Origin and Spread of Dravidian Speakers

Abstract

Some Researchers argue that there should be more cooperation between anthropologist and population geneticists due to the confounding variables that can influence patterns of interaction between populations and population structure generally, which are usually unknown by molecular biologists who know only the molecular evidence. They argue that the absence of cooperation between these groups may be the cause of disparity between the dates for Indian haplogroups among different population geneticists and interpretations of Indian populations. For example, many researchers claim that the Indian M haplogroup originated in situ among Dravidian speakers, because haplogroup M1 is only found in East Africa. Using molecular evidence we find that M1 is not isolated in East Africa. The molecular evidence indicates that M1 is spread across Sub-Saharan Africa, Arabia/Yemen and is even found in India; while the Indian haplogroup M3 is found on the Horn of Africa, Arabia/Yemen, and Iran along a migration path to South India, which is congruent with anthropological, linguistic and archaeological evidence that suggest a recent African origin for the Dravidian speakers in Nubia.