Andamanese Origins and the Central Race Lineage

[Euclides]

''Our data indicate that the
Andamanese have closer affinities to Asian
than to African populations and suggest that
they are the descendants of the early
Palaeolithic colonizers of Southeast Asia. In
contrast, the Nicobarese have genetic affinities
to groups widely distributed throughout Asia
today, presumably descended from Neolithic
agriculturalists.''


“Genetic Affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a Vanishing Human Population”
Thangaraj, K., Singh, L., Reddy, A. G., Rao, V. R., Sehgal, S. C., Underhill, P. A., Pierson, M., Frame, I. G., Hagelberg, E.
Current Biology, 2002, pages 1-18

[Renwein]

i wonder what's happened to the andamanese following the earthquake. the bbc website says that 'several islands' were submerged

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4128135.stm

[morfrain_encilgar]

Its a shame the part about physical anthropology isnt a bit more accurate, because only the low height of the Andamanese is similar to the Bambutids.

It also seems odd that they would use Howells to claim that the cranial resemblence of Andamanese is to Africans, rather than to Negritids elsewhere. Howells used the Andamanese to represent Negritids in his dataset, and here "Asian pygmoid" is being used more inclusively than Negritid.

Actually there are cranial similarities between the Andamanese and Caucasoids, and according to Harvati, the morphology of the Andamanese temporal bone, which reflects phylogenetic and functional evolution well, is different to most modern populations in some ways. Interestingly there is some affinity with Qafzeh IX and Skhul V.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

i wonder what's happened to the andamanese following the earthquake. the bbc website says that 'several islands' were submerged

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4128135.stm

The elevation of the individual islands would determine what happened. If it was only a coral atoll, then the wave would carry everything on the island out to sea. If these islands are volcanic or higher in elevation, then they will do better.

[Frans_Jozef]

Oxford research traces early human migration from Africa to Asia

News
28 January 2003

Research by Oxford University and collaborators has shed new light on the last 100,000 years of human migration from Africa into Asia. The new genetic study confirms that some of the earliest migrants travelled into Asia by a southern route, possibly along the coasts of what are now Pakistan and India.

The researchers identified a genetic marker in museum samples of inaccessible populations from the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. This allowed them to re-interpret previous genetic studies from the Indian sub-continent.

Professor Alan Cooper, Director of the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre at Oxford University, who led the study, said: 'The findings mark a significant step forward in our understanding of the nature and timing of human settlement of the world outside Africa, and may even give us a glimpse of what these ancient explorers looked like genetically.'

The Andaman Islanders have been an enigma since the early days of Victorian anthropology due to their distinctive physical appearance. They have a very short stature, dark pigmentation and tight curly hair which contrasts with settled populations practising agriculture in the region. The same features link them to other isolated populations throughout Southern Asia, many of whom are hunter-gatherers. This has lead to speculation that these groups might represent the original inhabitants of the region who have either been replaced or absorbed into more recent population expansions. More fancifully, some people have speculated that they are related to African Pygmy populations.

Relationships between different groups of people can be described by analysing mutations in mitochondrial DNA, a genetic component that is passed on maternally. The majority of people in Asia have been shown to carry mitochondrial DNA of a type known as haplogroup M, which has several subgroups and can be traced back 60,000 years. In the new study, the Andamans have been shown to belong to the M group, and most likely to its subgroup M2, which is around 53,000 years old. This provides evidence that the Andamanese are no more related to Africans than any of the rest of Eurasian populations, and may indeed be linked to surviving hunter-gatherer groups in mainland India who also carry the M2 marker. These groups are found at high frequency in the south of India, consistent with an original settlement of Asia by a coastal route within the last 100,000 years.

Dr Vincent Macaulay of the Department of Statistics in Oxford commented: 'Detailed analysis of haplogroup M will help us to flesh out the tempo and mode of this southern dispersal, which may have reached Australia and New Guinea very rapidly. The sequencing and analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes will play an important role.'

Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who took part in the study, said: 'The findings suggest that the similarities between these now isolated populations of Asia are not coincidental and that these peoples really do share a common history. The presence of M2 in significant proportions amongst the more European looking caste populations of India indicates that many of these early settlers were absorbed into later population expansions.'

The success of this study has led to the award of a major grant from the National Environment Research Council (NERC) to extend the work to other now vanished populations in the region. The aim of the 'Indian Rim Project' is to understand the nature and timing of human evolution and migration throughout this area and the effects of environmental change on these patterns.

For further information and a picture of the Andaman Islanders, please contact the Press Office on 01865 280528.

Notes to editors:

• These findings have been published in Philip Endicott et al. 2003, 'The Genetic Origins of the Andaman Islanders', American Journal of Human Genetics 72:178–184.
• The Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre, directed by Professor Alan Cooper, is part of the Oxford University Department of Zoology. Current research areas include the analysis of permafrost preserved mammals and plants, island evolution and extinctions, and the investigation of DNA from archaeological specimens. Following a successful bid to the Wellcome Trust and the UK government (JIF grant), new premises are currently being built in the Science Area and due to open in Spring 2003. For further information on the work of the Ancient Biomolecules Centre go to http://abc.zoo.ox.ac.uk

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/030128.shtml

[Frans_Jozef]

For the record, Central Race Lineage is a libertine translation for Weinert's concept of the Mittlere Linie, acutely and in a terrific fashion pointed out by Nordgau:

http://www.forums.skadi.net/showthre...ghlight=weinert

I know a good concept of classification of the races of mankind from Hans Weinert, Entstehung der Menschenrassen, Stuttgart 1941:

Weinert makes a "main line" or middle line of recent racial forms. On the bottom of this middle line is the "dark part" of this middle line: Australians, Weddas, Weddids, Drawidas, Tasmanians (exterminated), Melanesians and Negritos. These are the racial forms that stayed primitive, not only of the middle line, but also of mankind.
In the middle of the middle line are the Ainu: more developed and not as primitive as the races named before, but also not as developed as the real Caucasians and Europids.
On the upper part of the middle line of mankind are its developed and specialized forms, its fair parts: first, the surely not primitive, but developed Polynesians, and then the real Europids from Indids up to Nordids.

This is not a real "ancestry tree", because all races are recent, existing races of today's mankind. It only says, that Australians and so on (the dark part of the middle line) didn't develope and stayed primitive in their forms, while this middle line's other parts in other areas of the world, developed by mutation and selection to "higher" and more specialiced forms, though their ancestors surely looked more like Australians.

But nevertheless, one still can see the certain common ground of the dark part and the fair part of the middle line in the phenotypical forms, compared with the two side lines of mankind: the left line: the Negrids (with Hottentotts, Buschmänner [I don't know the English name - "Bushmen"?] Pygmies), and the right line: the Mongolids (with Indians, Eskimos and Malai).

These two side lines are clear different from the middle line, they are from an evolutionary view young and specialized forms of mankind. In spite of the dark skin, the Australian cannot be together with the Negro: the Australian is from his phenotype primitive and archaic, while the Negro shows everywhere (head shape, prognathy, lips, ... ) the characteristics of a specialized and developed African type of mankind. The same with the Mongolid who is in all his forms a developed and specialized form of North-East Asian environment.

So, mainly, one can make a division between three clear different lines of mankind, the "caucasian race", the "black race" and the "yellow race". Negroes and Mongolids are side lines quite different from the middle line, while the "caucasian race" (Europids) is the developed part of the middle line of mankind; the Australians and so on are the dark part of the middle line where there had been no or much less development and specialization than among the Europids.

[Allenson]

This is an interesting site on the Andamanese:

http://www.andaman.org/

Table of contents here with some info on anthropology and genetics:

http://www.andaman.org/book/text.htm

[morfrain_encilgar]

For the record, Central Race Lineage is a libertine translation for Weinert's concept of the Mittlere Linie, acutely and in a terrific fashion pointed out by Nordgau:

Caucasoids are less plesiomorphic in cranial anatomy than the Australoids are, but still generalised compared to Negroids or especially Mongoloids. The dental traits of Western Eurasians are more useful in identifying the Caucasoid lineage from as early as the Upper Paleolithic and showing there was a boundary between Eurasia and subsaharan Africa in the Paleolithic which prevented easy migration between these regions.

[Frans_Jozef]

Caucasoids are less plesiomorphic in cranial anatomy than the Australoids are, but still generalised compared to Negroids or especially Mongoloids. The dental traits of Western Eurasians are more useful in identifying the Caucasoid lineage from as early as the Upper Paleolithic and showing there was a boundary between Eurasia and subsaharan Africa in the Paleolithic which prevented easy migration between these regions.

This stands for a paradox, since the Andaman Islanders are believed in the OoA theory to descend from the early migrants who extending along the shores of the Indian Ocean will at long last boom into Australia, and the Andamanese according to Hanihara show a relationship to the Mechtoids.

Additionally, Loring Brace insist on a homomorphy of NW European skulls with those of Neanderthals, while modern Europeans and Neanderthals muster up further anatomical kinship in broader skull width in respect to the bizygomatic breadth.
Non-Europid usually have extreme narrow skull breadths.

[morfrain_encilgar]

This stands for a paradox, since the Andaman Islanders are believed in the OoA theory to descend from the early migrants who extending along the shores of the Indian Ocean will at long last boom into Australia, and the Andamanese according to Hanihara show a relationship to the Mechtoids.

Where did Hanihara find an affinity between Andamanese and Iberomaurusians? I know Harvati found that in one study but I didnt know that Hanihara did.