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Comment by noopx | Hacker News Reader

The article has various flaws in it. That includes their imaginary dating of the "Indian civilization" as well as the assumption behind the SNP mutations based age and origin correlation. The nomenclature used on the map is also wrong. There are more than a dozen mistakes in it.

There is no name of the author on the article either. I wonder if this is propaganda, pure carelessness or something else. Did the Zurich guys even approve publishing such non-sense?

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Max Planck Gesellschaft publication on this:

http://www.mpg.de/6818105/Holocene-gene-flow_India-Australia

> There are more than a dozen mistakes in it.

Could you please point those out?

'imaginary dating of the "Indian civilization"'

The 23rd centry BC seems to be right in the middle of the peak of the Indus Valley Civilisation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization

Economist articles have no byline as editorial policy.

Can't comment on the rest of your points.

That's an interestingly emotional, defensive response. Most HN readers would simply have found it an cool scientific article. I don't think the Economist science section really has a "propaganda" axe to grind. (And as others have said, they never sign articles.) What's the source of your reaction?

It could just hit close to home. These anthropological 'origin stories' sometimes contradict racial identity. For example, if you were to suggest that the Japanese were descended from Korean farmers that emigrated from mainland Korean, many Japanese would find that offensive because there is deep racial hatred of Korea (though maybe only truly present in the older generations) and a racial identity of being natives to Japan.

I wonder if English have ever felt similar offense when people point out the role of France and the french language in their country's and language's development.

Nope. When I realised, I thought holy shit, I pretty much speak French already. Learn some glue words then any word ending in 'able' or 'cial' (and a few others i forget) pronounced in a 'Allo 'Allo [0] accent and you are pretty likely to be talking French. :-) [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allo_Allo!

I think for the most part they're pretty well aware of the Latin influence on their language. But you might be interested in Googling "Anglish" for the (rather fringe) pushback against the ancient foreign incursion.

Is this a trailer for a highbrow dismissal?

You allude to many things but don't state counterpoints. Would you please elaborate?

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