Comments on: Dravidian & Korku People Of India Maybe Descendants Of Middle/Early Upper Paleolithic Settlers

By: Jim Stahl

Jim Stahl — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:22:55 +0000

This is really interesting research. I am curious though about the link to Dravidian languages since Korku is classified as an Austro-Asiatic language, related to Santali.

By: yourmom

yourmom — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:15:08 +0000

jesus christ, dravidian speaking tribe does not mean racially dravidian. in order to find out the genetics of dravidians use high caste south indians, for they are the most endogamous population hence probably having least australoid admixture from pariahs.

By: Martina

Martina — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:43:14 +0000

I have researched my genealogy quite extensively and suspected my maternal 8th g-grandmother to have been from Indian slave descent, assimilated into colonial Dutch culture in the late 1600′s. I had my mtDNA tested by the Genographic Project, hoping this would indicate an approximate geographic area of origin, but the answer I got was very vague – haplogroup M* with 3 variations from CRS in HVR1 at 16184T, 16223T & 16519C. So although it has confirmed my suspicions in broad terms, it has so far not been very helpful at all beyond this. It was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless, I am trying to make as much sense of it as I can. I am beginning to understand that of these 3 variations only 16184T may be of little but maybe some value in terms of trying to identify a subhaplogroup. In which sub-haplogroups of M* does 16184 occur, and if so can it be traced to a geographic area, a bit more specific than a band stretching part-way round the globe from Arabia to Australia? Is there a website where one can see all the subhaplogroups of M* listed with each ones charateristic identifying variations?

By: razib

razib — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:29:23 +0000

first, i would say that this is just an add-on to what toomas kisivild et. al. have been claiming.

second, i think we should be a bit cautious about 72 mtDNA lineages. after all, uniparental and such.

finally, just a minor precision quibble, but these are *dravidian speaking* *tribals* so the genetics here is representative of tribal people (those outside the caste system), not the vast majority of dravidian speakers (tamils, malayalis, telugus and kannadas). there is some philological evidence that many of these tribal people spoke different languages earlier, and that they picked up dravidian only in the last 10,000 years (based on some of the words in dravidian which seem to indicate that this group spread with agriculture, and the fact that elamite in khuzistan might have been a dravidian-related language).