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Why nobody from Central Asia, the centre of the world?

#StanisInTheHood

Hello Akhilesh

I read your article in the diplomat. Interesting to know that 23andme detected one full blooded Yakut and one full blooded English ancestors in your ancestry tree. However I must warn you that you should take these reports from genetic testing websites with a pinch of salt. Let me narrate my own experience with 23andme to put things in perspective.

I got my own genetic testing done with 23andme around the same time frame (i.e. around march 2018). After a couple of months they posted the results on their website. They put me down at 99.8% broadly south asian, 0.1% European, and 0.1% Japanese.

I was not much interested in this 0.1% European component. We have all heard those boring debates about putative foreign origins of Aryans and connection between IA langues and European languages and as such. So I ascribed this European component to some residual effect of this connection and ignored it. However, what hugely aroused my curiosity was this Japanese component. 23andme plaintively stated that I had a full blooded Japanese ancestor who lived between 1700 – 1790 ad. I had never heard about it from anyone before. I inquired with all my near and distant, old and very old, nri and non-nri relatives about this possible Japanese connection in the family. However everywhere I drew a blank.

Come to think of it, eighteenth century (1700s) are not that far back in history. Any such event such as a Japanese consort in the family will still live on as family lore. However, there is no absolutely no such tradition, oral history or a whispered rumor in the family or the village.

I come from a dusty village from the interior of Rajasthan. How on earth can any Japanese reach there in 1700s and just mingle with the general population. We belong to an orthodox Brahmin family. Now you imagine, what are the odds of a Japanese male coming to backwaters of Rajasthan, settling down with an Indian wife, and incredibly enough, still have his descendants recognized as Branhmins!

I even considered the possibly of any ancestor traveling to east asia in British Indian army and bringing home some Chinese/Japanese woman as wife, but unfortunately we just don’t have a military tradition in the family. There is no record of any of my pre-1800s ancestor ever travelling out of our village.

But even before my curiosity could be satisfied, 23andme did a somersault on their report. One fine morning they quietly dropped the Japanese component from my ancestry composition. Now I am 99.9% south asian and 0.1% European. You can guess how much trust I am putting in their ancestry report now 🙂

Right now, even as I write this, 23andme is regularly sending me emails that they have found many “dna relative” for me. They confidently state that “We predict xyz is your 4th Cousin”. However most of these so called dna relatives come from all over the world, some even from Arab countries. They can’t be my relative by any stretch of imagination.

Therefore I would advice you not to put too much weight in this so called Yakut ancestry. Caste endogamy in India is so stringent that chances of any Turkic ancestor entering your family tree via the Asaf Jahi dynasty (remember, nizam dynasty was muslim!) is practically nil. Asaf jahi dynasty certainly intermarried with many Indians, but then those children became muslim. It is next to impossible that they would quietly melt into your caste.