> in J. Biosci. 31(1), March 2006, 12, Indian Academy of
Sciences
>
> http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci
The above paper coming out of the Indian Academy of Sciences is a
joke. It treats the arrival of "Indo-European" speakers as a self
evident fact.
"
http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/mar2006/1.pdf"
"Towards the end of this time Indo-European speakers appeared and
established the caste system..(p. 1),"
Why even bother with genetics then?
The Bamshad study is methodologically flawed. For a nearly up to date
review of all genetic studies please see our paper proto vedic
continuity theory.doc in the files section. Michael Danino's
Purrattatva article recenlty mentioned here by V. Agrawal has the
most updated findings.
Critique of 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)."
M. Kelkar
>
> A careful reading of these articles should show, among others, that
> (a) on their own, they cannot be used in absolute dating of different
> migrations during the relevant time period, (b) progress can be made,
> has been made and will be made with respect of relative dating of
> migrations that can be identified in the available evidence, (c) some
> interesting information is pretty much independent of the timing
> problem (as it is the case that some haplogroups that are very
> prominent in some areas are completely absent in other areas).
>
> In brief, the studies on contemporary DNA are clearly relevant for the
> discussion and it would be unwise to dismiss them. It would be equally
> unwise to think that we could simply read out the migrational history
> of Holocene period from them.
>
> Cheers, Juha
>