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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

What I found surprising is that the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/

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It seems to me that, if you have a society that divides people by caste and comes down hard on intermarriage, after some generations this is what you'd expect. Not one big "Indian" gene pool, but several smaller ones who remain distinct while still living close together.

I think the surprising aspect is how completely the separation must have been maintained for such a long time.

Actually, we _do_ see this in Europe too. They don't have castes in Europe, by that name, but they did have the feudal system, with a clear division between commoners and aristocrats. One big difference was that it was possible for a commoner to be given a title and hence promoted, so there was some fresh blood coming in, but you still saw things like the serious genetic diseases of the Habsburgs.

Its a chicken & egg question, what came first? The caste separation or the genetic separation? I find both plausible.

> the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person

It's best said that India is Europe in half the land area. Culturally (languages, writing scripts, music, food, dance, architecture, politics) and pheno/genotypically (skin colour, facial and body structure, mt/Y-chromosomal DNA). I struggle to find another single country with as long a history as India's, which is as diverse.

A lot of research into the genetic history of the Indian subcontinent seems to be from the late 90s and early 2000s.

Is there a reason it has stopped? We have gotten a lot better at genetic anthropology since then but for some reason there is very little new research on the genetic history of the Indian subcontinent.

I assume people are not in a hurry to get themselves canceled. I’d imagine genetic researchers are particularly sensitive to potential misuse of their research.

That because of about 1500 years of strict endogamy. It's only in very recent times that inter-caste marriages have become more common.

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