Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

[RoyG]

Anshuman,

We shouldn't be bothered about the non-scientific outcome of the results for two reasons. One everybody is an immigrant at certain point if you go back in time sufficiently. The Europeans are a mixture of native hunter gatherers (who at some point were also intruders to the region), middle eastern farmers and a third wave which is still being investigated and which probably brought IE languages. Does it mean it is the end of European civilization. Even the Onge/AASI and postulated Iranian farmers are immigrants to the land which is thought to be through the sea route from Africa for the former. Second, as I have mentioned above more than 95% of the Hindu liturgy has sub-continental context which doesn't change irrespective of what genetics says. We should take this only as a scientific project and not fall into the trap of politics which is what the Left and a section of Western Indologists want.

RoyG,

I think those people did exist and there was to and fro migration. I think the timlines are off. I don't know why it has to be specifically from the Steppes. My considered opinion.

I could care less where my genes come. They could be 100% English for all I care. It's only when you start parroting that 'Aryans' gave my civilization culture, language, and that it was oppressive that I have a problem. There is 0% evidence for this but the genetics is being used to reinforce these bigoted linguistic ideas. If it's a genetic paper, keep it genetic. Don't start monkeying around with linguistic nonsense.

[Supratik]

From what little I have gathered from the latest Reich paper I have no problem with the mixtures (entirely possible). It is quite possible that ANI and ASI are themselves mixtures which you find when you have more data and look more deeply but how come the timelines suddenly got shortened. What is the explanation for that? In the earlier paper they claimed Onge is pure ASI. Then where did AASI come from. I am not clear on that. What is Iranian farmer? Is it a construct or someone did some study somewhere to find such a population. In the earlier paper they said ANI is closer to Europeans/Caucasians but did not claim Steppe connection. How did that change in this paper? What if the Indus Periphery population has nothing to do with Aryas, IE/PIE, Sanskrit, IVC, Vedas, etc. Without an archaeological context why is it important to study this population?

RoyG,

Correct. But it is a pet project of BIFs.

[A_Gupta]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6
Arun could you look at this and point me to that blog article you had linked a few days ago that disputed something by David Anthony?

https://t.co/6qM0f77HP5

I think.

[A_Gupta]

https://indo-european.info/ie/Admixture_analysis

Quote:

Two female samples from Bohemia were misidentified as Bell Beaker[Allentoft et al. 2015], when they were in fact three millennia younger, from Czech Slavs[Mathieson et al. 2017]. PCA or Admixture did not (and cannot) show differences with Bell Beaker or Balkan samples, since parental populations need to be available, or else archaeological context is needed to define demographic models and potential ancestral populations, to ascertain their actual link to the so-called steppe ancestry

[A_Gupta]

^^^ Quote: Technical issues
Shortcomings of methods used for the analysis of ancestral populations are usually not evident, and may affect any theory developed based solely on these methods.
Extraction techniques, analysis in different sequencing centres and compilation in different platforms, classification of poorly known individuals into cultures, and variability of radiocarbon dates obtained in different labs, are just few of the many known issues involved in human evolutionary biology.
The scarcity of samples adds difficulty to the classic problem of characterisation of discrete population structure in the presence of continuous patterns of genetic differentiation. The “clines versus cluster” problem in modelling population genetic variation should be addressed taking into account geographical barriers[Bradburd, Coop, and Ralph 2017], which necessarily involves a detailed description of ancient geography, ecology, mobility, etc. for any period investigated.
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a variable-reduction technique, similar to exploratory factor analysis. It reduces a larger set of variables into a smaller set of artificial variables, called principal components (PC), which account for most of the variance in the original variable. This method assumes that there is a linear relationship between variables, that there is sampling adequacy: a precise number of cases is difficult to evaluate, but it is to be assumed that scarce, damaged samples of ancient DNA preclude an ideal sample size. Variables also need to have adequate correlations in order for them to be reduced to a smaller number of components, and there should be no significant outliers.
PCA of ancient DNA samples show usually a large number of principal components, of which the most common ones selected for graphic analysis (PC1 and PC2) can usually explain (have a combined eigenvalue of) no more than 5-10% of the total variance, depending on the samples selected[2]. This is in line with the prediction that most eigenvalues of the theoretical covariance will be ‘small’, nearly equal, but is in contrast with the expectation that a few eigenvalues will be ‘large’, reflecting past demographic events[Patterson, Price, and Reich 2006].
Shortcomings of statistical methods used for the analysis of ancestral populations are usually not evident for the layman. They may affect any theory developed based solely on these methods.

[A_Gupta]

^^^ Rudradev, is the following good?

Quote:

Cognitive bias, conflicts of interest, contextual bias
In the academic community, prestige, access to grants, and even jobs depend on getting articles published in journals of high impact factor. These journals prefer short articles, mainly based on mathematical methods (preferably with reference to improvements in such methods), groundbreaking conclusions, and self-important titles, with a tendency to “culture-historicism”.
Pressure to publish means also pressure to gather, analyse and interpret the data. However, knowledge and expertise in gathering genetic data from archaeological remains does not mean expertise in statistics and computer science. Statistical knowledge does not qualify one to infer conclusions based on results either, unless one has some previous knowledge of the anthropological subjects involved. Otherwise, researchers concerned with fieldwork and statistical methods are exposed, during the interpretation of results, to the risks of circular reasoning and confirmation bias, by searching only for anthropological information that might fit their results. In this sense, a clear trend can be observed in recent publications, whereby wide-ranging conclusions in genetic papers tend to become outdated in very short periods, as new samples become available.
For the general population, SNP investigation offers a simple view of one’s own paternal line, that a thousand years (or ca. 30 generations) ago would represent a 1,000,000,000th of one’s own genealogical tree; four or five thousand years ago, its contribution to a personal ethnolinguistic definition is non-existent. This, together with the perceived complexity (and lack of familiarity with) intricately linked anthropological disciplines, has made human ancestry investigation quite popular among amateur geneticists, who can easily play with published open source software programs and free aDNA datasets, due to their accessibility. However, the correct use of these programs needs much more than just knowing how to apply certain commands to some data. The quest for one’s own personal and national “ethnic proportion”, often as part of pre-existing simplistic ethnolinguistic beliefs and socio-political agendas, is also being promoted by commercial genetic testing companies to sell their products, in what would certainly be a reason for Kosinna’s smile today.

[A_Gupta]

^^^ “whereby wide-ranging conclusions in genetic papers tend to become outdated in very short periods, as new samples become available“

I have noted previously that ANI, ASI went from being very ancient to being post-2000BCE; ANI went from being modeled by Steppe EMBA and Han to Steppe MLBA and no East Asia in a matter of two years, and so on.

[RoyG]

Defense of David Anthony is amusing in the link. Carlos in comments claims that he quoted, but doesn't state where the original came from. And then proceeds to run with it. They just can't admit that such things are simply bullsh*t. Such is the idiocy.

[ramana]

Guys Vagheesh et al are sincere mentees. its their mentors like Witzel who have proven track record of bias.

[RoyG]

Guys Vagheesh et al are sincere mentees. its their mentors like Witzel who have proven track record of bias.

Its an unfortunate situation. I respect him. Hopefully he can look over the evidence and see what we see.

[Rudradev]

^^^ Rudradev, is the following good?

In general, I agree with what he says. I am wondering how he arrived at these figures though:

For the general population, SNP investigation offers a simple view of one’s own paternal line, that a thousand years (or ca. 30 generations) ago would represent a 1,000,000,000th of one’s own genealogical tree; four or five thousand years ago, its contribution to a personal ethnolinguistic definition is non-existent.

The idea that 30 generations ago is a billionth of one's genealogical tree is simple enough. You have 2^30 (a little over 1 billion) ancestors if you go back 30 generations, so 1/(2^30) of your DNA presumably comes from each of them.

I am not sure where he gets the "four or five thousand years ago...contribution... non-existent" conclusion, however.

In general humans have mutation rate of between (10)^-8 and (10)^-9 per position per year. So when a person evolves a SNP via a mutation, it will be passed on down his lineage unchanged for between 100 million and 1 billion years. That is, as long as his lineage continues to survive and propagate itself. If all his descendants die out without reproducing at some point, the SNP is lost from the population.

In the 1000 genomes project, they looked at the rarest of rare SNPs (ones that are shared by two and only two individuals in their entire sample). They estimated common ancestry to the tune of 296 generations (7-9 kya) ago for SNPs found on two-and-only-two individuals from geographically dispersed populations, and ~143 generations ago (3.5-4.2 kya) for SNPs found on two-and-only-two individuals from the same geographically-restricted population. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15393

Maybe he is referring to the latter figure to say that "beyond four or five thousand years", shared SNPs become so rare that you are unlikely to find even two instances of a given SNP in a given, geographically-restricted population sample (and you need at least two individuals sharing a given SNP to derive any meaningful information from it in terms of common population ancestry).

That's just my conjecture. Hard to tell exactly what he means because he hasn't provided any reference citation for the statement.

[SBajwa]

Cheetah and Tiger are found in the one and the only country INDIA.. There is no other country in the world where you can find Cheetah and Tiger! that proves that Cheetahs and/or tigers in Africa are of Indian origin!

This might be wrong! but I got this point from somewhere! just sharing

[RoyG]

Cheetah and Tiger are found in the one and the only country INDIA.. There is no other country in the world where you can find Cheetah and Tiger! that proves that Cheetahs and/or tigers in Africa are of Indian origin!

This might be wrong! but I got this point from somewhere! just sharing

No.

[disha]

I need some help

I want the following lines written in Bengali, Gujarati and Hindi using Roman alphabet. Don't worry about pronunciation - just write what you can using Roman

My name is Ashok
My mother cooks food
My father is a farmer

I am going to reconstruct Sanskrit. OK add Marathi if you like. Maybe Punjabi but my brain may get frazzled by too many langauges

Hindi:

Mera Naam Ashok Hai
Meri Maata Rasoi Banaati Hai
Mere Pita Ek Khedut Hai (or) Mere Pita Ek Krushak Hai

Bangla

Amara Naama Ashoka
Amara Maa Ranna Kare
Amara Baba Krsaka

Gujarati

Maru Naam Ashok Che
Mari Maa Rasoi Randhe
Mara Pita Ek Khedut Che

[shiv]

^^ Thank you, Now I will accurately reconstruct Sanskrit from that demonstrating how PIE was accurately reconstructed by lingu-sists

[Rudradev]

I think the Sanskrit word for food is Randsoivan. Principal components analysis from Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Hindi (Brahmin) and Hindi (Sweeper) phonemic/etymological proportional covariance samples tells me so. I am nothing if not scientific

[shiv]

I think the Sanskrit word for food is Randsoivan. Principal components analysis from Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Hindi (Brahmin) and Hindi (Sweeper) phonemic/etymological proportional covariance samples tells me so. I am nothing if not scientific

I will incorporape er incorporate your scholarly suggestions into the final product when I recreate Sanskrit

[Rudradev]

Just for the massive SNP database, here are the 3 sentences in Dakshina-Kannada Konkani

1. Maggaley naav Ashok.
2. Maggali Aausu raandapp kartaa.
3. Maggalo bappusu gaddey kastaa.

Note some AASI is sneaking in with "gaddey", a Kannada word for field

[Murugan]

Is it Left to Right or Right to Left?

Brahmi = Left to Right. This is Brahmi. Ashokan Brahmi

Kharoshthi = Right to left (like persian, arabic, urdu)

[shiv]

I need some help

I want the following lines written in Bengali, Gujarati and Hindi using Roman alphabet. Don't worry about pronunciation - just write what you can using Roman


I am going to reconstruct Sanskrit. OK add Marathi if you like. Maybe Punjabi but my brain may get frazzled by too many langauges

Hindi:

Mera Naam Ashok Hai
Meri Maata Rasoi Banaati Hai
Mere Pita Ek Khedut Hai (or) Mere Pita Ek Krushak Hai

Bangla

Amara Naama Ashoka
Amara Maa Ranna Kare
Amara Baba Krsaka

Gujarati

Maru Naam Ashok Che
Mari Maa Rasoi Randhe
Mara Pita Ek Khedut Che

We will now take this word for word:
Hindi: mera
Bangla" amara
Gujarati: maru

The original Sanskrit word must have been "*m-a/e-r-*". Since babies say Aa" before "eh" it means primitive people also used to say "a"

So the word for "my" in Sanskrit must have been "mara"

Next:
Hindi "naam"
Bangla" naama
Guj: naam

Sanskrit must be: naam

Last word:
H - 'hai"
B: -
Guj "che"

Both hai and che have a "he" component. But "che" requires more work and most people corrupt words from more complex to simpler. So the original Sansk word must have had a "ch" component. So the Sanskrit equivalent word for "being" must be che

Hence the Sanskrit sentence "My name is Ashok" would be
"mara naam Ashok che"

Next lesson later..

Homework: Find one article by Witzel and translate into PIE

[Murugan]

Making it little easy for you doctor

[shiv]

Murugan do you know if it is थ or ठ because in Kannada ठ is like circle with dot in it (unable to produce using Quillpad)

[RoyG]

Pointed out by Shiv sometime back - only transitional Brahmi-Indus script in existence today. First 3 letters are from Brahmi and the rest are from Indus (1528 BC using thermoluminescence dating)

1528 BC would place it sometime during the late Harappan period and bolsters the theory that it transitioned to Brahmi and eventually to Gupta script.

Tamil-Brahmi didn't come about till much later. It couldn't have been a 'Dravidian' language they were speaking. The earliest Indus script finding is ~ 3500 BC which would place it > 2000 years before supposed Steppe migration into IVC so they couldn't have carried the language with them.

[Murugan]

my little conspiracy theory:

The 72 strong biorixv papers are forced and hurried construct to water down Rakhigarhi and its finds. The paper leaves more questions to be answered. It is timed as such.

Dholavira excavation report was not published for a very long time. Report was ready in 2005, and if I am not wrong, it was kept unpublished for 9 long years.

There is something serious and mysterious about these.

[Murugan]

dublikate

[Murugan]

Murugan do you know if it is थ or ठ because in Kannada ठ is like circle with dot in it (unable to produce using Quillpad)

थ is like theta, a dot in a circle
ठ is a circle, a mandala.

[Murugan]

For Nilesh ji

A POSSIBLE HARAPPAN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY AT DHOLAVIRA

Abstract: Astronomy arises very early in a civilisation and evolves as the civilisation advances. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a vibrant knowledge of astronomy would have been a feature of a civilisation the size of the Harappan Civilisation. We suggest that structures dedicated to astronomy existed in every major Harappan city. One such city was Dholavira, an important trading port that was located on an island in what is now the Rann of Kutch during the peak of the Harappan Civilisation. We have analysed an unusual structure at Dholavira that includes two circular rooms. Upon assuming strategically-placed holes in their ceilings we examine the internal movement of sunlight within these rooms and suggest that the larger structure of which they formed a part could have functioned as an astronomical observatory.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1310/1310.6474.pdf

[Prem Kumar]

Murugan: what's the Dholavira excavation report that was unpublished for 9 years?

[Murugan]

Now the hybrid praja of Hungai (acronym for Hunter Gatherer Indians), Agriculturist and Pastoralist developes astronomical observatories in IVC ! Hybrid is always progressive praja...

PAH !!! (For Pastoralist + Agriculturist + Hunter gatherer hybrids)

[Murugan]

Murugan: what's the Dholavira excavation report that was unpublished for 9 years?

Dholavira excavation was carried out by one enthusiastic archaeologist R S Bisht. The excavation was over in 2005. Dholavira was an advanced city. youtube video for Masters of the River briefly shows R S Bisht at work. must watch the video = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5bqAKixgYA

The report remained in tight wrap for unknown reason.

Some timid and treacherous archaeologists questioned the release of report coinciding with NDA coming to power. Instead of celebrating the release of report they questioned the timings of the report's release !! Some morons even called it a premature release.

The report is available on asi.nic.in. Right now the site is down.

[Murugan]

There is an indication here why his report was subject to that treatment:

Quite early in his career (1968-71), he was involved in excavations at Sanghol that led to the discovery of a site that extended from the late mature Harappan period to the modern. In 1971, he joined the new state of Haryana where he was involved with the important excavations at Banawali. Later he joined the Archaeological Survey of India and led the team that excavated at Dholavira, Kutch. He has written a large number of research papers on his findings. He is also one of the prominent archaeologists who dismiss the theory of the Aryan invasion of India and in fact sees Rigvedic Aryans as belonging to the late-mature Harappan period. From his school days, Bisht was fascinated by Sanskrit, though no one in his family had any knowledge of it. Today any conversation with him is sprinkled with generous quotations from the vast Sanskrit literature. Shivanand spoke to him about the mystery of Harappan culture, a sophisticated civilisation with no known literature on the one hand, and that of the vast Vedic literature with no archaeological evidence to locate its chronology and evolution.

http://www.ghadar.in/gjh_html/?q=node/83

[Murugan]

@Prem Kumar - you wd like to see this:

https://www.facebook.com/AncientIndus/p ... =3&theater

April 23, 2015

Finally, the Dholavira excavation reports by R.S. Bisht, the site's principal investigator, are available on the ASI website at http://asi.nic.in/pdf_data/dholavira_ex ... rt_new.pdf
Published in 2015, the report runs over 800 pages, is well illustrated and detailed. Congratulations to the ASI for making this long-awaited work so readily available, and thanks to Cameron Andrew Petrie for drawing our attention to it.

[Prem Kumar]

Murugan: the link from the Facebook page is dead. When I Googled, I found the full report (you can confirm if its the same one)

http://www.academia.edu/12012020/Excavations_at_Dholavira_1989-2005_RS_Bisht_2015_Full_text_including_scores_of_Indus_inscriptions_announced_for_the_first_time._Report_validates_Indus_script_cipher_as_layered_rebus-metonymy

[Prem Kumar]

Shri RS Bisht's work is unbelievably thorough!! True tapasya!

[Murugan]

@Prem Kumar - will sure look at it. I believe I have a saved copy but right now I am far away from my home PC.

***

Dr. Bisht, you have given us a fascinating view of ancient India and that too one contrary to what most of us learnt in schools. It has been a pleasure talking to you.

Dr Bisht:
It is my pleasure. One could talk endlessly about reconstructing ancient India. Unfortunately, the atmosphere in India has been vitiated by charges that anyone who disputes the Aryan invasion theory is a communalist, right reactionary or a chauvinist. And similarly the charges from the other side that all those who stick to theories of Max Muller, of an imported Vedic culture through invading Aryans, are Eurocentrics and ‘Macaulay’s children’. This precludes any dispassionate discussion. I do not think that there would be dispassionate reconsideration at least in my life time!

[Murugan]

Ok. Dr Bisht also posts his work in academia.edu. Here it is. There are many other interesting papers.

https://asi.academia.edu/RavindraSinghBisht

[Murugan]

'Sakya'muni in Ashokan inscription re. Sakyamuni's grand uncle (around 700 bce only) was one Sakkodhan

Scythians broadly (c700BC-???): The Greeks called most of the people north of the Black Sea ‘Scythians’. The Persians called the people of the central steppe Sakas, the two words meaning about the same thing. Both spoke Iranian languages.

[shiv]

Meri Maata Rasoi Banaati Hai

This is critical for me to become Hardmard Fropessor of Linguistics

Would Meri maata khaana pakaati hai be equally valid?

[Nilesh Oak]

^^ Thank you, Now I will accurately reconstruct Sanskrit from that demonstrating how PIE was accurately reconstructed by lingu-sists

Eagerly looking forward to it.

[shiv]

Beekes comparative Indo-European linguistics
https://archive.org/details/Comparative ... inguistics

Comparative linguistics began to develop very late, only shortly before 1800, when
Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan) became known in Europe and comparative Indo-Europe-
an linguistics came into being....the notion of analyzing words never occurred to the Greeks,something which was well advanced
in India.

A decisive breakthrough was the discovery of Sanskrit, which was evi-
dently somehow related to Greek and Latin, and which provided the foundation upon
which comparative Indo-European linguistics could be erected.

The idea of an ‘Indo-European’ family of languages grew out of the discovery that
the oldest language of the Indian subcontinent, Sanskrit, was related to the European
languages. The discovery of Sanskrit provided the key which opened the door to the
possibility of comparing the Indo-European languages with each other. Sanskrit was
helpful in a number of ways: it was older than all other known languages (its oldest
text goes back to before 1000 B.C.), and it was relatively transparent because its forms
could be easily analyzed: the original structure of its forms was well-preserved. In
Greek, on the other hand, the inherited sounds s, i̯and u̯had disappeared at an early
stage, followed by the contraction of adjacent vowels which masked the structure of
the original forms. A consequence of the transparent structure of Sanskrit, as opposed
to Greek, was that the Sanskrit grammarians had been able to describe the way its
forms were constructed: this proved to be of enormous importance for the work of
Western scholars.--crush my balls if this is not out of India