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

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

Post by shiv »

Marten wrote:Sri Joy, it is proven that Saraswati was fed by Himalayan waters. The feeder rivers moved and started the big switch to Ganga.
There are papers showing that rainfall was much higher. Serious papers with isotope analysis of rock - I have it somewhere.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Prem Kumar wrote:Shiv: looking forward to your article. Like you said, you can produce bits & pieces in places like Swarajya, MyInd etc and later on, release the whole thing as a book. OIT/AIT articles are always in demand, irrespective of season! We don't have to write articles only to rebut. But a steady stream of articles that promote OIT or discredit AIT will help people form a consensus opinion. This is how the AIT "hegemonic discourse" was built.
Good idea - if this one goes online I have "meat" for several more
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Marten »

shiv wrote:
Marten wrote:Sri Joy, it is proven that Saraswati was fed by Himalayan waters. The feeder rivers moved and started the big switch to Ganga.
There are papers showing that rainfall was much higher. Serious papers with isotope analysis of rock - I have it somewhere.
That is also true. Sediment analysis from Katch supported the origin of Saraswati theory. https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... an_Culture
From this year, 2017.
Giosan and co-workers contend that the 'mythical' Saraswati River was not a glacier-fed Himalayan river. Questioning the findings of Indian archaeologists and geologists, they postulate that the Saraswati was a monsoonal river originating in the foothills of the Siwalik Hills and did not water the heartland of the Harappan Civilization. Reduction in its discharges due to weakening of the monsoon rains resulted in its drying up, leading to the demise of the Harappa Civilization. I have put forth a number of evidence gathered in the last 10-15 years to show that their arguments are not acceptable and by giving eloquent examples have asserted that the climate is not the only cause of all changes occurring on the surface of the Earth, and that there are other factors, some more powerful, which bring about changes.

The River Saraswati was a Himalayan-born river. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... born_river [accessed Jun 24, 2017].
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

SriJoy wrote:^^
the conclusion that Saraswati had no Himalayan origin is due to the fact that there are no Himalayan sediment deposits in Saraswati bed for almost 1 million years.
Not true. Read 2012 Paper by Clift Peter et al.. (excellent paper). I don't have the details handy. It shows that ...based on U-Pb crystals found in paleo-channels, that Sarasvati had waters from Yamuna (definitely) and possibly Satlu (bit merky) until about 50,000 years ago and possibly at late as 9000 years ago.

I presented my talk based on this paper of Clift and few other (Francfort) + Ramayana + Mahabharata + Talageri work on Rigveda + more.. here: Jan 2017 at Kurukshetra University

https://youtu.be/cYFmDqBXJo4 (Audio is poor yet intelligible) for whatever value this might have...

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

Post by SaiK »

we are talking in terms of million years. is there a link to the formation of Thar dessert and Saraswati dry up?

PS:
nilesh ji, is there any mention of Thar dessert in our scripts?
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

SaiK wrote:we are talking in terms of million years. is there a link to the formation of Thar dessert and Saraswati dry up?

PS:
nilesh ji, is there any mention of Thar dessert in our scripts?
Maru-bhumi.. in the story of King Sagar (Ramayana and such). King Sagar was before Rama, so by my estimation before 13th millennium BCE
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Nilesh Oak
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

SriJoy wrote:
You are proposing timelines in 13K YBP ?
Seriously ?!?
Well, let me restate what I am sure about, with mathematical certainty (of course subject to falsification)...That Ramayana did not occur any time after 10,000 BCE.

My work here, for those who are curious... (based on 575+ astronomy, seasonal descriptions, chronology references of Valmiki Ramayana)

https://www.amazon.com/Historic-Rama-In ... Nilesh+Oak

--
As to desert and Maru-bhumi, and related geological evidence others who know more can chime in...
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

shiv wrote:My article now online on Swarajya
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/migrati ... not-really
Outstanding. It has been tweeted. And the first comment, surprisingly, is from a north-west European, Bjorn Biglund, a whiter than white Scandinavian obviously, as follows:

"A very simple and clear explanation of the sorry science and rich racism that gave birth to the so-called "Aryan Invasion" Theory. It is amazing that people in India still debate this issue when the evidence is so clear that the British invented this with the express purpose of facilitating their rule through the traditional Roman "divide ex impera" strategem that they applied globally. In Europe, these went quite out of fashion, along with Hitler except among some apologists for colonialism and Nazi holocaust denier types."
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

^^ :rotfl:

LOL JEM. If all goes well I will follow up with another article on the roots of that racism and why it became such a big deal for Europeans
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

Please do doc. This one is a thing of beauty. Simple, clear and easily accessible for the layman.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by vsunder »

Shiv: Congratulations on a lucid article.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Thanks vsunder and JEM
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Prem Kumar »

Great article, Shiv! You have written it in your characteristic style, laying bare the absurdity & motivations of AIT. Its a good, big-picture-painting article.

My only quibble if any, is that, there is actually no trace of migrations into India circa 2000 BC. I know that your article emphasizes that "gene-influx =/= migrations", but thought I'd point this out.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

JE Menon wrote:Please do doc. This one is a thing of beauty. Simple, clear and easily accessible for the layman.
Om!
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Prem Kumar wrote:Great article, Shiv! You have written it in your characteristic style, laying bare the absurdity & motivations of AIT. Its a good, big-picture-painting article.

My only quibble if any, is that, there is actually no trace of migrations into India circa 2000 BC. I know that your article emphasizes that "gene-influx =/= migrations", but thought I'd point this out.
Thanks.

Actually the Priya Moorjani paper (IIRC) mentions "4000 years ago" as one of three sets of possible dates. I am hypersensitive to any migration/population expansion in the 2000BC to 500BC period which will always be used as "proof" because the AIT people are perfectly happy to fudge dates. But the minute you find something earlier than 2000 BC the AIT/AMT is royally screwed. There is plenty of evidence - direct and indirect but it must be presented slowly and in small doses. That is one of the reasons that I did not publish what I wrote as a book. It is too heavy and too concentrated even when written with as much clarity as possible

Here is a quote from Moorjani
It is also important to emphasize what our study has not
shown. Although we have documented evidence for
mixture in India between about 1,900 and 4,200 years
BP, this does not imply migration from West Eurasia into
India during this time. On the contrary, a recent study
that searched for West Eurasian groups most closely related
to the ANI ancestors of Indians failed to find any evidence
for shared ancestry between the ANI and groups in West
Eurasia within the past 12,500 years
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

shiv wrote:
Prem Kumar wrote:Great article, Shiv! You have written it in your characteristic style, laying bare the absurdity & motivations of AIT. Its a good, big-picture-painting article.

My only quibble if any, is that, there is actually no trace of migrations into India circa 2000 BC. I know that your article emphasizes that "gene-influx =/= migrations", but thought I'd point this out.
Thanks.

Actually the Priya Moorjani paper (IIRC) mentions "4000 years ago" as one of three sets of possible dates. I am hypersensitive to any migration/population expansion in the 2000BC to 500BC period which will always be used as "proof" because the AIT people are perfectly happy to fudge dates. But the minute you find something earlier than 2000 BC the AIT/AMT is royally screwed. There is plenty of evidence - direct and indirect but it must be presented slowly and in small doses. That is one of the reasons that I did not publish what I wrote as a book. It is too heavy and too concentrated even when written with as much clarity as possible

Here is a quote from Moorjani
It is also important to emphasize what our study has not
shown. Although we have documented evidence for
mixture in India between about 1,900 and 4,200 years
BP, this does not imply migration from West Eurasia into
India during this time. On the contrary, a recent study
that searched for West Eurasian groups most closely related
to the ANI ancestors of Indians failed to find any evidence
for shared ancestry between the ANI and groups in West
Eurasia within the past 12,500 years

Shiv,

Firstly, alhamdulillah! Magnificent article. Goes far beyond mere defensive "rebuttal" to grasp back control of the narrative very authoritatively.

Now the nitpick. What Moorjani is talking about are possible time periods of *large scale admixture*, not dates of entry or arrival of ANI markers into India. Moorjani et al, in fact, make the explicit point in their paper that the incoming population could have arrived at any time before the large scale admixture (and consequent genetic expansion of ANI lineage markers) happened. Not necessary that they arrived at those time points (4000 ybp etc.) Those are only the late-bound limits by when these populations must already have been in India.

Edit: apologies, I see you have quoted the relevant passage from Moorjani at the end of your post itself.

Another thing for all of us to note (not a criticism of Shiv here) is that ANI is a category based on autosomal data. R1a and its subclades are categories based on Y chromosomal Haplogroup analyses. We cannot use ANI and R1a interchangeably. There is some statistical correlation between the two but that's all.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

SriJoy wrote:
there is nothing in the ramayana that can be used reliably to date it. Remember, Indian history is notoriously bad for accuracy of information recorded (e.g.: Rajatarangini and its flaws) and we ourselves don't consider Ramayana ultimately reliable, hence it is not a shruti.
It also has too much similarity with homer's Illiad and Ram was far more popular in Iranian plateau pre-Islam than India for me to consider it a truly indic tale or accurate. It also has a core of moralism that is distinctly middle-eastern as opposed to the mahabharata which reflects Indic values.
SriJoy ji

(1) I have already used Valmiki Ramayana to date it reliably, so your statement is wrong unless you show illogical/irrational nature of what I have done

(2) Yes, ancient narratives of India, like all other narratives (of other places) have errors and flaws so does 'all' existing scientific theories. None of this limits their use to know more and make progress

(3) Who is 'we'? The reliability of 'anything' is to be determined by how it withstands against objective tests. "Shruti or Smriti.. unless they withstand objective tests, is not to be trusted" - Iti Adi Shankaracharya. So whether Ramayana is a smriti or shruti or not is a non-issue

(4) Similarity of Ramayana with some other civilizations and that constituting its 'disqualification' has on logical or rational basis. There may be similarities or not.. has no implication on objective testing of its evidence.

(5) I am not asking you to endorse my theory/timeline. All I am saying is it is there for anyone to critique and I assert that it is capable of withstanding the tests of rational investigation, as much as theories of Kepler, Newton, Einstein and Maxwell are. Nothing less, nothing more.

Warm regards,

Nilesh Oak
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

Rudradev ji,

I would like to take on your offer..

(1) Would you able to briefly describe how they estimate the age of a certain haplogroup coalescence?

I know some of the elements they need

Age of each generation (e..g 30 years)

Mutation rate (how is this estimated)

# of mutations - How are these determined? especially # of mutations (isn't this a function of resolution?)
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

SriJoy wrote:
PS: On a side note, do you know how to get published on Swarajya ? I may have an article for them regarding Magadh...
I do have contacts at Swarajya however they are still being honed. If you are ok with having your stuff published at MYIND.net, I can help you rather easily. Send your stuff to them directly (or to me - first name last name at googlwala) and include your brief bio, a photograph is good too.

If you have series of articles in mind (not unlike Shiv ji), it is possible to publish it via MYIND.net too.

(I also have contacts at Indiafacts and few others). I find getting them them published at MYIND.net convenient and efficient.

Hope this helps,

Nilesh Oak
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

Rudradev wrote:
Another thing for all of us to note (not a criticism of Shiv here) is that ANI is a category based on autosomal data. R1a and its subclades are categories based on Y chromosomal Haplogroup analyses. We cannot use ANI and R1a interchangeably. There is some statistical correlation between the two but that's all.
Good point. I had somehow missed noticing it. (too much fuss of a specific point (in this case R1a) make us channel in only one direction..:) )
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote: I've been dealing with history a long time- so i know the comparative strengths of history. Basic fact is, our historical recordings are far less accurate than Roman or chinese. Ie, our works contain far more histographical errors than their's. It is what it is.
The value of history is based solely on its credibility, not its accuracy. Most history cannot be scientifically proven - but Christians maintained some record of their version of events after Christ which they call history. You may personally find Roman and Chinese history more credible - but you do know that a whole lot of historical documents (usually tablets) were discarded because they did not fit in with a Christian viewpoint. So I think Indian historiography is just as accurate as any other.

I think Prof Balagangadhara of Ghent University has the best works on this subject
SriJoy wrote:Especially when we come up with dates in Ice age setting, where we have no basis to conclude there was farming and thus, presence of settled society.
We do. I presume you know that evidence of the ice age comes from rocks that bear scars from being dragged in glaciers. There was no ice age in India. Ice age icing pretty much stopped in southern Europe. India was very likely one of the refuges to which people migrated during the last ice age. In fact the seas off Gujarat and Pakistan and Iran are so shallow today that they were probably not submerged during the last ice age and there were trade routes along the way. One could speculate that the melting of ice age glaciation actually caused Dwaraka to submerge.

Evidence of farming has been found in Baluchistan from 9000 years ago. The last ice age ended around that time (shortly before that as per the usual refs) . It is only an assumption to imagine that there could have been no farming before then. No icing over India back then. Ancient undated Slovenian references to India speak of a warm land where the sun shines all the time and there are two crops a year
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by disha »

Shiv'ji excellent article. Forwarded to many people. Will generate interesting debate and may cost me few more "friends" - Lol.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

^^Thanks LOL
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Nilesh Oak »

^ Likes of Copernicus - Kepler-Galileo-Newton-Maxwell-Einstein and their works were extremely harmful to then overall scholarship and the big picture.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

SriJoy wrote: But raw data/first hand sources, etc, is quantified credible gold for the whole field. For e.g., i can find actual, 2000 year old documents manual for making certain kinds of bronze in Roman empire 100 times more frequently and easily than Indian history.
We are going to stay in disagreement and that is not because I like inaccuracy. Please allow me to be facetious. No insult intended, but I do wish to make a point. In terms of your being a stickler for accuracy what is the metric that you used to measure and claim that you found 2000 year old documents "100 times more frequently and easily". This is the sort of hype and fudging that historians have also indulged in. This is the sort of stuff that goes on record, unchecked and unverified. But I digress.

I have a follow up article to the one published yesterday where i will quote referenced authors who say how European historians actually lied about the Aryan invasion to construct a theory suitable to their version of history. Those lies are now "historiography" that fits perfectly into the frames of reference needed for credibility. But the article is still a week or two away.

In my view 2000 years is very recent. Christians in Rome actually started maintaining records 2000 years ago and they are accurate to the extent that one wishes to believe them - including accurate records of miracles performed by Jesus Christ. In general I am talking about what has been preserved from 4000 years ago or earlier. Once you get to that era - Indian records and findings are as accurate as any you can get

SriJoy wrote: to consider something 'historical' that is speculated to 14,000 BC, is, simply speaking, 'wishful thinking'. there is no historical framework that allows for dates as old as that to be basis of a theory. And until such a framework even begins to exist, ice-age 'histography', is unsubstantiated thinking that academia will not take seriously.
Beautiful. Now you are making observations that Prof Balagangadhara has made - but he has gone a few steps further - I think his history is stronger than any one of us on here. You have used the terms "historical framework" and "historiography" and I compliment you for hitting upon the key concepts that were used to discard all tales of the past other than what was recorded in the Christian era. Everything after Christ was called "history" as recorded by "historiography". Everything before that was tales of the past which do not have the "framework needed to make them credible to western academia". That is a form of mental enslavement. A cage that ensures that nothing anyone else says about the past can ever be acceptable in (LOL) "academia"

SriJoy wrote: As far as i know, dates of farming evidence comes from a combination of genetic analysis of common food grains with their earlier counterparts (to establish dates of divergence), along with evidence such as seeds, etc from archaeology. I am not an expert on paleo-botany but i've read some articles on it via j-stor and i would say, answers lie in that domain.
There are two steps to paleobotany. The first step is to find seeds or plant remains. That is highly climate dependent. The best climate is dry and cold, failing which cold may be enough. India never did have a cold enough climate and even if we say only 10% has been explored the chances of finding plant remains of that antiquity in India are remote. We may have to look for and depend on other types of evidence. Just because we have not found the types of evidence that "fit into" western sources does not mean much. The same jstor should give you access to older/historic papers where criteria of acceptance meant white skin and Anglo-Saxon names. I have also published papers in a country and era where that was important. Also available on jstor though I can offer it for free.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

Nilesh Oak wrote:Rudradev ji,

I would like to take on your offer..

(1) Would you able to briefly describe how they estimate the age of a certain haplogroup coalescence?

I know some of the elements they need

Age of each generation (e..g 30 years)

Mutation rate (how is this estimated)

# of mutations - How are these determined? especially # of mutations (isn't this a function of resolution?)
Nilesh ji,

The process is non-trivial and very difficult to describe "briefly"... and of course, the less prior knowledge one assumes on the reader's part, the more lengthy any description will get!

Also, it is virtually impossible to do without the use of "math" HTML tags (to display equations in mathematical notation), and I don't think we have those on this forum.

What I can do for now is point you to an excellent primer by Dr. Kent Holsinger (his lecture notes in population genetics) at University of Connecticut. He assumes very little prior knowledge and takes you through the concepts step by step, all the way from Hardy Weinberg equation down to elements of phyllogeographical analyses and estimation of coalescence time. Unfortunately the PDF is about 330 pages long (hence my concern about "briefly" describing the same :) )

http://www.pdfdrive.net/lecture-notes-i ... 50263.html
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Lilo »

shiv wrote:My article now online on Swarajya
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/migrati ... not-really
Shiv ji,
Thanks for a lucid writeup fit for laymen on a complex subject.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by gandharva »

Indian genetic history: before the storm

Though we don’t have relevant ancient DNA from India proper to answer any questions yet, we do have ancient DNA from across much of Europe, Central Asia, and the Near East. What they show is that Indian populations share ancestry from both Neolithic Iranians and peoples of the Pontic steppe, who flourished ~5 to ~10,000 years ago. To some extent the latter population is a daughter population of the former…which makes things complicated. Conversely, no West Eurasian population seems to harbor ancient signals of ASI ancestry.

One scientist who holds to the position that most South Asian ancestry dates to the Pleistocene argued to me that we don’t know if ancient Indian samples from the northwest won’t share even more ancestry than the Iranian Neolithic and Pontic steppe samples. In other words, ANI was part of some genetic continuum that extended to the west and north. This is possible, but I do not find it plausible.

The reasons are threefold. First, it doesn’t seem that continuous isolation-by-distance works across huge and rugged regions of Central Eurasia. Rather, there are demographic revolutions, and then relative stasis as the new social-cultural environment crystallizes. This inference I’m making from ancient DNA and extrapolating. This may be wrong, but I would bet I’m not off base here.

Second, it strikes me as implausible that there was literally apartheid between ASI and ANI populations for the whole Holocene right up until ~4,000 years before the present. That is, if Northwest India was involved in reciprocal gene flow with the rest of Eurasia over thousands of years I expect there should have been some distinctive South Asian ASI-like ancestry in the ancient DNA we have. We do not see it.

Third, one of the populations with strong affinities to some Indian populations are those of the Pontic steppe. But we know that this group itself is a compound of admixture that arose 5,000-6,000 years ago. Because of the complexity of the likely population model of ANI this is not definitive, but it seems strange to imagine that ANI could have predated one of the populations with which it was in genetic continuum as part of a quasi-panmictic deme.

Finally, many of the critiques involve evaluation of the scientific literature in this field. Unfortunately this is hard to do from the outside. Citing papers from the aughts, for example, is not wrong, but evolutionary human population genomics is such a fast moving field that even papers published a few years ago are often out of date.

Many are citing a 2012 paper by a respected group which argues for the dominant model of the aughts (marginal population movement into South Asia). One of their arguments, that Central Asian migrant should have East Asian ancestry, is a red herring since it is well known that this dates to the last ~2,000 years or so (we know more now with ancient DNA). But the second point that is more persuasive in the paper is that when they look at local ancestry of ANI vs. ASI in modern Indians, the ANI haplotypes are more diverse than West Eurasians, indicating that they are not descendants but rather antecedents (usually the direction of ancestry is from more diverse to less due to subsampling).






https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/06/24/indian/
Last edited by gandharva on 27 Jun 2017 05:02, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

Nilesh ji,

If you want a quick overview of one of the mathematical methods commonly utilized, here is Hans Bandelt's description. (He is an author of Fluxus Engineering's Phyllogenetic Network Software that many groups have used for Analysis of Molecular Variance studies to determine coalescence times for haplogroups, particularly in studies using mitochondrial DNA).

This is the paper where Bandelt decribes his mathematical model:

http://www.genetics.org/content/genetic ... 3.full.pdf
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

Gandharva,

Please realize that this website

Code: Select all

gnxp.nofe.me
is not a source of legitimate scholarly writing on the subject.

It is the blog of Razib Khan, the Paki whom Tony Joseph liberally cites in his propaganda piece, and who has written excessively for all sorts of racist publications including VDARE and Takimag. He is a quasi-scientific face behind whom the AIT people like to hide.

As such I would not give it any serious consideration, and would not pubicize it by linking its content.

Notably, Khan (or one of his sponsors) does seem to have some experience with SEO. Just about any google search you do on Indian population genetics, R1a, Aryan Invasion etc. brings up his blog link on the front page (or at least, this was so until last week).
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by gandharva »

Rudradev wrote:Gandharva,

Please realize that this website

Code: Select all

gnxp.nofe.me
is not a source of legitimate scholarly writing on the subject.

It is the blog of Razib Khan, the Paki whom Tony Joseph liberally cites in his propaganda piece, and who has written excessively for all sorts of racist publications including VDARE and Takimag. He is a quasi-scientific face behind whom the AIT people like to hide.

As such I would not give it any serious consideration, and would not pubicize it by linking its content.

Notably, Khan (or one of his sponsors) does seem to have some experience with SEO. Just about any google search you do on Indian population genetics, R1a, Aryan Invasion etc. brings up his blog link on the front page (or at least, this was so until last week).

Rudradev Ji, I am aware of the histoy of this Razib Khan. The reason i posted it because, this writeup is post RW reponses to Joseph's Hindu article. And he appears lot more saner compared to inthe past. It's not that i am in awe of him but more to know how they are reacting to our responses.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by gandharva »

Take, for example, this latest position of Razib Khan.

Image

I remember Shiv Ji and others reaching abv conclusion 2 years back.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

Nilesh ji, you had also asked about methods to estimate Mutation Rate at a Locus. Here is a paper (Chandler 2006) that delineates one method frequently used for the purpose:

http://www.jogg.info/pages/22/Chandler.pdf
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by ShauryaT »

Shiv ji: Congratulations on publishing your piece. Hope you keep doing so.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

gandharva wrote: this writeup is post RW reponses to Joseph's Hindu article.
May I ask why you choose to classify responses to the Joseph article as "RW" (Right Wing) responses. Are you not yourself guilty of stereotyping and taking a biased stand while purporting to be unbiased? It appears that there can be no response to articles like Joseph's that will not be dubbed politically motivated by a "Right Wing" and therefore all responses are suspect. I think that is absolutely ridiculous and is emblematic of all that is wrong in this apology of a debate,

Please clarify and state if you meant what you wrote.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

What are ANI and ASI?

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying here, and the gurus on the forum can set me straight. If you take all the various subpopulations of India (ethnic groups, caste groups, tribes -- as identified today in the 21st century Samvat era) and see how their overall genetic make-up ("autosomal") correlates with each other, one arrives at a symmetric matrix of correlation coefficients. If one diagonalizes this matrix, the two largest eigenvalues correspond to ANI and ASI, and these have, in some measure, a strong statistical significance. Some authors claim that the first five eigenvalues have significance (e.g., https://phys.org/news/2016-01-genomic-i ... stral.html ).

The corresponding eigenvectors correspond to the genetic make-up of the hypothesized ancestral populations. In a sense, these ancestral populations are like the hypothethized "Proto-Indo-European" language, reconstructed from their traces. However, unlike language, we're dealing with actual physical things - DNA - so these ancestral populations have to be accorded a much higher degree of reality than PIE.

How do we arrive at the ages of these ancestral populations? I think one has to look at what the accumulated changes are in the modern day descendants from the hypothetical original ancestral population, and some model of the rate of change.

Since we don't know if today's divisions into ethnic groups, castes, etc., really correspond strictly to distinct ancestries, this type of study is best conducted with the units as individuals. But a genetic difference is of significance in this type of study really only if it is a characteristic of subpopulation, not of just one individual.

About the degree of reality of ANI and ASI: any symmetric matrix will have two largest eigenvalues, so how real are these? Suppose these ancestral populations as reconstructed today are 40,000 years old. Suppose we could try to do the same reconstruction using the same methods as today, but on a population from 5000 years ago. Would we recover exactly the same ANI and ASI as we do today? I assume that if all the populations grew proportionately from 5000 years ago to today, the results would be very close. In an extreme case, where an ancient subpopulation was genocided during the last 5000 years leaving no descendants today, the reconstruction as I've outlined above might lead to a somewhat different genetic composition of ANI, ASI. I think the degree of reality of two ancestral components is much higher than the specific genetic composition of those ancestries, and their specific ages.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by JE Menon »

Can someone explain why these are, first of all, classified as "Ancestral North Indian" and "Ancestral South Indian"? Might they not be just as viably classified as Ancestral East Indian and Ancestral West Indian?
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Karthik S »

May be because of geographic shape of India, there are more Latitudes than Longitudes, with converging peninsula.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

JE Menon wrote:Can someone explain why these are, first of all, classified as "Ancestral North Indian" and "Ancestral South Indian"? Might they not be just as viably classified as Ancestral East Indian and Ancestral West Indian?
Probably because there is a north-south gradient of ANI and ASI components, not an east-west component?
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