New article on The Caravan, Indus Valley People Did Not Have Genetic Contribution From The Steppes: Head Of Ancient DNA Lab Testing Rakhigarhi Samples, by Hartosh Singh Val.
Niraj Rai, head of the DNA Laboratory where the samples from the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi in Haryana are being analysed, has this to say:
It will show that there is no steppe contribution to the Indus Valley DNA.
The Indus Valley people were indigenous, but in the sense that their DNA had contributions from near eastern Iranian farmers mixed with the Indian hunter-gatherer DNA, that is still reflected in the DNA of the people of the Andaman islands.
The Rakhigarhi study provides direct evidence for the claims of a paper published in preprint on bioRxiv in March 2018, which outlines a comprehensive model for the settlement of different populations within the subcontinent.
Rai had earlier told Open magazine that the male:
Y chromosome R1a genetic marker is missing in the Rakhigarhi sample.
Commenting on other hypotheses:
any model of migration of Indo-Europeans from South Asia simply cannot fit the data that is now available.
The paper based on the examination of the Rakhigarhi samples will soon be published on bioRxiv.
EDIT: Added related Tweet of the report’s author:
if you add the rakhigarhi sample report (https://t.co/JaGLHRJroD) to the recent Reich lab model this map illustrates how india's population changed over last 10,000 years pic.twitter.com/9mWGIMj3RR
— Hartosh Singh Bal (@HartoshSinghBal) April 27, 2018
Related:
- Fast life history as adaptive regional response to less hospitable and unstable Early Indo-Iranian territory
- Early Indo-Iranian formed mainly by R1b-Z2103 and R1a-Z93, Corded Ware out of Late PIE-speaking migrations
- Y-DNA haplogroup R1b-Z2103 in Proto-Indo-Iranians?
- The Indus Valley Civilisation in genetics – the Harappan Rakhigarhi project
- The Aryan migration debate, the Out of India models, and the modern “indigenous Indo-Aryan” sectarianism
- North Pontic steppe Eneolithic cultures, and an alternative Indo-Slavonic model
- Consequences of O&M 2018 (II): The unsolved nature of Suvorovo-Novodanilovka chiefs, and the route of Proto-Anatolian expansion
- Olalde et al. and Mathieson et al. (Nature 2018): R1b-L23 dominates Bell Beaker and Yamna, R1a-M417 resurges in East-Central Europe during the Bronze Age
- The Indo-European demic diffusion model, and the “R1b – Indo-European” association
- The concept of “Outlier” in Human Ancestry (III): Late Neolithic samples from the Baltic region and origins of the Corded Ware culture
- New Ukraine Eneolithic sample from late Sredni Stog, near homeland of the Corded Ware culture
- Germanic–Balto-Slavic and Satem (‘Indo-Slavonic’) dialect revisionism by amateur geneticists, or why R1a lineages *must* have spoken Proto-Indo-European
