Posted on 09/06/2004 3:51:50 PM PDT by blam
Romany Gypsies came out of India
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Monday, 6 September 2004
A Romany woman dances in downtown Prague during the third annual Khamoro Festival of Roma music and culture (Image: Reuters/Petr Josek)
Legend has it that European Gypsies came from Egypt but a new genetic study has shown they came from a small population that emerged from ancestors in India around 1000 years ago.
The research, by Professor Luba Kalaydjieva of the University of Western Australia and team, looked at the origins of eight to 10 million people in Europe commonly known as Gypsies.
Roma, Romani or Romany are other names for this community, which has featured in movies such as Latcho Drom.
"[The research] is the best evidence yet of the Indian origins of the Gypsies," the researchers write in an article published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The researchers were first alerted to the idea that the Romany may be descended from a small founder population when they discovered that certain genetic mutations in the population were shared in people who were not directly related.
This occurs in other groups that have developed from small founder populations such as the Finns, Ashkenazi Jews, the population of Quebec in Canada and possibly the Australian island state of Tasmania, Kalaydjieva, told ABC Science Online.
Kalaydjieva and team have been studying the genetics of Romany people for over 10 years.
In this recent study, which will be published in the October issue of the journal, the researchers analysed five genetic mutations linked to certain diseases, such as the neuromuscular disorder myasthenia.
The aim was to try and estimate when the original founder population arose and when it split off into different groups of Romany.
The researchers studied the diversity of the chromosomes that carry the genetic markers. Over successive generations, the region around the genetic markers become more and more diverse.
By applying a known rate of genetic change in DNA, the researchers worked out the founder population emerged from the ancestral population 32 to 40 generations ago, or 800 to 1000 years ago.
An Indian origin
As well as looking at over 1100 samples of Romany from Europe, they studied six samples from India and found that the similarity in genetic markers supported the theory that the founder group, of perhaps under 1000 people, came from India.
The idea that Romany people came from India was first proposed 200 years ago based on similarities between their language and the Indian language Sanskrit, said Kalaydjieva. But such studies were inconclusive.
"There are quite a few examples where a population adopts a language but this does not necessarily mean its biological roots belong to the same place as the larger population that speaks this language," she said.
"So from the biological point of view we have provided we have provided the best evidence so far that this is indeed a population that derives from the Indian subcontinent."
Kalaydjieva and team's analysis of disease genetic markers supported the scientists' previous research on male and female genetic markers.
"It all points in the same direction," she said.
Gypsy: a loaded term
Kalaydjieva said scientists commonly used the term "Gypsy" but this was politically and historically loaded.
"Initially Gypsies were called Gypsies because Europeans believed, and this was a legend that the Gypsies maintained themselves, that they came from Egypt," she said.
But she said Gypsies had been persecuted due to superstition, racism and prejudice. The term Gypsy had become increasingly given a pejorative meaning, being used to describe a social category with a wandering nomadic way of life, rather than a biological population. Many people from that group now preferred to be called Roma, Romani or Romany.
She said the term Romani or Romany, strictly speaking linguistically and historically, described Balkan Gypsies. These people were a sub-group of European Gypsies and the scientific term Gypsy was a more generic term to cover the biological population.
Today people descended from European Gypsies live all over the world, even Australia. In Bulgaria alone there are at least 50 groups with different traditions, cultures, dialects and adopted religions.
GGG Ping.
This is not news. It has been commonly accepted that Gypsies came from India.
At the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, I thought I'd relate a personal story.
My parents rented one of their houses to Gypsies in Whittier, CA, about 20 years ago. They trashed the place and stuck them with the rent.
My mother told me the same thing. Do you suppose that was wishful thinking?
I wonder why they migrated out of India 1,000 years ago. Could it have anything to do with the spread of Islam?
My father in law rented a place to Gypsies in Houston 40 years ago & when they left they even took the door knobs.
Everybody knows they came from the region of India.
I wonder if they included Scottish and Irish Travelers ~ or Russian animal trainers?
"Gypsies....Tramps and Thieves..........."
When I was a child, my mother told me that Gypsies steal babies.
Why would they steal babies? To make them work in the circus? My husband heard that too.
They always painted his barn and outbuildings for him. They slaughtered designated pigs free of charge, hung the meat in the smokehouse, and didn't steal anything.
In earlier times pieces of his land had served as burial grounds for "slavecatchers" sent up from Kentucky to retrieve runaway slaves. They never returned to Kentucky with or without slaves.
One gathers the Gypsies knew they trod on truly sacred ground when they came to that place.
A brief note ~ there's a theory that the original Gypsy population fled India ahead of Moslem invaders.
We have some Gypsy words in our vernacular--"Punch" means "five"--five fruits for a drink, or five fingers for a fist. "Shiv"--knife.
A cryptic culture, with no music, art, storytelling. No Gypsy restaurants. Any music we think of as Gypsy is largely a romanticized Balkan pastiche, more Hungarian than Romani. To be frank, Gypsies have contributed practically nothing to Western culture except their own image as romantic vagabonds.
The reputation for itinterant thievery and con-artistry is well-deserved, but they have also managed this without a commensurate reputation for violence.
I saw a documentary a while back--may have been on the discovery channel, may have been Nova, I don't remember which. The Gypsies were a warrior caste that went to fight the Persians, and kept going west. Their migration can be traced by the words their language acquired in each region they moved through.
Dreaded red x on the image.
But still an interesting article.
Thanks!
Another skill was in making inexpensive costume jewelry ~ aka "junk jewelry". For several centuries they had a near monopoly in that particular business. When WWII came along, most American Gypsies relocated to Los Angeles to work in the aircraft plans working with aluminum. Their skill with light metals was of immense value at that time. Every now and then you find a young person of Gypsy ancestry searching for "cultural contact" to find out what it was Grandpa and Grandma left behind.
Ain't America a great land ~ it even assimilates Gypsies ~ and a Bill Clinton whose grandmother told fortunes in traveling carnivals can become President.
My sister is a labor and delivery nurse and her hubby is an OB-GYN. They say when a gypsy comes into the hospital to deliver a baby, the staff immediately clears everything possible out of the labor room before the patient is brought in or it will all be gone when the family leaves.
OTOH, when I was young my grandmother had two friends, two other grandmas right around her age, that were neighbors of hers. They were sisters, except one was a child that was born into the family and the other had been adopted. How that happened was that the father allowed a band of gypsies to squat for a few days on his land. When they decided to move on, a little baby girl in the group was ill. So they just left her behind so that they could leave. Imagine that. Just left behind because she was sick. Didn't steal a baby, they just dumped her.
In Hugo's novel,"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" La Esmerelda was often refered to as "The Egyptian". It was a common belief.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Scots-Irish-Welsh are not always blue-eyed and freckled--look at Catherine Zeta Jones. And there's the Cherokees to consider . There were also many Gypsy tribes who'd make their way up and down the hills.
One story of Appalachia and Gypsies intersecting in Depression era--a Gypsy thief was captured and put in the country jailhouse to await trial. All the Gypsy tribes circled their wagons in town and at sundown commenced to cry and wail and make an awful commotion. Sheriff decided that the better part of justice was to cut a quick deal--and the Gypsies got their member out of jail and beat a hasty exit from the county.
Is this the reason he started outsourcing to India?
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
He says they came from India, but that they were once thought to have come from Egypt originally which is where they got the name "Gypsies".
There's a temptation to be PC when discussing Gypsies--what can be understood by "gaijos" about their culture would indicate that a clever theft or con is something to be proud of. Gypsies do not like physical contact with non-Gypsies. We are "unclean". They have a distaste for cats.
Point of one interest--Gypsies, like hobos, would create little signs along the road that would only have significance for fellow Gypsies. These are called "Patterans". I saw one for sale in a catalog years ago--it was a figure of a cat marketed by the retailers as a " hobo sign that there was a nice lady ahead who would feed you."
Quite the contrary. A cat is an unclean animal because it licks itself and takes all the uncleaness inside itself...if a patteran was the figure of a cat, it didn't indicate anything pleasant.
They pulled some of the most despicable cons on elderly and helpless people I have ever heard of. They are pretty sorry imo.
Yup. I should have stated such in my first post. I read years ago that it is recorded somewhere(?) that a king in the Indus Valley awarded the king of Persia 10,000 of his subjects and there is some indication that this occured more than once. Somehow they made their way from Iran through Egypt and into Europe and were called Gypsies by the Europeans because they believed they came from Egypt.
Not terribly likely, I suspect, as they would have had to traverse thousands of miles of solidly Muslim territory to reach Europe.
It is most likely that they are descended from one of the many "criminal castes" of India, which you can still read about in the old pre-PC Indian literature.
g
They originate in Ireland and Scotland.
If we are talking of a relatively small population of about 1,000 people, there would not have been a serious problem in avoiding the Islamic conquest of the area.
If anyone remembers, it also had featured a Miami cop who had gone over to the good side. He was a gypsie who was trying to stop their cons. He had a tremendous advantage as he knew all their scams.
BTW I am reasonably sure one of the Irish Travelers came by my Fathers house one day. I was outside and he asked if I wanted my driveway paved. He was driving a new high end 4wd pickup and was a very sharp looking guy. I was familiar with the group and of course told him no.
A few days later I noticed where they had conned some other people in the neighborhood.
We've known this for decades because the Romany Languages are clearly descended from Sanskrit.
Maybe they were persecuted because of excessive lying and thieving?
My mother told me she would sell me to the gypsies if I didn't behave,
Yup. They got my dad, twice, on the paving thing. You won't believe how much he paid for just a little paving.
Yes, but as the article points out:
"There are quite a few examples where a population adopts a language but this does not necessarily mean its biological roots belong to the same place as the larger population that speaks this language," she [Professor Luba Kalaydjieva] said. "So from the biological point of view we have provided we have provided the best evidence so far that this is indeed a population that derives from the Indian subcontinent."
LOL, I would always hide when I saw them coming.
g
Is it true that all of their daughters are foxes?
One of the trades seems to be "house robbery". Count on it when the carnival comes to town. That doesn't mean all the folks in the carnival do that ~ just that some do.
I once watched as a group of young gypsy people did their "shopping" at a local Giant grocery store. The old folks were having coffee down at the Starbucks because a thunderstorm had shut down the carnival.
They ended up paying me alms ~ pulled my wallet out of my pocket, removed all the threads, and placed a brand new $1 bill folded up in a laundry ticket I had.
I was shown several ways to steal whole hams, jars of caviar, and so forth. Some of the young women asked me in Roma if I were a Gypsy, and I told them no ~ which didn't seem to satisfy them at all! (ROTFLMAO).
Here's the deal ~ in America Gypsies are much more diverse and racially mixed group than in the Old World. Numerous people of all kinds have managed to join up with them.
Further, there are four large peripatetic groups in America. The Gypsies are but one of those groups. The others are American Indians, Irish Travelers, and Sa'ami (and probably other Northwest Eur/Asian tribal folk).
Way back in the 1850s the US Government convened the American Indians at Chicago and another location further South for the purpose of paying them for their land.
The Indians then left those places and removed to Oklahoma.
Guess who else was there in Chicago at the time? Anyway, they followed the Indians. The Sa'ami had already intermarried extensively with the Pennsylvania tribes (having been in America since the 1600s), and many mixed Sa'ami/Indian folks went to OK.
Although I can't begin to track it all down, you do sometimes find an individual like Bill Clinton who has known roots among the Sa'ami (through the Church of the First Born), the Irish Travelers (try to find his Rileys in Ireland ~ they're all over the place ~ on the road!), the Roma (back through the Blythes to Billy Blythe, Kind of the Gypsies), and, according to his mother, a Cherokee here or there.
I suspect things are even more complex than that. But when the carnivals come around here in the Spring, the local news tells us that the house robberies start, the elderly get fleeced, the pigeon drop is practiced, and the Apostolic Charismatic Church of the First Born in the Fullness of Time, Teaching Christ's Commandments, Army Cross Training leaves it's brochures in the restrooms at Wal-Mart (possibly in memory and honor of their patron saint, Sam Walton).
Life can be good.
I can't believe this is actually being posted as recent news. This information has been available for years. All the Human or Cultural Geography books address the Gypsy culture and their origins. There are also lots of books about Gypies that have been out for years which also suggest they originated in India or Egypt.
"Some of the young women asked me in Roma if I were a Gypsy, and I told them no ~ which didn't seem to satisfy them at all! (ROTFLMAO)."
Do you speak the language?
They probably would given the opportunity, but other than that they run scams and would steal your "I" teeth if they had some value.
If all Gypsies looked like this they probably would not have such a bad reputation.
Info bump.
Fascinating information here! The things I learn from you FReepers! Thank you!
Have bookmarked this....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.