[HN Gopher] Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry
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Aboriginal Australian genomes reveal Indian ancestry
Author : triyambakam
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-03-01 21:46 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| yesenadam wrote:
| (2013)
| _dain_ wrote:
| 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._
| ace2358 wrote:
| 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"
| _dain_ wrote:
| it's based on DNA studies and ancestry percentage has a
| perfectly well-defined meaning
| ace2358 wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway12245 wrote:
| This is "Nature News". The source article is
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1211927110
| runsWphotons wrote:
| 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 if there doesn't also
| emerge evidence of substantial conflicts around this time.
| elliotshep wrote:
| > Something like 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-
| derived language families
|
| Have you got a source for that?
| stolen_biscuit wrote:
| > 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2018/mar/14/most-....
| ace2358 wrote:
| 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?
| pigscantfly wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That happened in England after the Battle of Hastings.
| Upper crust English is still dominated by french words.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Something like 80% of Australian languages are from Indian-
| derived language families
|
| Nonsense.
| causality0 wrote:
| He is correct.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0489-3
| [deleted]
| programmer_dude wrote:
| The article has no information beyond "Indian". Which part of
| India? Which clan?
| yrdmb wrote:
| 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
| matrix12 wrote:
| Dravidians.
| labster wrote:
| Distant relations, it makes them Branch Dravidians.
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