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Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

nature.com

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Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#11

Post by _dain_ »

This has been known for at least a decade.

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/

>Here’s a scenario. A ship from some Indian civilization about 4000 years ago [maybe Indus] loses its way and ends up crashing on the shore of Arnhem Land. Like most ships, its crew is all male. They survive the landing, and end up warring with a local tribe. Eventually, they kill off most of the men and annex the sobbing women. The new tribe has 5x higher carrying capacity, essentially due to better technology, and they’re militarily superior as well – better weapons and tactics. They expand and expand, picking up more and more old Australian genes as they do so. Not as an empire – they’re too simple for that – but the tribes that descend from them keep winning. They speak the ancestor of the Macro-Pama-Nyungan languages, which originates as a mix between their old-Dravidian language (from the men) and some local Australian tongue (from the women).

>One funny thing about this scenario: the sailors lose almost all of their civilization, and probably thought they were descending into savagery. On the other hand, the locals probably thought of the castaways as incredibly advanced, magicians or gods. They were both right.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#13

Post by causality0 »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #5
runsWphotons wrote: post #2

Looks like this is quite old...they will probably find even more introgression. Something like 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-derived language families and developed from around the time of the Dingo introduction (only 4000 years ago), so there basically had to be a substantial amount of gene flow as well. Only a minority of the aboriginal languages come from an earlier substrate. It would be surprising…

> 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-derived language families and developed from around the time of the Dingo introduction (only 4000 years ago) Source? Australia has been continuously populated by Aboriginal people for 60,000+ years, with over 260 languages I find that claim incredibly hard to believe.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/14/most-....

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#15

Post by yrdmb »

programmer_dude wrote: post #3

The article has no information beyond "Indian". Which part of India? Which clan?

Apparently, dravidian-speaking groups.

"Thus, the f4 statistics indicate a signal of gene flow from India to Australia and, furthermore, that the source population is more closely related to present-day Dravidian-speaking Indian groups than to Onge."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1211927110

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#16

Post by ace2358 »

_dain_ wrote: post #11

This has been known for at least a decade. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/ >Here’s a scenario. A ship from some Indian civilization about 4000 years ago [maybe Indus] loses its way and ends up crashing on the shore of Arnhem Land. Like most ships, its crew is all male. They survive the landing, and end up warring with a local tribe. Eventually, they kill off most of the men and annex the…

This is a completely baseless theory with no citations or evidence at all other than the “11% ancestry” (what does that mean?).

“Let assume that this new analysis is correct.”

Yeah okay mate. I wouldn’t say that “this is a known fact”

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#17

Post by _dain_ »

ace2358 wrote: post #16
_dain_ wrote: post #11

This has been known for at least a decade. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/ >Here’s a scenario. A ship from some Indian civilization about 4000 years ago [maybe Indus] loses its way and ends up crashing on the shore of Arnhem Land. Like most ships, its crew is all male. They survive the landing, and end up warring with a local tribe. Eventually, they kill off most of the men and annex the…

This is a completely baseless theory with no citations or evidence at all other than the “11% ancestry” (what does that mean?). “Let assume that this new analysis is correct.” Yeah okay mate. I wouldn’t say that “this is a known fact”

it's based on DNA studies and ancestry percentage has a perfectly well-defined meaning

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#18

Post by pigscantfly »

ace2358 wrote: post #7
stolen_biscuit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-derived language families and developed from around the time of the Dingo introduction (only 4000 years ago) Source? Australia has been continuously populated by Aboriginal people for 60,000+ years, with over 260 languages I find that claim incredibly hard to believe.

Especially only 4,000 years ago. I’m under the impression that the culture is much much older than that. Why would it change so quickly? Especially for a people’s that are quite traditional. At least as I understand it. I also understand that the native languages are mostly spoken and not written, are these Indian languages written?

Linguistic displacement can occur without genetic displacement. This has happened many times in history -- usually when a society's elite are displaced by a linguistically distinct foreign elite and their language is gradually adopted down the ranks of society as people seek advancement. Many branches of Proto-Indo-European (eg. Anatolian) are thought to have spread in this manner ie. with elite but not whole-population displacement.

I wasn't aware of this Australian language family example, but it may not be as surprising as it sounds at first.

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#19

Post by causality0 »

meepmorp wrote: post #8
runsWphotons wrote: post #2

Looks like this is quite old...they will probably find even more introgression. Something like 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-derived language families and developed from around the time of the Dingo introduction (only 4000 years ago), so there basically had to be a substantial amount of gene flow as well. Only a minority of the aboriginal languages come from an earlier substrate. It would be surprising…

> Something like 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-derived language families Nonsense.

He is correct.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0489-3

Re: Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry (2013)

#20

Post by ace2358 »

_dain_ wrote: post #17
ace2358 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a completely baseless theory with no citations or evidence at all other than the “11% ancestry” (what does that mean?). “Let assume that this new analysis is correct.” Yeah okay mate. I wouldn’t say that “this is a known fact”

it's based on DNA studies and ancestry percentage has a perfectly well-defined meaning

I understand how the theory of dna ancestry works, but it’s not so clear cut. We still don’t have a good understanding of how these things work over the time scales of Australia (60,000 years of inhabitation).

Saying that one boat accidentally crashed and took over Australia culturally is technically possible but completely without evidence, “11%” or not.

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