An intriguing paper by G. Lucotte:
In the present study we have extended the field of detection of haplotype XI/haplogroup R1a subject to other countries previously uncovered in our preceding articles [9,10]: these countries are mainly Northern Europe, Georgia and Armenia, Near/Middle East, North-Africa, Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. We found high haplotype XI frequencies values in Afghanistan (18.4%), in Iran (26.5%), in Pakistan (28% and 30.4%) and in India; in this last sub-continent, the maximal value of 61.3% was found in Punjab.
We have refound in our samples the clear distinction initially established by Pamjav et al. [21] between Indian Z93 populations and European Z280 populations: all our South Asian populations are Z93, while almost all our European populations are Z280. Datations show that the Z93 Pakistan Indian group is the most ancient (about 15.5 K years); in Europe, the Eastern populations are the most ancient (about 12.5 K years) and the Northern ones the most recent (about 6.9 Kyears).
Like a whole lot of other genetics papers, I am told it puts paid to the idea that there was a significant Y-chromosome influx into India 4.5 Kyears ago (which supposedly introduced Indo-European languages to India).
Some stronger conclusions
are derived here.
When you see papers
like this one, I have been told (I haven't read that one myself) that: "this paper takes only the Z280 and M458 marker found only in Europe and leaves out the much older Z93 branch".
PS: the reason for associating R1a genetics with Indo-European linguistics is, IMO, motivated by the prevailing theories of linguistic history and prehistory. This map, from the Lucotte paper, which would seem to show some correlation between presence of R1a with the extent of the Indo-European language family, is an example.
PS: I venture that the linguists see an Indo-European language tree because of the extremely low resolution of the linguistic data that they have, e.g.,
from a previous post of mine, even the human evolutionary tree is not a tree; and this is visible because of the very high resolution that DNA affords. For languages, if we really had century-by-century evidence of the form languages took, we would deduce a dense network of cross-connections, so much so that the tree would vanish.