Schurr, Theodore GGenographic Consortium2023-05-222023-05-222012-11-282014-11-21https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/1481Previous studies that pooled Indian populations from a wide variety of geographical locations, have obtained contradictory conclusions about the processes of the establishment of the Varna caste system and its genetic impact on the origins and demographic histories of Indian populations. To further investigate these questions we took advantage that both Y chromosome and caste designation are paternally inherited, and genotyped 1,680 Y chromosomes representing 12 tribal and 19 non-tribal (caste) endogamous populations from the predominantly Dravidian-speaking Tamil Nadu state in the southernmost part of India. Tribes and castes were both characterized by an overwhelming proportion of putatively Indian autochthonous Y-chromosomal haplogroups (H-M69, F-M89, R1a1-M17, L1-M27, R2-M124, and C5-M356; 81% combined) with a shared genetic heritage dating back to the late Pleistocene (10â 30 Kya), suggesting that more recent Holocene migrations from western Eurasia contributed© 2012 ArunKumar et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.demographyhaplogroushaplotypesIndiaPaleogeneticsphylogenetic analysispopulation geneticsY ChromosomesAnthropologyGeneticsGenetics and GenomicsSocial and Behavioral SciencesArticle