October 03, 2012

rolloff analysis of South Indian Brahmins as Armenian+Chamar

The first analysis of this population showed that there were negative f3(Brahmin; X, Y) signals when X were a variety of West European, Balkan, and West Asian population, and Y either the Chamar or North Kannadi. In the first analysis I used Orcadians and North Kannadi. I have now carried out a new rolloff analysis on 470,559 SNPs, using Armenians_Y and Chamar_M as the reference populations.

The exponential fit can be seen below.
The admixture date is 142.814 +/- 15.010 generations, or 4,140 +/- 440 years, which seems to correspond quite well with commonly accepted dates for the formation of Indo-Iranian.

I have previously observed that:

These patterns can be well-explained, I believe, if we accept that Indo-Iranians are partially descended not only from the early Proto-Indo-Europeans of the Near East, but also from a second element that had conceivable "South Asian" affiliations. The most likely candidate for the "second element" is the population of the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC). The rise and demise of the BMAC fits well with the relative shallowness of the Indo-Iranian language family and its 2nd millennium BC breakup, and has been assigned an Indo-Iranian identity on other grounds by its excavator. As climate change led to the decline and abandonment of BMAC sites, its population must have spread outward: to the Iranian plateau, the steppe, and into South Asia, reinforcing the linguistic differentiation that must have already began over the extensive territory of the complex.
Quite possibly, as the West Asian element began mixing with the Sardinian-like population in Greece, another branch of the Indo-Europeans made its appearance east of the Caspian, in the territory of the BMAC, admixing with South Asian-like populations. Thus, it might seem that the Graeco-Aryan clade of Indo-European broke down during the Bronze Age, with one branch heading off to the Balkans, and another to the east. 

This scenario would also explain how the likely J2-bearing population associated with the earliest Proto-Indo-Europeans may have acquired the contrasting pattern I have previously described: the western (cis-Caspian) population would have admixed with R1b-bearers who occupy the "small arc" west and south of the Caspian, while the eastern (trans-Caspian) populations would have admixed with R1a-bearers who occupy the "large arc" in the flatlands north and east of the Caspian. It would also explain how the "western" branch (Graeco-Armenian) would have picked up Sardinian-like "Atlantic_Med" admixture, which is absent in the "eastern" Indo-Iranian branch.

At the same time, this scenario would explain the lack of "North European" admixture in the "western" branch (since this was shielded by the Caucasus and Black Sea from the northern Europeoids who may have lived north of these barriers), and explain it in the "eastern" branch (since the BMAC agriculturalists were in contact with presumably northern Europeoid groups inhabiting the steppelands, unhindered by any major physical barriers). (The relative absence of this admixture in the Graeco-Armenian branch may be advanced on the strength of its absence in Armenians, the evidence of a Sardinian-like Iron Age individual from Bulgaria, and the historical-era timing of admixture for the Greek population.)

It would be interesting to carry out similar experiments on Iranian groups, to see if they, too, present a similar pattern of admixture.

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