ANI-ASI Admixture Dating

Similar to an earlier conference poster, Reich Lab's Priya Moorjani et al have another poster at SMBE. Here's the abstract:

Estimating a date of mixture of ancestral South Asian populations
Linguistic and genetic studies have demonstrated that almost all groups in South Asia today descend from a mixture of two highly divergent populations: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) related to Central Asians, Middle Easterners and Europeans, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI) not related to any populations outside the Indian subcontinent. ANI and ASI have been estimated to have diverged from a common ancestor as much as 60,000 years ago, but the date of the ANI-ASI mixture is unknown. Here we analyze data from about 60 South Asian groups to estimate that major ANI-ASI mixture occurred 1,200-4,000 years ago. Some mixture may also be older--beyond the time we can query using admixture linkage disequilibrium--since it is universal throughout the subcontinent: present in every group speaking Indo-European or Dravidian languages, in all caste levels, and in primitive tribes. After the ANI-ASI mixture that occurred within the last four thousand years, a cultural shift led to widespread endogamy, decreasing the rate of additional mixture.

I bolded the portion which seems new compared to the previous abstract.

169 Comments.

  1. Very interesting the notion that both ANI ASI diverged 60kya! They have also deleted the previous notion of the mixes cotiming with the putative indo-european theory probably the result of adding another 500 years;-) however, both of them are a set-back for the academic lovers. As for the invasionists/migrationists ANI is the last chance to prove anything which makes truthful sense.
    There is a clear archaeological record and explaination also for the start of the 4 to 1.2. Kyo major ANI ASI mix and i'm not writing about the Arya'n theory or rather story.
    P.S. I also know the authors method/tool is going to be attacked again:-(.

    • American Journal of Human Genetics states that current Indian population is derived from two ancestral populations—the Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and Ancestral South Indians (ASI)—both of which are older than 3500 Years Before Present (YBP).Evolutionary Biology Group of Estonia studied 600,000 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers among 30 ethnic groups in India. The human genomes consists of chromosomes, represented by the double helix and specific locations on the chromosome can be identified using markers with the common ones being micro-satellite markers and SNP markers.

      When these researchers modeled the data, they could not find any evidence of a dramatic Central Asian migration for this period. So they went back and till about 12500 Years Before Present (YBP) they could not find any evidence. Thus the mixing of the ANI and ASI did not happen 140 generations before as was believed, but probably more than 500 generations back (Each generation is 25 years). The paper explicitly mentions Max Muller’s theory and says that it is hard to find evidence for such a migration following the collapse of the Harappan civilization. As it stands now, the mixing between the two groups happened some time between 40,000 YBP and 12,500 YBP.

      Genetic study finds no evidence for Aryan Migration Theory--On the contrary, South Indians migrated to north and South Asians migrated into Eurasia.

      ''it is likely that West Eurasian diversity is derived from the more diverse South Asian gene pool"

      >>(Metspalu, Gyaneshwer Chaubey et al, AJHG,)

      'No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60000 years'.

      >>American Journal of Human Genetics in its issue dated December 9 2011.

      In my opinion a date of 12,000 years for the REMIXING of Indian tribes back into one genome group is more accurate. Man reaches india, one group, splits in two , splits further, seperate for several thousands years, divided by location, rivers, mountains, approx 12,000years ago, the different Indian tribes, Indian north, Indian south, Indian West, Indian East, start to re-engage the other tribes, making all tribes in india related back to each as it was from the very start. ANI and ASI are effectively the same one group, Before ANI and ASI mixed back into one group, a seperate ANI tribe migrated out of North west India, into west asia, central asia and europe.

      What do you think?

      • Actually ANI and ASI are both INDIAN MARKERS. You will not find one study to suggest ANI is sourced from west asia or anywhere else.

        • ANI and ASI are not 'markers' but 'clusters'. The evidence is quite robust that ANI is closer to western Eurasian populations than to ASI while the latter is a population isolate. Since ANI is similar to western Eurasian populations, it is challenging to discern the genetic legacy of prehistoric and historic population movements into the Indian subcontinent in the ANI cluster. Another hypothesis with particular relevance to the Paleolithic is that the subcontinent acted as a population refuge during glacial maxima and as a pump during interglacials. This would mean that the subcontinent was both a source and receiver of population exchange with central and western Eurasia.

      • I have gone through the Metspalu paper (American Journal of Human Genetics 2011; 89; 731-44; Dec 9) with a fine-toothed comb and cannot find your second quote ('No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60000 years'). Is this perhaps a bit of poetic license on your part or can you provide the page and paragraph? As for your first quote ("it is likely that West Eurasian diversity is derived from the more diverse South Asian gene pool"), this is a partial (and partisan) quotation of a much longer sentence regarding the similarity between West Eurasian and South Asian genetic signals that reads:
        "Namely, did genetic variation in West Eurasia and South Asia accumulate separately after the out-of-Africa migration; do the observed instances of shared ancestry component and selection signals reflect secondary gene flow between two regions, or do the populations living in these two regions have a common population hisotry, in which case it it likely that the West Eurasian diversity is derived from the more diverse South Asian gene pool. (p. 740)" As I have written before, the demographic interaction between South Asia and Western Eurasia is complex. It is likely that South Asia acted both as a reservoir (during glacial maxima) and as a pump (during glacial minima).

        As for the genetic signal of the Indo-Aryan migration, who has ever argued that Mayawati (a UP Chamar) would harbor it? What you and the 'Aryans came from UP' brigade have to explain is the k4 component being present at the highest levels in the northwest and at detectable levels among upper castes only (UP Brahmins and Kshatriyas) outside the northwest?

        If you look at Figure 2 (p. 736) of the Metspalu paper closely, k4 and k5 predominate among the Russians. For argument's sake, let's assume that the Andronovo population (proto-Indo-Iranian) was similar to present-day Russians (k4+k5). Then, follow the Andronovo folk down as they migrate into the BMAC area with gene swapping with the locals leading to weakening of the k4 signal and strengthening of the k5 signal. Then, another slow southeasterly movement through eastern Afghanistan and then the Swat and Dir River valleys (the Gandhara Grave Culture), into post-urban Harappa and the introduction of the India-specific k6 component. This is actually the exact mix we see in the northwest (k5>>k6>k4). With further eastward migration of the elite classes accompanied by intermarriage with locals, one would expect a further weakening of k4 and a strengthening of k6; this exactly what you see among UP Brahmins and Kshatriyas (k6=k5>>k4).

        Any 'Out-of-India' theory has to explain the relative absence of k6, the India-specific component (equivalent to ASI in Reich's paper), outside of the subcontinent and its presence in every group in north and south India and in Pakistan (Please don't trot out the 'Islamic era concubines' hogwash once again, Balaji! Metspalu's paper clearly refutes recent, historic k5/k6 admixture in the northern subcontinent ).

        • "Any 'Out-of-India' theory has to explain the relative absence of k6, the India-specific component (equivalent to ASI in Reich's paper), outside of the subcontinent and its presence in every group in north and south India and in Pakistan"

          A possible scenario as I had mentioned before: The ASI came from SE Asia about 60000ybp while the ANI came from South Asia about the same time ie after YTT. Both had initially come out from Africa 140000ybp. The ASI has had difficulty fully punching through the subcontinent. I think the major ANI-ASI mixture may not have even occurred until the Maghadan period (sorry Balaji on this one, I just can't see the slave and concubine thing).

          "It is likely that South Asia acted both as a reservoir (during glacial maxima) and as a pump (during glacial minima)."

          So after LGM South Asia has been the pump? This is exactly what I think happened too. Especially from southern India - south of the Vindhyas - as northern India was quite inhospitable too during LGM. This is also what recombinational analysis shows:
          "in Eurasian populations, recombinational distance correlated with distance from Southern India."
          http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/43813/1/tmm.pdf

          • Actually, any 'Out-of-India' theory has to explain not only the relative absence of k6 outside of the subcontinent but also the presence of k4 in the northwest and in upper castes only in the rest of the subcontinent. To put it more directly, in the Metspalu paper, the Russians don't have any k6 but the UP Brahmins and Kshatriyas have a small but detectable amount of k4. You have to admit, this (k4 in the subcontinent; little or no k6 outside the subcontinent) could at least be consistent with the standard model of an Indo-Aryan migration (Andronovo -> BMAC -> Gandhara Grave Culture -> post-urban Harappan Civilization).

          • "Actually, any 'Out-of-India' theory has to explain not only the relative absence of k6 outside of the subcontinent but also the presence of k4 in the northwest and in upper castes only in the rest of the subcontinent."

            I thought you were advocating an out of India theory "as pump (during glacial minima)" in the period following the LGM.

            That K4 and Zack's NEE may indeed have something to do with the later 800bc arrivals we see on the Indus that I had mentioned on another post (cf Sarai Khola). The diversity K4 is very low everywhere (I could not glean from Metspalu where its diversity was highest but I think it should be Europe). K6 and K5 have higher diversity even with ascertainment bias and they look more like ASI and ANI, respectively. Within South Asia I think this K4 spread in two ways - first with the Brahmans and then the Brahman Kshatriyas (Gurjar Brahmans form the Gujarat-Rajasthan borderlands).

          • Some other items relevant to the ASI ANI split and YTT.

            "Though the distribution of haplogroup M has been used to support the southern dispersal model, the coalescence age of haplogroup M in India (ca 45 ka) is considerably younger than in East Asia (ca 65 ka), which does not make sense if India was part of the original route of population movements. This has suggested to some a backward movement of populations into South Asia after the Toba super-eruption of 74 ka ago, as a consequence of a bottleneck and re-expansion (Oppenheimer 2003, 2009)." http://www.scribd.com/doc/31573883/Out-of-Africa-to-India-1#fullscreen:on

            "we argue that environmental and archaeological information is increasingly indicating the likelihood that H. sapiens exited Africa much earlier than commonly thought, and may have colonized much of southern Asia well before 60,000 years ago." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379112001758

            On the potential appearance of European type folk in 800bc:
            "Faith in the Aryan presence is still deeply rooted ... Sarai Khola) fall outside the temporal limits of the Aryan chronology."
            http://books.google.com/books?id=W6zQHNavWlsC&pg=PA410&lpg=PA376

  2. Two more things on the basis of the abstract from the research:
    1. Caste system now we can say is atleast ~4000YBP.
    2. The collapse of SSC/IVC played a crucial role in the start of the Indian society structure.
    Have a good time.

  3. The Indian subcontinent has received multiple populations from western Eurasia since the Paleolithic. ANI, therefore, broadly covers all of these western Eurasian inputs including early Middle Eastern agriculturalists, Bronze Age Central Asian agro-pastoralists and historic peoples such as Shakas, Kushanas and Hunas. The term, ANI, simply does not have the granularity required to highlight or date the differential presence of the Bronze Age Central Asian Indo-Aryan input in various present-day geographic, linguistic and, most importantly, caste groups.

    • American Journal of Human Genetics states that current Indian population is derived from two ancestral populations—the Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and Ancestral South Indians (ASI)—both of which are older than 3500 Years Before Present (YBP).Evolutionary Biology Group of Estonia studied 600,000 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers among 30 ethnic groups in India. The human genomes consists of chromosomes, represented by the double helix and specific locations on the chromosome can be identified using markers with the common ones being micro-satellite markers and SNP markers.

      When these researchers modeled the data, they could not find any evidence of a dramatic Central Asian migration for this period. So they went back and till about 12500 Years Before Present (YBP) they could not find any evidence. Thus the mixing of the ANI and ASI did not happen 140 generations before as was believed, but probably more than 500 generations back (Each generation is 25 years). The paper explicitly mentions Max Muller’s theory and says that it is hard to find evidence for such a migration following the collapse of the Harappan civilization. As it stands now, the mixing between the two groups happened some time between 40,000 YBP and 12,500 YBP.

      Genetic study finds no evidence for Aryan Migration Theory--On the contrary, South Indians migrated to north and South Asians migrated into Eurasia.

      >>(Metspalu, Gyaneshwer Chaubey et al, AJHG,)

      'No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60000 years'.

      >>American Journal of Human Genetics in its issue dated December 9 2011.

  4. Large scale ANI/ASI admixture is likely to have happened in Pakistan more recently than 1,200 years ago. Pakistan became predominantly muslim after the Islamic conquest of the Subcontinent and Islamic elites have imported kafir slaves and concubines throughut history causing significant gene flow into Islamic regions. For example the countries of North Africa from Egypt to Morocco have 20 to 30% sub-Saharan admixture a significant amount of which is likely due to this practice. Similarly a good part of the approximately 25% ASI in Pakistan is likely due to the importation of slaves and concubines from India. In fact ANI/ASI admixture in Pakistan continues to this day as the Muhajir migrants from the partition of India integrate into the Pakistani population.

  5. South Asians are Caucasoid-Dravidoid hybrids, so they cannot be the source of West Eurasians, who are all Caucasoids. There is no way to draw a line between the Caucasoid ancestors of South Asians (i.e., "ANI" people) and other Caucasoids wherever they are found in the world. "ANI" people are especially close to West Asian Caucasoids, so much so that they can roughly be considered parts of a cluster within the Caucasoid race.

    • I am not clear about these terms - Would you call this Paleolithic European Caucasoid or Dravidoid: http://www.kunstkamera.ru/en/temporary_exhibitions/virtual/gerasimov/09/18/
      "The Markina Gora skeleton was examined by G.F. Debetz, who estimated the individual’s age at 20-25. The man was rather low-statured (about 160 cm). The morphology of his skeleton is generally quite modern. Certain cranial features, including very narrow braincase, low and narrow face, marked prognathism (anterior protrusion of the midface), and very wide nose, are typical of tropical populations. The trait combination links the cranium with those of Papuans and Melanesians."

      • Onur is calling ANI "Caucasoid" and ASI "Dravidoid". His point is that if even the Pathans of the North-west province have 25% ASI, people from Pakistan could not have been the ancestors of West Eurasians. But even a thousand years ago, the people in the Northwest part of Pakistan would have had much less ASI than now. It is with the coming of Islam that large numbers of slaves and concubines were brought to Pakistan from India raising the level of ASI. It is likely that a few thoushand years ago Pakistan was almost 100% ANI and India almost 100% ASI, The ANI of Pakistan could have been the source of all the other West Eurasians.

        • The ANI of Pakistan could have been the source of all the other West Eurasians.

          As I stated, it is artificial to draw a line between "ANI" Caucasoids and other Caucasoids and propose that the former are the source of the latter. "ANI" people and West Asians, roughly speaking, form a cluster within Caucasoids, so ANI people are just the easternmost part of a Caucasoid sub-cluster, roughly speaking, that includes West Asians.

          • Dont know anything about genetics, but ok on Indian history: the heartland of Muslim India was not the Northwest but the Gangetic Plain.Given their obsession with fair skin, a large number of women were imported from Kashmir, Afghanistan and Punjab - the other way from what you suggest, in fact. The Tughlaqs for example were of mixed Punjabi Jatt & Rajput blood. The Mughals were of course closely intermarried into Rajputana as were the Lodi Sultans whose harem committed Jauhar during Tamelane's invasion. Concubines are imported from areas that are politically dominated, or abroad and fr use by the very few feudal elite, so this theory may not stand the test of historical rigour.

        • Has anyone checked the ANI/ASI number in some of 'aborigines' of the Indus valley such as the Mohanna (fishermen in Sindh, boatmen in the Punjab)?
          "The present study was designed to investigate the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) locus variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) allelic distribution in different Pakistani ethnic groups ... This analysis grouped most of the Pakistani ethnic groups together and closer to the European and Middle Eastern populations, except for the Mohanna from Sindh, who grouped with the African populations."
          http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/gte.2007.0120
          Incidentally, the Mohanna were found by Underhill to be 71% R1a1.

          The administrative heart of most of the northern Islamic empires was in was in the Agra/Delhi region.

        • I really have to disagree about the ASI component in the northwestern subcontinental populations being of such late historical vintage (9th-10th c. C.E. - arrival of Islam in the northwest). It is particularly anachonistic to say slaves and concubines were brought into 'Pakistan' from 'India' since this distinction is not even a century old. It is much more likely that the northwestern subcontinental ASI component is a remnant of the Paleolithic west-to-east out-of-Africa coastal movement that traveled up the Indus and established itself. Since Paleolithic hunter-gatherer populations tended to be small compared to the Neolithic agricultural ones, the ASI component was subsumed by the ANI component that likely arrived from the west with agriculture(i.e. biological discontinuity between Mehrgarh II and III). This ANI component was further reinforced by other genetically similar western Eurasian inputs during the late Neolithic/Bronze Age (possibly the proto-Dravidian-speakers and definitely the Indo-Aryans) and the historic period (Persians, Greeks, Shakas, Kushanas, Hunas and the Islamicized Turko-Afghans).

          • If the ASI in Pakistan is from the original "Out-of-Africa" settlers and the ANI is primarily from West Asian migrants who brought agriculture to Pakistan, for example at Mehrgarh, then the date for ANI/ASI admixture in Pakistan should be older than anywhere else in the Subcontinet. On the other hand if ASI was brought to Pakistan primarily by concubines and slaves from further east during the Islamic period, the admixture date in Pakistan should be the youngest in the Subcontinent. When the authors publish their data, we will know.

          • If your wild conjecture about ASI slaves was true, there would be no Indian cline.

          • If the ASI in Pakistan is primarily from the original "Out-of-Africa" settlers and the ANI is primarily from West Asian migrants who brought agriculture to Mehrgarh, then the date for ANI/ASI admixture in Pakistan should be older than anywhere else in the Subcontinent. On the other hand, if as I propose, the ASI in Pakistan is primarily from concubines and slaves transported to Pakistan during the Islamic period, the ANI/ASI admixture date should be the younger in Pakistan than anywhere else. Let us see what the data say when the authors publish their work.

    • How would you explain Brahui if pre-historical ASI hadnt been available locally any way?

  6. The ANI of Pakistan could have been the source of all the other West Eurasians.

    As I stated, it is artificial to draw a line between "ANI" Caucasoids and other Caucasoids and propose that the former are the source of the latter. "ANI" people and West Asians, roughly speaking, form a cluster within Caucasoids, so "ANI" people are just the easternmost part of a Caucasoid sub-cluster, roughly speaking, that includes West Asians.

    • I completely agree with Onur. 'ANI' is an umbrella term that covers the genetic component in the subcontinent that is more similar to western Eurasian populations than to 'ASI' or eastern Eurasian populations (i.e. southeast and northeast Asian). As such, it does not have the granularity to distinguish between early agriculturalists who migrated from west Asia, Bronze Age agro-pastoralists from central Asia or historic movements from both west and central Asia. That having been said, it seems plausible that the largest part of the 'ANI' component is a legacy of the west Asian agriculturalists, whose descendants went on to build the IVC, and not the central Asian agro-pastoralists, whose languages came to dominate the northern 2/3 of the subcontinent, since the estimated population of the Indus Valley alone in the late Harappan period was approximately 5 million. It is hard to imagine a migration of Indo-Aryans of a similar magnitude. The small but definite genetic legacy of the Indo-Aryans persists in northwestern subcontinentals and in upper castes/Brahmins in the remainder of the subcontinent.

  7. "The present study was designed to investigate the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) locus variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) allelic distribution in different Pakistani ethnic groups ... This analysis grouped most of the Pakistani ethnic groups together and closer to the European and Middle Eastern populations, except for the Mohanna from Sindh, who grouped with the African populations."
    http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/gte.2007.0120

    That is a single locus study and thus cannot be used to make inferences about ancestry.

  8. Let me get this straight to your conscious brain THERE IS NO DRAVIDIAN RACE NOR ANY "DRAVIDOID!" there are Doliocephals,Brachycephals, Mongoloids and probably Negroids etc. So stop talking crap.
    Irula is 100% ASI and they speak dravidian but Brahui also speak dravidian but they are 100% ANI! so its not that naive pal.
    Its clear that ANI is present in south Asia from prehistoric times and the DNA from farmana is going to bust some myths for sure.
    There is no reason to think that West asians made the Mehrgarh possible as genetic studies from early have confirmed their strong affinity to south asians! Read Irfan Habibs Pre-History part I and for the Indo-Arya theory well facts say its a story and not even a theory:-| but love makes miracles happen don't it?;-).

  9. and yes the European similar component found ~10% in Brahmins, the age here is the decider the age found from a reliable source and if possible from aDNA.

    • Nirjhar, I do agree with you that, if studied as a whole, the subcontinental populations do not yield evidence of a large-scale Bronze Age migration of Central Asian agro-pastoralists. However, given the peculiarities of the spread of Indo-Aryan languages and cultures down the Gangetic plain and of practices of strict endogamy, I do think that this legacy can still be detected among certain groups like the Brahmins. Since these groups are relatively small (no more than 5% of any regional population), one can easily imagine a future where strict endogamy is no longer practiced and the Indo-Aryan genetic legacy becomes nearly undetectable in most parts of the subcontinent. In sum, the overall genetic impact of Indo-Aryans was minimal except in certain elite groups and, in my opinion, the ANI component mostly represents the legacy of northwestern agriculturalists.

      • As i always consider assumption is the mother of all crap, what you say is possible but no real and direct evidence is available, for my theory i consider with Pconroy and ofcourse Indologist Giacomo Benedetti that South Central asia(Mehrgarh 7500b.c) was the PIE homeland from 4600 b.c. the time from when the famous archaeologic + anthropologic continuity of NW India started.

  10. Nirjhar,

    I use the racial term Dravidoid to mean "ASI". You should not confuse it with Dravidian (an ethno-linguistic term). Dravidoids do not exist any more, as they were hybridized by Caucasoids, as a result of which today South Asians are Caucasoid-Dravidoid hybrids in varying amounts. The Irula are far from being 100% "ASI"; they are on the order of 70% "ASI", hence they are Caucasoid-Dravidoid hybrids too. BTW, dolichocephal and brachycephal are not races; they are terms related to cephalic index.

    So far, there is no genetic finding that refutes the Aryan migration theory.

  11. In my opinion the "Indian cline" was probably formed in the IVC itself. The inhabitants of IVC were know to be trading with local hunter-gathers and besides trading goods probably traded genes. One would have to be delusional to believe that in an urban area such as the IVC no type of intermixing had occurred in a span of 1500 years! You only has to look at the dancing girl Mohenjo daro to see that she has features of a ANI/ASI mix. Features reminiscent of modern South Asians and East Africans.

  12. What about the Brahui people? And give me the reference that says there were "dravidoids" i want to see the bases of the claim, ofcourse they are cranial index specific but tell me what defines "race" among humans to you then?
    But please give me a single source which practically suggests the Arya migration, as an Arya i haven't got any so i want atleast one.

  13. And clearly remember that i saw in one of the ADMIXTURE sheet before that Irula was 100% ASI in this website, probably Zack can tell rightly.

  14. The Brahui? Due to the smallness of their average Dravidoid admixture they are Caucasoids.

    The Aryan migration is supported by the diminution of Caucasoid ancestry in South Asia from northwest to south and to east (the Aryans entered the Subcontinent from the northwest) and, more importantly, from higher caste to lower caste.

    Dravidoid means "ASI" people for me. Because that the consensus view is that "ASI" people are real, it is you, not me, who should prove his/her (sorry, I don't know your gender) claim by demonstrating that "ASI" people are not real.

    For me, race is a group of members of a species that is united by a large number of homogeneous and non-clinal genetic and phenotypic markers and traits specific to it. Races are somewhat like sub-species but less rigid than them. Contemporary South Asians are not a race but a group of racial hybrids due to the fact that their Caucasoid-Dravidoid admixture is clinal and heterogeneous.

    Zack recently calculated the "ASI" percentages of the South Asian samples in his database. Here is the spreadsheet that includes their calculated "ASI" percentages (note: only the samples with at least 20% "South Asian" component were included, so, for instance, bulk of the Balochi samples and all of the Brahui samples were excluded due to the smallness of their "South Asian" component percentages and, as a result, "ASI" percentages):

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuW3R0Ys-P4HdFN6QlFNUWJYZVl4YmZUU3BIQ0NBeFE#gid=0

    As you see in the spreadsheet, according to Zack's calculations the Irula on average have ~70% "ASI" ancestry.

  15. I do think that the term 'Dravidoid' is misleading and 'ASI' or 'Andamanese component' would be more appropriate. It is likely that the Dravidian languages entered the subcontinent from the northwest as well, likely with the spread of early agriculture. The northwest would then be an early area of admixture between the incoming agricultural ancestral 'ANI' and the already-established hunter-gatherer 'ASI'. As I mentioned before, agricultural populations tend to be larger than hunter-gatherer ones. This would explain why the 'ASI' component is weaker in the northwest. In the rest of the subcontinent, particularly south of the Vindhyas, the scenario was more akin to a technology transfer model with the 'ASI' hunter-gatherers adopting agriculture. Consequently, the 'ASI' population was larger and this component continues to be represented better in southern populations.

    The hypothesis of the 'ASI' component in the northwest being the result of Islamic era importation of slaves and concubines is highly implausible. The 'ASI' component is significantly represented in almost all studied northwestern populations. The population of this region was already in the tens of millions by the start of the Islamic era. In order for the 'ASI' component to be present at current levels across almost all populations, there would have to have been the importation of literally millions of slaves and concubines. There is no historic evidence of this ever happening. Moreover, the authors of the study under discussion state that an older date of admixture cannot be determined with the methodology being used. The 'slave and concubines brought ASI to "Pakistan"' seems to be an idiosyncratic pet hypothesis without any real basis in history or data that should be dropped from this discussion.

  16. RKM,

    Andaman Islanders and "ASI" people are racially different despite the fact that the Andamanese race is the closest extant race to the "ASI" race. Their racial difference is obvious from the phylogenetic tree in the Figure 4 of Reich et al. 2009. It shows that while "ANI" people and Utahn Whites (CEU) are genetically close enough to each other to be from the same race "ASI" people and Andamanese Islanders are comparatively genetically fairly distant from each other and thus are not parts of the same race. That is why I do not use a name related to Andamanese Islanders to denote the "ASI" race and prefer the imperfect and somewhat confusing but still better representative name "Dravidoid" instead.

    We can easily test the Islamic slavery hypothesis of Balaji for the "ASI" ancestry in NW South Asia. All we need to do is to test NW South Asian non-Muslims and compare them to the Muslims of NW South Asia. Due to the peculiarities of Islamic societies and slavery, non-Muslims mixed far less with slaves than Muslims did under Islamic rules. So if non-Muslims of NW South Asia have noticeably less "ASI" ancestry than Muslims of NW South Asia have, that may support Balaji's hypothesis.

  17. Onur,

    You may have a point about 'Andamanese' not being synonymous with 'ASI'. However, I was trying to suggest a way of clearing up the confusion between a 'Dravidoid' genetic component and the 'Dravidian' languages since the 'Dravidian' languages may well have spread from the northwest with the 'ANI' component.

    As for ASI being present in non-Muslim northwestern populations, it is present in the Kashmiri Pandits included in the Reich paper. Moreover, its presence can be deduced in the Panjabi Jatts, the Haryanvi Jats and the Panjabi Khatri (all or most presumably non-Muslim) in Zack's analysis. I agree that the presence of 'ASI' in the non-Muslim northwestern populations makes it highly unlikely that it was introduced into the northwest by Islamic-era slaves and concubines from the south.

  18. RKM,

    I fully agree with you regarding the probable origins of Dravidians. But, as I said, the term "Dravidian" and the term "Dravidoid" I use are different things. I prefer to use the racial term "Dravioid" to denote the "ASI" race because that the most "ASI"-admixed populations happen to be Dravidian speaking today.

  19. RKM,

    I fully agree with you regarding the probable origins of Dravidians. But, as I said, the term "Dravidian" and the term "Dravidoid" I use are different things. I prefer to use the racial term "Dravidoid" to denote the "ASI" race because that the most "ASI"-admixed populations happen to be Dravidian speaking today.

  20. ENOUGH WITH THE CRAP OF ASSUMPTIONS+INVENTING RACE+ARYAN FANTASY JUST STAY AT THE TOPIC OF MAJOR ASI-ANI mix AND HERE IS THE FACTUAL REASON OF THE START OF THE MAJOR MIX SUGGESTED BY Moorjani et al. Which goes PINPOINTLY EQUAL WITH THEIR CALCULATED DATE:
    http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/huge-ancient-civilization-collapse-explained-123449804.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=US&.lang=en-US
    It is clear that ANI corelates with caucasians but as it can be very old (60kyo) it is not important at all that all ANI should be caucasian!
    As some guys rightly pointed out to Onur that as major ANI-ASI mix started after the fall of SSC/IVC there is ample possibility that SC Asia was the source of quite the amount of the present caucasian genome to the whole Eurasia from the prehistoric times to neolithic!
    The skeleton studies from 4600b.c-800b.c. NW India by Kenneth Kennedy and others also says clearly of skeletons to be caucasian type like today in N. India with Archaeo+Anthro continuity of 3800 years practically deleting both Aryan and Dravidian hoax.
    Have a good time.
    P.S. As ASI is not related to any other group outside S. Asia guys like Onur are showing their wisdom by inventing new Humanoids etc.
    P.S. 2 The DNA of Farmana(2500b.c) i think will surely bring y-dnas like R1a1a Z93, R2a and H with a Mtdna surprise.
    N.

    • Please stop peddling pseudo-scientific terms like 'SSC/IVC', particularly in light of the recent definitive study by Giosan et al in PNAS (Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilization; 2012; June 26; 109 (26): e1688-94) which clearly demonstrated that the the much touted Ghaggar-Hakra was a monsoon-fed river, not the Vedic Sarasvati fed by the melting snows of high mountains. So I guess it is back to the drawing board for the Savarkarite rewriting of Indian history for Koenrad Elst and company. Also, as you go railing against the 'Indo-Aryan Migration' theory, please don't circulate a theory (PIE homeland in Mehrgarh!!!) that finds support only among the lunatic fringe. And, no, Nirjhar, not all mainstream scholars are modern-day 'Marxist' avatars of Herr Prof Mueller! To sacrifice truth and objectivity on the altar of an imported notion of nation-building (one race, one language, one religion) is objectionable.

      • According to Giosan et al., the Ghaggar-Hakra was not glacier-fed. Nevertheless they believe it was crucial to the Harappan civilization. When the flow of water in this river system decresed, the Harappan civilization collapsed and there was an eastward migration of the Harappans.

        • Yes you are correct but remember there was also some westward movements.

          • The Ghaggar-Hakra was an important area of Harappan settlement. However, the RV clearly describes the Sarasvati as being fed by melting snow of high mountains. So, either the painstaking research of a respected international team is part of some anti-Indian conspiracy or the RV is wrong. Take your pick.

            What is it about Indian nationalists that makes them do such contortions to bend the truth? I don't see Greeks having any issues with admitting that proto-Greek speakers came from outside modern-day Greece. Indians have to show the intellectual maturity to transcend the ills wrought upon their land during the colonial period.

        • That still does not make the Ghaggar-Hakra the Rigvedic Sarasvati.

          • If we use the text to date the period, it would mean that the Vedic poets are talking about a time when the Saraswati was glacier fed. It has been quite well known the Saraswati of IVC time-frame was periodic - a monsoonal overflow channel. The IVC period settlements are not on its banks ("the large paleo-courses of the rivers have been dry since the early Holocene if not earlier." THE INDO-FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT IN HARYANA AND RAJASTHAN H.P. Francfort).

          • Good morn, just had my breakfast BTW tell me What is river Sarasvati then? A outerplanet phenom or hallucination via too much soma?.

          • "What is river Sarasvati then?"

            It was clearly there - an Indus size river as per its basin, averaging 3-5 miles wide between and 12 miles at its max. It just did not have continuous flow in the IVC period otherwise we would not see settlements on its bed during that period. The river's water (and its people perhaps) appears to have moved west and east (the Shatudri into the Sindhu and the Yamuna into the Ganga) due to a fault. Francfort says this happened latest in early Holocene, about 10000ybp.

          • RKM, can you point me to your source which says "RV clearly describes the Sarasvati as being fed by melting snow of high mountains".

            To me it seems interpretation and not that explicit. Actually I find that Giosan paper strengthens the case of identifying Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara river with Sarasvati. They showed that river was indeed major and active during harappa time and confirms that Ghaggar region was main center of the subcontinent and later it moved/continued to east just like described in vedic literature.

          • "To me it seems interpretation and not that explicit."
            The interpretation looks pretty solid though, as if someone one is describing a mighty glacier fed river: "burst with her strong waves the ridges of the hills" "with fostering current comes forth, our sure defence, our fort of iron ... the flood flows on, surpassing in majesty and might all other waters ... Pure in her course from mountains to the ocean"

            It is clubbed with two other mighty glacier fed rivers: Sarasvati Sarayu Sindhu http://meluhha.com/newrv/verse.pl?v=10.64.9&q=sarv&acc=no&lang=ved&stratum=all&show=yes

          • Parasar, It is still interpretation though I agree that is intuitive interpretation. But at the same time it is not unreasonable for the Poet seating on the river at Rakhigarhi describe it as “swift river dissecting ridges of the hills” and Poet at Kalibangan in monsoon describe it as “mighty”. It was large river and was nourishing the largest number of settlements.

            The main difficulty was "mountain to the ocean". Now the paper is opening up that possibility for Ghaggar-Hakra-Nara during early phase. It shows that Hakra was strong enough at least in the monsoon to cross the thar dessert and join Nara to ultimately reach ocean.

            One has to look at the all evidence in total. RigVeda doesn't know about drying Sarasvati. Mahabhara and leter text mentions drying river. Even later text forgets about Sarasvati and make Ganga a main river. I find hard to now insist that river must be glacier fed. After all we are interpreting poet's description and not geologist.

          • uday,

            Sure, during monsoon many of these desert rivers do become powerful torrents. I have been stranded for days a few times (because many desert roads were laid straight on the dry river beds!). El Beruni and even later reports say the river was flowing. Going west to east, Beruni: "There are rivers and large streams which have their sources in and issue from the mountains surrounding the kingdom of Kapish or Kabul ... All these rivers fall into the Sind ...at a place called Panjnad, or "the junction of the five rivers." They form a very wide stream, which, at the time it attains its extreme breadth, extends ten parasangs, submerging trees of the forest, and leaving its spoils upon the trees like nests of birds. This stream, after passing Audar, in the middle of Sind bears the name of Mihran, and flows with a slower current, and widens, forming several islands ... the river divides into two streams, one empties itself into the sea in the neighbourhood of the city of Luharani, and the other branches off to the east to the borders of Kach, and is known by the name of Sind Sagar ... The river Sarsut falls into the sea to the east of Somnat. The Jumna falls into the Ganga below Kanauj, which city is situated on the west of the river. After uniting, they fall into the sea near Ganga Sagar."

            Nevertheless as surely know, a glacier fed river is a sight to behold (and fear).

          • Giosan et al. also say, "We also document renewed fluvial deposition on the lower
            Ghaggar-Hakra system approximately 700 y ago, which indicates that seasonal monsoon flows intensified episodically during the late Holocene and may provide an explanation for the high concentration of medieval fortified sites in this region".

            Though the Ghaggar-Hakra was rain-fed in Harappan times, it was more important than the Indus river system. This is in agreement with the respect accorded to it in the Rig Veda.

          • Thanks for the reference. I admire the way you have quotation from the published text at your fingertip. You must have very serious interest and spend lot of time thinking about this stuff.

            "Nevertheless as surely know, a glacier fed river is a sight to behold (and fear)"

            We are talking about the reconstructing the history thousands of year in the prehistory. Most obvious interpretations are not necessarily right. Many geologist and archeologists after discovery of Harrapan sites on Gagghar-Hakra-Nara had intuition that the river must have to be glacier fed to sustain such civilization. They found evidence of Sutlej and Yamuna flowing in to Ghaggar-Hakra. But now we know that they were almost right but two events were separated by 1000s of years. Gagghar-Hakra-Nara was actually monsoon fed and still strong enough to sustain the population year around.
            Giosan paper actually says that GH was only populated after the monsoon weakened. So the monsoon was very strong prior to early Harappan settlements on GH.

            GHN had 3 distinct phases. 1) when it flowed continuously to the ocean 2) When river split in to two parts GH and Nara 3) completely dried up. Most important question is when river stopped flowing to the ocean. They have documented activity in GH till 2300 BC. Pat and Nara region was active even after that. River bed was covered by Sand dunes very late in to 500CE. Hopefully future papers would answer this clearly. My Money is on it happening sometimes between 3000BC-2300BC.

            From Giosan paper:

            “the upper Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve in India also documented Holocene channel sands that are approximately 4300 y old”

            “On the upper interfluve, fine-grained floodplain deposition continued until the end of the Late Harappan Phase, as recent as 2,900 y”

            “This widespread fluvial redistribution of sediment suggests that reliable monsoon rains were able to sustain perennial rivers earlier during the Holocene and explains why Harappan settlements flourished along the entire Ghaggar-Hakra system without access to a glacier-fed river”

            “in the Cholistan region. Dunes younger than 1,500 y old on the edge of the expanding Thar Desert have begun to cover this region of the interfluve, but sediment originating from the Indus-Punjab system, the Ghaggar-Hakra, or from both of these river systems was deposited as late as 4,250 y ago”

            “Continuing to the southwest on the Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve, we document well-watered lands in the region of Pat, where channels ran parallel with the Indus and joined the Nara valley; their fluvial deposits at Fakirabad, among the dunes of the expanding desert, are even younger at approximately 3350 y old”

            “Further south, the Nara valley, which would be currently dry if not for modern irrigation, also had active fluvial sedimentation approximately 2900 y ago”

  21. RKM first tell me your ethnicity, I know for over a year that G-H was a rain feeded river but more importantly it has massive signs of settlements around it from archaic times and if you follow RV 10.75 Then G-H is the Sarasvati!, what is your info about Helmand?
    Please the SC asian origin of PIE is far more sound than any and not made up like "Dravidoid" and it is also prefered by clinical and latest Indologists like Giacomo Benedetti from pure academic criteria!
    http://new-indology.blogspot.com/2011/01/ancient-dna-from-europe-can-give-new.html?m=1 So if he is lunatic then others are surely cannibals:-D
    AND ONE LAST THING WEST ALWAYS HAVE PROBLEMS TO ORIGINATE SOMETHING WORTHY TO INDIA! For example 0.

  22. Nirjhar,

    It is a waste of time to discuss with you, as you are under the strong influence of nationalistic and fringe theories. I will not waste my time correcting your mistakes again and again.

  23. I'm sorry but i'm a guy of facts and you are a guy of the flow.

    • Look yourself in the mirror. No one except some Indian nationalists and a tiny number of fringe westerners takes you and your "facts" seriously.

  24. As i said you are a guy of the flow and i'm of the unwanted facts.

  25. LET ME SET ONE THING CLEAR: I am not a person who can be bought with stories by geniuses, phd's and people like most of here or anyother i only can be bought by truth and direct facts which don't need any assumptions.
    So if people think i'm lunatic nationalistic fringe! Then my answer is very noble- check the bases and truthfulness of your own prejudices first and then come to talk...

    • words, words, words...

    • Nirjhar, are you yourself doing primary research in the field or are you a secondary consumer of research that you screen through your extremely chauvinistic filter? It is quite unseemly to dismiss in such an off-hand manner the painstaking labor of serious scholars. You will have earned the right to do so only after you have spent decades under the scorching sun doing fieldwork or after you have gone nearly blind working in the basements of poorly lit national archives. Otherwise, please keep the hot air to yourself. Your agenda is quite clear to everyone.

  26. 2 thing RKM you didnt tell your ethnicity, are you afraid?
    All i do is checking the bases thats all and what most others do is following the 'academic tail' but truth also is academics also many times right, just need a little more rightness... Just a tiny little.

    • Nirjhar, what does my ethnicity have to do with any of this? You, who go parading around as 'Mr. Truth', should at least know that 'truth', if it is to be true to its name, does not come in multiple ethnic flavors. Shame on you for such blatant race-baiting!

  27. @Parasar, Do you know about any ancient agro-nomadic settlements around Haraxvaity? And why do you think the Avestans named it so?
    You know the problem here is 1 no one wants to believe or consider anything said by us as what we are saying is making them uncomfortable to their dearly attached sentiments and images in which they have grooved themselves so they are desperate to see everything via that glass and its a basic instinct of human nature but revolution is bound to happen cause no one can stop the truth and the glass will be shattered...
    SATYAMEVA JAYATE.
    P.S. All that people require to find truth is a brave and open mind, don't you think so?
    Have a good time.

  28. Thank you Nirjhar and RKM for pointing out and piquing my interest in the Giosan et al. PNAS paper. Among the references in this paper, there is a paper with the title “U-Pb zircon dating evidence for a Pleistocene Sarasvati River and Capture of the Yamuna River”!

    http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2012/01/23/G32840.1.abstract

    A glacier-fed Sarasvati could have existed 10,000 years ago as Parasar already commented and if the Rig Veda is describing this river then as also Parasar said, the Rig Veda is ancient indeed! Perhaps further work will show that a glacier-fed Sarasvati existed more recently than 10,000 years ago but certainly there is no such river now and the Ghaggar-Hakra was not glacier-fed in Harappan times.

    If you look in the Giosan et al. paper at Figure 2(b) (map of pre-Harappan sites) and Figure 3(a) (map of early and mature Harappan sites), you will see how critical the Ghaggar-Hakra river system was to early civilization in Pakistan. Most of the archaeological sites are on the Ghaggar-Hakra, not the Indus. It is therefore inaccurate to call it Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). If you don't want to be politically-incorrect and call it Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization (SSC), you can call it Ghaggar-Hakra Indus Civilization (GHIC)! Indeed with not enough flow in the Ghaggar-Hakra, the entire Harappan civilization collapsed even though there was adequate flow in the glacier-fed Indus.

    The Giosan et al. paper discusses archaeological sites in the context of the history of river flows in Pakistan. They talk about pre-Harappan sites (5,800 – 5,200 BP), early and mature Harappan sites (5,200 -3,900 BP), late Harappan sites (3,900 – 3,000 BP) and painted grey ware sites (3,000 – 2,600 BP). But no where will you find any mention of Aryan sites, though the Aryans are supposed to have invaded around 3500 BP.

    The eminent British Indologist and historian, A.L. Basham has the following to say about the Rig Veda in “The Wonder that was India” (1954), “When the hymns were written the focus of Aryan culture was the region between the Jamna (Sanskrit Yamuna) and Satlaj (Sutudri), south of modern Ambala, and along the upper course of the river Sarasvati. The latter river is now an insignificant stream losing itself in the desert of Rajasthan, but it then flowed broad and strong, and probably joined the Indus below the confluence of the Satlaj.” The paragraph ends as follows, “To the east the Aryans had not expanded far beyond the Jamna, and the Ganges (Ganga) is mentioned in only one late hymn.” Basham was not a votary of Hindutva – indeed he was an unabashed Aryan Invasionist. So we can give his interpretation of the Rig Veda credibility - he was a scholar of Sanskrit and could read read the texts for himself. Basham is placing the “Aryans” in the region of the Ghaggar-Hakra and at the same time as the Harappans when there was strong flow in the river!

    If you don't have a paper copy of Basham's book, you can read some of it for free at amazon.com.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Wonder-that-India-Sub-Continent/dp/159740599X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1341076746&sr=8-2&keywords=the+wonder+that+was+india#reader_159740599X

    • OMG, are you actually suggesting that the Rig Veda was composed in the early Holocene? If indeed it was, why wasn't the description of the 'Ghaggar-Hakra' (meaning, of course, the Sarasvati) updated in the hymns when the Indo-Aryans put aside their horses and chariots and built the cities of the 'Ghaggar-Hakra-Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization', which, I am sure, you believe they did? Would it not be easier to just say that the Ghaggar-Hakra does not fit the description of the Sarasvati in the Vedas?

      As for archeological evidence of an Indo-Aryan migration, what archeological evidence exists of the Proto-Greeks entering present-day Greece or, for that matter, of Huns invading Italy? Yet, we accept these as plausible and likely (pre)historic events. Archeological evidence of a slow, centuries-long inflow of semi-nomadic agro-pastoralists who built temporary structures out of perishable materials in a (sub)tropical country may be hard to find. However, the Gandhara Grave Culture seems to be a promising start.

      • "Do you know about any ancient agro-nomadic settlements around Haraxvaity? And why do you think the Avestans named it so?"

        Mundigak in Afghanistan was occupied during the whole period of the IVC.
        As to the name: “Last Results on Persian Researches” - Muller - “It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence [he is relying on Hapta Hendu's 15th position ie central asia to India to Persia], that the Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia ...” And from his “Lectures on the Science of Language”: “The Zoroastrians were a colony from northern India … Zoroastrians migrated westwards to Arachosia and Persia … they gave to the new cities, and to the rivers along which they settled, the names of rivers and cities familiar to them, and reminding them of localities which they had left.”

        Francfort mentions that up to about 4000bc the river still had flow sufficient to reach the ocean though considerably diminished form from the Holocene.

        The key question to me who do we associate the Aryans with. If the Aryans were horse riding nomads then neither the Saraswati, nor IVC is qualified to be identified with them. The utter paucity of horse remains is stark even if we grant that some horse remains were indeed there.

        • Given the literal and metaphoric prominence of the domesticated horse in the Vedic corpus (e.g. ashvamedha, the Ashvini, etc.), it would be hard to divorce Vedic Aryan culture from the domesticated horse. Therein lies the crux of the problem: how can a semi-nomadic, horse and chariot-riding people be credited with the creation of one of the most impressive urban civilizations of the ancient world, in which, as you correctly point out, Parasar, the domesticated horse is remarkable for its absence?

          As for 'Sarasvati', it needs to be mentioned that, as far as names for rivers go, it is fairly generic one meaning 'possessing flow, of mighty flow'. Many river names have been used and reused (Yamuna in India, Jamuna in present day Bangladesh; Iravati in the Panjab, Irrawaddy in Myanmar). It is entirely possible that there was/have been more than one 'Sarasvati' in the lands the Indo-Aryans/Indo-Iranians moved through or in which they settled. Also, Parasar, the possible movement of Zoroastrianism is not synonymous with the movement of ancient Iranians from the 'Hapta Hendu' into the Iranian plateau. You are correct that many scholars are now suggesting that Avestan was really a Vedic dialect with Iranian pronunciation (cf. Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present by Christopher I. Beckwith). This would just mean the movement of a sacerdotal language along with the religion, not necessarily a movement of people.

      • Well what do you do with Prof. Basham's statement on pages 31-32 of his book. “When the hymns were written the focus of Aryan culture was the region between the Jamna (Sanskrit Yamuna) and Satlaj (Sutudri), south of modern Ambala, and along the upper course of the river Sarasvati. The latter river is now an insignificant stream losing itself in the desert of Rajasthan, but it then flowed broad and strong, and probably joined the Indus below the confluence of the Satlaj.”

        Is he wrong here? He has the usual stuff about the Aryans and their horses and chariots but he also has the above statement.

        • The Nadi Stuti occurs in RV X, which is one of the younger, if not the youngest, mandalas. One can chart a eastward movement of Vedic culture within the RV itself. A possible scenario is that even within the RV the name 'Sarasvati' was used to designate different rivers, particularly since, as I mentioned in my earlier post, it is a fairly generic term for a flowing body of water. On the other hand, perhaps Basham was just plain wrong (he may have ascribed to the idea that the Ghaggar-Hakra was glacier-fed during the post-Harappan Vedic period). Clearly, you, Nirjhar and perhaps Parasar think that Prof. Basham was wrong about his AIT ideas. So, why could he not be wrong about other things as well?

          I do want to clarify my stance: the Ghaggar-Hakra basin was a major area of IVC settlement. I just do not see the scientific evidence to automatically equate it with the Vedic Sarasvati (particularly the mighty glacier-fed river that empties into 'samudra').

  29. At last! Some sense! Many thanks 2 you Balaji and Parasar!
    I will be brief:
    1.If Sarasvati(G-H) was a mighty one around 10000 years back then we can atleast say that during Rikvedic times it was a healthy river AND YOU KNOW THERE IS SOMETHING on the basis of REVISED MOORJANI ET AL. WE CAN SAY CASTE IS ATLEAST ~4000 YEAR OLD! AND RIKVED DONT MENTION CASTE IN THE FIRST 9 BOOKS! AND ITS FIRST MENTIONED IN THE PURUSHA SUKTA OF THE LATEST 10TH MANDALA! SO WE CAN ATLEAST PUT RIKVED TO THE LATE 3RD MILLENIUM BC AND SOME SUKTAS EVEN EARLY! WHICH IS THE EXACT DATE SET BY GIACOMO BENEDETTI WHO I THINK IS FOR REAL AND WHEN I ASKED HIM SOME SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ABOUT PIE HOME AROUND MEHRGARH ON THE "NEW INDOLOGY" BLOG MUCH BEFORE I WENT AWARE of the GEDROSIAN COMPONENT and of course this paper and others! I think i have given the link in a above post and you should watch it.
    2. BIHAR IS MENTIONED AS KIKATA ON THE 6TH MANDALA.
    Have good time.
    P.S. It wasnt brief was it?:-)

    • My God, what specious reasoning! Is this for real? "If the Ghaggar-Hakra 'may have been' glacier-fed in the early Holocene, then it 'must have been a healthy river' during Rigvedic times. That means, the Rigveda is more than 4,000 years old." What happened during the intervening 6,000 years? Isn't this the exact issue addressed by the Giosan paper - by the time of the mature IVC phase (2500 - 1900 BCE), the Ghaggar-Hakra was a monsoon-fed river? So, even if we accept all the hoaxes perpetrated to prove that the IVC was the work of the Indo-Aryans (e.g. horse on an IVC seal, IVC script being deciphered as Vedic Sanskrit), it means that during this time the Ghaggar-Hakra was monsoon-fed and, in order to be consistent with Vedic textual descriptions, could not have been the glacier-fed mighty Sarasvati!!!

    • Yes, Kikat has tripped everyone. The Ayra on the opposite bank of the Sarayu can explained away by Haroyu/Harayu, but there is no Kikat anywhere near Afghanistan or even the Punjab.

      • Parasar, Biharians as Kikatas are also mentioned here in RV 3.53.14 :http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv03053.htm
        Not a fan of the translator but there is no power that can erase the "unwanted datas" stored in the Riks and others.

        • Kikatas are mentioned in a derisive tone (Among Kikatas, what do thy cattle?) and I see no evidence in this hymn that these Kikatas are located in present-day Bihar. According to Prof. Michael Witzel, RV terms like 'kikata' and 'pramaganda' have a non-IE/IIr etymology and may be examples of a substrate effect (M. Witzel, ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF VEDIC STUDIES, Vol. 5 (1999), issue 1 (September)). This substrate interaction could certainly have occurred in the Panjab or points farther northwest and the term Kikata could have been used to designate different tribal groups at different times.

          • Here Dr. Witzel is trying substantiate his claim that early Rg Vedic horizon was limited to the NW - so he just made things up without any support to justify a NW Kikat, which he has to do as Kikat is mentioned in the older material. Every Indic material that I have come across has Kikat as Magadh. What would you expect the Vedic text to say to indicate its location is Bihar? Pramaganda is as good an internal clue as any since it looks to be referring to a river people, perhaps the river Gandak or the people in its vicinity called by the Greeks Gandaridae.

            I recall reading Dr. Witzel's claim that the Punjab/Afghan/Gandhara substrate is Munda as the oldest borrowings into the Rg are Munda. As Dr. Witzel cannot imagine an early Rg Vedic presence as far east as Bihar, essentially to justify this thesis he flips the whole geography of the subcontinent.

          • Are you actually suggesting that the RV's geographic horizon extends to present-day Bihar? If so, why would it mention one lone, supposedly eastern tribe, the Kikatas and nothing else - no eastern geographic landmarks, no other eastern tribes, eastern flora and fauna, nothing, zilch? As for Pramaganda, this term refers to a person, not a tribe. Moreover, Witzel's hypothesis is that the 'gnd' root is indeed Austro-Asiatic and may have been present in the name of a northwestern non-Aryan king, Pramaganda, and in the names of geographic features in other parts of the subcontinent such as the Gandak River.

            Even a superficial review of the RV clearly demonstrates that its geographic focus is the northwestern part of Panjab (now in Pakistan). No serious scholar actually believes that the cultural horizon of the RV extended east of the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab. Only in the later Vedic corpus do we see a eastward movement.

          • Yes I know most vedic commentators explain Pramaganda as the name of a king. What do you mean by eastern flora-fauna?

            No doubt that the bulk of the composition was in the Punjab and Eastern Afghanistan (even small streams are mentioned while from further east only larger bodies are noticed), which means the poets were in the western region.

            Nevertheless, from the Vedic period to recent times the Kikat country was considered 'impure' and has by all commentators been associated with south Bihar until the Aryan invasion issue came into focus.

            The Atharvan (parts which some consider to be older than the Rg) even while glorifying the Vratya in book 15, still throws curses upon the Magadhans.

            Please also see the Y dna distribution -
            http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2006/01/11/0507714103.DC1/07714Table_3.pdf
            You will notice the sharp contrast in Bihar between the Indo-Ayran (90%R, 0%O) and the Austrics (R is missing and O dominates). In western India too O2a is trace to 0.

            Therefore, language distribution, traditions, and Y dna distribution, all indicate that Munda had an eastern provenance and came into contact with the Indo-Aryans in the east.

  30. RKM, thats just fine cause some "lunatics" for your info have already suggested Rikved to be either Pre-Harappan or atleast Early harappan! Like Greek Nicholas Kazanas! Only thing is that he's probably not as educated as you;-).

    • Please use modern technology (Google Translator, for instance) to translate your mysterious pronouncements into grammatically correct, comprehensible English. Otherwise, please start a parallel discussion in the vernacular tongue that you learned on your mother's lap and with which you are most comfortable. Thank you.

  31. A SOLUTION TO THE HORSE PROBLEM
    To RKM and guys like him,
    1. Rikvedic horse was not quite similar to the war horses we dream as it had a special quality IT HAD 34 RIBS! http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv01162.htm
    THE UNUSUAL 34 RIBS OF RIKVEDIC HORSE ONLY MATCHES TO THE ARABIAN HORSE AND SOME OTHER PROBABILITIES ARE DISCUSSED HERE:
    http://new-indology.blogspot.com/2011/11/about-india-and-central-asia.html?m=1#comment-form
    Some Indologists have also argued for the scenario that it can be a local Indian breed like eg. Eqqus Sivalensis or etc. breed which had 34 ribs.
    2. A famous scientist who is a invasionist also named Colin Renfrew have already stated about "the exaggeration" of the horses significance in the field of Indo-european studies.
    So free me geniuses:-D.
    and to ordinary people like Parasar, Balaji what do you guys think?.

    • "THE UNUSUAL 34 RIBS OF RIKVEDIC HORSE ONLY MATCHES TO THE ARABIAN HORSE"

      I have thought for an entry via Arabia of R1a1 into India for a long time. I still think it ultimately came from Europe but I just don't see how it could have entered from the northwest which shows minimal R1a1 diversity.
      See eg. the Yusufzai R1a1, minimal diversity of haplotypes - yhrd.org/YP000791 17 of the R1a1 samples are the same! And the rest of the 15 R1a1 are close.

      On the other hand look at the R1a1 STR diversity in the Shimar SHR13-21 http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v103/n5/extref/hdy200972x7.doc

      • Parasar, you are waving a red flag ("I still think it (R1a1) ultimately came from Europe ...") in front of a bull (i.e. Nirjhar)!

        • RKM,

          To clarify - my comment was limited to R1a1 (portion of the Indo-Europeans), not Indo-Europeans as a whole. Indo-Europeans (or pre-proto etc.) may indeed have originated in South Asia or Central Asia.

          • Whew! That was a close call for you, Parasar. At least now Nirjhar will not have to use his keenly felt but grammatically mangled gobbledygook to eviscerate you on this forum.

      • The following paper claims that Europeans could not have contributed much in the way of genes to South Asia within the last few thousand years. It also claims that R1a1 in Arabs is due to gene flow from South Asia.

        http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v18/n4/full/ejhg2009194a.html

        • This paper sets up an easily defeatable paper tiger. R1a1 haplotypes that are relevant to the subcontinent are not the ones found in present-day Poland, the Czech Republic, western Russia, Belarus, etc. The region that is historically most relevant, both in terms of haplogroup frequency and haplotype diversity, is south Central Asia (south of the Kyzyl-kum), particularly the areas surrounding the erstwhile BMAC on the Amu Darya. Due to geopolitical turbulence, these areas (northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, southeastern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, northeastern Iran) seem to be the most under-sampled in these studies.

          • RKM,

            The haplotypes can sometimes be misleadingly close due to overlaps. At 67 markers the closest to me (L657+) is a Z283+ Kacper Wasielewski and L657+ Al-Whbh Al-Tamimi Fahd Rais Al-Whbh Al-Tamimi (from the Wahabi clan of the Tamims). Obviously the latter is much closer as we share a more recent ancestor I would estimate in the last 2000 years. A significant portion of the Prophet's Quraish clan are L657 too including the keeper of the Kaaba's key - Al-Shibi Al-Qurashi, whose family has been the custodian of the Kaaba predating Islam.

            Almost all Europeans and South Asians are Z85+. Under Z85, Europeans are Z283+ and South Asians Z93+. No Z283 has been found in South Asia, while trace Z93 is present in Europe mostly attributable to the Ashkenazi, Turks, and Arabs.

            L657 appears to be an Indo-Arab branch. The two Pakhtoons tested are both L657 and testing on another Pakhtoon is underway. One Iranian has tested L657+ but he is of the Quraish tribe (al-Hussaini al-Qurashi). Babasan Kazakhs too are L657+, they all are so close that they seem to be descend from one person - a Arab missionary perhaps. Absolutely no L657 to date has been found in Europe.

            http://www.semargl.me/dna/ydna/item-snp/91/

    • Sir Colin Renfrew has his own agenda for dissociating PIE culture from the horse: he is an outlier in believing that the PIE homeland was in Anatolia, not the Pontic Steppe, and that PIE speakers were first farmers who moved into southeastern Europe.

      Whatever relevance horses have to IE studies, they clearly are of huge relevance to Vedic studies given the emphasis on horses in the RV and that is the question at hand.

    • Nirjhar,

      I researched the horse issue a little further and I suspect that what you say is clearly something that should be investigated thoroughly. Apparently the Arabian may be a descendant of the Sivalensis and not of the European/Central Asian/Mongolian Caballus. The Arabian and the Sivalensis share a bending down of the face, a pre-orbital face pit in the skull, folding or frilling of the crown enamel, and an upper molar with a short grinding surface. see eg. "Many of the dark-coloured horses of Europe have Barb or Arab blood in their veins, this being markedly the case with the Old English black or Shire horse, the skull of which shows a distinct depression in front of the eye-socket. This depression is still more marked in the extinct Indian E. sivalensis, which may have been the ancestral form." These features and the recent finding the Arabians domesticated the horse 9000ybp ( http://news.discovery.com/animals/horse-domestication-saudi-arabia-110825.html ) make it likely that the Vedic reference to 34 ribs may have a meaning material to our discussion.

      • Some more stuff. Horse experts please chime in, as I have very little idea what this writer is talking about while analyzing the origin of the Arabian horse.

        "Some of these features are:

        (1) Five instead of six lumbar vertebrae;
        (2) 16 to 17 vertebrae in the tail as opposed to 18 in the horse;
        (3) Relative width to length and prominence of the brain case coupled with the low and lateral position of the orbits yields a larger brain;
        (4) A depression in front of the eye socket; and,
        (5) The depression of the profile of the face below the orbits which gives the characteristic “dish” profile.
        ...
        Equus agilis, the horse of the high, desert plains of Arabia and Africa, known as the hot-blooded horse of the South, possibly introduced from Northern India ... Equus sivalensis called the “Siwalik” horse from the discovery site in the Siwalik Hills at the foot of the Himalayas between the Sutilej and the Ganges.

        The Siwalki horse is similar to the modern Arabian “in the degree to which the front part of the skull is bent down on the facial axis, in the presence of a pre-orbital depression, in the great relative width of the upper molars, in the complexity of the enamel foldings in all the upper cheek teeth, in the shortness of the grinding surfaces of large upper wolf teeth.” It is most probable that the Arabian descends from the Siwalik horse of Northern India, one of the first of the true Equus horses ...

        The first mention of horses in Egyptian history (as well as the Bible) is between 1715 and 1689 BC ... Previous to this “no allusion has been made by any writer, sacred or profane, to horses in ancient Egypt, Libya or Ethiopia, and no wild horses were ever represented as existing in Abyssinia or Nigeria” ...

        However this may be, of interest to us is that from 2000 BC to late in the millennium, the horse of the south (the “Eastern” horse), the hot-blooded Arabian type spread out of the East (India?) into Arabia, Egypt, Africa, and on into Greece ...

        The horses of the Arabian type ... found themselves in a crucible where they had to withstand heat, cold, thirst, poor feed, exposure and the need to travel many hours over excessive distances merely to survive. These fierce conditions honed the species until it became what we see today. The Arabian is called “hot-blooded,” a term that refers to his blood vessels being nearer to the surface of the skin than in other species and not, as many think, a reference to temperament. By way of contrast, the descendants of Equus robustus have their blood vessels buried more deeply (a result of the cold Northern winters) and when you ride bareback you feel less warmth – hence, “cold-blooded.”"
        http://wiki.caid-commons.org/index.php/Origins_of_the_Arabian_Horse

        • Thanks and let be short, this chat is becoming an epic one and ITS CLEAR THAT THE HORSE OF RIKVED IS NOT THE ONE FROM STEPPE AND PROBABLY NOT FROM OUT OF SOUTH ASIA.

  32. Getting back to the issue of ANI/ASI admixture dating, I agree with Ibra that it must have started at the time of the Harappan civilization itself more than 4,000 years old since there were some Harappan settlements in the area of present-day India where they would have encountered ASI people. However, such settlements moved east of the Yamuna and South only after 4,000 years ago after the drying-up of the Ghaggar-Hakra, as shown in the Giosan et al. paper. So most of India should give dates younger than 4,000 years. Perhaps we should be able to detect a cline of admixture dates as well.

    If, as suggested by RKM, the ASI element in Pakistan is from the resident hunter-gathers there and the ANI element is from West Asian migrants who brought agriculture to Mehrgarh, the age of the ANI/ASI admixture in Pakistan should be about 9,000 years old. Unfortunately Moorjani et al. say that their method of dating admixture based on linkage disequilibrium cannot date such ancient admixtures. So with their method, the date for ANI/ASI admixture for Paksitan should be 4,000 years ago.

    My "wild" speculation is that most of the ASI in Pakistan is from concubines and slaves brought there from present-day India during the Islamic period. These concubines and slaves would have had about 50% ASI with ANI/ASI admixture date of about 3,500 years. The Pakistanis after many centuries of such gene flow would have gone from 0% to 25% ASI. The linkage disequilibrium method of Moorjani et al., may output a number like 1,200 years as a compromise intermediate between 3,500 and, say, 400 years.

    We will know when they publish their data.

    • ANI to me looks to be the remnant population from Africa which came into South and West Asia about 140000ybp and a section also moved on to SE Asia. While much of the subcontinent and west Asia got wiped out by YTT (Africa was less affected, some research is showing that pockets may indeed have survived (cf Jwalapuram). ASI in that scenario would be from the colonizers from SEAsia that for the most part survived YTT (even though closer, they were to the east). 70-60000ybp they colonized southern and eastern Asia. ASI in this scenario separated from ANI about 140-120000ybp and from E and SE Asians about 60000 years ago. ASI and ANI then have been admixing slowly in the last 60000years.

      • At Jwalapuran, they found the same tools before and after the Toba eruption.

        http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5834/114

        But whether they were made by modern humans or archaics is not known. My guess is that it is archaic humans in which case they would not be ASI. Also Macaulay et al.'s paper is not consistent with a 140000 ybp migration out of Africa.

        http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5724/1034.abstract?ijkey=QWTbNGl4UEtZk&keytype=ref&siteid=sci

        • According to Petraglia the tools resemble those made by modern humans, which means that modern humans potentially did survive the YTT disaster in South Asia. My guess on Y-DNA is that K was already born and so was R mtDNA, but not U.

          "Petraglia thinks that modern humans — rather than Neanderthals or other hominins — are the only species that would have been able to persist through an event as dramatic as the Toba eruption ... Neanderthal toolkits found in Europe are very different, he says. This is more evidence, he says, that the plucky ash-covered inhabitants of Jwalapuram were modern humans ... "The only way to definitively demonstrate the existence of modern humans before and after the eruption in India is by discovering human fossil skulls," says Ambrose. This is something that Petraglia will go some way to agreeing with: "It's true we have to look for fossils," he says. "The search is on.""

  33. Regarding the linguistic affiliation of words like "Kikata" and "Pramaganda", I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the Late Harappan language, the language that was found to form a substrate in Sanskrit. An eastward thrust of late Harappans would have carried the language all to way to UP and Bihar/Bengal only to be replaced by Indo-Aryan by the time of Buddha. Cultures like "Northern Black Polished Ware" would also seem to suggest Harappan affiliation leading up to to Magadha and the second urbanization phase of South Asia. http://i49.tinypic.com/13yqt07.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Black_Polished_Ware

    • Ibra,

      You make a very good point. It seems plausible that the lower Gangetic plain (eastern UP, Bihar, western Bengal) was some sort of composite between post-urban Harappan culture (uncertain linguistic affiliation - Para-Munda, Dravidian, or both) and the rice-cultivating eastern Neolithic, perhaps affiliated with Masica's mysterious language X.

      • RKM,Harappans were vedic in reality and para-munda/dravidian in theory, The fact is that RV mentions 'pur' city and if you say that of BMAC then you can suck it and i shall prove it why.
        and yes there is also swastikas on IVC/SSC art.

  34. Dear Zack,

    Here is the influence of ANI in various castes/tribes of India according to Reich’s nature article. While Mala, Madiga and Chenchu are from South India Bhils are from North India. Their genetic similarity prompts to designate them as Ancient Indians and not as ASI.

    Ancient North Indian [read Middle East, Central Asia and European or Aryan] ancestry [genetic mix up shown in the brackets as rounded off per cent] of various castes are Mala (38.8), Madiga (40.6), Chenchu (40.7), Bhil (42.9), Satnami (43.0), Kurumba (43.2), Kamsali (44.5), Vysya (46.2), Lodi (49.9), Naidu (50.1), Tharu (51.0), Velama (54.7), Srivastava (56.4), Meghwal (60.3), Vaish (62.6), Kashmir Pandit (70.6), Sindhi (73.7), Pathan (76.9).

    Thanks,
    Sekhar

    • Reich's paper makes the following quite clear: ANI and ASI form two distinct cluster, not variants of one 'Ancient Indian' cluster. Since ANI is closer to western Eurasian populations than to ASI, it likely captures many groups, including early west Asian farmers and later central Asian agro-pastoralists. As an analytic grouping, ANI simply does not have the granularity to distinguish between various western Eurasian contributions to various present-day Indian ethnic groups. Presumably, there is more central Asian agro-pastoralist contribution to the Pathans than to Malas or Chenchus.

  35. Like a crying baby:-D.

  36. Dienekes has some highly relevant findings, the latest of which is the one below.

    http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/07/indo-european-genetic-signatures-in.html

    He believes that what he calls "West Asian" (what Zack calls "Baloch-Caucasion" and what Metspalu calls "k5") is the genetic signature of Indo-Europeans. I find Dienekes's argument convincing -Europeans were not the originators of Indo-European languages and instead they received the languages they speak from migrants who also brought in the "West Asian" component.

    Now, we know that the "West Asian" component has been present in Mehrgarh since at least 9000 ybp. Therefore we do not need an Aryan invasion 3500 ybp to bring in this component which has been present in abundance for a long time!

    To the contrary it is much more likey that the subcontinent is the source of the "West Asian" component as well as the Indo-European languages. People, are reluctant to accept this because at present Pakistan has about 25% ASI and Indo-European speakers outside the Subcontient have 0% ASI. This difficutly will be cleared up if the ASI in Pakistan can be shown to have come there only within the last few centuries.

    The drying-up of the Ghaggar-Hakra river system around 4000 ybp caused the large population that was supported by the river system to have to migrate to survive. Some moved east to India creating the ANI/ASI cline in India. Some moved west and out of the Subcontient and imparted their language as well as their genes to the Europeans. If you look at the "HarappaWorld" spreadsheet, for example, you will see that the British have 11% Baloch (what Dienekes calls Gedrosia).

    • Balaji,

      Assuming that Dienekes' hypothesis about the Indo-European-related spread of the "West Asian" component in much of Europe (thus not anywhere else) is correct, it does not mean that the "West Asian" component originated in NW South Asia nor with Proto-Indo-Europeans wherever they lived. As already noted by Dienekes, the "West Asian" component has two peaks: Georgians and Abkhazians, both of whom are non-Indo-European speaking populations from the SW Caucasus, and Brahuis, Balochis and Makranis, all of whom are from the border region between present-day Iran and present-day Pakistan. The "West Asian" component is ubiquitous and one of the major components in all of West Asia (including the Caucasus), Central Asia and South Asia irrespective of the language family. So, whether Dienekes' hypothesis about the Indo-European-related spread of the "West Asian" component in much of Europe is correct or not, the "West Asian" component's spread and becoming one of the major components in all these three adjacent regions cannot be attributed to the Indo-European dispersals in these three adjacent regions, as also noted by Dienekes; the "West Asian" component must already have been ubiquitous and one of the major components in these three adjacent regions before the Indo-European dispersals there.

      • You are right.

        I am fully aware that the "West Asian" component is present in speakers of Turkic, Caucasian, Semitic and Indo-European languages. In other words, it is ubiquitous in Western Eurasia!

        It is in Europe that it occurs the least and even less in Basques and Finns (non-Indo-European speakers). Also aDNA from hunter gathers from 5000 ybp or earlier is lacking this component. From these facts, Dienekes infers that West Asians (essentially Iranians) brought the Indo-European languages to Europe along with the West Asian component. Dienekes discounts Pakistan as a source of the Indo-European languages because of the presence of substantial ASI in Pakistan.

        But if Iranians were the originators of the Indo-European languages, they were close neighbors of the people of Pakistan who would have been in contact with them for thousands of years. There would be no need for chariot-riding Aryans from the European steppes to invade 3500 ybp to introduce Indo-European languages to the Subcontinent.

  37. There is no reason to think that whole of the West Asian component represents PIE but it and the Gedrosian component is probably related to PIE movements but the fundamental question is Where both the components and PIE originated together, as i prefer It can be SC Asia but we need a true evidence not just for that but for any theory.
    Theories are paths but truth is the ultimate destination which can be only achieved by a true+unbiased path.
    "what is what takes you to that".

  38. This discussion has spun out of control. No amount of evidence that is to the contrary or at least raises questions about the following points will ever satisfy the Out-of-India camp (i.e. Balaji, Nirjhar and perhaps Parasar):

    1. The Proto-Indo-European urheimat is the Indus Valley.
    2. The Vedic Aryas domesticated the horse and built the IVC (sorry, I meant SSC).
    3. The Vedas were composed around 7,000 BCE (Does that date satisfy the proposed 'hypotheses'? I can adjust it as needed, of course.)
    4. The Harappans and the Vedic Aryas are the self same people.
    5. What else? Perhaps, the Dravidian languages are actually a long lost branch of the Indo-European.
    6. Millions of slaves and concubines were brought in from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by those beastly Turco-Afghans to Pakistan and that is what explains the ASI component in Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims of the northwest.
    7. The Vedic Aryas traveled around India in spaceships powered by winged horses with 34 ribs.
    8. The Vedic Aryas discovered the Americas 2500 years before Columbus.
    9. The Vedas were composed 9,000 years ago in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (maybe even Assam, Nagaland and Mizoram).
    10. There is not really any detectable genetic difference between any groups in the subcontinent. So, Zack and David Reich, please stop all this unnecessary "research".

    I hope the above finally satisfies everyone and we can all go back to our dayjobs.

    “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them”. David Hume

    • LOL! Love it! (Especially #7 and 8).Much respect to you for your patience and educational responses RKM. But unfortunately this is a situation repeated on multiple sites across the web. They're just like the religiocentric creationists in the US (they seem to be worse as they organize in packs). These "internet hindus" will scour the web for anything counter to their religion's worldview and then try to hijack the discussion. They will argue, modify facts, and sometimes even intimidate others unitl they get appeasement of their beliefs. Great list, maybe this might finally appease them! 😉

    • Many of the above are straw points apparently to make light of the matter.

      Nevertheless, if that 10000ybp early Holocene change in river flow is correct it could explain a number of things.

      Is it possible that Harrapa was later culture and that the Rg Vedic one preceded that? Why is Zack's and/or Reich's research inconsistent with a deeper timeline? I suggest that we use genetics as an objective independent tool, not just some elephant in the room where we are all seeing evidence supporting our preconceived notions.

      Why do you think that 34-rib horse is not an important clue? It is clearly not a Central Asian type, but an Arabian one.

      We know that that the chariot is missing in the Harappan period, but then there are no remains of chariots from the so called Vedic period either - "Since there is no material evidence or illustration of a chariot from this period, a picture must be reconstructed by piecing together the literary data ... The Vedic chariot has to be reconstructed only from references in the literature, since with the exception of one wheel no actual chariots or chariot parts have been revealed by archaeology ... depicted at Sanchi in approximately the first century A.D." Therefore, how can we establish the Rg Vedic date just from the chariot?

      I would think that the poets were hyping big time, but I pause because the Greeks mention a chariot culture well before Sanchi. Plus the destruction brought by rivers and weather in South Asia is immense - almost nothing survives a strong monsoon season. Large cities such as Kannauj and Gaur from a 1000ybp have vanished. During a severe monsoon the Terai to Kaimur used to become what looked like one water body (recall the Greeks mentioning an island nation in the Ganges, and the chief Mihirkul waiting to capture a city in Magadh till the waters drained).

      Greek eyewitnesses saw Indians on Chariots in Greece (with Xerxes some Indians "rode on horseback, others in chariots drawn by either horses or wild asses ... ") and Megasthesnes did see them in India: "Of the women, some are in chariots, some on horses, and some even on elephants, and they are equipped with weapons of every kind ... for it is a practice with them to control their horses with bit and bridle, and to make them move at a measured pace and in a straight course. They neither, however, gall their tongue by the use of spiked muzzles, nor torture the roof of their mouth ... Such as undertake this work require to have a strong hand as well as a thorough knowledge of horses. The greatest proficients test their skill by driving a chariot round and round in a ring; and in truth it would be no trifling feat to control with ease a team of four high-mettled steeds when whirling round in a circle. The chariot carries two men who sit beside the charioteer ... In India there are herds of wild horses, and also of wild asses ... The Prasian nation, which is extremely powerful, inhabits a city called Palibotra, whence some call the nation itself the Palibotri. Their king keeps in his pay at all times 60,000 foot, 30,000 horse, and 8,000 elephants ... The third division has charge of the foot-soldiers, the fourth of the horses, the fifth of the war-chariots, and the sixth of the elephants ... The chariots are drawn on the march by oxen, but the horses are led along by a halter, that their legs may not be galled and inflamed, nor their spirits damped by drawing chariots."

      Re: "and perhaps Parasar"
      In my opinion, FWIW, ANI has nothing to do with Aryans and what we think of as Aryans did not show up on the Indus until about 1000-800BC since even considering the monsoons in South Asia, I would expect the relative drier regions to have brought forth more evidence by now. I had indeed been intrigued by the paleolithic looking cave art in India (see Bhimbetka and Mirzapur), but had assumed it to be relatively recent graffiti!

    • RKM go to a shrink first and then talk to GB in his blog, you will find the absurdity of passion.

    • RKM,

      I cannot speak for Parasar or Nirjhar but I would like to correct you on my opinions.

      "1. The Proto-Indo-European urheimat is the Indus Valley."

      Possible/likely.

      "2. The Vedic Aryas domesticated the horse and built the IVC (sorry, I meant SSC)."

      Yes.

      "3. The Vedas were composed around 7,000 BCE (Does that date satisfy the proposed 'hypotheses'? I can adjust it as needed, of course.)"

      Don't know about the dating. Just that it has to be older than Max Mueller's.

      "4. The Harappans and the Vedic Aryas are the self same people."

      Yes.

      "5. What else? Perhaps, the Dravidian languages are actually a long lost branch of the Indo-European."

      Both the Dravidian language family and the Indo-European language family are indigeneous to the Subcontient. They are sister families not one a long lost branch of the other. The Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic language families are from East Asia.

      "6. Millions of slaves and concubines were brought in from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by those beastly Turco-Afghans to Pakistan and that is what explains the ASI component in Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims of the northwest."

      No. There are not millions of people living in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. The Turco-Afghans were not beastly. They were followers of their religion which permitted the enslavement of kafirs - they believed that it was a humane act to give the kafirs the opportunity to escape burning eternally in hellfire by embracing the one true faith. I believe that the Turco-Afghans did transport millions of kafir slaves. The numbers should be comparable or exceed the numbers in the trans-Atlantic slave trade of Africans or the trans-Saharan slave trade. Of course this can explain only the ASI in muslims.

      "7. The Vedic Aryas traveled around India in spaceships powered by winged horses with 34 ribs."

      No.

      "8. The Vedic Aryas discovered the Americas 2500 years before Columbus."

      No.

      "9. The Vedas were composed 9,000 years ago in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (maybe even Assam, Nagaland and Mizoram)."

      No.

      "10. There is not really any detectable genetic difference between any groups in the subcontinent. So, Zack and David Reich, please stop all this unnecessary "research"."

      No. To the contrary, please continue the excellent work.

      • Balaji, I am glad I was able to identify most of your highly unconventional notions about Indian pre-history. At least now we know all of the biases through which you filter any emerging data. JK is right - you guys are the Indian equivalents of the right-wing fundamentalist nuts who troll the internet to broadcast your crazy ideas.

        • Talk point to point not by emotion, thats the first thing you need to learn.
          You were doing it at first but what happened out of 'academic fuel'?.

  39. THERE IS NO REASON TO GIVE MEHRGARH THE CREDIT AS THE FARMING SEED OF SOUTH ASIA
    https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/lahurdewa-ganga-basin
    Prof. V. Shinde related to the farmana research also points out:
    http://forbesindia.com/interview/ask-the-insider/if-i-find-hidden-treasure-is-it-mine/18912/1
    I guess the Munda-Dravid "Hunter gatheres" of G-Y basin were not Hunter Gatherers at all.

    • Thank you for pointing out these papers. The Harappans apparently learned rice farming from the people of the G-Y basin. In Figure 56 of the supporting information to the Giosan et al. paper, they show how the Harappans shifted from river-based agriculture to monsoon-based agriculture as they moved east. This involved a greater dependence on rice.

  40. Examining the Harappaworld spreadsheet allows one to estimate approximately the extent of the transport of slaves into the Islamic world from Africa.

    African admixture in various middle-eastern populations:

    Iraqi Arab (muslim): 5%
    Iraqi Mandaean (non-muslim sect): 0%
    Assyrian (Iraqi christian): 0%

    Jordanian: 7%
    Palestinian: 7%
    Samaritian (endogamous quasi-Jewish sect): 1%
    Lebanese: 4%
    Ashkenazy Jew: 1%
    Sepharidic Jew: 1%
    Syrian: 5%

    Yemen: 18%
    Egypt: 18%
    Libya: 19%
    Morocco: 27%

    This practice continues to this day in parts of North Africa as seen in the following story.

    http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/world/mauritania.slaverys.last.stronghold/index.html

    African slaves were also brought to the Subcontient. One such slave was Sidi Mubarak Bombay in the nineteenth century.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidi_Mubarak_Bombay

    The genetic effect of this can be seen. For example:

    Brahui: 2%
    Balochi: 2%
    Makrani: 5%

    South Asians were also taken as slaves. For example read the following paper on the mtDNA and Y-chromosomes of the marah Arabs of Iraq.

    http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/11/288

    About 12% of the mtDNA and 4% of the Y-chromosomes came from South Asia. In other words, there was predominantly female-mediated gene flow. African admixture was comparable.

    • That there was slave trade is not in dispute. Reich had to throw out some data I think because of that.
      The issue here is slave trade and ASI on the Indus. RKM's comment makes perfect sense: "ASI being present in non-Muslim northwestern populations, it is present in the Kashmiri Pandits ... the presence of 'ASI' in the non-Muslim northwestern populations makes it highly unlikely that it was introduced into the northwest by Islamic-era slaves and concubines from the south."
      Kashmiri Pandits are known to have eastern (Kaulas) and southern (Agnihotris) brahmans in their Bhanmashi group.

      Maybe Zack can pull out the Mohanna data (limited SNPs unfortunately) which could throw light on aborigines of the Indus. http://www.investigativegenetics.com/content/pdf/2041-2223-2-1.pdf

      IVC 'Priest King': "The man's features show some "Negroid" features - but nowhere near as clearly or strongly as is claimed in some over-excited black quarters."
      Indus 'Dancing Girl': "unmistakably Negrid or Negritoid facial features."

      • Friends,There is a scientific evidence also of why the "negroid" ASI likely feature was there as Harrapans performed heavy inter-regional marriages for trade purposes: http://m.timesofindia.com/city/pune/Harappans-married-outside-to-secure-trade-relations/articleshow/10299629.cms
        and we also know the "dasis" performed the dances dominantly along a Kings sabha at his palace, 'dasis' were generaly of "lower birth" there for more of ASI, though never think all of ASI was negroid not caucasoid.
        Now the name "Priest king" is a thrown one and he can be easily a well estabilished trader!!, so ease off folks!!!, harappans traded deep down bharata to north in BMAC atleast as Elephant seals are found there with the script and guess what according to Prof. Bryant there is a peacock motif also in the Middle-east dating from 2100b.c.!!! Peacock is a typical Indian sign.
        SSC/IVC citys were dominant in traders, kings and "dasi" type of blokes and the Brahmins liked to reside on more of a ashram type of lifestyle close to prakiti to medidate, get spiritual knowledge,teach and more importantly live in peace and with occasional visit to the citys for political purposes or materialistic needs.
        After SSC/IVC collapsed the ANI-ASI mix had a sudden natural boost and then the endogamic caste emerged.

  41. Great! it looks now that the puzzle is getting its pieces filled, i'm also trying to find more pieces and have to say we don't see this kind of interesting chat daily on net so many thanks to Zack and guys like you.
    Have a good time.

  42. I have a couple more data point on African admixture in the Middle East. The Druze of Syria have 1% African admixture the same as the Jews and Samaritians and much less than that of other muslims. Perhaps the minority Alawite sect of President Bahar al-Assad will also be found to have less African admixture than Sunni Syrians. There are a few Christians in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel etc. though I have not seen data on them, we can expect them to have about 1% African. The Coptic christians of Egypt should have a little more African admixture but considerably less than the 18% of muslim Egyptians. It will be interesting to see the date of African admixture for coptic and muslim Egyptians. Very likely the admixture date for muslim Egyptians will be in the Islamic era and for the coptic christians much older.

    The two HRP Iraqi Arabs have 3% South_Indian admixture. Since the "average" South Asian has about 50% South_Indian, the Iraqi Arabs have ancestry of about 6% from South Asia in addition to 5% from Africa.

  43. Balaji, a request, can you bring any component data of Greeks, slavs and Germanic tribes? I would love to see the amount of Baloch/Gedrosian component among them.
    Thanking you.
    N.

  44. Dhanyavad Balaji, Surely if we put the other putative "bottleneck" theory away in a common sense there was somekind of out of sc asia of I.E. blokes but we are missing a vital decider as i'm saying for yokes the age of the components in the certain populations, boy that will be a revolution or betterly revealation;-).
    Have a good time.

  45. And yes i'm also working on the Sarasvati mystery with an expert help i think i will come with some solid baseful stuff so wish me sauvagya.
    N.

  46. RKM and Parasar pointed out that hindus and sikhs from the northwest also have substantial ASI. The northwest of India (East Punjab) was at the eastern frontier of the Harappan civilization and so ANI/ASI admixture should be expected there even before the collapse of the urban phase of Harappa and the migration of Harappans eastward. The real test will be non-muslims from areas more to the west, well inside Pakistan. Fortunately we have HRP0062 (Sindhi hindu), HRP0085 (Thattai Bhatia), HRP0108 (Halai Bhatia) and HRP0238 (Pushtikar brahmin). The ASI for these individuals are 23%, 22%, 22% and 31% respectively. As in the case of Punjab, the brahmin individual has higher ASI which I attribute to intermarriage with brahmins from other part of the Subcontient. The merchant-class hindu Sindhis have the lowest ASI of HRP individuals with no recent non-South Asian ancestor. It is likely that their ancestors acquired this ASI from marriage ties to merchants in India, for example the Vaish from Reich et al. have ASI of about 38%.

    The ASI numbers are from Zack's spreadsheet.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuW3R0Ys-P4HdFN6QlFNUWJYZVl4YmZUU3BIQ0NBeFE#gid=1

    • Good points. The numbers are partly showing the isolation of Sindh due to the Kutch rann and Thar desert. Note, Rajasthani brahman is 28.71% ASI.

      Similar numbers should also be seen in the Jats who have migrated from Sindh to the Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, W. UP (jatan-i-sharqi) and Kandahar (jatan-i-gharbi) and 'the eastern Jats' ( in the historical period (post Arab invasion, also mentioned are the desert Jats, the jatan-i-dashti likely living in the Indus lowlands). http://books.google.com/books?id=U7Q3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA163

      That it became even more isolated after the Arabs occupied it, is also possible. When Hsuan Tsang visited Sindh, he gives an eyewitness account of several stupas built by Asoka indicating more interaction at that time ("Asoka-raja has founded several tens of stupas in places where the sacred traces of his presence were found. Upagupta, the great Arhat, sojourned very frequently in this kingdom, explaining the law and convincing and guiding men. The places where he stopped and the traces he left are all commemorated by the building of sangharamas or the erection of stupas. These buildings are seen everywhere; we can only speak of them briefly.").

      Some of the Xing Nepalese have very low ASI numbers too.

      • Thanks for the information from Andre Wink's book. It speaks to the sorry state of scholarship in history in India and Pakistan that a Dutch scholar teaching at the University of Wisconsin had to write this important book!

        Anyway this gives us good information on about the Jats. We do not need to invoke descent from exotic Scythians. Instead Jats seem to be pastoralists from Sind who fled as refugees from the conquering Arabs. It will be interesting to see the date of their ASI admixture - it should be fairly recent.

        The Nepalese have low ASI because they have East Asian ancestry that dilutes their other ancestries.

  47. Bandhus, The fact is that the mix is atleast 4000 years old so i don't think geography will give us great clues though there are examples like Brahui whom don't have any ASI but looks dark and similar to other fellow south asians.
    If i'm not wrong persians also have a small amount of ASI! which AIT/AMT supporters put for the academic view of BMAC though i think that is a nother sign of their "Aryan home" to be quite closer to Bharata.
    And for BMAC and some other aspects here i give a veteran injection from academics.
    http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html
    Enjoy it.

    • Thank you Nirjhar for sending the link to Prof. Lal's talk. It was very informative. Prof Lal is a scholar of Sanskrit as well as an archaeologist - an excellent combination!

      I must disagree a little with you about the importance of geography. Though the Subcontient was divided politically between Pakistan and India only in 1947, the area of present-day Pakistan was always different from that of present-day India by climate and vegetation and there is also a natural border - the Thar desert. Due to this, over time there was also a genetic difference with the people in present-day Paksitan being 100% ANI and present-day India being 100% ASI until 4000 ybp. (I know that Parasar disagrees with me here and thinks that people in the Ganga basin were also 100% ANI until Maghadan times.)

      After the drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra 4000 ybp, the Harappans migrated east and formed the ANI/ASI cline in India that was observed by Reich et al.

      The Brahui are not 0% ASI, they have about 12% South_Indian which corresponds to about 12% ASI.

      Iranians do have a small amount of ASI and probably acquired it in the same way as the Iraqi Arab HRP participants.

      • Thank you and tell me about the latest thought on sarasvati that i have posted.
        Good times.

      • Balaji,

        To clarify, I do not think that the Gangetic folk were 100% ANI until Magadhan times. I just think that a major admixture between the north and south took place in Magadhan times. Admixture must have been happening before too, but we have very little evidence. It is only in the Magadhan period that horizons open up, with the north noticing the south ("the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Satiyaputras, the Keralaputras, as far as Tamraparni") and vice versa (Nandar, Kosar, "chariots of the Moriyar," Vadugar, etc.).

        As to the Austric ASI element, I don't know how old that is.

        Reich: "These results do not mean that the Indian groups descend from mixtures of European and Austro-Asiatic speakers, but only that they derive from at least two different groups that are (distantly) related to CEU and Santhal ... We use CEU as an unmixed surrogate for the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) population and for the sake of argument, we consider Santhal to be an unmixed
        surrogate for the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) population"

        But the Santhal are still off-cline:
        "We find that the 19 Indian groups are largely distributed along a one-dimensional gradient including CEU and the centroid of the Indian groups. The only exceptions to this are the Kharia, Santhal and Sahariya who are “off cline” suggesting a more complex mixture history (consistent with the Kharia and Santhal speaking Austro-Asiatic languages ... “off-cline” in the direction of being more closely related to East Asians (CHB). The fact that the “off-cline” groups include both of the Austro-Asiatic speaking groups (Kharia and Santhal), makes it likely that the PCA pattern genuinely reflects complex mixture in these groups—possibly gene flow from groups that are (distantly) related to East Asians—and is not a
        mathematical artifact of PCA that can arise due to isolation-by-distance"

        Essentially this looks to me to a two pronged ASI influence on South Asia - an early one that diverged from East Asians about 60000ybp and a later one that diverged from East Asians more recently whereby the east asian element is still putting it off the Indian cline. This has to be pretty recent, even historical perhaps.

        The two sources of ASI perhaps:

        Santhali traditions say that when the arrived in the Chotanagpur region was been mined by Saraks (or Tanti http://books.google.com/books?id=6C1RAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA428 ). Sarak=Jain Sharavaka, Tanti= Tantri or doctrinal Magadhi (cf. "Samma Sambuddho pi te pitakan Buddha vaehanan Tantin aropento Magadhi basayaiva aropesi").

        The Dravidian Kurukh Oraon put their arrival from Karnataka. http://books.google.com/books?id=_eqr833q9qYC&pg=PA32

  48. I went through the essay and it is more of poking holes in other theories than providing clear positive proof that the IVC folk were the Rg Vedic people. Yes, that 1200bc number was made up on flimsy grounds but what about a potential period 200-400 years later.

    “As for the question of biological continuity within the Indus Valley, two discontinuities appear to exist. The first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC ... and the second occurs at some point after 800 BC.” In other words, there was no entry of a new set of people between 4500 and 800 BCE, much less of Aryan invaders / immigrants ! ... Can’t we begin thinking afresh in this 21st century?"

    Let us other archeological evidence besides the intrusion seen after 800bc. The time period close to 800bc coincides with a number of items:

    1. "The PGW people ... were the first people
    to have definitely used the domesticated horse ... The culture is dated by radiocarbon to 1000–
    600 B.C."

    2. "Almost all the Chalcolithic sites of western and central India were deserted between the middle of the second millennium B.C. and the beginning of the first millennium B.C."

    3. "The first large-scale and effective use of iron in India is associated with this culture. The PGW culture is found in the Indo-Gangetic Divide and the upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab (ancient Aryavarta and Madhyadesa)."
    http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/nov2001/491.pdf

    Obviously the writer of the above knows that this late date does not coincide with the widely accepted entry time-line of the Aryans and therefore has this to say: "the PGW people, and they represent the second wave of the Aryans" implying that the first wave were perhaps the 1500bc folk. But in the paper they are no where to be seen in the archeology except in Malwa and the description of the culture provided is hardly persuasive that they are a horse and chariot culture: "The Malwa people domesticated
    cattle, sheep, goat and pig. They also consumed the flesh of wild animals like barasingha (Cervus duvauceli), rat, fish, turtle and molluscs ... Of particular interest are channel spouted bowls and pedestalled goblets from Navdatoli. They have significant parallels at Iranian sites and Sankalia (1964) interpreted them as evidence of Aryan migration from Iran into India ... sword with a mid rib. Such a sword also has affinities with specimens from bronze age sites in
    Iran, particularly Tepe Hissar and has been interpreted by Sankalia (1963, p. 329, figure 23–24) as another evidence of Aryan migration into India."

    A fresh 21st century review requires us to look at the evidence with a new perspective. Either the Rg Vedic horizon is very old, so old that good evidence has either perished or buried deep, or we have to fit it to the archeological evidence we have showing significant changes in the Ganga-Yamuna doab in 1000bc that spread both west and east. The intrusion was perhaps through the northern river valleys/passes and the expansion happened once settlement occurred in the doab.

    • “A fresh 21st century review requires us to look at the evidence with a new perspective. Either the Rg Vedic horizon is very old, so old that good evidence has either perished or buried deep, or we have to fit it to the archeological evidence we have showing significant changes in the Ganga-Yamuna doab in 1000bc that spread both west and east. The intrusion was perhaps through the northern river valleys/passes and the expansion happened once settlement occurred in the doab.”

      IMO, There is third middle ground. May be situation in Harappan time was similar to Janapada time. There was no central cultural entity to make whole region follow one culture/language and various religious thoughts similar to Vedas, Jainism, Buddhism, mother goddess worship in historic time were prevailing in those times too. Vedic religion was just one of the many and was followed by minority. It is just that we don’t have text from any other religion so don’t know about them. Just imagine how little we would know about prehistoric India if Rig Veda were not preserved.
      This is not radical idea. It is increasingly main stream view among Harrapan archeologist. Kenoyer, B Lal and Shaffer etc do support that Vedic Aryas were in Harrapan area at the time.

      • "This is not radical idea. It is increasingly main stream view among Harrapan archeologist"

        One clarification. I mean the idea that Vedic Aryas were in Harappa here . I didn't mean they support my "middle ground" idea.

        • You can add another name 'Giacomo Benedetti', BTW the path I walk is the 'O path'.
          Good times.

  49. ON RIVER SARASVATI
    From wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarasvati_river#Identification
    "According to Hindu scriptures, a journey was made during the Mahabharata by Balrama along the banks of the Saraswati from Dwarka to Mathura. There were ancient kingdoms too (the era of the Mahajanapads), that lay in parts of north rajasthan; that were named on the saraswati river. This gives some logic to the theory of Ghaggar-Hakkar being the ancient Saraswati.
    During the Pleistocene period the Himalayan mountains were under glacial cover and climate was fluctuating between glacial and interglacial phases. Around 40,000 yrs BC, the present Thar Desert enjoyed wet climate and greenery. Mythological River Saraswati/Vedic Saraswati (also known as Saraswati Nadi, Saraswati Nala, Sarsuti and Chautang in certain places, variously spelt as Sarasvati) is believed to have flowed during 6000–3000 BC from the melting glaciers of Garhwal Himalaya to Arabian Sea through the Thar Desert"
    Now we know from Giosan that G-H was a strong river ~8000b.c. And another reasearch lead by an Indian prof. In UK have found that satadru went to G-H 15000 years ago, so here the points that i got from the scholar i talked:
    1. Ghaggar-Hakra is the Sarasvati as Nadisukta, Brahmanas and Mahabharata confirms it.
    2. According to Mahabharata 9th book of Balaramas tirthyatra the Sarasvati disappears at the place called Vinashana and reappears at places of Camasobheda and Nagobheda, So it arrives at sea near Somnath, the concept of Rikved can be same as above.
    3. The name sarasvati itself means "endowed with pools" which is proper of a rain-fed river, the water of it was always accumulating in the depression caused by the far ancient 15kya Himalayan river allowing agriculture.
    4. Even now in the region many villages have names with -Sar "pool".

    • Giosan and several of his co-authors also wrote another paper in which the found that a glacier-fed "Sarasvati" did flow in the Pleistocene.

      http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2012/01/23/G32840.1.abstract

      Their PNAS paper showed the importance of the Ghaggar-Hakra to the Harappan civilization. The identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with Sarasvati was accepted by early Indologists like Max Mueller and right up to A.L. Basham. It is only because it is not compatible with the theory that Aryans invaded 3500 ybp that some today resist the identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with Sarasvati.

      • In one word its pathetic and in a nother dirty.

      • -RIVER SARASVATI AND GODDESS SARASVATI LINK-
        As we know the name 'Sarasvati' means most likely 'endowed with pools' though other etymologies are also possible, now we know from late RV period Sarasvati is invoked as a goddess which she is most frequently known as today but guess what the link with the pool/lake still remains with her as the vahana (ride) she has... SWAN.
        Good times.

  50. Parasar, Dont worry if we do a little reasearch we will find that From Rikved the geography was surely of Punjab and areas around it and the term Ayas is not meant to Iron but to a metal most likely copper/bronze.
    The 800b.c. intrusion is related to fellow dasa/dasyu folks of Iran after the decline of SSC/IVC (i.e. Brahmavarta Aryavarta) and about SSC/IVC is Arya or not Farmanas DNA will answer it nicely.
    But tell me first what do you think about the Swastikas at 'IVC'?.
    Good times.

  51. LETS PLAY A GAME WHICH IS CALLED "DEEP INDOLOGY SEARCHER" OR 'DIS'
    In the game i will provide a clue link on some issue and the rule is one who at the first site will give the correct definition without any internet help after seeing it will be called a DIS, So i start with this- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/KINGS_of_BAKTRIA._Agathokles._Circa_185-170_BC._AR_Drachm_(3.22_gm,_12h)._Bilingual_series._BASILEWS_AGAQOKLEOUS_with_Indian_god_Balarama-Samkarshana.jpg
    Its a easy one folks don't upset me:-).

  52. Very Sorry! The correct link- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Agathokles.jpg
    Though the previous one had more hints;-)

  53. While we wait for Reich's group to publish their data on the dating of the ANI/ASI admixture, we can examine the data that Zack has conveniently tabulated for us.

    Let us look at four Pakistani populations from HGDP - Pathans, Sindhi, Balochi and Makrani. They have S_Indian component of 23%, 26%, 14% and 10% respectively. Using Zack's formula this works out to 21%, 26%, 13% and 11% ASI respectively.

    RKM proposed that the ANI in Pakistan came primarily from West Asian migrants who brought agriculture to Mehrgarh 9000 years ago and the ASI came primarily from the hunter-gatherers who were resident in Pakistan since humans migrated from Africa 60,000 (or 140,000) years ago. If the ASI admixture happened 9000 years ago, this should have been sufficient time for Pakistanis from Makran to Sind to have the same ASI. Even the 1300 years since the conquest of Sind by Muhammad bin Qasim should have been more than sufficent to equalize the ASI from Sind to Makran by inter marriage. The factor of 2 difference in ASI in going from Sind to Makran can only be explained by an ongoing flux of ASI genes to Sindh from the east.

  54. Quite probable! But unless we find a reliable tool to age the components present in certain groups the data is to reamain 1/2.
    For me the age of the components is far far more significant than the proportion.

  55. SOME FACTS
    #we now know that Lahuradewa of G-Y basin has clear signs of rice cultivation aka farming around 1000 years before Mehrgarh, so the 'fitting theory' of West asian origin for South asian farming is well dead, also the early phase I skeletons of Mehrgarh show ideal similarity to the South asians rather than W asians as Irfan Habib have pointed out in his book 'Pre-History part-I' who is also an invasionist.
    # There are 3 ancient intrusions that NW India faced from neolithic to iron age 6000b.c., 4500b.c and 800b.c. Between the latter two we find the famous anthropic/archaeologic continuity of almost 4000 years!.
    Now the questions are whom came on 6000b.c.? The J2 y-dna people? and what about the 4500-800b.c. Continuity? Did the PIE originate and spread all around the Eurasia as latest indologists like Giacomo Benedetti suggests? Is the Gedrosian component the clear sign of the scenario?, whom came at 800b.c.? The kambojas, Persian dasa-dasyus or pre-scythians? Its also a fact that scythians originated horse riding for battles. The answer is probably yes for all but don't know for 100%.

  56. To get an idea of how long it takes for inter marriage to even out genetic differences, let us consider a hypothetical Muhajir woman with an ASI of 50% who marries into a Sindhi family with ASI of 26% in Karachi and all of whose descendants marry only Sindhis. Let us also assume that the generations are spaced apart by 25 years. Her first child is born in 1948 with an ASI of 38%. Her first grandchild is born in 1973 with an ASI of 32% and her first great-grandchild is born in 1998 with an ASI of 29%. Her great-great-grandchild to be born in 2023 will be only 1.5% higher in ASI than the average Sindhi. Thus 75 years are sufficient to erase the ASI difference between her descendants and the average Sindhi!

    The Muhajir population, as a whole, is likely to persist for more than 100 years because of cultural differences, their being more likely to be considered Ajlaf or Arzal etc. But in a few centuries, inter-marriage will inevitably dissolve the Muhajir identity and they will merge into the Pakistani larger Pakistani identity. Muslim communities are simply not as strongly endogamous as Hindu castes and cannot therefore persist with genetic differences for as long a time.

    Therefore variations in ASI within Pakistan can only be explained by relatively recent differential influx of ASI that have not yet had time to be erssed by intermarriage.

  57. Zack's data on ASI for individuals with ASI greater than 19% is well worth studying.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuW3R0Ys-P4HdFN6QlFNUWJYZVl4YmZUU3BIQ0NBeFE#gid=1

    The average for 23 HGDP Pathans is 21% with 5 individuals less than 19% and with two, HGDP00239 and HGDP00237 with ASI of 32% and 31% respectively. The range of ASI values is therefore greater than 13%.

    The 24 HGDP Sindhis have an average ASI of 26% and 3 individuals have ASI of 30% and 2 less than 19%. The range for Sindhis is greater than 11%.

    Of the 24 HGDP Balochis, only 4 have ASI greater than 19%. The average is only 13% but one Balochi, HGDP00070 has ASI of 37%. The range is greater than 24%.

    All the Pakistani HGDP individuals with ASI greater than 30% must have recent ancestry outside their respective communities perhaps from India or from Pakistani Ajlaf or Arzal communities.

    Now consider a strongly endogamous Indian community, namely Iyers. There are 10 such among the HRP participants. HRP0142 has the highest ASI of 41.8% and HRP0133 has the lowest at 40.4%. The range is 1.4% which is sufficiently small that it might be noise from the ADMXTURE algrorthm.

    The high variation in ASI in the different communities in Pakistan is strong evidence that RKM's hypothesis that the major event of ANI/ASI admixture in Pakistan happened 9000 years ago is incorrect.

  58. Balaji, Nice, zack what do you say?
    But guys remember Harappans were performing inter-region marriage for trade purpose from mid 3rd millenium b.c. Which surley brought ASI (similarly as P. Moorjani et al. Have pointed that there were some ANI ASI mix before the significant acceleration~4000YBP) and quite probably some ANI related components too from North and West of Sapta Sindhva.

  59. 3 Things on RKs post.
    1. Zebu.2. ME sentiment3. 0 Actual evidence.

  60. Thanks for the link and i have given my thoughts here also-
    http://dienekes.blogspot.in/2012/09/rolloff-analysis-of-south-indian.html
    and saying again that the ROLLOFF date is most likely to reflect the time of the spread of Brahmanism to South India and adding here that as in a later ROLLOFF post of DP NI brahmins have shown post 600B.C.{ the time when the the continuity from 4500B.C. ended and the long era of intrusions started} mixes so we may have to depend more on the moorjani paper.
    STAY WELL.