Stephen Oppenheimer

Stephen Oppenheimer (born 1947) is a British paediatrician, geneticist, and writer. He is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. In addition to his work in medicine and tropical diseases, he has published popular works in the fields of genetics and human prehistory. This latter work has been the subject of a number of television and film projects.

Quotes

• Yet the class structure which cripples Britain more than any other European state, is as nothing compared with the stratified hierarchies in Austronesian traditional societies from Madagascar through Bali to Samoa. (...) This consciousness of rank is thus clearly not something that was only picked up by Austronesian societies from later Indian influence.” (p.484)
  • Eden in the East: the Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia (Phoenix paperback, London 1999 (1998), Stephen Oppenheimer, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

• Barley cultivation was developed in the Indus Valley.
  • Eden in the East: the Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia (Phoenix paperback, London 1999 (1998), Stephen Oppenheimer, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

• 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

• Oppenheimer, a leading advocate of this scenario, summarizes it in these words: “For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough 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.”
  • Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve, p. 152., in GENETICS AND THE ARYAN DEBATE Michel Danino* (Published in Puratattva, Bulletin of the Indian Archaeological Society, New Delhi, No. 36, 2005-06, pp. 146-154.)

• First, that the Europeans’ genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans’ ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths.
  • Stephen Oppenheimer, (pp. 153-154 of The Real Eve) quoted in Was The Indian Sub-Continent The Original Genetic Homeland Of The Europeans? , S Kak

Quotes about Oppenheimer

• Oppenheimer is a medical doctor who has lived in Southeast Asia for decades. Like most of us, he is vaguely influenced by Marxism, e.g. where he dismisses religion as a means to “control other people's labour”, with explicit reference to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. His book is based on solid scientific research (genetic, anthropological, linguistic and archaeological), and is in that respect very different from the numerous Atlantis books which draw on “revelations” and “channeling”... Stephen Oppenheimer makes a detailed and strong case for the importance of the culture of sunken Sundaland for the later cultures in the wide surroundings. India too must have benefited of certain achievements and human cargo imported from there.
  • Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.