Dear editorials, friends of Archaeology, science, History and documentation,

Every one are aware of most famous such places like DHOLAVIRA, KOTI KURAN,
KANMER ETC. but that’s not the only. There further more than hundred of such
destroyed civilisation in Kutch and in Rann of Kutch. All ancient civilisations
listing for more than hundreds has been produced and amongst those, 30 places we
have covered for research purpose. BUT FILMING OF SUCH FAMOUS PLACE HAS NOT BEEN
PRODUCED FOR PUBLIC viwings and AWARENESS. Not only that but DHOLAVIRA
Documentary filming is also far from public viewing. Recently a copy of those
films has been shown by Kutch science foundation to the schools in Kutch and a
copy has been awarded to those schools for the future school study program
demonstration. A Copy also has been presented to the Archaeological department
of Gujarat, BHUJ branch and also to Dholavira Archaeological office for their
access at RATANPAR SCHOOL near Dholavira in KHADIR KUTCH. A filming of Dholavira
will show emigration from Indus Saraswati basin to middle Asia based on
archaeological study,
also an OFFICIAL book from Mexico MAYA study will give notes as Indian crossed
Atlantic from Europe and Africa and settled in Mexico caves 20000 years ago with
cave pictures study. Who were the Aryans, Have they descended from Central
Asia...? THAT WAS THE BELIEF BUT GENETIC STUDY HAS CONTRADICTORY TO THAT.
Emigration, INSTEAD OF MIGRATION OF ARYAN FROM MIDDLE ASIA. This contradiction
genetic study and new archaeological study now reverses the history, and insists
to rewrite that history as Aryan are originated in Indian continents. As there
are civilisation like MARUDA TAKKAR beyond those so called invasion time. And
also shown in DHOLAVIRA DOCUMENTRY. Also MAYA civilisation study (very few know
about MAYA and its meanings), civilisation authentic book and information says
that Indians arrived here in Mexico by crossing Atlantic and lived in caves some
20000 years ago. According to the European tribes, they are of that Indian
origin by genetic study and history of those European tribes. Also Egyptian
OLD name “MUDRAYA” derived from SANSKRIT derived– AVESTHA. They used to pray
Sun, SNAKEs, Garuda, Fire, and also Cow as sacred as many gods habited in cow
as Hindu tradition,
Names like King RAMESIS, and his queen Sitare, Matare and dynasty, Queen
HATSHEPSUT (HAsT SHEP SUT) means she did intervened the dynasty rules and she
become the KING with Beard (queen dynasty).
Genetic study from Maternal Mitochondrial genes, which persists for generations
as birth giving mothers, STUDY SHOWS EMIGRATED FROM INDIAN CONTINENT TO OTHER
PLACES ARTICLES ARE PRODUCED AND IS also AWAILABLE.

Many sites also has been produced for Kutch tourism based on archaeological
interests. There is little info for locations of archaeological interests in
Kutch. Recently a god attempt is made by following site.
http://www.world66.com/asia/southasia/india/gujarat/kutchhttp://www.world66.com/\
asia/southasia/india/gujarat/kutch/lib/gallerythough much table work produced
papers for the geology and archaeology is available. But a concrete field work
was required to produce documents and proofs. Apart from famous archaeological
places e.g. DHOLAVIRA, KURAN and KANMER, there further more than Hundreds of
such destroyed civilisation in Kutch and in Rann of Kutch. We have covered about
30 places and reported to media for public interests. Wish to carry for all such
places. Culture traditions and ancient findings always attracted to visit those
places and search such ancient monuments and civilisations.
Recently discovered stone age instruments from Kutch suggests that Kutch was
place of Human habitation since more than 150000 years. Not only that many
palaeontologist are in search of Human pre ancestors fossil in Kutch.

6. Human Empowerment Conference, Houston, presents genetic study findings
(September 2005)
Paper presented by Dr. Chandrakant Panse at the Human Empowerment Conference
(HEC), Houston, Texas, USA; Sept 16 – 18, 2005:DNA, GENETICS & POPULATION
DYNAMICS: DEBUNKING THE ARYAN INVASION PROPAGANDA
Summary: The so-called Aryan invasion, an idea designed to divide the Hindus of
Northern and Southern Bharat, was never supported by any concrete evidence and
yet was elevated to the stature of a theory. It has been pushed in secondary
school textbooks as a dogma. Science now conclusively rejects any notion of any
Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent.I. BackgroundStudy of changes
(mutations, insertions) in chromosomal DNA is very difficult due to its
magnitude. In humans, the egg contains 22 chromosomes plus the X sex chromosome,
and the sperm has similar 22 plus either the X or the Y sex chromosome. An XX
combination in the embryo ensues a female, and an XY a male. There are some 3
billion DNA base pairs in the 46 chromosomes in a human cell. Studying changes
as markers in only the Y chromosome can be simpler, but traces only the male
ancestry. Cells contain mitochondria, structures where oxygen is utilized. A
mitochondrion has its own DNA, only 16,569 base pairs long, and entirely
independent of the chromosomal DNA. Following mutations in the mtDNA is thus
significantly easier, but traces only female ancestry as the mitochondria are
descendants of the egg, with no contribution from the sperm.Attempts at linking
of populations through insertions of repeat sequences are underway (1), but call
for abundant caution because sampling errors, numbers of markers employed,
choices of markers, statistical models selected for analysis, etc., influence
the results of such studies (2). More importantly, polymorphism (different
alleles, or slightly different forms of the same gene) subjected to local
positive selection can result in convergent evolution, the reverse also holds
true, and these can lead to abnormal conclusions regarding histories of
populations (2). Attempts to demonstrate similarities amongst Asian and European
gene pools not only suffer from such drawbacks in spite of vigorous statistical
analysis, but also can be explained by multiple mechanisms (3). II. North &
South Bharatiyas Share mtDNA, Which Is Distinct From That of EuropeansExtensive
sequencing and statistical analysis of a part of mtDNA which has sustained
mutations (the mitochondrial hypervariable region I, HVR I), from reasonable
sample sizes, has shown that certain sequences dominant in Europe are uncommon
in India, and when found, are almost equally divided amongst the North and South
Indians. Conversely, there are sequences common to both the North and South
Indians which are uncommon in Europe (4). These data have been used to estimate
the time of diversion of the peoples of Europe and Asia in the Pleistocenic era
(4), emphasizing that these are phylogenically different peoples (5). III. North
& South Bharatiyas Share Tissue Antigens, Distinct From Those of EuropeansAll
diploid human cells express a set of proteins on their surfaces, HLA-A, B and C,
which can be unique to an individual. They are coded for in the major
histocompatibility complex of genes (MHC class I) on chromosome 6. These are the
proteins which are recognized as non-self by the immune system in transplant
rejection, and are variously called transplant antigens, phynotypic markers,
cell-surface markers, etc. All of these proteins in all persons have identical
structures and functions, yet can be distinguished from others. Not all 6 class
I antigens (3 each from paternal and maternal copies of chromosomes 6) may be
unique to an individual; some are identical or similar. MHC class II proteins
(DP, DQ, DR) are expressed by some immune system cells only, but may be even
more polymorphic. Analysis of the DNA sequences coding for the different forms
of these proteins (alleles) demonstrate that while populations which are closely
related, geographically or through known migrations, show similarities in their
class I and II MHC antigens, the Asians and the Europeans are distinct, separate
but equal, people (6).Conclusion: The stark lack of similarities in the gene
pools of the Indian subcontinent and Europe, vividly evident in the mtDNA and
the MHC complex, destroys any ' Aryan invasion' notions, and confirms the
genetic uniformity of peoples of the Indian subcontinent.Chandrakant Pansé,
Professor of Biotechnology

By Dr.BHUDIA-Science Group Of
INDIA.http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/venustransit_2004/President:'Kutch
Science Foundation'.Founder :'Kutch Amateurs Astronomers Club - Bhuj -
Kutch'.Life Member:'kutch Itihaas Parishad'.kutchscience@...,
kutchscience@...,http://uk.geocities.com/wildlifeofkutch/
http://www.geocities.com/kutchsciencehttp://profiles.yahoo.com/kutchscience2000h\
ttp://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/scienceclubofindiahttp://in.groups.yahoo.com/gro\
up/kutchsciencehttp://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/kachchhhttp://in.groups.yahoo.co\
m/group/bhuj Do visit our ABOVE Clubs/Groups of Science club of India, Science
Group of India.
GENETICS AND THE ARYAN DEBATE
Background
Along with the birth of anthropology, the nineteenth century saw the development
of semi-scientific to wholly unscientific disciplines, such as anthropometry,
craniometry or phrenology. Unquestioningly accepting the prevalent concept of
race, some scientists constructed facial and nasal indexes or claimed to measure
the skull’s volume for every race, of course with the result that the white
race’s cranium was the most capacious and its owner, therefore, the most
intelligent; others went further, insisting that amidst the white race, only the
Germans were the “pure” descendants of the “Aryan race” which was destined the
rule the earth.In India, from 1891 onward, Herbert H. Risley, an official with
the colonial government, set about defining in all seriousness 2,378 castes
belonging to 43 “races,” all of it on the basis of a “nasal index.” The main
racial groups were Indo-Aryan, Turko- Iranian, Scytho-Dravidian, Aryo-Dravidian,
Mongoloid and Mongolo-Dravidian.
Unfortunately, this imaginative but wholly unscientific work weighed heavily on
the first developments of Indian anthropology; in the 1930s, for instance, B. S.
Guha studied skeletons from Mohenjo-daro and submitted a detailed report on the
proto- Australoid, Mediterranean, Mongoloid and Alpine races peopling the city,
all of them “non-Aryan” of course. Long lists of such fictitious races filled
academic publications, and continue to be found in Indian textbooks today. In
the wake of World War II, the concept of race collapsed in the West. Rather late
in the day, anthropologists realized that race cannot be scientifically defined,
much less measured, thus setting at naught a whole century of scholarly
divagations on “superior” and “inferior” races. Following in the footsteps of
pioneers like Franz Boas,1 leading scientists, such as Ashley Montagu,2 now
argued strongly against the “fallacy of race.” It is only with the emergence of
more reliable techniques in biological anthropology that anthropometry got a
fresh chance; it concentrated not on trying to categorize noses or spot “races,”
but on tracing the evolution of a population, on signs of continuity or
disruption, and on possible kinships between neighbouring populations.In the
Indian context, we are now familiar with the work of U.S anthropologists Kenneth
Kennedy, John Lukacs and Brian Hemphill.3 Their chief conclusion, as far as the
Aryan debate is concerned, is that there is no trace of “demographic disruption”
in the North-West of the subcontinent between 4500 and 800 BCE; this negates the
possibility of any massive intrusion, by so-called Indo-Aryans or other
populations, during that period. Die-hard proponents of such an invasion /
migration have therefore been compelled to downscale it to a “trickle-in”
infiltration,4 limited enough to have left no physical trace, although they are
at pains to explain how a “trickle” was able to radically alter India’s
linguistic and cultural landscape when much more massive invasions of the
historical period failed to do so.5 Other proponents still insist that “the
Indo-Aryan immigrants seem to have been numerous and strong enough to continue
and disseminate much of their culture,”6 but do not explain how the “immigrants”
failed to leave any trace in the anthropological record. A powerful new tool In
the 1980s, another powerful tool of inquiry came on the scene: genetics, with
its growing ability to read the history contained in a human body’s three
billion bits of information. In particular, techniques used in the
identification of genetic markers have been fast improving, leading to a wide
array of applications, from therapeutics to crime detection to genealogy. Let us
first summarize the basic definitions relevant to our field. In trying to
reconstruct ancestry, biologists use two types of DNA, the complex molecule that
carries genetic information. The first, Y-DNA, is contained in the Y-
chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes; it is found in the cell’s nucleus
and is transmitted from father to son. The second, mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA,
is found in mitochondria, kinds of power generators found in a cell, but outside
its nucleus; this mtDNA is independent of the Y-DNA, simpler in structure, and
transmitted by the mother alone. For various reasons, all this genetic material
undergoes slight alterations or “mutations” in the course of time; those
mutations then become characteristic of the line of descendants: if, for
instance, the mtDNAs of two humans, however distant geographically, exhibit the
same mutation, they necessarily share a common ancestor in the maternal line.
Much of the difficulty lies in organizing those mutations, or genetic markers,
in consistent categories called “haplotypes” (from a Greek word meaning
“single”), which constitute an individual’s genetic fingerprint. Similar
haplotypes are then brought together in “haplogroups,” each of which genetically
identifies a particular ethnic group. Such genetic markers can then be used to
establish a “genetic distance” between two populations. Identifying and making
sense of the right genetic markers is not the only difficulty; dating their
mutations remains a major challenge: on average, a marker of Y- DNA may undergo
one mutation every 500 generations, but sudden changes caused by special
circumstances can never be ruled out. Genetics, therefore, needs the inputs from
palaeontology and archaeology, among other disciplines, to confirm its
historical conclusions. India’s case Since the 1990s, there have been numerous
genetic studies of Indian populations, often reaching apparently divergent
conclusions. There are three reasons for this: (1) the Indian region happens to
be one of the most diverse and complex in the world, which makes it difficult to
interpret the data; (2) early studies relied on too limited samples, of the
order of a few dozens, when hundreds or ideally thousands of samples are
required for some statistical reliability; (3) some of the early studies fell
into the old trap of trying to equate linguistic groups with distinct ethnic
entities — a relic of the nineteenth-century erroneous identification between
language and race; as a result, a genetic connection between North Indians and
Central Asians was automatically taken to confirm an Aryan invasion in the
second millennium BCE, disregarding a number of alternative explanations.7 More
recent studies, using larger samples and much refined methods of analysis, both
at the conceptual level and in the laboratory, have reached very different
conclusions (interestingly, some of their authors had earlier gone along with
the old Aryan paradigm8). We will summarize here the chief results of nine
studies from various Western and Indian Universities, most of them conducted by
international teams of biologists, and more than half of them in the last three
years; since their papers are complex and technical, what follows is,
necessarily, highly simplified and represents only a small part of their
content. The first such study dates back to 1999 and was conducted by the
Estonian biologist Toomas Kivisild, a pioneer in the field, with fourteen
co-authors from various nationalities (including M. J. Bamshad).9 It relied on
550 samples of mtDNA and identified a haplogroup called “U” as indicating a deep
connection between Indian and Western-Eurasian populations. However, the authors
opted for a very remote separation of the two branches, rather than a recent
population movement towards India; in fact, “the subcontinent served as a
pathway for eastward migration of modern humans” from Africa, some 40,000 years
ago:
“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 [between Europeans and Indians] 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.”
In other words, the timescale posited by the Aryan invasion / migration
framework is inadequate, and the genetic affinity between the Indian
subcontinent and Europe “should not be interpreted in terms of a recent
admixture of western Caucasoids10 with Indians caused by a putative Indo-Aryan
invasion 3,000–4,000 years BP.” The second study was published just a month
later. Authored by U.S. biological anthropologist Todd R. Disotell,11 it dealt
with the first migration of modern man from Africa towards Asia, and found that
migrations into India “did occur, but rarely from western Eurasian populations.”
Disotell made observations very similar to those of the preceding paper:
“The supposed Aryan invasion of India 3,000–4,000 years before present therefore
did not make a major splash in the Indian gene pool. This is especially
counter-indicated by the presence of equal, though very low, frequencies of the
western Eurasian mtDNA types in both southern and northern India. Thus, the
‘caucasoid’ features of south Asians may best be considered ‘pre-caucasoid’ —
that is, part of a diverse north or north-east African gene pool that yielded
separate origins for western Eurasian and southern Asian populations over 50,000
years ago.”
Here again, the Eurasian connection is therefore traced to the original
migration out of Africa. On the genetic level, “the supposed Aryan invasion of
India 3000-4000 years ago was much less significant than is generally believed.”
A year later, thirteen Indian scientists led by Susanta Roychoudhury studied 644
samples of mtDNA from some ten Indian ethnic groups, especially from the East
and South.12 They found “a fundamental unity of mtDNA lineages in India, in
spite of the extensive cultural and linguistic diversity,” pointing to “a
relatively small founding group of females in India.” Significantly, “most of
the mtDNA diversity observed in Indian populations is between individuals within
populations; there is no significant structuring of haplotype diversity by
socio-religious affiliation, geographical location of habitat or linguistic
affiliation.” That is a crucial observation, which later studies will endorse:
on the maternal side at least, there is no such thing as a “Hindu” or “Muslim”
genetic identity, nor even a high- or low-caste one, a North- or South-Indian
one — hence the expressive title of the study: “Fundamental genomic unity of
ethnic India is revealed by analysis of mitochondrial DNA.” The authors also
noted that haplogroup “U,” already noted by Kivisild et al. as being common to
North Indian and “Caucasoid” populations, was found in tribes of eastern India
such as the Lodhas and Santals, which would not be the case if it had been
introduced through Indo-Aryans. Such is also the case of the haplogroup “M,”
another marker frequently mentioned in the early literature as evidence of the
invasion: in reality, “we have now shown that indeed haplogroup M occurs with a
high frequency, averaging about 60%, across most Indian population groups,
irrespective of geographical location of habitat. We have also shown that the
tribal populations have higher frequencies of haplogroup M than caste
populations.” Also in 2000, twenty authors headed by Kivisild contributed a
chapter to a book on the “archaeogenetics” of Europe.13 They first stressed the
importance of the mtDNA haplogroup “M” common to India (with a frequency of
60%), Central and Eastern Asia (40% on average), and even to American Indians;
however, this frequency drops to 0.6% in Europe, which is “inconsistent with the
‘general Caucasoidness’ of Indians.” This shows, once again, that “the Indian
maternal gene pool has come largely through an autochthonous history since the
Late Pleistocene.” The authors then studied the “U” haplogroup, finding its
frequency to be 13% in India, almost 14% in North-West Africa, and 24% from
Europe to Anatolia; but, in their opinion, “Indian and western Eurasian
haplogroup U varieties differ profoundly; the split has occurred about as early
as the split between the Indian and eastern Asian haplogroup M varieties. The
data show that both M and U exhibited an expansion phase some 50,000 years ago,
which should have happened after the corresponding splits.” In other words,
there is a genetic connection between India and Europe, but a far more ancient
one than was thought. Another important point is that looking at mtDNA as a
whole, “even the high castes share more than 80 per cent of their maternal
lineages with the lower castes and tribals”; this obviously runs counter to the
invasionist thesis. Taking all aspects into consideration, the authors conclude:
“We believe that there are now enough reasons not only to question a ‘recent
Indo-Aryan invasion’ into India some 4000 BP, but alternatively to consider
India as a part of the common gene pool ancestral to the diversity of human
maternal lineages in Europe.” Mark the word “ancestral.” After a gap of three
years, Kivisild directed two fresh studies. The first, with nine colleagues,
dealt with the origin of languages and agriculture in India.14 Those biologists
stressed India’s genetic complexity and antiquity, since “present-day Indians
[possess] at least 90 per cent of what we think of as autochthonous Upper
Palaeolithic maternal lineages.” They also observed that “the Indian mtDNA tree
in general [is] not subdivided according to linguistic (Indo-European,
Dravidian) or caste affiliations,” which again demonstrates the old error of
conflating language and race or ethnic group. Then, in a new development, they
punched holes in the methodology followed by studies basing themselves on the
Y-DNA (the paternal line) to establish the Aryan invasion, and point out that if
one were to extend their logic to populations of Eastern and Southern India, one
would be led to an exactly opposite result: “the straightforward suggestion
would be that both Neolithic (agriculture) and Indo-European languages arose in
India and from there, spread to Europe.” The authors do not defend this thesis,
but simply guard against “misleading interpretations” based on limited samples
and faulty methodology. The second study of 2003, a particularly detailed one
dealing with the genetic heritage of India’s earliest settlers, had seventeen
co-authors with Kivisild (including L. Cavalli-Sforza and P. A. Underhill), and
relied on nearly a thousand samples from the subcontinent, including two
Dravidian-speaking tribes from Andhra Pradesh.15 Among other important findings,
it stressed that the Y-DNA haplogroup “M17,” regarded till recently as a marker
of the Aryan invasion, and indeed frequent in Central Asia, is equally found in
the two tribes under consideration, which is inconsistent with the invasionist
framework. Moreover, one of the two tribes, the Chenchus, is genetically close
to several castes, so that there is a “lack of clear distinction between Indian
castes and tribes,” a fact that can hardly be overemphasized. This also emerges
from a diagram of genetic distances between eight Indian and seven Eurasian
populations, distances calculate on the basis of 16 Y-DNA haplogroups (Fig. 1).
The diagram challenges many common assumptions: as just mentioned, five castes
are grouped with the Chenchus; another tribe, the Lambadis (probably of
Rajasthani origin), is stuck between Western Europe and the Middle East;
Bengalis of various castes are close to Mumbai Brahmins, and Punjabis (whom one
would have thought to be closest to the mythical “Aryans”) are as far away as
possible from Central Asia! It is clear that no simple framework can account for
such complexity, least of all the Aryan invasion / migration framework.
The next year, Mait Metspalu and fifteen co-authors analyzed 796 Indian
(including both tribal and caste populations from different parts of India) and
436 Iranian mtDNAs.16 Of relevance here is the following observation, which once
again highlights the pitfalls of any facile ethnic-linguistic equation:
“Language families present today in India, such as Indo-European, Dravidic and
Austro-Asiatic, are all much younger than the majority of indigenous mtDNA
lineages found among their present-day speakers at high frequencies. It would
make it highly speculative to infer, from the extant mtDNA pools of their
speakers, whether one of the listed above linguistically defined group in India
should be considered more ‘autochthonous’ than any other in respect of its
presence in the subcontinent.”
We finally jump to 2006 and end with two studies. The first was headed by Indian
biologist Sanghamitra Sengupta and involved fourteen other co-authors, including
L. Cavalli-Sforza, Partha P. Majumder, and P. A. Underhill.17 Based on 728
samples covering 36 Indian populations, it announced in its very title how its
findings revealed a “Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists,”
i.e. of the mythical Indo- Aryans, and stated its general agreement with the
previous study. For instance, the authors rejected the identification of some
Y-DNA genetic markers with an “Indo- European expansion,” an identification they
called “convenient but incorrect ... overly simplistic.” To them, the
subcontinent’s genetic landscape was formed much earlier than the dates proposed
for an Indo-Aryan immigration: “The influence of Central Asia on the
pre-existing gene pool was minor. ... There is no evidence whatsoever to
conclude that Central Asia has been necessarily the recent donor and not the
receptor of the R1a lineages.” This is also highly suggestive (the R1a lineages
being a different way to denote the haplogroup M17). Finally, and significantly,
this study indirectly rejected a “Dravidian” authorship of the Indus-Sarasvati
civilization, since it noted, “Our data are also more consistent with a
peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the
Indus....” They found, in conclusion, “overwhelming support for an Indian origin
of Dravidian speakers.” Another Indian biologist, Sanghamitra Sahoo, headed
eleven colleagues, including T. Kivisild and V. K. Kashyap, for a study of the
Y-DNA of 936 samples covering 77 Indian populations, 32 of them tribes.18 The
authors left no room for doubt:
“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.”
So the southward gene flow that had been imprinted on our minds for two
centuries was wrong, after all: the flow was out of, not into, India. The
authors continue:
“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.”
The last of the two rejected associations is that of the Indo-Aryan expansion;
the first, that of the spread of agriculture, is the well-known thesis of Colin
Renfrew,19 which traces Indo-European origins to the beginnings of agriculture
in Anatolia, and sees Indo-Europeans entering India around 9000 BP, along with
agriculture: Sanghamitra Sahoo et al. see no evidence of this in the genetic
record.
The same data allow the authors to construct an eloquent table of genetic
distances between several populations, based on Y-haplogroups (Fig. 2). We learn
from it, for instance, that “the caste populations of ‘north’ and ‘south’ India
are not particularly more closely related to each other (average Fst value =
0.07) than they are to the tribal groups (average Fst value = 0.06),” an
important confirmation of earlier studies. In particular, “Southern castes and
tribals are very similar to each other in their Y-chromosomal haplogroup
compositions.” As a result, “it was not possible to confirm any of the purported
differentiations between the caste and tribal pools,” a momentous conclusion
that directly clashes with the Aryan paradigm, which imagined Indian tribes as
adivasis and the caste Hindus as descendants of Indo-Aryans invaders or
immigrants.In reality, we have no way, today, to determine who in India is an
“adi”-vasi, but enough data to reject this label as misleading and unnecessarily
divisive.

Conclusions
It is, of course, still possible to find genetic studies trying to interpret
differences between North and South Indians or higher and lower castes within
the invasionist framework, but that is simply because they take it for granted
in the first place. None of the nine major studies quoted above lends any
support to it, and none proposes to define a demarcation line between tribe and
caste. The overall picture emerging from these studies is, first, an unequivocal
rejection of a 3500-BP arrival of a “Caucasoid” or Central Asian gene pool. Just
as the imaginary Aryan invasion / migration left no trace in Indian literature,
in the archaeological and the anthropological record, it is invisible at the
genetic level. The agreement between these different fields is remarkable by any
standard, and offers hope for a grand synthesis in the near future, which will
also integrate agriculture and linguistics. Secondly, they account for India’s
considerable genetic diversity by using a time- scale not of a few millennia,
but of 40,000 or 50,000 years. In fact, several experts, such as Lluís
Quintana-Murci,20 Vincent Macaulay,21 Stephen Oppenheimer,22 Michael
Petraglia,23 and their associates, have in the last few years proposed that when
Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, he first reached South-West Asia around
75,000 BP, and from here, went on to other parts of the world. In simple terms,
except for Africans, all humans have ancestors in the North-West of the Indian
peninsula. In particular, one migration started around 50,000 BP towards the
Middle East and Western Europe: “indeed, nearly all Europeans — and by
extension, many Americans — can trace their ancestors to only four mtDNA lines,
which appeared between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago and originated from South
Asia.” 24 Oppenheimer, a leading advocate of this scenario, summarizes it in
these words:
“For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of
M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find the highest rates and greatest
diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in
the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia,
but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south,
thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of
India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as
51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from
India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before
finally coming into Europe.”25

We will not call it, of course, an “Indian invasion” of Europe; in simple terms,
India acted “as an incubator of early genetic differentiation of modern humans
moving out of Africa.”26 Genetics is a fast-evolving discipline, and the studies
quoted above are certainly not the last word; but they have laid the basis for a
wholly different perspective of Indian populations, and it is most unlikely that
we will have to abandon it to return to the crude racial nineteenth-century
fallacies of Aryan invaders and Dravidian autochthons. Neither have any reality
in genetic terms, just as they have no reality in archaeological or cultural
terms. In this sense, genetics is joining other disciplines in helping to clean
the cobwebs of colonial historiography. If some have a vested interest in
patching together the said cobwebs so they may keep cluttering our history
textbooks, they are only delaying the inevitable. * References & Notes 1 Franz
Boas, Race, Language and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1912). 2 Ashley Montagu,
Man’s most dangerous myth: The fallacy of race (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1942). 3 Let us mention three important papers: (1) B. E. Hemphill, J. R.
Lukacs & K. A. R. Kennedy, “Biological adaptations and affinities of the Bronze
Age Harappans,” in Harappa Excavations 1986-1990: A Multidisciplinary Approach
to Third Millennium Urbanism, ed. R. H. Meadow (Madison: Prehistory Press,
1991), pp. 137-182. (2) Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in
the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?” in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient
South Asia, ed. George Erdosy (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), pp.
32-66. (3) Brian E. Hemphill, Alexander F. Christensen & S. I. Mustafakulov,
“Trade or Travel: An Assessment of Interpopulational Dynamics among Bronze Age
Indo-Iranian Populations,” South Asian Archaeology, 1995, ed. Raymond Allchin &
Bridget Allchin (New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 855-
871. 4 See for instance Michael Witzel, “Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from
Old Indian and Iranian Texts,” Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, vol. 7
(2001), No. 3 (25 May), § 8. 5 For a fuller discussion of this and other
paradoxes of the Aryan invasion theory, see Michel Danino, L’Inde et l’invasion
de nulle part: le dernier repaire du mythe aryen (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
2006), forthcoming in English as The Invasion That Never Was, 3rd ed. 6 Ram
Sharan Sharma, Advent of the Aryans in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), p. 52.
7 See a few examples in The Indian Human Heritage, ed. D. Balasubramanian & N.
Appaji Genetics and the Aryan Debate / p. 12 Rao (Hyderabad: Universities Press,
1998). 8 This is the case of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, of Stanford University,
co-author of a “classic” work which, as regards India, did not dare to question
the invasionist framework: L. L. Cavalli- Sforza, P. Menozzi & A. Piazza, The
History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994); twelve years later, Cavalli-Sforza co-authored two papers that rejected
this framework, see notes 15 & 17 below. Another case is that of the Indian
biologist Partha P. Majumder (see notes 12 & 17 below). 9 T. Kivisild, M. J.
Bamshad, K. Kaldma, M. Metspalu, E. Metspalu, M. Reidla, S. Laos, J. Parik, W.
S. Watkins, M. E. Dixon, S. S. Papiha, S. S. Mastana, M. R. Mir, V. Ferak, R.
Villems, “Deep common ancestry of Indian and western-Eurasian mitochondrial DNA
lineages” in Current Biology, 18 November 1999, 9(22):1331-4. (Most of the
articles quoted in this paper are available on the Internet; to locate them,
enter their full title in a good search engine.) 10 “Caucasoid” is a
nineteenth-century term for a member of the white race, coined at a time when
the Caucasus was thought to be the homeland of the Indo-Europeans. The term has
no scientific meaning but has stuck, and is still used occasionally by
biologists, although, as further quotations will show, often within quotation
marks, as a reminder of its inadequacy. 11 T. R. Disotell, “Human evolution: the
southern route to Asia” in Current Biology, vol. 9, No. 24, 16 December 1999,
pp. R925-928(4). 12 Susanta Roychoudhury, Sangita Roy, Badal Dey, Madan
Chakraborty, Monami Roy, Bidyut Roy, A. Ramesh, N. Prabhakaran, M. V. Usha Rani,
H. Vishwanathan, Mitashree Mitra, Samir K. Sil & Partha P. Majumder,
“Fundamental genomic unity of ethnic India is revealed by analysis of
mitochondrial DNA,” Current Science, vol. 79, No. 9, 10 November 2000, pp.
1182-1192. 13 Toomas Kivisild, Surinder S. Papiha, Siiri Rootsi, Jüri Parik,
Katrin Kaldma, Maere Reidla, Sirle Laos, Mait Metspalu, Gerli Pielberg, Maarja
Adojaan, Ene Metspalu, Sarabjit S. Mastana, Yiming Wang, Mukaddes Golge, Halil
Demirtas, Eckart Schnakenberg, Gian Franco de Stefano, Tarekegn Geberhiwot,
Mireille Claustres & Richard Villems, “An Indian Ancestry: a Key for
Understanding Human Diversity in Europe and Beyond”, ch. 31 of Archaeogenetics:
DNA and the population prehistory of Europe, ed. Colin Renfrew & Katie Boyle
(Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000), pp. 267-275.
14 Toomas Kivisild, Siiri Rootsi, Mait Metspalu, Ene Metspalu, Juri Parik,
Katrin Kaldma, Esien Usanga, Sarabjit Mastana, Surinder S. Papiha & Richard
Villems, “The Genetics of Language and Farming Spread in India,” ch. 17 in
Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis, eds. Peter Bellwood & Colin
Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003), pp.
215–222. Italics in one of the quotations are in the original. 15 T. Kivisild,
S. Rootsi, M. Metspalu, S. Mastana, K. Kaldma, J. Parik, E. Metspalu, M.
Adojaan, H.-V. Tolk, V. Stepanov, M. Gölge, E. Usanga, S. S. Papiha, C.
Cinnioglu, R. King, L. Cavalli-Sforza, P. A. Underhill & R. Villems, “The
Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and
Caste Populations,” American Journal of Human Genetics and the Aryan Debate / p.
13 Genetics 72(2):313-32, 2003. 16 Mait Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Ene Metspalu,
Jüri Parik, Georgi Hudjashov, Katrin Kaldma, Piia Serk, Monika Karmin, Doron M
Behar, M Thomas P Gilbert, Phillip Endicott, Sarabjit Mastana, Surinder S.
Papiha, Karl Skorecki, Antonio Torroni & Richard Villem, “Most of the extant
mtDNA boundaries in South and Southwest Asia were likely shaped during the
initial settlement of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans,” BMC Genetics 2004,
5:26. 17 Sanghamitra Sengupta, Lev A. Zhivotovsky, Roy King, S. Q. Mehdi,
Christopher A. Edmonds, Cheryl-Emiliane T. Chow, Alice A. Lin, Mitashree Mitra,
Samir K. Sil, A. Ramesh, M. V. Usha Rani, Chitra M. Thakur, L. Luca
Cavalli-Sforza, Partha P. Majumder, & Peter A. Underhill, “Polarity and
Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both
Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of
Central Asian Pastoralists,” American Journal of Human Genetics, February 2006;
78(2):202-21. (Italics in one of the quotations are mine.) 18 Sanghamitra Sahoo,
Anamika Singh, G. Himabindu, Jheelam Banerjee, T. Sitalaximi, Sonali Gaikwad, R.
Trivedi, Phillip Endicott, Toomas Kivisild, Mait Metspalu, Richard Villems, & V.
K. Kashyap, “A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion
scenarios,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 January 2006,
vol. 103, No. 4, pp. 843–848. (Italics in one of the quotations are mine.) 19
Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins
(London: Penguin Books, 1989). 20 Lluís Quintana-Murci, Raphaëlle Chaix, R.
Spencer Wells, Doron M. Behar, Hamid Sayar, Rosaria Scozzari, Chiara Rengo,
Nadia Al-Zahery, Ornella Semino, A. Silvana Santachiara- Benerecetti, Alfredo
Coppa, Qasim Ayub, Aisha Mohyuddin, Chris Tyler-Smith, S. Qasim Mehdi, Antonio
Torroni, & Ken McElreavey, “Where West Meets East: The Complex mtDNA Landscape
of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor,” American Journal of Human Genetics
74(5):827-45, May 2004. 21 Vincent Macaulay, Catherine Hill, Alessandro Achilli,
Chiara Rengo, Douglas Clarke, William Meehan, James Blackburn, Ornella Semino,
Rosaria Scozzari, Fulvio Cruciani, Adi Taha, Norazila Kassim Shaari,6 Joseph
Maripa Raja, Patimah Ismail, Zafarina Zainuddin, William Goodwin, David Bulbeck,
Hans-Jürgen Bandelt, Stephen Oppenheimer, Antonio Torroni, Martin Richards,
“Single, Rapid Coastal Settlement of Asia Revealed by Analysis of Complete
Mitochondrial Genomes,” Science 13 May 2005, vol. 308, No. 5724, pp. 1034-36. 22
Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve: Modern Man’s Journey out of Africa (New York:
Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003). See an introduction to Oppenheimer’s theory on
the website: www.bradshawfoundation.com. 23 Hannah V. A. James & Michael D.
Petraglia, “Modern Human Origins and the Evolution of Behavior in the Later
Pleistocene Record of South Asia,” Current Anthropology vol. 46, Supplement,
December 2005, pp. S3-S27. Genetics and the Aryan Debate / p. 14 24 William F.
Allman, “Eve Explained: How Ancient Humans Spread Across the Earth” (on the
website of Discovery Channel, 21 August 2004). 25 Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real
Eve, op. cit., p. 152. 26 See note 15 above.

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