People from the Indian subcontinent are higher risk for heart disease, all things equal. So?
People of Indian subcontinental origin. South Asians. Are at higher risk for heart-related disease than other world populations. Probably every year one of the big newspapers has a feature focusing […]
The Genetics Of The St. Thomas Christians, part 2
Last year I posted The Genetics of the St. Thomas Christians. Recently I got some more samples. Of these, four were clearly self-identified as Southist/Knanaya Christians (as opposed to Northist Christians). The Knanaya are a bit different in their traditions than the broader much larger St. Thomas Christian community. In the PCA above the bottom […]
The diverse origins of the Bengali gentry
I’ve been rather busy with other things and the South Asian Genotype Project has fallen a bit by the wayside. But, I plan on allocating a day on a weekend soon to getting through the backlog. But, before that, I thought I would submit something t…
The battle for the soul of the Heart of Asia
Kumārajīva was one of the early translators of the Buddhist canon into Chinese. His father’s lineage was reputedly Indian, while his mother was from the elite of the city of Kucha, on the northern edge of the Tarim basin. It was one of the cities where a form of Tocharian was spoken. This enigmatic Indo-European […]
The Munda arrived in India 4,000 years ago (probably)
I didn’t plan to talk about the Munda any time soon, in part because I recently wrote a post, The Munda as upland rice cultivators, which outlined my views. But there is a new preprint with new samples which attempts to estimate admixture times using genome-wide data. You can see the results above, and, also […]
DNA results from Rakhigarhi are now being reported (really!)
It looks like Outlook India is the first out of the gates to start reporting on the results from Rakhigarhi in northwest India, We Are All Harrapans. This is a “mature phase” Harrapan site that dates to about 2250 BC or so. Media reports have always been garbled on this topic, so anything that is […]
No steppe ancestry in the the Rakhigarhi samples = non sequitur
Harappan site of Rakhigarhi: DNA study finds no Central Asian trace, junks Aryan invasion theory: The much-awaited DNA study of the skeletal remains found at the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi, Haryana, shows no Central Asian trace, indicating the Aryan invasion theory was flawed and Vedic evolution was through indigenous people. … “The Rakhigarhi human DNA […]
The peopling of the Indian subcontinent at the dawn of knowing
A few people have been pointing me to a new paper, A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family, which implies that the Dravidian language family diversified ~4,500 years ago. I don’t have much to say about the paper itself since it aligns with my own conclusions, but it’s well outside of any field […]
The genetics of the St. Thomas Christians
First, I have to say I appreciate everyone who keeps sending data to the South Asian Genotype Project. Basically, I’m automating the pipeline, finding ways to merge data from a host of sources, but also figuring out how to refine the analysis. But until then, today I decided to do some more manual analysis of […]
“Rakhigarhi paper” out in January 2018?
Tony Joseph has an interesting piece up, Who built the Indus Valley civilisation?, which people are asking me about via email. First, I don’t have any inside information. Last I heard in September was that the Rakhigarhi results were “one or two months away,” like they have been for a year or so. So I put […]
The Indo-Aryan migration to the Indian subcontinent
The piece is up at India Today. The headline and title are of course optimized for clicks. I would, for example, say that the Indo-Aryans came from the west, not the West. In the course of writing this it has become clear that many people have very specific commitments on this issue. I think it […]
Indian genetics, the never-ending argument
I am at this point somewhat fatigued by Indian population genetics. The real results are going to be ancient DNA, and I’m waiting on that. But people keep asking me about an article in Swarajya, Genetics Might Be Settling The Aryan Migration Debate, But Not How Left-Liberals Believe. First, the article attacks me as being … Continue reading “Indian genetics, the never-ending argument”
The last days of pre-ancient DNA Indian population genomics
If anyone wants to know about the population genetics of South Asia, I recommend three papers (all are open access): – Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India – A genetic chronology for the Indian Subcontinent points to heavily sex-biased dispersals – The promise of disease gene discovery in South Asia In the near … Continue reading “The last days of pre-ancient DNA Indian population genomics”
The Cape Coloureds are a mix of everything
A Cape Coloured family
I’ve mentioned the Cape Coloureds of South Africa on this weblog before. Culturally they’re Afrikaans in language and Dutch Reformed in religion (the possibly related Cape Malay group is Muslim, though also Afrikaan…
Resolutions in the Indian genetic layer cake
Two years ago Reconstructing Indian Genetic History reframed how we should view South Asian historical genomics. In short, Indians can be viewed as a hybrid between a West Eurasian group, “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI) and a very different…
Harappa Ancestry Project @ N ~ 50
Zack Ajmal now has over 50 participants in the Harappa Ancestry Project. This does not include the Pakistani populations in the HGDP, the HapMap Gujaratis, the Indians from the SVGP. Nevertheless, all these samples still barely cover vast heart of Sout…
Harappa Ancestry Project, update
Last week I announced the Harappa Ancestry Project. It now has its own dedicate website, http://www.harappadna.org. Additionally, it has its own Facebook page. For Zack to get his own URL he needs about 10 more “likes,” so please like it! (…
PCA, Razib around the world (a little)
I have put up a few posts warning readers to be careful of confusing PCA plots with real genetic variation. PCA plots are just ways to capture variation in large data sets and extract out the independent dimensions. Its great at detecting population substructure because the largest components of variation often track between population differences, […]
One principal component to rule them all?
Despite the reality that I’ve cautioned against taking PCA plots too literally as Truth, unvarnished and without any interpretive juice needed, papers which rely on them are almost magnetically attractive to me. They transform complex patterns of variation which you are not privy to via your gestalt psychology into a two or at most three […]