Another blow to the 'Aryan Invasion Theory'

Shared and Unique Components of Human Population Structure and Genome-Wide Signals of Positive Selection in South Asia
  
"Knowing whether signals associated with the initial peopling of Eurasia fall within our detection limits requires additional extensive simulations, but our current results indicate that the often debated episode of South Asian prehistory, the putative Indo-Aryan migration 3,500 years ago (see e.g., Abdulla) falls well within the limits of our haplotype-based approach. We found no regional diversity differences associated with k5 at K = 8. Thus, regardless of where this component was from (the Caucasus, Near East, Indus Valley, or Central Asia), its spread to other regions must have occurred well before our detection limits at 12,500 years. Accordingly, the introduction of k5 to South Asia cannot be explained by recent gene flow, such as the hypothetical Indo-Aryan migration. The admixture of the k5 and k6 components within India, however, could have happened more recently—our haplotype diversity estimates are not informative about the timing of local admixture.

Both k5 and k6 ancestry components that dominate genetic variation in South Asia at K = 8 demonstrate much greater haplotype diversity than those that predominate in West Eurasia. This pattern is indicative of a more ancient demographic history and/or a higher long-term effective population size underlying South Asian genome variation compared to that of West Eurasia. Given the close genetic relationships between South Asian and West Eurasian populations, as evidenced by both shared ancestry and shared selection signals, this raises the question of whether such a relationship can be explained by a deep common evolutionary history or secondary contacts between two distinct populations. Namely, did genetic variation in West Eurasia and South Asia accumulate separately after the out-of-Africa migration; do the observed instances of shared ancestry component and selection signals reflect secondary gene flow between two regions, or do the populations living in these two regions have a common population history, in which case it is likely that West Eurasian diversity is derived from the more diverse South Asian gene pool."


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New research debunks Aryan invasion theory

Published: Saturday, Dec 10, 2011, 10:30 IST
By Kumar Chellappan | Place: Chennai | Agency: DNA

"According to Prof Singh, Dr Chaubey, and Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj, another member of the team, the findings disprove the caste theory prevailing in India. Interestingly, the team found that instead of Aryan invasion, it was Indians who moved from the subcontinent to Europe. “That’s the reason behind the findings of the same genetic traits in Eurasian regions,” said Dr Thangaraj, senior scientist, CCMB."


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Out of India after Africa? Nat Geo now supports this theory

"Modern humans migrated out of Africa via a southern route through Arabia, rather than a northern route by way of Egypt, according to research announced at a conference at the National Geographic Society this week.

“Evolutionary history shows that human populations likely originated in Africa, and the Genographic Project, the most extensive survey of human population genetic data to date, suggests where they went next…Modern humans migrated out of Africa via a southern route through Arabia, rather than a northern route by way of Egypt,” said a news statement released by IBM."

“The divergence of a common genetic history between populations showed that Eurasian groups were more similar to populations from southern India, than they were to those in Africa. This supports a southern route of migration from Africa via the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in Arabia before any movement heading north, and suggests a special role for south Asia in the ‘out of Africa’ expansion of modern humans.”

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Genographic Project confirms humans migrated from Africa through Arabia 

 

Still no trace of an Aryan Invasion

by Koenraad  Elst

Last night, 1 March 2011, I attended a lecture by Cambridge (UK) archaeologist Cameron Petrie on the state of the art in Harappan excavations and the emerging picture of the "Indus" civilization. Interesting, but no real news.

Just a few highlights in this modest blog report. Petrie showed a map of excavation sites used by Michel Danino in "a popular book" on the Indus-Saraswati civilization, next to his own map. Danino's map shows a high concentration of sites along the Ghaggar river, i.e. the remains of the once-mighty Saraswati; but Petrie's map shows a paucity of sites in the same region. That looks serious. But the very next item in his talk reversed this impression. He reported on a survey of Haryana by a Ph.D. candidate from Rohtak who during 2008-10 identified hundreds of as yet unexcavated Harappan sites. His map showed a concentration of "new" sites precisely in the "empty" Ghaggar region... So, this seems to confirm that the Saraswati was an important centre of Harappan civilization after all.

Incidentally, for the most common chronology proposed by the non-invasionist school, a non-urbanized Saraswati basin would not be such a problem. People like K.D. Sethna and Nicholas Kazanas date the Rg-Vedic age to the early Harappan and even pre-Harappan age, in conformity with the lack of an urban setting in the Rg-Veda. But the latter information could also be matched to a Harappan date but in a non-urbanised border region of the Harappan area, as Shrikant Talageri opines. The latter also points out that the Asuras, a term apparently referring in that context to the Iranians, the Vedic Indians' westerly neighbours, are often described as more advanced in material culture. So, locating the Vedic tribes outside the metropolitan area could make sense. And the impression of a west-to-east gradient in Harappan development, confirmed once more by Petrie, would therefore not be a problem for Talageri's position. But many scenarios remain possible.

Petrie purposely avoided the topic of the alleged Aryan invasion. His survey of Harappan history at no point necessitated such a hypothesis, for the story could apparently be told with reference only to purely internal developments. He only agreed to discuss it when asked by the chairman in question time, but remained non-committal. He said the question was so complicated that it would perhaps never be decided.

At that point I proposed to narrow the question down to a degree of simplicity where a field archaeologist would definitely be able to answer. He agreed that Prof. B.B. Lal had made his name in the 1950s and 60s by detailing our knowledge of the Painted Grey Ware and identifying it as characteristic of the invading Aryans moving eastwards, deeper into India; and that Lal had later repudiated any claims of an Aryan invasion and is now a leading light of the non-invasionist school. Lal now says that no archaeological trace of an Aryan invasion has ever been found or identified. Petrie also conceded that Harvard Sanskritist Prof. Michael Witzel had likewise admitted that "as yet" no such arcaheological evidence of an Aryan invasion has been discovered. So, a very simple question would be: did Cameron Petrie, as a field archaeologist fresh from the recentmost excavation, ever come across actual pieces of evidence for an Aryan invasion. He smiled and agreed that he too had no such sensational discovery to announce. So: as of 2011, after many decades of being the official and much-funded hypothesis, the Aryan Invasion Theory has still not been confirmed by even a single piece of archaeological evidence.

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