02-03-2008, 12:58 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(1) there is an underlying unity of female lineages in India, indicating that the initial number of female settlers may have been small;
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This is not relevant to the direction of movement of population.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(2) the tribal and the caste populations are highly differentiated;
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The "Out of India" theory is posited on the fact that there is a lot of genetic variation. So the above statement does not contradict that finding.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(3) the Austro-Asiatic tribals are the earliest settlers in India, providing support to one anthropological hypothesis while refuting some others;
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Basically, the austro-asiatic tribal does not provide conclusive evidence one way or another. So why mention it?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(4) a major wave of humans entered India through the northeast;
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Which crystal ball did they read that from. There are various points of access into India, and in the geological scale the land masses were all one and the migration could have occurred before then.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(5) the Tibeto-Burman tribals share considerable genetic commonalities with the Austro-Asiatic tribals,
supporting the hypothesis that they may have shared a common habitat in southern China, but the two groups of
tribals can be differentiated on the basis of Y-chromosomal haplotypes;
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Again, this does not suggest anything about the direction of migration, since this only proves common ancestry, which is not relevant to direction of migration.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(6) the Dravidian tribals were possibly
widespread throughout India before the arrival of the Indo-European-speaking nomads, but retreated to southern
India to avoid dominance;
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So let us get this straight, "the dravidians" are already taken as an article of faith, and then the authors build on one unproven assumption to make another claim the the "dravidians" went south to avoid "domination by the aryans". so not only do these "Scientists" who came up with this nonsense know that (a) aryans and dravidians did not get along (b) the aryans dominated the dravidians from way back then.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(7) formation of populations by fission that resulted in founder and drift effects have left their imprints on the genetic structures of contemporary populations;
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WTF is the "genetic structures"...we have only barely mapped the human genome of one human being, and already these "scientists" are pulling various theories on "genetic structures" and speak as if the genomes of people of various tribes on this planet have been mapped, which is of course, completely bogus.
What "genetic structures"? The ones that determine TFTA "aryan" characteristics?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(8) the upper castes show closer genetic
affinities with Central Asian populations, although those of southern India are more distant than those of northernIndia;
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The above does not contradict the "out of India" theory...in fact, the above data can be used to claim that dravidians were the root population and the "aryans" were the ones who decided to migrate north. Such a migration could also explain the difference in genetic distance.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> (9) historical gene flow into India has contributed to a considerable obliteration of genetic histories of
contemporary populations so that there is at present no clear congruence of genetic and geographical or sociocultural affinities.
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So this last point basically says that genetic studies are useless because "historical gene flow" (whatever that means) has destroyed the "lineage". There are many problems with this line of thinking, first among which is the notion that these people are in fact using a rigorous methodology to come up with their fanciful "aryan dravidian theory" which apparently is rock solid.
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts...yan-debate.html
The methodology used in the above paper uses the fact that the maximum variation and variety points to the place of origin (on the thesis that variation decreases when a "tribe" branches out to another part of the world from the point of origin. Which one sounds more plausible even to the average science amateur?
The main difference in the methodology used is that:
The paper by the bunch of bengali Indians is based on the notion that genetic distance can somehow be used to claim that Aryans went this way and dravidians the other -- the whole notion itself is bogus unless the authors can explain how they came up with the direction of migration just on the knowledge that two populations came from a common set of ancestors.
Put more simply: The "Genome Research" article's authors only know the absolute value of the "magnitude" (genetic distance) of the difference between populations and yet they are making claims about "sign" (direction of migration).
The Michael Danino paper clearly explains how they used genetic distance to determine the direction of migration.