

Genetic evidence suggests that, four millennia ago, Indians landed in Australia - benpbenp
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21569688-genetic-evidence-suggests-four-millennia-ago-group-adventurous-indians

======
hzay
>> Sadly, the archaeological record has yet to reveal tandoori ovens or
fossilised chapatis in Australia.

Only marginally relevant to the article but it never ceases to pain me when I
see another piece of evidence that the delicious and varied south indian
cuisine is not well-known outside south india.

~~~
Surio
I share your pain.

Blame it on the surfeit of "Balti houses" in UK which have managed to crowbar
faux north indian cuisine as _the only_ Indian cuisine into brit pop culture!

~~~
meaty
Try west London, particularly Hounslow. Plenty of south Indian cuisine and at
very reasonable prices.

------
spinonethird
In similar news, researches recently found that Madagascar was colonized by
Indonesian people, not people coming from mainland Africa. Moreover, there
were only about 30 female settlers (no information about male settlers as the
study was done on mitochondria DNA, which is only passed from mother to child,
but not from father to child).

<http://www.economist.com/node/21550759>

[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1739/2761...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1739/2761.short)

~~~
tokenadult
_In similar news, researches recently found that Madagascar was colonized by
Indonesian people, not people coming from mainland Africa._

The genetics study is a confirmation of a fact that was known for a long, long
time on linguistic grounds. (All of the major languages spoken on Madagascar
are Austronesian languages, cognate with the languages from farther east like
those of Indonesia and Polynesia.) The travel of some food crops to Madagascar
with the early seafaring settlers also suggested this.

------
mvermaat
Link to the original publication:
<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/09/1211927110>

(I'm sorry that it is behind a paywall.)

Irina Pugach, Frederick Delfin, Ellen Gunnarsdóttir, Manfred Kayser, and Mark
Stoneking. Genome-wide data substantiate Holocene gene flow from India to
Australia. PNAS 2013; published ahead of print January 14, 2013,
doi:10.1073/pnas.1211927110

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grecy
Near my hometown in Australia human remains have been found that are older
than any existing model of human migration says they aught to be.

Nobody has come up with a good explanation of how human could have been in
Australia so long ago.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mungo_remains>

------
chwolfe
If you're interested in the work being done to understand Indus script, Rajesh
Rao delivered a TED talk with plenty of machine learning goodness:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_ston...](http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_stone_for_the_indus_script.html)

~~~
kylebgorman
Rao's claims are nonsense, according to computational linguist Richard Sproat
(Bell Labs, University of Illinois, OHSU, now at Google):

<http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/newindex/indus.html>

~~~
srean
...and the counterargument has been debunked too. A lot of complaints were
just ad hominem attack alleging Tamil supremacy, Tamil ethnocentrism. The
first note of dicord that strikes you as an Indian is that bar one, all
authors of that paper were from North India. If any Tamil bias is expected
from that rergion it would be a bias against Tamil.

I dont know why Rao's claim (well they arent quite claims either, not yet
atleast, they are rather a call for further investigation) have been so
spectacularly blown out of proportion and why people get so upset about it.

Sproat at least does not say that Rao in any form claimed that his work
"proves" anything one way or the other, rather that it was the "discussion"
around the paper that claims a proof. I would have been happier if that
distinction was made clearer.

In anycase if you search HN you will find an interesting thread discussing
this topic. Learned quite a bit from it.

Here is the previous discussion <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4061748>
and some here as well

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4154755>

EDIT: @kylebgorman I dont consider myself qualified enough to agree or
disagree, but have to say that I was taken aback by the push back it received,
particulay the vociferous allegation of Tamil supremacy.

EDIT @kylebgorman wait I didnt say that the paper or the criticism was
ethnically biased, but that ethnic bias was a major criticism that was levied
against Rao's paper. This comment on the thread will have some examples
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4062129> rebuttals, counter rebuttals, ,
counter-counter... you get the idea.

~~~
kylebgorman
The many computational linguists who have discussed these papers in public
fora have expressed disgust with the scientific naïveity of the Rao et al.
paper; the pushback is due to its very poor scientific merits (in contrast
with its very high publication profile), not some ethnic bias as you seem to
allege.

------
strlen
This is very interesting, I always thought of Australian natives as having
been a part of an out-migration of similar populations (remnants of which
still exist, e.g., Andamanese in India, small populations in Thailand,
Malaysia, and Philippines, etc...) from South/South-East Asia -- with
intermarriage between further migrations (Indo-European speakers,
Austronesians, etc...) and these remnant populations leading to form the
different ethnic groups along the route of migration.

I wonder if another possible explanation for the Dravidic SNPs is due to
intermarriage with Indonesian population -- themselves probably bearing some
Dravidic DNA due to India's influence on Indonesia at one time -- that
traveled to Northern Australia from the late middle ages until early 20th
century for fishing and trade purposes.

------
bencollier49
It seems a little bit generous to allow 30 years per generation. The current
average maternal age at childbirth in Western Europe is apparently around 29.5
years old.

Wouldn't we expect that to be earlier in aboriginal cultures?

~~~
sageikosa
Only if you assume a generation is keyed on the "first" birth; it is
matrilineal; that culturally child-birthing begins as soon as puberty kicks in
(rather than being forestalled by social taboos or customs); and that puberty
kicks in at roughly the same age then as now, even in an area of scarce
resources.

I might think, off the bat, that 30 years is too high as well, but I also
might assume they picked that number for a reason. Certainly, I'd like to know
what it is as well, as that number is one of two key variables that creates
the time-span value used for dating.

~~~
cabalamat
> ...it is matrilineal...

Bear in mind they are counting mutations on the y-chromosome, which is based
from father to son. Over a wide range of cultures men on average mate with
women who are younder than them, so the time between generations by
patrilineal descent will be greater than the time by matrilineal descent.

~~~
bencollier49
Ahhh, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.

------
gus_massa
It's interesting the hypothesis that the dingoes came in the same migration.
Is there any study of the genome of dogs/lingoes classified by geographical
origin?

------
lrhot9
A scenario: <http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/>

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i386
If this is true, is there any evidence of cultural or technological
contamination? Surely these seafarers brought a lot of new ideas and
technology with them (such as agriculture).

------
ForFreedom
Can India claim rights to Australia?

------
noopx
The article has various flaws in it. That includes their imaginary dating of
the "Indian civilization" as well as the assumption behind the SNP mutations
based age and origin correlation. The nomenclature used on the map is also
wrong. There are more than a dozen mistakes in it.

There is no name of the author on the article either. I wonder if this is
propaganda, pure carelessness or something else. Did the Zurich guys even
approve publishing such non-sense?

~~~
cschmidt
That's an interestingly emotional, defensive response. Most HN readers would
simply have found it an cool scientific article. I don't think the Economist
science section really has a "propaganda" axe to grind. (And as others have
said, they never sign articles.) What's the source of your reaction?

~~~
pyre
It could just hit close to home. These anthropological 'origin stories'
sometimes contradict racial identity. For example, if you were to suggest that
the Japanese were descended from Korean farmers that emigrated from mainland
Korean, many Japanese would find that offensive because there is deep racial
hatred of Korea (though maybe only truly present in the older generations) and
a racial identity of being natives to Japan.

~~~
jlgreco
I wonder if English have ever felt similar offense when people point out the
role of France and the french language in their country's and language's
development.

~~~
willyt
Nope. When I realised, I thought holy shit, I pretty much speak French
already. Learn some glue words then any word ending in 'able' or 'cial' (and a
few others i forget) pronounced in a 'Allo 'Allo [0] accent and you are pretty
likely to be talking French. :-) [0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allo_Allo>!

