R1a1/M17's origins:South Asia?

p. 16-7
"The most common Y-chromosomal lineage among Indians, R1a, also occurs away from India in populations of diverse linguistic and geographic affiliation. It is widespread in central Asian Turkic-speaking populations and in eastern European Finno-Ugric and Slavic speakers and has also been found less frequently in populations of the Caucasus and the Middle East and in Sino-Tibetan populations of northern China (Rosser et al. 2000; Underhill et al. 2000; Karafet et al. 2001; Nebel et al. 2001;Weale et al. 2001). No clear consensus yet exists about the place and time of its origins. From one side, it has been regarded as a genetic marker linked with the recent spread of Kurgan culture that supposedly originated in southern Russia/Ukraine and extended subsequently to Europe, central Asia, and India during the period 3,000�1,000 B.C. (Passarino et al. 2001; Quintana Murci et al. 2001; Wells et al. 2001). Alternatively, an Asian source (Zerjal et al. 1999) or a deeper Palaeolithic time depth of ∼15,000 years before present for the defining M17 mutation has been suggested (Semino et al. 2000; Wells et al. 2001). Interestingly, the high frequency of the M17 mutation seems to be concentrated around the elevated terrain of central and western Asia. In central Asia, its frequency is highest (>50%) in the highlands among Tajiks, Kyrgyz, and Altais and drops down to <10% in the plains among the Turkmenians and Kazakhs (Wells et al. 2001; Zerjal et al. 2002). Our low STR diversity estimate of haplogroup R1a in central Asians is also consistent with the low diversities found by Zerjal et al.(2002) and suggests a recent founder effect or drift being the reason for the high frequency of M17 in southeastern central Asia. In Pakistan, except for the Hazara, who are supposedly recent immigrants in the region, the frequency of M17 was similarly high in the upper and lower courses of the Indus River valley (Qamar et al. 2002). The frequency of R1a drops from ∼30% in eastern provinces to <10% in the western parts of Iran (Quintana-Murci et al. 2001). Both Pakistanis and Iranians showed STR variances as high as those of Indians, when compared with the lower values in European and central Asian populations. Unexpectedly, both southern Indian tribal groups examined in this study carried M17. The presence of different STR haplotypes and the relatively high frequency of R1a in Dravidian-speaking Chenchus (26%) make M17 less likely to be the marker associated with male �Indo-Aryan� intruders in the area. Moreover, in two previous studies involving southern Indian tribal groups such as the Valmiki from Andhra Pradesh (Ramana et al. 2001) and the Kallar from Tamil and Nadu (Wells et al. 2001), the presence of M17 was also observed, suggesting that M17 is widespread in tribal southern Indians.

Sanghamitra Sengupta et al. (2006), Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists, American Journal of Human Genetics, 78:202-221


Tribal Indian r1a1 has higher diversity than any other group tested in the world.

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