Romila Thapar has said it. Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, who has been excavating in the Indus city of Harappa has said it. Now the bastion of the Eminent Historians – the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) too agrees that there is nothing called Aryans or Dravidians and we Indians all belong to the same gene pool.
The test has classified the people in north and south India as belonging to one gene pool, and not different ethnic groups such as Aryans and Dravidians.
Giving the information to The Hindu here, Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research D.N. Tripathi said geneticists from Pakistan had collected samples for genetics analysis of the people of Indian subcontinent and sent them to cellular and molecular biology laboratories in the U.S. Scientists in Pakistan concluded from the test results that the human race spread out of Africa 60,000 years before Christ. They settled in the subcontinent. Geneticists in Pakistan concluded that people living in the northern and southern regions of India and those in the West Asian region were from the same gene pool, he added.Asked about the argument of many historians tracing the lineage of people in north India to Aryans, Prof. Tripathi said test results had proved this wrong. “We have the results of studies. The conclusion of some historians that Aryans came here 15,000 years before Christ does not hold water,” he added. [People in north and south India belong to the same gene pool: ICHR Chairman via Rajeev Srinivasan]
Two observations
- According to the theory supported by the Aryan Invasion/Migration folks, the invasion/migration happened between 3000 – 1000 BCE and not, 15,000 years back.
- The fact that humans migrated out of Africa some 85,000 years ago has been proved by the Bradshaw Foundation and Professor Stephen Oppenheimer and hence that too is not a new revelation
Isn’t it nice that our eminent historians rely on Pakistani geneticists to make the case to rebuff Aryan invasion/migration theory? Thank you Pakistani geneticists and thank you US for those wonderful labs.
JK,
That still leaves the theory of ATT (Aryan Tourism Thoery) propounded by Rajeev Srinivasan in open 🙂
Regards
My goodness, JK!
You mean that the ‘people like us’ thing is actually true!
🙂
NB: Btw, my wife was studying some samples from across the subcontinent, and she found that the significant variation from her DNA analysis was in samples from NWFP. I though t that tied with anthropological studies that suggest that descendents of the Greeks of Alexander’s army in Nuristan and other regions.
I have a question. Even if we consider the Aryans came from outside and integrated with the natives (just like Africans migrated to other parts of the world), can the gene pool of today’s sample (I hope the sample was correct representative of the population) after 100s of generations of mixing and remixing with the natives prove otherwise? In other words, do you expect to see pure Aryans and pure Dravidian gene pools today? By this reasoning, I feel that the results do not prove anything substantial. or did I miss something?
BTW, I can understand a Dravidian gene pool. Where did they find an Aryan specimen? Who are the Aryans of today? How do we define it before comparing the two specimens?
P@L,
You could find Aryan genes if they were a race, but many people think it is just a linguistic term.
While this study says that “we are all one”, there was a study done sometime back which said “Central Asia is supposed to have contributed in a major way to the Indian gene pool. Populations of North India are genetically closer to Central Asia. South Indians share less similarity and Northeast Indians share the least.”
http://www.varnam.org/history/2004/11/ethinic_india_a_genomic_view.php
Nitin,
That region was a melting pot of cultures in ancient times. Before Alexander it was captured by Darius I. After Alexander and Chandragupta Maurya, it was under Arab rule, then the Mongols and Turks. Probably your wife would find all possible DNAs there.
This issue is far from settled. You may read two important articles in this context here, and here. The lead author of the former article is Spencer Wells, the author of Journey of Man, which lends credence to the theory that early migrants into India (~ 50000 years ago came from Africa), while another wave of immigrants into India came from Central Asia (who were originally out of Africa, too), perhaps around 3000-4000 B.C. The latter article addresses the Aryan Invasion Theory directly. Whatever the ICHR may assert, the fat lady hasn’t even started clearing her throat yet on this. By the way, did the ICHR verify if the Pakistani geneticists had published their results in a reputable journal?
This same information was published in the National Geographic Website on Jan 10 2006 at this link http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes.html.
[Note that it is a bit slow]
And in there it is mentioned that one Mr Kashyap of the National Institute of Biologicals in Noida had published these results in the “Proceedings of the National Academies of Science”.
Also, i don’t see why ICHR did not know about this and why Pakistani geniticists were needed to confirm this again.