AIT, NEW genetic evidence

[David Salmon (Kettenpom)]

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Kekai Manansala <kekai at JPS.NET>
To: <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: AIT, NEW genetic evidence


> To classify the human populations of Asia 50,000 years ago as
> "pre-caucasoid" is poor analysis and linked with earlier Eurocentric
> racial mythology.
>
> In fact, given recent evidence that the out of Africa migration of
> modern humans began during this period, the people could be more
> accurately described as proto-Africoid. In phenotype, their remains were
> closest to modern Papuans, Fijians or Australian Aborigines only
> shorter.
>
> Since, it is likely that all the non-African "racial" groups originated
> from this exodus, one cannot classify this deme simply as
> "proto-caucasoid" or "proto-mongoloid" or whatever.
>

"Likely"?  What do the DNA or mitochondrial surveys say?


> Also, the linguistic and archaeological evidence does *not* support a
> West Asian origin for Dravidian.  SUsing the standard techniques of
> greatest diversity and least moves, the point of origin of this language
> family would be squarely in South Asia.
>

The languages of 50,000 years ago are so far removed from the languages of
the last 10,000 years or so as to be almost beyond study.  The relevance of
population and language movements of 50,000 years ago to the question of the
origin of Dravidian would seem to be nil, as you might agree?


> The earliest modern "Australoid" phenotypes occur in Sumatra not in the
> "Mediterranean." And the authors fail to note that the mtDNA strains of
> the vast majority of Indians tested are significantly closer to East
> Asians than to Europeans or "Middle Easterners" that were tested.
>

I think the point of the authors probably had more to do with -disproving-
any large maternal DNA contribution to the South Asian populations than with
trying to -prove- anything about modern and more recent (a few thousand
years or so) changes.

Even so, one wonders what the ratio of women to men were in those "Aryan"
tribal excursions into India.  Were they like the Greek onslaught on Troy,
composed almost solely of men?  Or if not, how many men originally does the
DNA imply in total, if one assumes that most of them arrived in the
centuries in which the "Aryans" came, however they did it?  I don't believe
that data can say a thing about that.

Much ado about very little, perhaps?