Maldivian riddle

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Thor Heyerdahl spent many years solving the question of who were tall people with blue eyes and brown hair - the most ancient people on the islands of the Maldives. He did not find the answer, unlike Anatoly Klyosov, who proved their genetic relationship with the ancient Aryans.

The title of this essay repeats the title of Thor Heyerdahl's book, translated by Progress in 1988, with the subtitle New archaeological adventures of the author of "Kon-Tiki" … Heyerdahl spent many years solving the question of who were tall people with blue eyes and brown hair - the most ancient people on the islands of the Maldives. He did not find the answer, and how can he find it? How to check? Well, he would say they were the ancient Norwegians. Or the ancient Slavs. Or Tibetan blondes. Or the French. Well, and then what? The closest would be the ancient Indians, but how to check this? And why those and not others?

In general, Heyerdahl had such a game. Like "yes and no - don't say, but who hid, it's not my fault." Or who hid, it doesn't matter. The goal was to write interestingly, to publish an interesting book. This goal was achieved, and the riddle, of course, remained a mystery. It was not part of the author's tasks to unravel it, because it was, by definition, impossible. True, Heyerdahl made some assumptions, and was not far from the truth, as will be shown below, although he missed a little with geography. But you can’t judge him for that.

By the way, there was a similar story with Heyerdahl much earlier, at the end of the 1940s, under the title "Journey to Kon-Tiki".

Only the riddle was different - where did the people come from to Polynesia? Who were those ancient sailors? Heyerdahl suggested that these were ancient people from South America. And in order to prove the fundamental possibility of such a transition, or more precisely a crossing, he overcame this huge distance on a raft made according to the rules of ancient art. The book turned out to be wonderful, with a lot of photos that showed what huge fish they pulled out of the ocean, and what they just flopped in a jump right onto the deck, take it - I don't want to. We, children of the 1950s, read this book, knowing full well that we would never have such trips, but still dreaming about them. Heyerdahl's conclusion was that people arrived in Polynesia by boat or raft from South America.

Heyerdahl was wrong. The very first studies of haplotypes and haplogroups showed that Polynesians have haplogroup C, and there is no such haplogroup in South America, there is a continuous haplogroup Q. But a good, interesting book remained.

While flipping through the book "The Maldives Mystery" I drew attention to a photograph showing stones with ancient symbols. There was a swastika right in the middle.

This was already a clue, although when summing up the results of his research, Heyerdahl did not mention the swastika. This was strange, since the swastika is a well-known ancient sign of the Aryans. So what Heyerdahl mentioned, what conclusions did he come to? They are like that - the most ancient inhabitants of the Maldives were called redines, when they lived - it is unknown. In general, the finds of Heyerdahl and other researchers point to the lifetimes of the alleged openings from 2500 years ago. According to Heyerdahl, the Maldives were inhabited - according to local official figures - 1100 years ago, that is, in the 10th century AD. True, Wikipedia reports that the Maldives archipelago was inhabited more than two millennia ago by Dravidians - immigrants from territories corresponding to modern Sri Lanka and southern India, that until the 12th century the Maldivians professed Buddhism, but in 1153 one of the active Arab landed in the Maldives preachers of Islam, and soon the entire population converted to Islam. True, Wikipedia reports on South India, and Heyerdahl - on northwestern India as the starting points of settlement, plus Sri Lanka, but such disagreements when solving riddles are common.

As a result, Heyerdahl lists the variants of the origin of the ancient redines - Buddhists from Sri Lanka and Hindus from northwestern India, about 2500 years ago. He believes that if someone lived in the Maldives before them, then they were expelled or assimilated. The conclusion of Heyerdahl's book ends like this: "".

Now let's see what DNA genealogy tells us. This new science is remarkable in that it sharply narrows the range of hypotheses discussed. She introduces quantitative parameters as the basis for discussions, and it is already difficult to argue with them. It relies on the DNA of people, in this case, living now in the Maldives, on their haplogroups and haplotypes, on the number of mutations in haplotypes, and on the calculations of the times when the distant ancestors of these people lived. Let me remind you that a haplogroup is a concept equivalent to a specific genus of humanity, and many hundreds of such DNA genera are now identified on the planet. These are the main clans and their families, which can be called tribes. In other words, the Maldivian riddle immediately turns into the plane of what kind of humanity are the people living in the Maldives now, when their distant ancestors lived, and how this fits in with other revealed facts, such as the Aryan swastika on ancient Maldivian stones, ancient legends and myths, and testimonies of historians, archaeologists, linguists.

First, let's recall where the Maldives are. They are located in the Indian Ocean, the nearest land is India and Sri Lanka. It is not surprising that Thor Heyerdahl named them as the initial settlement areas. But who were these people by origin, by haplogroups, i.e. by the clans and tribes of mankind?

Data on DNA testing of the first 126 people of the Maldives archipelago has recently appeared in the literature. It is clear that in the first place they tested the local inhabitants, presumably descended from the ancient inhabitants of the islands. It turned out that out of these 126 people, thirty, that is, a quarter of all, have haplogroup R1a. This is the largest share of the population. This is already the first success - the Aryans of India had the haplogroup R1a, as do their descendants now, occupying up to 72% in the higher castes of India. So the ancient swastika in the Maldives is already getting its first peg.

The next step in solving the riddle is to build a haplotype tree using a professional program. The program arranges haplotypes in a "hereditary order", as mutations would flow from one haplotype to another over the course of millennia. Indeed, the clever program did indeed assign haplotypes to genera and their branches, as these genera were independently identified by the researchers. When constructing the tree, information about clans-tribes was not entered, only the haplotypes themselves were introduced, without explanations. The resulting tree is shown below. The program built it in a few minutes. The resulting tree shows the branches of the main genera that make up the population of the islands for this sample. The sample is small, but experience shows that when it is increased, the basic patterns are preserved. There will be some progress, but the essence will remain the same.

Tree of 12 marker haplotypes for 126 people in the Maldives.

Based on data from (Pijpe et al, 2013). The main haplogroups are shown.

By the appearance of the branches, you can immediately tell whether the branches are recent or ancient, and by the haplotypes of the branches, you can calculate when the ancestors of these branches arrived in the Maldives. In fact, there are some difficulties with data interpretation, and we will show this below with some examples. There are only two haplotypes of haplogroup A (numbered 46 and 96), which means they came from Africa. The haplotypes are almost the same, which means they are recent visitors. There is nothing to pay attention to them. At the very top is the flat branch of haplogroup K, all haplotypes are the same. So everyone is close relatives, the common ancestor lived quite recently, 100-200 years ago. The haplogroup itself is very ancient, and this particular branch is again recent visitors to the islands.

Haplogroup J2 is represented by three branches. Usually, carriers of this haplogroup live in the Middle East, Western Asia, the Caucasus, the Mediterranean, among the Dravidians of India, a little in the higher castes of India, but much less than R1a. Bottom right - a very young branch, one mutation for six haplotypes in the branch, the common ancestor of all lived only 200 years ago. It is considered so - 1/6 / 0.022 = 8 conditional generations of 25 years, so that the branch was formed 200 years ago. 0.022 is the mutation rate constant for those 12-marker haplotypes that were determined in those tested for DNA. Another branch J2 of 9 haplotypes, with a common ancestor 4825 ± 980 years ago, the third - 6600 ± 1200 years ago. These are clearly the Dravidian haplotypes of India, but they do not have an Aryan swastika or blue-eyed. In addition, they descend from too ancient common ancestors, which means that their ancestors did not live in the Maldives, but were "brought" to the islands in Y-chromosomes.

Haplogroups R2, H, L are the Dravidian haplotypes of India and Sri Lanka. They, too, cannot be fair-haired and with blue eyes. In haplogroup R2 (on the right in the haplotype tree), there are 61 mutations per 15 haplotypes, from a common ancestor with a haplotype

14 23 14 10 13 19 11 14 10 16 16 11

This ancestor lived 61/15 / 0.022 = 185 → 226 generations ago, that is, 5650 ± 920 years ago (the arrow shows the calculated correction for recurrent mutations). It is clear that he did not live in the Maldives. But for comparison, the Dravidian haplotypes of southern India (Klyosov, 2013):

14 23 14 10 13 19 12 14 10 16 16 11 with a common ancestor 7650 ± 1200 years ago, and

14 23 14 10 13 18 10 13 10 16 16 11 with a common ancestor 5250 ± 780 years ago.

So they arrived in the Maldives, when it is not known, they could have at any time, even 200 years ago, and the common ancestor would have been the same in time, that is, 5-6 thousand years ago, if they arrived in a group.

On the left, on the haplotype tree, there is a branch of haplogroup L. It is relatively young and presents several sub-branches. The common ancestor of one subbranch lived 1675 ± 400 years ago, the other about 775 years ago.

The haplotypes of the Dravidian group H are too few in number, and even the lifetime of a common ancestor cannot be calculated from them. However, the branch on the right, haplogroup H1, almost all haplotypes are the same, the common ancestor is recent. They are not candidates for redins - neither by anthropology, nor by age in the Maldives.

Only the R1a haplogroup remains, moreover, the most numerous in the sample. Let's take a closer look at it.

The Maldivian haplotype tree has two R1a branches in the lower right corner. There are ten haplotypes in one branch, and twenty in the other. The ancestral haplotypes of the branches are as follows (differences are shown in bold):

13 25 16 10 11 15 10 13 11 17 14 11

13 25 15 10 11 14 10 14 11 17 14 11

In the first branch, there are 20 mutations for ten haplotypes, in the second - for twenty haplotypes, 37 mutations, that is, the branches are almost the same in age (since the average number of mutations per haplotype is practically the same). Indeed, the common ancestor of the first branch lived 20/10 / 0.022 = 91 → 100 conditional generations of 25 years each, that is, about 2500 years ago. The common ancestor of the second branch lived 37/20 / 0.022 = 84 → 92 conditional generations, that is, about 2300 years ago. So Heyerdahl was right, who wrote in his book that the settlement of the Maldives was in the middle of the 1st millennium BC, about 2500 years ago. And when did the common ancestor of these two R1a branches live? The distance between the ancestral haplotypes of the branches is three mutations, which shows 3 / 0.022 = 136 → 158 conditional generations, that is, 3950 years, and the common ancestor of both branches lived (3950 + 2500 + 2300) / 2 = 4375 years ago. These are the times of the R1a carriers on the Russian Plain, from where the Aryans spread south to Mesopotamia and east and then south to the Iranian plateau and Hindustan.

In principle, they could get to the Maldives either from Arabia, through the Arabian Sea, or from India, from which it is much closer. So, most likely, Heyerdahl is right when talking about settling from India and from Sri Lanka, which until relatively recently was Ceylon.

And now let's look at the ancestral haplotype of our ancestors, the ancestors of ethnic Russians of the haplogroup R1a, on the Russian Plain. They all "left" this haplotype about 4900 years ago (apparently, in the Balkans, on the way to the Russian Plain), or 4600 years ago, already on the Russian Plain:

13 25 16 10 11 14 10 13 11 17 14 11

This is the ancestral haplotype and R1a groups with the index according to the catalog Z280, the so-called Central Eurasian subclade (formed 4900 years ago), and it is the so-called ancestral haplotype of the Russian Plain (formed 4600 years ago) [Rozhanskii and Klyosov, 2012]. In principle, they are inseparable by haplotypes. In any case, these are our ancestral haplotypes. Those in the Maldives are the same, only slightly younger (with a common ancestor, I remind you, about 4375 years ago), and already diverged into branches by the middle of the 1st millennium BC. So in the Maldives - our relatives, the descendants of our proto-Slavic ancestors.

Let's look at the ancestral haplotype of the Aryans who arrived in India about 3500 years ago (Klyosov and Rozhanskii, 2012):

13 25 16 10 11 14 10 13 11 17 14 11

Exactly the same as on the Russian Plain. This, the last haplotype, was obtained by considering all Indian haplotypes of haplogroup R1a, given in the Indian database. It contains 133 haplotypes of haplogroup R1a, containing 446 mutations. This gives 446/133 / 0.022 = 152 → 179 generations, that is, approximately 4475 years before the common ancestor. So the haplotype is common with the Russian Plain, and the age is close, and practically the same as in the Maldives.

So we solved the Maldives riddle, who were the ancient inhabitants of the islands, who were the most distant sailors who were tall in the ancient Maldives and had brown hair and blue eyes. They had haplogroup R1a, were descendants of ancient Proto-Slavic ancestors who, like Aryans, advanced in their migrations to Hindustan about 3500 years ago, and further to the Maldives about 2500 years ago. It is possible that they reached the Maldives from the Arabian Peninsula, from which a regular sea connection with Hindustan was later established, but the haplotypes of the Arabian Arabs are the same as on the Russian Plain, which means that the conclusions of our study remain the same.

Literature

Klyosov, A. A. (2013) Subclad R1a-Z93 among Dravidians of India (based on Chennakrishnaiah et al “Indigenous and foreign Y-chromosomes characterize the Lingayat and Vokkaliga populations of Southwest India” (2013). Bulletin of the Academy of DNA Genealogy, vol. 6, No.. 8, 1361-1373.

Klyosov, A. A., Rozhanskii, I. L. (2012) Haplogroup R1a as the proto Indo-Europeans and the legendary Aryans as witnessed by the DNA of their current descendants. Advances in Anthropology, 2, 1-13.

Pijpe, J., de Voog, A., van Oven, M., Henneman, P., van der Gaag, KJ, Kayser, M., de Knijff, P. (2013) Indian Ocean Crossroads: Human Genetic Origin and Population Structure in the Maldives. Amer. J. Phys. Anthropol., 151, 58-67.

Rozhanskii, I. L., Klyosov, A. A. (2012). Haplogroup R1a, its subclades and branches in Europe during the last 9000 years. Advances in Anthropology, 2, 139-156.