prasad1
Active member
I always find it puzzling and a little sad how nativists cling to the wishful purity of their vision of the past. Why allow yourself to be humiliated by the likely fact of migration? If your sense of self is dependent on insisting that you are a purer and a truer Indian than others, then you have bigger problems than the inconvenient findings of genetic science.
A new, large-scale study on the genetic formation of South Asia and Central Asia is bound to spark a furore of its own. The work of 92 scholars across several continents, the study’s findings further debunk the notion that Proto-Indo-Europeans (that is, the first speakers of the language family that would one day span northern India to Europe) came out of India. Hindutva irredentists insist that the culture of the Vedas had to originate in India, not come from elsewhere. Using genetic science, this new study confirms the outlandishness of that theory.
The groups that made up ancient India comprised mixtures of South Asian hunter-gatherers (the oldest inhabitants of the subcontinent), Iranian agriculturalists (who appeared in the subcontinent as early as 4700 BCE) and Steppe pastoralists from Central Asia (who moved into South Asia between 2000 and 1000 BCE). Of course, there was movement in multiple directions, not just into the Indian subcontinent; a few outlier individuals found in Turan (the term for the broader area around Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) have South Asian hunter-gatherer DNA. However, the significant arrival of Steppe pastoralists into the Indian gene pool traces conventional understandings of the movement of Indo-Europeans into the subcontinent. The authors claim that their study offers for the first time DNA evidence of “large-scale genetic pressure from Steppe groups in the second millennium BCE,” consistent with physical archaeological evidence. The study also includes data that suggests current Brahmin groups contain more DNA from these Steppe pastoralists than other caste groups in India.
Together, these findings add nuance to the accepted scholarly understanding of the formation of the Indian population, but they reject the Hindutva-espoused idea that the Indo-Europeans had to originate in India. It suggests that Indians – like almost every other people in the world – are the product of waves of migration.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/colu...s-certainty/story-5bksG02SSb4uvR3t2GUOrI.html
A new, large-scale study on the genetic formation of South Asia and Central Asia is bound to spark a furore of its own. The work of 92 scholars across several continents, the study’s findings further debunk the notion that Proto-Indo-Europeans (that is, the first speakers of the language family that would one day span northern India to Europe) came out of India. Hindutva irredentists insist that the culture of the Vedas had to originate in India, not come from elsewhere. Using genetic science, this new study confirms the outlandishness of that theory.
The groups that made up ancient India comprised mixtures of South Asian hunter-gatherers (the oldest inhabitants of the subcontinent), Iranian agriculturalists (who appeared in the subcontinent as early as 4700 BCE) and Steppe pastoralists from Central Asia (who moved into South Asia between 2000 and 1000 BCE). Of course, there was movement in multiple directions, not just into the Indian subcontinent; a few outlier individuals found in Turan (the term for the broader area around Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) have South Asian hunter-gatherer DNA. However, the significant arrival of Steppe pastoralists into the Indian gene pool traces conventional understandings of the movement of Indo-Europeans into the subcontinent. The authors claim that their study offers for the first time DNA evidence of “large-scale genetic pressure from Steppe groups in the second millennium BCE,” consistent with physical archaeological evidence. The study also includes data that suggests current Brahmin groups contain more DNA from these Steppe pastoralists than other caste groups in India.
Together, these findings add nuance to the accepted scholarly understanding of the formation of the Indian population, but they reject the Hindutva-espoused idea that the Indo-Europeans had to originate in India. It suggests that Indians – like almost every other people in the world – are the product of waves of migration.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/colu...s-certainty/story-5bksG02SSb4uvR3t2GUOrI.html