Tuesday, December 24, 2019

The four fathers of the Munda

With a hat-tip to Turtle Island: some six weeks ago, Prajjval Pratap Singh uploaded a team paper (pdf) onto the arxiv, about the Munda in eastern [trans]India. (Which I'm tempted to label "Gangea".) The Munda shared male DNA and language in common. But they did not develop any of that in India.

Most Munda descend from haplogroup O2a-M95. It turns out, though, that O2a-M95 origins precede 10000 BC and the ancestor's descendants cluster southeast Asian. Indian Munda sons of O2a-M95 cluster in two separate lineages: B419 in east Bengal; B418 among the North Munda - and these didn't mix. Two others, M1284 (rare) and B426 crop up in all the Munda populations.

From Figure 2, B419 is a subset of B418. That is: a descendant, maybe even a grandson. And they all descended from ancestral M1284. Scions of M1284, most of all B426, seem to have followed their B418 and B419 cousins westward.

Also I suspect B419 (alone) did spawn off within Bengal and Chittagong. Some consider that fringe as part of India - or of "Pakistan", as the modern Indus Valley would title it. I leave that to the politicians.

Of interest - to some - is that the men imposed their Australasian language(s). Again, it is often the case that women teach the language. I could see the eastern men simply swamping whatever locals there were, up to Bengal. I find that argument weaker for B418-Munda further west. Did B418 set up a trade-network up the Ganges?

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