Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia

Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia is the study of the genetics and archaeogenetics of the ethnic groups of South Asia. It aims at uncovering these groups' genetic history. The geographic position of South Asia makes its biodiversity important for the study of the early dispersal of anatomically modern humans across Asia.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

B

• Bhalla lists a number of specific genes which are characteristically strong or weak in given racial types, and finds that they do define certain ethnic sub-groups of India, esp. the Mongoloid tribals of the northeast, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, and the Australoids in the remaining tribal pockets of the south. Everywhere else, including in many tribal areas, the Mediterranean type is predominant, but the present battery of genetic markers was not able to distinguish between subtypes within this population, much less to indicate different waves of entry.
  • V. Bhalla: “Aspects of Gene Geography and Ethnic Diversity of the People of India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, P.51-60; specifically p.58. paraphrased in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• In a perceptive 2007 paper, Nicole Boivin offered this critique of genetic studies: In reading the genetics literature on South Asia, it is very clear that many of the studies actually start out with some assumptions that are clearly problematic, if not in some cases completely untenable. Perhaps the single most serious problem concerns the assumption, which many studies actually start with as a basic premise … that the Indo‐Aryan invasions are a well‐ established (pre)historical reality. (Boivin, 2007: 352) Referring to studies cited above (Bamshad et al., 2001; Cordaux et al., 2004), Boivin argued that they “confirm such invasions in large part because they actually assume them to begin with” (Boivin, 2007: 352). Among other methodological issues, she noted the failure to take into account the genetic legacy of known invasions, especially of historical periods, and the “problematic assumption … that caste is unchanging”—for instance, that today’s Brahmin necessarily had Brahmin ancestors, which need not be correct, or again that castes were strictly endogamous, which was rarely the case (Boivin, 2007: 354).
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Boivin N. 2007. Anthropological, historical, archaeological and genetic perspectives on the origins of caste in South Asia. In: Petraglia MD, Allchin B, editors. The evolution and history of human populations in South Asia: inter‐disciplinary studies in archaeology, biological anthropology, lin- guistics and genetics. Dordrecht: Springer. pp 341–361.

C

• Cavalli-Sforza and his team state that “Indian tribal and caste populations derive largely from the same genetic heritage of Pleistocene [=10000 to 3 mya] southern and western Asians and have received limited gene flow from external regions since the Holocene [=c 10000 to present]. The phylogeography [=neighbouring branches] of the primal mtDNA and Y-chromosome founders suggest that these southern Asian Pleistocene coastal settlers from Africa would have provided the inocula for the subsequent differentiation of the distinctive eastern and western Eurasian gene pools”
  • square brackets added; Cavalli-Sforza 2003).Cavalli-Sforza et al 2003 'The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers ...' American Journal of Human Genetics 72 (313-32). Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Chapter 9

D

• Recent work suggests that the supposed Aryan invasion of India 3,000-4,000 years ago was much less significant than is generally believed.
  • Todd R. Disotell (“Human evolution: the southern route to Asia”), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

• [there is ] “a genetic continuum between the Harappans and the present‐day people of the region” (Dutta, 1984: 73);
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Dutta PC. 1984. Biological anthropology of Bronze Age Harappans: new perspectives. In: Lukacs JR, editor. The people of South Asia: the biological anthropology of India, Pakistan, and Nepal. New York: Plenum Press. pp 59–75.

E

• Phillip Endicott, Mait Metspalu, and Toomas Kivisild corroborated such findings in a 2007 study: The Austro‐Asiatic and Tibeto‐Burman language groups may retain a distinctive genetic signature due to their relatively recent introduction and limited subsequent male gene flow. However, consistent divisions between populations speaking Dravidian and Indo‐Aryan languages are harder to define with reliability. The complex and intertwined history of changes in language, subsistence patterns, demography and political intervention, makes it difficult to relate genetic patterns to these widespread linguistic categories. The evidence from mtDNA argues against any strong differentiation between these (and other) major language groups …, and therefore nullifies attempts to trace, maternally, the large‐scale population movements once speculated to have accompanied the arrival of Indo‐Aryan languages. (Endicott et al., 2007: 238)... will continue to emphasize the genetically complex patterns present, and are increasingly unlikely to support reductionist explanations of simplistic demographic and cultural scenarios. Rather, they should put weight behind the suggestion that West and South Asia, as conduits for the settlement of the rest of the world, are central to comprehending modern human evolution outside of Africa. (Endicott et al., 2007: 240)
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Endicott P, Metspalu M, Kivisild T. 2007. Genetic evidence on modern human dispersals in South Asia: Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA perspectives: the world through the eyes of two hap- loid genomes. In: Petraglia MD, Allchin B, editors. The evolution and history of human popula- tions in South Asia: inter‐disciplinary studies in archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics and genetics. Dordrecht: Springer. pp 299–244.

• The difference between castes can in some cases be expressed in terms of the respective distances between their average characteristics and those of the European type. And this is only to be expected given the basic fact that India is a large country with great variation in physical type and lying in the border zone between the major races. The rich biological variety in the Indian chapter of the human species is due to many factors, but so far the Aryan Invasion has not been shown to be one of them.
  • Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• I frowned when I saw genetic findings being mustered as proof against the linguistic AIT. Confusing language movements with demographic movements was a childhood disease of Indo-European linguistics before 1945. Especially after Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), race thinking came to dominate the Humanities. There were warnings from Indo-Europeanists, including the much-maligned Friedrich Max Müller, to maintain the distinction, but the public and many professionals started speaking of “the Aryan race”, not in the vague sense common earlier (race = any group of hereditary belonging, from family to nation and race to humanity, Sanskrit jāti), but in the biological sense. After 1945, this went completely out of fashion in the West, but in India, not encumbered with the guilt about Nazi racism, time has stood still.... Other activist Hindus, by contrast, feel vindicated in their long-standing support for the AIT. Indeed, there exists a casteist-racist fringe among Brahmins who feel flattered by the claim that they descend from foreign conquerors and that they imposed the caste system as a racial Apartheid system. Outsiders including Joseph may not know about this, but any defence of the AIT plays into the hand of the most regressive elements of Hindu society. In the West too, the AIT is not only an unassailable orthodoxy in academe, it also serves as ideological backbone for some remaining racist ideologues... Many geneticists themselves don’t properly understand the Aryan debate, already two centuries old before genetics became a useful instrument in reconstructing migrations in history. The first studies in this field, finding e.g. that some genes were strikingly common between North India and Eastern Europe, contained conclusions that were at best not in conflict with the Aryan invasion scenario but did not prove it at all. In casu, they may at that stage have shown up grounds for either an India-to-Europe movement or a Europe-to-India movement without being able to decide between the two. Yet, they concluded in favour of the AIT because they retrofitted their own newfound data into the theory that, they heard, had already been proven by the linguists.... This is the so-called “circular argument of authority”: first you feed an expert a story, then he himself comes out with that same story, and then you can claim that your own little story has been confirmed by a world expert, thus giving it more authority. ... In the Aryan debate, the same thing has happened: the AIT viewpoint is first fed to experts from other fields, such as genetics, and then these view the data in their own field through the glasses which their partisan friends have put on their noses. The geneticists quoted here, both in their original papers and in the quotes from interviews, clearly have no independent grasp of the Aryan debate. ... Though the geneticists certainly live up to the scientific method when it comes to handling genetic data; when they approach the AIT as possible explanation, they become mere followers of convention.... But note that the scientists admit that they have not studied the link between their genetic data and the identification of the purported migrants as Indo-European: this is only “attributed” and “inferred”, meaning “borrowed on trust from our Indo-Europeanist informers”, all of them wedded to the AIT. They do not make a professional claim for the AIT, that is only a speculative afterthought, merely for genetically attested movements.... The geneticists he has quoted here may not be the publicity-seeking types who like to make bold statements. Nonetheless, their belief in an all-male incursion into India that has left traces in the Y-genes may well have substantial ramifications for Indian history, even by implying an Aryan invasion. And while none of them has been quoted as actually having proven, through his research, an Indo-European invasion, it is still possible that some of them do think so. Or, because of the present commotion over Joseph’s article, they may step back to make up their minds, now with a better grasp of the Aryan origins question, and finally conclude that what they have proven, does imply the Aryan invasion. It will take argumentative acumen and a serious research effort to convince them otherwise.
  • Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

F

• Physical anthropology, in its current state, is of no use to us to assess the possibility of these migrations... Nothing in the osteometric data shows that relationships existed between the populations of the Oxus Civilization and those of the steppes: these populations are separate, different. This would prove that if there were migrations, they were not significant at that time. Mixtures of steppe and oasis populations do not become significant until the time when corpses disappear through cremation or exposure. Recent research tends to show the weight of the permanence of local populations since the Chalcolithic, but this in no way excludes limited exchanges.
  • p 302 Henri-Paul Francfort. La civilisation de l'Oxus et les Indo-Iraniens et Indo-Aryens en Asie centrale. 2005, in: G. Fussman, J. Kellens, H.-P. Francfort, X. Tremblay, Aryas, Ariens et Iraniens en Asie centrale

H

• As for the question of biological continuity within the Indus Valley, two discontinuities appear to exist. The first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC and is reflected by the strong separation in dental non-metric characters between neolithic and chalcolithic burials at Mehrgarh. The second occurs at some point after 800 BC but before 200 BC. In the intervening period, while there is dental non-metric, craniometric, and cranial non-metric evidence for a degree of internal biological continuity, statistical evaluation of cranial data reveals clear indications of interaction with the West and specifically with the Iranian Plateau.
  • Hemphill, Brian E. "Biological adaptations and affinities of Bronze Age Harappans." Harappa Excavations 1986-1990: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Third Millennium Urbanism (Monographs in World Archaeology No. 3) (1991): 137-182.

• [A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola):] “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”
  • Hemphill & Christensen: “The Oxus Civilization as a Link between East and West: A Non-Metric Analysis of Bronze Age Bactrain Biological Affinities”, paper read at the South Asia Conference, 3-5 November 1994, Madison, Wisconsin; p. 13. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The data provide no support for any model of massive migration and gene flow between the oases of Bactria and the Indus Valley. Rather, patterns of phenetic affinity best conform to a pattern of long-standing, but low -level bidirectional mutual exchange.
  • (HEMPHILL, 1998 et 1999). quoted in p. 302. Henri-Paul Francfort. La civilisation de l'Oxus et les Indo-Iraniens et Indo-Aryens en Asie centrale. 2005, in: G. Fussman, J. Kellens, H.-P. Francfort, X. Tremblay, Aryas, Ariens et Iraniens en Asie centrale

• With closest biological affinities outside the Indus Valley to the inhabitants of Tepe Hissar 3 (3000–2000 BC), these biological data can be interpreted to suggest that peoples to the west interacted with those in the Indus Valley during this and the preceding proto-Elamite period and thus may have influenced the development of the Harappan civilization. The second biological discontinuity exists between the inhabitants of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh, and post-Harappa Timarghara on one hand and the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other... The Harappan Civilization does indeed represent an indigenous development within the Indus Valley, but this does not indicate isolation extending back to Neolithic times. Rather, this development represents internal continuity for only 2000 years, combined with interactions with the West and specifically with the Iranian Plateau.
  • (Hemphill et al. 1991: 174) quoted in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge page 31

K

• [Kenneth A.R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data:] “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.”
  • K.A.R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49. On p.42, Kennedy quotes the suggestion that “not only the end of the [Harappan] cities but even their initial impetus may have been due to Indo-European speaking peoples”, by B. and F.R. Allchin: The Birth of Indian Civilization, Penguin 1968, p. 144. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• In 2000 Kivisild and colleagues found that “even the high castes share more than 80 per cent of their maternal lineages with the lower castes and tribals.” Taking all aspects into consideration, the authors concluded that “there are now enough reasons not only to question a ‘recent Indo‐Aryan invasion’ into India some 4000 BP, but alternatively to consider India as a part of the common gene pool ancestral to the diversity of human maternal lineages in Europe” (Kivisild et al., 2000: 267–271).
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Kivisild T, Papiha SS, Rootsi S, Parik J, Kaldma K, … Villems R. 2000. An Indian ancestry: a key for understanding human diversity in Europe and beyond. In: Renfrew C, Boyle K, editors. Archaeogenetics: DNA and the population prehistory of Europe. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp 267–275

• In 2003 Kivisild and colleagues questioned the correlation between subsistence categories and genetic difference. Their conclusions highlighted India’s genetic complexity and antiquity, since “present‐day Indians [possess] at least 90 per cent of what we think of as autoch- thonous Upper Paleolithic maternal lineages.” Significantly, “the Indian mtDNA tree in general [is] not subdivided according to linguistic (Indo‐European, Dravidian) or caste affiliations, although there may occur (sometimes drastic) population‐wise differences in frequencies of particular sub‐clusters” (Kivisild et al., 2003a: 216–221). In other words, their results found broad agreement with archaeology and anthropology in con- cluding that language and ethnicity cannot be mapped in a one‐to‐one correspondence relationship.
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Kivisild T, Rootsi S, Metspalu M, Metspalu E, Parik J, … Villems R. 2003a. The genetics of language and farming spread in India. In: Bellwood P, Renfrew C, editors. Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp 215–222.

• [Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan)101 culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India:] “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• This neatly fits the earlier findings of non-genetic (morphological) physical anthropology, viz. that the population type of northwestern India has remained the same for at least 8,000 years.... In deference to established Indological opinion, the biologists make a perfunctory nod toward the “supposed” Aryan invasion, only to state that they have found no evidence for this popular supposition: “Their low frequency [i.e. of the West-Asia-related genes] but still general spread all over India plus the estimated time scale does not support a recent massive Aryan invasion, at least as far as maternally inherited genetic lineages are concerned.”
  • Current Biology (London), vol.9, nrs.22 and 24, by T. Kivisild et al. (“Deep common ancestry of Indian and Western-Eurasian mitochonrdial DNA lineages”), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.with quote of “Deep common ancestry of Indian and Western-Eurasian mitochonrdial DNA lineages”

• K. Kennedy (1984), however, who was able to examine all three hundred skeletons that had been retrieved from the Indus Valley Civilization, found that the ancient Harappans "are not markedly different in their skeletal biology from the present-day inhabitants of Northwestern India and Pakistan" (102). He considers any physical variations in the skeletal record to be perfectly normal for a metropolitan setting and consistent with any urban population past or present (103). As far as he is concerned, the polytypism in the South Asian record represents an "overlap of relatively homogeneous tribal and outcaste groups and their penetration into villages, then into urban environments of more heterogeneous people." There is no need to defer to intruding aliens for any of this: "This dynamic rather than mass migration and invasions of nomadic and warlike peoples better accounts for the biological constitutions of those earlier urban populations in the Indus valley." Here, again, we encounter the same objections raised repeatedly by South Asian archaeologists: "Of the Aryans, we must defer to literary and linguistic scholars in whose province lies the determination of the arrival and nature of the linguistic phenomenon we call the Aryans. . . . But archaeological evidence of Aryan- speaking peoples is questionable and the skeletal evidence is nil" (104).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Not only is the skeletal evidence nil, but "if invasions of exotic races had taken place by Aryan hordes, we should encounter obvious discontinuities in the prehistoric skeletal record that correspond with a period around 1500 BC." Whatever discontinuities do occur in the record are either far too late or far too early (Kennedy 1995, 58). These discontinuities were taken from a further study undertaken on the skeletal remains in the Harappan phase "Cemetery R37" (Hemphill et al. 1991). The results of this survey showed two periods of discontinuities: the first occurs during the period between 6000 and 4500 B.C.E. between the Neolithic and Chalcolithic inhabitants of Mehrgarh, and the second at some point before 200 B.C.E. (but after 800 B.C.E.), which is visible in the remains at Sarai Khola (200 B.C.E.). Clearly, neither of these biological discontinuities corresponds with the commonly accepted period for Indo-Aryan intrusions. The Aryans have not been located in the skeletal record.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

M

• Detailed anthropometric surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions. On the basis of analysis of stature, cephalic and nasal index, H.K. Rakshit (1966) concludes that ‘the Brahmins of India are heterogeneous and suggest incorporation of more than one physical type involving more than one migration of people’.... “A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra on whom 18 metric, 16 scopic and 8 genetic markers were studied, revealed not only a great heterogeneity in both morphological and genetic characteristics but also showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes. P.P. Majumdar and K.C. Malhotra (1974) observed a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to OAB blood group system among 50 Brahmin samples spread over 11 Indian states. The evidence thus suggests that varna is a sociological and not a homogeneous biological entity.”
  • K.C. Malhotra: “Biological Dimensions to Ethnicity and caste in India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, Manohar, Delhi 1992, p.65. Reference is to H.K. Rakshit: “An Anthropometric Study of the Brahmins of India”, in Man in India #46; and P.P. Majumdar & K.C. Malhotra: OAB Dynamics in India: A Statistical Study, Calcutta 1974. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• [In the past, the Caucasian presence was also in evidence:] “Although a large number of prehistoric sites have been excavated in India, only a few of them have yielded human osseous remains (…) None of the pre-Mesolithic sites have yielded skeletal material; the earliest remains are around 8,000 years old. An examination of the morphological features of skeletons from sites of the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and iron age periods reveals the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in all the periods, the absence of Mongoloids, and the existence of at least two types of Caucasoids, the dolichocephals and the brachycephals (…) The skeletal evidence thus clearly establishes the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in India for at least 8,000 years.”
  • Kailash C. Malhotra: “Biological Dimensions to Ethnicity and Caste in India”, in K.S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, p.63. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

N

• [In fact, no “entry” of these Mediterranean Caucasians can be derived from the data, certainly not for the post-Harappan period. According to an older study, they were present even in South India in 2,000 BC at the latest:] “The evidence of two racial types, the Mediterranean and the Autochthonous proto-Australoid, recognized in the study of the skeletal remains from the neolithic levels at Brahmagiri, Piklihal, Tekkalakota, Nevasa etc., seems to suggest that there was a thick population consisting mainly of these two races in South India around 2000 BC.”
  • B. Narasimhaiah: Neolithic and Megalithic Cultures in Tamil Nadu, Sundeep Prakashan, Delhi 1980, p.195: quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

O

• We find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the South, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a “male Aryan invasion” of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe. (Oppenheimer, 2003: 152)
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Oppenheimer S. 2003. The real Eve: modern man’s journey out of Africa. New York: Carroll & Graf.

• Another geneticist, S. Oppenheimer, offers independent confirmation (2003) that there was no Aryan entry, either male or female; he focuses on the M17, or so-called “Caucasoid” (=Aryan!), genetic marker: “South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India” .
  • (2003: 152:Oppenheimer S. 2003 The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey out of Africa NY, Carroll & Graf. Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Chapter 9

S

• In 2009 Swarkar Sharma and colleagues came to a similar conclusion in their review of competing theses on the origins of the caste system. Based on a sample of 681 Brahmin and 2128 tribal and Scheduled Caste communities, the authors found “no consistent pattern of the exclusive presence and distribution of Y‐haplogroups to distinguish the higher‐most caste, Brahmins, from the lower‐most ones, schedule castes and tribals” (Sharma et al., 2009: 51). In their view, the Y‐haplogroup R1a1 holds the key to the origins of the caste system; exploring its frequency not only in India but also in the rest of Eurasia and Central Asia in particular, they found that “the age of R1a1 was the highest in the Indian subcon- tinent” and concluded “in favor of the suggestion that there has been no bulk migration from Central Asia to India” (Sharma et al., 2009: 54, 52). Besides, the age of Y‐haplogroup R1a1 was highest in scheduled castes/tribes when compared with Central Asians and Eurasians. These observations weaken the hypothesis of introduction of this haplogroup and the origin of Indian higher most castes from Central Asian and Eurasian regions. The authors, in fact, argue in favor of an “origin in the Indian subcontinent” of haplogroup R1a1 and “the autochthonous origin and tribal links of Indian Brahmins, confronting the concepts of recent Central Asian introduction and rank‐related Eurasian contribution of the Indian caste system” (Sharma et al., 2009: 54).
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Sharma S, Rai E, Sharma P, Jena M, Singh S, … Bamezai RNK. 2009. The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1* substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the caste system. Journal of Human Genetics 54(1): 47–55.

• The Y‐chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo‐Aryan language family. (Sahoo et al., 2006: 843)
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Sahoo S, Singh A, Himabindu G, Banerjee J, Sitalaximi T, … Kashyap VK. 2006. A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: evaluating demic diffusion scenarios. PNAS 103(4): 843–848.

• “There is no evidence whatsoever to conclude that Central Asia has been necessarily the recent donor and not the receptor of the R1a lineages” (Sengupta et al., 2006: 218; the R1a lineages being a different way to denote the haplogroup M17). Significantly, this study also noted: “Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus … [There is] overwhelming support for an Indian origin of Dravidian speakers” (Sengupta et al., 2006: 202, 219).
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Sengupta S, Lev A, Zhivotovsky LA, King R, Mehdi SQ, … Underhill PA. 2006. Polarity and tempo- rality of high‐resolution Y‐chromosome distributions in India identify both indigenous and exoge- nous expansions and reveal minor genetic influence of Central Asian pastoralists. American Journal of Human Genetics 78(2): 202–221.

• “The Vedda, the Melano-Indians and the Indus people and the actual inhabitants of the northern half of India, which classical anthropology used to class as Mediterraneans, all belong to one same human ‘current’ of which they manifest the successive ‘waves’. Everything indicates, physical traits as well as geographical distribution, that the Vedda have arrived first, followed by the Melano-Indians, and then the Indus people.”... “The Italian anthropologist [Mario Cappieri] has emphasized not only that the skulls of Mohenjo Daro resemble those of today’s Sindh and those of Harappa resemble those of today’s Panjab, but even that the individual variability is identical today to what it was four thousand years ago.”
  • Bernard Sergent: Genèse de l’Inde, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. ‘Biologically and linguistically, we are very mixed’, says Suresh Singh (…) The report says that the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (…) The sons-of-the-soil theory also stands demolished. The Anthropological Survey of India has found no community in India that can’t remember having migrated from some other part of the country.” Internal migration accounts for much of India’s complex ethnic landscape, while there is no evidence of a separate or foreign origin for the upper castes.
  • N.V. Subramaniam: “The way we are. An ASI project shatters some entrenched myths”, Sunday, 10-4-1994. On a recent anthropological survey led by Kumar Suresh Singh. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• A more recent study (Sahoo ... Endicot, Kivisild... Kashyap 2006) concludes: “The Y- chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin of Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India” (p 843); then again: “It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. ... our findings do support a local origin of haplogroups F* and H” (p 847)
  • Sahoo S., Singh A., Kivisild T... et al 2006 ‘A Prehistory of Indian Y-chromosomes’ in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) vol 103, no 4, 843-8.Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Chapter 9

• The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1 substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the case system.
  • Sharma S. et al The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1* substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the caste system 2009 quoted in N Kazanas, INDIGENISM AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE ARYAN-INVASION-THEORY. THE ADYAR LIBRARY BULLETIN 2014-15

• "If pastoralists arrived recently, based upon linguistic and religious evidence on a track from the north via Bactria, S. Tajikistan and N.Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush into the N. Pakistan plains one would expect to see L3-M357 in India. Although this haplogroup occurs with an intermediate frequency in Pakistan (6.8%), it is very rare in India (0.4%)".
  • Sanghamitra Sengupta et al. 2006. “Polarity and Temporality of High Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India”, publication in American Journal of Human Genetics (vol 76).

U

• In 2010 Underhill was the lead author of a study that examined the relationship between European and Asian Y chromosomes within the same haplogroup R1a, which, for our purpose, is the same as M17 and has been regarded as a marker of the supposed Indo‐ European migrations; the authors found that coalescent time estimates of R1a1a correlate with the timing of the recession of the Last Glacial Maximum and predate the upper bound of the age estimate of the Indo‐European language tree … The presence and overall frequency of haplogroup R1a does not distinguish Indo‐Iranian, Finno‐Ugric, Dravidian or Turkic speakers from each other. (Underhill et al., 2010: 483) Moreover, the distribution of sub‐haplogroups of R1a “would exclude any significant patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, at least since the mid‐Holocene period” (Underhill et al., 2010: 483).
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Underhill PA, Myres NM, Rootsi S, Metspalu M, Zhivotovsky LA, … Kivisild T. 2010. Separating the post‐glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a. European Journal of Human Genetics 18(4): 479–484.

• Importantly, the virtual absence of M458 chromosomes outside Europe speaks against substantial patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, including to India, at least since the mid-Holocene.
  • Underhill et al Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a quoted in N Kazanas, INDIGENISM AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE ARYAN-INVASION-THEORY. THE ADYAR LIBRARY BULLETIN 2014-15

W

• “The incursions of ‘foreign’ people within the periods of time associated with the Harappan decline cannot be documented by the skeletal record … The physical anthropological data refutes the hypothesis of ‘Aryan invasion’” (Walimbe, 2014: 337–339).
  • quoted in M. Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
  • Walimbe SR. 2014. Human skeletal biology. In: Chakrabarti DK, Lal M, editors. History of ancient India. Volume 2: Protohistoric foundations. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.

• The anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappa remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day.
  • Sir M. Wheeler: The Indus Civilization, Cambridge University Press 1968, p.72, quoted in K.D. Sethna: The Problem of Aryan Origins, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi 1992 (1980), p.20. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.