The peopling of India refers to the migration of Homo sapiens into the Indian subcontinent. Anatomically modern humans settled India in multiple waves of early migrations, over tens of millennia. [1] The first migrants came with the Coastal Migration/Southern Dispersal 65,000 years ago, whereafter complex migrations within South and Southeast Asia took place. West Asian (Iranian) hunter-gatherers migrated to South Asia after the Last Glacial Period but before the onset of farming. Together with ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers they formed the population of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC).
With the decline of the IVC, and the migration of Indo-Europeans, the IVC-people contributed to the formation of both the Ancestral North Indians ("ANI"), who were closer to contemporary West Eurasians, and the Ancestral South Indians ("ASI"), who were descended predominantly from the Southeastern Indian hunter gatherers (known as "AASI", who were distantly related to East Eurasians such as Aboriginal Australians, Andamanese, and also to East Asians), but also from West Eurasian hunter-gatherers from the Iranian Plateau. These two ancestral populations (ASI and ANI) mixed extensively between 1,900-4,200 years ago, after the fall of the IVC and their respective southward migration, [2] and affected both modern Indo-European populations as well as the Dravidian populations in the subcontinent, while the migrations of the Munda people and the Sino-Tibetan-speaking people from East Asia also added new elements.
The dating of the earliest successful migration of modern humans out of Africa is a matter of dispute. [3] It may have pre- or post-dated the Toba catastrophe, a volcanic super eruption that took place between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba. According to Michael Petraglia, stone tools discovered below the layers of ash deposits in India at Jwalapuram, Andhra Pradesh point to a pre-Toba dispersal. The population who created these tools is not known with certainty as no human remains were found. [3] An indication for post-Toba is haplogroup L3, that originated before the dispersal of humans out of Africa, and can be dated to 60,000–70,000 years ago, "suggesting that humanity left Africa a few thousand years after Toba." [3]
It has been hypothesized that the Toba supereruption about 74,000 years ago destroyed much of India's central forests, covering it with a layer of volcanic ash, and may have brought humans worldwide to a state of near-extinction by suddenly plunging the planet into an ice-age that could have lasted for up to 1,800 years. [4] If true, this may "explain the apparent bottleneck in human populations that geneticists believe occurred between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago" and the relative "lack of genetic diversity among humans alive today". [4]
Since the Toba event is believed to have had such a harsh impact and "specifically blanketed the Indian subcontinent in a deep layer of ash", it was "difficult to see how India's first colonists could have survived this greatest of all disasters". [5] Therefore, it was believed that all humans previously present in India went extinct during, or shortly after, this event and these first Indians left "no trace of their DNA in present-day humans" – a theory seemingly backed by genetic studies. [6]
Research published in 2009 by a team led by Michael Petraglia of the University of Oxford suggested that some humans may have survived the hypothesized catastrophe on the Indian mainland. Undertaking "Pompeii-like excavations" under the layer of Toba ash, the team discovered tools and human habitations from both before and after the eruption. [7] However, human fossils have not been found from this period, and nothing is known of the ethnicity of these early humans in India. [7] Recent research also by Macauly et al. (2005)[ who? ] [8] and Posth et al. (2016), [9] also argue for a post-Toba dispersal. [8] Early Stone Age hominin fossils have been found in the Narmada valley of Madhya Pradesh. Some have been dated to 200- 700,000 BP. It is uncertain what species they represent. [10]
By some 70-50,000 years ago, [11] [9] [12] [13] only a small group, possibly as few as 150 to 1,000 people, crossed the Red Sea. [14] The group that crossed the Red Sea travelled along the coastal route around the coast of Arabia and Persia until reaching India, which appears to be the first major settling point. [15] Geneticist Spencer Wells says that the early travellers followed the southern coastline of Asia, crossed about 250 kilometres (155 mi) of sea, and colonized Australia by around 50,000 years ago. The Aborigines of Australia, Wells says, are the descendants of the first wave of migrations. [16]
The oldest definitively identified Homo sapiens fossils yet found in South Asia are Balangoda man. Named for the location in Sri Lanka where they were discovered, they are at least 28,000 years old. [17]
Theories around Indigenous Aryanism are popular among certain Hindutva circles, and do not have any support in peer-reviewed literature. [18]
Narasimhan et al. (2018) introduced the term AASI, "Ancient Ancestral South Indian" [note 1] (AASI) for these oldest human inhabitants, which were possibly distantly related to the common ancestors of East-Eurasians such as Andaman Islanders (such as the Onge), East Asians, and Australian Aboriginals. [20] [21] [22] [23] According to Narasimhan et al. (2019), "essentially all the ancestry of present-day eastern and southern Asians (prior to West Eurasian-related admixture in southern Asians) derives from a hypothetical single eastward spread, which gave rise in a short span of time to the lineages leading to AASI, East Asians, Onge, and Australians.", [24] a lineage often referred to as "East-Eurasians". [25]
Several genetic studies have found evidence of a distant common ancestry between native Andaman Islanders and the AASI/ASI ancestral component found in South Asians. [20] Modern South Asians have not been found to carry the paternal lineages common in the Andamanese, which has been suggested to indicate that certain paternal lineages may have become extinct in India, or that they may be very rare and have not yet been sampled. [26] Chaubey and Endicott (2013) further noted that "Overall, the Andamanese are more closely related to Southeast Asian Negritos than they are to present-day South Asians." [27] [note 2]
Shinde et al. 2019 found either Andamanese or East Siberian hunter-gatherers fit as proxy for AASI "due to shared ancestry deeply in time." [28] According to Yelmen et al. (2019) the native South Asian genetic component (AASI) is distinct from the Andamanese and not closely related, and that the Andamanese are thus an imperfect and imprecise proxy for AASI. According to Yelmen et al, the Andamanese component (represented by the Andamanese Onge) was not detected in the northern Indian Gujarati, and thus it is suggested that the South Indian tribal Paniya people (who are believed to be of largely AASI ancestry) would serve as a better proxy than the Andamanese (Onge) for the "native South Asian" component in modern South Asians. [29]
According to Narasimhan et al. (2019), the "AASI" component in South Asians shares a common root with the Andamanese (as exemplified by the Onge) and is distantly related to the Onge (Andamanese), as well as to East Asians, and Aboriginal Australians (with those groups and the AASI sharing a deep ancestral split around the same time), [23] which would place them in the East-Eurasian lineage.
The present-day Andamese are considered to be part of the "Negritos", several diverse ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of southeast Asia. [30] Based on their physical similarities, Negritos were once considered a single population of related people, but the appropriateness of using the label 'Negrito' to bundle together peoples of different ethnicity based on similarities in stature and complexion has been challenged. [31] Recent research suggests that the Negritos include several separate groups, as well as demonstrating that they are not closely related to the Pygmies of Africa. [32]
According to Vishwanathan et al. (2004), the typical "negrito" features could also have been developed by convergent evolution. [33] According to Gyaneshwer Chaubey and Endicott (2013), "At the current level of genetic resolution, however, there is no evidence of a single ancestral population for the different groups traditionally defined as 'negritos'." [27] Basu et al. 2016 concluded that the Andamanese have a distinct ancestry and are not closely related to other South Asians, but are closer to Southeast Asian Negritos, indicating that South Asian peoples do not descend directly from "Negritos" as such. [34]
Groups ancestral to the modern Veddas were probably the earliest inhabitants of Sri Lanka. Their arrival is dated tentatively to about 40,000–35,000 years ago. They are genetically distinguishable from the other peoples of Sri Lanka, and they show a high degree of intra-group diversity. This is consistent with a long history of existing as small subgroups undergoing significant genetic drift. [35] [36]
A 2013 study by Raghavan et al. showed that the Vedda are closely related to other groups in Sri Lanka and India, especially to Sinhalese and Tamils. They additionally found deep relations between the indigenous Vedda and other South Asian populations with the modern populations of Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. [37]
After the Last Glacial Period, human populations started to grow and migrate. With the invention of agriculture, the so-called Neolithic revolution, larger numbers of people could be sustained. The use of metals (copper, bronze, iron) further changed human ways of life, giving an initial advance to early users, and aiding further migrations, and admixture.
According to Silva et al. (2017), multiple waves of migration from western Eurasia took place after the last Ice Age, both before and after the advent of farming in South Asia. [38] According to Narasimhan et al. (2019), people related to Iranian hunter-gatherers were present in South Asia before the advent of farming. They mixed with Ancestral Ancient South Asians (AASI) to form the Indus Valley population. With the decline of the IVC after 1900 BCE and the arrival of the Indo-Aryans, IVC-people mixed with incoming Indo-Aryans, forming the Ancestral North Indians (ANI). Other IVC-people mixed with AASI forming the Ancestral South Indians (ASI). [19] [39] [40] [41]
These two ancestral groups mixed in India between 4,200 and 1,900 years ago (2200 BCE – 100 CE), whereafter a shift to endogamy took place, [41] possibly by the enforcement of "social values and norms" during the Hindu Gupta rule. [22] Reich et al. stated that "ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in India, and is higher in traditionally upper caste, martial races and Indo-European speakers. ". [39]
Basu et al. (2016) note that mainland India harbors two additional distinct ancestral components which have contributed to the gene pools of the Indian subcontinent, [note 3] namely Ancestral Austro-Asiatic (AAA) and Ancestral Tibeto-Burman (ATB). [22]
Narasimhan et al. (2019) and Shinde et al. (2019) conclude that west Eurasian ancestry was already present before the advent of farming in South Asia. [38] [19] [note 4]
Metspalu et al. (2011) detected a genetic component in India, k5, which "distributed across the Indus Valley, Central Asia, and the Caucasus". [43] According to Metspalu et al. (2011), k5 "might represent the genetic vestige of the ANI", though they also note that the geographic cline of this component within India "is very weak, which is unexpected under the ASI-ANI model", explaining that the ASI-ANI model implies an ANI contribution which decreases toward southern India. [44] According to Metspalu et al. (2011), "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." [45]
Speaking to Fountain Ink, Metspalu said, "the West Eurasian component in Indians appears to come from a population that diverged genetically from people actually living in Eurasia, and this separation happened at least 12,500 years ago." [web 1] [note 5] Moorjani et al. (2013) refer to Metspalu (2011) [note 6] as "fail[ing] to find any evidence for shared ancestry between the ANI and groups in West Eurasia within the past 12,500 years". [50] CCMB researcher Thangaraj believes that "it was much longer ago", and that "the ANI came to India in a second wave of migration [note 7] that happened perhaps 40,000 years ago." [web 1]
According to Gallego Romero et al. (2011), their research on lactose tolerance in India suggests that "the west Eurasian genetic contribution identified by Reich et al. (2009) principally reflects gene flow from Iran and the Middle East." [51] Gallego Romero notes that Indians who are lactose-tolerant show a genetic pattern regarding this tolerance which is "characteristic of the common European mutation." [52] According to Romero, this suggests that "the most common lactose tolerance mutation made a two-way migration out of the Middle East less than 10,000 years ago. While the mutation spread across Europe, another explorer must have brought the mutation eastward to India – likely traveling along the coast of the Persian Gulf where other pockets of the same mutation have been found." [52]
According to Broushaki et al. (2016), evidence indicates that the Neolithic farmer component forms the main ancestry of many modern South Asians. These Neolithic farmers migrated from the fertile crescent, most likely from a region near the Zagros Mountains in modern day Iran, to South Asia some 10,000 years ago. [53] [54]
Mehrgarh (7000 BCE to c. 2500 BCE), to the west of the Indus River valley, [55] is a precursor of the Indus Valley Civilisation, whose inhabitants migrated into the Indus Valley and became the Indus Valley Civilisation. [56] It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia. [57] [58] According to Lukacs and Hemphill, while there is a strong continuity between the neolithic and chalcolithic (Copper Age) cultures of Mehrgarh, dental evidence shows that the chalcolithic population did not descend from the neolithic population of Mehrgarh, [59] which "suggests moderate levels of gene flow." [59] They further noted that "the direct lineal descendents of the Neolithic inhabitants of Mehrgarh are to be found to the south and the east of Mehrgarh, in northwestern India and the western edge of the Deccan Plateau", with neolithic Mehrgarh showing greater affinity with chalcolithic Inamgaon, south of Mehrgarh, than with chalcolithic Mehrgarh. [59]
While the IVC has been linked to the early Dravidian peoples, some scholars have suggested that their Neolithic farmer predecessors may have migrated from the Zagros Mountains to northern South Asia some 10,000 years ago. [60] According to David McAlpin, the Dravidian languages were brought to India by immigration into India from Elam. [61] [62] [63] [64] Franklin Southworth also states that the Dravidian Languages originated in western Iran and that publications and research are "further evidence of [the relationship between Dravidian languages and Elamite] viability". [65] According to Renfrew and Cavalli-Sforza, proto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent, [66] [67] [68] [note 8] but more recently Heggerty and Renfrew (2014) noted that "McAlpin's analysis of the language data, and thus his claims, remain far from orthodoxy", adding that Fuller finds no relation of Dravidian language with other languages, and thus assumes it to be native to India. [69] Renfrew and Bahn conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and that "the linguistic jury is still very much out." [69] [note 9]
Shinde et al. (2019) and Narasimhan et al. (2019), analysing remains from the Indus Valley civilisation (of parts of Bronze Age Northwest India and East Pakistan) and "outliers" from surrounding cultures, conclude that the IVC-population was a mixture people related to Iranian herders and AASI: [19]
The only fitting two-way models were mixtures of a group related to herders from the western Zagros mountains of Iran and also to either Andamanese hunter-gatherers or East Siberian hunter-gatherers (the fact that the latter two populations both fit reflects that they have the same phylogenetic relationship to the non-West Eurasian-related component likely due to shared ancestry deeply in time) [28]
According to Shinde et al. (2019) about 50–98% of the IVC-genome came from people related to early Iranian farmers, and from 2–50% of the IVC-genome came from native South Asian hunter-gatherers sharing a common ancestry with the Andamanese. [28] Narasimhan et al. (2019) found the IVC-genome to consist of 45–82% Iranian farmer-related ancestry and 11–50% AASI (Andamanese-related hunter-gatherer) ancestry. [19] Narasimhan et al. (2019) conclude that the Iranian farmer-related ancestry is related to but distinct from Iranian agri-culturalists, lacking the Anatolian farmer-related ancestry which was common in Iranian farmers after 6000 BCE. [42] [note 10] Those Iranian farmers-related people may have arrived in India before the advent of farming in northern India, [42] and mixed with people related to Indian hunter-gatherers c. 5400 to 3700 BCE, before the advent of the mature IVC. [77]
The analysed samples of both studies have little to none of the "Steppe ancestry" component associated with later Indo-European migrations into India. The authors found that the respective amounts of those ancestries varied significantly between individuals, and concluded that more samples are needed to get the full picture of Indian population history. [28] [19]
In the second millennium BCE people from the Sintashta culture [79] [80] migrated through Bactria-Margiana culture and into the northern Indian subcontinent (modern day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal). The Indo-Aryan migrations started in approximately 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia. [81] [82] [note 11]
The Proto-Indo-Iranians, from which the Indo-Aryans developed, are identified with the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BCE),[ citation needed ] and the Andronovo culture,[ citation needed ] which flourished c. 1800–1400 BCE in the steppes around the Aral sea, present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The proto-Indo-Iranians were influenced by the Bactria-Margiana culture, south of the Andronovo culture, from which they borrowed their distinctive religious beliefs and practices. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800–1600 BCE from the Iranians, [84] whereafter the Indo-Aryans migrated into the Levant and north-western India and possibly Inner Asia.
Lazaridis et al. (2016) notes that the demographic impact of steppe related populations on South Asia was substantial and forms a major component in northern India. [85] Lazaridis et al.'s 2016 study estimates 6.5–50.2% steppe related admixture in all modern South Asians with higher caste and Indo-Aryan speaking groups having more steppe admixture than others. [note 12]
A series of studies from 2009 to 2019 have shown that the Indian subcontinent harbours two major ancestral components, [39] [40] [41] formed in the 2nd millennium BCE, [19] namely the Ancestral North Indians (ANI), which is closely related to contemporary West-Eurasians, and the Ancestral South Indians (ASI) which is distinct from any outside population. [39] [19] [note 13] ANI formed out of a mixture of IVC-people and migrants from the steppe, while ASI was formed out of IVC-people who moved south and mixed further with local hunter-gatherers. [19]
These IVC-people did not carry steppe admixture and were instead a mixture of mostly Neolithic Iran-related ancestry and minor AASI (native South Asian hunter-gatherer) ancestry. According to Narasimhan et al. 2019, the genetic makeup of the ASI population consisted of about 73% AASI and about 27% from Iranian-related peoples. [19] This estimate is similar to that of Reich et al., who in 2018 note that the ASI have a West-Eurasian ancestry component (derived from Iranian-related farmers) which Reich estimates at about 25% of their ancestry (not detected in his initial 2009 analysis), with the remaining 75% of the ancestry of the ASI deriving from native South Asian hunter-gatherers. [86]
ANI formed out of a mixture of IVC-people and migrants from Bronze age steppe. [19] Lazaridis et al. (2016) [note 14] notes that the demographic impact of steppe related populations on South Asia was substantial. According to the results, the Mala, a south Indian Dalit population with minimal Ancestral North Indian (ANI) along the 'Indian Cline' have nevertheless c. 18% steppe-related ancestry, showing the strong influence of ANI ancestry in all populations of India. The Kalash of Pakistan are inferred to have c. 50% steppe-related ancestry, with the rest being of Iranian farmers ancestry. [87] [note 15] Reich et al. stated that "ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in India, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-Aryan speakers". [39]
According to Ness, there are three broad theories on the origins of the Austroasiatic speakers, namely northeastern India, central or southern China, or southeast Asia. [88] Multiple researches indicate that the Austroasiatic populations in Central India are derived from (mostly male dominated) migrations from southeast Asia during the Holocene. [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [note 16] According to Van Driem (2007),
the mitochondrial picture indicates that the Munda maternal lineage derives from the earliest human settlers on the Subcontinent, whilst the predominant Y chromosome haplogroup argues for a Southeast Asian paternal homeland for Austroasiatic language communities in India. [94]
According to Chaubey et al. (2011), "AA speakers in India today are derived from dispersal from Southeast Asia, followed by extensive sex-specific admixture with local Indian populations." [90] [note 17] According to Zhang et al. (2015), Austroasiatic (male) migrations from southeast Asia into India took place after the latest Glacial maximum, circa 4000 years ago. [92] According to Arunkumar et al. (2015), Y-chromosomal haplogroup O2a1-M95, which is typical for Austroasiatic speaking peoples, clearly decreases from Laos to east India, with "a serial decrease in expansion time from east to west", namely "5.7 ± 0.3 Kya in Laos, 5.2 ± 0.6 in Northeast India, and 4.3 ± 0.2 in East India". This suggests "a late Neolithic east to west spread of the lineage O2a1-M95 from Laos". [93] [95]
According to Riccio et al. (2011), the Munda people are likely descended from Austroasiatic migrants from southeast Asia. [91] [96] According to Ness, the Khasi probably migrated into India in the first millennium BCE. [88]
According to a genetic research (2015) including linguistic analyses, suggests an East Asian origin for proto-Austroasiatic groups, which first migrated to Southeast Asia and later into India. [92]
According to Cordaux et al. (2004), the Sino-Tibetan possibly came from the Himalayan and north-eastern borders of the subcontinent within the past 4,200 years. [97]
The ancient people, who lived in the upper-middle Yellow River basin about 10,000 years ago and developed one of the earliest Neolithic cultures in East Asia, were the ancestors of modern Sino-Tibetan populations. [99] Haplogroup O2-M122 is primarily found among males of Sino-Tibetan ancestry in the Himalayas and Northeast India and which is generally absent among other linguistic families other than Northeast India. O-M134, a subclade of O-M122, has a high percentage, 86.6%, among Tamangs of Nepal, with similar frequencies, ~85%, among the northeastern Indian Tibeto-Burman groups, including Adi, Naga, Apatani, and Nyishi. [100] In Assam, Tibeto-Burman expansion throughout Brahmaputra Valley associated with the patrilinial lineage of O-M134 [102] which occurs at a high frequency of 85% in Kachari (Boro Kachari) peoples and 76.5% in Rabha peoples. [103] [105] It has a significant presence among the Khasis (29%), despite being generally absent in other Austroasiatics of India, and it shows up at 55% among the neighbouring Garos, a Tibeto-Burmun group. [106]
A wide variety of Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Sizable groups that have been identified are the West Himalayish languages of Himachal Pradesh and western Nepal, the Tamangic languages of western Nepal, including Tamang with one million speakers, and the Kiranti languages of eastern Nepal. The remaining groups are small, with several isolates.
The Newar language (Nepal Bhasa) of central Nepal has a million speakers and a literature dating from the 12th century, and nearly a million people speak Magaric languages, but the rest have small speech communities. Other isolates and small groups in Nepal are Dura, Raji–Raute, Chepangic and Dhimalish. Lepcha is spoken in an area from eastern Nepal to western Bhutan. [107] Most of the languages of Bhutan are Bodish, but it also has three small isolates, 'Ole ("Black Mountain Monpa"), Lhokpu and Gongduk and a larger community of speakers of Tshangla. [108]
One complication in studying various population groups is that genetic and linguistic affiliations in India only are partially correlated, especially in cases where Austric-related peoples have adopted languages from their non-Austric neighbors. For example, while the Oraon adivasis have Austric-related ancestry, their language, called Kurukh, is Dravidian. [109] The Bhils and Gonds Adivasi are frequently classified as "Austric" groups, [110] yet Bhil languages are Indo-European and the Gondi language is Dravidian. [109] On the other hand, the Nicobarese are considered to be a Mongoloid group, [111] [112] and the Munda and Santals Adivasi are "Austric" groups, [113] [114] but all four speak Austro-Asiatic languages. [111] [112] [113]
The Indo-Iranian languages constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.5 billion speakers, predominantly in South Asia, West Asia and parts of Central Asia.
The Elamo-Dravidian language family is a hypothesised language family that links the Elamite language of ancient Elam to the Dravidian languages of South Asia. The latest version (2015) of the hypothesis entails a reclassification of Brahui as being more closely related to Elamite than to the remaining Dravidian languages. Linguist David McAlpin has been a chief proponent of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, followed by Franklin Southworth as the other major supporter. The hypothesis has gained attention in academic circles, but has been subject to serious criticism by linguists, and remains only one of several possible scenarios for the origins of the Dravidian languages. Elamite is generally accepted by scholars to be a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language.
The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC, spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia and western Xinjiang in the east. In the south, the Andronovo sites reached Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is almost universally agreed among scholars that the Andronovo culture was Indo-Iranian. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon.
The Andamanese are the various indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal. The Andamanese are a designated Scheduled Tribe in India's constitution.
Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of peoples predominantly found in South Asia, who (traditionally) speak Indo-Aryan languages. Historically, Aryans were the Indo-Iranian speaking pastoralists who migrated from Central Asia into South Asia and introduced the Proto-Indo-Aryan language. The early Indo-Aryan peoples were known to be closely related to the Indo-Iranian group that have resided north of the Indus River; an evident connection in cultural, linguistic, and historical ties. Today, Indo-Aryan speakers are found south of the Indus, across the modern-day regions of Bangladesh, Nepal, eastern-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and northern-India.
The Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Ā́rya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European speaking peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages to major parts of Eurasia in waves from the first part of the 2nd millennium BC onwards. They eventually branched out into the Iranian peoples and Indo-Aryan peoples.
The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia is the study of the genetics and archaeogenetics of the ethnic groups of South Asia. It aims at uncovering these groups' genetic histories. The geographic position of the Indian subcontinent makes its biodiversity important for the study of the early dispersal of anatomically modern humans across Asia.
David Emil Reich is an American geneticist known for his research into the population genetics of ancient humans, including their migrations and the mixing of populations, discovered by analysis of genome-wide patterns of mutations. He is professor in the department of genetics at the Harvard Medical School, and an associate of the Broad Institute. Reich was highlighted as one of Nature's 10 for his contributions to science in 2015. He received the Dan David Prize in 2017, the NAS Award in Molecular Biology, the Wiley Prize, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal in 2019. In 2021 he was awarded the Massry Prize.
Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the conviction that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. It is a "religio-nationalistic" view on Indian history, and propagated as an alternative to the established migration model, which considers the Pontic–Caspian steppe to be the area of origin of the Indo-European languages.
The Dravidian peoples, Dravidian-speakers or Dravidians, are a collection of ethnolinguistic groups native to South Asia who speak Dravidian languages. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of South India and are natively found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Dravidian peoples are also present in Singapore, Mauritius, Malaysia, France, South Africa, Myanmar, East Africa, the Caribbean, and the United Arab Emirates through recent migration.
The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and formed the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.
Haplogroup R1a, or haplogroup R-M420, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup which is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia and Central Europe to Central Asia, southern Siberia and South Asia.
The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals, dated to the period c. 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex, c. 2200–1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, and spreads through Orenburg Oblast, Bashkortostan, and Northern Kazakhstan. Widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages, whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Aryans, the Sintashta culture is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture.
Y-DNA haplogroups in populations of South Asia are haplogroups of the male Y-chromosome found in South Asian populations.
The study of the genetics and archaeogenetics of the Gujarati people of India aims at uncovering these people's genetic history. According to the 1000 Genomes Project, "Gujarati" is a general term used to describe people who trace their ancestry to the region of Gujarat, located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, and who speak the Gujarati language, an Indo-European language. They have some genetic commonalities as well as differences with other ethnic groups of India.
Caucasus hunter-gatherer (CHG), also called Satsurblia cluster, is an anatomically modern human genetic lineage, first identified in a 2015 study, based on the population genetics of several modern Western Eurasian populations.
This article summarizes the genetic makeup and population history of East Asian peoples and their connection to genetically related populations such as Southeast Asians and North Asians, as well as Oceanians, and partly, Central Asians, South Asians, and Native Americans. They are collectively referred to as "East Eurasians" in population genomics.
In archaeogenetics, the term Western Steppe Herders (WSH), or Western Steppe Pastoralists, is the name given to a distinct ancestral component first identified in individuals from the Chalcolithic steppe around the turn of the 5th millennium BC, subsequently detected in several genetically similar or directly related ancient populations including the Khvalynsk, Repin, Sredny Stog, and Yamnaya cultures, and found in substantial levels in contemporary European, Central Asian, South Asian and West Asian populations. This ancestry is often referred to as Yamnaya ancestry, Yamnaya-related ancestry, Steppe ancestry or Steppe-related ancestry.
Vasant Shinde is an Indian archaeologist, who has done excavations at Rakhigarhi from 2011 to 2016. He was the first author on the long-awaited 2019 paper "An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers," on DNA-research on a single skeleton from Rakhigarhi which shows that the people of the Indus Valley Civilisation had no steppe (Indo-Aryan) genetic ancestry, in line with the Indo-Aryan migration theory. The day after the publication Shinde publicly endorsed the Out of India theory, contradicting the conclusions of this paper.
... new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter ... initiating an "Instant Ice Age" that – according to evidence in ice cores taken in Greenland – lasted about 1,800 years ...
... had H. sapiens colonized India before the eruption? The majority of genetic evidence seems to suggest that the initial colonization of India took place soon after the Toba event. It should be noted, however, that on the basis of this evidence, the hypothesis that modern human populations inhabited India before ~74ka and underwent extinction as a result of Toba cannot be ruled out. If population extinction occurred, there would be no trace of their DNA in present-day humans ...
... Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. The international, multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, has uncovered what it calls 'Pompeii-like excavations' beneath the Toba ash ... suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks,' said project director Dr Michael Petraglia ...
The analysis of two Y chromosome variants, Hgr9 and Hgr3 provides interesting data (Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). Microsatellite variation of Hgr9 among Iranians, Pakistanis and Indians indicate an expansion of populations to around 9000 YBP in Iran and then to 6,000 YBP in India. This migration originated in what was historically termed Elam in south-west Iran to the Indus valley, and may have been associated with the spread of Dravidian languages from south-west Iran (Quintan-Murci et al., 2001). ...
More recently, about 15,000-10,000 years before present (ybp), when agriculture developed in the Fertile Crescent region that extends from Israel through northern Syria to western Iran, there was another eastward wave of human migration (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Renfrew 1987), a part of which also appears to have entered India. This wave has been postulated to have brought the Dravidian languages into India (Renfrew 1987). Subsequently, the Indo-European (Aryan) language family was introduced into India about 4,000 ybp ...
... Our coalescence analysis suggests that the expansion of Sino-Tibetan speakers to northeast India most likely took place within the past 4,200 years ...
... over one million speakers each: Bhili (Indo-Aryan) 4.5 million; Santali (Austric) 4.2 m; Gondi (Dravidian) 2.0 m; and Kurukh (Dravidian) 1.3 million ...
... The Bhils are one of the largest tribes concentrated mainly in Western Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Eastern Gujarat and Northern Maharastra. Racially they were classified as Gondids, Malids or Proto-Australoid, but their social history is still a mystery (Bhatia and Rao, 1986) ...
... The Khasis are one of the Indo-Mongoloid tribes in Northeast India. They speak the Monkhmer language, which belongs to the Austro-Asiatic group (Das, 1978) ...
... The Car Nicobarese are of Mongoloid stock ... The Nicobarese speak different languages of the Nicobarese group, which belongs to an Austro-Asiatic language sub-family ...
... Racially, they are proto-australoid and speak Mundari dialect of Austro-Asiatic ...
... The Santals belong to his second "main race", the Proto-Australoid, which he considers arrived in India soon after the Negritos ...
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