{"id":19390,"date":"2013-08-30T14:19:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T06:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/?p=19390"},"modified":"2013-08-30T14:19:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T06:19:27","slug":"dna-tests-reveal-interesting-news-on-caste-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/religion\/2013\/08\/30\/dna-tests-reveal-interesting-news-on-caste-system\/","title":{"rendered":"DNA tests reveal interesting news on caste system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To quote the important statements:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Their finding,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cell.com\/AJHG\/abstract\/S0002-9297%2813%2900324-8\" target=\"_blank\">recently published<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0<em>American Journal of Human Genetics<\/em>, made waves when it was revealed that genetic mixing ended 1,900 years ago, around the same time the caste system was being codified in religious texts. The\u00a0Manusmriti, which forbade intermarriage between castes, was written in the same period, give or take a century.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thangaraj says the study shows only a correlation between the early caste system and the divergence of bloodlines, and whether one caused the other is a debate better left to historians. Nonetheless, it puts a stake in the ground, marking the moment when the belief that one should marry within one\u2019s own group developed into an active practice.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He also doesn\u2019t want the early signs of a caste system to overshadow another finding of his study \u2014 how completely the population mixed 2,000 years ago. He points to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paliyartribal.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Paliyar tribe<\/a>\u00a0in the foothills of southern India. Their villages are inaccessible by car, and outsiders cannot visit them without a government permit. \u201cThey\u2019re still in the forest,\u201d says Thangaraj, \u201cbut still they have some affinities with other groups. At some point in time, everybody was mixed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Regardless of the manusmriti, its interesting to note that genetic mixing was prevalent till 1,900 years ago in India, and it originates from two main bloodline groups: Africa and Eurasia. As mentioned, nearly every Indian can be traced to genetic mix of these two groups. Full article below.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\" data-responsive=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"India caste\" alt=\"India caste\" src=\"http:\/\/timeglobalspin.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/india_caste_0827.jpg?w=360&amp;h=240&amp;crop=1\" \/><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><figcaption>\n<blockquote><p><small>Dr. Kumarasamy Thangaraj<\/small>Kumarasamy Thangaraj takes a blood sample from an Andaman islander, as part of his research into the genetics of India&#8217;s castes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<blockquote>\n<aside>\n<div data-set=\"post-rail\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Dr-Kumarasamy-Thangaraj\/180656845296789\" target=\"_blank\">Kumarasamy Thangaraj<\/a>\u00a0traveled 840 miles (1,350 km) off of the eastern coast of\u00a0India\u00a0by plane, then ship, then six hours by car, then ship again to collect blood samples from an isolated tribe of hunter-gatherers on the\u00a0Andaman Islands. Their blood, he explained through an interpreter, would help him understand a pivotal moment in India\u2019s genetic history. The tribesmen had never heard of a gene before or an academic study for that matter, and the whole pitch struck them as an interesting diversion from their usual routine of spearfishing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThey mostly laughed,\u201d Thangaraj says, before they offered up their arms in exchange for food. A few needle pricks later, they returned to their boats to fling short wooden spears into the water with uncanny aim, while Thangaraj made the long journey home to Hyderabad. He deposited the latest samples into a blood bank, alongside another 32,000 samples from his countrymen.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The collective bloodlines at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccmb.res.in\/\" target=\"_blank\">Centre for Cellular &amp; Molecular Biology<\/a>, India\u2019s leading genetic-research institute, pose a unique riddle for researchers. On the one hand, geneticists can trace nearly all bloodlines back to two ancestral groups, one hailing from\u00a0Africa, the other from Eurasia. These groups mingled, married and swapped genes. A mixture of their genetic material can be found in nearly every person on the subcontinent today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But at some mysterious point in history, these braided bloodlines began to fray. The population divided along linguistic, religious and tribal lines, to the point where it separated into 4,635 distinct genetic groups.\u00a0Europe\u00a0and Asia look positively homogeneous in comparison, says Thangaraj. He and his collaborators at Harvard Medical School wanted to know when exactly the Indian melting pot stopped melting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Their finding,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cell.com\/AJHG\/abstract\/S0002-9297%2813%2900324-8\" target=\"_blank\">recently published<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0<em>American Journal of Human Genetics<\/em>, made waves when it was revealed that genetic mixing ended 1,900 years ago, around the same time the caste system was being codified in religious texts. The\u00a0Manusmriti, which forbade intermarriage between castes, was written in the same period, give or take a century.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thangaraj says the study shows only a correlation between the early caste system and the divergence of bloodlines, and whether one caused the other is a debate better left to historians. Nonetheless, it puts a stake in the ground, marking the moment when the belief that one should marry within one\u2019s own group developed into an active practice.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He also doesn\u2019t want the early signs of a caste system to overshadow another finding of his study \u2014 how completely the population mixed 2,000 years ago. He points to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paliyartribal.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Paliyar tribe<\/a>\u00a0in the foothills of southern India. Their villages are inaccessible by car, and outsiders cannot visit them without a government permit. \u201cThey\u2019re still in the forest,\u201d says Thangaraj, \u201cbut still they have some affinities with other groups. At some point in time, everybody was mixed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It\u2019s a point that he stresses to anyone who wants to turn bloodlines into battle lines. On Aug. 15, on India\u2019s independence day, a mob from the Rajput community in Bihar<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/other-states\/black-independence-day-for-dalits-in-bihar-village\/article5041981.ece\" target=\"_blank\">attacked<\/a>\u00a0men, women and children in the Dalit community. They beat them with rods, killing one and injuring 54. \u201cLook, we were all brothers and sisters 2,000 years back,\u201d Thangaraj says of this sort of violence, \u201cwhy are you fighting now?\u201d Although he did observe one notable outlier from the extended family: the spear-wielding fishermen of the Andaman Islands have no trace of the genetic mix that pervades the mainland. Proof that the only the thing that really could have stopped India\u2019s ancestral populations from mixing was an 840-mile schlep to a remote tropical island.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Read more:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/world.time.com\/2013\/08\/27\/what-dna-testing-reveals-about-indias-caste-system\/#ixzz2dQiYOQ2x\">http:\/\/world.time.com\/2013\/08\/27\/what-dna-testing-reveals-about-indias-caste-system\/#ixzz2dQiYOQ2x<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To quote the important statements: Their finding,\u00a0recently published\u00a0in the\u00a0American Journal of Human Genetics, made waves when it was revealed that genetic mixing ended 1,900 years ago, around the same time the caste system was being codified in religious texts. The\u00a0Manusmriti, which forbade intermarriage between castes, was written in the same period, give or take a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,12],"tags":[280,112,17,302],"class_list":["post-19390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indian","category-religion","category-techstuff","tag-culture","tag-discrimination","tag-hinduism","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19391,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19390\/revisions\/19391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}