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 Murugan »

Pidhiya Barbad ho jayegi - By doing purva-paksha of malechha's and yavana's works.
Hope we and our generation assert themselves, establish who we are and what we speak in a systematic, institutionalized way. Let them wonder Bharatiya Kim Prabhashet, Kim asit , Vrajet Kim ? Bharatiya किं प्रभाषेत किमासीत व्रजेत किम्, Bharatiya कैसे बोलता है, कैसे बैठता है और कैसे चलता है

Let maleccha and yavana do purva-paksha and Uttara Paksha on our assertive works. We will study their paksha if required and update ourselves if needed.

This will need resources and integrated institutions. Currently only Baba Ramdev has wherewithal. He is partially funding Rajivji's initiative on 100 Indian scholars. Govt is still funding Leftist and JNU type ideology. Hope Rajivji's scholars are not only meant for doing Purva Paksha. They will re-assert our place and let others react.

Bahut ho gaya.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Neilz »

Just saw this video, not sure if shared earlier. It is long(1hr 37min) but very informative.

Indian civilization: The Untold Story- A Talk by Raj Vedam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGyjvyXEKdc
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/31/292581
Abstract

The genetic formation of Central and South Asian populations has been unclear because of an absence of ancient DNA. To address this gap, we generated genome-wide data from 362 ancient individuals, including the first from eastern Iran, Turan (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan), Bronze Age Kazakhstan, and South Asia. Our data reveal a complex set of genetic sources that ultimately combined to form the ancestry of South Asians today. We document a southward spread of genetic ancestry from the Eurasian Steppe, correlating with the archaeologically known expansion of pastoralist sites from the Steppe to Turan in the Middle Bronze Age (2300-1500 BCE). These Steppe communities mixed genetically with peoples of the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) whom they encountered in Turan (primarily descendants of earlier agriculturalists of Iran), but there is no evidence that the main BMAC population contributed genetically to later South Asians. Instead, Steppe communities integrated farther south throughout the 2nd millennium BCE, and we show that they mixed with a more southern population that we document at multiple sites as outlier individuals exhibiting a distinctive mixture of ancestry related to Iranian agriculturalists and South Asian hunter-gathers. We call this group Indus Periphery because they were found at sites in cultural contact with the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) and along its northern fringe, and also because they were genetically similar to post-IVC groups in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. By co-analyzing ancient DNA and genomic data from diverse present-day South Asians, we show that Indus Periphery-related people are the single most important source of ancestry in South Asia — consistent with the idea that the Indus Periphery individuals are providing us with the first direct look at the ancestry of peoples of the IVC — and we develop a model for the formation of present-day South Asians in terms of the temporally and geographically proximate sources of Indus Periphery-related, Steppe, and local South Asian hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. Our results show how ancestry from the Steppe genetically linked Europe and South Asia in the Bronze Age, and identifies the populations that almost certainly were responsible for spreading Indo-European languages across much of Eurasia.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

What puzzles me most about the paper:
These results suggest that the ASI and ANI were both largely unformed at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, and imply that the ASI may have formed in the course of the spread of West Asian domesticates into peninsular India beginning around 3000 BCE (where they were combined with local domesticates to form the basis of the early agriculturalist economy of South India, or alternatively in association with eastward spread of material culture from the Indus Valley after the IVC declined.
It seems to me that the chain is -
1. Find 3 aDNA outliers in the BMAC region.
2.Hypothesize that these are from the Indus Valley Civilization.
3.Attempt to derive Indian ancestry
As South Asian test populations we used an Indian Cline group with high ANI ancestry (Punjabi.DG), one with high ASI ancestry (Mala.DG), early Iron Age Swat Valley samples (Swat Protohistoric Grave Type - SPGT), and Early Historic Swat Valley samples (Butkara_IA). Fig. 3A shows that the only models that fit all four test South Asians groups are combinations that involve the AASI, Indus_Periphery and Steppe_MLBA (in the analyses that follow, we therefore pooled the Steppe_MLBA).
Steppe_MLBA is aDNA Steppe-Middle-to-Late-Bronze Age.

4.
South Asia
1. After exploring a wide range of models of present-day and ancient South Asia, we identify a unique class of models that fits geographically and temporally South Asians: a mixture of AASI, Indus_Periphery, and Steppe_MLBA. We reject BMAC as a primary source of ancestry in South Asians.
2. A population of which the Indus_Periphery samples were a part played a pivotal role in the formation of the two proximal sources of ancestry in South Asia, the ANI and ASI. Both ends of the Indian Cline had major components of Indus_Periphery admixture: ~39% for the ASI and ~72% for the ANI. Today there are groups in South Asia with very similar ancestry to the ASI and ANI.
3. Much of the formation of both the ASI and ANI occurred in the 2nd millennium BCE. Thus, the events that formed both the ASI and ANI overlapped the decline of the IVC.
4. The ASI were not a clade with the earlier hunter-gatherer populations of South Asia (AASI), but harbored significant amounts of ancestry related to early Iranian agriculturalists, likely transmitted though the IVC.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by RoyG »

A_Gupta wrote:What puzzles me most about the paper:
These results suggest that the ASI and ANI were both largely unformed at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, and imply that the ASI may have formed in the course of the spread of West Asian domesticates into peninsular India beginning around 3000 BCE (where they were combined with local domesticates to form the basis of the early agriculturalist economy of South India, or alternatively in association with eastward spread of material culture from the Indus Valley after the IVC declined.
It seems to me that the chain is -
1. Find 3 aDNA outliers in the BMAC region.
2.Hypothesize that these are from the Indus Valley Civilization.
3.Attempt to derive Indian ancestry
As South Asian test populations we used an Indian Cline group with high ANI ancestry (Punjabi.DG), one with high ASI ancestry (Mala.DG), early Iron Age Swat Valley samples (Swat Protohistoric Grave Type - SPGT), and Early Historic Swat Valley samples (Butkara_IA). Fig. 3A shows that the only models that fit all four test South Asians groups are combinations that involve the AASI, Indus_Periphery and Steppe_MLBA (in the analyses that follow, we therefore pooled the Steppe_MLBA).
Steppe_MLBA is aDNA Steppe-Middle-to-Late-Bronze Age.

4.
South Asia
1. After exploring a wide range of models of present-day and ancient South Asia, we identify a unique class of models that fits geographically and temporally South Asians: a mixture of AASI, Indus_Periphery, and Steppe_MLBA. We reject BMAC as a primary source of ancestry in South Asians.
2. A population of which the Indus_Periphery samples were a part played a pivotal role in the formation of the two proximal sources of ancestry in South Asia, the ANI and ASI. Both ends of the Indian Cline had major components of Indus_Periphery admixture: ~39% for the ASI and ~72% for the ANI. Today there are groups in South Asia with very similar ancestry to the ASI and ANI.
3. Much of the formation of both the ASI and ANI occurred in the 2nd millennium BCE. Thus, the events that formed both the ASI and ANI overlapped the decline of the IVC.
4. The ASI were not a clade with the earlier hunter-gatherer populations of South Asia (AASI), but harbored significant amounts of ancestry related to early Iranian agriculturalists, likely transmitted though the IVC.
May I have your contact info? Made a few interesting observations that you may like.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

RoyG - mac gupta 123 at y a h o o . c o m
Remove the spaces.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Arun/RoyG:

My comments on Arun's blog
Arun this paper has some the following issues which I find interesting
1. The linguistics dates of IE spread are taken from David Anthony (ref no 46) that I have shown elsewhere to be patently fake and contrived. My paper will appear in due course.
2. This paper reinforces what was earlier suggested by Reich et al and Priya Moorjani (refs 44 and 45) that ASI-ANI mix occurred in the last 2000-4000 years ago. Both this paper and the earlier Reich paper suggest that there was lack of mixing of ASI and ANI before that. In fact this paper says that ASI and ANI were "largely unformed) 4000 years ago (page 14).

Now here is what is really funny. If ANI and ASI ancestry represent IE speakers and and Dravidian language speakers (respectively) and if they started mixing as recently as in the last 4000 years when the migrations are said to have occurred, but the admixture had NOT occurred before that date - it tears down all assumptions of a "Caste system" having been created by the migration of ANI/IE speakers displacing ASI/Dravidian language speakers. If they were mixing, there were not remaining separate. It is as simple as that.

In fact as per this paper ASI and ANI were unformed 4000 years ago - but in the gap between 4000 to 2000 years ago the thorough admixture that we see among Indians occurred. If one assumes (wrongly as it turns out) that IE languages came to India about 4000-3500 years ago then it appears that the real mixing of ASI and ANI started AFTER those people came.

3. Of course all this ignores and totally fails to explain how the oldest IE language Sanskrit has references (in the Vedas) to the geography of IVC from 5000 years ago and the start of aridity 4000 years ago - adding to the growing body of evidence that linguists have been bluffing and making up cock-and-bull stories about language spread
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

Interesting map in the paper above.
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2018/0 ... h-and.html
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

I also added
Replying to my own post: I forgot to mention that this paper makes statistical predictions about the entire Indian subcontinent with zero samples from IVC or anything east or south of that. The closest "south Asia" samples are from Swat in Pakistan. Swat is closer to "Turan" (Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan) than to major IE speaking areas of India like Bengal, south Gujarat, Maharashtra and the Eastern gangetic plain. So linguistic conclusions connected to genetics need to be taken with a pinch pf salt
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

A_Gupta wrote:Interesting map in the paper above.
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2018/0 ... h-and.html
It's a bullshit map that takes from David Anthony

While I wait for my own talk on this to appear online here are posts previously made on BRF
In his book, “The Horse, the wheel and Language”, David Anthony quoting Max Muller's translation of The Rig Veda (1.162)writes:

“Another verse in the same hymn read: "Those who see that the racehorse is cooked, who say, 'It smells good! Take it away!' and who wait for the doling out of the flesh of the charger-let their approval encourage us." .

Vidyarthi, a Veda scholar explains the same passage in his book. He first quotes Max Muller’s translation and goes on to point out Max Muller’s errors as follows:

“The translation of this mantra is especially noteworthy. The word wajinarm from waja, cereals, is here taken as meaning horse, and Professor Max Muller is so anxious to bring forth the sense of the sacrifice of the horse that, not, content with this be interprets mansa bhiksham upaste, which means 'he serves the absence of meat’ into ' he serves the meat.' Can there be anything more questionable?“
The following paragraph is from my own notes, unpublished

The Eurasian steppe region has many ancient graves in which horses or parts of horses have
been buried along with humans. Some of these burials are elaborate and seem to be the graves of
important or wealthy people. It is claimed that burials of this type are described in the Vedas. This
is patently untrue. Not a single verse in the Vedas describes how to dig or construct a grave. No
Vedic hymn describes the burial of a king. Yet one single word in one hymn of the Rig Veda
(10.18.13) is widely quoted by archaeologists, linguists and historians as linking the Rig Veda with
“kurgan” type burials in the Eurasian steppe. David Anthony, an anthropologist and author of the
book “Horse, Wheel and Language” has commented in a paper entitled “Archaeology and
Language” 13 by saying: “One hymn (Rigveda 10.18) describes a covered burial chamber with posts
holding up the roof, walls shored up, and the chamber sealed with clay—a precise description of
Sintashta and Andronovo grave pits.”



I repeat that no Vedic scholar agrees that the Vedas were meant for translation. They are not histories. Griffiths translation sounds stupid. Ancient Hindus look like stupid morons if you read the translation. The link below is what Griffiths wrote. (Rig Veda 10:18.1 to 10.18.14)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rigveda/rv10018.htm

Tell me where it says what David Anthony the archaeologist claims: "a covered burial chamber with posts holding up the roof, walls shored up, and the chamber sealed with clay"

These people are liars. Every single one of them
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

A_Gupta wrote:What puzzles me most about the paper:
These results suggest that the ASI and ANI were both largely unformed at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, and imply that the ASI may have formed in the course of the spread of West Asian domesticates into peninsular India beginning around 3000 BCE (where they were combined with local domesticates to form the basis of the early agriculturalist economy of South India, or alternatively in association with eastward spread of material culture from the Indus Valley after the IVC declined.
Ok.

WTF is ASI/ANI "FORMED" supposed to mean?

ASI & ANI are not limited liability corporations. They are not groups of people who one day (3000 BCE) came together & said... "ok, this bunch speaks shuddh IE, this other bunch speaks some undu-gundu dravidian language. Bunch 1 will now go this way, towards the Himalayas, and bunch 2 will go that way, towards the peninsula."

They are statistical constructs. Period. They are groups of genome-wide markers regarded as principal components, of which (1) the earliest in the ASI were present in India as of at least 60kya (2) the earliest in the ANI were present in India as of at least 45 kya (3) none are shared with any European population as of 12.5 kya at the most recent.

What this paper seems to be attempting is to "redefine" the ASI and ANI for political convenience, based on what Arun correctly observes are (a) three aDNA samples "hypothesized" to be outlier emigres from IVC and (b) a total of 246 samples of which over 40% (!) were simply junked because of "statistical noise" (per the paper). Meaning, they didn't fit the picture Reich et al were trying to paint based on their hypothesis about the three aDNA samples being "hypothetical IVC emigres".

Rather than bow to the null hypothesis, Reich et al have... as they preciously put it in the paper... "developed a new methodology" to force fit their findings onto the picture they want to paint. This is 0% genetics, 100% Harvard on display. News for you, Reich.... there's nothing whatsoever new about that "methodology". It's called cherry-picking, and bad scientists have been doing it for centuries.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by RoyG »

A_Gupta wrote:RoyG - mac gupta 123 at y a h o o . c o m
Remove the spaces.
You have mail.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

Rudradev wrote:
A_Gupta wrote:What puzzles me most about the paper:
Ok.

WTF is ASI/ANI "FORMED" supposed to mean?

ASI & ANI are not limited liability corporations. They are not groups of people who one day (3000 BCE) came together & said... "ok, this bunch speaks shuddh IE, this other bunch speaks some undu-gundu dravidian language. Bunch 1 will now go this way, towards the Himalayas, and bunch 2 will go that way, towards the peninsula."

They are statistical constructs. Period. They are groups of genome-wide markers regarded as principal components, of which (1) the earliest in the ASI were present in India as of at least 60kya (2) the earliest in the ANI were present in India as of at least 45 kya (3) none are shared with any European population as of 12.5 kya at the most recent.

What this paper seems to be attempting is to "redefine" the ASI and ANI for political convenience, based on what Arun correctly observes are (a) three aDNA samples "hypothesized" to be outlier emigres from IVC and (b) a total of 246 samples of which over 40% (!) were simply junked because of "statistical noise" (per the paper). Meaning, they didn't fit the picture Reich et al were trying to paint based on their hypothesis about the three aDNA samples being "hypothetical IVC emigres".

Rather than bow to the null hypothesis, Reich et al have... as they preciously put it in the paper... "developed a new methodology" to force fit their findings onto the picture they want to paint. This is 0% genetics, 100% Harvard on display. News for you, Reich.... there's nothing whatsoever new about that "methodology". It's called cherry-picking, and bad scientists have been doing it for centuries.
Please put your comments on the site of the Abstract itself as I have done
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/31/292581
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by raghava »

shiv wrote:
Please put your comments on the site of the Abstract itself as I have done
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/31/292581
Doc, They don't seem to have published your comment
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

raghava wrote:
shiv wrote:
Please put your comments on the site of the Abstract itself as I have done
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/31/292581
Doc, They don't seem to have published your comment
:D Give them a day. My comments were less scathing - but still - can't say. Anyhow I had an interaction with author on Twitter earlier today
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by syam »

Image
The person on this seal is Jain Tirthankara.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

royg pointed me in a direction :)
My comment, related to that direction, was published.
http://disq.us/p/1rfc0qc

More on that on my blog:
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2018/0 ... times.html
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Rudradev »

What is the paper trying to establish with this "admixture" claim?

It seems to be saying that the three (putative) IVC emigres showed a much more ancient admixture between markers from Iranian Agriculturists and AASI than modern-day samples (Palliyar).

The implication is that people from the Indus Valley (if indeed those three aDNA samples were from the IVC) were genetically distinct from the modern Palliyar. Even though both groups contain similar ingredients of admixture, the admixture in the Palliyar happened very much later.

Which itself puts a big hole in the Thaparite claim that IVC residents were in fact "Dravidians", and indeed racially contiguous with the "Dravidians" of today, having ventured south after being pushed out of their crumbling cities by an onslaught of Sanskrit-speaking, horse-riding Aryans from Eurasia.

Indeed, the IVC samples demonstrate admixture between Iranian and AASI components dating to LONG before the collapse (or even the golden age) of the IVC... which does not fit an AIT scenario at all.

Whether the Palliyar admixture happened a little after, or much after the IVC collapse is nearly beside the point.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

Rudradev wrote:What is the paper trying to establish with this "admixture" claim?

It seems to be saying that the three (putative) IVC emigres showed a much more ancient admixture between markers from Iranian Agriculturists and AASI than modern-day samples (Palliyar).

The implication is that people from the Indus Valley (if indeed those three aDNA samples were from the IVC) were genetically distinct from the modern Palliyar. Even though both groups contain similar ingredients of admixture, the admixture in the Palliyar happened very much later.

Which itself puts a big hole in the Thaparite claim that IVC residents were in fact "Dravidians", and indeed racially contiguous with the "Dravidians" of today, having been pushed out of their crumbling cities by an onslaught of Sanskrit-speaking, horse-riding Aryans from Eurasia.

Whether the Palliyar admixture happened a little after, or much after the IVC collapse is nearly beside the point.
Yes, the Thaparite claim goes for a toss.

But there is a problem in the paper. The "Iranian agriculturalists" who mixed with "AASI" around 4500 BCE to produce the Indus_Periphery persons were respectively the ancestors of the "Iranian agriculturalists" and "AASI" who mixed around 1700 BCE to produce the ancestors of today's Palliyar, unless "Iranian agriculturalists" and "AASI" kept their pristine "purity" between 4500 BCE and 1700 BCE, oblivious to the movements of people, the rise and fall of a far-flung urban civilization, incursion of BMAC or Steppes people into Iran, etc. etc.; yet it seems that is how the paper talks about it. That is why we get the paradox that with the very same ancestors ("Iranian agriculturalists", "AASI") IVC and Palliyar are nevertheless genetically distinct.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

Dunno what to make of this.

The paper under discussion talks about Steppe_EMBA and Steppe_MLBA. (Early-Middle Bronze Age) and (Mid-Late Bronze Age).

The paper under discussion starts off saying "Steppe_EMBA" is ubiquitous in India; but when discussing South Asia, uses Steppe_MLBA in its ancestry model for ANI and ASI.

I went looking for what Steppe_EMBA and Steppe_MLBA signify. Found this, from an year ago.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/03/e ... -east.html
Steppe_MLBA and Steppe_EMBA are different because the former show excess Central European Middle Neolithic (Central_MN) affinity, and thus cluster at the top of the graph and above the line of best fit, while the latter show excess Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (Caucasus_HG) affinity, and so cluster at the top of the graph but below the line of best fit

- Indo-Aryan-speaking South Asians fall below the line of best fit, which suggests that they don't have much, if any, Central_MN ancestry, so they're probably largely of Steppe_EMBA origin (though their Iran Neolithic-related farmer ancestry might be skewing things to some extent here, because it's more closely related to Caucasus_HG than to Central_MN)

- Both the ancient and most modern-day Eastern Iranian-speakers (Sarmatians and Pamir Tajiks, respectively) more or less hug the line of best fit, suggesting that they're a mixture of Steppe_MLBA and Steppe_EMBA

- all of the Scythians fall above the line of best fit, suggesting that their steppe ancestry largely derives from Steppe_MLBA.

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

Post by gandharva »

Rudradev wrote:What is the paper trying to establish with this "admixture" claim?

It seems to be saying that the three (putative) IVC emigres showed a much more ancient admixture between markers from Iranian Agriculturists and AASI than modern-day samples (Palliyar).

The implication is that people from the Indus Valley (if indeed those three aDNA samples were from the IVC) were genetically distinct from the modern Palliyar. Even though both groups contain similar ingredients of admixture, the admixture in the Palliyar happened very much later.

Which itself puts a big hole in the Thaparite claim that IVC residents were in fact "Dravidians", and indeed racially contiguous with the "Dravidians" of today, having ventured south after being pushed out of their crumbling cities by an onslaught of Sanskrit-speaking, horse-riding Aryans from Eurasia.

Indeed, the IVC samples demonstrate admixture between Iranian and AASI components dating to LONG before the collapse (or even the golden age) of the IVC... which does not fit an AIT scenario at all.

Whether the Palliyar admixture happened a little after, or much after the IVC collapse is nearly beside the point.

My knowledge is minimal on this topic but i have a question.Isn't AASI denotes hunters and gatherers, so how can they build a civilization? Shouldn't builders of IVC be this mixture between Iranians and AASI?

Reich says following in his latest book which, IMO, includes and discusses results of the paper. I mean to say following observation is aware of the contents of the latest paper.

"The picture of population movements {no invasion} in India is still far less crisp than our picture of Europe because of the lack of ancient DNA from South Asia. An outstanding mystery is the ancestry of the peoples of the Indus Valley Civilization, who were spread across the Indus Valley and parts of northern India between forty-five hundred to thirty-eight hundred years ago, and were at the crossroads of all these great ancient movements of people. We have yet to obtain ancient DNA from the people of the Indus Valley Civilization, but multiple research groups, including mine, are pursuing this as a goal. At a lab meeting in 2015, the analysts in our group went around the table placing bets on the likely genetic ancestry of the Indus Valley Civilization people, and the bets were wildly different. At the moment, three very different possibilities are still on the table. One is that Indus Valley Civilization people were largely unmixed descendants of the first Iranian-related farmers of the region, and spoke an early Dravidian language. A second possibility is that they were the ASI—already a mix of people related to Iranian farmers and South Asian hunter-gatherers—and if so they would also probably have spoken a Dravidian language. A third possibility is that they were the ANI, already mixed between steppe and Iranian farmer–related ancestry, and thus would instead likely have spoken an Indo-European language. These scenarios have very different implications, but with ancient DNA, this and other great mysteries of the Indian past will soon be resolved."

To my understanding all three possibilities rule out Aryan Vs Dravidian scenario in IVC. And Why only steppe migrants are being concsidered as Aryans and not Iranian related farmers though they came from across the Hindukush? Is it because they could be black skinned?
Last edited by gandharva on 03 Apr 2018 09:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

raghava wrote:
shiv wrote:
Please put your comments on the site of the Abstract itself as I have done
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/31/292581
Doc, They don't seem to have published your comment
Take 2: All credit to the discussion moderators. They requested me via email to edit out the more unsavoury comments and resubmit. I have done that - so let me see.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Arjun »

Who are these 'Iranian farmers' the paper keeps referring to? The Aryan Iranians or the pre-Aryan Sumerians and Elamites ??
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by ukumar »

A_Gupta wrote:Dunno what to make of this.

The paper under discussion talks about Steppe_EMBA and Steppe_MLBA. (Early-Middle Bronze Age) and (Mid-Late Bronze Age).

The paper under discussion starts off saying "Steppe_EMBA" is ubiquitous in India; but when discussing South Asia, uses Steppe_MLBA in its ancestry model for ANI and ASI.

I went looking for what Steppe_EMBA and Steppe_MLBA signify. Found this, from an year ago.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/03/e ... -east.html
Arun, let me try to explain. EMBA is genetic component from early steppe ( Yamna ) folks and MLBA is from post CWC steppe folks. In earlier papers Indians could be modeled as three way combination of Iranian Farmer + Onge + EMBA. With new ancient DNA in new paper they discovered that Indians (swat and other 3 potential Indian migrants to BMAC and Iran) and other central asian already share minor genetic ancestry from Siberian HG. They call this indian component “IVC peripherals” . Modern Indians can now be modeled as IVC peripheral + Onge + steppe MLBA.


Old:
Indian = Iranian farmers + Onge + EMBA

New:
Indian = IVC peripherals + onge + MLBA
IVC peripherals = Iranian farmers + Onge + sebirian HG

BTW, paper supplements have detailed explanation for all these. You may want to read if not already.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Pulikeshi »

A must read paper for all those trying to understand the evolution, conflict and opportunities genetics presents with archeology.

Divided by DNA: The uneasy relationship between archaeology and ancient genomics
“Half the archaeologists think ancient DNA can solve everything. The other half think ancient DNA is the devil’s work,” quips Philipp Stockhammer
In duelling 2015 Nature papers6,7, the teams arrived at broadly similar conclusions: an influx of herders from the grassland steppes of present-day Russia and Ukraine — linked to Yamnaya cultural artefacts and practices such as pit burial mounds — had replaced much of the gene pool of central and Western Europe around 4,500–5,000 years ago. This was coincident with the disappearance of Neolithic pottery, burial styles and other cultural expressions and the emergence of Corded Ware cultural artefacts, which are distributed throughout northern and central Europe. “These results were a shock to the archaeological community,” Kristiansen says.
Many archaeologists are also trying to understand and engage with the inconvenient findings from genetics. Carlin, for instance, says that the Bell Beaker genome study sent him on “a journey of reflection” in which he questioned his own views about the past. He has pored over the selection of DNA samples included in the study as well as the basis for its conclusion that the appearance of Bell Beaker artefacts coincided with a greater than 90% replacement in Britain’s gene pool. “I didn’t want to be questioning it from a position of ignorance,” Carlin says.
Reich concedes that his field hasn’t always handled the past with the nuance or accuracy that archaeologists and historians would like. But he hopes they will eventually be swayed by the insights his field can bring. “We’re barbarians coming late to the study of the human past,” Reich says. “But it’s dangerous to ignore barbarians.”
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by Murugan »

Golden artifacts found in Harappa/Mohenjo-daro have been made of gold brought from today's Kolar Gold Field. This is ascertained through an impurities-analysis of gold, as every goldmines and its ore has its signature composition.
Lothal might also have been the intermediary station for the import to the Indus valley of gold from Kolar (Mysore) gold-fields, some semiprecious stones from the Deccan plateau and shell from the w. coast and in turn might have depended on the Indus valley of such items as copper and chert, their sources being nearer the Indus then Lothal.
http://asi.nic.in/asi_exca_imp_gujarat.asp

When Harappa was functioning, Gold mine 2000+ km south were also active and people there (the so called dravidians) knew how to make, pack and securely 'export' gold far away. = People down south were equally or more advanced then Harappans.

We are discussing things in isolation onlee.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

ukumar wrote:[
Arun, let me try to explain. EMBA is genetic component from early steppe ( Yamna ) folks and MLBA is from post CWC steppe folks. In earlier papers Indians could be modeled as three way combination of Iranian Farmer + Onge + EMBA. With new ancient DNA in new paper they discovered that Indians (swat and other 3 potential Indian migrants to BMAC and Iran) and other central asian already share minor genetic ancestry from Siberian HG. They call this indian component “IVC peripherals” . Modern Indians can now be modeled as IVC peripheral + Onge + steppe MLBA.


Old:
Indian = Iranian farmers + Onge + EMBA

New:
Indian = IVC peripherals + onge + MLBA
IVC peripherals = Iranian farmers + Onge + sebirian HG

BTW, paper supplements have detailed explanation for all these. You may want to read if not already.
Thanks, but I'm still confused. The excerpt I quoted from March 2017 thought that Indians were better modeled with EMBA than MLBA.
It shouldn't matter what the previous unknown components are.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

With this new preprint + the assumption that the Steppe ancestry is correlated with Indo-European languages, the story that Indo-European languages entered India post-IVC; that Vedas, Mahabharata etc., are at a maximum age of 3500 years before present, etc., is reiterated. Perhaps Rg Veda composition started in the Asian Inner Mountain Corridor, and the verses with geography references were added much later, etc. If Kaliyug began 3100 BC, that was somewhere in Central Asia.

There was no Out-of-India except for some Indus periphery folks, but these Indus periphery are outliers at BMAC, neither they nor what is supposed to be the original South Asian hunter-gatherer population didn't leave much of a trace outside of India.

"ANI and ASI were still largely unformed by 2000 BCE", and since most Indians are descended from ANI + ASI, it means the peopling of India really began after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization. So this is either the triumphant hurrah or the last gasp of the invasionists, depending on which way you think this is going to play out.

PS: the "no significant incursion into India that left a genetic imprint in the last 14,000 years" goes obsolete.
AASI has been in India deep in time.
The "Iranian Agriculturalist" contributed to the Indus Periphery persons some 6500 years ago.
IVC people are taken to be a mixture of AASI and Iranian Agriculturalist from 6500 years ago.
The Indus Periphery persons have no Steppe ancestry, plus the Steppe has no AASI component it seems, so one cannot argue that "Steppe_MLBA" has some Indian-origin component.
Therefore the only OIT signal would be AASI, and there is no OIT signal in this model.

The argument that genes do not correlate with language is a truism; but can it work in this case? We'd have to postulate that there was a diffusion of Sanskrit or its precursors without movement of people from North India into Iran, BMAC and Steppes long before the Indus Valley Civilization (and from the Steppe people into Europe); and in particular that Sanskrit or precursors were one of the languages of the people of AASI origin. This could very well be true; but it is next to impossible to demonstrate. One might say this was just as hard to demonstrate before this preprint; but before this preprint one did not have to demonstrate language propagating outward while people were moving in the opposite direction.

If there is no aDNA from India that (a) has little AASI component and (b) can plausibly be ancestral to some component that is currently taken to be from outside India ("Iranian Agriculturalist", "Steppe EMBA or MLBA"), then IMO, the OIT story is over. Vedic Saraswati, archeo-astronomy dates etc., will have to find another explanation.

PS: tongue-in-cheek, some of what Talageri finds in the Rg Veda, e.g., names of various peoples that correspond to branches of IE-speaking people works if those parts of the Rg Veda are steppes-literature.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by bharotshontan »

Folks there is no ancient DNA that is capturing anything called AASI. Prior to this they had the DNA of some bodies from Zagros mountains in Iran from 7000bc, which they refer to in anthropological circles in shorthand as Iran_N or Iran Neolithic or in latest Reich book as Iranian farmers. For this study they saw how much they could model the three individuals labeled as Indus Periphery into Iranian farmer, and the rest they said must be AASI since it also didn't match the steppe aDNA. Problem in this construct is that if you're going looking for data to match your migrationist construct, you WILL find it. Is anyone actually surprised that remains from Suvastu valley have some commonality with Iranian farmer and some distinction? Does that have to mean Iranian farmer is ancestral to Suvastu valley, and so is some hypothetical AASI (constructed not from ancient DNA but from saying what is NOT Iran Farmer in Suvastu).

Up until this paper they had nothing called Indus Periphery or from Suvastu valley, so they said the non Iran Farmer and non steppe in the Indian subcontinent was some aboriginal and unadmixed and separate ancestral cluster known as Ancestral South Indian. Now with India periphery they have found Iran Farmer like DNA in northwest subcontinent goes further back, so they have in a way appropriated that and requalified ASI into AASI, while also holding on to the ridiculous old notion of ANI and ASI still "forming" and then mixing fifteen hundred years later according to Max Mueller timeline.

I will bet my left baby producer that Rakhigarhi is not being published because predictably going by this ridiculous migrationist construct they will see Rakhigarhi as more southeast shifted than Indus Periphery but they will again say it is Iran Farmer descended plus a requalified AASI (maybe they'll call it AAASI) and Rakhigarhi researchers are probably not about force fitting data into stupid migrationist model like that.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by hanumadu »

The new 'findings' fit AIT to a 'T'. To me that's suspicious.
1. Timelines of steppe people into India - check
2. South Indians are IVC people - check
3. South Indian (Dravidian) languages are from IVC
And of course
4. Aryan people from steppe brought Samskrit to India.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

Very roughly the story goes like this (don't use any dates or figures from here):

Let's look at 7000 years before present. What do we have?
- attested in Iran by aDNA "Iranian farmer".
- in India, unattested by aDNA, but reasonably safe theoretical assumption, AASI

What else in India? What would the ancestry of someone in Punjab 7000 years before present be? In the absence of anything else, it would be some combo of Iranian farmer + AASI. Suppose we found in Punjab aDNA from 7000 years ago. Then whatever it was, it would not be explainable in terms of some contemporary Iranian farmer; at best it would trace to some common ancestry with Iranian farmer, with the theoretical AASI thrown in. (Finding in BMAC of 3 persons with AASI but no steppe ancestry suggests that this Punjab aDNA would also show no recent common ancestor with steppe.) Moreover, other peoples in India of 7000 years ago would presumably be better modeled via this aDNA + AASI rather than Iranian farmer + AASI. But we don't have aDNA from Punjab from 7000 years ago, and so the only choice is to model people in India not in terms of Iranian farmer (ostensibly outsider) and AASI. And of course, in the absence of aDNA there is nothing really to model. A principle of parsimony says that the people of north India of this time had (Iranian farmer + AASI) ancestry.

The same goes for Indians from 6000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 4000 years ago. 3000 years ago, we get the first aDNA in the Indian subcontinent, that from Swat. It can only be modeled in terms of aDNA found so far and theoretical populations like AASI. If we had aDNA from Punjab from 7000 years ago, for example, the model of Swat aDNA might be very different. Just like the discovery of these three Indus_Periphery persons turned the theoretical constructs ANI and ASI from being quite ancient (from more than 14000 years ago) to being post-Saraswati-Sindhu civilization.

One revelation of this paper (assuming that it is correct) is that genetic models seem to be not stable against small perturbations. Three samples of aDNA turned the origins of ANI and ASI upside down. It may be a fair inference that further discoveries could destabilize the model that this paper proposes.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

hanumadu wrote:The new 'findings' fit AIT to a 'T'. To me that's suspicious.
1. Timelines of steppe people into India - check
2. South Indians are IVC people - check
3. South Indian (Dravidian) languages are from IVC
And of course
4. Aryan people from steppe brought Samskrit to India.
Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko parpola are quoted - so that's no wonder
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

A_Gupta wrote: The argument that genes do not correlate with language is a truism; but can it work in this case? We'd have to postulate that there was a diffusion of Sanskrit or its precursors without movement of people from North India into Iran, BMAC and Steppes long before the Indus Valley Civilization (and from the Steppe people into Europe); and in particular that Sanskrit or precursors were one of the languages of the people of AASI origin. This could very well be true; but it is next to impossible to demonstrate.
IMO the idea is not to individually take down every paper that comes but postulate whatever we find to be provable or plausibly hypothetical from our viewpoint. That is all that is required. A counter view. I had a series of Tweets in a conversation with the author Vagheesh. He asked me what my thoughts were. I said - we will need to look at earlier migrations as well

Privately - it is possible that IE languages developed on the way out of Africa 40,000 years ago

I think it is extraordinarily silly to be stuck on language s for just 6-7000 years when human history and evidence of human intelligence goes back a long long time
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by A_Gupta »

shiv wrote:
A_Gupta wrote: The argument that genes do not correlate with language is a truism; but can it work in this case? We'd have to postulate that there was a diffusion of Sanskrit or its precursors without movement of people from North India into Iran, BMAC and Steppes long before the Indus Valley Civilization (and from the Steppe people into Europe); and in particular that Sanskrit or precursors were one of the languages of the people of AASI origin. This could very well be true; but it is next to impossible to demonstrate.
IMO the idea is not to individually take down every paper that comes but postulate whatever we find to be provable or plausibly hypothetical from our viewpoint. That is all that is required. A counter view. I had a series of Tweets in a conversation with the author Vagheesh. He asked me what my thoughts were. I said - we will need to look at earlier migrations as well

Privately - it is possible that IE languages developed on the way out of Africa 40,000 years ago

I think it is extraordinarily silly to be stuck on language s for just 6-7000 years when human history and evidence of human intelligence goes back a long long time
Yes, but what is plausibly hypothetical becomes much less plausible with even one paper, if the paper is correct.

One has to account for all the language families, so one would have to say that they all developed on the way out of Africa 40K years ago.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by ukumar »

A_Gupta wrote: Thanks, but I'm still confused. The excerpt I quoted from March 2017 thought that Indians were better modeled with EMBA than MLBA.
It shouldn't matter what the previous unknown components are.
It does matter actually. Models are approximate based on known genetic sources. Since Iranian farmers + Onge did not acccount for Siberian HG EMBA was preferred as a better match over MLBA. With IVC peripherals having Siberian HG, MLBA is preferred by models over EMBA. What it means is that Indians have less Steppe than previously modeled . You can expect this could refined further as ancient DNA from IVC and South India is available.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by bharotshontan »

A_Gupta wrote:
One revelation of this paper (assuming that it is correct) is that genetic models seem to be not stable against small perturbations. Three samples of aDNA turned the origins of ANI and ASI upside down. It may be a fair inference that further discoveries could destabilize the model that this paper proposes.
I agree with rest of your post as it seems pretty much in line with mine. I do like genetics as a far more objective science than archaeology or linguistics though since it is all biochemistry and statistics. Only problem is it requires large amounts of relevant data, without which it goes for a toss which is what is happening with India right now.

Below link is a map of all the aDNA from around the world that has been found and processed and published so far (minus the latest paper we are discussing here which has the Indus Periphery and Suvastu valley samples).
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/an ... 7#1/-72/49

Look at the amount of geographical and time coverage of aDNA from the Europe and other cold places as opposed to from subcontinent which so far has only some Nepal remains. With the amount of coverage Europe has, a 3-way population structure is fairly accurate. The problem in this latest India related paper is they are hell bent on assuming that Indian subcontinent must have same history as European subcontinent. So they are happy to go to the level of 3 ancestral clusters for us to mirror Europe:
1) AASI (for Euros this is WHG)
2) Iran farmers (for Euros this is same)
3) Bronze age steppe (again same for both)
The only issue is WHG has plenty of aDNA backing it up from Spain to England. On other hand AASI is derived from inference of that which is NOT Iran farmer.

Either way, given inadequacy of data, folks with the type of authority that this paper's authors carry should be frank about how little they have instead of trying to speak so confidently about how much European and Indian story is the same. One thing to keep in mind is that Europe due to being so harsh and ice ages etc actually had isolated populations over tens of thousands of years, so in Europe's case a mixing of 3 strands of differentiated humanity does hold water in an almost Latin America style mixture. On other hand from northeast Africa to Philippines is a continuously populated unbroken warm tropical belt. Differentiated populations have less chance of arising. If anything, Indians differentiated in the historical era due to caste endogamy, not in this prehistoric era.
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Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

Post by shiv »

A_Gupta wrote:
Yes, but what is plausibly hypothetical becomes much less plausible with even one paper, if the paper is correct.

One has to account for all the language families, so one would have to say that they all developed on the way out of Africa 40K years ago.
You probably know that in terms of science
1. One paper being correct can only be validated by multiple studies that confirm it. One paper is a data point.
2. We DO NOT have to account for all the languages. All we have to do is to account honestly and accurately for what WE find.

Anyone who tries to tell everything about everybody is unlikely to be doing much more than guesswork or simply making things up.

This paper changes nothing in terms of language spread. it may say things about people spread. That is all.
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