Ancestor of Easter Island and of India

choi

(1)
(a) Rodrigo Peréz Ortega, No 'collapse' for ancient people on Rapa Nui. Science, 385: 1146-1147 (Sept 13, 2024)
https://www.science.org/content/ ... ew-evidence-reveals

Quote:

"When European explorers first reached Rapa Nui, a remote island in the south Pacific Ocean, in the 1700s, they encountered a small community of about 3000 people living among giant stone statues and stone platforms. Anthropologists later concluded that ancient, much larger populations [estimated 15,000 inhabitants, a number which this article said is false from the beginning when the number was proposed] on what Europeans called Easter Island had built the statues * * *

"The whole-genome data allowed the researchers to search for signs of bottlenecks, which leave low diversity in the genomes of descendants. They saw evidence of only one, very ancient bottleneck, likely due to the founding event of the island before 1300 C.E. [timing is done from number of mutations from ancestors, mutation rate is constant (generally speaking)] * * * [This research] team estimates the population [in Rapa Nui after the fouding] grew slowly but steadily after it was founded. Historical records show European contact did lead to population crashes: Peruvian slave raiders kidnapped one-third of the population in the 1860s and disease outbreaks left only about 110 individuals by the 1870s.  

Note:
(i) Nature has its own summary (dated Sept 11, 2024), which, however, is locked behind paywall.
(ii) Easter Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island
(section 1 Etymology)

(b) The above summarizes
Moreno-Mayar JV, et al, Ancient Rapanui Genomes Reveal Resilience and Pre-European Contact with the Americas. Nature,
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39261618/

You may click, in the upper right corner for "Full text links." (There are two links.)

The full text, under the section "MAIN" started with: "Rapa Nui, also known as [Napa Nui lanhuage, per Wiktionary] Te Pito o Te Henua ('the navel of the world'), is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the world. Located in the Pacific, on the easternmost tip of the Polynesian Triangle, it lies 3,700 km west of South America and more than 1,900 km east of the closest inhabited island. Despite the remoteness of Rapa Nui, archaeological and genetic evidence shows that Polynesian peoples from the west [originating in Taiwan] had already reached the island about 1250 CE. The following five centuries saw the Rapanui, the inhabitants of Rapa Nui, develop a culture characterized by iconic giant stone statues (moai) and monumental stone platforms (ahu). Owing to the isolation of Rapa Nui, Europeans reached the island only in 1722 CE." (citations omitted)

choi

(2)
(a) Michael Price, Where Did India's People Come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises Analysis confirms Iranian influx, but also finds genes from Neanderthals and a mysterious human ancestor. Science, Mar 4, 2024 (it is unclear whether this review is published online only, and never in print)
https://www.science.org/content/ ... y-reveals-surprises
("Most Indians are primarily a mixture of three ancestral populations: hunter-gatherers who lived on the land for tens of thousands of years, farmers with Iranian ancestry who arrived sometime between 4700 and 3000 B.C.E., and herders from the central Eurasian steppe region who swept into the region sometime after 3000 B.C.E., perhaps between 1900 and 1500 B.C.E. * * * [according to this bioRxiv, farmers with Iranian ancestry] came from farmers from an ancient agricultural center called Sarazm [which is quite a distance from present-day Iran] in the northwest of what today is Tajikistan. Farmers here grew wheat and barley and kept cattle, and traded extensively throughout Eurasia")

summarizes

(b) Kerdoncuff E et al (from UC Berkeley), 50,000 Years of Evolutionary History of India: Insights from ∼2,700 Whole Genome Sequences. bioRxiv, Feb 20, 2024.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.15.580575v2
(Discussion: "Notably, a majority of Neanderthal ancestry that exists today in present-day individuals is found in India")

Note:
(i) The bioRxiv.org bills itself as "the preprint server for Biology." What this means is that this article will be published in PRINT in the near future, but the authors wished to share the research result now, by publishing ONLINE first without peer review.
(ii) Aryan (adjective First Known Use 1839, noun First Known Use 1849; etymology: "Sanskrit [noun masculine] ārya noble, belonging to an ancient people of northern India speaking an Indo-European dialect")
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Aryan
Is said to be the farmers with Iranian ancestry, or "Iran-related farmers."