shiv wrote:RajeshA wrote:
[*] The model ANI-ASI is important in order to show how the Europeans originate in India but DO NOTcarry many markers today present in the Indian population. These would have been the ASI markers. This model in fact provides OIT a chance.
Rajesh there may be no ANI ASI at all. Even the Reich paper does not explain how Dravidian speaking tribals have 40% "ANI" while upper caste Indo European speakng have only a little more at 60%
But my biggest objection to what you write is as follows. Please think about it:
The Reich study was done specifically to prove that ANI/ASI do exist.
I agree. They selected certain markers which they collected under ANI and another set of markers which they collected under ASI.
By dividing a set into two parts, one would get two sets. They got ANI and ASI. These were the two sets they set out to get.
shiv wrote:North Indian upper caste genes of Indo European speakers were specifically chosen to represent North India.
South Indian tribals who speak Dravidian languages were specifically to represent South Indians.
In other words there was a selection bias from the start to try and prove something.
I agree (in a qualified sort of way).
If I were to look at their choices of groups and populations abstractly, I would say, well that is their choice. It depends on what theory they wish to prove, what assumptions they make, etc. If they are upfront and honest, then they are free to prove what they wish, and we are free to criticize their methods, their data and their interpretations.
I assume they are using castes as a unit of study, because of their endogamous nature, and as ready-made social constructs for study of the structure of Indian population.
Reich et al. do dabble a lot in caste and region to make their points, and to find a "cline". But that is the exact point they are trying to make. That there is indeed a cline to see, as one moves from North to South, from upper caste to lower caste.
What I do find a little disconcerting is when they say on page 493
Reich et al. wrote:The 18 Indian Cline groups all have between 39% and 77% ANI ancestry on the basis of f₃ Ancestry Estimates (Methods), which we quote because it has the smallest standard errors (Table 2). ANI ancestry is significantly higher in Indo-European than Dravidian speakers (P 50.013 by a one-sided test), suggesting that the ancestral ASI may have spoken a Dravidian language before mixing with the ANI. We also find significantly more ANI ancestry in traditionally upper than in lower or middle caste groups (P50.0025), and find that traditional caste level is significantly correlated to ANI ancestry even after controlling for language (P50.0048), suggesting a relationship between the history of caste formation in India and ANI–ASI mixture
The ANI-ASI cline does not really disturb me on the issue of language. I would expect that those who have more Ancestral North Indian ancestry would be speaking North Indian languages.
What however disturbs me is that those with higher ANI ancestry were found to be generally of higher castes. Now they say that the effect of language (region) has been compensated for. I don't know, but a lot more testing needs to be done to know whether this really is the case.
shiv wrote:The suggestion was that Northern Upper caste speaking an IE language was of Aryan descent and South tribal speaking Dravidian would represent the two extremes postulated by the Aryan invasion theory.
We really have two ways to define our identities in this context - genetically and/or linguistically.
1) If each of us defines himself/herself through his genetic profile, then one would have to accept that we are mixed, and that there is really no way to make a clean split - only ANI or only ASI.
2) If however one identifies himself over one's language and culture, then it can be the case that one would feel the inclination to tend more towards ANI or ASI.
Through this linguistic and cultural identification, the additional association of ANI with higher castes, and ASI with lower castes, as has been postulated by this paper, can cause certain discomfiture, because the identification what had started out with language and culture ends up being an identification with caste.
shiv wrote:But what actually happened was that there was not a big difference between the two. The findings do not support the idea that a migrating population of Indo Aryan speakers displaced Dravidian speakers to create the caste system. The highest and lowest castes and the IE and Dravidian speakers all share a broadly similar percentage of genes.
I agree. However ANI is not being necesarily considered as a population which moved in into the Indian Subcontinent recently as is the case with Aryans according to the AIT/AMT model, and displaced any ASI population. Both ANI and ASI are considered as two past populations, resident
in India since a long time. This paper does not speak of any
displacement - on the contrary the paper says, there has been a lot of
mixing.
shiv wrote:What the authors have done is to call that proportion of genes that are similar to the European CEU as "ANI" and the dissimilar part as ASI. In other words as per the Reich paper if you have a slightly higher proportion of genes smilar to CEU (European), then you are "Ancestral North Indian". In other words North Indian==European similarity. Upper Caste==European. Therefore Aryan invasion may be true. That is what caused all the excitement despite the ambiguous findings.
I think here we need to distance ourselves from any genetic definition of modern Indians as ANI or ASI based on their ANI-ASI ratio. Modern Indians are a combination of both components.
I agree that in order to find out exactly what constitutes ANI component or ASI component per their markers, comparison with CEU on the one hand and Onge of Andamans on the other hand were undertaken.
Now what we do get through this model is that ANI was indigenous to India, and thus Indo-European languages were developed in India, and from India, not only languages but also speakers of these languages moved out through Central Asia into Europe.
So I think that part of AIT, the AIT-Nazis can really forget.
However the equation of higher ANI ratio leads to higher caste does disturb me. Perhaps here one can intervene and say that those groups with the highest ANI percentage - Pushtuns and Sindhis are not Hindus at all, much less be of higher caste. In fact even our history is witness to a certain scorn among Vedics towards those in our Northwest as they did not observe the Vedic rituals, so even then Pushtuns may not have been regarded as "upper castes".
shiv wrote:I would reject the ANI/ASI terminology
I have not been able to decide whether to keep it or reject it. On the one hand this helps explain why the Europeans who share some clades with Indians, do not have any genetic markers often observed among South Indian populations. On the other hand, caste hierarchy is being shown to correlate with ANI-ASI cline, which has its own risks.
Also CEU may have similarity with ANI but it doesn't say anything about caste. The CEU in fact lies outside Indian social structures. Furthermore there is also no pure CEU population. That too is mixed with other West Eurasian populations.
Even if one were to accept that ANI-ASI cline reflects caste hierarchy in India, one must be clear that this is only a statistical correlation and should not be treated as higher ANI component as
deserving of consideration as higher caste. These are two different things.