Tag: DNA

I have been trying to fathom the mystery of Human migration in the world.

There are descriptions of Great Flood in almost all the mythologies,Jewish, Christian, Mayan,Incas, Sumerian.

But the Great Floods do not get such detailed references anywhere as in Tamil Classics belonging to Tamil Sangam Era, which is erroneously dated around 3 BC.

The internal evidence in the Texts, external references found in world literature, Vedic Texts and Geology assigns an earlier date.

There is a study which states that the Tamils were very much an advanced civilisation around 74,000 years ago.

Please refer my Post.

And there is site reflecting Tamil Culture, 1 Million year old, in Pallavaram Cheanni, Tamil Nadu, India.

Tamil quotes the Vedas and they quote Tamil.

Read my Post on this.

So it is well nigh impossible to assign exact dates for these two or which precedes the other because of the Time frame involved, on the available evidence now.

Dating of these are verified by Astronomy, Astro-archeology and of course by Anthropology,Cultural,Linguistic similarities and Archeology.

Yet another source is Genome Study, the Study of Genes.

By studying  and comparing the Genes of the present population with the ancient skeletons found around the world, one can arrive at a conclusion.

When one looks at Human population in the Europe, one finds that it seems to start abruptly, with the statement that People migrated from Asia.

From where in Asia and Why?

The Western science has been silent till now.

Now research of DNA has come a long way and they prove that the migration took place from India, then called Bharatavarsha.

Reference in The Bhagavatha Purana states that the ancestor of Lord Rama, Satyavrata Manu migrated from the South of Vindhya Mountains to Ayodhya and Manu’ son Ikshvaku founded the Ikshvaku Dynasty.

Please read my Post, Rama’s ancestor Dravida, migrated from South.

At the same time Shiva with his son Ganesha moved westwards  through Middle East ,Europe,Africa,South America, North America, Central America, Russia to Arctic where the Rig Veda was composed.

Then they returned to India through the Khyber Pass and this event has been taken as Aryan Invasion of India.

Please read my Posts on each point.

Now that the far Eastern and American civilizations are traced to Santana Dharma, it is evident that the people of the far east( in relation to the west, here they mean the now Middle east), it is the Sanatana Dharma Tribes which migrated to these places.

Read my Post Vedic Tribes.

The Reports.

Human Migration, In and Out of India.

* I have provided this Map to inform readers of the other view that the initial Migration to India was from Africa.I disagree with this view.Check My Posts on this.

new study has revealed that Indians belonging to higher castes are genetically closer to Europeans than are individuals from lower castes, whose genetic profiles are closer to those of Asians.

The study compared genetic markers—located on the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA—between 265 Indian men of various castes and 750 African, Asian, European and other Indian men. To broaden the study, 40 markers from chromosomes 1 to 22 were analyzed from more than 600 individuals from different castes and continents. The comparison of the markers among these groups confirmed that genetic similarities to Europeans increased as caste rank increased.

The study, led by Michael Bamshad of the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, and his colleagues, is reported to be the most comprehensive genetic analysis to date of the impact of European migrations on the structure and origin of the current Indian population. The article appears in the current issue of Genome Research.

The caste system, defined in ancient Sanskrit texts, determines a person’s rank in society: The Brahmin, who were traditionally priests and scholars, held the highest rank in Hindu society. Warriors and rulers made up the Kshatriya who were the next in line to the Brahmin. Merchants, traders, farmers, and artisans were the third caste called the Vysya. The Shudra were the fourth rank and consisted of laborers. Because of strict rules forbidding marriage between men and women of different castes, these four classes remained distinct for thousands of years.

Bamshad’s team found that Y chromosomes from the Brahmin and Kshatriya closely resembled European Y chromosomes rather than Asian Y chromosomes. The Y chromosomes from the lower castes bore more similarities to the Asian Y chromosome. The mitochondrial DNA showed the same pattern.

The authors believe their results support the notion that Europeans who migrated into India between 3,000 and 8,000 years ago may have merged with or imposed their social structure on the native northern Indians and placed themselves into the highest castes.

Analysis of the paternally transmitted Y chromosome among Indians in general indicated that the Y chromosome had a more European flavor. Maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA among Indians is more Asian than European. This suggests that the Europeans who entered India were predominantly male.

. . .

That required developing new computational methods for genetic analysis. “Figuring out how these populations are related is extremely hard,” Reich says. “There’s a lot that happened in Europe in the last 8,000 years, and this history acts like a veil, making it difficult to discern what happened at the beginning of this period. We had to find statistics that were able to tell us what happened deep in the past without getting confused by 8,000 years of intervening history, when massive and important events occurred.”

“What we find is unambiguous evidence that people in Europe today have all three of these ancestries: early European farmers who brought agriculture to Europe, the indigenous hunter-gatherers who were in Europe prior to 8,000 years ago, and these ancient north Eurasians,” Reich says. Further analyses showed that describing present-day Europeans as a mixture of the three populations is a good fit for most, although not all, populations.

When the study began, the ancient north Eurasian population was a “ghost population”—identified based on genetic patterns without any ancient DNA. But in 2013, another group analyzed DNA from two skeletons found in Siberia, one from 24,000 years ago and one from 17,000 years ago, and found that it shared genetic similarities with Europeans and North Americans. The ghost, Reich says, had been found.

Although DNA from ancient north Eurasians is present in nearly all modern Europeans, Reich’s team did not find it in their ancient hunter-gatherers or the ancient farmers. That means the north Eurasian line of ancestry was introduced into Europe after agriculture had been established, a scenario most archaeologists had thought unlikely.

“We have this amazing observation that only two ancestries are represented among the first farmers, from about 7,000 to 5,000 years ago. And then suddenly everybody today has ancient north Eurasian ancestry,” Reich says. “So there must have been a later movement of this ancestry into Europe.”

Anthropologists have long thought that densely settled populations would be resistant to the arrival of new groups. “But this is hard evidence that exactly such a major migration occurred,” Reich says. “It’s very important because it’s a major contributor to Europeans today.” The time of the ancient north Eurasians’ arrival remains to be determined, but Reich says their later-than-expected movement into Europe might help explain the complex mix of languages that exists there today…

..Anatole Klyosov is a friend of yours? That is positively awesome. The y-DNA R1a1a matter still seems to be shrouded in mystery to a large extent. There is a basic split between Northern Europe and Asia which has become apparent. Here is a blog post from the Polish Genetics and Anthropology Blog run by one of our very own forum members which summarizes the findings. A major division within R1a1a emerges: Southern Europe and Asia vs. Northern Europe –

Thus far, all the South-Asian participants of the Family Tree DNA R1a1a and Subclades Y-DNA Project have tested positive for the Z93 SNP, which, as mentioned, seems to be the defining SNP which separates Northern European and Asiatic R1a1a indviduals. From the R1a1a spreadsheet, I will list a few Indian individuals who have tested for the relevant SNPs in question;
– An individual who lists his surname as Bajwa. The Bajwa are a Jatt clan from the Punjabi-speaking areas of Northwest India. This individual is listed as positive (+) for Z93.
– An individual who is of a Nair background from Kerala, southern India. He is positive for both Z93 and L342.2+, which is downstream from Z93.
-An individual who lists his surname as Kamath. Kamath is a very common surname among the Saraswat Brahmins of the Konkan coast of India. He is positive for L342.2. Given that this is downstream from Z93, it is likely he is also Z93+.
– A Bihari Brahmin individual who lists his last name as Dikshit. As in the last two individuals, he has not tested for Z93 but is L342.2+ and L657+, both downstream from Z93.
– An individual who lists his surname as Khokar. Khokar is a Punjabi-specific surname borne by a variety of clans of various ethnic groups in the Punjab region. While the individual doesn’t seem to have tested for Z93, he is L342.2+, thus he is likely to be Z93+ as well.

I personally think it would be highly fallacious to form any conclusions based on such small sampling. More R1a1a South-Asians most certainly need to get themselves tested. But thus far, all the Indian individuals seem to be Z93+. I asked Polako, the forum enthusiast on everything R1a1a about all this, and this is what he had to say. However, going by the results thus far, I have no idea as to how we could possibly go about tracking the Indo-European migration to India and their patrilineal descendants (Brahmins, etc) if all South-Asian R1a1a individuals are indistinguishable from each other. This, to me, make absolutely no sense. I will refrain from concluding anything on the matter for now, though. The apparent lack of SNP differentiation between various South-Asian R1a1a individuals also doesn’t quite corroborate with the appreciable variation and differences in the autosomal DNA admixture proportions of the various castes and tribes of India.

The T. Kivisild et al study is actually based on y-DNA and mtDNA Haplogroups, not autosomal DNA. The map which you posted is actually a multidimensional scaling plot of eight Indian and seven western Eurasian populations, using Fst distances calculated for 16 Y-Chromosomal SNP haplogroups. In terms of autosomal DNA however, the Punjabis cluster firmly within South-Asia, along with other more North-Westerly groups such as the Pathans, Sindhis and Kashmiris. Additionally, they tend to exhibit elevated amounts of West-Asian and Northeastern European admixture relative to other South Asian groups; which is quite typical of Northwest Indian and Pakistani groups.

The Lambadis are a nomadic tribe affiliated with the Banjaras of Northwest India found in south and west India. The Castes and Tribes of South India (1909) by Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari has an interesting introductory account on them;

Oddly enough, the Lambadi of Andhra Pradesh according to the same Kivisild et al. (2005) study exhibited y-DNA R1b at 27%, which is quite atypical for Indians in general.

Citation.

http://www.hhmi.org/news/modern-europeans-descended-three-groups-ancestors

http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/showthread.php/25479-Brahmin-caste-R-M17-affinities-with-Europeans-or-lack-thereof-(split)-mod?s=58e5b2b489abad795b20a2acde8a7a64

http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/05_01/Indo-European.shtml

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