Genome Study Investigates Origins of India’s Modern Population

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA—According to a Live Science report, Elise Kerdoncuff of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues analyzed more than 2,700 genomes of modern Indians who live in 17 Indian states and represent speakers of the country’s major languages and tribal and caste groups. The study suggests that the population has three main ancestral groups, including Neolithic farmers from the area of Sarazm in what is now northwestern Tajikistan; pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe; and hunter-gatherers from South Asia. The study also determined that an influx of people to India from Africa some 50,000 years ago brought genetic variation to these three ancestral groups. A separate analysis of the genomes determined that like most non-Africans, Indians inherited between one and two percent of their DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans. The researchers noted that almost 90 percent of all known Neanderthal genes found in modern humans today were detected in the genomes studied. It is not known if Neanderthals and Denisovans lived in the area, or if their genes were carried to India by modern humans after encounters with Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia. To read more about the study of Denisovan DNA, go to “Denisovans at Altitude,” one of ARCHAEOLOGY’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2019.