Indian caste system is 2,000-year-old
Hyderabad: Endogamy, or the practice of marrying within a certain group, started about 2,000 years ago in the Indian subcontinent, a recent study has revealed.
The study states that the three-part cultural story in the country, before 4000 years ago, from 4,000 years to 1,900 years ago and 1,900 years to now had no cross-cultural marriage links about 4,000 years ago to complete admixture setting in and finally endogamy prevailing about 1,900 years ago. This also leads to the conclusion that the caste system must have been introduced only in the last 2,000 years.
The study was carried out by researchers of the city-based CSIR laboratory Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and Harvard Medical School.
Researchers studied the genetic structure of 73 communities in the country including Vysyas, Velamas and Naidus from the state. The researchers published a paper, Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India, in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The study found that there was complete admixture, marriages among different groups, between 4,200 years and 1,900 years ago. “There was complete mingling among the ancestral North Indians and ancestral South Indians and almost every tribe mixed with everyone else during this period,” Dr K. Thangaraj, senior principal scientist and group leader, CCMB, explained.
Researchers studied the lengths of chromosomal segments of all these 73 pan-Indian groups to ascertain the age of the population mixture. The study found that almost all these sects had some genetic similarities which show that there would have been links among them at some point in time.
Dr Thangaraj said, “We predict that it was only in the last 2,000 years that the caste system was formed. This had a lot of medical implication as the mutation is circulating only among these groups. So, genetic diseases increased after the caste system was enforced.”
South Indian genes are not related to anyone outside of the subcontinent while those of North Indians have links with Europeans.
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