In India the debate of who were your ancestors -- North Indian or South Indian? rages on. Can you tell this from color of skin, size of ears, and texture of hair? Maybe no! If genetic mapping is done for you, you can be up for a shock for the fact most likely you may not be that different from someone else from another part of India.
Anthropologists, evolutionary scientists and genetic-researchers have worked over the last 50 years. The results that have come out comprehensively challenge numerous previously held beliefs about Aryan-Dravidian divide. Physical characteristics -- skin color, ears, hair -- are just some of it, which change according to climatic conditions and do not take millions of years. The new research is genome-based, examining SNPs or ‘single-nucleotide polymorphisms’.
Most Indians today are a mix of these two groups Ancestral South Indians (ASIs) -- who arrived about 60,000 years ago and Ancestral North Indians (ANIs), who came later. Interestingly, the genetic mix apparently pre-dates all our historic social self-conceived separations based on caste and endogamy. Shocked to hear that!! Fact is that we were all mixed up into Indians long before the origin of the stigmatic caste system and so called ‘purity’ maintained by it is only about 3,000 years old.
It has been observed regarding acceptance of the scientific findings that any society takes a longer time to interpret and accept scientific findings. The Christian dominated-west still has problems in fully accepting Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. But, as they say over the time the people who believe in older theory are not converted but they finally die out and a new generation of neo-believers takes their place. And it’s true also in other fields of scientific research like physics and astronomy as well.
The fact we all came out of Africa is more or less now accepted. The question is of when and how? The story of our journey out of Africa is fascinating as it is the story of all of us. Numerous streams of disciplines are working together -- archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary sciences, linguistics, history, sociology, genetics and more, in finding answers to these questions.
No matter how stubborn we are with our beliefs, yet, as we have seen, with every new scientific discovery, our lives do change, in both obvious and subtle ways. Whatever the outcome, the unraveling of the human genome would only make us better humans with out racial conflicts.
Anthropologists, evolutionary scientists and genetic-researchers have worked over the last 50 years. The results that have come out comprehensively challenge numerous previously held beliefs about Aryan-Dravidian divide. Physical characteristics -- skin color, ears, hair -- are just some of it, which change according to climatic conditions and do not take millions of years. The new research is genome-based, examining SNPs or ‘single-nucleotide polymorphisms’.
Most Indians today are a mix of these two groups Ancestral South Indians (ASIs) -- who arrived about 60,000 years ago and Ancestral North Indians (ANIs), who came later. Interestingly, the genetic mix apparently pre-dates all our historic social self-conceived separations based on caste and endogamy. Shocked to hear that!! Fact is that we were all mixed up into Indians long before the origin of the stigmatic caste system and so called ‘purity’ maintained by it is only about 3,000 years old.
It has been observed regarding acceptance of the scientific findings that any society takes a longer time to interpret and accept scientific findings. The Christian dominated-west still has problems in fully accepting Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. But, as they say over the time the people who believe in older theory are not converted but they finally die out and a new generation of neo-believers takes their place. And it’s true also in other fields of scientific research like physics and astronomy as well.
The fact we all came out of Africa is more or less now accepted. The question is of when and how? The story of our journey out of Africa is fascinating as it is the story of all of us. Numerous streams of disciplines are working together -- archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary sciences, linguistics, history, sociology, genetics and more, in finding answers to these questions.
No matter how stubborn we are with our beliefs, yet, as we have seen, with every new scientific discovery, our lives do change, in both obvious and subtle ways. Whatever the outcome, the unraveling of the human genome would only make us better humans with out racial conflicts.
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