I’ve been meaning to link to the recent study in Nature, “Reconstructing Indian Population History” (subscription reqd.) all week, but have been too busy (note: a document full of supplementary information is freely available here, though you need to be able to understand the way they do statistical analysis to make sense of all the charts).
As this is genetics, one would expect some comments from Razib, and indeed, one is not disappointed: here are Razib Khan’s comments on the study (see also this follow up post, where Razib creates his own plots based on the study’s data). The study gives data that relates to quite a number of different things, but the takeaway points seem to be : (1) South Indian and North Indian populations are genetically fairly mixed, and are (1a) more closely related to each other than to any other genetic/ethnic group; (2) the “Ancestral South Indian” genetic type is projected to most closely resemble a nearly extinct tribe in the Andaman Islands, the Onge (which is not to say that the Onge are themselves the “origin” of the South Indian gene pool); and (3) caste groups in the same regions of India show surprisingly high genetic difference in some cases, suggesting that caste endogamy within individual regions is a rather ancient practice.
According to Razib at least, the biggest limitation of this study is the small sample size (in the low hundreds). It seems clear that all of the conclusions being drawn from this study would be on stronger ground if they could go back and multiply the number of samples by 10.
Finally, there is a good, not overly technical synopsis of the Nature study at the Times of India: here. The TOI focuses on point (1) more than the others:
`This paper rewrites history… there is no north-south divide,” Lalji Singh, former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a co-author of the study, said at a press conference here on Thursday.
Senior CCMB scientist Kumarasamy Thangarajan said there was no truth to the Aryan-Dravidian theory as they came hundreds or thousands of years after the ancestral north and south Indians had settled in India.
It is probably a mistake to read too much into this study, or even to accept the co-author’s bald claim that “there is no North-South divide” (Razib points out that it’s not that there aren’t genetic differences between North and South Indians — there are — but they fall on a gradient, rather than a solid barrier). Still, the study might have implications for South Indian activists who articulate a separatist “Dravidian” agenda, as well as North Indian “Aryan Invasion” proponents, who fantasize that they are really European. The only people who are really genetically “pure” on the Indian subcontinent are, it appears, the Onge.
PS — there is a difference between having a “white person” complex and a white skin complex. The former isn’t that common a desi trait. The latter? An issue for discussion.
So change your position, and flagellate away.
rahul, if you want us to unclench or fists first you must extend your hand
“our” not “or”
That’s what she said.
PS — there is a difference between having a “white person” complex and a white skin complex.
Yeah, but that gets back to, is that any more unique than skinny girl, beautiful girl, symmetrical face, tall girl (I’m a girl so hence the gender use but can refer to men to), top-educated ivy snob girl, very rich girl, inferiority complexes. Skin color I believe world-wide has been more “political”, more defining of “political identity” among nations, so that’s where that uniqueness comes in, despit, the fact that desis, although on average are dark, come in all colors. Anyways I don’t generally flagellate over these issues, except the skinny part is getting to me as an individual and not as my Indian cultural trait (lol), b/c as I get older I have to really work to keep my weight off – but that’s a whole other topic.
That’s what she said. lol, reading these one-liners from some of you folks really entertains me at work.
What the hell? Are Indians the new self-hating Jews?
I feel that we are dealing with two partially related, but independent narratives here. The first is of the urban, semi-educated moron, who has heard of the greatness of the white nations,has a partial, romanticised knowledge of the colonial times, believes in the theory of the martial races, and has no reasons not to believe what the NCERT text books taught him about the AIT. This chap desperately wants to advertise any or perceived Aryan fiber in his being, to fit in with the those he sees as truly cool. He wants to bask in the reflected glory of the great white light, even though in his heart he knows that it is not his own. The second narrative is more traditional, followed by people for whom the idea of white racial superiority is irrelevant, who will probably spend all their lives without coming across a single white person, who are largely insulated from western cultural influences and no motivation to pretend to be anything but themselves. And yet, they have a proclivity for fairer complexion. I think that the fair skin colour that they prefer is a light brown one, well within the spectrum of desi skin phenotype. And this phenomenon is itself not universal, probably more prevalent in the North. The origins are unclear to me.
I feel that we are dealing with two partially related, but independent narratives here. The first is of the urban, semi-educated moron, who has heard of the greatness of the white nations,has a partial, romanticised knowledge of the colonial times, believes in the theory of the martial races, and has no reasons not to believe what the NCERT text books taught him about the AIT. This chap desperately wants to advertise any or perceived Aryan fiber in his being, to fit in with the those he sees as truly cool. He wants to bask in the reflected glory of the great white light, even though in his heart he knows that it is not his own. The second narrative is more traditional, followed by people for whom the idea of white racial superiority is irrelevant, who will probably spend all their lives without coming across a single white person, who are largely insulated from western cultural influences and no motivation to pretend to be anything but themselves. And yet, they have a proclivity for fairer complexion. I think that the fair skin colour that they prefer is a light brown one, well within the spectrum of desi skin phenotype. And this phenomenon is itself not universal, probably more prevalent in the North. The origins are unclear to me.
PS, Thanks for sharing your experiences with East Asians. I guess it is a matter of degrees of self-esteem. No one Asian group is completely free of it. Some perhaps more than others. The modern world is dominated by the post colonial experience that I am not sure we can reasonably figure out where it started like someone else above asked.
We do know that Mueller who coined “Aryan”” and Caldwell who coined “Dravidian” meant them to mean a groups languages that seemed to have some similarities. Both words were from Sanskrit (Arya – a person with a noble characteristic, and Dravida – meaning South; see #19-22), and were not used to describe languages until the 19th century. We know that during that time in Europe race-pseudo science, despite objections by philologists like Mueller, started to use the terms to mean race.
What I find strange is that “Dravidian” group of languages include languages not only found in the South, but even in the North India and Central Asia. In addition Finnish, Hungarian and other Uralic languages are supposedly related. To me it seems that both linguistic branches are Indo-European – just different areas of both Europe and India and Central Asia. Finland has more blond and blue eyed population than just about any other, yet Finnish is related to “Dravidian” languages.
107 · Sameer on October 6, 2009 5:44 PM · Direct link What I find strange is that “Dravidian” group of languages include languages not only found in the South, but even in the North India and Central Asia. In addition Finnish, Hungarian and other Uralic languages are supposedly related. To me it seems that both linguistic branches are Indo-European – just different areas of both Europe and India and Central Asia. Finland has more blond and blue eyed population than just about any other, yet Finnish is related to “Dravidian” languages.
Sameer:
Get over it! Now YOU’RE fantasizing about being a blond haired-blue eyed Finn. Dravidian family of languages are NOT at all related to Uralic family of languages. However, you are correct that Dravidian languagaes are spoken by indigenous North, North Eastern, central Indians, as well as 2.22 Million Brahvi people of Pakistan (pop. 2,000,000), Iran (200,000), and even AFghanistan (20,000). These Brahvis identify themselves as Baluchi people. NOTE: Not all Baluchis are Brahvi speakers. Only 15% of Baluchis are Brahvi (or Dravidian language speakers).
This language is a Dravidian language like Malayalam, but they are so mutually unintelligible (kind of like Russian and Bengali).
first is of the urban, semi-educated moron, who has heard of the greatness of the white nations,has a partial, romanticised knowledge of the colonial times
There was a deliciously funny and direct post written by ANNA to a “scythian” individual who fits the above description – you may enjoy: http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004496.html
There is some speculation that they are related, but the evidence is far from conclusive – if there is a relationship it goes back to the distant past. There are a number of theoretized links between the Dravidian language family and others (Afro-Asiatic, Altaic), but nothing convincing.
“Finland has more blond and blue eyed population than just about any other, yet Finnish is related to “Dravidian” languages.”
True. But the Finns are also closely related with the Chinese. You find mongoloid features amongst the Finns more than in any other European nation. Strange isn’t it.
Krishna iconography has unfortunately been monopolized by ISKCON, and most of the serious ISKCON fundamentalists are white. If you check ISKCON illustrations you couldn’t tell Krishna apart from a white person. Same holds true for all of the inhabitants of Mathura, which becomes an East European town going by the origins of the dasas and dasis(?)
south indians are actually realated to our martian overlords.
That is not it at all. You missed my point. The point was to show the mistake of expanding language similarities to mean race. http://keywen.com/en/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Dravidian http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/4737/dravid1.html
That is the problem since race pseudo science took over initial linguists discoveries of language that made no conclusion about race. It is like we can’t group languages even today without seeing them through the prism of 19th century race pseudo science.
That is not it at all. You missed my point. The point was to show the mistake of expanding language similarities to mean race. http://keywen.com/en/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Dravidian http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/4737/dravid1.html
That is the problem since race pseudo science took over initial linguists discoveries of language that made no conclusion about race. It is like we can’t group languages even today without seeing them through the prism of 19th century race pseudo science.
That is not it at all. You missed my point. The point was to show the mistake of expanding language similarities to mean race. http://keywen.com/en/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Dravidian http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/4737/dravid1.html
That is the problem since race pseudo science took over initial linguists discoveries of language that made no conclusion about race. It is like we can’t group languages even today without seeing them through the prism of 19th century race pseudo science.
That is not it at all. You missed my point. The point was to show the mistake of expanding language similarities to mean race. http://keywen.com/en/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Dravidian
That is the problem since race pseudo science took over initial linguists discoveries of language that made no conclusion about race. It is like we can’t group languages even today without seeing them through the prism of 19th century race pseudo science.
The connection with “Dravidian” languages with Finnish is something that was being explored. Dravidian Languages vs Finno-Ugrian http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/4737/dravid1.html
Maybe there is a definitive connection, maybe not. I think it is good to think fresh, and test other possibilities that could be better than what we have right now. Regardless, language groups does not mean same race. Linguists did not mean that when they first began to group, and that is what should be kept in mind today.
Is it really? Perhaps it is the way race has been thought about in recent years is what is off. Race is more complex than we think. African Bushmen also have features that seem East Asian. Perhaps a population with more blond blue eyed people who also have more monogloid features than other European groups whose language could be related to Dravidian languages is what is normal.
Then again, White people turned Jesus and all the Biblical heroes from being Arab/Sephardic looking to being brown-haired Caucasians. It happens.
Apparently Fins are not the only ones close to Asians:
“To be part of a different race, at the very least a ethnic group must be part of a different race. The haplogroup overlap is so extensive that to argue that people of the same haplogroup are part of different races proves the Left to be correct: race is a social construct. Either we go with biology or race is a social construct where we choose who’s white and who isn’t based on how much we like them.
The Arab Y-DNA is also similar to that of Europeans. Not only do they belong to the same J haplogroup as southern Europeans, but J is actually closer to I (northern Europe) than the West European R-haplogroup.
West European R is actually grouped together with Asian haplogroups, Q, N and O: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I_(Y-DNA) An argument could legitimately be made that J is “more Caucasian†than R. You can have no doubt that this is how white nationalists would interpret things if J instead of R was grouped with Asians.
I don’t subscribe to that line of reasoning, but R-haplogroup people should really be careful when they judge who’s white and who’s not because scientifically-speaking they are the closest ones to being non-white.” http://ethnicgenome.wordpress.com/
http://ethnicgenome.wordpress.com is run by a white nationalist jew. fyi.
A White nationalist jew? How do you know that?
“Then again, White people turned Jesus and all the Biblical heroes from being Arab/Sephardic looking to being brown-haired Caucasians. It happens.”
Actually, European painters in Italy and Holland (especially) often did go to the Jewish quarters for models for their Biblical subjects. They were pretty good at capturing a “Jewish” look, too. Still, their friends and the best paid local models probably did get to be Jesus and Mary. Now the mass produced pics that ended up on cottage walls, well, more artistic license in evidence.
As far as the usual phenotype of the Jews at that time–the definition and identity has not been constant. A mid-20th c. writer, James Michener, wrote a book called the Source, based on the succession of people who lived around the archeological site now in Akka, Israel, over the past several thousand years. One of his stories is a fascinating and painful tale of a Jew who wants to compete in the earliest Greek Olympics and must un-do his circumcision, Greeks being hooked on the in-tact body. Ouch. He did his research about ethnicities, maybe because he was an adopted child and curious about all that. One of his characters was a blond “Hebrew” who was descended from Hittites whose origins are uncertain, at least as of 1965 when Michener was writing. I don’t know–were they “aryans?” Anyway, supposedly he based his characters on research, but it’s been a long time since I read it. Still, it was an interesting interruption of stereotypical expectations. There were also Indians who crossed paths with the hebrews and even in those days, India was considered “exotic.” Sorry. It was. St. Thomas the Apostle went there, as you probably know.
Any way, there have always been a mixture of physical types in the middle east. It’s a mixing bowl.
“True. But the Finns are also closely related with the Chinese. You find mongoloid features amongst the Finns more than in any other European nation. Strange isn’t it.”
Have you actually been there? Just curious. I mean I’m sure there are some with mildly epicanthic folds and a flattish face, but “closely related to the Chinese” stretches credibility. Because I know quite a few and I can’t tell them from Scandis, or, for that matter, from Belgians (where I once lived.) All those northerners look similar to me.
Yes, they are close to the Chinese and many Finns have Mongoloid features (High cheekbones, smaller eyes hand in hand with blue-eyes, blond hair)
” We have identified a new T–>C transition on the human Y chromosome. C-allele chromosomes have been found only in a subset of the populations from Asia and northern Europe and reach their highest frequencies in Yakut, Buryats, and Finns. Examination of the microsatellite haplotypes of the C-allele chromosomes suggests that the mutation occurred recently in Asia. The Y chromosome thus provides both information about population relationships in Asia and evidence for a substantial paternal genetic contribution of Asians to northern European populations such as the Finns “
Furthermore, Finns and Mordvinians also had higher frequencies (9-10%) than west Europeans (French and Swedes), consistent with an Asiatic Mongoloid influence known to exist in Finno-Ugrian tribes.
Link: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1712423
The Finns you know must be from the Eastern parts that are closer to the Swedes. Mongoloid influences go as far down as the white Fatherland. Many southern/southern-eastern Germans show what is called the ‘Alpine nose’, a crab apple shape nose close to the mongoloid nose. Several have high cheekbones too. These people are different from the Saxons in the north though culturally German. Some show the ‘Mongoloid Spot’ that disappears upon reaching puberty, and is one of the surest markers of Mongoloid ancestry. 90% of mongoloid children have that spot at some point after birth (Probably from Hun invasions, or something related. Hun was incidentally a pejorative used for the Germans in WW1)
“The Finns you know must be from the Eastern parts that are closer to the Swedes. Mongoloid influences go as far down as twhite Fatherland. Many southern/southern-eastern Germans show what is called the ‘Alpine nose’, a crab apple shape nose close to the mongoloid nose. Several have high cheekbones too. These people are different from the Saxons in the north though culturally German. Some show the ‘Mongoloid Spot’ that disappears upon reaching puberty, and is one of the surest markers of Mongoloid ancestry. 90% of mongoloid children have that spot at some point after birth (Probably from Hun invasions, or something related. Hun was incidentally a pejorative used for the Germans in WW1)
Could be. They talked about their home towns and regions but I didn’t absorb too much since I never got to travel there. I remember reading Magic Mountain, a Thomas Mann book (German writer I had to read in the States as an Indian taking English lit) and one of the characters reminisced about a Swabian boy in school who had blue eyes of a vaguely Asiatic cast. Mann also made allusions to Indian cultural influences of his day (early 20th c.) Germans and Hungarians both claimed some “Hun” ancestry but it’s sort of in the same vein as desis claim Iranian or Scythian or whatever. That is to say, occasionally evident but hardly enough to claim them as “Uncle!” Come to think of it though, maybe that accounts for the German/Japanese alliance during WWII. Once in the United States, people of dissonant heritages seem to forget about past conflicts, as long as their points of commonality are strong enough. I think desis are getting to be like that too, though I think the differences among ourselves may be greater.
it’s like reading a 1930s physical anthropology text now!
re: ethnic genome, he links to my stuff now and then. get a pro-white but anti-anti-semitic sense from his posts (i.e., jews are white, whites rock).
anyway, no one should focus on one gene or study anymore. like so many of the comments above. these newer studies look at the a non-trivial fraction of the total genome. (hundreds of thousands of SNPs is still a tiny portion of 3 billion base pairs, but you might not get much more statistical power going alway up to the whole genome for these sorts of studies).
“it’s like reading a 1930s physical anthropology text now!”
givus a break. We’re not all geneticists. Just putting the haplotypes and genome sequences to places and faces. Literature just expresses what people perceive about these matters, and I wouldn’t offer it as some sort of scientific proof, but better literature does often describe society and the people in it quite profoundly. I don’t see how you could study “race” and not study literature and history, whether Indian or European or any place else that has had a literary tradition. unsci aside: My mom claims she can tell who comes from her village just by looks, even when they’re wearing parkas. She’s USUALLY right. Who knows what they’ll be saying about our ultra-modern beliefs in a another century. It’s when people start with the “my nose is better than your nose” that troubles arise. Personally, I never believed in the “north/south divide” anyway.
· “Puliogre in da USA on October 8, 2009 10:04 AM · Direct link south indians are actually realated to our martian overlords.”
Now THAT’s a profound observation. It explains everything.
My mom claims she can tell who comes from her village just by looks, even when they’re wearing parkas.
you read the part about between-population differences? brownz are way more different than they “should” be from place to place…. (inbreeding is another word)
for those of you interested in finnetics, map for you.
some talk about indian muslims earlier. new paper, Traces of sub-Saharan and Middle Eastern lineages in Indian Muslim populations.
1) south asian muslims are mostly south asian
2) some middle eastern ancestry is detectable, in north india it is all iranian & central asian. among the mapplas of kerala some arab is detectable too.
I’m a malu and by the way I’m black as coal. I guess the only people I could claim ancestry to are Africans. I love being Indian and I can’t imagine being anything else. There are some “white” people in my family too and they could care less about my skin colour. I think thats the way it should be for all Indians, regardless of physical features.
Mathai, skin colour isn’t the only indicator for ancestral origin.
Correction: Skin colour alone isn’t THE indicator of ancestral origin.
Just curious, how many of you are population geneticists ? How many of you have had papers in AJHG ? How many of you are in a tenure track position in population genetics or statistical genetics ?
Disclaimer – I am not.
“you read the part about between-population differences? brownz are way more different than they “should” be from place to place…. (inbreeding is another word)”
Check. My mom always did think the couples looked suspiciously alike considering cousin marriage was taboo. There’s more ways to inbreed than first or second cousins.
@ KolaNutTechie:
Look, the Finns and Sami (Lapps) certainly are derived from Siberian stock and have some features that could be described as Mongoloid. But “closely related with the Chinese” is just silly.
Some East Asians are hairier than others. Is that an indication of being closely related to Europeans? No. There is enormous variation within geographical so-called “races”, and alpine noses or high cheekbones do not necessarily have anything to do with East Asian genes. I’m not saying you are wrong, but things don’t always fit the boxes that easily.
Mongoloid features in Eastern Europe are often attributed to contact with Central Asian peoples, who have invaded, interbred and settled all over the region at different times in history. I read one study once that said the high rate of alcoholism among Russians was related to Mongol genes. Not saying I believe that, just saying.
Even seen a Hazara from Afghanistan? Totally Mongol-looking.
Hey Eurasian, I actually agree with most of all you say. Being related to the Chinese I meant overlap with the Mongoloids.
A. Hitler’s oil painting of the Mother Mary and Baby Christ from his early years. The Jewish baby Christ could pass for a Dane.
http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/politics/twoartists.htm
@Eurasian Most Hazaras are of Mongoloid origin – have you ever met an Uzbek or a Tajik? (A large portion of Afghanistan is Tajik, while the Pushtuns are only about 60%). Af-Pak has the most diverse gene pool since it has traditionally been the melting pot for cultures (via trade routes) over several centuries.
All said, the Armenian bank manager pulled out her son’s photograph and voila! we had a doppelganger for someone with an Iyer heritage. Not implying I am anything but Magadhan in origin, but just saying. 😉