Stay Curious

SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AND UNLOCK ONE MORE ARTICLE FOR FREE.

Sign Up

VIEW OUR Privacy Policy


Discover Magazine Logo

WANT MORE? KEEP READING FOR AS LOW AS $1.99!

Subscribe

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?

FIND MY SUBSCRIPTION
Advertisement

Genetics as the myth buster: Indian edition

Explore the Harappa Ancestry Project and its insights into South Asian ethnic groups, including the Vishwakarma and Tamil Nadar caste.

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

Whenever Zack Ajmal posts a new update to the Harappa Ancestry Project he appends some data to his ethnic database. This sends me to Wikipedia, because how many people are supposed to know what a "Muslim Rawther" means? Well, if you are a Muslim Rawther, and perhaps from Southern India, you would. But South Asian ethno-linguistic categories and hierarchies are notoriously Byzantine, and I have difficulty making sense of them. This isn't too surprising in my case, as my family's background is relatively mixed in the very recent past (e.g., Hindus and Muslims, and people of various caste backgrounds), so we're not the sort who can go at length about our pure ancestry and all that stuff. Unfortunately, Wikipedia isn't always useful, because the people editing the entries on particular South Asian ethnic groups are often people from those ethnic groups, so you get a lot of extraneous information, and ...

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe
Advertisement

0 Free Articles