Indian Inbreeding, Genetic Risks, Aryan Invasion Theory

Medical research results show a particular genetic past that has resulted in unique genetic risks specific to an unmixed tribal-dominated society:

The researchers' work also has surprising and important medical implications. They discovered that many groups in modern India descend from a small number of founding individuals, and have since been genetically isolated from other groups. In scientific parlance this is called a "founder event."

"The finding that a large proportion of modern Indians descend from founder events means that India is genetically not a single large population, but instead is best described as many smaller isolated populations," said Singh. Thangaraj continued, "The widespread history of founder events helps explain why the incidence of genetic diseases among Indians is different from the rest of the world."

Founder events in other groups, such as Finns and Ashkenazi Jews, are well known to increase the incidence of recessive genetic diseases, and the new study predicts that the same will be true for many groups in India. "It is important to carry out a systematic survey of Indian groups to identify which ones descend from the strongest founder events," said Reich. "Further studies of these groups should lead to the rapid discovery of genes that cause devastating diseases, and will help in the clinical care of individuals and their families who are at risk."

...

To shed light on genetic variability across the Indian subcontinent, the research team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 diverse groups, representing 13 states, all six language families, traditionally "upper" and "lower" castes, and tribal groups.

These genomic analyses revealed two ancestral populations. "Different Indian groups have inherited forty to eighty percent of their ancestry from a population that we call the Ancestral North Indians who are related to western Eurasians, and the rest from the Ancestral South Indians, who are not related to any group outside India," said co-author David Reich, an associate professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

On the other hand, it validates the Aryan Invasion Theory, that says invaders came down from the north into the subcontinent, which was already inhabited.