Geneticists Shake UP the Mix Again

[Minimalist]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... ney123.xml

Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations.

The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the entire human genetic makeup, or genome.

[kbs2244]

Not just in the Artic, but in the Pacific too.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 052308.php

How did all those people get around so much?
And where did they come from?

[Ishtar]

That the Indians are related to the Siberians will come as no surprise to Indian historians, who've always said that the composers of the Vedas travelled south from Siberia after the last ice age into India. They claim that they came into India further east, from Nepal, and then made their way north westwards towards where they eventually settled, the Indus valley.

In recent years, archaeological digs along that route have uncovered artefacts that could show a migratory trail of sorts.

Here's a map I did a while back. The blue circle shows their path of migration and how they eventually pushed out the indigenous Anu tribe west and northwest into Afghanistan. The longer, red lozenge shape shows the Indus valley, stretching from India into Pakistan. And the smaller red circles show recent archaeological digs:

http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=270163&sid=FTP

Vadodara, Jan 21: Recent excavations in parts of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Pakistan have made the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) believe that a developed civilization possibly existed in the region in the 6th millennium BC, assumed to be older than the Indus valley civilisation.

According to ASI Director Dr B R Mani, the civilisation, believed to be much older than the Indus civilisation of the second and third millennium BC, stretched from Iran in the west to North Bengal in the east.

So could the Sindhi (the Indian race used in the first article's sample) be the modern day descendants of the composers of the Vedas?

When their forefathers settled in what's now known as Pakistan, it was still part of India. But many of the Sindhi had to leave that land in 1947 when it was partitioned off by the British, declared a Moslem-only country and named Pakistan.

But the very name of the Sindhi is what that part of India was originally called before Alexander's Greeks mis-named the river Sindhu 'Hindu'.

The river Sindhu was also known as the river Indhu, thus giving us the Indus Valley.

[Minimalist]

Is it even possible to cross at Nepal, Ish? I thought the whole point of the strategic importance of the Khyber Pass ( in Afghanistan) is that it was the main route through the mountains from Central Asia to India.

Of course your "red lozenge" is pretty close to the Khyber Pass which seems fairly logical to me!

[Ishtar]

Good point, but ... Siberia is just north of the Gobi desert and Mongolia, and to the direct south is Tibet. There are trade routes through the Himalayas from China, via Ladakh in Tibet, then into Nepal and then into India.

And... oh dear...I know where this is going. Oh well, here goes....there are rivers that come down from Tibet, so maybe they came in boats.

The Indus begins in Tibet at the confluence of Sengge and Gar rivers and flows southwest through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. It is fed by the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej rivers, among others.

Most of the other Himalayan rivers drain the Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin. Its two main rivers are the Ganga and the Brahma and the Yamuna among other tributaries. The Brahmaputra originates as the Yarlung Tsangpo River in western Tibet, and flows east through Tibet and west through the plains of Assam. The Ganga and the Brahmaputra meet in Bangladesh, and drain into the Bay of Bengal through the world's largest river delta.

I've bolded the Ravi because that river is the setting for one of the earliest stories in the Rig-veda, the battle of Sudas and the Ten Kings. Sudas was a Puru (the Purus are thought to have composed most of the Vedas) and the ten kings that Sudas and his men fought against were from tribes with Iranian sounding names. Sudas and his men won against all the odds, so this could be a quasi-historical account of the Purus having to battle the Anu tribe before pushing them north-west and westwards - Iran and Afghanistan. The Ravi is in the Punjab, which is named after the Purus.

So could they have come via China? Interestingly, the article about gene flow also between the Orcadians and the Siberians also says this:

The Orcadians, or those closely related to them in central/northern Europe, also contribute to two other North East Asian populations, the Hezhen and Han from Northern China.

[kbs2244]

Ish,
We are talking about “The Roof of the World” here.
Those trade routes are literally goat trails and they use sheep as the pack animals.
They are used only for the two most valuable thing on the planet.
Salt going south and gold going north.
It is a rite of passage into manhood to make the trip.
And those river are more vertical than horizontal.
Neither would be a “migration” route.
The Khyber Pass is at least useable by donkey and horse.
I have no doubt that people got around, but Nepal and Tibet are not likely to be the route.

[Ishtar]

You may be right, KB ... I'm not an expert on migratory routes.

But we do know that the Chinese have always considered Tibet their own country, and so there would have been routes in ... possibly the same route that the Chinese army took in 1949?

The routes from Tibet through Nepal into India are well known enough today. I wouldn't say they are exactly major trunk roads by any means, but they are more than goat trails and you just need an experienced guide.

Michael Woods took a whole camera crew up through the Nepal route to Tibet for one programme in his brilliant series of documentaries: In Search of Myths and Heroes, ... and I don't think he considered it a rite of passage, although personally, I wouldn't want to have done it!

Also, there's a fascinating book you might enjoy called Himmler's Crusade. It's about a party of German anthropologists, led by Ernst Shafer, who trekked to Tibet in 1938 on behalf of the German Reichfuhrer in the hope of finding the much-vaunted Aryan connection. Half the book is about how they went up through the foothills of Himalayas at Sikkim, which is bordered by Nepal on its west. His party had a hell of a job with the local British politicos (being practically already on a war footing), but still they made it to Tibet.

The Hindu Kush (Khyber Pass) is much further west.

[Minimalist]

so maybe they came in boats.

ROTFLMAO. Yeah, but one waterfall or decent set of rapids would make for a real short trip!

[dannan14]

ROTFLMAO. Yeah, but one waterfall or decent set of rapids would make for a real short trip!

Yup, i think they proved that in the movie 'Deliverance'

[Digit]

As I recall Ish there is a high pass that fits but open only in the summer.

[Ishtar]

Yes, Dig. I've been having a hunt around and there are some ways through which shouldn't have been too much of a stretch for tough, hunter gatherer, nomadic types.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas

The rugged terrain of the Himalaya makes few routes through the mountains possible. Some of these routes include:

1. Gangtok in Sikkim to Lhasa in Tibet, via the Nathula Pass and Jelepla Passes (offshoots of the ancient Silk Road).

2. Bhadgaon in Nepal to Nyalam in Tibet.

3. Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, India.

4. The road from Srinagar in Kashmir via Leh to Tibet. This pass is now less used because of regional troubles. Many people are affected.

5. Mohan Pass is the principal pass in the Siwalik Hills, the southern most and geologically youngest foothills running parallel to the main Himalayas in Sikkim.

[Ishtar]

so maybe they came in boats.

ROTFLMAO. Yeah, but one waterfall or decent set of rapids would make for a real short trip!

OH GOOD! So not boats then! Hallelujah!

[Minimalist]

You remember the raft scene at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?

I'd say that would put the kabosch on the idea but they DID end up in India.

[Ishtar]

You remember the raft scene at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?

I'd say that would put the kabosch on the idea but they DID end up in India.

[Digit]

North of the Himalayas is the source of Lapiz Lazuli, which of course was highly prized in Egypt. If the price was right somebody would have carted it over the mountains and frankly I would say that it was the ideal commodity.
Single source, highly desirable and small in bulk.
Like Heroin.