Tamil merchant in ancient Mesopotamia

Recent analyses of ancient Mesopotamian mitochondrial genomes have suggested a genetic link between the Indian subcontinent and Mesopotamian civilization. There is no consensus on the origin of the ancient Mesopotamians. They may be descendants of migrants, who founded regional Mesopotamian groups l...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-10, Vol.9 (10), p.e109331-e109331
Main Authors: Palanichamy, Malliya Gounder, Mitra, Bikash, Debnath, Monojit, Agrawal, Suraksha, Chaudhuri, Tapas Kumar, Zhang, Ya-Ping
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asian Continental Ancestry Group - genetics
Biology and Life Sciences
Civilization
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
DNA, Mitochondrial - genetics
Gene Pool
Genetic testing
Genetic Variation - genetics
Genetics, Population - methods
Genomes
Genomics
Geography
Haplotypes
Haplotypes - genetics
Humans
Immunology
India
Laboratories
Mesopotamia
Migrants
Mitochondria
Mitochondrial DNA
Mutation
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Population studies
Zoology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent analyses of ancient Mesopotamian mitochondrial genomes have suggested a genetic link between the Indian subcontinent and Mesopotamian civilization. There is no consensus on the origin of the ancient Mesopotamians. They may be descendants of migrants, who founded regional Mesopotamian groups like that of Terqa or they may be merchants who were involved in trans Mesopotamia trade. To identify the Indian source population showing linkage to the ancient Mesopotamians, we screened a total of 15,751 mitochondrial DNAs (11,432 from the literature and 4,319 from this study) representing all major populations of India. Our results although suggest that south India (Tamil Nadu) and northeast India served as the source of the ancient Mesopotamian mtDNA gene pool, mtDNA of these ancient Mesopotamians probably contributed by Tamil merchants who were involved in the Indo-Roman trade.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0109331