inferences from contemporary haplogroup distributions almost never necessarily imply anything. that is, there are more and less probable scenarios rooted in the principle of parsimony.

manju, steve oppenheimer in *the real eve* reviews all the M studies. i think there was a more recent one too, but i don’t follow the stuff closely.

It will be more accurate to say that there are more basal M lineages in India than anywhere else in the world, but since quite a few basal M lineages not detected in India are found in East Asia plus in such remote places as the Sahul and America (and I’m not talking about C and D but M* in ancient remains in North America) next to N lineages that are virtually absent from India (only derived R lineages are found), I don’t think we can say that India was the center of M expansion.

Could you please point me to the study? Or are you thinking about M10’42?

Is the genetic evidence conclusive about the date, direction and number of branches of the OOA ?

not sure if it’s totally relevant here. i guess we’d have to look at mtDNA coalescence times for haplogroup M, i think that’s ASI. don’t know off the top of my head. i believe that the andaman islanders spit from the ASI ~ 25 years ago. but there’s no reason that there couldn’t have been older/earlier arrivals. i think the stuff on haplogroup M in india suggests that the indian lineages are basal to the east asian ones, so i’d think we’re taking west -> east. i assume a split with a north and south branch in southeast asia, south leading to sahul, north leading to east asia. could have been more complicated than that though. the last 10,000 years is kind of looking confusing. perhaps the first 50,000 years was too.

According to this summary the cronology is as follows:

ASI ?
ANI. Around 10.000 kyrbp.
Munda From 10.000 to 5.000 kyrbp.
Indo-Aryans 4000-3000
Tibeto-Burmans. MOre recently

Just one doubt: when did the ASI arrived to South Asia ? And from where, east-asia, sahul or west-asia ? Is the genetic evidence conclusive about the date, direction and number of branches of the OOA ? Regarding the direction i mean: africa>west-asia>south-asia>sahul>southeast asia>east-asia in stead of a possible alternative west-asia>central asia>east-asia>south-east-asia>sahul>south asia>central asia>America ?

Excellent post anyway !

Yes, also at Titriş Höyük, SE Anatolia:

“This report describes a pilot study examining aDNA from a skeletal population excavated in the 1990s at the late Early Bronze Age (EBA, c. 2300-2100 BC) urban settlement of Titriş Höyük in southeastern Turkey. Typically, late EBA burials at Titriş Höyük consisted of periodically reused underground family crypts contained within houses.”

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oa.1213/abstract

I think you’re correct that the Dravidians were the original ANI wave, prior to the Indo-Aryans. It also seems that Dravidian speakers inhabited Harappa, and burial under the floor of the house was common in Anatolia at sites like Çatal Höyük, where:

The people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within the village. Human remains have been found in pits beneath the floors, and especially beneath hearths, the platforms within the main rooms and under the beds. The bodies were tightly flexed before burial, and were often placed in baskets or wrapped in reed mats. Disarticulated bones in some graves suggest that bodies may have been exposed in the open air for a time before the bones were gathered and buried. In some cases, graves were disturbed and the individual’s head removed from the skeleton. These heads may have been used in ritual, as some were found in other areas of the community. Some skulls were plastered and painted with ochre to recreate human-like faces, a custom more characteristic of Neolithic sites in Syria and at Neolithic Jericho than at sites closer by.

I tend to go by linguistic groupings and trait clusters over genetic inferences, when they conflict, and then look for a genetic pattern that supports linguistics, as genetic markers are subject to gene flow, drift, etc. We have good cases studies such as Hungarian, Ket, Burishaski and European Roma that show that gene flow obfuscates ancient kinship or creates illusions of recent common origin, while languages still preserve the former better. O2a may just be an artifact of eff population size differences but otherwise Austroasiatic-speakers expanded from NE India back to (South)east Asia.

the mycenaeans are not equivalent in scale, but they too are a civilization without a literary record. they seem to have used linear B for accounting purposes only.

Seriously, progress in Harappan philology may well give us a hint or three about the descent of South Asians.

the harappans did not cremate, but practiced burial. additionally, i think they often buried people underneath their houses. india’s climate being what it is the preservation will not be good, but there’s always a chance of getting stuff from subfossils.

Except that the lazy buggers somehow managed to build a large-scale society without leaving any significant literary record.

(…or at least, none that we have found yet).

Seriously, progress in Harappan philology may well give us a hint or three about the descent of South Asians. That’s on my wish list for the Archeology Fairy.