 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss the Rakhigari skeleton and the archeogenetic evidence or ancient DNA evidence that has been discovered from that skeleton. To discuss this and other issues, we have with us Professor Satyajit Rat who teaches in Pune and who was very much a part of the Delhi Science Forum and the All India People Science Network. Satyajit, first let's discuss the science itself because I think in the shall we say the larger historical debates because the Aryan invasion, the Indo-Aryan people, people of South Asia, all these issues, the essential scientific achievement sort of goes to the background. This particular event of reconstructing from the skeletons of Rakhigari and in this particular case succeeded with only one skeleton. This is a major scientific achievement. It's a monumental scientific achievement. But let me add a caveat to what you said. Last week there was not one paper published. Last week there were two papers published by the same, well not by the same but by an overlapping group of global collaborators from an extraordinarily wide range of solid leaders. This is the paper we have discussed earlier which also was archived as a pre-print and has now been published officially in science. Therefore, the authors could not discuss it for the last six to eight months but we have already discussed it earlier. So the science paper therefore forms the background in the sense that this is a technological tour de force, 500 plus ancient genomes from about 500 years to about 10,000 years old from backwards from the present day have been not totally but significantly substantially sequenced and genetic relatedness between them and genetic relatedness with present day populations has been established. That's the background on which the selfie, what everybody is now referring to as the Rakhigari paper, acquires its ones as well as its portables. So the distinction is that most of these 500 plus are from archaeological sites, skeletons from archaeological sites where the weather conditions are much more conducive to some preservation of ancient DNA deep in bones. Rakhigari is the only one that is indubitably from the subcontinent with all our tropical subtropical climatic conditions where DNA recovery is extraordinarily hard because the weather conditions allow both non-microbe and micro driven degradation of DNA. So very little DNA is recovered technically. In simple terms, the warmth of the weather while you can find bones getting readable DNA out of bones becomes very hard. And on top of that you have the microbial action also which degrades the DNA? Well, yes, but keep in mind that the weather also impacts microbial density, the warmer the more microbial activity you're going to have. So those are interrelated issues. And as a result, it's no surprise that many of the bones, they've tried six or seven different skeletons, many of the bones that might from Rakhigari really didn't give any connection. Keep in mind another technical problem that all of us tend to lose, which is we're dealing with extraordinarily new amounts of DNA. They are so small that they can be swamped by accidental contamination. The samples are very small. Therefore, they can be easily drowned out by extraneous matter, which is contamination. Right. When you collect the bone, at least the DNA is inside the bone. So you treat the outside of the bone and get rid of whatever stuck to it. But even in the laboratory, there is always the possibility of accidental contamination. Now, if you get lots of DNA out of the bone, then small accidental contaminations, you can exclude quite easily. But when you get really small amounts, it's very hard. So what David Reich, Vagish Narayan and their colleagues have done in Hurt is a technological tour de force that we should be appreciative of just as we should be appreciative of the technological achievements of the other hand. Correct. It's that simply an outstanding achievement. And just to explain to our viewers that if you have lots of noise, but your signal is very strong, then of course, it doesn't matter. You can easily pick up the signal. But like for instance, the voice in background and noise. But if the signal itself is very weak, the voice is weak, then the noise obviously drowns it out. And this is analogous to what the DNA signatures you are talking about, that contamination is in this case, the noise and it can drown out what is the essential signal, which is the ancient DNA. Absolutely, well put. So, which is why the cell paper of Shinde Ital actually spends a fair amount of time describing not just how and what they have done in technological terms, what doing multiple testing to ensure that they really have ancient DNA. They've taken about 100 times they have done this in order to really verify the results. And they said this once. Not simply that. Not simply that. They have actually then done the software analysis, the bioinformatic analysis in a variety of ways to ensure that what they have is actually a unique sequence that's very unlikely to have come from any contemporary source. And this technically should be in mind when we come to discussing the implications of what this information tells us. You know, there's one particular element in all of this, that this archaeo geretic studies have really three major components. One is the geretic component, which is the ability to multiply the any DNA sample and produce really millions of copies, then which you process. So this is I would call the biological part of it, if you will. And of course, it has biological sensors and so on, but it's really at the realm of biology. The second is what you said the bioinformatic part of it, which is really being able to reconstruct the sequences, match, cross match, etc., etc. And also the fact that you have millions of copies from which you are collating this information. So that itself is a monumental, shall we say mathematical computer science exercise. The third, which is also forgotten, of course, not so much in the cell paper, but you take the science paper that what is called the mixing models, that you take current genetic evidence and you take this, then you need to have mixing models to predict how do you see this happen and you get the that you see the current shall be say profile of people. So these are three elements to the science of it as it were, which is something which is I think sort of not understood. And of course, geretics is the most exciting because it's a new one in that sense. Yes, all of this said, let us keep in mind limitations. This is not an entire sequence. Every last nucleotide on this woman buried 45, 4800 years ago has not been seen. What we are doing with the informatic analysis is, despite all its statistical reliability, it's actually still statistic probably. And the kind of models that we build then become, no matter how robust they are, still derivatives from an original statistical probability. So this is the kind of evidence that we should be incorporating and integrating into a range of disciplines and such evidence, be it from linguistics, from textual analysis, from archaeology, from other historical sources, from archaeology, and the number of related to come up with some understanding of migrations. Let me make one final in this context about the idea of migrations. This is a sequence of a woman buried in Akhigari. In and of itself, the sequence tells us anything about who, from where, and when to where. It is only when you integrate information that is collected in this diversity of disciplines across a temporal client that you begin to build likelihood models of migration. All of this we should keep in mind as an ongoing learning process other than making assertions about personal proofs of something or the other. You know, that brings us to the next logical question. There is Professor Shinde who is one of the authors of the paper. In fact, he is the first author. He is an archaeologist from what I gather. But he is supposed to have said, of course, we do not have independent verification of what he is supposed to have said. But according to papers, he is supposed to have made the following observations that this proves there is no Aryan migration. And he talks about Mortimer Wheeler, which is really pre-independence, shall we say, studies which were done, which were very preliminary. And Monserra Harappa, as you know, was 1920s. So, that is really something which is very much in its infancy. And the Aryan invasion theory has been discarded from 60s onwards, saying, migrations, yes, but large-scale invasion, no. This is, I think, Romula 60s, ancient Indian History Congress presidential address. So, all of that to have been now brought out by Professor Shinde to say the quoting Mortimer Wheeler, there is no Aryan invasion, seems to be tilting at windmills. And secondly, how do you provide any information from the Rakhigari skeleton that there was no migration from the steppes carrying the Indo-European languages? First, genes don't tell us anything about language anyway. And secondly, how do you then explain, shall we say, over North India, the genetic markers of the steppes people, particularly in certain castean communities, as the companion paper that we talked about, the science paper shows that exists. Could you explain to our viewers what is the mystery that Shinde is presenting us on the basis of the cell paper and how seriously we can take it asides? Professor Shinde is an archaeologist and an archaeologist of reputation, standing and persistence. He has led the Rakhigari excavations and unlike many other archaeologists, clearly he has been open-minded enough to partner the genocists in an effort to add the integrating lines of evidence. All of this, I think, we should be appreciative. That said, let me start the conversation not so much by a discussion of history itself, but by a discussion of what this actually is in the cell paper. So the cell paper makes three inferences. The first inference is that substantial hilarity exists with the maternal lineage of this woman, this elite woman, since she was ceremonially married. I doubt very much that ordinary people were ceremonially buried in any human culture. The maternal lineage of this woman is deeply South Asian, ancient South Asian. Sixty, sixty-five thousand years hunter-gatherers. Going back to the first people of South Asia, this given the fact that a lot of other genes have crept into her genome subsequently underlines a basic, sad, apparent truth of our species, which seems to be that when we spread into territories where there were no pre-existing human communities, we go men and women. When we re-spread into territories where there are already people, we apparently go as men, much more than women. And one can now begin to draw further interpretations inferences on this, what I consider to be a fact of our species. Secondly, where does this quote, new unquote genetic footprint in DNA come from? And the answer is that it is, let us not use the phrase come from, it is related to central West Asian, what you can call the Angolian, Pirani, Zagros, this general area across the Titus Euphrates basin. There have been genomes, both ancient and contemporary, and her DNAs is related to those. But our bioinformatic analysis, what you call our cutting-edge computer analysis are now sophisticated enough to allow us to do further section and an extraordinarily interesting part. We have been assuming that in the 2000 years ago, agriculture was initiated in the present, in the Titus Euphrates, and so on and so forth. And we have discussed about what the agriculture spread from there, both into Europe, not westwards and into South Asia, cultural diffusion and so on and so forth. And the truth always seems to be some combination. It is evident that the relatively non-ancient part of her DNA comes from, or I take that back, is related to the genetic footprints found in West Central Asia across the Titus Euphrates Valley, Iran, Zagros Mountain, and so on and so forth. Now that is where agriculture started in the 60s. So our assumption has been that these agriculturists, as they spread agriculture, both through cultural diffusion and through intermarriage, let us call it likely, speeded the practice of agriculture. So the simple expectation was, since agriculture in the Indus Valley is a couple of thousand years later at tests than agriculture in the Fertile Precent, by available evidence so far, that that is how agriculture came to the industry as well. The genetic expectation then is that the estates and circulation component of our genome will be related to the farming communities of the Fertile Precent. And astonishingly, now sophisticated in Mexican analyses are good enough to make the case sure not that they are related. But their relationship goes back to days prior to agriculture. Well, I have a rider over here, which is, you know, this is something you see across the Fertile Precent, that people mixing is less, but agriculture seems to sprung up at a, in this arc, almost quasi simultaneously. So I would argue that knowledge traveled, of course, it seems. So the migration rates are very low, but people must have traveled to have this information. And I would say that we are probably losing sight of that agriculture or proto-agriculture would have had a longer time. Well, it is still sort of migrant, semi-migratory communities moving from place to place, but in selected places by which they were actually developing agriculture. So I would say that that evidence is still not to me that was there a proto-agriculture phase or not is an open question. No, no, no. So this is where we begin to, I think, jump into political prejudices rather than looking at the data themselves. The data themselves are saying something interesting. The data are saying that the West Central Asian contribution to the Indus Valley civilization's DNA is not directly from the farmers. This does not say anything at all about whether agriculture was independently discovered in the Indus Valley or what or where or where. It is simply an interesting nuance on an ongoing discussion in scholarship about understanding our heritage. So all we can say is that we have a bifurcation between the hunter-gatherers of Zagros Mountains, Iranian, shall we say the hills and the Harappan population that takes place 12,000 years back and that predates the Harappan civilization as we would call it, the growth of agriculture and the cities in this place. That's what we can talk about. The split also predates the agriculture development in the patriarchal sector. As well as here, obviously, both places. Genetic place. Yes. So there is evidence there for now. Yeah, go ahead. Now rather that the simple model that agriculturists came and populated South Asia, we now have an even more complex model of a combination of cultural and genetic influences that is fascinating to work out in whichever direction it goes. And it will also be lot of shall we say crop genetic evidence which should now be added to this. This is what I was talking about at the end but you brought it up. So I would be delighted if we begin to do crop archeogenetics. Yeah, because that would really have a much stronger component relating to this. It would be independent evidence and in all historiography independent evidence carries massive value. So that was one element of the Rakhigari story. The third component of Rakhigari that is provided that I find utterly fascinating. In fact, perhaps the most fascinating is what political prejudice is presenting as an out of India theory support. And I am amused by the political prejudice because I think that that evidence is telling us something far more fascinating than some silly Chauvinist of India knows. Here's what it shows us. It shows us that of the 520 genomes in the science paper, 523 or what is it? Because there's that many genomes come from single architectural sites between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea around in Eastern Iran, in Turkmenistan. So in this cluster it is therefore now in informatic analysis possible. Do all of them cluster together? Do all of them look like each other? And the answer is in science paper, yes, most of them look like each other. But there are always outliers and you don't know why the outliers are outliers. So here's where the Rakhigari cell paper intersects 520 plus genomes that is the science paper. In two locations, science paper that are sort of archaeo geographically like closer to Rakhigari. Which is the Indus Valley periphery, the authors call it. One in Munur in Eastern Iran and one in Chattosofta in Turkmenistan. They found these clusters of genomes with some outliers. So they did something that I think was incredibly insightful, at least in retrospect. They asked, are those outliers in those locations related to the Rakhigari woman? And the answer is yes. And I find this mind blowing not because it is evidence of out of India. In fact, in some simple-minded sense it is not. They have not contributed DNA in those locations because they are outliers in those locations. So clearly, they are a normalist there, genetically speaking. But culturally speaking, they are an established presence there because they were ceremonially buried there. What you have, and I'm hand waving, but what you have is the fascinating possibility of established trade, run by trading households, which only married within themselves, yet lived in far-flung locations. Didn't marry there, which is why they are genetic outliers there. But are culturally located there because they were ceremonially buried there. And really, for me, the heartwarming and incredible possibility is that 5,000 years ago, we had sophisticated and established a stable in trade rooms that trading families existed. I mean, is this not far more enriching to our own understanding of our species, some chauvinist notions of how everybody is from us? Last part, but I still have to drag you to the chauvinist analysis of talking that one skeleton in Rakhigari, about 4,500 to 4,800 years back, proves that there was no steps migration into South Asia. And then, of course, does not explain how do you see the step signature in, shall we say, South Asian population, particularly Northwest to North South Asia? Quite honestly, and this is the reason I didn't even bring up that issue, although it is formally part of my list of interesting up to Rakhigari. But quite honestly, responding to this particular piece of chauvinism feels pointlessly silly. It's almost like seriously asking a transplant surgeon to respond to ministerial claims of ancient province of transplant surgery based on the ongoing Enesh festival here in Pune. So to you, the answer would be it is sulling the enterprise of science, which is the grand one of knowledge, which shall we say, everyday ideological projects, which are really have a completely political purpose, have really no purpose in terms of discovery of knowledge. This is, I agree, this is flattening the extraordinarily rich landscape that science brings to our own understanding of ourselves and our world into what amounts to petty chauvinism. Thank you Satyajit on that note and we shall try and shall we say, restrict more of our discussions to the larger issue of knowledge than addressing the petty chauvinism of a certain petty people, shall we say. But let's also face it, that project, though it independent one of science, still remains politically a very important project to contest. Thank you very much Satyajit for being with us, trying to explain difficult issues from Pune. Thank you. This is all the time we have the news click today to discuss this and other issues, do keep watching news click.