Posted on 09/23/2009 5:45:59 PM PDT by BGHater
There isn’t any way for DNA to show geographical origin, although some kind of common ancestry or other close relationship can sometimes be shown between two individuals sometimes separated by great expanses of time. :’)
The caste system may be medieval in origin; it wasn’t ubiquitous in ancient India, and probably wasn’t introduced by the Moslem invasion, though the rigid enforcement of the caste system may have been either imposed by the Muzzies, or (IMHO more likely) a response to the domination of India by a fairly small Muzzie minority.
Vegetarianism in India didn’t catch on until what we’d call late antiquity, and again didn’t become near-universal until sometime in the Middle Ages, again, possibly in response to the Muzzie domination.
When Ashoka conquered his empire, he then went Buddhist and repudiated violence (at least by word). He put pillars around the frontiers, with the same message, but each in the local language. Two or three of those were in Aramaic, and erected in what is now Afghanistan.
Currently the medical researchers in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia are focusing on such bodies because they have an historic "living population" right there and can match DNA from thousands of years ago with modern DNA in the same gene groups.
I've caught sight of some similar work with Eskimos in this country and Canada.
As for invaders wiping out indigenous people, that may have happened to a large extent in the U.S. and Canada, but certainly not farther south. The population of Mexico and many other "Latin" American countries is mixed, with a heavy admixture of indigenous Indian blood. Yet the language is Indo-European (Spanish) for most of these people. So Latin America provides an excellent model of how invasion and conquest could change language and introduce social stratification without exterminating the native people. I think that is what happened in India, and probably in many other places, like Britain, for example.
I suspect the situation is more complex. The Andamanese simply do not look much like south Indians. The latter lack peppercorn hair, steatopygia, and other Andamanese traits. There is also another “primitive” indigenous population to be considered: the Veddoids, who resemble Aussie aborigines more than Andamanese.
Caste is a fundamental part of Hinduism. In fact, some Hindu “religious” scriptures are little more than glorifications of the conquest of the dark-skinned people by the Aryan invaders. Neither Islam nor Christianity have caste as an integral part of their culture. If that were not so, why would Dalits be so inclined to convert to Christianity, more than other groups?
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