‘Four major Asian ethnic groups orginated in Nepal’

Jul 20, 2014-A team of researchers has found out that Nepal and the eastern Himalayas is the birthplace of four major ethnic groups in Southeast Asia and Pacific.

The team’s findings debunk the widely-accepted story that indigenous people of Nepal, such as Tamang, Newar and Kiranti, migrated from Tibet and Mongolia.

“It’s the other way round,” said noted historical linguist Georg Van Driem, who was involved in the research. Driem shared the findings to an audience in the Capital last Sunday.

The Switzerland-based Dutch researcher and his team used genetics and linguistics to locate the origin of Tibeto-Burman, Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic and Austro-Tai ethnic groups. People who speak Newari, Tamang, Lepcha, among other languages, fall under the Tibeto-Burman ethnicity. Vietnamese- and Khmer-speaking population fall under Austroasiatic family.

Linguists applied the theory that males are more dominant in disseminating languages than females to understand spread of ethnic groups and languages.

The geneticists in the team then mapped the mutations in y-chromosomes of the four ethnic populations. Y-chromosomes are found only in male DNAs and are passed down from fathers to sons.

The research team found that one Y-chromosomal mutation, called haplogroup ‘O’, is spread throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific, among populations that speak Tibeto-Burman, Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic and Austro-Tai. “And we found out that the origin of that Y-chromosomal haplogroup O is in Nepal and eastern Himalayas,” Driem said. “This also suggests that we are extremely close to each other than we think and should celebrate our rich diversity,” said the linguist who has been studying Himalayan languages since 1983.

 Published: 20-07-2014

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