Study connects North Indians to mysterious ancient Europeans
A new set of people who came from North Eurasia were the third group of ancestors
HYDERABAD, SEPTEMBER 22:
Genetic Science has added a new twist to the ancestry of the modern Europeans. DNA studies have unravelled that the natives of present day Europe are a mixture of three different ancestral groups and not just two as believed so far.
An international research team, including one from India which analysed human genomes from strands of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) extracted from 9 ancient corpses and compared with a large sample of 2,400 humans from diverse present day population across the world, stumbled upon this third dimension to the ancestral roots. According to available historical records, the first wave of hunter gatherers came to Europe around 40,000 years ago.
They were followed by agriculture practising people from the Middle East between 7,000-8,000 years ago. It now conspires that a new ‘mysterious’ set of people came from North Eurasia. The global project was done by a consortium led by University of Tubingen and Harvard medical School, along with scientists from the Hyderabad-based, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB).
Indian connection
The CCMB scientists found some exciting leads into the affinity of ancient North Indians (ANIs) with the Europeans. It would be challenging to see which one of the three ancestral European populations is related to the ANIs, said Lalji Singh, former Director at the Institute. The Consortium findings published in Nature also suggested that the new ancestors to the Europeans from North Eurasia had taken off to the Americas and gave rise to the Native Americans there. “It seems clear now that the third group linking Europeans and Native American arrives in Central Europe after the early farmers,” explained Johannes Krause from the University of Tubingen.
Relative terms
Meanwhile the research team from the CCMB had earlier found that up to 70 per cent of the ANIs had shown genetic affinity with Europeans. In addition to ANIs, the ASIs (Ancestral South Indians) form the ancestral populations from whom the Indians emerged. DNA studies so far have shown that the ASIs did not have any genetic affinity outside India, said Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Principal Scientist in the research.
Meanwhile the research team from the CCMB had earlier found that up to 70 per cent of the ANIs had shown genetic affinity with Europeans. In addition to ANIs, the ASIs (Ancestral South Indians) form the ancestral populations from whom the Indians emerged. DNA studies so far have shown that the ASIs did not have any genetic affinity outside India, said Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Principal Scientist in the research.
He pointed to the milk digesting ability as a possible link between the migrants to Europe from the Middle East (7,000-8,000 years ago) and the people of the Northwest part of India (states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana). Thangaraj explained that the domestication of animals and practise of agriculture began in the near East region. Simultaneously a genetic mutation occurred in humans to digest milk-sugar. Normally, many mammals cannot digest milk after weaning.
There is enough evidence to show that the early hunter-gatherers and farmers had already adapted to a starch rich diet. This is clear from the high copy numbers of amylase (an enzyme that helps in breaking down starch and carbohydrates in general) in their genomes. This amylase factor was common in Europeans, Middle Eastern people and Northwest Indians, Thangaraj said.
(This article was published on September 22, 2014)
Comment of Premendra Priyadarshi: "Man reached Europe in three or four larger waves, from India through West Asia and Central Asia has been made out long back by Stephen Oppenheimer in his slide show:
That the population reaching India from Africa split into two soon after reaching Gujarat. One turning south to become the ASI and one to north becoming ANI. This is confirmed byReich et al and Male et al 2012 read together: IBM-study http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/
FIGURE 4. A model relating the history of Indian and non-Indian groups.
From the following article:
David Reich, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Nick Patterson, Alkes L. Price & Lalji Singh
Nature 461, 489-494(24 September 2009)
doi:10.1038/nature08365
Modelling the Pathan, Vaish, Meghawal and Bhil as mixtures of ANI and ASI, and relating them to non-Indians by the phylogenetic tree (YRI,((CEU,ANI),(ASI, Onge))), provides an excellent fit to the data. Although the model is precise about tree topology and ordering of splits, it provides no information about population size changes or the timings of events. We estimate genetic drift on each lineage in the sense of variance in allele frequencies, which we rescale to be comparable to FST (standard errors are typically ![plusminus]()
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