--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, sree nathan <sreenathan.ansi@...> wrote:
> Please follow the following link [to a genetic paper by S. Sahoo et
> al. -- FB]:
>
> http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/843.full.pdf
>
> You may get some better idea on paternal ancestry of Indians
> Also, there are many other studies to refine your understanding
Dear Sreenathan,
Sahoo et al.âs paper suggests that any genetic similarities of Central Asian and South Asian populations âare most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward' (p. 847). The paper, just like another oft-cited study by S. Sengupta et al. (see abstract at <
http://tinyurl.com/reudt>), claims that no significant genetic flows into South Asia from Central and/or Western Asia can be detected in historical times. Sengupta et al. detects no significant movement in the last 10,000-15,000 years. Both Sahoo et al.âs and Sengupta et al.âs data have been cited extensively by Hindu nationalist polemicists like N.S. Rajaram and S. Kalyanaraman (who ignore all genetic papers to the contrary) to undercut the so-called Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), which they assume must have left a deep inprint on the genetic record of South Asia. They have grotesquely misused these data, claiming that these studies demonstrate that Indo-Aryan immigration into South Asia never occurred.
Yet, if we take the conclusions of these genetic studies literally, then they would indicate not only that there was no Indo-Aryan immigration in the second millennium BCE, but that there were no Saka, Kushana, Huna, and later on Afghan-cum-Turk Muslim invaders (nor any other invaders) into India in historical times either. And given all the historical evidence to the contrary, that would be patently absurd!
The point is that these recent studies show that the tools of population genetics are not sensitive enough to detect any Western or Central Asian immigrations and/or invasions of India in proto-historical and historical times -- not even when we take them all together! That is, take them in the aggregate -- Indo-Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Sakas, Kushanas, Hunas, Muslims, etc., extending over some 3000 years or so -- and the genetic studies can't detect anything significant. In sum: population genetics has nothing to say yet about the advent of Indo-Aryan speakers in South Asia.
I may further point out that Dr. Peter Underhill, geneticist at Stanford University, claims that R1a1-M17, which he discovered in 1995, and which has often been attributed -- e.g., by Dr. Spencer Wellsâ Genographic Project -- to the spread of Indo-European (while Hindutvavadins let it originate in India), thinks this haplogroup âarose in the area around the Hindukush around 10,000 BC (+/- 3000 years), and spread eastwards and westwards. It has the largest impact on S. Asia (some 25%), but is found from E. Europe to India. However, its resolution, that means as subgroups of M17, still are too inadequate, so that nothing specific can be said about a possible (re-)introduction of a variety of M17 into S. Asia [along with the Aryans].â I have taken this quote from M. Witzelâs summary of Underhillâs talk at a symposium on âAryan/Non-Aryan Origin of Indian Civilizationâ held at Dartmouth, MA back in 2006 -- see his Indo-Eurasian_research message archived at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/4278
Kind regards,
Francesco