hellbender]

I think rejection of caste helped Islam become entrenched in Bengal, and is a factor in the spread of Christianity, which is especially strong among the Dalit or “untouchable” caste.

[BGHater]

'African Bushmen (Khoi-San)'

I'd say more in line with Papua. I'm not up to date if there is a DNA link between the two.

[Pontiac]

This really surprises me. Did the Indians have any recorded history before the Brits invaded?

Are their memories really that short? Maybe their recorded history ignored the caste system because it was so ubiquitous that it was invisible to those writing their history. It was always there everywhere so why talk about it?

I suppose the British are still hated in India and make a convenient scapegoat to blame their nasty caste system on when they talk to the Liberal Westerners. And of course the Brits a good Liberal reformed Colonial Masters must be self castigating and take the blame willingly.

[hellbender]

The Andamanese don’t look much like Papuans at all, nor like most Australian aborigines. Peppercorn hair (as seen in the picture I posted) is found only in Andamanese and African Bushmen. Some think those two groups are the oldest, least changed human groups.

[muawiyah]

The Caste structure is laid out in the Bhagavad Gita and other even more ancient documents.

I really can't imagine who would think it was invented by the Brits.

This kind of dovetails with a discovery reported recently about various European and Middle-Eastern Haplogroups. It seems the MOST COMMON haplogroup in Europe is also the most common one in the Middle East EXCEPT, and this is a really big, huge EXCEPT, that haplogroup does not appear among the Sa'ami (Laplanders) in the far North in Europe, nor among Saudi Arabians living on the Arabian peninsula.

Think about it ~ the most common lineage of people in Europe and the Middle East simply disappears in the far North or in the Arabian desert.

Is it because that common type of human simply cannot reproduce itself outside it's narrow "range", or is there a disease, or does Sunlight control their reproductive capacity?

Now we come to India and there are only two main strains, and everybody is part of both, but in different proportions, but what about the other strains who've gone through there? What about the others who were known to have ruled vast areas in India ~ what happened to their genetic imprint?

Again, it's the same sort of pattern you get with Europe and the Middle East which are generally to the North.

Recently there was a report that Middle Easterners living in Sweden had VERY LOW birthrates. Are they trying to survive North of some level of sunlight that they have to have to reproduce?

There are definitely some strange things here that will, eventually, be explained by someone.

[BGHater]

My bad, I thought Papuan’s had peppercorn hair as well. It really is fascinating if its environmental adaptation or simple genetics[Wow].

[muawiyah]

At the moment the San people are the presumptive ancestors of us all (non-Africans). To get from there to the blue-eyed platinum blondes in the far North they must be considered to be highly adaptive.

That's why its not surprising to find the Islanders don't look all that much like the guys on the Continent.

[hellbender]

Papuans tend to have wooly hair somewhat like African Negroes, but not the extremely tightly-wound discrete clusters of hair described by the term “peppercorn.”

[SunkenCiv]

John McWhorter sez that the Khoi-San languages are believed to be the oldest surviving language family.

[SunkenCiv]

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[hellbender]

I just found an article which states that similarities between Andamanese and African "pygmoid" groups (which I suspect means Bushmen, but perhaps includes others) are convergent. I.e. they evolved independently in distantly related populations. Maybe hair texture is rather easily modified; after all, I didn't take people very long to breed all kinds of strange hair textures in dogs.

The article also found that " New data sets...confirm the absence of any Andaman M2 haplotypes among the ethnic populations of India."

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=378623