Where Have We Come From - The Indian Story*

 

Oldest ancestors of modern Indians, the First Indians, were the descendants of the African hunter-gatherers, who migrated out of sub-Saharan Africa around 50,000 – 70,000 years ago, carrying the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the African eve in their cells. They probably reached India 65,000 years ago. Evidence of their life are found in Bhimbetka caves in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh and in Jawalapuram, located in Curnool district of Andhra Pradesh. This is not to say that archaic Humans did not live in India before 65000 years. Both Bhimbetka and Jawalapuram have evidence of such life. But none of these people left any descendants among modern Indians. Indians, across the country today, have inherited about 50% of their genome from First Indians. Onge tribe of the Little Andaman Island have the maximum inheritance from the First Indians. They number about 120 today. Rest of Indians with much reduced proportion of First Indian genome number about 1,36,64,00000.

Second mass migration in ancient India occurred between 7000 BCE - 3000 BCE. These were the Iranian agriculturists from the Zagros mountains of north-western Iran. They probably introduced farming in the northern and western plains of India. Though, there is some evidence that farming was independently discovered in the village of Mehrgarh at the foot of Bolan hills in Balochistan around 7000 BCE. Migrating Iranian farmers interbred with the First Indians. Descendants of this mixed parentage went on to create one of the earliest and the most sophisticated urban civilisations in the ancient world, the Harappan civilisation, that thrived from 2600 BCE - 1900 BCE. All Indians today, except Onge tribe of Little Andaman Island, have varying proportion of genes from these Iranian farmers too.

Iranian agriculturists spread a new language in their adopted land. This was a derivative of the proto-Elamite, spoken in the Elam region of the Zagros region of Iran, from where they came. Language of First Indians mixed with the language of the new arrivals, like the genes of the interbreeding populations. This union was the birth of the language of the Harappans. Harappan script has still not been completely deciphered. But there are indications that it may have been a form of proto-Dravidian. There are many similarities in the roots of words shared between proto-Elamite and the proto-Dravidian.

The third and the latest wave of migration to ancient India began in 2100 BCE. Migrating people were the Steppe pastoralists, the Yamnaya, from the Eurasian plains. They reached India from north and came to be called Aryan latter. This is the most controversial migration of people to ancient India.

Yamnaya people and their culture burst upon Europe and Asia beginning 3000 BCE. Yamnaya were a nomadic tribe. From their pastures in Eurasian steppes, Yamnaya migrated west to Europe and south to Asia. All modern Europeans, including Russians, have varying mix of Yamnaya genes in their genome.  These pastoralists spread the Yamnaya or the Aryan culture, including the language, to the lands they came to inhabit.

Before I go further, let me recapitulate briefly, various streams of genetic heritage that formed the river of modern Indian genome by their confluence in a deep past. Three waves of human migration and their mixture created our genome. These were the hunter-gatherers from Africa, the First Indians, about 65,000 years ago; Iranian agriculturists in 7000 BCE; and the Steppe pastoralists, The Yamnaya, also called the Aryans, from Eurasian plains in 2100 BCE.

[Ancestry of modern Indians was researched extensively by the Harvard geneticist David Reich and his collaborator Nick Patterson. They received wholehearted help from Indian scientists Lalji Singh and Kumarasamy Thangaraj of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad. Reich and Patterson arrived at CCMB in October 2008, to present their conclusions about origin of modern Indian genome. But they were informed by Singh and Thangaraj that suggestion of a major Eurasian incursion into ancient India could not be accepted by India because of cultural resonances of these assertions. To avoid overt reference to mass migration from abroad, and not to falsify scientific evidence either, two new terminologies were devised overnight, to represent mixture of genes in the modern Indian genome; Ancestral South Indians (ASI) and Ancestral North Indians (ANI).

Iranian farmers bred with First Indians. ASI were their progeny. ANI have the mixed parentage from First Indians, Iranian farmers and Yamnaya pastoralists. But none of the Indians today have a pure ANI or ASI inheritance. Dramatic mixing of genes in the past 2000 years has distributed this legacy, in varying proportions, among Indians in every region of the country today – except perhaps the 120 odd Onge people of Little Andaman Island, who have almost no genetic heritage from Yamnaya or the Iranian farmers.]

Evidence of a major migration of Yamnaya pastoralists in India between 2000 BCE -1000 BCE is staggeringly huge. The archaeological and the anthropological proofs have been bolstered by the Ancient DNA studies.

Indian males have much larger share of Yamnaya genes in their Y-chromosome, than in the rest of their genome. 70-90 percent of mtDNA of Indians is related to First Indians, but only 10-40 percent of Y-chromosome has contribution from the First Indians. This strongly suggests that Yamnaya migration in India was male centred. This sex-asymmetric population mixture is seen in other cultures too and is not unique to India. In Afro-Americans, 20% of European ancestry comprises 80% male inheritance. In Latinos from Colombia, 80% of European ancestry is more unbalanced, i.e., fifty-to-one in favour of males. Males from populations with more power, social and political, seem to pair up with females from populations with less.

Yamnaya brought proto-Indo-European languages to India and Europe. Modern languages derived from proto-Indo-European include Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujrati, Persian, English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Russian. Yamnaya arrived in India from North. Harappans migrated south as Yamnaya settled in the northern regions of India. People of north-western India who speak the Indo-European languages, i.e., Hindi, Gujrati, Marathi, etc., have larger proportion of Yamnaya genes. Harappans migrating south spread Dravidian language, i.e., Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam in southern India. These people have less genetic heritage from Yamnaya genome.

High castes, like Brahmins, have more of Yamnaya genes in their genome, then the lower castes. Strict endogamy among castes in India has maintained the ancient genetic makeup of castes for thousands of years. Brahmins were the custodians of Sanskrit - a derivative of proto-Indo-European language, and a mark of hierarchical dominance in India for long.

Proponents of right-leaning ideology do not accept the migration of Yamnaya from Eurasian Steppes to India. It is their belief, or rather wish, that Aryans – as they call these migrating people ­­– were the original inhabitants of the Harappan civilisation. They argue it is these Harappans, the real Aryans in their minds, who spread Indo-European languages to Europe. It is not my intention today to wade into this debate. There is absolutely no evidence of migration of Indians towards Eurasian Steppes. Modern Europeans have no genetic endowment from ASI or First Indian genome.

Idealogues of this stream assert that Vedas were composed by Aryans who were the original inhabitant of Harappan cities. There is overwhelming evidence which suggests that Harappa was a pre-Vedic civilisation. It was mainly an urban civilisation while Vedic society was rural and pastoral. There were no cities in the Vedic period. Harappan seals depict many animals but not the horse. Horse and chariots with spoked wheels were a defining feature of Steppe pastoralists, and Rig Veda is replete with description of the warrior god Indra riding his horse-drawn chariot. Harappan seals often depict the tiger but the animal is never mentioned in Rig Veda.

Rig Veda, the first Veda, was composed between 2000 BCE -1000 BCE, the time of arrival of Yamnaya in north India. It is in a language Yamnaya brought to India, a derivative of the proto-Indo-European, the Old Sanskrit. It was not written in proto-Dravidian, the language which has the strongest claim as being the language of Harappan people. Rituals described in Rig Veda have little similarity with the Harappan culture. The latter Vedas, composed by the people who carried a mixed inheritance from Yamnaya and the Harappans, have elements of Harappan culture imbued in them.

 

Nature does not wear its deepest truths on its sleeve. But neither does it deceive intentionally. It scatters liberal clues to its true nature and phenomena in its fabric. One of the spectacular achievements of modern science is the discovery of these footprints. Unlike faith, evidence for the assertions of science is in the public domain for all to examine.  We now know with reasonable certainty, ‘where have we come from?’

In the inconceivable vastness of universe, we inhabit a speck of dust called Earth. If seen in the context of the boundless Cosmos, provinciality is built in our origins. Should we then bind ourselves further in the shackles of a parochial vision engendered by myths and xenophobic ideologies? The miracle of Evolution has endowed humans with a mind, which is capable of immense leap of thought, through application of reason. Shouldn’t we try to free our minds of these bonds, perhaps only momentarily, borne on the wings of reason.

I beg your indulgence to permit me to paraphrase the poetic finale of Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

There is a grandeur in this view of life, that while life everywhere on earth was immersed in the grind of survival and proliferation, a clan of intrepid people, perhaps numbering not more than few hundred, moved out of their ancestral home in Africa, across the Nile Valley or the Red Sea, and gradually over many millennia, spread over Asia, Europe, Oceania and Americas. Their descendants went on to found the first civilisations of the ancient world. Their migration continued across the globe; the new arrivals mixed their genes with the old inhabitants and new races arose.

We, numbering billions today, are all descendants of those few African forefathers. This is the truth, the evidence of which is now blowing in the wind.

 

*This is the story I had set out to narrate, when I conceived this piece first. Previous post was meant as an introduction of a few paras, till it grew into an essay of over 1500 words, and demanded an independent existence. My knowledge of this subject grew from various books on evolution I read in the past decade. Two books, I read last year, helped immensely in understanding the migration of world-populations in the last 50,000 years. These are, Who We Are and How We Got Here, by David Reich and Early Indians by Tony Joseph. Both are marvellously written. Former covers the movement of people in all the continents. Tony Joseph discusses Indians.