--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- ehlsmith <ehlsmith@...> wrote:
>
> ,
> > it may be worth
> > asking the question of whether Dr. Melkar's claims
> > about genetics are
> > any more solid than his claims about linguistics.
> > For example see
> >
> http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/abstract/11/6/994>
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ned Smith
>
>
> *****GK: Man o man is this ever devastating!
> Particularly since many of the contributors happen to
> be Hindus (judging by the names at least). Thanks for
> this.****
The above cited study already ASSUMES what needs to be proven.
"This is owing, in part, to the many different waves of immigrants
that have influenced the genetic structure of India. In the most
recent of these waves, Indo-European-speaking people from West Eurasia
entered India from the Northwest and diffused throughout the
subcontinent. They purportedly admixed with or displaced indigenous
Dravidic-speaking populations."
How would they know that even before conducting the study? Their "West
Eurasian" haplotypes include Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan! The
letter cited in the link provdis few details about methodology.
The Bamshad study has been rejected by the scientific community owing
to its methodological problems.
The above study, and there are more like these, cannot be used to
prove linguistic migrations because they never break down the
population by language. The similarity in genes they cite cuts across
both so called "Indo-Aryan" and "Dravidian" groups. So one cannot
claim that one of the language groups is "foreign" and the other is
native. Moreover similarity in haplotypes does not indicate the
*direction* of gene flow nor does it indicate when the flow supposed
to have occured.
This is not the only study of its kind. We have reviewd a whole bunch
of them in Section 6.2 of proto-vedic continuity.doc.
Refer to the link below for a critique of Bamshad methodology. (Hint
use the binocular icon to search for "Bamshad.")
<
http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild2003a.pdf>
"In contrast, the majority of the Indian paternal lineages do not
share recent ancestors with eastern Asian population but stem from
haplogroups common to (eastern) European or Western Asian populations.
This finding has recently been interpreted in favor of the classical
Indo-Aryan invasion hypothesis. Here, we show this interpretation is
probably caused by a phylogeographically limited view of the Indian
Y-chromosome pool, amplified because of current inconsistencies in the
interpretation of the temporal scales in the variability of the
non-recombining (NRY). It appears to us that the high variability of
the STR's in the background of NRY variants in India is consistent
with the view of the largely autochthonous pre-Holocene genetic
diversification-a conclusion reached earlier for the Indian maternal
lineages (Kivisilid et al 1990a). "
"However the fact that just the two autochthonous Indian mtDNA
clusters, out of the much larger variety comprise about a thrid of all
maternal lineages of the upper casts of the Dravidian speaking
Telegu's suggest strongly that the origin of the endogamous caste
system should not be traced to a simple model of a putative Indo-Aryan
invasion some 4700 year ago (p. 5)."
And their conclusion:
"If we were to use the same arithmetic and logic (sensu haplography 9
is Neolithic) to give an interpretation of this table, (Table 17.3),
THE STRAIGHTFORWARD SUGGESTION WOULD BE THAT BOTH (NEOLITHIC)
AGRICULTURAL AND INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AROSE IN INDIA and from
there, spread to Europe (emphasis in the original)".
M. Kelkar
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page!
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>