[colorado tanker]

I read somewhere that the DNA evidence suggests the first modern humans out of Africa began working around the Indian Ocean coast, so that would fit with the Andaman Islanders, isolated from the continent, being among the oldest DNA types.

There appears to be a lot of work to be done on this subject. It's interesting that at one time in the distant past there was a lot of intermarriage, but that stopped with the advent of the caste system. So, what changed? Why didn't the invaders from the North start a caste system right away?

[Rookie Cookie]

If they had been “invaders”, the ASI (Indo-Europeans) would have wiped out the native ASI population (as was the case with European migration of north America) rather then allow large amounts of genetic flow between. Also they would have imposed their own Indo-European language and a rigid class/caste structure right away. Instead traces of Dravidian language family survives in places as far away as Iran and among Brahuis in north western Pakistan.

[Rookie Cookie]

Correction*: If they had been “invaders*”, the ANI* (Indo-Europeans) would have wiped out the native ASI population (as was the case with European migration of north America) rather then allow large amounts of genetic flow between. Also they would have imposed their own Indo-European language and a rigid class/caste structure right away. Instead traces of Dravidian language family survives in places as far away as Iran and among Brahuis in north western Pakistan.

[SunkenCiv]

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.