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An Ancient Link To Africa Lives On In Bay Of Bengal
The New York Times ^ | 12-10-2002 | Nicholas Wade

Posted on 12/10/2002 1:09:21 PM PST by blam

An Ancient Link to Africa Lives on in Bay of Bengal

By NICHOLAS WADE

Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago east of India, are direct descendants of the first modern humans to have inhabited Asia, geneticists conclude in a new study.

But the islanders lack a distinctive genetic feature found among Australian aborigines, another early group to leave Africa, suggesting they were part of a separate exodus.

The Andaman Islanders are "arguably the most enigmatic people on our planet," a team of geneticists led by Dr. Erika Hagelberg of the University of Oslo write in the journal Current Biology.

Their physical features — short stature, dark skin, peppercorn hair and large buttocks — are characteristic of African Pygmies. "They look like they belong in Africa, but here they are sitting in this island chain in the middle of the Indian Ocean," said Dr. Peter Underhill of Stanford University, a co-author of the new report.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: africa; ancient; ancientnavigation; andaman; andamanislands; archaeology; australesian; bay; bengal; borneo; crevolist; dna; epigraphyandlanguage; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; heyerdahl; history; link; madagascar; mtdna
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To: belmont_mark
Yup. Some on Okinawa too.
21 posted on 12/10/2002 2:11:28 PM PST by blam
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To: blam
My view of the matter is that people went into Africa, rather than out of it. If you look at the distribution patterns of people by race and genetic code, the whole probem is solved. You can have as many volcano hits as you want, it would only concentrate genetic inheritance, all Black, all White, or all Asian.
22 posted on 12/10/2002 2:31:57 PM PST by Little Bill
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To: blam
bump
23 posted on 12/10/2002 3:19:31 PM PST by LiteKeeper
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To: VadeRetro; jennyp; Junior; longshadow; *crevo_list; RadioAstronomer; Scully; Piltdown_Woman; ...
This ping will overlap some with junior's, but I guess it can't be helped.

Alert: Out of Africa with big butts!

[This ping list for the evolution -- not creationism -- side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. If you want to be included, or dropped, let me know.]

24 posted on 12/10/2002 5:17:04 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
A particularly ugly Andaman Islander ran around blow-darting people in London, circa early 1880s. See Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four.
25 posted on 12/10/2002 5:21:49 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro

Andaman Islander
26 posted on 12/10/2002 5:30:38 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: blam
The author compares the Andamanese to pygmies then describes bushman characteristics. The bushmen of southern Africa are short but are not related to the pygmies of central Africa. It is the bushmen who have the peppercorn hair, protruding buttocks, etc. They also have the blue spot on their backs that identifies them as Asians rather than Africans. I wonder if those islanders have that spot.
28 posted on 12/10/2002 5:35:05 PM PST by arthurus
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To: PatrickHenry
The Negrito

"That the Andamanese are not a local development but the remnant of a once widely-spread race is shown by the fact that they are not the only Negritos: there are the other living Negrito groups that we will look at in more detail in Chapters 35 to 37.

As regards the remoter relationships, there are two opposing schools of thought. The first holds that the Negritos were one group living in a large area of tropical Asia many tens of thousands of years ago when new and more aggressive immigrants arrived who pushed the ancestral Negritos and Veddoids into the remoter jungle areas. In such a scenariothe Negrito and Veddoid groups in mainland areas would then gradually have lost contact with each other, leaving us today with only a few widely separated surviving populations.

The second school of thought holds that all these groups share a common ancestral origin somewhere in southeast Asia or southern China. In this scenario the Negritos and the Veddoids have alwayys remained people of the deep forests (hence their small stature, which woould then not be an ancestral trait but the result of similar life styles in the deep forests) while the ancestors of the Tasmanians, Papuans and Australians left the area to migrate to their later homelands. The latter groups must have been highly enterprising: they are the earliest people known to have made substantial sea crossings.

The genetic and linguistic varieties gives a hint at the sheer complexity of past population movements in what for want of a better word we shall call the Negritoid-Veddoid ancestral area: the number of living indigenous languages still spoken in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua-New Guinea and Australia has been estimated at over 1400 (of which 750 in Papua-New Guinea alone) which is more than a quarter of all the world's languages. There are another 170 still living languages in Australia. The number of extinct languages in that area is likely to be much greater still.

Looking at the overall picture, we can see an outline, however vague and shadowy, of the area that the hypothetical ancestral race of Negritos, Veddoids, Papuans, Australians, Tasmanians and Melanesians once occupied, perhaps 70,000 years ago. It ranged from India through Indo-China to Indonesia and from southern China through Taiwan to the Philippines, with New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania settled later by the same people.

While the anthropological and linguistic evidence for a relationship is often weak and controversial nature, what, then, about the biological and genetic evidence? A recent work on genetic relationships among human groups says the following:

While our potential skills for analyzing human evolution are increasing, social changes taking place in developing countries are rapidly destroying the identities - if not the very existence - of the most important aboriginal populations. This organized research efforts to save this precious information about our past have acquired a new urgency.

A complete genetic investigation of the Negrito, the Veddoid and other remnant population groups with the techniques of DNA analysis is both important and urgent. Happily, many genetic laboratories all around the world have taken up the challenge.

The following data comparing a number of major as well as remnant groups Asian are based on outdated techniques of the 1980s to 1990s but they still remain valuable until the DNA analyses in preparation and planned are published."

30 posted on 12/10/2002 5:53:12 PM PST by blam
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To: arthurus
"It is the bushmen who have the peppercorn hair, protruding buttocks, etc. They also have the blue spot on their backs that identifies them as Asians rather than Africans. I wonder if those islanders have that spot."

I would like to see a DNA comparison of these people with the Bushmen also. The Bushmen do have Mongol Spots and are Asian. The Female Bushmen have a unique 'apron' over the genetial area. There aren't any 'pure' Bushmen alive today, they are mixed with the Bantu (black) people.

31 posted on 12/10/2002 5:59:54 PM PST by blam
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Comment #32 Removed by Moderator

To: All

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33 posted on 12/10/2002 6:19:19 PM PST by Bob J
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To: What is the bottom line
Here ya go:


34 posted on 12/10/2002 6:34:11 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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Comment #35 Removed by Moderator

Comment #36 Removed by Moderator

To: PatrickHenry
Jennifer Lopez buttocks. Helium implants, in all probability.
37 posted on 12/10/2002 6:43:56 PM PST by Dog Gone
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To: What is the bottom line
That pic comes from this website: HERE.

The text that goes with that pic is this:

Fig.2. A modern "Venus of Willendorf" – an Onge woman with steatopygia ("fat bottom"). Steatopygia has been widespread, perhaps even universal, in human prehistory and is reflected in the famous ice-age "Venus figurines." Only two living populations still have this ancient human trait today: the Khoi ("Hottentot") of South Africa and the Andamanese
Note that the use of the word "widespread" is apparently not intended to be humorous. (But it is.)
38 posted on 12/10/2002 6:48:13 PM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: blam
The things you can learn on Free Republic bump
39 posted on 12/10/2002 7:23:26 PM PST by Darnright
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To: PatrickHenry
Thanks for the ping, Patrick

So... the successive waves of migration are interesting.

Was this a boat ride to the islands, or over a land bridge during times of lower water levels?
40 posted on 12/10/2002 8:00:04 PM PST by edwin hubble
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