New Data from the World of Genetics: “There is no North-South divide”?

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.

140 thoughts on “New Data from the World of Genetics: “There is no North-South divide”?

  1. The only people who are really genetically “pure” on the Indian subcontinent are, it appears, the Onge.

    How you define genetic “purity” depends entirely on where you want to draw arbitrary lines. I would be willing to surmise that much of the North/South genetic divide likely has to do with who they traded and interacted with. The South had dealings with everyone from East Africa to Japan through maritime trade while the North had a lot of interaction through the Silk Road as well as Central Asian invaders. That alone could account for substantial genetic variation and is a more likely culprit than any imagined “Aryan/Dravidian divide.”

    At the end of the day, however, it’s not genotype that makes an ethnicity. It’s the shared culture and norms that bind people together. The fixation on biology kind of misses how people actually relate to each other.

  2. So I have to stop telling people that I am an Aryan? That sucks! This is really going to disappoint my girlfriend’s Nazi parents.

  3. So I have to stop telling people that I am an Aryan? That sucks! This is really going to disappoint my girlfriend’s Nazi parents.

    In Sanskrit “Aryan” just means “Noble.”

    So at best, saying you’re aryan is just kind of self-aggrandizing.

  4. The Aryans were associated with unwashedness and savagery even before the Nazis. Their contributions are mostly in the field of mumbo jumbo philosophy with no scientific value. If there is indeed a racial Aryan seed one can see its effectiveness in debilitating rational thought in the allegedly “Aryan” Urheimats like Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. Even today North (West) Indian masculinity is too testosterone centered and it lags in all development indexes. After all Indra was known for his sexual potency, boastfulness and humongous intake of aphrodisiac!

    Just observe how traffic brawls on Gurgaon streets quickly degenerate into name dropping, maa-behening and quite often feature threats of violence and guns. Gurgaon was named after the supposed birth place of the Great Arya Dronacharya.

    Great news that we are all mixed blooded mutts and not that different. I hope it will cure some people of their fixations with racial ideals to begin with, and then they can move on to try and becoming more well rounded human beings and comprehend the more sophisticated philosophical systems that have evolved since the spear chuckers died out.

  5. Who exactly are these “North Indian Aryan Invasion” proponents? The BJP/RSS prefers an ancestral Vedic origin. The idea of extra-Indian Aryans originated through Europeans, and is supported by tribals and Dravidians. No matter what the genetic evidence says, the Dravidian, adivasi, and Hindutva movements will go on.

  6. Razib, for all his erudition and merits, does seem to have an axe to grind with India. All his posts on India tend to have a pessimism bias. Maybe it has to do with being a Bangladeshi in absentia. Please forgive me for trying to isolate his bias and thinking about it too loudly.

  7. Rajib has this interesting comment (comment 13 of http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/09/the_politics_of_genetic_histor.php#comments): “the two-stream model is a hypothesis. my own hunch now is that it’s probably wrong. i suspect there was one stream which split somewhere in northwest india, leading to west and east eurasian clades. then later the west eurasians came back to india (ANI) is what i would bet…….i wouldn’t be surprised if the dominant signal of ANI had more to do with the dravidian expansion than the indo-aryan one (which may have been a condary overlay).”

  8. Who exactly are these “North Indian Aryan Invasion” proponents? The BJP/RSS prefers an ancestral Vedic origin.

    The colonialists and white nationalists are the most vocal proponents of a so called ‘Aryan’ invasion, with dravidian/dalit extremists in the opposite order for the same reasons though with inverted morality. In the Colonialist version NIs seen as ersatz versions of Whites, but only ersatz and for reason of expediency to explain everything from India’s cultural institutions and economic growth. In the dravidian/dalit version the NI invaders were more well defined whites of the blue-eyed variety (though blue eyes are not found anywhere except Salman Rushdie novels) to fit in distinctly as the “other”. Some fringe NIs and haters also seem to fall for that narrative. You find those types overrepresented amongst Khalistanis and Pakistanis (Who are muslim NIs seeking racial differentiation for greater legitimacy) The BJP/RSS Hinduism doesn’t go beyond 19th century Savarkarism is too much of a mutating politically convenient hodge-podge to be checked for consistency or any “core” ideology beyond protecting cows and the honor of Indian (aka Hindu) women. I would agree with you though they really never bother about Aryan racial purity as far as paranoid dravidian ideologues of like rank like to extrapolate.

  9. interesting topic, too bad it is soooo overlaid with the bakwaas of identity politics or communalism as it is called in india. While considerable credit should be given to european racists of the 19th century and the british need to prove indian cultural and racial inferiority, it is nevertheless sad how much of this is internalized within indian politics and culture.

    And, what can one say of the conflation of “aryan” (based on use of indo-european language) versus the idea this was a race?? Its a total mess with people back projecting all kinds of nonsense from current times. I mostly communicate in english, does it mean that I am racially anglo-saxon?? chinese is an increasingly important commercial language, does it mean that all these folks have east asian ancestry.

    I am happy we are mostly mongrels, and with sound scientific basis to support this! Maybe we can now focus on the future instead of the mythical past.

  10. No matter what the genetic evidence says, the Dravidian, adivasi, and Hindutva movements will go on.

    Maybe I am missing the argument, but wouldn’t Hindutva folks be thrilled about this because they are the proponents the “Out of India” theory which states that Indians (whether Indo-European or Dravidian language-speakers) were indigenous to India from the start, and there was no “European” invasion? Maybe they claim that the Vedic people took their language and culture to other lands outside of India, but they would reject the theory that Dravidians were “enslaved” by Vedic ancestors that invaded the land. And honestly, the group I have heard being the strongest “Aryan Invasion” proponents are not North Indians so much as Tamil Brahmins, who claim that they are Aryans and all other Tamilians are Dravidians, or something.

  11. What of this guys J2b2 Y-DNA thoughts. Racist opinions, but science seems correct. < a href=http://mudaliars.110mb.com/genetics.htm>Scythian Origin of Mudaliars

  12. Amardeep,

    I think third party quoting can be misleading sometimes.

    Here is the abstract of the study from the Nature:

    Abstract

    India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyse 25 diverse groups in India to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the ‘Ancestral North Indians’ (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, whereas the other, the ‘Ancestral South Indians’ (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in most Indian groups, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the indigenous Andaman Islanders are unique in being ASI-related groups without ANI ancestry. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years owing to endogamy. We therefore predict that there will be an excess of recessive diseases in India, which should be possible to screen and map genetically.

    From Nature 461, 489-494 (24 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08365; Received 21 April 2009; Accepted 5 August 200, Reconstructing Indian population history, David Reich1,2,5 , Kumarasamy Thangaraj3,5, Nick Patterson2,5, Alkes L. Price2,4,5 & Lalji Singh3

  13. Maybe they claim that the Vedic people took their language and culture to other lands outside of India, but they would reject the theory that Dravidians were “enslaved” by Vedic ancestors that invaded the land.

    Every Indian group has a narrative of enslavement, from your Hindu nationalists vis-a-vis the Muslims to the Tamils who can whing endlessly about Vedic colonization. As if being colonized was the solo right of the Indic peoples. I guess a bit of Genghis Khan in India would have been a sobering effect on our persecution complex and endless whinging about history. The Russians lost 23,954,000 people in WW2, and read up on social churns in Chinese history to get a sense of scale. For all their vileness, I doubt any Brahmin institution carried out mass physical violence against so called lower castes on any significant scale (And please, I am non-Brahmin) Whinging about history needs to stop and this study is very positive for those ends.

  14. What’s up with all this “European invasion” reference… I watched “The Story of India” series recently… and good ole Michael Wood (though he butchers names of places and people in India) made a pretty convincing argument that the “Aryans” (or whatever you want to call them) may have come from Turkmenistan, which is in Central Asia…

    Archeological digs found similar burial methods, similar treatment of horses, carts etc (since horses were not indigenous to India) and also similar types of special (ahem… like special brownies) drinks enjoyed by many.

    Has anyone else read about this possible migration from Turkmenistan?

  15. Has anyone else read about this possible migration from Turkmenistan?

    Babur and the Mughals came from the Fergana valley (present day Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) in 1526, long after the Kushan empire in the 1st century. There are big gaps in history between the Indus valley civilization(2600BCE-1900BCE) to the Buddha’s (563BCE) and Mahavira’s (599BCE) times, which is were the controversy centers. But there is no collective memory of any migration among any groups. Turkmenistan was still desert as far back as history goes.

  16. The South had dealings with everyone from East Africa to Japan through maritime trade while the North had a lot of interaction through the Silk Road as well as Central Asian invaders. That alone could account for substantial genetic variation and is a more likely culprit than any imagined “Aryan/Dravidian divide.”

    if the south indians had dealings with these ancient peoples, those ancient peoples did not have any relationship to the current peoples of east africa, japan or central asia. we know this because the genetic relationship of south indians to these people = zero (excluding some siddi groups with clear recent african ancestry). re: sample size. let me clarify and say i should have put the onus on representativeness the 100+ individuals are biased to tribals and UP & andhara pradesh caste groups. i’m pretty sure if you included assamese & bengalis there i would be a significant east asian dimension discernible (though minor in comparison to ANI and ASI).

    any “out of india” theory has a serious problem: all north indian groups have a non-trivial proportion of “ancestral south indian. the “ancestral south indian” is found in only one major non-indian group, gypsies. no one else. in contrast, the “ancestral north indian” clusters much more closely to west eurasian populations. that implies a lot of separation between these two “indian” groups at some point. when you use methods of population differentiation which don’t have any explicit hypothesis or model (e.g., ‘structure’) indians tend to be more like west eurasians than east eurasians (though in between), and these results would imply that that affinity is purely due to the ANI (the ASI seem likely to be a distant branch of east eurasians, which is why indian mtDNA tends to be so ‘eastern’ i think).

    there’s a lot in these data that don’t add up. a lot of what we think is wrong. not quite sure personally what is, or isn’t, wrong.

    Razib, for all his erudition and merits, does seem to have an axe to grind with India. All his posts on India tend to have a pessimism bias. Maybe it has to do with being a Bangladeshi in absentia. Please forgive me for trying to isolate his bias and thinking about it too loud

    most of my non-white international readers have stupid nationalistic viewpoints and i get tired of them sometimes. asians are the worst about this (including indians in this set). latin americans are usually angered that they aren’t quite as white as they may wish to be (e.g., brazilians and argentines). the koreans are the most bizarrely persistent about their weird claims. indians just assume i’m an anti-hindu muslim and leave 🙂

  17. LinZi, I was so annoyed by that Michael Wood documentary (well, the first episode, where he discusses Aryans) that I stopped watching it. He just reiterates all the arguments of the Victorians and never, not even once, even summarizes the other sides of the debate. Because that’s just what the Aryan Migration Theory is: a debate. All Wood says is that there is some “controversy” and leaves it at that – he never explores the other side of the story and to me that was extremely irresponsible.

    So don’t go quoting Michael Wood as if he’s the most credible source on Indian history. He’s just another historian with an axe to grind.

  18. "I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair, nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language...to me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar."
    (Max Mueller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, 1888, pg 120) 
    
  19. “Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814 -1891) was an Evangelist Missionary & Orientalist of the British Colonial era. To aid his mission, he nativised Christianity by adopting a teleological approach to re-classify Indian languages inspired by scientific racial theories that was popular amongst the European intellectuals in the 19th century. The result, “The Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages”, (1856, revised edition 1875 ) laid the theoretical foundation of the political, academic and ‘revivalist’ movement that came to dominate Dravidian nationalism in the twentieth century. It also significantly dampened the arising nationalist & Indian freedom movements.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Caldwell

    “During the 19th century, many European missionaries and imperialists traveled the world seeking conquests and converts. One country which saw a great deal of this kind of exploration was India (including what is now Pakistan). Some of the missionaries were also antiquarians by avocation, and one such fellow was the French missionary Abbé Dubois (1770-1848). His manuscript on Indian culture makes some unusual reading today; the good Abbé tried to fit in what he understood of Noah and the Great Flood with what he was reading in the great literature of India. It was not a good fit, but he did describe Indian civilization at the time, and provided some pretty bad translations of the literature.

    It was the Abbé’s work, translated into English by the British East India Company in 1897 and with a laudatory preface by German archaeologist Max Muller, that formed the basis of the Aryan invasion story–not the Vedic manuscripts themselves. Scholars had long noted the similarities between Sanskrit, the ancient language in which the classical Vedic texts are written, and other Latin-based languages such as French and Italian. And when the first excavations at the large Indus Valley site of Mohenjo Daro were completed early in the 20th century, and it was recognized as a truly advanced civilization, a civilization not mentioned in the Vedic manuscripts, among some circles this was considered ample evidence that an invasion of people related to the peoples of Europe had occurred, destroying the earlier civilization and creating the second great civilization of India.” http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=151674

  20. More by Max Mueller on what he meant way back in the 19th century for those of us now in the 21st century.

    “ARYAN , a term which has been used in a confusing variety of significations by different philologists. By Muller especially it was employed as a convenient short term for the whole body of languages more commonly known as Indo-European (q.v.) or Indo-Germanic . In the same way Max Muller used Aryas as a general term for the speakers of such languages, as in his book published in 1888, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas . “Aryas are those who speak Aryan languages, whatever their colour, whatever their blood . In calling them Aryas we predicate nothing of them except that the grammar of their language is Aryan ” (p . 245) . It is to be observed, therefore, that Max Muller is careful to avoid any ethnological signification. The Aryas are those who speak Aryan without regard to the question whether Aryan is their hereditary language or not . As he says still more definitely elsewhere in the same work (p . 1 zo), ” I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language . The same applies to Hindus, Greeks, Romans Germans, Celts and Slaves . When I speak of them I commit myself to no anatomical characteristics .

    The blue-eyed and fair-haired Scandinavians may have been conquerors or conquered, they may have adopted the language of their darker lords or their subjects, or vice versa . I assert nothing beyond their language when I call them Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts and Slaves; and in that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians . . . To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.”

  21. All Indian groups try their absolute best to distinguish themselves from the “other” Indians or “Indians” in general. Another words, absolutely every community tries to convince themselves and their non-Indian peers that their community/caste is “not really Indian” or “not like the other Indians.”

    Most Indian communities are guilty of this, and every now and then, I’m sure that you (and I) have done our share of finger-pointing and self-exclusivity. Here is a bit from wikipedia about the Scythian origins of the Nairs, which is a community from Kerala.

    “The Nairs have also been classified as of Indo-Scythian (Saka) origin as well as being linked to the Nagas.” (Source: Raman Menon, K. “The Scythian Origin of the Nairs”, Malabar Quarterly Review, Vol. I, No. 2, June 1902). NOTE: That even the source is a “Menon” which is a type of Nair, so naturally, he has a Scythian fantasy.

    I have a Marathi Muslim friend, and he surprised me by saying that “Chee! We’re not Indians. We’re Arabs!” Now, he may have been joking/exaggerating. But the 2 Romanians with us probably took him seriously. Moreover, on another day, he said that “If I visit J&K or Afghanistan, it may be safe for me, because I’m a Pathan.” Ahem…Arabs and Pathans/Pashtuns are not the same thing. Hello? So he’s done some this “I’m not a real Indian bit.”

    I had this one Hindu Kashmiri guy who looked like any old standard-old-Indian guy from Madhya Pradesh. That day that we met, he told one of my South Indian friends in a friendly way that “your people are ‘pure’ Indians, but my people are not. We’re mixed with Scandinavians….” The Kashmiris said it with pride that he’s “not a real Indian”, and he said it politely. Hello? Those South Indian “Pure Indians” are dying for your people, and they don’t want to be marginalized or patronized as being racially inferior.

    Even on Wikipedia, amongst Punjabis, the punjabi authors on Wikipedia have sent a convoluted, disjointed, and confused message about their identity/origins. They differentiate communities that are the same and that does NOT need to be differentiated, such as the Rajputs, Khatris, Auroras, and Kambojas. Why else do they have same names? These Punjabi authors seemed to have fantasized about an Afghani origin as if Afghanistan is the center of all high-culture and intellect of the world. Sure, the Afghanis are fair-skinned, and Indians salivate at depigmented folks.

    Finally also from Wiki: “Recent genetic studies amongst Iyers of Madurai reveal close proximity to populations from Eurasian steppes of Central Asia” (Source: K. Balakrishnan, R. M. Pitchappan, K. Suzuki, U. Sankar Kumar, K. Tokunaga (1996). “HLA affinities of Iyers, a Brahmin population of Tamil Nadu, South India.”. Wayne State University Press. Retrieved 2008-08-19). Once again, the proponents of this “study” are Brahmins themselves who want their identity to be distinct.

    Padma Lakshmi also did this: She always talked of her ‘Brahmin’ identity but not so much her Tamil/Malayalee identity. Also, when it suited her, she was a vegetarian on her travel show to Spain; she was a Hindu when it was economical/appealing for Westerners; and then she ate beef like a slut on a commercial; and now she had a baby out of wedlock. What a hypocritical Scythian-wannabe.

  22. 17 · razib on October 3, 2009 4:30 AM · “most of my non-white international readers have stupid nationalistic viewpoints and i get tired of them sometimes. asians are the worst about this (including indians in this set). latin americans are usually angered that they aren’t quite as white as they may wish to be (e.g., brazilians and argentines). the koreans are the most bizarrely persistent about their weird claims. indians just assume i’m an anti-hindu muslim and leave :-)”

    Very interesting. I didn’t realize that Koreans had weird claims. Please explain.

  23. Maybe we need a song like James Brown did for black Americans: “Say it loud! I’m Indian and I’m proud!”

    Ah the multifaceted ramifications of the Indian racial inferiority complex…

  24. The Kashmiris believe in the opposite of this report cited above. According to Wikipedia about the Kashmiris: “The Austroloid, proto-Austroloid and Alpanoid race remnants, which lingered on in remote regions, settling into endocrine social groups in India, and very often recognized as the aborigine tribes of India have a specific racial content and are not related to the early people of Kashmir. There were no aborigine people in Kashmir, and Nagas and Pisachas have no aboriginal history.”

    However, these same Kashmiris also feel that they are “the purest species of Aryans”, but ironically, their language is not really classified as an Indo-Aryan language. It’s classified as a Dardic language, which is a sister language to Iranian and Indo-Aryan.

    Why does every Indian community aspire to become like barbarians of Afghanistan/Arabia? Just because they are fair-skinned, I suppose.

  25. Not every community does. I am not sure I would call Afghanistanis and Arabs barbarians. That seems a bit harsh.

  26. I must say though, every time I hear an Indian Muslim claim Arab ancestry I roll my eyes. I have heard this from various South Asian Muslims, which seems peculiar to me.

  27. 28 · Sameer on October 3, 2009 2:01 PM · Direct link I must say though, every time I hear an Indian Muslim claim Arab ancestry I roll my eyes. I have heard this from various South Asian Muslims, which seems peculiar to me.

    However, I remember reading on a white dating site, one malayalee girl (Indo-American) identified her people as having mixed bloods of Arabs, Jews, and Europeans since it’s a coastal trade area. She was a Hindu.

    Sikhs claim all kinds of different stories on their pedigree.

    Brahmins are from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, and Georgia/Chechnya, but not Andhra Pradesh. Heaven forbid that they are from Andhra or related to Africans!

    So everyone in India claims to be non-Indian and they have data on nasal and cranial index to substantiate their claims.

  28. Yeah, the origin stories of most caste groups that you find online are ridiculous. The greatest tribute for them is to be called a “handsome race” in some British ethnographic study from the 19th century, they usually have that in bold.

  29. So everyone in India claims to be non-Indian and they have data on nasal and cranial index to substantiate their claims.

    That’s 19th century race pseudo-science for ya, which also talked about Jews having bigger noses and being part of the racially inferior stock of Semites unlike the superior Aryan race of Europeans. Ironically, Indian Muslims (at least North Indians) claiming an Arab, Semitic, origin are putting themselves lower on this race-pseudoscience racial hierarchy.

  30. I think we have a long way to go before we are happy just to be Indians like our far ancestors were before all sorts of colonialism.

  31. Speaking of “genes” how come Indians and Chinese people look nothing alike but they are basically neighbors?

    In Europe you can see slight variations in people from different countries, but they are basically “white” looking. Indians and Chinese have 0 physical characteristics in common(well maybe one, but for the sake of male pride we wont bring it up).

  32. one malayalee girl (Indo-American) identified her people as having mixed bloods of Arabs, Jews, and Europeans since it’s a coastal trade area.

    so… she’s saying her great-grandma and such kinda got around, eh? if that’s inherited, introduce me to this girl stat!

  33. Raju “Because that’s just what the Aryan Migration Theory is: a debate. All Wood says is that there is some “controversy” and leaves it at that – he never explores the other side of the story and to me that was extremely irresponsible.”

    I did leave my comment with a question… “Has anyone else read about this possible migration from Turkmenistan?”

    Notice the word possible and the question mark. (Making my comment a comment on ONE thing I saw, and a question on what other people may know) I am just wondering where the reference to European invasion came from… as the only thing I have seen (which is not much) mentions Turkmenistan, but not really any mention of Europe. I haven’t done any real studies of it, except from a surface interest in the linguistic connections between a lot of languages… (which are really interesting)

    I don’t really know any of this history… or what the Victorian argument was or was not… also I don’t really know what the “other side of the story”… I have only heard the European Origin of “Aryans” is debated, and this documentary which explores possible Turkmenistan connections. So if would like to fill me in on the various sides of the debate, that would be very interesting for me.

    And what exactly is Michael Wood’s bias? I have seen numerous documentaries by him, and while some can be a bit simplified, a lot of them are rather interesting. (Like his travels on the path of Alexander)

  34. “Speaking of “genes” how come Indians and Chinese people look nothing alike but they are basically neighbors?”

    Only one reason… the Himalayas.

  35. Hi Linzi. Most academics who posit an outside origin for Rg Vedic culture point to Cental Asia rather than Europe as the homeland of the proto-Indo European languages. In that sense they believe that IE languages are as “foreign” to Europe as they are to India. Woods is referring to Bactriana-Margianna Complex (BMAC) bronze age civilization in Turkmenistan as being the incubator of Rg Vedic culture, they point to what they see as evidence of the soma drinking and other Vedic ritual practices.

  36. thanks for filling me in a bit, louiecypher… but what are the other possibilities besides Central Asia that Raju and others were referring to?

  37. The “indigenous Vedic culture” proponents have kind of forced themselves into a box. By refusing to accept that our “high traditions” in philosophy, comtemplative spiritual practices are the result of mixing, they get too emotionally attached to the idea of an Indian origin for this one ingredient of Indian culture. Which is quite silly because the Hittites prayed to Indra/Varuna but as far as we know did not do “Downward Facing Dog”. Something special happened in the subcontinent

  38. Only one reason… the Himalayas.

    Thanks Linzi. That’s what I was thinking, but I really didnt know how big they were or how long the Himalayas extended to the point were there was 0 gene flow.

    Geography is not a strong point of mine.

  39. Raju is referring to the debate in India, there are people both on the Left and the Right who keep saying the “AIT is dead” and that the Aryan Rg Vedic culture developed in India. Woods was just being respectful and giving them a nod. The AIT is dead in the sense that most historians agree there is no evidence of the Indus Valley Civ ending in an Indo-Iranian blitz and most reject the Aryan-Dravidian dialectic that the Dalitstanis/DK have setup, but the evidence is very strong that the Indic branch of the IE languages (and associated Rg Vedic culture, which per my earlier post is just one ingredient of Indian culture) is an import from Central Asia

  40. “Thanks Linzi. That’s what I was thinking, but I really didnt know how big they were or how long the Himalayas extended to the point were there was 0 gene flow.”

    Well, I don’t think there is zero gene flow, but just think about the mountains and how hard they are to cross… on one side the plains of India on the other the high mountainous areas of Tibet… squeezed in between we have the Nepalis and Bhutanese, who do rather often look like varying combinations of Indians and East Asians, but even Tibetans, who are on the same side of the mountains as the Chinese, had a completely different language and look than the Chinese further east. I think in the past, before China took over Tibet, Tibet always viewed themselves are a buffer region between China and India politically.

    Also, if you look farther east, where Indian borders more easterly (is that a word?) Asia,where there is no large mountain range, the people in those regions look much more like a mix between Indian and East Asian features.

  41. Speaking of “genes” how come Indians and Chinese people look nothing alike but they are basically neighbors?

    Actually, visit the NE Indian states and you’ll see a range of East and Southeast Asian physical characteristics in the population. Members of the “tribes” such as the Nagas claim portions of what is currently India and Burma. There are also a number of Tibetan refugee groups living in pockets in the NE. Tibet is a large geographic region and that plus ethnic/cultural differences between Tibetans and Han Chinese also probably resulted in a buffer between Indian and Chinese populations.

  42. 37 · louiecypher on October 3, 2009 4:22 PM · Direct link Hi Linzi. Most academics who posit an outside origin for Rg Vedic culture point to Cental Asia rather than Europe as the homeland of the proto-Indo European languages. In that sense they believe that IE languages are as “foreign” to Europe as they are to India. Woods is referring to Bactriana-Margianna Complex (BMAC) bronze age civilization in Turkmenistan as being the incubator of Rg Vedic culture, they point to what they see as evidence of the soma drinking and other Vedic ritual practices.

    I read that we can’t ascertain what language BMAC had. don’t cofuse prot Indo european (PIE) with prot indo Iranian (PII). PIE emerged around 6000 years ago north of the black sea and northwest caspian sea. PII emerged 4000 years ago north of where kazakstan, Mongolia and Russia intersects and this was called the Pazyryk Culture If I rember correctly. These pazyryk people harnessed horses, smoked heroin soma/homa, and ate beef and horses and buried the dead with their possessions. They lived in decomposable homes unlike brick structures of IVC. The pazyryk culture is ATTESTED a bein the earliest PII and location was 55N, 55E.

    The PII were one of the many groups that emerged from the PIE of Ukraine/SW Russia area.

  43. Raju is referring to the debate in India, there are people both on the Left and the Right who keep saying the “AIT is dead” and that the Aryan Rg Vedic culture developed in India. Woods was just being respectful and giving them a nod. The AIT is dead in the sense that most historians agree there is no evidence of the Indus Valley Civ ending in an Indo-Iranian blitz and most reject the Aryan-Dravidian dialectic that the Dalitstanis/DK have setup, but the evidence is very strong that the Indic branch of the IE languages (and associated Rg Vedic culture, which per my earlier post is just one ingredient of Indian culture) is an import from Central Asia

    Thanks for pointing this out. Raju – the migration theory is not a myth, there is significant evidence that cultural similarities exist between the cultures in various countries of IE speaking peoples. Both Razib and Louiecypher are referring to this. The ‘invasion’ theory as one of an outside military attack is probably not accurate and receives little attention in mainstream historical circles these days. When an invasion is mentioned these days (as in AIT), mainstream historians working on this mean a cultural invasion i.e. an outside culture came in and influenced the local culture to a significant extent such that while remnants of existing culture may have persisted, the new culture was a significant if not the dominant part of the resulting culture. This view may or may not change in time as more evidence becomes available.

  44. I tend to agree with mahesh on the Indian tendency to disassociate from a core identity. Its nothing but an inferiority complex. Its also why we don’t find respect in the world. If you have no self-regard you can’t expect it from others.

  45. I tend to agree with mahesh on the Indian tendency to disassociate from a core identity. Its nothing but an inferiority complex. Its also why we don’t find respect in the world. If you have no self-regard you can’t expect it from others.

    You and mahesh are of course right. There is a circular reasoning here: the rampant desi disassociation from a core desi identity aka self-loathing itself arose because of the contempt that the european colonials and the previous muslim conquerors already had for the natives of India, and that they and the world in general continue to have today. Desis have earned the contempt of the world by their weakness, disunity, self-loathing, abject living conditions plus the fact that desis are very dark skinned in a world dominated by light skinned races like europeans, east asians and some others.

    The “solution” to this low status among the stupid and servile crowd of treacherous psuedo-intellectuals is to suck up to the dominant groups by claiming to be closer to them racially and joining them in their contempt for the overwhelming majority of desis. Traitors such as these can serve as useful idiots for the enemies of desis which deludes these idiots into imagining that they are being accepted by the current high status crowd. Unfortunately for these traitors that does not prevent them from being subjected to the same humiliations that all desis face.

    Thr correct solution is for desis to become strong and successful which will not happen as long as desis are disunited and servile.