Genetics issues in ancient India

[Steve Farmer]

Satya Upadhya writes:

> Here is an interesting article (from the San Francisco Chronicle) on this
> problem:
>
> www.dalitstan.org/holocaust/invasion/histgene.html

This "news" item, which originally appeared in Newsday, is a good
example of the kind of wild distortion that we've been talking
about. When you compare the article with the two research papers
on this topic written by this  group, you will find no evidence
that even vaguely justifies such a sweeping interpretation. For
one of those original papers, see:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/62000214/START

Cf. also with their short earlier piece in Nature, for which no
abstract exists:

Nature 1998 Oct 15;395(6703):651-2. Female gene flow stratifies
Hindu castes.
Bamshad MJ, Watkins WS, Dixon ME, Jorde LB, Rao BB, Naidu JM,
Prasad BV, Rasanayagam A, Hammer MF.

The papers by Kivisild & Distell (cited in earlier posts) have
been wildly misinterpreted to show that no Aryan migration ever
occurred. The work of Bamshad and the rest of his group have been
wildly misinterpreted to show not only that a migration occurred,
but that it was in fact a full-blown Aryan Invasion of the old
Mortimer Wheeler style.

None of these papers by geneticists were written with cognizance
of any of the complex acculturation processes involved in this problem.

Steve Farmer