A Family Tree in Every Gene

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

By Armand Marie Leroi
The New York Times

London — Shortly after last year's tsunami devastated the lands on the Indian Ocean, The Times of India ran an article with this headline: "Tsunami May Have Rendered Threatened Tribes Extinct." The tribes in question were the Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese and Sentinelese - all living on the Andaman Islands - and they numbered some 400 people in all. The article, noting that several of the archipelago's islands were low-lying, in the direct path of the wave, and that casualties were expected to be high, said, "Some beads may have just gone missing from the Emerald Necklace of India."

The metaphor is as colorful as it is well intentioned. But what exactly does it mean? After all, in a catastrophe that cost more than 150,000 lives, why should the survival of a few hundred tribal people have any special claim on our attention? There are several possible answers to this question. The people of the Andamans have a unique way of life. True, their material culture does not extend beyond a few simple tools, and their visual art is confined to a few geometrical motifs, but they are hunter-gatherers and so a rarity in the modern world. Linguists, too, find them interesting since they collectively speak three languages seemingly unrelated to any others. But the Times of India took a slightly different tack. These tribes are special, it said, because they are of "Negrito racial stocks" that are "remnants of the oldest human populations of Asia and Australia."

It's an old-fashioned, even Victorian, sentiment. Who speaks of "racial stocks" anymore? After all, to do so would be to speak of something that many scientists and scholars say does not exist. If modern anthropologists mention the concept of race, it is invariably only to warn against and dismiss it. Likewise many geneticists. "Race is social concept, not a scientific one," according to Dr. Craig Venter - and he should know, since he was first to sequence the human genome. The idea that human races are only social constructs has been the consensus for at least 30 years.

But now, perhaps, that is about to change. Last fall, the prestigious journal Nature Genetics devoted a large supplement to the question of whether human races exist and, if so, what they mean. The journal did this in part because various American health agencies are making race an important part of their policies to best protect the public - often over the protests of scientists. In the supplement, some two dozen geneticists offered their views. Beneath the jargon, cautious phrases and academic courtesies, one thing was clear: the consensus about social constructs was unraveling. Some even argued that, looked at the right way, genetic data show that races clearly do exist.

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Comments

[Nubianem]

THE NEGROID POPULATION OF INDIA IS ABOUT 500 MILLION PEOPLE

It is not surprising that the Indian Government and many Indians are concerned about preserving the most ancient people in India who are Negrito.

Today's Negrito in the Andaman Islands and the region were not affected by the Tsunami as much as was previously thought. Many, due to having 'ancient scientific knowledge,' knew a tsunami was approaching and left the area. This 'ancient knowledge' goes back to a period of over 10,000 years, when this very 'Negrito' stock was widespread all over Asia, from the Indian Ocean to Siberia and from Arabia to Hawaii. In fact not only were there Negritoes in great prominence in prehistoric and ancient Asia, there were aslo the taller, more robust Negro/Africoid type from India to Melanesia, where they continue to exist today.

India's people, particularly those in southern and eastern India as well as some in Bangladesh have returned to their Africoid/Negroid roots ( see www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html also see 'Susu Economics: The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth," pub. by www.AuthorHouse.com also see http://community.webtv.net/pabarton (various Black race types of ancient America, Asia and Africa)

MORE ON THE RACIAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SOME INDIANS (INDO-NEGROIDS) FROM INDIA AND BLACKS FROM AFRICA SEE
http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire
http://www.dalitstan.org/sudroid/books
http://www.dalitstan.org/books/sudroid

One is not going to see the Black Indo-Negroid people of India on most Indian or Asian tv networks for that matter. That population of about 500 million people spread from India to Melanesia are hidden or only presented in negative ways on Asian or American media.

However, today these groups are rising just as Africans and African-Americans, they are uniting in areas of culture, science and education and they are beginning to control their own media.

Hence, we will not learn about the many great Black Indo-Negroid kingdoms of ancient India from Indian tv, but we here in Black America have the opportunity to create media that unites Blacks from around the world and begin making movies and programs about Black civilizations in the Americas, Africa, Moorish Europe, India and elsewhere in Asia. We have the opportunity to get news and information from Black America, Africa Caribbean, Black Brazil, Latin America, Black India, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea and elsewhere and use that news to educate each other about the global presence of Black people and Black culture.

After we have done that, we will see why India is concerned about its Negrito race. It is because the core of India's civilization is rooted in the Negrito past and in the prehistoric and ancient Negrito-Black Cushi civilization that was once the dominant civilization in India.
http://www.dallitstan.org/sudroid/books
http://www.dalitstan.org/books/sudroid

MORE ON THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF BLACKS IN INDIA, READ, "A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming," published by www.Xlibris.com http://community.webtv.net/pabarton