Toomas Kivisild Quotes

We found an extensive deep late Pleistocene genetic link between contemporary Europeans and Indians, provided by the mtDNA haplogroup U, which encompasses roughly a fifth of mtDNA lineages of both populations. Our estimate for this split [between Europeans and Indians] is close to the suggested time for the peopling of Asia and the first expansion of anatomically modern humans in Eurasia and likely pre-dates their spread to Europe.” ...the genetic affinity between the Indian subcontinent and Europe “should not be interpreted in terms of a recent admixture of western Caucasoids10 with Indians caused by a putative Indo-Aryan invasion 3,000–4,000 years BP.”

This neatly fits the earlier findings of non-genetic (morphological) physical anthropology, viz. that the population type of northwestern India has remained the same for at least 8,000 years.... In deference to established Indological opinion, the biologists make a perfunctory nod toward the “supposed” Aryan invasion, only to state that they have found no evidence for this popular supposition: “Their low frequency [i.e. of the West-Asia-related genes] but still general spread all over India plus the estimated time scale does not support a recent massive Aryan invasion, at least as far as maternally inherited genetic lineages are concerned.”

Indian and western Eurasian haplogroup U varieties differ profoundly; the split has occurred about as early as the split between the Indian and eastern Asian haplogroup M varieties. The data show that both M and U exhibited an expansion phase some 50,000 years ago, which should have happened after the corresponding splits.... We believe that there are now enough reasons not only to question a 'recent Indo-Aryan invasion' into India some 4000 BP, but alternatively to consider India as a part of the common gene pool ancestral to the diversity of human maternal lineages in Europe.

In 2003 Kivisild and colleagues questioned the correlation between subsistence categories and genetic difference. Their conclusions highlighted India’s genetic complexity and antiquity, since “present‐day Indians [possess] at least 90 per cent of what we think of as autoch- thonous Upper Paleolithic maternal lineages.” Significantly, “the Indian mtDNA tree in general [is] not subdivided according to linguistic (Indo‐European, Dravidian) or caste affiliations, although there may occur (sometimes drastic) population‐wise differences in frequencies of particular sub‐clusters” (Kivisild et al., 2003a: 216–221). In other words, their results found broad agreement with archaeology and anthropology in con- cluding that language and ethnicity cannot be mapped in a one‐to‐one correspondence relationship. ...
present-day Indians [possess] at least 90 per cent of what we think of as autochthonous Upper Palaeolithic maternal lineages.... “the Indian mtDNA tree in general [is] not subdivided according to linguistic (Indo-European, Dravidian) or caste affiliations,”... the straightforward suggestion would be that both Neolithic (agriculture) and Indo-European languages arose in India and from there, spread to Europe.”

In 2000 Kivisild and colleagues found that “even the high castes share more than 80 per cent of their maternal lineages with the lower castes and tribals.” Taking all aspects into consideration, the authors concluded that “there are now enough reasons not only to question a ‘recent Indo‐Aryan invasion’ into India some 4000 BP, but alternatively to consider India as a part of the common gene pool ancestral to the diversity of human maternal lineages in Europe” (Kivisild et al., 2000: 267–271).