The ancestry of Australian aborigines has been a
subject of interest from Indian, and particularly South Indian point of view,
ever since it was found that the direct descendants (in Madurai) of out-of
Africa migration shared the same genetic marker M130 with nearly half of
Australian aborigines. Fourteen members of a family of Piramalai kallar
community settled near Madurai are found to have this genetic marker which is
also found in some sections in the Western Ghats. The same is also found in
Malaysia and Philippines. (Read here)
The connection between Australia and Malaysia or Philippines
is understandable due to proximity between those places, but a vast ocean separating
Australia and India on the one side and Africa and India on the other had
puzzled the researchers as to how the migration had happened to India. The
usually hypothesised route is from Africa to Australia via India along the
coast.
(The red arrow shows the route of early out- of
Africa migration).
A genetic
study publsihed in 2009 more or less supported this route based on the
finding that the Australian aborigines shared a mutation of mtDNA (received by everyone
from their mother) with some Indian tribal populations.
But a more recent
study published a couple of days ago says that the genetic history indicated
by the Y chromosome (received from father to son only) of the Australian
aborigines show that they are indigenous to Australia and not connected with or
shared by the Indians. That means the fathers were there in Australia stayed
put for all these 50,000 years. The mothers came from India! This is how a
commoner like me will deduce!
In between these two studies there was another study
published in 2013 that said that some Indians with Dingo dogs had migrated
to Australia straight across the Indian ocean some 4000 years ago.
It is nice to hear the genetic connections between
regions, but to accept the theories of how the migration could have happened is
a bit difficult in this sector of population as we have some local history of
the past going back to thousands of years. I wrote this
article at that time, pointing out that 3500 years ago, a final deluge
drowned all the habitats in the Indian Ocean forcing a group of people headed
by the Pandyan king to move to Indian mainland via western ghat section (Kollam
to be precise) and settle down in Madurai finally. The presence of M130 (initially detected in Virumandi Andi Thevar of
Madurai) in Madurai can be traced to this migration. Earlier their
ancestors could have inhabited some island (peak of submerged Western Ghats) in
the West Indian ocean where Mascarene plateau
was a highland until 7000 years ago. Before that period, the Pandyans of the first
Sangam age were located on the eastern section of the Indian Ocean somewhere
near Sundaland. That was closer
to Australia.
When sea floods and tsunamis had happened, the
Australian aborigines had moved further inland of Australia while those
scattered in the Indian Ocean islands, moved in different directions. Those
closer to Indian land mass moved to India and those on the eastern sector moved
to occupy Polynesian islands. This dispersal took place almost in the same
period of 3500 years before present.
Previous dispersal had happened about 7000 years ago
when the Tamil speaking Pandyans moved away from southern latitudes (more
closer to Australia and Sunda land) towards western Indian Ocean islands and
the southern tip of Indian which was jutting out into the Indian Ocean but now
under water. The same period also saw floods in Australia which are known from the
preserved stories of Australian aborigines. The aborigines who had migrated
inland did not venture out of Australia anytime in the past. Thus their Y
chromosome had remained exclusively within Australia. Others who were outside
Australia had perished although those with M130 marker had survived and spread
to other places. This could be the only explanation for why the aboriginal Y
chromosome is retained within Australia while the mtDNA is shared by others in
India.
With the existing inputs, I can say that the
aborigines had shared a common past with Indians, particularly south Indians or
Tamils who were scattered in the Indian Ocean.
The foremost common evidence is the Boomerang, the unique tool
used by Australian aborigines only.
An Australian aborigine holding the boomerang.
The only other place where we find boomerang in use
is in the community of Piramalai kallar – the same community some of whom are
found to have the same genetic marker of the aborigines!
There is yet another place where we find this
boomerang. It is in Minoan art!.
The person in this ancient Minoan art is holding in
his left-hand what looks like a boomerang. This is Greece of 3500 years before
present. (Read
my article). The time tallies with the same deluge that brought in Pandyans
and Tamils to Madurai. The boomerang could have travelled along the sea route
around Africa and entered the Mediterranean Sea and from there to pre-Hellenistic
Greece.
Another striking similarity between Indian and
Australian aboriginal population is the way they decorate the body with white
marks. The aborigines are known for making white marks on the body. They are
mostly striped marks and are done on religious occasions. They look similar to
the marks made by Shiva devotees with white ash (vibhuthi).
The white stripes on this aborigine look like
Vibhuti applied on the body of a devotee of Shiva or Muruga.
(Pic courtesy:- http://www.thiruppugazh.org/?p=1805
)
A devotee of Muruga with Vibhuti stripes on his body.
The culture of smearing white ash on the body
started with the legend of Lord Shiva dancing at the death of Tripura asuras. I
have deciphered it as the symbolism of destruction of Mt Toba in
this article. The explosion of Mt Toba resulted in the spewing of white ash
everywhere. The dance of death at that explosion symbolised in the dance of
Shiva as the Destroyer was known as “Pandaranagam”. From then onwards the habit
of smearing white ash had come to stay. The staunch devotees of Shiva used to
smear white ash all over the body. The living examples are the Naga sages.
Others used to wear stripes of white ash on the forehead and all over the body.
Similar habits in the Australian aborigines especially during religious and
spiritual events seem to have sprung from a common practice of an undated past that
was developed by Indian ancestors. The practice had stayed with the aborigines,
but the original cause was lost.
Another striking similarity with the aborigines is
the use of a wind instrument called Didgeridoo. It is along
pipe which they blow on all important occasions. The image below shows an
aborigine (with white stripes in his body) blowing it.
Usually a didgeridoo player will be accompanied with
a clapstick player and a song man. They go together to remote places and play
out the olden myths and stories of the aboriginal community.
This information has a striking similarity to Tamil
customs in two ways. One is that a similar looking wind pipe is a popular indigenous
instrument in rural Tamilnadu. It is called ‘Thaarai’. It is always accompanied
with a drum beaten with two sticks which is called “Thappattai”. Together they
are known as “thaarai – thappattai”.
Given below is the picture of aborigines playing
clapsticks and didgeridoo.
The following picture shows Tamils playing Thaarai- Thappattai.
The long and extended wind pipe is blown in all
ceremonies varying from death ceremonies to religious ceremonies in rural Tamil
lands. The aborigines also do the same with didgeridoo.
The 2nd similarity is that the aborigine
didgeridoo player used to go around the lands along with a song man who will
sing the histories of aborigines. This is similar to the description in Tamil Sangam
texts of PaaNan, the song man or the composer going in the company of
instrumentalists to places and sing songs to earn a living. Verse 335 of
Purananuru ( a Sangam text) is in the form of a narration by a PaaNan who
identifies himself along with 3 others as the oldest clans in Tamil lands. They
are PaaNan (composer cum singer), Paraiyan (drummer), Thudiyan (another kind of
Drummer) and Kadamban (not exactly known but can be a dancer). This verse
mentions only these 4 people as the oldest inhabitants (kudi) of Tamil lands.
Aborigines with similar avocations seem to possess a history of avery distant
past that is forgotten completely now but can be discovered through Tamil and
Indian cultural traits.
Most of the aboriginal ideas on religion are similar
to Hindu Thought. They believe in life after death. They believe in the
eternity of the soul. For them life and death are in perfect harmony and death
means new birth into another existence. What is more, the aborigines consider
the earthly existence as similar to ‘maya’, a kind of dream state and consider
death as a return to an existence from a dream like earthly life. As such they don’t
think that death means an end.
This belief in after life has given rise to worship
of ancestors. Like Hindus, they believe that ancestors bestow their blessings
to their offspring. They come in dreams at times to forewarn of some danger. Their
views on sleep and dreaming are also amazingly close to Hindu Thought. They believe
that everyone leaves their soul during sleep and wander in dream like state.
This kind of spiritual ideas of Hinduism found among
them with no organised head or community to lead them in their thousands of
years of seclusion could not have come to them without a common ancestor in a
very distant past who had separated from them long ago.
In this background, the one evidence I can see is in
the image found in ancient aboriginal art that is strikingly similar to an old
Hindu concept of a Goddess. Take a look at that image:
Though there is a myth related to this image of a
woman, this is similar to the image of Lajja Gauri, a
personification of Vedic Goddess Aditi, who was the mother of all gods and
known as goddess of Fertility. The image of Lajja Gauri is shown below.
The same concept is also found in the Goddess Pachamama of Incas in the
Andes.
The above is the image of Pachamama of Incas. This
Goddess is also known as Fertility giver.
Similar looking images for the same concept found in
3 different places – how could this happen independently of each other?
The only
plausible explanation is the presence of a common ancestor. A common group of
ancestors of the present day people (in Andes, Australian aborigines and
Hindus) at a single location at a distance past had scattered far and wide.
Among them the aborigines seem to have frozen into a different time scale of
the past. Though genetic studies seem to raise conflicting questions on their
ancestral connections, we may have to wait for more studies to come up as the
cultural similarities between them and the Indians cannot be easily brushed
aside as insignificant.
Related articles:-
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From
Genetics reveal 50,000 years of
independent history of aboriginal Australian people
The first complete sequences of the Y chromosomes of
Aboriginal Australian men have revealed a deep indigenous genetic history
tracing all the way back to the initial settlement of the continent 50,000
years ago, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology today.
The study by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and collaborators at La Trobe University in Melbourne and several other Australian institutes, challenges a previous theory that suggested an influx of people from India into Australia around 4-5,000 years ago. This new DNA sequencing study focused on the Y chromosome, which is transmitted only from father to son, and found no support for such a prehistoric migration.
The study by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and collaborators at La Trobe University in Melbourne and several other Australian institutes, challenges a previous theory that suggested an influx of people from India into Australia around 4-5,000 years ago. This new DNA sequencing study focused on the Y chromosome, which is transmitted only from father to son, and found no support for such a prehistoric migration.
The results instead show a long and independent
genetic history in Australia. Modern humans arrived in Australia about 50,000
years ago, forming the ancestors of present-day Aboriginal Australians. They
were amongst the earliest settlers outside Africa. They arrived in an ancient
continent made up of today's Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, called Sahul,
probably thousands of years before modern humans arrived in Europe. Five
thousand years ago, dingos, the native dogs, somehow arrived in Australia, and
changes in stone tool use and language around the same time raised the question
of whether there were also associated genetic changes in the Australian
Aboriginal population.
At least two previous genetic studies, one of which
was based on the Y chromosome, had proposed that these changes could have
coincided with mixing of Aboriginal and Indian populations about 5,000 years
ago.
Anders Bergstrom, first author on the paper at the
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "We worked closely with Aboriginal
Australian communities to sequence the Y chromosome DNA from 13 male volunteers
to investigate their ancestry. The data show that Aboriginal Australian Y
chromosomes are very distinct from Indian ones. These results refute the
previous Y chromosome study, thus excluding this part of the puzzle as
providing evidence for a prehistoric migration from India. Instead, the results
are in agreement with the archaeological record about when people arrived in
this part of the world."
Dr John Mitchell, Associate Professor at La Trobe
University in Melbourne, explained: "Clearly there is keen interest in the
Aboriginal community to explore their genetic ancestry and without them this
study would not be possible - our first step was to return their results to
them, before the scientific article was published. This collaboration in genome
sequencing, to explore their ancient history, was made possible by years of
engagement beforehand with Aboriginal communities."
Further study
is needed to answer questions such as how the dingo did get to Australia and
why other people such as the seafaring Polynesians didn't settle on the
continent. Expanding the genetic analyses beyond the Y chromosome and to the
whole genome will also be necessary to completely rule out external genetic
influences on the Aboriginal Australian population before the very recent times.
Lesley Williams, who was responsible for the liaison
with the Aboriginal community, said: "As an Aboriginal Elder and cultural
consultant for this project I am delighted, although not surprised, that
science has confirmed what our ancestors have taught us over many generations,
that we have lived here since the Dreaming."
Dr Chris Tyler Smith, group leader at the Wellcome
Trust Sanger Institute added: "By fully sequencing and analysing
Y-chromosomal DNA, we have been able to trace ancient human migrations and
inform living people about their ancestry. We are using the latest technology
to genetically unearth our ancient history - something that has only become
possible in the last decade. We look forward to further collaborations to
understand more of this unique heritage."
Source: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute [February
25, 2016]
