Wednesday, November 09, 2005

My ancestor didn't take that route, Dr. Wells.

My 35000 years and 7 months old deep ancestry is out. Just yesterday Genographic project team uploaded my results. I belong to Haplogroup R (M173) and I suppose that means I’m in fact R1.

However, Dr. Wells went completely wrong about my paternal ancestor’s journey over the period. Contrary to his video message that my ancestors went westward from Central Asia to Europe, they actually moved south and reached India. And now here I’m in South India. I suppose R1 is also found among Camerooneans, so he could have talked about the possibilities of descendents of M173 moving to Africa and South Asia. I suppose he can not talk only about the most common route taken by Haplogroup R1 people while giving personalized messages.

My close cousins:
Unsurprisingly, most of my matches are Indians including a Pakistani and a Parsi. However, there were couple of distant matches with Central Asians (an Uzbek and a Central Asian muslim from China). I suppose too obvious.

What next?
I can’t go for surname project since I don’t have a surname. I can’t go for gotra test since, I have inherited my gotra matrilineally and I suppose I have to go for an mtDNA testing to compare my maternal ancestry.

Does this journey correspond to my community's folk story?
My community has a folklore that we migrated (or driven) from South to North generations back. I suppose even few Scandinavians have that story and I think it has been compared with R1a1 migration to Scandinavian countries. However, not much luck in my case. The south to north distance is just 100kms. That is from Kannur to Kasaragod and Mangalore all in south-west coastal India.

Update: 10-November-2005
Am I really R1?
This discussion at Genealogy-DNA-L forum about R1b in India has left me wondering about the validity of my M173. My STR counts at DYS390-DYS391-DYS392 are 23-10-10. It looks like people who have those values generally found to be positive for M124 or Haplogroup R2, an Indian specific Haplogroup with high frequency in South India. And I'm South Indian.

Update: 11-November-2005
I'm not the only Indian unhappy with my genetic journey described by Spencer Wells.

6 comments:

Jhangora said...

So did you get your Y Haplogroup tested again?

I learnt from QAF that you are R2.

Arn't these tests done in India.I would like to know my ancestry.I could not grasp Y and mtDNA but Maju sent me a link and I think I'm getting interested in the subject.

Manju Edangam said...

Pasota:
I have not heard of any company in India till now. Few months back I heard a story that a company in Delhi was going to help some families to *prove* their lineage from the days of Ramayana! I don't know what happened to it.

Of course, I thought of starting my own company but there was no funding and no geneticist was ready to work, so you lost out a free testing :-).

Jhangora said...

Proving lineage from the days of Ramayana would be tough.Do we have any remains of people from that period?

I also think about starting business ventures about which I have no knowledge and funding has always been a problem.But therez a cousin who has made it big.I hope he would act as an angel investor.

On haplogroup testing in India.There are govt. labs.I think you need to give them an idea to commercialize this thing.

I think national geographic charges around 100 US $ for haplogroup testing.Is that right.

Manju Edangam said...

Yes, Genographic project charges something around that.

Regarding Ramayana people, I believe some families are being taken for a ride.

Icarus said...

I don't think it's easy to plot the journey of one's ancestors if one belongs to such a diverse mix of genes that is the Indian population. Do you know if anyone has conducted a study of the correlation between caste and haplogroups? I'm not a population geneticist, but my hunch is that such a study should throw light on the path of our ancestors, among other things.

Manju Edangam said...

Icarus:
Yes, many papers have come out in the last 12-13 years on Indian castes. Some of the main papers are;

Bamshad et al. 2001
Kivisild et al. 2003
Sengupta et al. 2006

Then there are others;
Basu et al. (forgot)
Sahoo et al. 2006

You can find all these papers on the web. Probably, you can start your search from Pubmedcentral.nih.gov