>> Sadly, the archaeological record has yet to reveal tandoori ovens or fossilised chapatis in Australia.<p>Only marginally relevant to the article but it never ceases to pain me when I see another piece of evidence that the delicious and varied south indian cuisine is not well-known outside south india.
In similar news, researches recently found that Madagascar was colonized by Indonesian people, not people coming from mainland Africa. Moreover, there were only about 30 female settlers (no information about male settlers as the study was done on mitochondria DNA, which is only passed from mother to child, but not from father to child).<p><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21550759" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/21550759</a><p><a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1739/2761.short" rel="nofollow">http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1739/2761...</a>
Link to the original publication: <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/09/1211927110" rel="nofollow">http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/09/1211927110</a><p>(I'm sorry that it is behind a paywall.)<p>Irina Pugach, Frederick Delfin, Ellen Gunnarsdóttir, Manfred Kayser, and Mark Stoneking. Genome-wide data substantiate Holocene gene flow from India to Australia. PNAS 2013; published ahead of print January 14, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1211927110
Near my hometown in Australia human remains have been found that are older than any existing model of human migration says they aught to be.<p>Nobody has come up with a good explanation of how human could have been in Australia so long ago.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mungo_remains" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mungo_remains</a>
If you're interested in the work being done to understand Indus script, Rajesh Rao delivered a TED talk with plenty of machine learning goodness:<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_stone_for_the_indus_script.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_ston...</a>
This is very interesting, I always thought of Australian natives as having been a part of an out-migration of similar populations (remnants of which still exist, e.g., Andamanese in India, small populations in Thailand, Malaysia, and Philippines, etc...) from South/South-East Asia -- with intermarriage between further migrations (Indo-European speakers, Austronesians, etc...) and these remnant populations leading to form the different ethnic groups along the route of migration.<p>I wonder if another possible explanation for the Dravidic SNPs is due to intermarriage with Indonesian population -- themselves probably bearing some Dravidic DNA due to India's influence on Indonesia at one time -- that traveled to Northern Australia from the late middle ages until early 20th century for fishing and trade purposes.
It seems a little bit generous to allow 30 years per generation. The current average maternal age at childbirth in Western Europe is apparently around 29.5 years old.<p>Wouldn't we expect that to be earlier in aboriginal cultures?
It's interesting the hypothesis that the dingoes came in the same migration. Is there any study of the genome of dogs/lingoes classified by geographical origin?
A scenario: <a href="http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/" rel="nofollow">http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/</a>
If this is true, is there any evidence of cultural or technological contamination? Surely these seafarers brought a lot of new ideas and technology with them (such as agriculture).
The article has various flaws in it. That includes their imaginary dating of the "Indian civilization" as well as the assumption behind the SNP mutations based age and origin correlation. The nomenclature used on the map is also wrong. There are more than a dozen mistakes in it.<p>There is no name of the author on the article either. I wonder if this is propaganda, pure carelessness or something else. Did the Zurich guys even approve publishing such non-sense?