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What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Guest - 07-01-2008
<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Jul 1 2008, 08:05 AM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Jul 1 2008, 08:05 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->can learned members please suggest essential readings for a total layman to learn the basics of biotechnology?
[right][snapback]83621[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Biotechnology is a huge field. What topic especially arouses your interest?
Are you interested in genetics, so as to follow the DNA based studies discussed in this thread?
For genetics a very introductory tutorial based on slides with lots of drawingsl is at:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/basics/index.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics
Haplogroups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Y-chrom..._DNA_haplogroup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitocho...DNA_haplogroups
Collection of resources:
http://www.kumc.edu/gec/
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Bodhi - 07-02-2008
<!--QuoteBegin-Ashok Kumar+Jul 1 2008, 09:46 PM-->QUOTE(Ashok Kumar @ Jul 1 2008, 09:46 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Jul 1 2008, 08:05 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bodhi @ Jul 1 2008, 08:05 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->can learned members please suggest essential readings for a total layman to learn the basics of biotechnology?
[right][snapback]83621[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Biotechnology is a huge field. What topic especially arouses your interest?
Are you interested in genetics, so as to follow the DNA based studies discussed in this thread?
[right][snapback]83636[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is right. To follow more closely all the Genetics and DNA debate.
Thanks for the links!
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Try introductory university level courses. There may be PPT presentations of lectures online for this subject, as there are for others.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks Husky
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Guest - 07-08-2008
http://www.white-history.com/aryangene.htm
from the sad website..... http://www.white-history.com
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Pandyan - 07-08-2008
Arthur Kemp is a nerdicist (aka nordicist) loser. His work is comparable in worthlessness to PN Oak. He's been refuted thoroughly by Dienekes Pontikos and others regarding his section on Portugal, Greece, and the Mediterranean in general. I also remember seeing a reply somewhere for Bharat.
http://dienekes.110mb.com/articles/kempsslander/
http://www.geocities.com/refuting_kemp/
This is a recurring theme in the study of European history, starting with the English and German historians ascribing the achievements of Ancient Greece and Rome to themselves by alleging that the ruling class of both were racially Nordic. It is nothing but indicative of a deep rooted inferiority complex. What else can you show for when your people were barbarians for hundreds of years?
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - ramana - 07-08-2008
Even though it was the Spanish that threw of the Islamic yoke and led the exploration which led to the colonization it is the Anglo Saxons who claim the Greco-Roman heritage. The Hispanics are marginalized in the European balance of perceptions. The Portugese who contributed the most to navigation and ship based exploration(Henry the Navigator etc) are even further marginalized.
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 08-11-2008
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mice migrated out of India :-)
>From Steve Jones, "Darwin's Ghost" :
<b>"The center of genetic diversity of the world's mice is in Pakistan and India. </b>Mus musculus {the Swedish mouse} and Mus domesticus {the American, West European and Australian mouse } began their journey there, in a common homeland and with a shared pool of genes. Their ancestors traveled in man's wake, in separate waves north and south around the icy Alps as farmers move west. As they went, they evolved, until, at last, when the circle was closed and the mice met, each had changed enough to render them incompatible..."
---
The on-line book "Mouse Genetics"
http://www.princeton.edu/~lsilver/book/MG1.html
has the advent of the mouse in the Middle East :
This dawn occurred at the end of the last ice age, some 10,000 years ago, across a region retrospectively called the Fertile Crescent that extends from modern-day Israel up through Lebanon and Syria and curves back down through Iraq toward the Persian Gulf (figure 1.2). It was in this region at this time â known as the neolithic transition â that tribes of nomadic hunters and gatherers began to cultivate plants and domesticate animals as a means for sustenance (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1984). Farming eliminated the need for constant migration and brought about the formation of villages and the construction of permanent shelters for both people and their livestock. With the seasonal planting of crops, families needed to store dry food, in the form of grain, for both themselves and their animals. With food reserves in granaries and cupboards, the house mouse began its long interwoven history with humankind.
<b>The ancestors of the house mouse, who were concentrated in the steppes of present-day Pakistan at that time (figure 1.2), </b>had been living happily oblivious to people for eons, but suddenly (in terms of evolutionary time), migrants to the new Neolithic villages found mouse paradise in the form of a secure shelter with unlimited food (Auffray et al., 1990). ......
When people wandered out from the Middle East in search of new lands to cultivate, mice followed as stowaways within the vehicles used to carry household belongings. Later, they would travel with ship-borne merchants going to and from distant lands.
---
Arun Gupta<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 08-25-2008
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Early African migrants made eastward exit</b>
Michael Hopkin
<i>
Travellers hugged the coast as they wandered the world.</i>
The first modern humans to emigrate from Africa may have done so by sticking to the coast.
Analysis of surviving aboriginal populations in Southeast Asia suggest that they arose from a single wave of migrants who left the Horn of Africa more than 65,000 years ago.
..<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Hauma Hamiddha - 01-27-2009
An interesting study of R1a1 Y-STR haplotype
Some may find a case for OIT in this work. The authors are quite cautious though. In the least it provides a strong case for the monophyly of brAhmaNa-s across India, unlike what some others have claimed. The diversity of the haplotype in the Kashmirian brAhmaNa-s among the brAhmaNa-s is of interest.
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 02-12-2009
this is for witzel :
Origins of White People ( video )
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 02-24-2009
A South Asian race?
Home > Communities > Science & History > Indian History Project > Forum > Messages
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1/14/07
Anil
A South Asian race?
Introduction
This is fundamentally an anthropological question, but one with profound implications for the beginnings of Indian history.
Ironically, it was scholars like Max Mueller - who had absolutely nothing to do with any form of science and who probably implicitly believed in the Biblical legend of the Tower of Babel for the origin of languages (the Theory of Evolution wasn't even proposed at that time!) - who proposed that the Vedic Aryans were one branch of people from the Caucasus region, who radiated out into all regions which came to speak an Indo-European language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_family) and acquired an Indo-European culture (with features such as fire-rituals, which were historically practised in several regions of the Indo-European crescent).
Specifically for India, it was theorised that these invading / immigrating people of Caucasians displaced / subjugated the "native" Dravidians and tribal groups, inevitably mingling with them to some extent over the millennia, although this was greatly limited by inventing the insulating caste system. The basis for this simplistic theory was the striking similarities in languages like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin; the arguments used in constructing the theory were extremely far-fetched interpretations of a couple of Vedic verses; and the proof was the relative fair complexion of North Indians compared to the South Indians (supposedly even of South Indian upper castes compared to the "lower castes"), and the fact that the languages of North and South India could be neatly classified into two different families of languages.
1/14/07
Anil
Soon, by force of repitition, this became accepted historical theory and nobody ever asked if there was any forensic evidence for such an Aryan migration into India. But it must be said that there were scholars who rubbished it as soon as it was proposed, as completely absurd and altogether without any basis. For instance, MS Elphinstone (History of India, 1841) wrote:
"It is opposed to their (Hindus') foreign origin, that neither in the Code (of Manu) nor, I believe, in the Vedas, nor in any book that is certainly older than the code, is there any allusion to a prior residence or to a knowledge of more than the name of any country out of India. Even mythology goes no further than the Himalayan chain, in which is fixed the habitation of the gods...
"...To say that it spread from a central point is an unwarranted assumption, and even to analogy; for, emigration and civilization have not spread in a circle, but from east to west. Where, also, could the central point be, from which a language could spread over India, Greece, and Italy and yet leave Chaldea, Syria and Arabia untouched?
"...There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabitated any country but their present one, and as little for denying that they may have done so before the earliest trace of their records or tradition."
This is a point Swami Vivekananda stresses too, and, through his classic dark-skinned Bengal Brahmins vs fair-skinned lower-caste communities of Punjab argument, shows the meaningless superficiality of exceedingly simplistic, sweeping generalisations that North Indians are upper-caste South Indians are more fair complexioned than the majority of the "lower-caste" South Indians.
1/14/07
Anil
Why this theory holds sway
The British also had an ulterior motive in propagating a multi-racial theory that small numbers of foreigners superimposed themselves upon vastly larger numbers of "dark-skinned native aborigines" - if that was anyway the case, any form of opposition to British rule in India was quite meaningless!
http://www.voi.org/books/ait/ch11.htm
If pervasive Euro-centrism made a completely baseless theory mainstream, then the perversion of Nehruvian / Marxist historians has kept it alive in our textbooks: if you cannot accept that your culture may actually have had a foreign stimulus, you are an intellectual coward who cannot come to terms with the truth; and if you try to construct a theory of complete indigeneous origin, you are a closed-minded, empty-headed jingoist bent on "distorting" history to suit your convenience! This strategy of painting anyone opposed to them in a saffron brush has been remarkably successful.
It is a huge scandal that this theory has come to be regarded as an accepted view without ever been questioned in a strictly scientific light - which is, in fact, the only way of establishing its validity.
1/14/07
Anil
What anthropology says
I will limit myself to suggesting the following link, and quoting here a few sailent points mentioned on that page:
http://www.voi.org/books/ait/ch49.htm
"...If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.
"...the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan) culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India...
"...English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. âBiologically and linguistically, we are very mixedâ...the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. âThere is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional levelâ...For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India...Internal migration accounts for much of Indiaâs complex ethnic landscape, while there is no evidence of a separate or foreign origin for the upper castes.
"...scientists...reject the identification of caste (varNa) with race on physical-anthropological grounds...
"...significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions...
"...A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra...showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes."
1/14/07
Anil
Genetic evidence
The most conclusive refutation of the putative "foreigner Aryan" -"native Dravidian" racial divide is provided by DNA analysis. Only last year, using Y-chromosomal analysis, a team of scientists came up with some dramatic findings
Note: Y-chromosomal analysis is particularly suited for assessing if a migration from Central / West Asia (as is supposed by the Aryan Invasion / Immigration Theory) as Y-chromosomes are passed only along the direct male line and can, therefore, be used to trace paternal lineage. This contrasts with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is transmitted through females. Now, in case of an invasion, it is probable that more males came at first, and the females followed - so "Aryan" genes could have been lost if the early Aryan males married "non-Aryan" females, and the "Aryan" females arriving later married the males produced by the union of "Aryan" males and "non-Aryan" females.
The paper I am referring to is Sahoo S et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 2006, Volume 103, pp 843-848.
The paper says:
"...The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family...
"It is not necessary...to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny..."
1/14/07
Anil
The detailed arguments
"Both IE- (ie Indo-European, eg Hindi) and DR- (ie Dravidian, eg Tamil - paranthesis mine, for explanation only) speaking populations show a high combined frequency of haplogroups C*, L1, H1, and R2. The total frequency of these four haplogroups outside of India is marginally low. In turn, haplogroups E, I, G, J*, and R1* have a combined frequency of 53% in the Near East among the Turks and 24% in Central Asia, but they are rare or absent in India...Similarly, haplogroups C3, D, N, and O specific to Central Asian (36%) and Southeast Asian populations (subclades of haplogroup O; 85%) are virtually absent in India...
"...Southern castes and tribals are very similar to each other in their Y-chromosomal haplogroup compositions, and that their gene pool is significantly related to the castes of Northwest India...In contrast, the potential contribution from Central Asia to the Indian Y-chromosomal pool is minor. In the case of Northwest India, there is nothing to choose between two opposing scenarios: (i) the flow of Y chromosomes from Central Asia, and (ii) the flow of Y chromosomes in the opposite direction, to Central Asia from Northwest India. Meanwhile, the West Asian contribution to the Indian Y-chromosomal pool was significantly smaller in all three admixture tests."
For those who may be interested, the paper is available here (wait for a few minutes for the PDF file to get downloaded and, if that that doesn't happen, download it manually by clicking on the given link):
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/4/843?...ourcetype=HWCIT
Helpful information:
What are Y chromosomes? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosomes
What are haplogroups? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup
1/14/07
Ranajeet
Scanned pages from works by Max Mueller and other westerners
http://www.sabha.info/research/aif.html
1/16/07
Chiron !!!!
Anil
Are you Sure that Males come first to Invade and after successful Conquest, females follow??
They were never Planned Invasions in Ancient times. In Ancient History Of India, there are only 2 planned Invasions documented..
First is that of Kaal-Yavan mentioned in Mahabharata
Second is that of Alexander.
All of the remaining Invasions were in fact Gory Migrations. Scythians, Kushans, Huns, all were entire Races and Huge tribes who were migrating in search of Greener pasteurs.
Hence even Females accompanied Men, as it was not a Guided tour. It was the journey.
Although I disapprove Aryan Invasion theory, I see this fallacy in your argument.
1/16/07
aritra ja kichu
i may be a fool, but i do not get the points of ambareesh and ranajeet. it does not matter whether the information is from a specific page or not. this is a forum for discussing issues. and aniljee has raised an important question. i had read about the y-chromosomal analysis, but unfortunately could not get the details. thanks to aniljee for the information.
1/16/07
Anil
@ Ambareesh
I only meant that Y-chromosomal analysis is more clinching evidence than mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. If it so happened that the males came before the females (which is a very probable scenario in an invasion), then the mitochondrial DNA - which is transmitted through the female line - could have been lost. That fear doesn't exist for Y chromosomes, which are transmitted through direct male lineage.
MtDNA analysis has already nullified any Aryan "invasion" or "immigration" (Kivisild T et al. Current Biology 1999, Vol 9, pp 1331-1334), but this theoretical possibility of the males preceding the females in an invasion obviously came in the way of accepting its results as final.
The paper says:
"About a fifth of the human gene pool belongs largely either to Indo-European or Dravidic speaking people inhabiting the Indian peninsula. The âCaucasoid shareâ in their gene pool is thought to be related predominantly to the Indo-European speakers. A commonly held hypothesis, albeit not the only one, suggests a massive Indo-Aryan invasion to India some 4,000 years ago. Recent limited analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of Indian populations has been interpreted as supporting this concept. Here, this interpretation is questioned. We found an extensive deep late Pleistocene genetic link between contemporary Europeans and Indians, provided by the mtDNA haplogroup U, which encompasses roughly a fifth of mtDNA lineages of both populations. Our estimate for this split is close to the suggested time for the peopling of Asia and the first expansion of anatomically modern humans in Eurasia and likely pre-dates their spread to Europe. Only a small fraction of the âCaucasoid-specificâ mtDNA lineages found in Indian populations can be ascribed to a relatively recent admixture."
In other words, some genetic commonality exists between some Indians and Caucasians, but that is from a very ancient (tens of millennia ago) migration. More on that soon.
A South Asian race?
Home > Communities > Science & History > Indian History Project > Forum > Messages
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1/16/07
Anil
The Kivisild et al. paper is available here (a PDF version can be downloaded from the link on the right side of this page):
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=A...1a75443d1e8c68d
1/17/07
SAN
We have been hearing for a quite some time that this theory is wrong that theory is wrong.
So what is the truth?? Which is the correct theory??
Somebody should come out cearly,without giving reference to old theories about the correct theory of the origin of South Asian Race.
Rest other discussions are repeat of what has been said already.
1/17/07
Anil
@ San
I trust the answer to your question will emerge in the next few posts I'm preparing.
1/17/07
Anil
@ Ambareesh
At any rate, I think it is incorrect to compare the Aryan "invasion" with later invasions, as they have a major, basic difference: the former must've been massive (large enough to have left an unmistakable genetic imprint - indeed, introduce a completely new population into the subcontinent); later ones, even ones as major as the Muslim ones, didn't leave any noticeable genetic imprint.
For that reason, it is reasonable to expect that the Aryan "invasion" would have occurred over several decades and so, one would have to be prepared for the fact that the first wave was predominantly males, so the mtDNA (transmitted through females) could have been lost - that question can only be put to rest by Y-chromosomal analysis.
1/17/07
Chiron !!!!
Anil
Of course, I agree with the data and the hypothesis that you are proposing.
The Only thing that I found intriguing was the Males First Assumption of your post.
Other than this one, The hypothesis is just fine and consistent with Genetic Principles.
The Aryan Invasion was more of a Migration. The point is, Be it Caucasian, OR negroid, OR Mongoloid, everybody is descended from African Homo sapiens ancestor.
So there has to be a point when People Migrated to Subcontinent.
And that Migration was in search of resources.
The so called Aryan race must have displaced the race that migrated to this region before them. And you are true that this migration and displacement must have happened many millenia ago, and hence can be ignored to simplify the problem and decrease the variables involved in the anomaly.
For that reason, it is reasonable to expect that the Aryan "invasion" would have occurred over several decades and so, one would have to be prepared for the fact that the first wave was predominantly males, so the mtDNA (transmitted through females) could have been lost - that question can only be put to rest by Y-chromosomal analysis.
My objection was only to the above assumption. It is based upon the migrational pattern of pastoral and/or Hunter-Gatherer and/or nomadic communities.
Given the primitive times, and time required for migration, males-first assumption misses something.
For the sake of simplicity if we assume that the so called Aryan Race was somewhat similar to Scythians OR Huns in their migration pattern, then we see that they simply moved into the next area for resources, and met the opposition by force.
For your assumption to be correct, the gap between first Male-Wave of invasion and second community wave of migration, along with the absence of mtDNA anomalies, the gap between these two waves must be of atleast a century. More but definately not less. Given the low life expectancy, 100 years means atleast 3-4 generations.
1/17/07
Chiron !!!!
Of course, I am eagerly waiting for your next posts. These doubts of mine were a bit early. The line of thought you have introduced is interesting.
Just that I thought this point is a discrepancy in the theory you are proposing.
The nomadic tribes never migrate with males 'scouting' ahead 100 years before the community actually deciding to move on. They always moved as a single unit. Men, Women, Children, beasts, everybody. And the gradually displace their predecessors OR themselves get displaced OR assimilated.
And they Displace OR get displaced OR get assimilated as a Single unit.
1/17/07
Anil
@ Ambareesh
the Males First Assumption of your post...For your assumption to be correct, the gap between first Male-Wave of invasion and second community wave of migration, along with the absence of mtDNA anomalies, the gap between these two waves must be of atleast a century. More but definately not less. Given the low life expectancy, 100 years means atleast 3-4 generations...this point is a discrepancy in the theory you are proposing. The nomadic tribes never migrate with males 'scouting' ahead 100 years before the community actually deciding to move on. They always moved as a single unit. Men, Women, Children, beasts, everybody. And the gradually displace their predecessors OR themselves get displaced OR assimilated.And they Displace OR get displaced OR get assimilated as a Single unit
I'm afraid you still don't get my point. Firstly, it is *not* a theory I am proposing. I am only outlining all extreme cases which have necessarily to be taken into account by any analysis of the problem, and citing the scientific evidence which comprehensively negates any AIT/AMT-type migration scenario in the last ten millennia. And the two extreme scenario are
1) mtDNA having got lost, or
2) Y-chromosomes having got lost...
...by admixture of the "entering" population with the "native" population. Of the two, the first is more easy to imagine as there is nothing to indicate the Aryans were an Amazonian tribe!
Why do you think career-geneticists - and many of the authors being common to both papers, too - did not stop with an mtDNA analysis (Kivisild et al - 1999), but went on to do a Y-chromosomal analysis (Sahoo S et al - 2006) also for the same problem?
Scientific rigour demands that the analysis be capable of explaining away any possibility, howsoever improbable.
1/17/07
Anil
@ Ambareesh
The point is, Be it Caucasian, OR negroid, OR Mongoloid, everybody is descended from African Homo sapiens ancestor. So there has to be a point when People Migrated to Subcontinent. And that Migration was in search of resources. The so called Aryan race must have displaced the race that migrated to this region before them. And you are true that this migration and displacement must have happened many millenia ago, and hence can be ignored to simplify the problem and decrease the variables involved in the anomaly
That's a slightly incorrect statement of the problem.
Firstly, it is incorrect to talk of an "Aryan race" - there is absolutely no such implication in the use of the word "Arya" or "Aryan" in any of our literature. This is purely a Western distortion.
Secondly, the Homo sapiens species should not be confused with races.
The peopling of Eurasia by anatomically modern man emerging from Africa around 70,000 years ago as having resulted from resources is something I don't agree with - it was probably purely wandering into any area that was conducive to life. After all, all people in Europe and Asia are believed to have descended from just 600 females - there just weren't that many people to have competed for resources!!!
The so called Aryan race must have displaced the race that migrated to this region before them...this migration and displacement must have happened many millenia ago
Firstly, if you agree it was that long ago, we can't talk of races at that time - differentiation of characteristics peculiar to races, human cultures and languages etc are much more recent phenomena.
Secondly, if you read either of the two papers, you can see that there actually has been NO major influx into the subcontinent ever since it was first peopled by anatomically modern man some 70,000 years ago. What diversity we see in India today is the result of evolution, adaptation to India's bewildering geographic / climactic diversity etc in these 70,000 years.
1/17/07
Azygos
@Ambareesh
Exactly, what i was thinking but could not paraphrase in words which Anil did....If you consider aryan as a race which displaced native Indian races, at some point in time, then there must have been a genetic admixture as evident from the Y chromosomal analysis of Indians and central asian (aryan homeland) people. But because, the evidence points to no such thing, we can safely conclude that DNA evidence is against AIT/AMT theories.
1/18/07
Ranajeet
This is from the indo-euracist forum
It seems that the genetic evidence against AIT/AMT/ATT is piling up to the extent that even Witzel is abandoning it.
`I don't mind if (current) genetics do not show an "Aryan" influx
into India. After all, I have always maintained that the immigrant
*Indo-Aryan speaking* pastoralist group, out of Afghanistan and
Central Asia ( ~~ BMAC area), can have been very small, but that it set off,
a la Ch. Ehret, a cultural wave across NW India and beyond, -- all of
which has little or *no* connection with genes.
showing 21-30 of 81
1/18/07
Azygos
# Post queries only when Anilji is finished
I think the initial queries have been answered to the satisfaction of everybody. Other queries can be posted when the entire article has been posted
@everyone
It is important to realize that AMT theory is cause for concern as well.....The difference b/w AMT and AIT is only in degree and not in kind. To refute AMT altogether, i believe we must debunk the astronomical hypothesis put forward by Tilak in his "arctic home of the vedas" which will be dealt separately when we analyze the rig vedic hymns.
Next, some like Rajiv Kocchar, propound theories about zorashtrians going for morals, and Indians for might....i believe, a nasty hypothesis, which Thapar and others seem to find favour with
Finally, i believe we now have enough evidence to conclusive refute any association between IVS people and the dravidians. That will be taken up in the Indus Valley Tradition thread.
1/18/07
Anil
@ Ranajeet
Thanks for mentioning Michael Witzel. His status as an unparalleled Sanskrit scholar notwithstanding, he has overreached himself and strayed deep into historical theory - an area he has absolutely no training in - and has been dishing out some utter rubbish for quite some time now - we'll probably start a separate thread to discuss his theories.
1/19/07
Anil
Background - The Story of Modern Humans
I think it would be apt now to take a step back and look at the larger background of which our question is a part: the story of how modern humans (ie, we!) came to populate the world.
Only in the last two years, evidence of fundamental importance has been pieced together by researchers, which significantly alters the idea we had of how modern man spread all over the world.
Summarising these finds, Ted Goebel writes in the prestigious journal, Science [Vol 315 (12 January 2007), pp 194-196]:
"Current interpretations of the human fossil record indicate that fully modern humans emerged in sub-Saharan Africa by 195,000 years ago. By 35,000 years ago, modern humans thrived at opposite ends of Eurasia, from France to island southeast Asia and even Australia. How they colonized these and other drastically different environments during the intervening 160,000 years is one of the greatest untold stories in the history of humankind.
"...we must know when these populations expanded from Africa into Eurasia. For the past 20 years, many researchers in this field have been under the impression that this event could have occurred as early as 100,000 years ago, but new genetic evidence indicates that the spread out of Africa occurred much more recently, closer to 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.
"...35,000 years ago, modern populations of sub-Saharan Africa and Europe shared a very recent common ancestor, one that likely expanded from east Africa 60,000 years ago. This population not only spread south into South Africa but also east into Eurasia...
"Archaeological evidence of the hypothesized passage across the Red Sea still eludes us, but the fossil and archaeological records for southeast Asia and Australia indicate that moderns had arrived in these regions by 50,000 years ago. The road east likely followed the south Asian coastal margin...
(contd.)
1/19/07
Anil
"...genetic records suggest that sets of genes, called haplotypes, carried by the first moderns into northern Eurasia existed by 45,000 years ago. Precisely where they evolved remains unknown; possibilities include southern Arabia, India, or other regions of interior western Asia. In any case, the outcome was a series of concomitant founding migrations about 40,000 years ago from western Asia to the Mediterranean, temperate Europe, Russia, and central Asia.
"...The first moderns to colonize European Russia may not have spread from the Levant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant - paranthesis mine) via central Europe, but instead from interior western Asia via the Caucasus Mountains or from further east central Asia...
"So what we infer is this: Modern humans spread out of Africa very late in the Pleistocene--as recently as 60,000 to 50,000 years ago. One founding population spread east, reaching Australia by 50,000 to 45,000 years ago. Another remained in southwestern Asia or India, but after ~5000 to 10,000 years, its descendant populations dramatically expanded their range, colonizing lands as far removed from one another as northern Africa, temperate Europe, and the Russian Plain. They also reached southern Siberia by 45,000 years ago and arctic Siberia by 30,000 years ago, but the retelling of these and other events in the missing years of modern human evolution must await new fossil and archaeological discoveries as well as continued DNA sampling of the world's living populations."
1/19/07
Anil
^^^^^
I will draw the attention of readers to the underlined portions of the previous post, especially the last line.
It must now be clear to you that Russians and Europeans (ie, Caucasians) are themselves descended around 40,000 years ago from a branch of the people who had already settled down somewhere in Asia - where exactly is not known and, as the article says, India is also a possible candidate.
Next, I draw your attention back to the following line in the first paper I mentioned (Sahoo S et al, PNAS 2006):
"The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward."
Population geneticists frequently use a parameter called genetic distance (denoted by Fst), which gives an idea of the extent of dissimilarity between genetic samples from two different sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_distance). For the staggering amount of data that analyses like this problem involve, Fst is calculated by computers. Some earlier genetic analysis papers had similarly calculated genetic distances and found that Indian caste communities were about as genetically distant from Indian tribes as they (ie, Indian castes) are from Central Asian populations. A genetic distance table is also calculated and provided in this paper (Table 1).
However, the classic mistake the earlier papers made was in lazily leaving the number-crunching job to the computer and not looking deeply at the actual distributions of the haplogroups - this was a little silly, really, as the same computer which calculated the genetic distance could also have mapped the distributions of the haplogroups. And from such a simplistic, overall statistical parameter, they straightaway jumped to the conclusion that an Aryan migration must indeed have taken place!
1/19/07
Anil
However, if they had got down to the messy job of mapping the actual haplogroup compositions, they would easily have realised that there could have been no admixture between the populations of India and Central / West Asia. After all, if there had been an Aryan invasion / migration into India, they would have brought the characteristic, major haplogroups of Central / West Asian populations into India, and these would be observed in the genes of present-day Indians. The truth, as Sahoo et al point out, is that the major, characteristic haplogroups of Central / West Asia are almost entirely absent in India, and vice versa!
To use an analogy from cricket, this is the equivalent of judging that a batsman's is eminently suitable for a certain foreign tour simply on the basis of his overall career average of 50, while failing to take into account the fact that he averages 75 at home and 25 abroad, or that he is quite inconsistent (ie, equal numbers of high scores and ducks).
Hallelujah, geneticists even appeared to "prove" a harebrained theory! As a case study in how an absurd, baseless thing becomes an accepted fact simply by force of repitition, this would be a psychologist's delight!
Luckily, Sahoo et al are wise enough not to shirk the hard job of mapping the haplogroup compositions of the populations, and also analyse if the data is consistent with an admixture that could have been brought about by an Aryan invasion / immigration into India from Central / West Asia within the last ten thousand years. They also make it a point to refer to the earlier papers which concluded that an Aryan invasion / immigration had taken place, and explain the mistake in their interpretation (Bamshad M et al. Genome Research 2001, Vol 11, pp 11-994; Wells RS et al. PNAS 2001, Vol 98, pp 10244-10249; Cordaux R et al. Current Biology 2004, Vol 14, pp 231-235).
1/19/07
Anil
Indians from Caucasians / Caucasians from Indians?
We've been taught for a long time now that Indian upper castes are of the Caucasian stock (having entered the country as "Aryans"), and completely different from "native Dravidians and tribals". Any number of superficial arguments to support this theory: North Indians are fair-complexioned relative to the South Indians, "upper" castes are more fair-complexioned than "lower" castes and tribes especially in the south, Kashmiris look like Greeks, the Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra have fair complexions and light eyes just like the Caucasians...the list is quite long.
However, by combining the results of more than one, independent, comprehensive scientific analyses, what we have is actually a complete reversal of the earlier explanations:
1) Anthropology and genetics altogether rule out any migration of the AIT / AMT-type of populations from Central / West Asia into India anytime in the last ten thousand years;
2) Almost the entire population of India - whether present-day north and south Indians, or castes and tribes - has been native to India since around 50,000 years. The differences between various groups are simply the result of evolution and the development of different physical and cultural characteristics owing to the vastly varied geographic / climactic environments of the subcontinent;
3) This is the most dramatic: it is not that some Indians are derived from "Caucasians" 4,000 years ago; many present-day "Caucasians" are very probably derived from Indians 40,000 years ago.
Of the people from India who migrated into Europe and Russia 40,000 years ago, those best suited to the colder, harsher climate of their newer home - light-complexioned etc - would have survived by natural selection, which explains the relatively uniform physical characteristics of present-day Europeans while Indians retain great diversity.
So, the next time someone flings the usual rot about North vs South, Chitpavans and Kashmiris vs Tamils and Keralites, you know what to tell them!
1/19/07
Jyotirmaya
Hey that was fantastic research.
Anil tell me sincerely, are you a Historian or an archaeologist by any chance? or the study of this subject is just an hobby. If it is a hobby then you are fantastic just dont throw away this hobby away, India and we will loose a good history writer MAN YOU ARE FANTASTIC. my hats off to you.
Take care
1/19/07
Sanket
@Anilji
Sir, thanks for the input. The theory of Max Mueller was based on the assumption that language and race share a intimate relationship. This theory is rubbished today and morever the concept of race is not held to be scientific. The word "Arya" which meant noble has been convulted to mean an invading race.The ATI is probably the most destructive theory in human history and proves from a miral point of view the destructiveness of lies.
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1/20/07
Anil
I'm very grateful to the members for patiently reading through my long-winded posts and recording their appreciation.
1/20/07
Anil
A word of caution
Although I have said above that recent scientific evidence is pointing towards to the fact that, contrary to earlier theories, it is many of the present-day Caucasians who may be derived from some Indian populations who migrated into Europe and Russia around 40,000 years ago, I hasten to caution that it should not be interpreted to mean an Out-of-India Migration as the logical opposite of AIT / AMT. That long ago, I do not think humans would have evolved sufficient cultural characteristics to have developed cultural identities of their own. I use the words Indian and Caucasian merely to denote the present-day geographical location of these populations.
This 40,000 year-old migration, of populations already settled in India into Europe, is merely a very ancient anthropological phenomenon, and a surprising one, as it
a) not only disproves earlier notions that the people migrating out of Africa branched into two groups in the Levant itself - one going westward into Europe and the other eastward into Asia, but
b) also throws up the surprising fact that they moved into Asia, settled down for 5-10,000 years and only then did groups of them start migrating from deep within Asia, in waves into Europe. Why such a thing happened is as of yet unclear.
To put it in a humorous vein, please do not interpret race in a racist way!
1/21/07
Anil
A South Asian race?
We are now left with evaluating if most South Asians actually constitute a race by themselves, like some other populations of the world which have been traditionally accorded the status of races, such as the Negroids, Caucasoids, Mongoloids etc. For almost two centuries, a rational analysis of this problem was bedevilled by prejudiced European theories, but that is being assaulted by the sledge-hammer of genetics.
As I have described above, both mitochondrial DNA (maternal) and Y-chromosomal (paternal) analyses have established that there is no contribution from either the west, north or north-west of India to the gene-pools of Indian populations. There is, however, the often unsaid phenomenon of admixture with Sino-Tibetian populations in the North-East - and this is actually quite visible.
Now, a group of American medical researchers came up with some startling results which are of relevance to us, although they were studying quite something else - plotting genetic variation among Indians to provide a backdrop for genetic diseases. Admittedly, they sampled Indian-born people who were living in the USA, but that does not in any way reduce the significance of their results as the sampled individuals represented most language communities in India, and were spread over the entire spectrum of caste-designations.
The study I am referring to is: Rosenberg NA et al., "Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India," Public Library of Science Genetics 2006, Vol 2, pp 2052-2061:
http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/...pgen.0020215#s3
(the PDF version can be downloaded by clicking on the link on the right side of the above page).
A more pop-sci version of the above is at:
http://content.msn.co.in/Lifestyle/Moreonl...206_451.htm#top
1/21/07
Anil
And what are their results?
"We find that populations from India, and populations from South Asia more generally, constitute one of the major human subgroups with increased similarity of genetic ancestry. However, only a relatively small amount of genetic differentiation exists among the Indian populations...many genetic variants are distinctive in India...
"The noticeable genetic divergence of India from other regions is coupled with low levels of genetic divergence across the subgroups within India (ie, Indians are genetically quite distinct from other populations of the world, but quite close to each other - paranthesis mine)...Considering all populations in India, Europe, and East Asia, microsatellite Fst for India was 0.0049, smaller than the values of 0.0078 for Europe and 0.0110 for East Asia. Similarly, for the indels, India had Fst = 0.0079, whereas Europe and East Asia had Fst = 0.0110 and 0.0190, respectively.
(A quick reminder about genetic distance, Fst: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Distance)
Populations of Europe are traditionally accepted to belong to the Caucasoid race, and those of East Asia to the Mongoloid. You can see from the genetic distance values here that Indians of widely-varying regional, language and caste backgrounds appear to be genetically closer to each other than people belonging to populations, which have already been accepted as races, are among themselves.
In simple words, although Indians have never been designated as one unique race, an Indian is genetically closer to another Indian than an Englishman is to a Pole (both of whom are accepted to belong to the Caucasoid race), or a Japanese is to a Chinese (both of whom are accepted to belong to the Mongoloid race).
1/21/07
Anil
Conclusion
The implication is clear: the earlier ridiculous theories based on superficial considerations like skin, hair or eye colour have to be debunked; South Asians are a unique race by themselves, and one of the largest ones at that, comprising around a sixth of mankind.
1/21/07
Anil
Important Note
The purpose of these posts is merely to contradict earlier, baseless and prejudiced theories about the origins of India, which were first maliciously used by Europeans to perpetuate their rule in India by making them appear as only the latest in an endless list of foreigners to colonise the land and make it their own, and are now being wickedly taught to successive generations of our schoolchildren by the intellectually perverse Marxist / Nehruvian historians - who have never shown the sincerity to update our history textbooks in the light of the dramatic, unambiguous evidence that has emerged in the last few decades outright contradicting their pet theories.
The idea was to bring out a cold, scientific truth that South Asians are a race unto themselves - if populations like the Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid can be technically termed as races - and that it wasn't Caucasians who migrated into India 4,000 years ago but some people settled in what is today India who migrated into Europe 40,000 years ago giving rise to the so-called "Caucasian race".
The goal was to refute the poisonous theory coined by the Europeans that the caste-system in India is of racial origin - projecting the petty, uncivilised practices they had indulged in throughout their history, onto us (we all know how Hitler used the concept of "Aryan").
So, although it is now clear that South Asians - whether North or South Indians, whether castes or tribes - are one race, let us not misinterpret this scientific fact by making it the basis of any racially exclusivist philosophy in the future. Let there be no Indian Hitlers.
1/21/07
Anil
We were the first, and for a very long time, the only ones to talk of the universal brotherhood of mankind (vasudaiva kutumbakam) and to have an all-embracing philosophy (ekam satvipra bahudha vadanti). Let's not reverse this glorious heritage now.
Also, let us eschew hypocrisy and admit that the caste-system, although not a form of racial discrimination as we are made to believe, and is only a social institution, is bad enough; let us work against it.
1/21/07
Anil
Harshal's question
Harshal asks:
"The favourite topic nowadays is to find the genetic or racial origin of the inhabitants of Indiawhether they are Caucasian or ethnic Asians etc. Andaman & Nicobar Islands a part of India houses a stone age population of Negroid origin. Can any Hypothesis be put how did they reach their? or can they be traced back to the earlier migration of Human race before the continents Seperated. I would like to see what migration theory is applied here."
The inhabitants of Andaman and Nicobar Islands are anatomically modern humans, who could have reached there only within the last 50-60,000 years, not earlier. The broad efflux of modern man from Africa I have already described above. I don't think science agrees that they originated when the continents were still joined together, which was several millions of years ago.
To my mind, it is not how they got there - after all, they are not the only ones; you have the Australian and Tasmanian aborigines too (and they too are classified as Negroid); What I think is remarkable is that they lived all this while in complete isolation, living as primitive lives as our ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago, right up to the present day. The historian Will Durant uses a beautiful expression to describe such aborigines: "our contemporaneous ancestors".
Populations which were in touch with those settled in other regions, which migrated around, mixed with populations of other regions etc evolved varied physical (ie, skin, hair or eye colour etc) and cultural characteristics, and achieved development, to reach where we are today.
Even in continental regions, we do find tribes with primitive hunting-gathering lifestyles, don't we? You may be surprised to know that there are several such tribes all over Siberia - although they are Caucasian (white), they are about on the same plane as some tribes in the forests of Madhya Pradesh, who were "discovered" only in the twentieth century! Their skin colour is merely the result of natural selection.
1/24/07
harshal
What leads me to an agreement with your Hypothesis is that. I agree Continents seperated Millions of years ago and Modern Human history is around fifty to Sixty thousand years old.Yes it may be possible that they developed like that in isolation and got the physical charecteristics in accordance with the Geographical and climatic conditions.
1/24/07
Nikhil
anil,
I found this interesting website where the author has point wise tried to give supporting evidence for AIT. When one looks at it it seems that many of the verses from RV quoted might have been mis translated or have alternative meanings (eg. Indra destroyed the dams...which could also be related to a persons feelings etc.).
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/133...t/fall_ind.html
One of the major points missing is that no one takes into account the drying up of the sarasvati river and the fact that so many IVC sites are found along it.
your views please.
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1/24/07
Unnamed
>>Indra destroyed the dams...<<
Eh? Indra destroys 99 fortresses to get to vrtra, who steals the waters.
It seems he's one of those saivite-dravidian fanatics..
Although I'm not so knowledgeable, this is what I say about his views:
First off, it is to be understood he's relying on an outdated work in the days of british bigotry by stuart piggott.
1. According to his claim, the same place was destroyed time over time; the harappans were foolish enough to construct at the same place, the aryans were revisiting the harappan sites and not annihilate them completely for mysterious reasons. It can also be a site of cremation, or a pottery zone..
2. A valid point, although his quotation doesn't speak of 'skulls'. Grouping of skeletons may also mean a plaque, for mass cremation is often performed at such instances.
3. The third evidence is not valid, considering the fact that hittites have nothing to do with fishing, but harappans have more to do with it. considering this important point, it depends upon how much we can accept suggestions by piggott. It is well accounted for now, that trade was well developed between indus and other civilisations. On the other hand the outdated research didn't account sarasvati in vedas, which puts their origins to 3000 BCE, predating or contemporarial to IVC.
4.Indra's conquest involves him breaking up 99 fortresses to get to vrtra who steals the waters, parching the earth dry. If it is really a conquest, then dravidians were seizing up the waters for themselves and hittites justly revolted back, but then they would be indigenous inhabitants of india. On the other hand it makes tall claims of having built dams, with no evidence at all. There is no area that looks like a dam either, and it would definitely have resisted the weather for centuries when the great bath and citadel have themselves resisted it.
5. Horse fossils have been found in early times of IVC as well.
6. Later archaeological findings contradict his statements that there is no continuity in bones
1/24/07
Unnamed
=>The claims of dravidians having been broad nosed, etc.. comes from only one hymn about vrtra (i think), which calls him anaasa(noseless) and apaada(feetless!)
As for the 'scriptural references' -
1. If i'm not mistaken, its the popular habit of occidentals translating varna as colour, when it means vocation
2. Krishna is a honorable title, historically preceding birth of krishna-govinda as well.
3. The references seem to stick to eight fold one, so I cannot comment much about them. However, one thing I know well is that rakshasa - is name of god in veda, meaning 'protector'.
The rest of it is absurd where he keeps making his own fantastical assumptions..
1/24/07
Azygos
@nikhil
That site is another of those several anti hindu propaganda sites......I cannot get into a detailed rebuttal over such a pathetically perverse article; however, i will draw your attentions to some of the points, which are the trademark shibboleths of nehruvian/eurocentrist/marxist and pakistani historians.....
# Examine the references at the bottom. You can clearly find that all of them are over two decades old. Latest scientific methods utilised by Kenoyer and Dani [harappa.com] have already debunked any archaeological evidence supporting AIT....I am sure Anil will enlighten everyone in his Indus Valley Tradition thread.
# The horse evidence holds no water.
http://www.svabhinava.org/AITvsOIT/HorsesI...yList-frame.php
I found this reply interesting...posting an excerpt
I think it is relevant to note that just as horses were central to the Vedic Indians they have always been central in Indian history, but *they have always been imported into the subcontinent* from the Epic, Mauryan, Mughal through to the British period. So the horse has always been highly prized despite not being indigenous to the subcontinent (although there is an indigenous species of onager native in the Northwest).
So the non-indigenousness of the horse need not a priori indicate the non-indigenousness of the Indo-Aryans. It was an elite, imported animal used for sacrificial and military purposes (not for food) and therefore not likely to show up in great quantities in the archaeological record.
# the chariot evidence
THere is enough counterevidence....moreover how does vedic Rath become a four wheeled chariot! Moreover, K D Sethna has shown that IVC could have had chariots. Finally, if horse is important to the rig vedic people, so is the cow.......Horse was important to other civilizations too like Greece but not the cow.....I do not understand why DONT anti AIT/AMT proponents use the cow face especially because horse lost all religious significance in puranic ages.
1/24/07
Azygos
As expected, while glossing through the messages, Witzel expectedly disdainfully brushes off any idea of rig vedic people venerating the cow.....Yet, only the cow is given the status of agnya or that which is not to be killed. And even more noticable is that the puranas dont attest any importance to the horse [I dont think horse is the vahana/mount of any god/goddess either, not even Indra of the puranas! This point can be used to negate those who claim that aryans had a dominant influence on Hindu theology...substance for another article, i will work on in the coming months]
However, one must note that out of India proponents have suggested that India was actually the first nation to domesticate the horse......but again, it is the ridiculous 1200 B.C dating of the rig veda which is the prime obstacle; because by 1200 B.C several civilizations had domesticated the horse.
# I would request some members to meticulously go through the particular message board and examine the evidence both for and against AIT....it is serious top quality research work!
# Vishnu being aryan god and shiva as dravidian god arguments are not even worth considering! Even if i ignore the shiva as rudra proposition, Vishnu is definitely not the most prominent deity of the rig vedic pantheon [even Witzel will testify for that] Secondly, the vedas as well as puranas are conspicuously devoid of any shiva Vs Vishnu battles for supremacy.....The most minimal disparaging statement may be made against each other like in the sage Brhgu episode, but certainly no counterpart to the epic Krishna Vs Indra battles as in Bhagavatam
Finally, i will once again, point out the absolutely ludicrous nature of the vritta = dam argument. Vritta can be an obstacle, but certainly it is no dam. One of the vedic verses proclaims Indra drinks Soma and destroys Vritta.
1/24/07
Azygos
Vritta cannot be a dam
One of the rig vedic verses [Indra drinks Soma and destroys Vritta]
# Vritta can be translated as obstacle. But here the primary meaning is to be taken as Ignorance. Hence, there is an obstacle and that is ignorance. [Vritta in sanskrit also stands for envelope of darkness....and the strong association of darkness with ignorance, as pointed out in several upanishad....e.g. The light of the effulgent brahman dispels the ignorant darkness (caused by maya) Sun, hence is often taken to the symbol of brahman....
Thus, it is Indra [Sri Aurobindo says Indra is the lord and controller of the senses....So Indra, destroys the darkness ; the ignorance caused by Vritta...and How; with the aid of Soma (externally alcohol but spiritually it is the lord of the divine bliss/ecstacy]....thus, the One (aspirant) who manifests the powers of Indra, thereby controlling his senses causes Soma to descent and manifest its power of divine bliss; which flushes the last bit of ignorance towering over man and smashes to smithereens all doubting dogmas inherent to the mind....
Now, vritta also stands for a serpent...thus, in puranic stories [seeking references] you will find Krishna destroying the serpent of ignorance.....
Amazingly, in the garden of Eden, it is the serpent who tempts Eve into attaining the apple (of desire). And who else is the serpent, but the inherent ignorance in the heart of humanity. And it it desire that fuels the fires of ignorance. Thereby, serpent as ignorance can possibly be considered either as a jungian archetype for spiritual ignorance.
THus, we can safely conclude that vritta could never have been a dam.
1/24/07
Azygos
An important point which i missed out; Krishna is always pictured as dark skinned, and Shiva, the god of the dark dravidians is always white skinned......A paradox in itself.
Varna has several connotations....even if hypothetically i accept it as colour; then how do you accommodate the red haired ksatriyas, the blue eyed vaishyas <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo--> and why the complete absence of intervening brown shades?#Btw, we must all thank Anil for his splendid contribution in this thread.....This article is exclusive to IHP. The DNA evidence is the definitive proof against Aryan Invasion theory.....However, proponents of Aryan Migration theory will still claim that a very small number of aryans had a tremendous influence on Indian culture, both secular and sacred....
1/25/07
Anil
@ Nikhil
I don't think we need take that article seriously - it is too vicious and intemperate to be given the respect of a dispassionate, scholarly study.
At any rate, modern archaeologists since the mid-1980s onwards have been *completely dismissive* of the notion of an Aryan invasion / migration.
1/26/07
Ekam
nice thread guys.
anil, great work on the summary.
reg one issue that u were locking horns with ambreesh:
the reason of choice of Y over mtDNA could also be this- earlier invasions usually ended up with acquisition of females of the invaded race. those societies being patriarchial ones, we wouldn't know the origins based on mtDNA. In cases like these, use of Y over mtDNA is preferred. hope this helps.
k
1/27/07
Unnamed
Um, it is best to keep the views of mystics aside, because they tend to superfluous and therefore not commendable; such as the suggestion that battle of indra with vrtra needs to have a gnostic meaning [gnostic again implies esoteric, and such ideas have to be kept aside]. We can however suggest that vrtra is a serpent due to instinctive fear towards it, and I totally agree with views of dayananda and aurobindo that vedic sanskrit was more subjective, giving greater opportunity for such meanings.
Gnostic conclusions aside, it is not sensible to say that 99 fortresses were destroyed to blow a dam up...
1/27/07
Anil
Thanks for the clarification, Karthikeyan. That's the whole idea of this community: to pool together the specialised expertise of various members in an attempt to re-investigate Indian history. Otherwise, amateurs like me may not be able to get very far...
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1/27/07
.ZangetsU.
@anil
So what does a race mean?
I guess it would have atleast a few Y-haplogroups distinct from otheres?
And btw, great work ,
"MAN THATS GOOD TO HEAR"
"WE ARE A DIFFRENT RACE"
1/27/07
Anil
@ Darth
Good question.
We could work with the definition of race as a genetic branch of a species, or a sub-species.
Given the way this term has been used (especially by the Europeans) up to the 1940s - traces of which linger noticeably to this day - some scholars (mostly social "scientists") have rejected the very use of the term race. But it could be meaningful and useful to work with a genetic definition of race.
You can see how the definition of race has evolved, starting from superficial classification on the basis of skin-colour etc a couple of centuries ago, to a more scientific one based on genetics, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
Also, I would like to slightly qualify your exultation that we are a distinct race unto ourselves. I repeat my cautionary words: let's not use this fact to fuel racially exclusivist / supremacist theories! What I am more pleased about is that we have evidence to conclusively disprove the poisonous "Aryan-Dravidian" or "caste communities-tribals" divide which was used to undermine our unity, perpetuate a disparaging picture of our culture, and enable foreign rule in our country; sadly, our onw historians with Marxist / Nehruvian leanings stupidly continue with this falsehood.
More importantly, it will ultimately help push back the dates for the beginnings of Indian civilisation by several millennia than what is currently taught in our textbooks.
1/27/07
Chiron !!!!
Vritra Translates as Envelope.
1/28/07
.ZangetsU.
@Anil
Yes, I know about that.(the 2500BC date and the flood mentioned in bible on which MUL(ERROR) fixed the date)
2/4/07
Anil
@ Arun
I don't myself know why humans ventured out into the more inhospitable regions like Siberia, once they were settled in warmer areas. It already appears that it may have been the inhospitability which, in the first place, stopped them from migrating into Europe / Russia in the Levant itself, when they first emerged from Africa.
I can only put it down to the inborn exploratory spirit of man, akin to the spirit with which some humans tiptoed across the Bering Straits (which were then passable by foot) "just to see what's on the other side", and arrived in the Americas.
Also, since humans had spent a very long time in Africa (~ 130,000 years!) before ever moving out, I would imagine they had grown sated living in the same environment, and were quite eager to explore - and could do so as they had "developed" (if you see what I mean, ie hunting/gathering methods, clothing etc) to a good extent.
Nor do I think they went out into Europe at once: it was a gradual process, occurring in waves. A fresh batch of people ventured out only when it had trickled in that the previous ones seemed to be doing fine.
Since agriculture etc were only to start much later (last ten millennia, really), the difference between life in the tropical climes and in the colder regions mustn't have been particularly great - it was the same hunting / gathering lifestyle everywhere.
2/4/07
Anil
@ Arun
As for the mediaeval Muslims (ie, Semites) from West Asia, it cannot be said that there is absolutely *no* genetic imprint at all - there surely must be, but it must be confined to communities which anyway trace their ancestry to outside India. There are many families even today which are aware that their ancestors came to India from Turkey, Arabia, Persia or Afghanistan in the Mediaeval times (the last two would, again, not be much different from us genetically) and, sure enough, such communities used to be endogamous.
Way more native people converted to Islam than came to India as invaders, originally.
Besides, the truth is that Islamic society in India too is as much socially stratified as the Hindu one. The Muslim nobles - who were generally from outside India - did not intermarry with native converts, and this situation actually continues to this day. Didn't the last Nizam of Hyderabad marry a Turkish princess?
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2/5/07
Azygos
Check this link
http://www.geocities.com/hinduwoman0/casteism
The asrafs are high caste muslims of India and non asrafs [mentioned even in the controversial Sachar committee report] are the lowest of the rung; the dalits who converted to Islam.
Moreover, at time of partition, majority of the islamic nobility who intermarried must have moved into pakistan. Were any DNa samples taken from the pakistani population...
2/5/07
Bhavna
The Genographic Project
This is a very interesting topic. A few y
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 02-24-2009
2/5/07
Bhavna
The Genographic Project
This is a very interesting topic. A few years ago, National Geographic started the 'The Genographic Project' which is tracing human migration patterns based on DNA.
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html
They postulate that there have been a number of genetic markers that have passed through India, starting with Haplogroup M* around 60,000 years ago. We have then had genetic migrations at:
- 50,000 years(Haplogroup C (M130) and Haplogroup D (M174)),
- 20,000 years (Haplogroup L (M20))
- 25,000 years (Haplogroup H1 (M52))
and all of this before arrival of the (so called) agriculturists 10-20,000 years ago (Haplogroup G (M201)-Haplogroup J) in the Indus valley.
Basically, I think, if you put most of the genetic groups in a blender - you get a South-Asian .
2/6/07
Anil
@ Bhavna
if you put most of the genetic groups in a blender - you get a South-Asian
Not true. South Asians are characterised by a group of South Asia-specific haplogroups. There simply isn't that much scatter in the haplogroup compositions of South Asians - the genetic distances for South Asians are *smaller* than that for East Asians (Mongoloids)!
But yes, South-East Asians and Australian aborigines could show traces of some of those haplogroups, as the migration east of India is believed to have happened through India. And, as we see now, Caucasians could also show traces of those haplogroups, having probably been derived from South Asians.
2/6/07
Bhavna
@ arun nanda
They have shown that the migration of Aborigines into Australia happened during an Ice-age 60,000 years ago, when there was a land bridge between Northern Australia and Asia via Indonesia.
2/7/07
Anil
^^^^^
That's very true.
This is actually a very fascinating question which draws on two virtually unrelated disciplines: anthropology / population genetics and geology.
Around 10,000 years ago (ie at the end of the last Ice Age), the sea level was around 120m lower than it is today. It has risen over the last ten millennia, at times catastrophically by several metres at once - and such events may well have given rise to the flood legends which occur in many completely diverse cultures too cut off from each other geographically to have had any cultural exchange.
The entire seaboard of India lost heavily during this period (called the Holocene Era), and there are more than one distinct flood legend in popular lore - there's that of Manu and, of particular relevance to us, is that of the Tamils which is supposed to have submerged most of their country till only peninsular India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives remained. This is described in the Sangam Literature. Even "Adam's Bridge" across the Palk Strait is supposed to have been passable by foot up to the 15th century CE.
So, yes, till about a couple of a thousand years ago, there probably was a contiguous land link from south India right up to Australia and, probably, further.
2/11/07
.ZangetsU.
@bhavna
If you look at the description closely ,its a guess and they too don't know if its true,also stupid linguistics are used to get those migration paths.
3/5/07
Nikhil
IVC script decoded ??
http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=352560&sid=FTP
interesting article. Dont know if its authentic or not!!
Does ne one know abt this international indology conference in Goa??
Is this an academic conference?
3/5/07
Azygos
I have posted it on the online resources too....The work is a hypothesis, and not yet universally accepted....What is solely important to us, is that a white german, not some desi hindu came up with it.
showing 71-80 of 81
3/5/07
Azygos
I am copy pasting a news report from the Indus Saraswati community, whose theme is basically the same as our discussion.
Progress Made In Studying Genetic Traits Of India
Despite the fact that the people of India constitute more than one-sixth of the world's entire population, they have been underrepresented in studies related to genetic diseases. And with the growth of modernization, complex genetic diseases associated with urban and western lifestyles have risen to near-epidemic proportions, making genetic cataloging and association studies of particular importance.
In response to this dearth of information, a team of researchers, including Pragna I. Patel, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), and Noah Rosenberg, assistant professor in the department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan, have conducted genetic analysis of India-born individuals in the U.S. Through their studies, they have begun to shed light on the genetic variations of the diverse population of India.
In a study published online in the journal PLoS Genetics, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), Patel and colleagues analyzed 1,200 genome-wide polymorphisms collected from 432 individuals representing 15 different Indian populations.
This study represents the largest study of Indian genetic variation performed to date, in terms of the total number of sites in the human genome that were surveyed.
The researchers found that populations from India, and more generally, South Asia, make up one of the major human ancestry groups, with relatively little genetic differentiation among the Indian populations. Although the study used participants that may not reflect a random sample from India, these results still suggest that the frequencies of many genetic variants are distinctive in India compared to other parts of the world.
3/5/07
Azygos
continued....
"We were struck both by the low level of diversity amongst people spanning such a large geographical region, and by the fact that people of the Indian sub-continent constituted a distinct group when compared to populations from other parts of the world," says Patel.
Her group is using this study as a foundation for future studies on the genetic basis of various common diseases in Asian Indians-such as heart disease, which is highly prevalent in this population. Individuals interested in participating in this study may see details at http://www.usc.edu/RICADIA.
###
The research group also includes other researchers from the USC Institute for Genetic Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, the University of Michigan, the departments of neurology and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and the Center for Medical Genetics at the Marshfield Medical Research Foundation, Marshfield, Wisconsin.
The study was funded by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences (Rosenberg), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (Rosenberg) and a grant from the University of Southern California. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute provided additional support for genotyping.
Noah A. Rosenberg, Saurabh Mahajan, Catalina Gonzalez-Quevedo, Michael G. B. Blum, Laura Nino-Rosales, Vasiliki Ninis, Parimal Das, Madhuri Hegde, Laura Molinari, Gladys Zapata, James L. Weber, John W. Belmont and Pragna I. Patel, "Low levels of genetic divergence across geographically and linguistically diverse populations of India." PLoS Genetics, Dec. 22: Vol. 2, No. 12. http://www.plosgenetics.org/.
Contact: Jon Weiner
University of Southern California
3/18/07
Azygos
The view of Witzel: prior to Y chromosomal analys
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewitzel/EJVS-7-3.pdf
Once genetic testing will have provided us with more samples of the (few not cremated) skeletal remains from contemporary burials and of modern populations we may be in a better position to judge the phsyical character of previous and modern populations. This
will become apparent even more, once not just mtDNA (inherited by females) but also the male Y chromosome (some of it likely that of immigrating tribesmen) will have been studied. Only then we will be able to tell which particular strains, corresponding to which neighboring areas,24 were present in the Northwest of the subcontinent at that time."
It is a fallacy to compare various Brahmin groups of India in order to establish a common older type. Brahmins, just like other groups, have intermarried with local people, otherwise how would some Newar
Brahmins have 'Mongoloid' characteristics, or how would Brahmins of various parts of India have more in common with local populations than with their 'brethren', e.g. in the northwest? Studies based on just one area and a few markers only, such as E. Andhra (Bamshad 2001) do not help much.
But, Witzel, wary of being caught by his canard washes his hands off the genetic evidence too...
In the end, to be absolutely clear, what counts is the Indo-Aryan culture, their social system, their texts, their rituals, and the frame of mind they brought into the subcontinent.
5/31/07
Anil
A parting shot (?)...
Who is better equipped to comment on this question than an anthropologist? That too someone like Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, who has studied this problem for decades and has inspected probably every damn skeleton found at a pre- or proto-historical archaeological site in the subcontinent?
Just how contemptuously dismissive he is of the notion of a foreign Iron Age race on the subcontinent is clear from the fact that he calls such a theory *unscientific*:
Kennedy KAR, "When the Wild Veddas Came to Edinbugh," in Kenoyer JM (ed.), "From Sumer to Meluhha: Contributions to the Archaeology of South and West Asia in Memory of George F. Dales, Jr." Wisconsin Archaeological Reports, Volume 3 (1994) pp 281-313, specifically 305
"The matter of using contemporary populations to make historical and archaeological arguments is not new in archaeology and biological anthropology, but circumstances pertaining to the Veddas are unique because history and myth continued to shape archaeological and anthropological interpretations for such a long time, until well after the mid-point of the twentieth century. Parallels of this nonscientific approach include the assumption that the mound-builders of North America were of a separate racial stock from historic native Americans, that the citadel and walls of Zimbabwe could not have ben constructed by earlier Bantu people of Africa, and that the Iron Age megalithic monuments of India and Sri Lanka were erected by some mysterious race of invaders from beyond the borders of the subcontinent."
PS: Veddas - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veddas
10/9/07
Anil
What at all did humans move out of Africa?
This question has been asked earlier: why did anatomically modern humans ever move out of Africa after having lived there for tens of millennia without having shown any inclination to move out, and into places as inhospitable as Siberia?
Some scientists appear to have found a possible answer to at least the first part of that question: a massive drought in Africa may have forced our ancestors to move out of Africa and explore "greener pastures" elsewhere. Apparently, there was another abortive attempt to emerge from Africa around 125,000 years ago.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle2617296.ece
The paper being referred to is here:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0703874104v1
4/24/08
Azygos
DNA evidence negates AIT/AMT
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip...6/06/24/&prd=th
4/30/08
Azygos
India acquired language but not genes
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...ndia_genes.html
5/23/08
Azygos
http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/AJHG...78_p202-221.pdf
8/22/08
Anil
@ Nikhil - regarding Vrtra
We return to this thread again!
Regarding Vrtra and the battle between Indra and Vrtra, please have a look at the interpretation given by the Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture:
http://www.vedah.com/org2/audio_vis/selected_rv/indra.asp
"This hymn to Indra, the Lord of the luminous Mind in the Veda, describes in detail the symbolic battle between Indra, the leader of the luminous devas and Vritra, the leader of the forces of ignorance and evil. The Rig Veda refers to this battle in many places. Some persons (like the guy in the article you pointed out, and even some scholars of considerable standing ) assert that this battle is fought between two opposing class. Examination of the epithets in all the fifteen mantras of this hymn and the fifteen of the next hymn confirming that the battle is psychological between the forces of good and evil. For instance the eighth verse refers to the waters mounting the mind which cannot make sense if we regard waters as physical. The benefit of this victory is the release of all the divine energies which are blocked by Vritra to the earth and the release of Soma, the Delight for all."
8/24/08
Anil
"India acquired langauge, not genes"
Umm...even that is questionable.
Examples are given of how Spanish and Portugese culture came to be widespread in South America, although the vast populations of native South Americans will not show any European genes. Or even how signs of Muslim culture / architecture / language will be found all over India, even though the contribution of the Muslim invaders to India's genetic pool is negligibly small. Or - this one is done to death - how Indians acquired the English language and culture although we don't have any genes from the English.
But there is a catch: in none of these instances do we find a near-complete replacement of the substrate language / culture for a sizeable segment of the population. For instance, the native South Americans continue to have their own mother tongues and cultures. After over 800 years of Muslim rule (and, in total, around a millennium of Muslim influence), the contribution of Arabic / Turkish / Persian etc to the languages of India is perhaps less than 3% of the vocabulary. And, inspite of its widespread usage, English is not the first language for Indians, leave alone English words having percolated the substrate. Besides, archaeologically speaking, the dramatic influx of a foreign culture is bleedingly obvious in all these instances. On the other hand, for millions of people, even in the remotest areas of India, the substrate language is overwhelmingly Sanskrit-derived. And archaeological evidence for ancient India only piles up on the side of indigeneous continuity, rather than any noticeable foreign contribution. So the model of IE culture- / language-transfer without transfer of genes for ancient India does not sound convincing. In private email conversation, Prof Richard Villems (Estonian Biocentre, University of Tartu) did point this fact out. Indeed, to my mind, persisting with the notion of foreign IE contribution looks increasingly like a case of intellectual inertia and, strictly speaking, unscientific.
showing 81-81 of 81
11/12/08
Anil
' "no one really knows how long ago there was a community that spoke Proto-Indo-European," ... [On the other hand, a] migration-free theory that assumes the continuity of all European and Asiatic populations from Paleo-/Mesolithic times is gaining consensus not only among prehistorians but also, and especially, among linguists. ... Overwhelming linguistic evidence â perfectly coinciding with the continuity evidence provided by archaeology â confirms this new thesis and, more generally, the advantages of the theory.'
--- Mario Alinei, Current Anthropology 2003, v. 44, pp. 109-110.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/3m0mziz3mds/Alinei and Frye in Current Anthropology 2003 44 109-110.pdf
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - HareKrishna - 02-25-2009
100 points question
If sinhala from Sri Lanka are white aryan invaders how come they are as black as near-by tamils?
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Husky - 02-26-2009
<!--QuoteBegin-HareKrishna+Feb 25 2009, 12:30 AM-->QUOTE(HareKrishna @ Feb 25 2009, 12:30 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->100 points question
If sinhala from Sri Lanka are white aryan invaders how come they are as black as near-by tamils?
[right][snapback]94894[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Forget the oryan fable.
It's because they are both ethnically Indian. All us Indians take the colour of the surroundings of where we live in the Indian subcontinent, if we live there long enough (say some millennia). SL is south of TN. Sinhalas and Tamils' skintones are natural for the environment and shows both have been there for some significant amount of time.
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - acharya - 03-02-2009
The Aryan Hypothesis and Indian Identity: A Case Study in the Postmodern Pathology of National Identity.
By J. Randall Groves, Ph.D.
Professor of Humanities
Ferris State University
The use of the concept of identity in historical studies is somewhat problematic since it may result in overly simple essentialisms. It can also be used to exercise power over those being identified. Thus the description or construction of an identity often leads to deep disagreement among scholars. On the other hand it is clearly impossible to do area studies without making at least provision identifications. It is important, however, that provisional identifications not become reified or ontologized into something that later loses its provisional status. When this happens it can result in a pathology of identity that can lead to a negative characterization of some groups, or even the exclusion and oppression of certain groups. Historical studies are full of such reifications, and this is particularly true of the Aryan hypothesis explanation of early India.
In this paper I trace various uses of the Aryan hypothesis by different groups of Indian and non-Indian scholars of Indian history in order to show how this hypothesis has taken several forms as it was put to use in the construction of Indian identity. These constructions of Indian identity will show that India is suffering a pathology of identity in response to the modern and postmodern stresses it is undergoing. India is not alone in its present postmodern pathology. We see the same phenomenon in various parts of the world with the conservative and religious revivals in the Islamic world, Israel and the United States.
The Aryan hypothesis has taken many forms since its inception. The following is a list of some of these standard forms:
1. The linguistic thesis that Sanskrit shares a common origin with several Meditteranean, Near Eastern and European languages.
2. The AIT, or Aryan invasion thesis that argues that Vedic culture in India is the result of an invasion of outsiders.
3. The AMT, or Aryan migration thesis that says there was no invasion, merely a migration.
4. The âindigenous Aryanâ thesis that says the Aryans never invaded nor migrated into India, they were already there.
5. The OIT, or âout of Indiaâ thesis that says that Aryans are originally from India and spread out from there to the rest of the world.
The Aryan hypothesis is useful to the study of cultural identity because it shows the complex interrelationships between self and other in the formation of identity. In India as well as other parts of the world, it has functioned as a myth of origins, and as mythologists understand, creation myths are often reiterated precisely in crisis periods in which the structure or basic order of a society has been called into question.
The theory begins as a view about Sanskrit linguistics, becomes a theory of invasion and migration concerning not only India, but also Iran, the Mediterranean and Europe. Then it is taken up in Germany to ground Nazi race theory and in Britain and India to explain caste in terms of race in India. It is also the means by which Indians come to terms with the psychological burden of defeat and colonial domination. In recent times it has become the scene of a political contest of wills between Indian Nationalists and their opponents. Thus the Indo-Aryan hypothesis played an important role in the formulation of identity in both Nazi Germany and modern India. In this paper I will focus on the role the Aryan Hypothesis has played in India, with special attention to how the view of the other is basic for a dialectic of identity.
The Aryan Hypothesis: Linguistic Roots
The use of the concept of identity in historical studies is highly contested. While most historians have is a highly controversial view in recent studies of Ancient India. Originally a result of Western scholarship, the supporters of the Aryan Hypothesis in India and the West have used it to support very different conceptions of Indian identity. Interestingly, so have its detractors.
The linguistic argument for Indo-Aryan as the ancestral language of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit comes from William Jones, who noted important similarities between several European languages such as Greek, Latin, Gothic and Celtic on the one hand, and Sanskrit on the other. These similarities cried out for explanation, and Jones, a believer in the truth of the Christian Bible, believed it was because they were all descendants of Ham, one of Noahâs sons.
The Aryan invasion hypothesis, the idea that Indian culture is the result of the synthesis of two peoples, one indigenous, the other a group of invaders called âAryans,â was taken up by Max Müller, who deduced the idea of an Aryan migration into India by looking for the homeland of Indo-Aryans from linguistic evidence from the Vedas. This evidence led Müller to believe that the early Indo-Aryans were a nomadic and pastoral people from several possible locations, all outside of India. If the Aryans came from outside India, then they must have invaded India and brought their culture, particularly the Vedas, with them. More textual evidence for the Aryan Hypothesis comes from the text of the Vedas. Muir and more recently, Witzel, have argued that one can trace the movements of peoples from reading the stories contained in the Vedas.
Indian scholars were not particularly impressed at first with Aurobindo, Ramchandra Rao and Aghorechandra Chahattopadhyaya all voicing reasonable objections to the theory, particularly the problem of a group of people giving rise to such great civilizations as the Greek, Roman, Vedic and Persian without leaving any trace of itself. They also noted the problems of associated with a primitive nomadic people managing to "formulate a language as intricate and complex as Indo-European." Interestingly, these objections seem to have been largely powerless to resist the popularity of the Aryan hypothesis over time. We shall see below that this was even true of Indian scholars.
The Vedas:
When Max Müller first came up with a date for the Vedas, he drew upon his belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible and determined that the Vedas were written around 1200 BCE by working forward from the date of the construction of the Tower of Babel after the flood, around 2500 BCE, and backward from the date of the Buddha, around 500 BCE. The Biblical argument became less convincing to later scholars, but the dates stuck in Western philology as the probable dates of the Vedas. There could be no clearer case of the other bringing his or her cultural assumptions into play in interpreting a foriegn culture. Müller was deeply interested in India, but he was also so imbued with his own culture that he simply could not bring himself to examine it on its own merits. India was thus first presented to the West in the only terms Müller had at his disposal, Christian terms.
The Indus Civilization:
In 1921, the ruins at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were identified as the remains of the Indus civilization This civilization was dated at 3000 BCE and therefore, if the date of the Aryans is thought to be around 1500 BCE, as it is for those who believe in the AIT, then this gives rise to the view that the Indus peoples were not Aryans. Further, the scholar Mortimer Wheeler interpreted skeletons found in Mohenjo-Daro as evidence of military conquest of the Indus by the Aryans. Later scholars have dated the demise of the Indus civilization at 2000 BCE, thus by the time of the alleged arrival of the Aryans the Indus civilization had already expired. If the Indus were already gone, they could not have been conquered by the Aryans. The argument now given most support by all sides in the debate says that the Sarasvati river, which was the ecological center of the Indus civilization, changed its course and dried up.
Caste and Race:
The idea that there was an Aryan invasion was quickly linked to the idea that the upper castes were descendants of the Vedic Aryans, while the lower castes were the conquered Dravidians. The idea is that the conquerors used caste as a way to solidify their position as ruler of India and to keep their people separate from the Dravidians through marriage restrictions based on caste. This, in turn, supported the racial interpretation of the caste system and of Indian society generally. Some passages in the Veda were thought to imply racial differences between Aryans and Dravidians (or Dasas). Skin color and nose size were thought to have been indicators that the Aryans were a different race from the Dravidians. Both these criteria have since been debunked by more careful readings of the Vedas, but the racial interpretation, as we shall see, will be very important in the formulation of Indian identity.
Trautman and Inden give extensive treatments of European views of India, and the Aryan hypothesis is a key element in their accounts.
Indian identity:
Romila Thapar writes, âIdentity in pre-colonial India was dependent on various features such as caste, occupation, language, sect, region and location. As late as the eighteenth century caste was often given primacy over religion, although caste and religious sect could overlap. But in the colonial reconstruction of society religion was given primacy, particularly as the imprint of identity.â Thaparâs view of Indian identity is consistent with the common understanding of India as primarily a Hindu country with a large minority of Muslims and lesser minorities of Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists and so on. Another key component of Indian identity involves the colonial and postcolonial experience. As Frantz Fanon pointed out, the colonized must come to terms with the colonial experience of defeat and domination. While Fanonâs thesis was primarily a psychological one, it is clear that the same is true an a broader cultural sense. These two elements, religion and the colonial experience are key to understanding contemporary Indian identity.
The Aryan Hypothesis is uniquely formulated such that it engages both aspects of Indian identity. It addresses, on the one hand, what it means to be Hindu and what role Hinduism had at the beginning of Indian history, and it raises all the suspicions that come with any investigation that could be regarded as part of the colonial experience or part of the contemporary nationalist movement. It is not surprising then that the Aryan Hypotheses, whether it be the AIT, AMT or the Indigenous positions, raises deep issues of identity and the corresponding decibel level of argument. In this paper I am not interested in adjudicating any of the issues, which are highly complex and contentious. I am only interested in the interplay of the research on the Aryan Hypothesis and the idea of Indian identity.
From the British point of view, the Aryan Hypothesis made India into the childhood of Europe, in fact, a permanent child without the intervention of the British. The view of India as a âland of dreams,â as it was for the German philosopher Hegel is, of course, meant as a contrast with the a supposedly more rigorously thinking European culture. Some early orientalists saw India as a spiritual contrast to materialistic Europe, and thus implicitly criticized their own civilization. This idea of India as a spiritual nation was somewhat at odds with the notion of conquering Aryans, but Hegelâs answer was simply that the settling down of the Aryans into the warm weather of India made the physically wandering Aryans into âspiritually wanderingâ Aryans. James Mill saw in India mostly a need for reform and thus a corrupt and primitive version of Britain. The idea of an India, an other, that was less developed than Britain was a source of pride and confidence for the British. Their ability to defeat and dominate the much larger India only convinced them of British cultural superiority. This superiority, in turn, justified colonialism in order to bring British civilization to backward India.
Romila Thapar surveys the Indian reactions to the Aryan hypothesis and points out how it came to be used and continues to be used in the political confrontations of various groups. We shall see that each one of these uses is one that engages the notion of Indian identity. She begins with Jyotiba Phule, who accepted the AIT, and used it to argue that the upper caste Brahmins were descendants of the Aryans and thus were alien to India. Therefore the lower castes, now associated with the indigenous people of India, were âmore Indianâ than the upper castes. This argument was used to justify various political movements, particularly in South India, to undermine Brahmin dominance and privilege. It is interesting that the AIT was used to bring former âoutsiders,â who were regarded as less Indian than the upper castes, to the âinsideâ of Indian identity in a sort of Nietzschean âtransvaluationâ of Indian identity.
Hindutva ideology, a variety of Hindu nationalism, started out supporting the Aryan hypothesis, but later turned against it altogether, arguing that the Aryans were indigenous to India and that there was no invasion at all. This is, of course, the Indigenous position. Interestingly, this argument configures Indian identity so that being Indian is a matter of being a member of a religion that originated in India, and therefore the outsider is the Muslim, the Christian and even the Marxist. This view rejects the whole interpretation of caste distinction as a remnant of the Aryan invasion. Sometimes it is argued that the AIT idea of caste conflict is meant to divide India against itself for the political gain of some groups. This has been one of the criticisms of the âMarxistâ historians, such as Thapar and Sharma, whether it is a fair criticism or not. The counter-argument is that Hindutva ideology is skewing the evidence in order to support a nationalist agenda that some worry is akin to an Indian version of Fascism that has the motive of attacking the Muslim community and its place in the idea of India. This ideology then functions to confer a unique âinvaderâ and âoutsiderâ status to the Muslim community. It is easy to see why the Hindutva might have hostility to the AIT since, if it is true, the Aryans become just another set of invaders/outsiders comparable to the Muslims and the British. Indeed, if we add recent work that suggests an earlier Dravidian migration into India, Indian identity becomes one of mere geography, with several groups possessing equal standing and equal rights to Indian identity. This is precisely what Arun Shourie fears as he writes: âThey have made India out to have been an empty-land, filled by successive invaders. They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zooâan agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as âIndia,â just a geographical expression, just a construct of the Britishâ¦â Shourieâs mention of Hinduism as a zoo raises another argument, namely, that Hinduism, which is generally taken as a sort of base-line of Indian identity in the face of other sorts of diversity, is itself a diverse group of doctrines and beliefs separable into Vaishnaivism, Shaivism and so on. Even Hinduism is an âimagined community.â
Others find the âdiverse Indiaâ view liberating, as it casts aside historical conflicts between groups and argues for the unification of an India that includes Hindus, Muslims, and everyone else in the present to make up for the torn condition of the historical India. This was Jawaharlal Nehruâs view. Nehru believed that it was âundesirable to use Hindu or Hinduism for Indian culture.â The emphasis of this position is on India as a project in identity formation. This is the âCongressâ and the Marxist view of a secular India. âA secular state, from this perspective, is the only political system that can protect the equal rights of all citizens to define themselves as being Indian with cultural credentials that are as good as anybody elseâs.â Later in this paper I will defend this view as the âhealthiestâ or least pathological of the views of Indian Identity.
Early mainstream historians who accepted the AIT felt that it gave a foundation to Indian history, and this view appealed to the upper castes, who identified themselves as descendants of the ancient Aryans. Some, such as Keshab Chunder Sen, even went so far as to claim kinship with the British, claiming the British colonial experience to be one of reuniting lost cousins. The British also found this view conducive to the needs of empire stability since it meant the British were merely returning India to its roots. Thus they were willing to take on an identity in the eyes of the other that they might not fully agree with in the last analysis in order to further their purposes. It is often forgotten how often we take on identities for strategic purposes. Here we see a dialectical interplay between British views of India, British views of themselves, Indian views of the British and Indian views of India in the framework of the colonial experience. Critics would see the âlost cousins viewâ as an example of the oppressed attempting to identify with the oppressor as the expression of a psychological need to construct subaltern identity in a more positive sense. As Indians became more hostile to this sort of response, it became less palatable. It was also undermined by the discovery of Indus Valley civilization.
The discovery of the Indus civilization meant that there was an important part of Indian history that was not Aryan, thus claims for a linear history for the Hindus that was identical with a linear history of India was now impossible. This has led some to attempt an identification of the Aryan and Indus Valley civilizations by pushing back the date of the Aryans and the Vedas to the point where the Indus Valley civilization is also Aryan and Vedic. We see again a dialectical process in which the Aryan is reinterpreted to be Indus and the Indus to be Aryan. The dating of the Vedas to the time of the Indus will bring the Aryans to the Indus, and the attempts to decipher the Indus seals as a form of Sanskrit brings the Indus to the Aryan in a double movement of identity construction.
Another strain of identity construction occurs in the form of the Theosophist movement that sees India as the cradle of all civilization. The theosophist holds to an âout of Indiaâ position in which not only was there no Aryan invasion into India, the invasion in fact went the other way. Migrating Indians brought their superior civilization to the world and became the basis of Greek, Roman, Persian and European civilizations, indeed, the foundation of knowledge itself. We might call this the âuniversalistâ or âcosmopolitanâ notion of identity, as paradoxical as that might sound. There are those who wish to extend their sense of solidarity to all people to the extent that they postulate common origins in order to transcend the innumerable divisions between peoples.
Indigenous Indians use of the Aryan hypothesis:
Several native Indian thinkers, Raja Rammohan Roy, DayÄnand SaraswatÄ«, Justice Ranade and LokamÄnya Tilak, and Vivekananda all made use the Aryan hypothesis in ways that serve to configure Indian identity. In what follows I will draw heavily upon Dorothy Figueiraâs insightful analysis of these thinkers but focus on these thinkers use of the Aryan hypothesis to reconfigure Indian identity. Roy, the founder of BrÄhmo SamÄj, was convinced of the similarity of Christianity and Hinduism and worked to rehabilitate and reform Hinduism âby proving that Sanskrit literature espoused monotheism and rejected idol worship. Roy was instrumental in the movement against sati and tried to undermine polytheism. He believed the Vedas had been misread, sometimes out of Brahmin self-interest, and decided to do a translation into the vernacular, thus making him a sort of Hindu Martin Luther. Thus Hinduism had descended into superstition and needed to be returned to its Aryan golden age. Roy was in a two-way contest of wills with the Brahmins and the Christian Trinitarians, the later of whom he believed were also guilty of polytheism. This two-way battle is representative of Royâs position between Indian orthodoxy and British colonial power. Some commentators, such as Ashis Nandy, believed that Roy identified with the British oppressor as an ego defense mechanism. Whether or not Nandy is correct, it is clear that the Aryan hypothesis puts Indian adherents in a difficult position with regard to British colonial power, particularly those who felt Hinduism was in need of reform. This was especially true of those like Roy, who also were enamored with those aspects of Christian belief that were critical of Hinduism.
DayÄnand SaraswatÄ«, founder of the Ärya SamÄj, also believed in an Aryan golden age and that Hinduism had strayed from the example of the ancient Aryans. His reform efforts went beyond those of Roy, and included such issues as female equality in education, child marriage, choice in marriage and remarriage for widows. SaraswatÄ«, like Roy, reinterpreted the Vedas in ways that supported his reforms and his belief in an Aryan golden age. He was also conceptually opposed to transmigration and karma because they led to passivity. This passivity had deprived India of much of its intellectual and physical vigor that the Aryans had when they migrated from Tibet and established Äryavarta, homeland of the Aryans, which was previously uninhabited. Here it is important to notice this detail. The fact that there were no previous inhabitants made the Aryans the rightful owners of India. But the effect of the Aryans went well beyond Äryavarta. The Aryans taught Greece, Egypt and Europe whatever initial knowledge they had. This land was regarded as a place of high virtue, a virtue that was only undermined by the MahÄbhÄrata war. The degeneration of the Hindu culture led to the weakness that enabled the British to overcome India. Only by recovering its Aryan cultural strength may India become an equal to British power. Here again we see the Aryan hypothesis in service of the psychological need to come to terms with British colonial dominance in such a way as to rehabilitate Indian identity.
Justice Ranade regarded the British as uncorrupted Aryans who were sent by providence to reform the Indians. Ranade writes, âwe now have a living example before us of how pure Aryan customs, unaffected by barbarous laws and patriarchal notions, resemble our own ancient usagesâ¦and restore the old healthy practices.â We see in this a complete acceptance of the rule of the oppressor and a blueprint for restoring an acceptable Indian identity. India should not reject British criticisms; it should reform itself in light of them. Restoration had been attempted before, but Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Scythians or Dravidians always interrupted it. Dravidian influence was particularly damaging since it helped cause the weakness that set the stage for defeat by the Muslims. In each case we see the construction of a pernicious âotherâ that serves to undermine Aryan culture and explains how it could come to pass that a virile culture could be overwhelmed by decadent cultures.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak calculated from astronomical data contained in the Vedas that the Aryan homeland must have been in the arctic, which was much more mild at the time. In 8000 BCE the climate changed and the Aryans were set to wandering. In the face of such a catastrophe, it isnât surprising that the sacred texts might be corrupted. Nevertheless, the Aryans culture was so superior to all others that they were able to conquer and spread Aryan culture across the world. Swami Vivekananda, who felt that the Aryan race was the only really civilized race in the world, took the superiority of Aryan culture to the next level. Any civilization in the world is the result of intermixing with Aryan blood. Aryan culture in India, which is identified by Vivekananda as best exemplified by the upper castes, was so superior that it should be exported to the West. There even exist some racially pure Aryans living in the Himalayas who are close to supermen in intelligence, beauty and virtue. These pure Aryans are in stark contrast to Indiaâs first peoples, whom he regarded as wild and sometimes even cannibals. For Vivekananda, there can be no real kinship between northern and southern India. In Vivekananda, then, the need to structure a healthy Indian identity led to a racist doctrine that separates the good races from the degenerate races. In contrast to the earlier reformers like Roy and SaraswatÄ«, who were led by colonial experience in combination with the Aryan hypothesis to question the separation of races and castes, Vivekananda built the same combination into a justification from a defense of racism and caste.
It is almost as if the Aryan hypothesis, once in place in the colonial context, was destined to run through all possible uses of the idea, some co-opting the British, others rejecting them, some using it to reform, others using it to defend tradition. In all cases, however, it was used to construct a new identity, an identity that all seemed to feel needed reconstruction in the face of British domination. British domination was simply a fact that struck so deep into Indian self-consciousness that it required an ideological response at various levels. The Aryan hypothesis, an idea supplied by British scholars, was both absorbed and rejected, depending on whether the thinker felt it would be more useful to accept or to reject.
Gyan Prakesh points out that there is a common assumption among most nationalist views of Indian identity I would add that this is in fact true of most view of identity. Prakesh characterizes this assumption as saying that âIndia was an undivided subject, that is, that it possessed a unitary self and a singular will that arose from its essence and was capable of autonomy and sovereignty. From this point of view, the task of History was to unleash this subjectivity from colonial controlâ¦â This denial of obvious diversity is pathological in my view. In a separate work, I have identified two contrasting kinds of health among cultural unities. At the level of the self, it is pathological to operate with more than one identity. We call that the mental illness of multiple personality. Conversely, at the level of the nation, too great an emphasis on unity in the face of diversity is pathological. Tom Nairn views all nationalism as âthe pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as âneurosisâ in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon the world and largely incurable.â I do not go so far as Nairn, but I do put a limit to the degree of unity that it is healthy for a nation to claim. As with the self, there is a legitimate psychological and cultural need for a unified, single identity at the level of the nation, but at the national level it is as dangerous to be âtoo unifiedâ as it is to be too disunited.
The focus on authenticity based on a myth of origins in order to claim an historical identity may not be pathological, but it is a mistake that contributes to the pathology. It is simply bad faith in the existentialist sense to claim a âcoreâ identity for something as diverse and changing as the nation and culture of India. Cultural identities are always narrative projects. This is what the modern founders of India believed, and they were correct. The right in India is engaged in a narrative project as well, they simply regard it as returning India to its roots, and their rejection of the AIT and AMT is an attempt to accomplish that. The left in India is nevertheless correct to fear the recent efflorescence of right-wing nationalism, whatever the benefits that accrue to India from a long-needed change of leadership. But it is also important to see the phenomenon of right-wing and religious conservative movements as part of a world-wide phenomenon in which societies respond to modernization and internationalization (and often westernization) by turning to communalism.
http://www.freewebs.com/randoc/The%20Aryan...%20Identity.doc
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 03-03-2009
<b>Common genetic traits - Aryan theory demolished
BY KUMAR CHELLAPPAN</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->An internationalteam of genetic scientists has ruled out the theory of Aryan invasion of the Indian sub-continent.
âThe age old argument that there was an Aryan invasion of the sub-continent is simply bunkum.
Scientific studies prove that there is no such thing as Aryan Indian or Dravidian Indian. Genetic high resolution studies carried out by us prove that all Indians are derived from same grandgrand parents who arrived here 60,000-70,000 years ago from Africa,â Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, a scientist of the team, told Deccan Chronicle.
Dr Chaubey, a member of the scientific community at the Instituteof Molecular an d Cell Biology, University of Tartu, Estonia, said the research also proved that all Indians had common genetic traits irrespective of the regions to which they belonged.
âIt took us four years to complete the study and we analysed 12,200 samples to reach this conclusion,â said Dr Chaubey.
âGenetic studies help us to establish relations between populations. We focussed on the paternal (Y chromosomes) and maternal DNA genealogies. The data which we generated does not support any major influx to the subcontinent other than the earlier arrival of migrants from Africa,â he said.
âThe present day caste/creed/religion is of indigenous origin,â said Dr Chaubey.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - ramana - 03-03-2009
A whole body of histories and social commentaries have to be re-written after this final conclusion of incorrectnessof AIT.
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 03-28-2009
Compilation of Genetic Studies by Shri M. Kelkar.
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/palaeolithic
See Diagrams by Gyaneshwer Chaubey
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/pala...c/peopling1.jpg
C*, F*, P*, R*, R2 in India
--
link:
Haplogroups K1, K2, K3 and K4 are found only at low frequency in South Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Oceania, and Australia.
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - dhu - 04-01-2009
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Excerpt: "The Hindus: An Alternative History"Â [n:w]
<i>Reality </i>comments :
Abrahamic weed, obviously. Her contempt for Hindus is not even disguised; outsourced from Africa, indeed! As though Hindus have an issue with humans coming out of Africa or even evolution. It is Euro-centric "Indologists" like her who have deep prejudices over the notion of their ancestors coming out of an Indian homeland.
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What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - G.Subramaniam - 04-02-2009
<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Mar 28 2009, 08:08 PM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Mar 28 2009, 08:08 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Compilation of Genetic Studies by Shri M. Kelkar.
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/palaeolithic
See Diagrams by Gyaneshwer Chaubey
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/pala...c/peopling1.jpg
C*, F*, P*, R*, R2 in India
--
link:
Haplogroups K1, K2, K3 and K4 are found only at low frequency in South Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Oceania, and Australia.
[right][snapback]95855[/snapback][/right]
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The chart by Chaubey shows that Indians are a sub-set of Africans and the rest of the world is a subset of Indians
What DNA Says About Aryan Invasion Theory -2 - Husky - 04-06-2009
Hot off the wires.
More Oryans to invade. Fortunately in UK and only two in number as far as has been ascertained. The local populace should be able to deal, I think.
No point keeping an eye out for tanks this time. Just look for the spikes instead.
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/boat-...ul-1699585.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Two rare blonde hedgehogs freed</b>
Two rare blonde hedgehogs were released into the wild after being rescued last year, the RSPCA said today.
The two hedgehogs, one male and one female, were brought to the animal welfare charity's Stapeley Grange Wildlife Centre and Cattery in Nantwich, Cheshire, after they were found wandering around during the day.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->