Dr. Spencer Wells, who worked to Cavalli-Sforza and is featured in the documentary The Journey of Man (he has a book out by the same name-it’s a pretty slim volume just like Bryan Sykes’ Seven Daughters of Eve) was recently interviewed by the Indian news site Rediff. He illustrates how geneticists can run into a minefield of myth & history. Here is a funny snippet:
Some people say Aryans are the original inhabitants of India. What is your view on this theory?
The Aryans came from outside India. We actually have genetic evidence for that. Very clear genetic evidence from a marker that arose on the southern steppes of Russia and the Ukraine around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. And it subsequently spread to the east and south through Central Asia reaching India. It is on the higher frequency in the Indo-European speakers, the people who claim they are descendants of the Aryans, the Hindi speakers, the Bengalis, the other groups. Then it is at a lower frequency in the Dravidians. But there is clear evidence that there was a heavy migration from the steppes down towards India.
But some people claim that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India. What do you have to say about this?
I don’t agree with them. The Aryans came later, after the Dravidians.
I wish Wells was as direct when an Australian Aborigine told him that this Out-of-Africa stuff was crap and that his elders told him they had always been there. I watched the first half of the documentary-Dr. Wells looks like an albino, that’s what I kept thinking, oh, and wondering if he had any female relatives my age….
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