Wednesday, October 10, 2012

On the origin of Indians - 5

Some attention may be paid to this:
Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a, European Journal of Human Genetics (2010) 18, 479–484; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.194; published online 4 November 2009

available here:

From the point of view of genetics, the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory is dead as a doornail. 
Quotes follow beneath the fold.
(PS: mid-Holocene = 7000-5000 years ago).
 From the abstract:

The diversity and frequency profiles of M458 suggest its origin during the early Holocene and a subsequent expansion likely related to a number of prehistoric cultural developments in the region. Its primary frequency and diversity distribution correlates well with some of the major Central and East European river basins where settled farming was established before its spread further eastward. Importantly, the virtual absence of M458 chromosomes outside Europe speaks against substantial patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, including to India, at least since the mid-Holocene.
From the text:

A final comment can be made concerning the relationship between R1a phylogeography and contested origin of Indo-Europeans that is generally, though not solely, attributed to either Anatolia, the South Caucasus or the North Pontic-Caspian regions (Gray and Atkinson56 and references therein). Haplogroup R1a1a occurs in all three of these areas and beyond at informative frequencies (Figure 1). Consistent with its wide geographic spread, the coalescent time estimates of R1a1a correlate with the timing of the recession of the Last Glacial Maximum and predate the upper bound of the age estimate of the Indo-European language tree. Although virtually absent among Romance, Celtic and Semitic speakers, the presence and overall frequency of haplogroup R1a does not distinguish Indo-Iranian, Finno-Ugric, Dravidian or Turkic speakers from each other. Some contrast, however, is unfolding in its subclade frequencies. Although the R1a1a* frequency and diversity is highest among Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers, the subhaplogroup R1a1a7-M458 frequency peaks among Slavic and Finno-Ugric peoples. Although this distinction by geography is not directly informative about the internal divisions of these separate language families, it might bear some significance for assessing dispersal models that have been proposed to explain the spread of Indo-Aryan languages in South Asia as it would exclude any significant patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, at least since the mid-Holocene period.