Waves of migration into South Asia

[bmoney]

Those areas are not of importance till Antiquity. The Yadavs seem to vary , but they have nil to very low Steppe. My point is even if there were Irula/Paniya populations scattered around, I am quite sure the main populations in towns or urban settings were on the SIS3 cline in the Western Uttar Pradesh/Haryana region. Well we will find out soon enough. Though regions in the East are a different ball game but the Steppe these people get is from mixing with other Northern Indians from the west.

But Gangetic Brahmins score 5-10% extra steppe on average compared to Iron Age Indo-Aryans from Punjab although there is variation in the Swat results.

I'm not saying the people before them were Paniya, but rather a mix of AASI/Munda like peoples as the Narasimhan paper mentions that when Austro-Asiatics arrived, the area was nearly devoid of Iran_N ancestry, and this is well after Mehrgarh.

West UP and Haryana would of course have more NW influence as Rakhigarhi was a part of the Harappan civ

My guess is the eastern area was heavily forested and converted into farmable plains much later by the Indo-Aryan settlers themselves, so like you imply Indo-Aryans with Iranic ancestry from the BMAC and Punjab admixing further on their way in

[parasar]

Retroflex consonants were likely not present in old Magadhi. In its successor languages such as Bangali retroflex consonants are rare.
For even a key word such as brahmaNa we say babhan. The Buddha used the same form in circa 550 BC and did Asok in his inscriptions. The murdhanyas are rare in the east but increase as we go west and south. But over a period some retroflex consonants have crept in due to the immense Sanskritization over time. Assamese is still retroflex free.

In circa 500 BC the Magadhan chief Sisunaag banned retroflex usage (Rajasekhara's Kavyamimamsa p. 50, Sisunaag prohibited the utterance of eight harsh retroflex sounds) indicating some Dravidian contact in that period as retroflexes are minimal in TB and AA languages.

"In geographic terms, retroflexion is most prominent in the south, west and northwest,
where the bulk of Dravidian and Indo-Iranian languages are spoken. It is least prominent in the
northeast, where it is absent from most Tibeto-Burman languages, Khasi (Austro-Asiatic, MonKhmer),
the Tai-Kadai languages of Assam, and even the Indo-Aryan language, Asamiya
(a.k.a. Assamese)."
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/b...PhD_thesis.pdf

"Although still named Murdhônyô when they are being taught, retroflex consonants do not exist in Bengali and are instead fronted to their postalveolar and alveolar equivalents"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_alphabet

[pegasus]

Retroflex consonants were likely not present in old Magadhi. In its successor languages such as Bangali retroflex consonants are rare.
For even a key word such as brahmaNa we say babhan. The Buddha used the same form in circa 550 BC and did Asok in his inscriptions. The murdhanyas are rare in the east but increase as we go west and south. But over a period some retroflex consonants have crept in due to the immense Sanskritization over time. Assamese is still retroflex free.

In circa 500 BC the Magadhan chief Sisunaag banned retroflex usage (Rajasekhara's Kavyamimamsa p. 50, Sisunaag prohibited the utterance of eight harsh retroflex sounds) indicating some Dravidian contact in that period as retroflexes are minimal in TB and AA languages.

"In geographic terms, retroflexion is most prominent in the south, west and northwest,
where the bulk of Dravidian and Indo-Iranian languages are spoken. It is least prominent in the
northeast, where it is absent from most Tibeto-Burman languages, Khasi (Austro-Asiatic, MonKhmer),
the Tai-Kadai languages of Assam, and even the Indo-Aryan language, Asamiya
(a.k.a. Assamese)."
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/b...PhD_thesis.pdf

"Although still named Murdhônyô when they are being taught, retroflex consonants do not exist in Bengali and are instead fronted to their postalveolar and alveolar equivalents"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_alphabet

Yes this, reiterates my point that these IVC/Dravidian languages were spoken all the way up into the Hindu Kush.

[Generalissimo]

The South Asian cline that no longer exists

[parasar]

"Although there is evidence for migration into Europe from the steppes, the details of human movements are complex and involve independent acquisitions of horse cultures. Furthermore, it appears that the Indo-European Hittite language derived from Anatolia, not the steppes."
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6396/eaar7711

And, "The steppe people seem not to have penetrated South Asia [meaning: "early spread of Yamnaya Bronze Age pastoralists had limited genetic impact in Anatolia as well as Central and South Asia."]. Genetic evidence indicates an independent history involving western Eurasian admixture into ancient South Asian peoples."

"In South Asia, we identified at least two distinct waves of admixture from the west, the first occurring from a source related to the Copper Age Namazga farming culture from the southern edge of the steppe, who exhibit both the Iranian and the EHG components found in many contemporary Pakistani and Indian groups from across the subcontinent. The second came from Late Bronze Age steppe sources, with a genetic impact that is more localized in the north and west."

[Generalissimo]

Namazga_CA doesn't differ from most of the other BMAC samples, so saying that it has EHG ancestry doesn't change anything, because it's EHG-related ancestry that was already accounted for in the earlier models.

And I'm not sure what the big deal is that South Asians probably have steppe-related ancestry coming from the forest steppe near the Pontic-Caspian steppe, rather than the Pontic-Caspian steppe itself? The difference is a few miles and some trees. What is more interesting IMO is that this ancestry is more western than Yamnaya ancestry, and from deep within Europe's borders.

[bmoney]

Namazga_CA doesn't differ from most of the other BMAC samples, so saying that it has EHG ancestry doesn't change anything, because it's EHG-related ancestry that was already accounted for in the earlier models.

And I'm not sure what the big deal is that South Asians probably have steppe-related ancestry coming from the forest steppe near the Pontic-Caspian steppe, rather than the Pontic-Caspian steppe itself? The difference is a few miles and some trees. What is more interesting IMO is that this ancestry is more western than Yamnaya ancestry, and from deep within Europe's borders.

agreed, Namazga might be more relevant for South Indians and non-Sindhi Gedrosians and also might help differentiating steppe in NW South Asians from the BMAC

If z93 came from something resembling the Poltavka outlier, the source is very European-like. However the European ancestry is pretty diluted outside Brahmins, Utmankhels, NW South Asians etc who aren't anywhere near the majority of South Asian Indo-Aryans

Likely the main scenario was a few R1a founders bringing the pre-Aryan tribe/community into the Indo-Aryan fold, but no significant further mix from that point

In the case of South Indian non-Brahmin R1as, a few seeder Indo-Aryans who adopted Dravidian culture as the Dravidians were migrating South as @Asrafael mentioned in another thread. I've seen a few R1a South Indian mid-low castes with 0-2% NE Euro on Harappa

For South Indian Brahmins, they were just North Indian Brahmins who mixed with South Indian elites and diluted that way

[poi]

I know facts get lost in huge threads like these. And I am not keeping up with these topics lately, but has anything happened to make this wrong?

Europe got its steppe from half-Siberian Yamnaya like folks,
... while South Asia got its steppe from quarter-European Steppe MLBA folks.

All but a couple of 1500-500 BCE Swat Valley Iron Age samples had less than 20% steppe,
... so it is pretty dang clear the initial IndoAryans in South Asia were not that steppe-elevated.

Initial IndoAryans from the early 1st MM BCE had lower steppe than the modern NW SouthAsians and the Northern Brahmins.
Multiple Saka like waves added more steppe that we see today. Written history does point to this as well.

R1a "puzzle" seems like a slam dunk based on ancient DNA, since no R1a to be seen until 400 BCE from those dozens of 1500-500 BCE Iron Age samples.
Common sense and gut feeling say otherwise, but the genetic evidence points that R1a must have been non-Indo-Aryan when it arrived that late in South Asia.

[bmoney]

I know facts get lost in huge threads like these. And I am not keeping up with these topics lately, but has anything happened to make this wrong?

Europe got its steppe from half-Siberian Yamnaya like folks,
... while South Asia got its steppe from quarter-European Steppe MLBA folks.

All but a couple of 1500-500 BCE Swat Valley Iron Age samples had less than 20% steppe,
... so it is pretty dang clear the initial IndoAryans in South Asia were not that steppe-elevated.

Initial IndoAryans from the early 1st MM BCE had lower steppe than the modern NW SouthAsians and the Northern Brahmins.
Multiple Saka like waves added more steppe that we see today. Written history does point to this as well.

R1a "puzzle" seems like a slam dunk based on ancient DNA, since no R1a to be seen until 400 BCE from those dozens of 1500-500 BCE Iron Age samples.
Common sense and gut feeling say otherwise, but the genetic evidence points that R1a must have been non-Indo-Aryan when it arrived that late in South Asia.

Its confusing. But R1a had to have been there in the beginning.

Theres no way the Scythians could have had the same y impact even though they were historically significant

Anyway, the more adna the better

[Generalissimo]

Europe got its steppe from half-Siberian Yamnaya like folks.

Yamnaya is over half Eastern European Hunter-Gatherer (EHG), and the rest Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) and Middle Neolithic European farmer.

So definitely not half Siberian.

I know that there's a preference by some to claim that EHG is actually Siberian, but this isn't a reasonable claim, because EHG existed west of the Urals (in Europe) already 12,000 years ago, and is not recorded anywhere east of the Urals (in Siberia) at any time.

R1a "puzzle" seems like a slam dunk based on ancient DNA, since no R1a to be seen until 400 BCE from those dozens of 1500-500 BCE Iron Age samples.
Common sense and gut feeling say otherwise, but the genetic evidence points that R1a must have been non-Indo-Aryan when it arrived that late in South Asia.

R1a-L657 is definitely the Indo-Aryan marker and it came from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, where the Proto-Indo-Aryans lived because they loaned words to early Uralics who lived in the nearby forests, so there's no point forcing another narrative.