Who do the English think they are?
In the early 5th century the Roman legions abandoned Britain, and the sceptered isle fell off the pages of history. When it reemerges two centuries later Celtic Britain had become the seedbed for the nation-state of England. The Christian religion, newly-established on the island at the time, had given way once again to paganism. Brythonic […]
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Who do the English think they are?
For centuries, debate has raged about whether England’s population is largely descended from German immigrants. Now, we have answers
Kashmiri Brahmins are just like other Kashmiris
I think I’ve posted this before, but it was a while ago before we had so many readers. In this paper they took 15 random Kashmiris from the Valley, and compared them to various populations. The plot below, as well as admixture analysis in the paper, shows no daylight between the Pandit samples and generic …
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What do we call the Ancient Ancestral North Indians?
Commenters on this weblog have expressed dissatisfaction with the nomenclature of the “eastern Iranian farmers” who were the dominant genetic contributors to the Indus Valley People. The author of The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia agrees that this is a problem. To review: the dominant ancestry component, called Iranian-related or eastern …
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The Brahui, total genetic replacement?
An Ethnolinguistic and Genetic Perspective on the Origins of the Dravidian-Speaking Brahui in Pakistan: In this report we reexamine the genetic origins of the Brahuis, and compare them with diverse populations from India, including several Dravidian-speaking groups, and present a genetic perspective on ethnolinguistic groups in present-day Pakistan. Given the high affinity of Brahui to …
The East Asian ancestry in Bengalis is probably not Munda
There has been some debate about the East Asian ancestry in Bengalis for decades. To me, the most parsimonious explanation 10 years ago is that it was mostly Munda. These are the Austro-Asiatic people of the highlands to the south and west of Bengal. There is also one Austro-Asiatic group to the north of Bangladesh, …
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Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu are very similar to Maharashtra Brahmins
I periodically get inquiries on various issues relating to the genetic position/relatedness of various “communities” in the Indian subcontinent. Thanks to the South Asian Genotype Project I’ve got a rather large database to query such questions. A reader asked about his own community, the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu of Maharashtra. They are Kayasthas. The actress Kajol …
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Genetic distance in Europe and South Asia
People always ask about genetic distance. Above is a NJ tree of a pairwise Fst.
Here is the raw table.
Please stay chill in the comments.
(used Plink’s Fst with 200,000 markers)
The Jat Gene!
About 10 years ago there was a defunct blog called the “Jat Gene.” Standard stuff. Nothing super amazing discovered, but the Jats do seem on one end of the pole. I happen to have half a dozen Jats which cluster together. You can see where they are on the PCA plots above. – no surprise …
The Arctic home of the Aryans
The Fatyanovo culture flourished between 2800 and 1900 BC. It seems they were part of a Central European “reflux” migration. That is, their forebears were related Yamna agro-pastoralists who migrated west out of the steppe and mixed with Central European farmers. Eventually, some of these people moved back east along the edge of the forest-steppe …
A risk factor for COVID-19 in South Asians
The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals: A recent genetic association study (Ellinghaus et al. 2020) identified a gene cluster on chromosome 3 as a risk locus for respiratory failure in SARS-CoV-2. Recent data comprising 3,199 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and controls reproduce this and find that it is the major …
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Maharashtra genetics
Novel insights on demographic history of tribal and caste groups from West Maharashtra (India) using genome-wide data (OA): The South Asian subcontinent is characterized by a complex history of human migrations and population interactions. In this study, we used genome-wide data to provide novel insights on the demographic history and population relationships of six Indo-European …
The great Chinese genetic database
China Is Collecting DNA From Tens of Millions of Men and Boys, Using U.S. Equipment: The police in China are collecting blood samples from men and boys from across the country to build a genetic map of its roughly 700 million males, giving the authorities a powerful new tool for their emerging high-tech surveillance state. […]
The Indo-Iranians go west!
I’ve long been curious about the Indo-Iranians who “went west”. I’ve tried to run some qpAdmin with Iranians, and the results are erratic. I think the main issue is the reference populations are quite different from the “simple” situation in India. But, I think it is plausible to say that Sintashta ancestry is lower in …
The memes reflected in our genes
One of the major findings from Narasimhan et al. is that when it comes to total ancestry, Brahmin groups are enriched in the groups which have more “steppe” ancestry than you’d expect (West Eurasian ancestry is a function of steppe + IVC). That being said, Narasimhan et al. could not find evidence that Brahmins are …
AASI Y chromosomal lineage: haplogroup C
There was a conversation in the comments about which Y chromosomal lineages clearly descend from “Ancient Ancestral South Indians,” the people who have strong affinities to the eastern wave out of Africa. Though Y chromosomal lineage H is strongly localized to South Asia, it seems to have deep Pleistocene connections to West Asia, so that …
A North Indian in Uzbekistan at 1550 B.C.
I was rereading the supplements for Narasimhan et. al. for the purposes of trying to adduce the best model to calculate “steppe” proportions in Iranians (someone asked I do this). In the process, I noticed this passage again: Third, we find that one of the outliers, Bustan_BA_o2, is consistent with being admixed between an individual …
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The Facts About Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test
With Warren dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination a lot of people on podcasts I listen too are making fun of her DNA test. Unfortunately, there are some falsehoods being promoted. It’s kind of scary for me because this is a field I know well, and it’s disturbing to watch falsehoods becoming […]
Dime-Store Genomics
Genetic testing will soon be cheap, routine, and ubiquitous.
Why physical appearance is an imperfect individual proxy for ancestry
Pictured above are some Kalash children. You notice in the foreground and center a child who could easily pass as European and draw no notice on the streets of Gdansk, Poland. But look at the child right behind her, I would guess she’d draw no notice on the streets of New Delhi! Though the Kalash …
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