Talk:Haplogroup R1a

Misleading header and intro

"Haplogroup R1a, or haplogroup R-M420, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup" - is misleading, because R1a also can exist as mtDNA. To avoid these frequent misunderstandings, we genereally should set "Y-" before "Haplogroup" and even the Name itselve.HJJHolm (talk) 09:13, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The naming is correct.although some y-dna and mt-dna share a similar name, haplogroup R1a as a Y-DNA haplogroup and haplogroup R1a as an mtDNA haplogroup represent distinct genetic lineages and are inherited through different ancestral lines.what i can infer from this statement of yours is the confusion that same r1a ydna haplogroup which is used to trace deep ancestory (as it mutates rarely or very slowly) is same as r1a mt-dna (which is not very useful to determine ancestors as it mutates at a much faster rate).they are not same. 45.249.86.113 (talk) 00:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I think that was the point? If there are two different topics with the same name then we try to pick titles which avoid confusion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Repeated attack on south asian sections

Some editiors are repeatesly attacking south asian section/south asia/ south asian origin section in the article with bad faith edits.adding extermely biased information as well as relating scholarly research to hindutva amd indian nationalism .multiple pages relat8ng to south asia has been attacked by these editors.unbiased admins should keep an eye.i alone am not responsible for monitoring these hate filled humans. Superlog47 (talk) 11:41, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Quoting Pande (2022), Manchester University Press pp. 1976-1979

The star object of these stories is the R1a haplogroup passed on through male lineage from father to son. The R1a is supposed to be found in higher frequencies in north Indian, upper castes (Friese, 2018). The presence of the R1a gene is supposed to indicate a continuity between the Indus Valley Civilisation and the Hindu, upper caste north Indian people in modern day India. This haplogroup is contested because in the Migrant Aryans narrative, a group of people from the steppes of Central Asia carrying the haplogroup entered India at some point along with some preliminary version of Vedic culture.

There are multiple contestations here. The mainstream perspective is of the R1a originating 'outside' India and being carried in to the country by a group of migrants ('the Aryans') who arrived after the Indus Valley Civilisation. This narrative means that the Vedic culture was brought in by people not indigenous to the modern idea of what is territorially India. The Hindu Nationalist narrative also proposes that the R1a haplogroup is indigenous to India and could have spread outwards from India. The haplogroup being associated with 'north Indian, upper castes' already raises several questions on the objective of unifying all of India as a single homogenous entity with an unbroken lineage. It also reinforces the assumption that north Indian, upper castes are a discernible population group. The intertwining of nationalist asperations, ideas of race, and differences between populations, religion and belonging with genetics becomes difficult to separate.

Quoting Lalueza-Fox (2022), MIT Press, pp.81-82:

The idea that western Eurasian peoples could have shaped moder Indian diversity is, quite understandably, viewed negatively in India, where nationalism is a growing ideology. (ln fact, the genetic results point to peoples from western Asia, not from Europe, as drivers of this social change.) Some years ago, local scientists supported the view that the existence of an R1a Y chromosome was not attributable to a foreign gene flow but instead that this lineage had emerged on the subcontinent and spread from there. But the phylogenetic reconstruction of this haplogroup did not support this view. (So far, however, R1a is absent from the Bronze Age periphery of India, thereby raising an interesting point about a potential decoupling between the spread of steppe ancestry and the arrival of this characteristic Y chromosome lineage. The ideological backgrounds against which these ideas clash, even today, can be easily related to India's colonial period. - Hunan201p (talk) 12:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Austronesier and Skllagyook: Sourced or not I find this paragraph → "Within India, authors frequently claim that haplogroup R1a, and even Western Steppe Herder ancestry originated within India and spread throughout Eurasia.[25] However, according to Amrita Pande, these claims represent distortions of the truth and wilfull ignorance, motivated by Hindu nationalism.[25] Carles Lalueza-Fox suggests that the idea of western Eurasian people had a genetic or cultural impact on ancient India is unpopular within Indian society, due to the growing popularity of nationalism in India, as well as the historical use of the Aryan invasion theory as a justification for British colonialism in India, as well as the Aryanist theories of Nazi Germany.[26]" – rather detailed / excessive / attacking towards a certain group (Hindu nationalists), ergo WP:UNDUE and WP:BALANCE, and should be removed.

The sentence before this one – "However, the mainstream position among geneticists is that haplogroup R1a did not originate in South Asia, and that the bearers of haplogroup R1a settled in South Asia from West Asia" serves our purpose against that specific origin hypothesis. See for example this sentence - "However, according to Narasimhan et al. (2018), steppe pastoralists are a likely source for R1a in India", it serves the same purpose at Proposed Transcaucasia and West Asian origins and possible influence on Indus Valley Civilization but is succinct without any narrative towards the believers of that specific origin hypothesis. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 13:42, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@Hunan201p: forgot to ping - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 13:45, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

The are some ideological metadebates that are notable and worth mentioning in certain contexts. This is however a technicalcruft page about the haplogroup, so IMHO any mention of such metadebates is undue here. Giving space to conspiracy theories which claim that genomic research is deliberately biased should stay out per WP:PROFRINGE. –Austronesier (talk) 13:53, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Folks, I'm sorry I didn't type this hours ago but there's simply no way I could have done it without any sleep beforehand. In short, I agree with you. The details are going too far in to Indigenous Aryanism and too far from R1a as a technical subject. I will trim the details from the wiki and the citation quotes.

The "probable place of origin" in tbe infobox also needs changing to what the article actually says: most of the authors cited suggest a West Asian origin, a few suggest a possible Caucasus origin. It is claimed that Spencer Wells proposed a Central Asian origin, however I am not seeing that in his paper. What he did say was this, yet I am not even certain that this would be relevant to R1a origins.

The current distribution of the M17 haplotype is likely to represent traces of an ancient population migration originating in southern Russia/Ukraine, where M17 is found at high frequency (>50%). It is possible that the domestication of the horse in this region around 3,000 B.C. may have driven the migration (27). The distribution and age of M17 in Europe (17) and Central/Southern Asia is consistent with the inferred movements of these people, who left a clear pattern of archaeological remains known as the Kurgan culture, and are thought to have spoken an early Indo-European language (27, 28, 29).

At the very least we should specify he is referring to R1a1a (M17). - Hunan201p (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

List removed

Joshua Jonathan removed list of notable carriers. Did the same at R1b. Here he gave no explanations, there he said "undue trivia". Lists of "notables" are accepted and widespread in Wikipedia. If stuff has sources why removing list? 151.38.149.52 (talk) 11:31, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

It was removed before from all haplogroup articles, possibly has a reason. Let me check. Also some of the sources you used aren't reliable, hence restored the WP:STABLE version. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 11:33, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Joshua Jonathan. This is mega-cruft. –Austronesier (talk) 11:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's good if you check, but anyways, lists of people are a main feature of Wikipedia, why shouldn't we have some for the haplogroups as well? P.S. let me know which sources that I added are not reliable so I see what I can do 151.38.149.52 (talk) 11:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Extremely tedious, was only able to check ~50 revision, all the way to 2008, couldn't find any such list in them. Probably got added / removed in between. Andrew Lancaster would know better. Anyway, I'm opposing it since we already have this article - List of haplogroups of historic people. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 12:39, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

What about a list with best known (really really renowned individuals) + link to List of haplogroups of historic people? Such list may look like "boasting" for R1a haplogroup but it's actually just really cool trivia, and I can create other short lists for each haplogroup (I already made one for R1b)... 151.68.122.62 (talk) 19:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't remember who removed what but yes in general there has been a long term consensus to avoid "famous carrier" sections in Y DNA articles. One of the problems in practice (because we played around with it for a while) was also finding good reliable sources. But a common argument is also that the information is trivial. I can imagine exceptions, such as the famous Richard III tests?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:08, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Geographical origin tally

After getting some much needed rest, I now feel prepared to start the gradual process of sorting out what the studies in this article say about R1a origins, as well as clearing out the unreliable sources (such as blogs or tweets) in the article and general tidying.

I would also like to acknowledge my mis-characterization of the studies on 21:16 16 July 2023. I implied with this comment that most of the studies say the haplogroup originated in West Asia. As I will show below by compiling quotes from all of the studies, that was incorrect. I also hinted that we should specify that Wells (2001) was talking about R1a1, when the article already does. These errors might reflect my insufficent sleeing patterns and general laziness; at least that is what I am hoping for.

I will create sub-sections below tallying the studies for their proposed geographical origin of R1a.

Eastern Europe

I will start this section off by saying is that there is a problematic statement in the "R1a origins" section that reads:

The ancient DNA record has shown the first R1a during the Mesolithic in Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (from Eastern Europe),[5][6] and the earliest case of R* among Upper Paleolithic Ancient North Eurasians,[7] from which the Eastern Hunter-Gatherers predominantly derive their ancestry.[8]

Haak, et al. (2015) ([6]) do mention the mesolithic R1a individual from Karelia, who they describe as the "oldest known" R1a specimen found to date, but not "the first". And yet they also acknowledge that the modern R1a was brought to Europe from the East and that Karelia did not belong to the derived lineage M417 within R1a.

These statements, while interesting and notable, don't explicitly support an Eastern European origin. They just note that mesolithic hunter gatherers had R1a and that a Karelian HG is the oldest sample of R1a yet identifed. Saag, et al. (2016) also suggest that it may have been a common haplogroup among EHG.

There is seemingly one citation in the body that does directly support an Eastern European origin: Semino, et al. (2000), who do say on page 1156:

... haplotypes Eu18 and Eu19 as signaatures of expansions from isolated population nuclei in the Iberian peninsula and the present Ukraine, following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). In fact, during this glacial period (20,000 to 13,000 years ago), human groups were forced to vacate Central Europe, with the exception of a refuge in the northern Balkans (16). Similar discrete patterns of the flora and fauna in Europe have been attributed to glaciation-modulated isolation followed by dispersal from climatic sanctuaries (18). This scenario is also supported by the finding that the maximum variation for microsatellites linked to Eu19 is found in Ukraine (19).

This beings my tally of studies supporting an Eastern European origin for haplogroup R1a to a grand total of 1. If anyone has more studies that support an Eastern European origin of R1a, go ahead and cite them, but until then I see no rationale for listing it as the first (and therefore, most supported, according to convention) location in the infobox. - Hunan201p (talk) 08:23, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@Hunan201p: Should we rearrange Possible place of origin paramter? And what would be the order? - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:56, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Hunan201p I think it would be more interesting to consider how many studies think R1a entered Europe from the east (via eastern europe). I think that by tallying to come to a conclusion we risk WP:SYNTH because in reality there is not much consensus about where R1a originated apart from somewhere between Europe and India.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:48, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Fylindfotberserk and Andrew Lancaster: thanks for your comments, sorry it has taken so long for me to respond. Running short on time these days. I totally agree with Andrew Lancaster that it would be original research to tally the sources to re-arrange the order in the infobox. That's why I feel better about giving up on that task, but also why I don't have much of an answer for Fylindfotberserk. I also concur with Andrew's observation that there doesn't appear to be a consensus as to where R1a originated. I will add more if I can find the time. Please press ahead if you've got a plan. - Hunan201p (talk) 11:43, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@Hunan201p and Andrew Lancaster: Possibly the reason why it was "Eurasia" for years in the "|Possible place of origin= parameter" before some newb editor replaced it with various regions . I wouldn't have a problem if we revert back to it and/or use some arrangement like this → "[[Haplogroup_R1a#Origins|see here]]" for the parameter. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 12:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

There will inevitably be editors who want to narrow it down further, but Eurasia is at least difficult for anyone to get upset about. Another source-based option is a list "x, y or z", or something like "proposals are mainly in the area stretching from x to y" although even that is difficult in this case?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:55, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Good idea, folks! I'll start with Andrew's proposal and invite him to do the second when he finds the time. Hunan201p (talk) 00:46, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

South Asia

@Plumeater2: "South Asia is the preferred terminology. Pinging Fowler&fowler and RegentsPark for input. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:18, 2 November 2023 (UTC)