Tajik outpost

A new preprint on Indian genomics from Moorjani et al. Some figures and statements are a bit shoddy, but overall, it has good material.

1 notable result: only 22 out of 2126 from core Indian cline lack Aryan ancestry! They don’t tell us which part of or which jAti-s these hail from. That is only ~1% of the core India cline population has a purely pre-Aryan heritage – this illustrates the sheer magnitude of the genetic impact of the AI – something many of us have known for more than 2 decades. Yet is something the India pseudointellectuals constantly deny till they go blue in the face. It is hard to see a nation so disconnected from its ethnogenesis which stares at its face.

The authors present evidence that some Sarazm individuals are closest to the purely “Iranian farmer” type ancestry found in Indians. They also present evidence for a Harappan individual with shell ornaments at Sarazm, Tajikistan. This suggests that Sarazm was probably at the “Iranian farmer” pole of the Harappan genetic continuum from Northwest India to Tajikistan. This makes one wonder if the Sarazm culture spoke a language distantly related to Harappan & was a peripheral state to the “Harappan empire.” Interestingly, the Aryans probably had contact with the region even before the invasion. For example, . a lapis-lazuli bead the Harappan-periphery, Bactria, was found at a Sintashta site; a ceramic resembling a BMAC one has been found at a Petrovka site at Ust’e. Thus, the movement of the Aryans towards this region might have not been random but a deliberate entry into local politics with the breakdown of the Harappan empire.