India Acquired Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says

national geographic ^ | January 10, 2006 | Brian Handwerk

[Chi-townChief]

I have to say I'm disillusioned!

[Prost1]

I would say that is true if you consider just the Dravidians. But there are many who are Sakas. No question their origins.

[Fractal Trader]

GGG ping

[alloysteel]

India itself is as much an admixture of genetic types as the people of North and South America who are commonly referred to as "American Indians". There are ethnic types ranging from those who could easily pass for European to those that are definitely of East Asian derivation, and even some of Polynesian origins.

Some migrations are of greater extent, and began much earlier, than common belief has credited them with being.

Probably the great transmitter of culture across the "Indo-European" tribes was more the existence of the Persian Empire than of any actual migration of people from one place to another. Armies travel, not harvesters of grain and herders of animals.

[Verginius Rufus]

Haitian Creole is derived from Latin, although the Haitians generally have very little Roman ancestry, I would guess. Languages have often been adopted by people whose ancestors spoke different languages (a great many Americans are in that category). It would not be very surprising if the Indo-European languages spread in India without a large influx of new people, if the new people happened to be in control

The word "punch" and Punjab (Panjab) are both derived from the Sanskrit word for "five" (Punjab is a region with five rivers, and punch had five ingredients), which is similar to the Greek word pente meaning "five."

English "five" is also related, but the original p changed to f in the Germanic languages (Greek pater, English "father," Latin piscis, English "fish," Greek polos, English "foal," etc.)

[blam]

Journey Of Mankind

[CarrotAndStick]

In India, there are a number of nationalists who believe that all that is India or Indian, originated from India alone.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vijendra Kashyap is one of them.

[SunkenCiv]

The finding disputes a long-held theory that a large invasion of central Asians, traveling through a northwest Indian corridor, shaped the language, culture, and gene pool of many modern Indians within the past 10,000 years.

That theory is bolstered by the presence of Indo-European languages in India, the archaeological record, and historic sources such as the Rig Veda, an early Indian religious text.

FWIW, I don't accept geographical origin ideas proceeding from genetic studies, because single individuals living long ago have a disproportionate influence (through chance, for the most part) on large current populations; also, a lot of things have gone on in the past 10,000 (or 50,000, or 100,000) years which are not written down. It goes without saying that genetic material from that long ago is essentially nonexistent, so all the data collected merely shows current distributions.

In the case of this study, I'd be very cautious in accepting it; there's been a nationalistic push to deny "foreign" origin for the IndoEuropean populations of the Indian subcontinent, and the political need to have just such a conclusion in a genetic study.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the ping! Will do the list thang when I get home.

Tamil Trade
INTAMM | 1997 | Xavier S. Thani Nayagam
Posted on 09/11/2004 8:07:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1213591/posts

'Detectives' unearth secrets of the past (Dilmun seals inscribed with Indus Valley inscription)
Daily News the Voice of Bahrain | Monday 6th June 2005 | Rebecca Torr
Posted on 06/24/2005 9:49:38 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1429854/posts

[Tyche]

40000 year old footprints in Mexico kinda change the timeline

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1436677/posts

[BricksAndMortar]

All Indians:

[CarrotAndStick]

When one major culture adopts the tongue of another, they usually do so because the adopted language has a specific advantage, most always the advantage being of the language having a written script(the Thai script is a stylised Indian Tamil script). But Indian languages, given the similarites with ancient Greek, have a totally different script compared to the European languages.

So this theory that Indians borrowed only language, of the spoken form, and not the script, has some holes to patch.

[FierceDraka]

So the Indian Tamil script has no vowels, like Hebrew?

[Bender2]

Gad! We outsourced English?

[CarrotAndStick]

Nope, that's not Tamil, those are the consonants of the Devanagari script. Here's a complete list:

[CarrotAndStick]

A rough Western equivalent of how the alphabets of the Indian languages work is the forming of words with the pronounciation key of a dictionary. That is why words written in Indian scripts can only be pronounced one way.

[SunkenCiv]

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[SunkenCiv]

:')

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1436650/posts

[shuckmaster]

Correct! There is the strong possibility that Indo-Europeans brought in the language and advanced culture but, the genetic lines were later out breeded by Asians who prospered in the new culture.