Ancient Tamil Nadu in the News!

[Guest guest]

Chennai, January 5 - India's East Coast, especially along Tamil Nadu,

is increasingly drawing the attention of archaeologists and

anthropologists from across the world for its evolutionary and

historical secrets.

 

The focus has sharpened after genetic scientist Spencer Wells found

strains of genes in some communities of Tamil Nadu that were present

in the early man of Africa.

 

In the "Journey of Man" aired by the National Geographic channel,

Wells says the first wave of migration of early man from Africa took

place 60,000 years ago along the continent's east coast to India.

Genetic mapping of local populations provided the evidence.

 

RM Pitchappan, a professor of Madurai Kamaraj University in Tamil

Nadu, helped Wells collect the gene evidence from Tamil Nadu's

Piramlai Kallar people, inhabiting the Madurai and Usilampatti areas

500 km south of Chennai.

 

Their genes have the amino acid bands found in the gene map of the

original man from Africa.

 

Says Pitchappan: "The ancestors of the Kallar community may have come

into India from the Middle East."

 

Wells believes there were three waves of migration that early man

undertook. According to him and his Indian collaborator, early man

went from Africa to the Middle East, on to Kutch on India's west

coast, all the around to the peninsula's east coast and then on to

Australia.

 

Pitchappan, who heads the immunology department at Madurai Kamaraj

University, has found that the gene markers M130 seen in man 50,000

years ago and M20 seen in man of 35,000 years ago are present in the

Kallars and several other local people of Tamil Nadu.

 

Some of the markers are common to the Kallars and the Yadava

populations of the Saurashtra coast in Gujarat. And the M172 markers

found in some Tamil Nadu populations are also found in the people of

Pakistan's Balochistan province and M17 in some populations of

Central Asians.

 

"Of lasting genes and lost cities of Tamil Nadu"

Papri Sri Raman (Indo-Asian News Service)

 

Courtesy HPI

Source:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_132193,000900020001.htm