Who Created Harappan / Indus Valley Civilisation? | How Did It End? | Samvaad With Devdutt Pattanaik

@Musings I would like to request this thread be closed. It has been a spirited discussion and all that could be said has been said.
Sorry for the circular discourse.

I would prefer the thread stays open @Musings and am fine with putting a hold on the to-and-fro with @Vikramaditya1 on this topic for now.

Up to you and the mod team though if you feel the thread is beyond recourse!
 
Sorry for the circular discourse.

I would prefer the thread stays open @Musings and am fine with putting a hold on the to-and-fro with @Vikramaditya1 on this topic for now.

Up to you and the mod team though if you feel the thread is beyond recourse!
Naa lets leave it open bro.
 
I have already stated that the the genome does not exist in sampled material as yet (soon to change so don't worry yourself over this matter). In fact, this was stated some pages back.
I have no problem with models. I have a problem with assigning a confidence and numerical range that the model itself doesn't provide for the population you're talking about.

This is why I have challenged you to produce an alternative either by MODEL OR by DIRECT SAMPLE to the one postulated.
No. You don't get to make an estimate about an unsampled population and then declare it established until somebody supplies a competing estimate.
I am not inventing 99%, just as I did not invent 50-70%. Read the papers and understand the inferences made by Narasimhan, later cited by others.
Then show me where 99% Gangetic appears in Narasimhan or Yang.
Because you've now given us three different things.

1. Narasimhan: AASI ancestry up to ~60% in South Asia.

2.Your original claim: pre-Harappan Gangetics 50–70% or more saaar.

3.Your latest claim: pre-Harappan Gangetics probably 99% saaar.

The first is published. The latter two are your demographic extrapolations saar.
I stand by my reasoning that NO ALTERNATIVE GENOMIC CONTRIBUTION HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED (BY MODEL, ALSO TO BE CORROBORATED SOON ENOUGH IF THE PRESENTLY EXCAVATED HUMANS ARE OF OLD ENOUGH AGE) OUTSIDE OF AASI FOR EVOLVED HUMAN BEINGS IN THE PRE-HARAPPAN PHASE GANGETIC POPULATION.
Absence of a demonstrated alternative source is not evidence that a real unsampled population was 99% the remaining modeled source. An unsampled population can contain different proportions of known components, unsampled substructure within those components, ancestry poorly represented by available proxies, or gene flow not resolved by the particular model.
If you can prove "the modeled AASI source corresponds essentially one to one with the actual pre Harappan population of the Gangetic plain." Then it's problem solved, but you can't. Hence the whole hypothetical, possibilities, potential mumbo-jumbo, running around in circles throwing maps around etc etc etc...

So yes, 99% is far more likely and 50-70% remains a baseline minimum.
Where does the minimum come from? That's now the precise question. If 70% is the contribution of an AASI-related source to reconstructed ASI, it does not follow that every population east of the IVC had >=70% AASI.
It means the source population represented by that branch must have been sufficiently AASI rich to generate the modeled mixture.
You still need to establish that your pre-Harappan Gangetics are identical to that source. Otherwise you've gone from population genetics to “Who else could they possibly have been?”. Might as well as put rastafari in there.
Think of it theoretically that if the resultant ASI population is 70% AASI, then ANY SOURCE POPULATION MUST ALSO BE AT LEAST 70% if it produced this contribution to the admixture in ASI. BUT IN TRUTH, A GREATER PROPORTION IS MORE LIKELY, AS WE KNOW THAT AASI ADMIXED WITH SOMETHING ELSE TO PRODUCE ASI.

The inferences regarding AASI composition are all quite simple but you have chosen to ignore them in order to shield yourself from further discussion about Iranians and Ukrainians. Understandable. Completely sympathise with your ongoing plight.
Mathematically, if you model ASI = 70% source A + 30% source B then yes, the AASI related source supplying that 70% is necessarily more AASI rich than the resulting mixture. I don't dispute arithmetic.
But you have silently changed AASI-related source in an admixture model
into the entire pre-Harappan Gangetic population. That's the missing step. Your arithmetic can establish properties required of the modeled source. It cannot establish where every real-world member of that source lived.

If your AASI source is modeled as effectively 100% AASI, that doesn't make every hunter gatherer from Uttar Pradesh in 3000 BCE automatically 100% AASI.
Source node is not geographical census.
Incorrect. You and I BOTH know this. You choose to ignore it and pretend, on the technical issue of "unsampled saar!", that a very robust mathematical model is somehow not sufficient enough to be confident, beyond reasonable doubt, of this reality. Essential, you dispute the model.
No! For what must now be the twentieth time:
I accept the model.
I accept AASI.
I accept Iranian-related ancestry.
I accept the Indus-Periphery Cline.
I accept later formation of ASI through mixture with more AASI-rich populations.
I accept that populations farther east/south were probably substantially more AASI rich.
What I don't accept is "therefore pre-Harappan Ganga = minimum 50–70%, probably 99% AASI = hard civilizational boundary."

That's your interpretation of the model.
Stop hiding your additional inference behind Narasimhan's name.
Many physical and engineering realities are based on models, not direct observation. Are we to dispute all of these now just to suit your existential crises?
Of course. I'm an engineer. You really don't need to explain mathematical models to me.

And precisely because engineering relies on models, we distinguish model output, assumptions, confidence intervals, extrapolation and observation. If my finite element model predicts a component fails at 11.5 kN I don't say “It definitely failed at 11.5 kN because nobody has produced an alternative broken component.” Especially if the model never actually modeled the component I'm assigning that number to.
And yet, the model clearly supports a near exclusive AASI gangetic population. No further support from me is needed. If you dispute Narasimhan and Yang, that's on you.
Show me that sentence in Yang. Because Yang says something substantially more cautious.
She says ancient individuals representing the AASI lineage “have yet to be sampled” and, based on additional AASI ancestry in southern Indians, says those representatives “likely lived in southern India.”
Not “near exclusive AASI population of the pre harappan gangetic plain.”
Your own source locates the hypothetical unsampled representatives primarily toward southern India, not specifically the Ganga.
Of course Southies are different. We knew that. Of course northern Indians are "similar" to indus populations but the discussion here by Yang is in a POST-HARAPPAN CONTEXT.
For that particular paragraph about formation of northern and southern Indian ancestry, yes. That's exactly why you can't use it as a direct genomic description of Pre-Mature harappan Gangetics.

Thank you.
Here Is what Yang says about the INDUS PERIPHERY (NOT GANGA!) IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PRE-MATURE HARAPPAN PHASE:

"Indus Periphery (IP) ancestry—ancestry associated with 5,000–4,000-year-old individuals from near the Indus Valley [59,60]. This ancestry is a mixture of ancestry related to the AASI lineage and Basal Iranian ancestry, and populations associated with this ancestry contributed to populations in South Asia."

This is unequivocal. The date period is stated. "Basal Iranian". Yang's words, not mine. This population then contributed to the rest of South Asia during the collapse of IVC.
Correct. Yang defines IP ancestry as a mixture of AASI related and Basal Iranian related ancestry and says populations associated with it subsequently contributed to South Asian populations.

Nothing controversial there. But notice what this establishes IP ancestry existed near the Indus. It does not establish contemporary Ganga = 99% AASI. The second proposition remains your inference as usual.
Question the map. No problem. You've already questioned the model.

Again, your beef is with the authors of these papers, not with me. The map shows exchange between IVC (IP) and the rest of modern Bharat, including Ganga almost up to Bangladesh. If there is some error in the map, write to Yang, not me, and explain your concerns.
Yang explicitly warns readers how to interpret these diagrams.
Her Figure 1 caption says the tree is not meant to depict migration routes or geographic origins from internal nodes. And throughout the review, these figures schematically summarize extremely complicated population relationships. A shaded blob and an arrow are not an ancient population census. They're visualization.

You're reading pixel position as though Yang excavated genomes everywhere underneath the purple shading.
I should point out thatvYang is a FEMALE btw, (Melinda Yang)....did you actually read her paper??

View attachment 214674
I think she will be more pissed at your fictions than my incorrect pronounces.
OK, you're criticising every source I provide, fair enough, but keep in mind, the Narasimhan paper is only 7 years old so few peer reviewed follow ups will be available for now. In any event, millions of your countrymen trust this source. If we take them at face value, they have better combined experience than this entire forum on this precise matter:


"Helixline is the result of collaborative expertise from leading bioinformatics scientists, genomics researchers, and software engineers united by a single vision: to bring world-class genetic precision to India.

Our multidisciplinary team combines decades of experience in population genetics, ancient DNA analysis, machine learning, and software engineering. We work tirelessly to advance the boundaries of South Asian genetic understanding while maintaining the highest standards of data security and scientific rigor."

I tried the link again btw and could also not find the text specifying "pre-vedic ganga basin" which is odd. Presumably it is elsewhere on the site so I shall try to find it again. In the meantime, feel free to disregard it altogether since you do not trust the validity of this commerical enterprise, not that their methods are any different to Narasimhan's!
Popularity isn't peer review. And their “decades of combined expertise” marketing copy doesn't transform their blog into ancient DNA evidence. More importantly, you yourself can no longer find the paragraph you quoted.
So let's do the sensible thing disregard it until you relocate the source. No accusation of fabrication necessary. Maybe the page changed or the passage came from elsewhere. But an unlocatable commercial blog quotation isn't going to settle prehistoric gangetic genomics it's futile anyway.
Jacob Harringer. Not peer reviewed. But I won't let you deny this source because he has used EXACTLY THE SAME modelling as Narasimhan. Have a look at the webpage and see for yourself. It is entirely reasonable AND EVIDENCE BASED that he makes these subdivisions within the AASI category.
😂
You don't get to announce that I am forbidden from questioning an unpublished internet model because somebody used the same software or methodological family as a peer reviewed population genetics paper.
Same modeling tool is not the same as "same evidentiary status." I can run ADMIXTOOLS tomorrow. That doesn't turn my blog into Science.

Model validity depends on the chosen populations, proxies, topology, constraints, SNP coverage, fit statistics, alternative models and interpretation not merely the software package.

In fact, modern methodological work has specifically warned that admixture graphs can admit multiple fitting histories then obtaining a fitting graph doesn't uniquely establish that history.
So give me Harringer's actual model and I'll assess it as a model.
But “he used the same technique” is not peer review by osmosis.
Can't keep posting the same figures and maps fro peer reviewed sources, let alone non-peer reviewed follow up work. You can take it or leave it. With the available evidence, I am entirely confident that there are substantial and significant differences between the genomic composition of Ganga dwellers and Indus dwellers at all points in ancient history. You can wait for direct evidence if you wish, so much so that INTERNAL SPLITTING of AASI is now being proposed by experts with far greater knowledge than you or i on this matter. This is your prerogative to believe what you wish to believe.
Which would actually strengthen my caution. If AASI itself contained substantial prehistoric substructure, then treating “AASI” as one homogeneous population occupying one geographical block becomes less defensible, not more.
You can't simultaneously argue
AASI contained distinct NW/SE substructure and
therefore the unsampled Gangetic population can simply be identified with a homogeneous near-100% AASI source node.
The more population structure you introduce, the less your cartoon boundary works.
Wordplay to suit an OOI narrative. Either the source genome is Iranian or it isn't. Nobody denied the existence of AASI in the mature IVC populations.
Another random nothing burger.
You compressed population genetics into nationality. Iranian-related is a statement about genetic affinity relationship.

It does not mean Iranian people arrived and took over Harappa.

Shinde's major result was precisely that the Iranian related ancestry in the Rakhigarhi individual separated from Iranian plateau lineages more than 12,000 years ago, long before Iranian Neolithic farming populations existed in the form relevant to the old farmer migration hypothesis.
That's why the paper is literally titled
An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers.”

Humans and chimpanzees share ancestry. Either the source was chimpanzee or it wasn't aaa argument.
In fact the MAJORITY source genome is Iranian, strongly inferring a negligible-low volume of AASI in the IVC EVEN TO BEGIN WITH. A few nomads were there, sure, but the urban settlements were built by Iranians.
Cock and bull story. A population carrying 70% ancestry related to lineage X and 30% related to lineage Y does not allow you to assign urban planning to X and spears to Y. You would need archaeological evidence linking particular incoming populations to the development of Harappan urbanism. You don't have that here.

Lecture us all on "divergence" as much as you like but this is an "OOI" coping mechanism deployed by Narasimhan and Shinde. A pointless observation. The source was either Iranian or it wasn't. It doesn't matter PRECISELY WHEN they diverged from other Iranian populations in the context of DISPROVING OOI CLAIMS. (N.B. Now we are touching on the sordid politics of Indian researchers, which I discussed separately AS PER REICH'S OWN PUBLISHED JOURNAL EXTRACTS. we can revisit that later if you wish but you know what Reich himself said!).

Let me remind you ONCE AGAIN OF the dominance of Iranian genes EVEN IN THE DIRECTLY SAMPLED RAKHIGARI SPECIMEN. AASI HAD BEEN OVERRUN AND WAS A MERE FOOTNOTE IN GENOMIC HISTORY BY THIS STAGE UNLESS YOU WISH TO CLAIM AASI BUILT HARAPPA WITH THEIR SPEARS??

View attachment 214678
Iranian related ancestry = architects
AASI related ancestry = spear wielding nomads
Perhaps cite the SNP responsible for drainage engineering while you're at it.😂

Narasimhan explicitly reports actual Indus periphery individuals with AASI related estimates reaching roughly 50%. Ralhigarhi individual had nearly a quarter-ish AASI, "mere footnote saar."
So much for “a few nomads.”

The Iranian in your story diverged more than 12000 years ago from Iranian plateau lineages, what's next? Keep following the ancestry tree back to declare everyone African and say African build Harappa?
But genotype does mostly confer phenotype (with environment contributing significantly less to phenotypic adaptations) in this context, ESPECIALLY in terms of skeletal structure. This is well understood in bioarchaeology and even in modern medicine. Therefore, the inference is entirely reasonable that the pre-existing genotype were likely different.
You actually think "direct sampling" is required or even possible in order to prove every single evolutionary or natural selective step in human populations??


"Heritability studies indicate that 60-70 % of the variability in bone mineral mass or bone mineral density (BMD) can be accounted for by genetic variation. Cross-trait analyses suggest that a proportion of this variation reflects genetic influences on bone and body size, such as height and lean body mass. Candidate-gene studies have demonstrated associations between several genetic polymorphisms and bone mineral mass but, as yet, genotype determinations have proved unhelpful in identifying individuals at increased risk of osteoporosis. Variations in diet and other environmental factors contribute 30-40 % to total phenotypic variance in bone mineral mass or BMD. "
Nobody disputes that skeletal traits have genetic components. Your osteoporosis citation says genetic variation explains a substantial proportion of variation in bone mineral density. Great.

It does not say "skeletal morphology permits calculation of AASI versus Iranian related autosomal ancestry."
These are different questions.
Heritability answers "How much phenotypic variation in this population is statistically associated with genetic variation?"

Ancestry inference asks "From which ancestral populations did this individual's genome derive, and in what proportions? A 60–70% heritability estimate for BMD doesn't magically become 60–70% AASI.
Genotype and phenotype aren't interchangeable words just because phenotype is influenced by genotype.
....Class 12 NCERT Biology.....

As for your "You actually think direct sampling is required … blah blah"
No. Again you're arguing against something I haven't said, remember winning argument against yourself?
Morphology has been used to infer biological affinity for centuries.
My objection is specifically to using a morphology paper to substantiate a numerical AASI ancestry estimate.
Lukacs can tell us extremely interesting things about Gangetic Mesolithic morphology, activity and adaptation.
It cannot give us Damdama individual X = 93% AASI.
Yes. They came from the same "out of Africa" movement.
We are stuck on an Unsampled thing called AASI. It's not even comparable to Irans' out of Africa movement basal Eurasean. Or the one you keep saying as Andamanese, they are an entirely different "GHOST LINEAGE" called AASI. But sure you reconstructed an entire story line on this GHOST LINEAGE.
You're denying a simple trend due to outliers. Lands adjacent to the Pakistani component of the IVC are actually precisely where these outliers mostly lie anyway. It's not just "significant variation" across south Asia. There is a well recognised trend. Take it or leave it.


It's you who has referenced them as exceptions that somehow disprove Pakistan's general trend of having lower AASI in its genome than India.
This is your extrapolation Modern national ancestry gradient -> hard Indus/Ganga genetic boundary before Mature Harappa -> separate civilizations. Which is what I'm calling out.
Modern populations have undergone several thousand years of subsequent admixture. Narasimhan's entire paper is largely about reconstructing those transformations. You cannot use the endpoint as a photograph of the starting condition.
By the way, if you wish to compare modern nation states (which was not my original discussion at all) North India averages in the order of 10-20% more AASI than Pakistan (including South India makes the difference more striking).
The northwest Indian/Pakistani overlap you dismiss as “outliers” is precisely what we'd expect from a geographical ancestry cline crossing a modern political border. Genes apparently failed to anticipate Partition.
You can see this just by eyeballing the below chart.

View attachment 214724
It's a G25/Genoplot reconstruction of modern populations using modeled ancestry components. Even if every pie chart were perfectly estimated, it would demonstrate exactly what it says on the tin
Ancestry patterns among modeled modern populations.
It does not show Gangetic ancestry in 3000 BCE. You cannot point at a modern Tamil pie chart and use it as an ancient DNA sample from Mesolithic Uttar Pradesh.
The trends are obvious, with outliers.
Tell you what, you stick to your "Harappan could possibly sound like Brahmi and/or any eastern language"
For God's sake. 😂
Brahmi doesn't “sound” like anything biology wizard saaar. Brahmi is a writing system. Harappan is an undeciphered sign system, probably writing or some form of symbolic communication depending on which scholarly interpretation you accept.
The underlying Harappan language is unknown. You keep comparing a script to a spoken language and then accusing me of linguistic confusion. God help me with these geniuses.
and I will stick to my "Harappan can only be declared similar to any language lying to the east, or even to the west, or north, or south, if proven beyond reasonable doubt. Until it is proven, there is no link" .....and the readership can decide for themselves.
If by “there is no established link”, yes.
Absolutely. I'll sign that sentence.
If by “there is no link” you mean “the languages were unrelated,” no.
Those aren't equivalent propositions.
No demonstrated relationship is not the same as demonstrated nonrelationship.
That's been the entire disagreement.
As far as I am concerned, you can swing Olmec around and declare that this is also linked to Brahmi, since apparently I cannot rely on the null hypothesis applying here.
You're misusing “null hypothesis.”
A statistical null hypothesis isn't
Whatever relationship I personally doubt is false until somebody proves it beyond reasonable doubt.
And failure to reject a null hypothesis does not generally mean the null has been proven true.
That's statistics 101. If H0 is “no detectable relationship under this test,” failure to reject H0 means the available data didn't provide sufficient evidence against it.
It doesn't establish metaphysical certainty that no relationship exists. And here we don't even possess a deciphered Harappan linguistic dataset on which to perform the comparison you're pretending has already occurred.
I shall now leave it at that, since folks are rightly a bit annoyed at this thread dumping by both you and me.

I genuinely hope you are this enthusiastic in months and years to come on this particular subject when newer research will, most probably, confirm my assertions hitherto.
Perhaps! And here's the difference between us, if ancient Gangetic DNA eventually comes back 99% AASI-related, I'll say you were right about that prediction. I have absolutely no emotional investment in making prehistoric gangetics iranian, Steppeland, Martian or anything else. My objection has always been to presenting a prediction as an established observation. Future evidence can resolve it. That's how science is supposed to work.
Pakistan's claim over its own birthright has been awoken and cannot now be undone, not by any force on earth!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Nobody needs to take that away from Pakistan. What that doesn't mean is therefore the Harappan civilization is exclusively Pakistani, its Indian sites somehow secondary foreign possessions, and a prehistoric genetic border conveniently anticipated the international boundary created in 1947.
 
Sorry for the circular discourse.

I would prefer the thread stays open @Musings and am fine with putting a hold on the to-and-fro with @Vikramaditya1 on this topic for now.

Up to you and the mod team though if you feel the thread is beyond recourse!
I feel like the thread is on topic. 🤔 We are not discussing some modern Indo Pak conflict, or are we wildly off topic. So far nobody has opened a viable discussion on that front against or for either points.
 

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