of mice and men: dna, archaeological and linguistic correlation of the two linked journeys of mice...

7/29/2019 Of Mice and Men: DNA, Archaeological and Linguistic correlation of the two linked Journeys of mice and men, by P

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Of Mice and Men: DNA, Archaeologicaland Linguistic correlation of the

two linked journeys of mice and men

Premendra Priyadarshi, (Dr)

email: [email protected]

Abstract:

The domestic mouse and the house rat are two human

commensal species which originated in India. The

domestication of the two had occurred in India before they

migrated out about 15,000 and 20,000 years back

respectively. It is generally held that these species migrated

with farming related human migrations. The DNA analysis of

the mice (Mus musculus) informs us that the domesticus sub-

species left India, entered Iran, reached West Asia and from

there Southeast Europe. The other sub-species musculus

musculus entered Central Asia from India to disperse in the

Russian steppe and further west.

These routes of migration of commensal mice overlap the

routes and times of human migration as deciphered more

recently by human DNA studies (musculus R1a1a: Central

Asia, Russia, Europe; domesticus J2b: Iran, Fertile Crescent,

South Europe).

It was found earlier that male DNA lineage J2b (M12;

M102), distributed from India to South Europe, was associated

with the migration of Indo-European language and farming in

West Asia and Southern Europe. J2b samples were only lately

studied in India. Data for age of this lineage in India, Iran,Anatolia and the Balkans, obtained from different published

papers show that this lineage too originated in India and then


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OFMICEANDMEN / 317migrated to Europe through Iran and West Asia. Our study

rules out Seminos claim of origin of this lineage in West Asia

or North Africa, and notes that Semino (2004:1026 fig 2D) got

his result wrong only because he had excluded DNA samples

from South Asia east of Pakistan.

We thus find that the mice and human Y-chromosomal

lineages migrated out from India with farming and Indo-

European languages by two routes, one northern and the other

southern, both meeting again in the Central and Western

Europe.

Archaeology and Ecology of Commensalism and

Mice Migration

Domestic mice and house rats are commensals of man,

subsisting on human food debris, although they also steal food

from farms and storage. It has been found that these species of

mice and rats migrated with agricultural migrations taking

place after the Last Glacial Maximum; however, non-

commensal species migrated earlier independently of human

migration.

It became known even before the arrival of DNA

technology that India was the original home of all mice and

rats, collectively called the murids. Early on G. Tate noted, on

the basis of bones, feet and other morphological features of the

murids, that India was undoubtedly the home of these rodents

(1936:506, n2). A genus of rat, Bandicota, found in Malaysia

and Java, was noted to have its headquarters in India

(ibid:512). Genus Ra ttus, which has a global distribution

today, too was noted to have its home in India (ibid).

However, some wild members of genus Rattus migrated to the

Islands of East India quite early, where they evolved into

further species adapted to those areas ( ibid). From Burma,

some Rattus members entered China.

Mus originated in India, and its commensal species (Musmusculus) evolved and lived only in north India until 15,000

years back. Ferris et al, on the basis of DNA analysis of


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domestic varieties ofMus, estimated that the commensal

association between mice and our ancestors began more than a

million years ago, i.e., at an early stage in the evolution of

Homo erectus (1983:Abstract). This commensal relation

between Homo erectus and some species ofMus is indirect

evidence that Homo erectus lived in India during most of this

period, because we know that commensal species ofMus did

not live anywhere beyond India then.

When Homo sapiens sapiens arrived in India in about

100,000 ybp or earlier, domestic mice became adapted to live

in and around human dwellings. Boursot noted that thedomestic mouses expansion to the periphery of Eurasian

range, and more recently to the rest of the world, is related to

human activity (1993:119). Searle (2009) too noted that

phylogeography of the house mice should reflect patterns of

human movement in the past.

The house mouse Mu s musculus was one of the early

species ofMus. Mus musculus diverged into three principal

sub-species, viz. Mus musculus domesticus, M. musculus

musculus and M. musculus castaneus about 500,000 years

back (Geraldis, 2008; Din, 1996; Boursot, 1993), and all of

these three commensal sub-species, continued to live in India

until about 15,000 years back.

However, it has been noted that there are many Mus species

in Europe and West Asia, which have no affinity with human

dwellings. These free-living (not dependent on human

dwellings) species, such as Mus macedonicus, Mus spicilegus

and Mus cypriacus, too originated in India, but they left India

much earlier, about 700,000 to 500,000 years back, and have

been living in Europe and West Asia independently of man

since then (Macholan et al, 2007). However, the three

branches of the commensal species Mus musculus did not

leave India when man left India during the Upper Paleolithic

(between 70,000 and 25,000 ybp) for Southeast Asia,Central Asia or West Asia. Domestic Mice left India with man

only when the Neolithic era arrived, about 15,000 to 10,000

years back.


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OFMICEANDMEN / 319This raises a question as to why the domestic mice preferred

to stay in India, and not venture out with man during the Upper

Paleolithic. This implies that even before farming was adopted

by man in India, there had been surplus food gathered by man

from wild Indian paddy fields and other sources. Some works

analyzing domestic mice migration from West Asia to West

Europe provide insight into this question.

Auffray and colleagues (1990) studied mice fossils from

West Asia and Europe vis--vis archaeological remains. They

noted that although many wild species of mice had entered

West Asia and Europe since much earlier times, the housemouse (Mu s mu sculu s do mest icus) appeared at the

easternmost Mediterranean Basin at the endpoint of the

Pleistocene, i.e. about 10,000 years before present (ybp). It did

not spread further west for many thousand years. Bones of this

species were found from the western Mediterranean Basin

from the Bronze Age layer, and in north-west Europe from the

Iron Age layer, but not earlier when the Neolithic first arrived

into these areas. On the other hand musculus sub-species of

the house mice (Mus musculus musculus) reached Central

Europe and then Northwest Europe through Russia earlier than

the domesticus subspecies, at a time when the latter was

confined to the Levant or East Mediterranean basin.

Aufray et al note that this archaeological survey is in

agreement with genetic data of mice which provide indications

as to the speed, steps and pathways of progression of the

house mouse populations in western Eurasia. It is interesting to

note that the spread of the domesticus corresponds with the

spread of human male lineage J2b in West Asia and Europe,

while that of musculus musculus sub-species with that

of human male lineage R1a in Central Asia and Europe

(vide infra).

Cucchi, Aufray and Vigne raise this question, Why did

colonization by house mice in the Western Mediterranean notoccur until the Iron Age, when it would have been expected

that the species would have benefited from ecological transfer


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and passive transportation during Neolithic migrations ? Why

domesticus mice remained stationed at West Asia for many

thousand years without making any westward progression into

Western Europe? What prevented their westward diffusion

they ask (2005:436).

In a bid to find the answers, they examine the matter further.

According to the biological definition of commensalism, the

house mouse relationship with humans should depend only on

food supply and possible protection against climatic variations

and predation, without either harm or benefit from the latter.

Mice must have felt safer in human vicinity. Tsutim et al(2008) found that human environment gives protection to

sparrows from being predated by carnivorous birds and

animals. The same must have been applicable to the mice.

It is well accepted that the existence of the house mice was

so much dependant on human food that they migrated with

man as a passive migrant. One of the most characteristic

features of house mice life history is probably its

commensalism in relation to humans. The worldwide

colonization by this species is mainly due to passive transport

by humans and is a consequence of its ecological dependence

on humans wrote ecologists Wilson and Reeder (2005:1401).

However, a particular threshold of density of human

population was required to generate enough food-debris for

the survival of a colony of mice. Searle et al (2009) noted that

the mice lineages established in the western and northern parts

of British Islands were results of Viking arrivals. To form

viable populations, house mice would have required large

human settlements such as the Norwegian Vikings founded,

they noted. Mice lineages found in other parts of British

Islands reflect earlier development of larger human

settlements during the Iron Age movement of man from

Germany into Britain (ibid.).

Moreover any house mouse migration to a new area couldnot have taken place until the humans of the new area had

been advanced enough to stop small game hunting. For this to


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OFMICEANDMEN / 321have happened, the mere arrival of farming into the area was

not enough. Man of that area needed to be very highly

dependent on farming, so as to spare the small animal from

hunting.

This gives us an answer as to why mice migration from the

Eastern Mediterranean region to West Europe did not take

place until a particular point of time. Or, why domestic mice

migration from India to West Asia did not take place until

12,000 or 10,000 ybp. Thus we can explain the house mice

migration on the basis of source-sinktheory of Dias (1996).

Human population of source area needs to have some specificfeatures, like generation of enough food debris or surplus

food, and that of the sink area should lack those supporting

features and should have features hostile to the new-comers,

leading to death of new arrivals. It may be assumed

that because of smallness of fertile area in the Middle East,

even arrival of the Neolithic could not generate a very large

human population there to have acted as a source of large

number of mice for passive export or migration to Western

Mediterranean.

Munro, on the basis of archeological evidence found that

during the Natufian period (about 12,000 ybp), West Asian

people hunted fast-running small games, even though a

sedentary life had been established (2003:53). Similar

aggressive small game hunting was practiced in Europe too at

that time, where from a single site in Portugal dating 12,000

ybp, 9000 rabbit bones have been recovered (Hockette).

Probably such conditions prevailed in the northwestern

Europe until the first millennium BCE when the Iron Age took

off there. Hence before the Iron Age in northwest Europe and

the Bronze Age in southwest Europe, house mice could not

have thrived as commensal.

Cucchi et al analyse the whole thing in the following way,

Tchernov (1984, 1991) has demonstrated, through the firstsedentary settlements in the Natufian period, that

commensalism is a consequence of both intensive human


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pressure on natural habitats and increases in plant usage

leading to the creation of a new ecological niche available for

anthropophilous1 species. This anthropization of the

environment should have provided a decrease of predation

and of interspecific competition. It should also have increased

the food availability for mice and provided protection against

meteorological variation and climatic change. (2005:437)

Thus the mere arrival of farming was not sufficient to lead to

the anthropization of Europe until the Bronze Age in Central

Europe and the Iron Age in Northwest Europe. There was little

anthropization of Western Europe until Iron Age, as comparedto the Neolithic period large villages or towns of the Eastern

Mediterranean, Iran and India (ibid). Thus Cucchi et al take

help of the source-sink theory (of Dias) considering that the

western and north-western European environments acted like

sinks for mice, until the first millennium BC (ibid:439-440).

This ecological discussion (and source-sink theory) can be

applied to human migrations also, and that makes it clear that

the West Asian ecosystem was not large enough to have acted

as a human linguistic source to a much larger and already

more densely populated area such as north India. Moreover

creating an elite-dominance by a tiny source linguistic-

population over a huge sink linguistic-population was not

possible by any West Asians arriving at northern India.

Human migration from West Asia to Iran and India claimed by

Renfrew (2004:80) is further ruled out by Groubes (1996)

analysis, which rejects this possibility after taking into account

all the various ecological factors. He finds that population

expansion after glacial periods starts in southern latitudes first,

and when the Carrying Capacity of area reaches saturation,

then migrations take place to the north. In the West Asian case,

no post-glacial migration either to the east or south could have

taken place and human migrations must have taken place only

to the west and north, he concludes (ibid:105).

1 Anthropophilus, literally meaning man loving. In ecology, it means living

beings which live near man or human dwellings.


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OFMICEANDMEN / 323

We thus know from archaeology and ecology that

people outside India, like those in Central Asia, Iran and West

Asia, stopped the hunting mode of life and started subsisting

largely on cereals in a sedentary lifestyle several thousand

years after the Last Glacial Maximum. There is certainty in

archaeological evidence for the appearance of the domestic

mice and the Neolithic together in West Asia and

Mediterranean basin (Bonhomme 2010:6-7, web version).

Domestic mice, sedentary living, the decreased hunting of

small animals and the Neolithic appear at West Asia as a

package suddenly, giving certainty to inevitable conclusion

that the two arrived together. On the other hand Indian

Neolithic evolved gradually over time. It is because of this

packaged nature of West Asian Neolithic that manyauthorities believe the Neolithic was imported to West Asia

from somewhere else.

Although, recent researches have revealed that modern

Fig.1 (from Renfrew 2004:80, fig. 5.1). Renfrews flawed scheme of origin

of 1) Afro-Asiatic (Semitic), 2) Elamo-Dravidian, 3) Indo-Aryan and 4)

Altaic language families from the hypothetical nuclear area (West Asia)

where four major language families originated without any geographical

isolation from each other. Routes 2 and 4 are not supported by DNA

findings for man and mouse. DNA flow is from east to west.


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human behavior originated for the first time in India (James

and Petraglia, 2005:S7; James, 2009; Petraglia et al, 2009),

there has been a lot of resistance from archeologists, linguists

and historians to this fact. In the past, historians usually tended

to date all advanced cultural remains within the Biblical time

limit of 6000 ybp.

Kivisild impugns this bias in favour of West Asia in the

following words, The heart of the matter is an understanding

and reevaluation of some of the basic concepts of South Asian

archaeology in a global context, including modern human

behavior, the cultural shift(s) toward it, and the geographicspread of its manifestations. According to the classical view,

blade technology in India is classified as Upper Palaeolithic,

with the implicit assumption that it is derived from the culture

arising first in the Near East and expanding approximately

40,000 years ago toward Europe. (2005:S18)

Kivisild supports James and Petraglias theory of the South

Asian origin of modern human behavior: James and Petraglia

argue, on the basis of the wide diversity of Late Pleistocene

lithic tools in South Asia, the continuity of Middle and Upper

Palaeolithic sites, and their distinctiveness from the

contemporary artifacts of the Near East and Europe, that the

South Asian Upper Palaeolithic developed largely from local

roots. (ibid). He rejects the West Asian origin of modern

human behavior, because it suddenly appears as a package in

West Asia, and that implies transfer of cultural package from

somewhere to West Asia, India being the most likely place for

origin of such package.

A similar view is held by Bar-Yosef (2007) too regarding

West Asia. He attributes the new successful technologies

observed inthe Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic to social processes

and economic innovations by Middle Palaeolithic of some

particular region from where this spread as a package to the

West Asia and the rest of world. He rejects West Asia,and suggests Africa to be the source of farming culture.


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OFMICEANDMEN / 325Although later genetic studies reject Bar-Yosefs suggestion of

Africa as a source of human population for West Asia, yet his

arguments against West Asia being the place of origin of

farming remain valid.

Tchernov (1997) by a detailed analysis had earlier proved

that there was no correlation between climatic changes and

cultural revolution in West Asia. Bar-Yosef too refuted any

correlation between climatic change and cultural revolution in

West Asia (1998:164). The West Asian cultural revolution is a

sudden appearance of farming, pottery and sedentism,

imported from outside. But such cultural changes in India,South China and Southeast Asia have evolved slowly in situ

over a long period of time, although influenced by climate.

Hence correlation between climate change and cultural

evolution exists in India, but not in the case of West Asia

(Kivisild, 2005; James and Petraglia, 2005). Thus the

evidence-based opinion of experts on this particular issue is

that the West Asian Neolithic was not indigenous to the West

Asia but was imported there from somewhere else. Recent

findings of Ganga Valley Pottery Neolithic and Mehrgarh

Neolithic provide source or missing link for the West Asian

Neolithic (Priyadarshi 2011b).

If farming did not evolve in situ in West Asia then from

where did it arrive to the West Asia? It remained a matter of

guess for most of the authors. The Bar-Yosef guess North

Africa was not supported by any. James and Petraglia firmly

believe that the source of modern behaviour of West Asian

cultures was India. Kivisild also supports this view.

Dennel (2005) supports such a view affirming that

modernity was indigenous to South Asia. James (2009)

further buttresses the view. The comparative study of

literature, mythology and linguistics by Kazanas (2009b) too

supports an Indian origin of the ancient West Asian cultures.

Thus ecology, ancient literature and mythology rule outRenfrews and Bellwoods theories of human migration from

West Asia to India.


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This discussion leads us to concluding that the house mice

had a commensal relationship with humans in India since

much before invention of farming. This implies:

i) That human population was quite dense in India, even

before the Neolithic. Hence there was sufficient

anthropization of the country since very early days.

Weknow from other works that India had the highest

human population density during much of prehistory

(Petraglia, 2009:1, pdf).

ii) Indians were not aggressive small game hunters

(possibly because of availability of better food like

wild paddy, barley, millets, fruits, tubers and larger

game animals); and

iii) There was a food surplus in India, even before shifting

to farming, to have resulted in waste food and food

debris, for consumption by mice. There were wild

paddy fields in India, which were infested with foxes,

jackals and snakes. However, if there was a human

settlement near the paddy fields, even if man did not

cultivate paddy actively, he must have protected these

fields from being destroyed by jackals, foxes etc. This

effect must have provided sanctuary to the mice infields located near human settlements.

House Mice Migrations out of India

It is now generally accepted that man migrated not only

with his own DNA, but also carrying along with him pests,

commensals and infective microorganisms.2 It has been found

that study of domestic mice and rats can be a powerful tool to

know the human prehistory. Such studies have been made for

2

Pests like lice and infective micro-organisms like H. pylori infested andtravelled with man over a long period and longdistances. Today, their DNAs serve

to trace human prehistory. For lice: Toups 2011; for gut bacteriumH. pylori: Falush

2003 and Linz, 2007.


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OFMICEANDMEN / 327West Asia, Europe, Southeast Asia and Polynesia (Rajabi-

Maham, 2007; Cucchi, 2006). However no such study of

human migration, migration of farming and migration

of murids in an Indian context has so far been attempted by

any researcher, largely because of a generally held erroneous

notion that India was not a source of agriculture,

Y-chromosomal (male) lineages, or any language family.

For the same reasons, the Indian human DNA pool too has

not been studied by evolutionary biologists until quite late

(only a couple of exclusive articles exist).3 Yet with the help of

the meager DNA studies of Indians available, we are in aposition to examine whether or not domestic mice migration

occurred with human Y-chromosomal DNAs in the South

Asian context too.

Groves (1984, 1995) surveyed a large number of murids

morphologically and found that many non-commensal as well

as commensal species were introduced into Island and

Mainland Southeast Asia (ISA, MSA) from India together

with rice agriculture. Non-commensal species Mus caroli and

Mus cervicolor, non-commensal murids invariably restricted

to the rice farming areas, originated in India, and today they

are widely distributed in MSA north of the Malay, but

distributed only spottily in the archipelago (Fig. 2). Mus dunni,

a small mouse, native of northeast India, is a rice-field pest of

Indonesia (Groves 1995). Migration of the rice-field pests

from India is consistent with some of more recent views that

rice-farming may have originated in India (Tewari 2006; Sang

2009). The commensal sub-species of domestic mice in the

SEA is Mus musculus casteneus. It is also found in India, its

place of origin.

3

Evolutionary biologist Rosenburg (2006:2052) noted, Although Indiacomprises more than one sixth of the worlds human population, it has largely been

omitted fromgenomic surveys that provide the backdrop for association studies

of genetic disease.


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Most of the species of genus Mus, whether commensal or

non-commensal, are found in India. Wilson and Reeder noted

about the three subspecies of commensal mice, Genetic data

indicated that ranges ofmusculus, castaneous and domesticus likely

correspond to three distinct paths of expansion from the Indian

cradle. (2005:1409; also Bourset 1993:128) In fact later discovery of

migration routes and distribution ranges of human male lineages (Y-

DNA) R1a1a (Underhill 2010); O2a (Kumar 2007) and J2b

(Sengupta 2006; Priyadarshi 2011a)exactly overlap those of the

three Mus musculus sub-species respectively.

Fig.2. Distribution ofMus cervicolorin rice fields in the SEA,

from Groves 1984.

Fig.3. Routes of mice migration out of India. The route marked d (for

domesticus) overlaps the route of human migration of male lineage

haplogroup J2b. The route m (for musculus) overlies the route of

human migration for R1a1a (M17; old name R1a). J2 (which includes

J2b) has been identified as a lineage carrying Indo-European language

and farming into West Asia and South Europe. On the other hand, R1a1a

was identified as a marker of Aryan migration (Wells 2001). Figure from

Boursot et al 1996.


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OFMICEANDMEN / 329

Darvish et al (2006) studied DNA of the house mice from

Eastern Iran and drew a lineage map or dendrogram by

comparing it with similar data from other parts of the world.

It showed that the North Indian house mice occupied a central

ancestral place, from where all the three branches or

subspecies of the house mice had originated. One branch

dispersed to South India and Indonesia as castaneous

subspecies. The second branch musculus subspecies passed

from north India to Pakistan, then to Birdjand, Kakhk and

Mashhad (of Khorasan province of northeast Iran), wherefrom

entering Central Asia through Turkmenistan, ultimately

reaching Russia, from where a branch reached Romania. The

domesticus sub-species moved westward from India through

Iran, ultimately reaching Israel and France. All these all

dispersals occurred between 15,000 ybp and 10,000 ybp, after

the Last Glacial Maximum had receded.

Fig.4. Showing farming and Austro-Asiatic language migration to the

Southeast Asia as male lineage (Y-Chr) O2a. This migration overlaps

mice migration ofcastaneus sub-sp. (Source: Kumar et al 2007).


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Mus m. musculus and domesticus species reached the

Arabian coast (Yemen and Oman) from Pakistan, quite early,

from where they migrated along the African coast and in boats

to Madagascar. Duplantier and colleagues noted However,

the kinship between the Yemeni mice and those from

Madagascar argues in favour of importation along the African

coast and from the islands of Pemba, Zanzibar and the

Comoros, as previously described for the shrew Suncus

murinus by Hutterer and Tranier (1990). This shrew originated

from Asia: it is naturally present from Pakistan to Japan.

Its expansion westwards, to the Arabian peninsula, the coast of

East Africa and the islands of the Indian Ocean is the result of

importations by humans (Duplantier 2002:156). It is not

irrelevant to mention here that Asian House Shrew is another

commensal mammal, which subsists on insects growing in

domestic drains and food debris. It is found mainly in South

Asia and Southeast Asia. It is called chuchunderin Hindi.Its Sanskrit is shalyaka-vata which may be a source of English

Fig.5. DNA dendrogram showing the house mice origin from India.

Source: Darvish, Bonhomme and Orth 2006.


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OFMICEANDMEN / 331shrew, however there are no cognate words for shrew in the

Germanic languages.

In fact these authors find absolutely no evidence of any

subspecies of mice having arrived to Madagascar from

Indonesia, thus raising serious doubts over Bellwoods

hypothesis of human migration from Indonesia to Madagascar

(ibid:157). It is important to correlate here that Underhill et al

(2010) found that there was a sea mediated migration of

human male lineage R1a1a7 (a branch of R1a1a; M17) from

Sind (Pakistan coast) to the Arabian coast (Yemen and Oman).

Rajabi-Maham et al (2008) found that from the FertileCrescent mice expansion toward Europe and Asia Minor

took at least two routes, tentatively termed the Mediterranean

and the Bosphorus/Black Sea routes, 12,000 years ago.

However, this date is a bit earlier than what has been

calculated by other authors.

The domestic mice (and the domestic rats) are the only

animal which stayed in India for over 900,000 years without

leaving this country until dispersal of farming started. Given

the fact that there was an advanced pottery Neolithic in the

Ganga Valley at 10,000 ybp (Tewari 2008), we may safely

assume the presence of Pre-Pottery Neolithic in India roughly

about 13,000 ybp to 14,000 ybp, because 3000 years is the

time generally required for transition from non-pottery to

pottery stage of Neolithic in other parts of world like

West Asia. Mus domesticus reached the Eastern Mediterranean

basin in about 10,000 ybp (Cucchi et al 2005). We can

corroborate these two findings and say that 3000 years was the

time required for the migration of mice from India to

West Asia.

Logical inference is that proto-agriculture4 began first in

India, possibly much earlier than we imagine which kept mice

4 Sedentary settled life, cattle domestication, harvesting and storing from the

wild growths of paddy and other grains, food processing like cooking, milling,

roasting, barbequing etc.


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dependent on Indian human population for ages until finally

agriculture itself evolved and migrated out of India. The route

map of mice migration as mapped by the geneticists is exactly

the same as that of human migrations.

Migration of Rats

Rattus rattus (black rat, ship rat, roof rat) is another murid

species which originated in India and then migrated to the rest

of the world. From India it migrated to the West Asia and then

to Europe. Rattus reached West Asia by 20,000 years before

present, a date earlier than the domestic mouse migration

(Aplin 2008; CSIRO 2008; Jones 2008). Migration of this

species also took place from India to Madagascar and Western

Indian Ocean through Arabian coast (Yemen, Oman) and

boats, in parallel with that ofMus mu scul us do mest icus

(Tollenaere, 2010).

Fig.6. Route map of dispersal of domestic mice. The Mus musculus

domesticus migration, which occurred about 15,000 to 10,000 ybp,

exactly mimics the distribution map of haplogroup J2b to the west of

India, while that ofM. musculus musculus mimics that of R1a1a (Figure

from Bonhomme et al 2007).


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OFMICEANDMEN / 333

From DNA studies, Ken Aplin (2008) was able to identify a

total of six house rat (Rattus rattus) lineages in the world.

Although all of them originated in India, they thrived further

as six different lineages in six regions viz. India, East Asia, the

Himalayas, Thailand, the Mekong Delta, and Indonesia. The

Indian lineage spread to the Middle-East around 20,000 years

ago, then later to Europe. It reached Africa, the Americas and

Australia during the Age of Exploration. The migrations were

results of human migrations to these regions from India. Our

findings also show a good match between the historic spread

of each lineage and ancient routes of human migration and

trade, but there are a few surprises that raise new questionsabout human prehistory, noted Aplin.

Fig. 7. Migration route of domestic black rat and domestic cattle as

suggested by Dorian Fuller and Boivin Nicole (2009). Their date for

Indo-African migration are much later than the dates suggested by

available genetic studies.


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Tollenaere noted, Phylogeographic patterns supported the

hypothesis of human-mediated colonization ofR. rattus from

source populations in either the native area (India) or anciently

colonized regions (the Arabian Peninsula) to islands of the

western Indian Ocean. (2010:Abstract) This was possibly

because some early Indian proto-farmers may have migrated

to Arabian and Western Indian Ocean shores at 20,000 ybp, a

date earlier than the supposed date of agriculture in West Asia.Human migration from India to East Africa through Yemen

has not been studied so far at DNA level. Yet two things point

to such a human migration. One is the presence of

Fig.7. Routes of migration of six different DNA lineages ofRattus rattus,

as found in the DNA study by Aplin (2008) (Source: CSIRO 2008).


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OFMICEANDMEN / 335Y-chromosomal haplogroups H1, T (K2) and mitochondrial

DNA haplogroups M1, M6, M3, M4a in East and Central

Africa. The other is common words for many crop products

and domesticated animals in Indian and African languages.5

In fact now strong evidence has emerged for an Indian cultural

migration to Africa round the Last Glacial maximum (Kearsley

2010). Migration histories of zebu (cow) and dog, as revealed

by DNA studies, are consistent with the migration history of

rats, man and proto-farming from India to East Africa, and

from there to West Asia along Red Sea and Nile (Priyadarshi

2011b), but discussing them is beyond the scope of this article.Ra ttus norveg icus (brown rat, sewer rat) is a partially

commensal (also exists as free-living or non-commensal)

species in northern Europe (Yoshida, 1980), which migrated

there in large numbers from northeast China in 1727, although

there is evidence of earlier presence of this rat in Europe from

ninth century AD. It had reached China from India, before

Neolithic evolution. This species had evolved for a long time

in China. It is important to note that this species takes

to hunting and preying on mollusks and fish-lings in ponds

and rivers, if faced by any inadequacy of food, while black

rat is not a hunter under any circumstance (Galef Jr. and

Bennett 1980). Norvegicus colonizes colder, moister places,

like basements, banks of rivers and sewer channels etc

(Bajomi 1999).

On the other hand the Rattus rattus of Indian origin has

developed full commensalism and complete dependence on

human food and environment. It does not hunt. It stores food

stolen from human households. In contrast to norvegicus, R.

rattus prefers to live at higher, drier and warmer places like

attics and thatched roofs (Harpar 2005). This is another

behavioral adaptation owing to living within human dwellings

5Although Winterss (2007, 2008, 2010a, 2010b) assumption that Dravidian

speakers came to India from Africa is not proved correct by his articles, these

inadvertently supply enough evidence, both linguistic and genetic, to prove the

reverse i.e. there was a farming related migration from India to East Africa.


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in Upper Paleolithic India, because dogs necessarily lived in or

about human dwellings at that time, forcing the black rats to

occupy the roofs as safe home.

From the difference of habitat and habit, it can be inferred

that contact of Chinese rat (Rattus norvegicus) with farming

society and cereal diet is very late, and this rat has retained

much of its predator or wild habits, which is a legacy of

its living in the non-farming surrounding of China till latean

indirect evidence of the late arrival of rice-farming in northeast

China.

There are non-domestic rice-field pest rat species, which arefound in India and SEA. They too originated in India and have

migrated with rice-farming to SEA rice-fields. Rattus nitidus

(a native of Nepal), Rattus argentiventer and Bandicoot-rat

(Bandicota bengalensis, a native of Mahanadi delta, lives in

association with buffalo) are some of the examples (Groves

1984 & 1995). It may be noted that buffalo too was

domesticated first in India from where its domesticated

lineages migrated to SEA and Egypt (Groves 1995). Origin of

these rice-field pests in India and their subsequent migration to

Southeast Asia is indirect evidence that India is the older

natural home of rice. There is enough DNA evidence for the

first domestication of rice in India (Priyadarshi 2011b),

discussing which is beyond the scope of this article.

Human Migration from India

Y-Chromosomal Lineage J2b (M12, M102)

The male human lineage (Y-chromosonal haplogroup) J2b

quite intriguingly overlaps the route map of Mu s m.

domesticus. Priyadarshi (2011a) found that the age of this

lineage given by different authors for different parts of

Eurasia, if tabulated, lead to the conclusion that this DNA

lineage originated in India about 14,000 or 15,000 ybp, andthen migrated to West Asia, and from there to the Southeast

Europe (Tables 1 and 2; Fig.7).


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OFMICEANDMEN / 337

Table 1: STR Variance of Y chromosomal

Haplogroups J2b and J2

Haplogroup India Iran West Asia/ Balkans/

(South Anatolia Europe

west

Asia)J2b (M12) 0.436 0.337 0.248 0.1919

J2 (M172) 0.8410 0.5211

STR Variance of Y-Chromosomal Haplogroups (Greatervariance indicates older age of DNA lineage at that place)

Table 2


Anatolia EuropeJ2 (M172) Not Not 18,600

available available years12

J2b (M12; Not Not 8,600 12,300 years

also M102) available available years13 in Battaglias

This is a study; 14 6,700

descendant of years at

J2 (above) Nekomedeia(Macedonia)15

6 Sengupta 2006:212, Fig. 4.7 Data from Cinnioglu 2004, quoted by Sengupta, 2006:216.8 Cinnioglu 2004:131, Table 2.J2b has been named J2e in this article.9 Battaglia 2009:7 (web version), Table 1. Also, figure from Pericic et al. 2005,

quoted by Sengupta 2006:216.10 Thanseem 2006:6, web version, Fig. 2.11 Cinnioglu 2004:131, Table 2.12 Ibid13 Ibid.14 Battaglia, V. et al, Y-chromosomal evidence of the cultural diffusion of

agriculture in southeast Europe, European Journal of Human Genetics (2009) 17,820-830; Table 1, p. 826.

15 King, R. J. et al, Differential Y-chromosome Anatolian Influences on the

Greek and Cretan Neolithic, Annals of Human Genetics 2008, 72,205214;

Table 2, page 210.


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Anatolia Europe

J2b2 (M241 13,800 Not 10,100 5,800 years

This is a years16 available years17 (Central

descendant of Italy);

J2b (above) 5,400 years

(Albania);

2,900 years

(Greece);18

4,800 years19

Table showing age of Y-Chromosomal Haplogroups J2b andJ2 in different areas (data pooled from several studies). It has

been proposed that J2b did not reach the Balkans from

Anatolia, but used sea coastal route to reach the Balkans and

Italy (Di Giakomo 2004:367, last line of conclusion). Tables

are from Priyadarshi, 2011a.

The migration map of J2b corresponds to the Mu s m.

domesticus spread route not only grossly, but in finer detail

too. Thus the J2b reached southeast Anatolia, and then did not

penetrate rest of Anatolia, but took sea route to reach the

Balkans and Cyprus (Di Giakomo). Crete was not populated

by J2b lineage, but by another lineage (J2a) which dominatedthe western and northern Anatolia (King 2008).

DNA studies have revealed that lineage J2, of which J2b is a

segment, is associated with spread of Indo-European language

and farming in West Asia and Southeast Europe. It was noted

by King and Underhill (2002) that in Europe and Levant,

Turkey, Iraq and Iran this haplogroup is found in those areas

which also have archaeological evidence of early farming,

figurine, clay sealing stamps and painted pottery. Chiaroni

16 Sengupta, p. 216.17

Battaglia, V. et al, Y-chromosomal evidence of the cultural diffusion ofagriculture in southeast Europe, European Journal of Human Genetics (2009) 17,

820-830; Table 2, p. 826.18 Ibid.19 Ibid.


24/37

OFMICEANDMEN / 339et al (2008) showed that the haplogroup J2 is found

principally in those areas of West Asia which have a good

rainfall. Burbujani (1995) noted that specific DNAs,

Indo-European language and farming culture had migrated

together in Europe.

Piazza (1995) too found that certain DNA, Indo-European

languages and Neolithic had spread together into Europe. He

however noted that there were distinctly two branches of Indo-

European entering into Europe, one from the Kurgan area in

the northeast Europe, and the other in the Balkans from West

Asia. However he could not locate the common source of boththe branches of Indo-European.

Today, scientists, linguists and archaeologists of Europe by

and large hold that the J2 spread in South Europe was

associated with Indo-European linguistic migration (Piazza

1995; Burbujani 1995; Renfrew, 2004; Bellwood, 2002; Gray

and Atkinson, 2003). Hence such a view should not now be

dropped only because it has become obvious recently that J2,

in all likelihood, originated from India.

Fig.8. Distribution of J2b. (Source: Family tree DNA: History Unearthed

Daily, M102 Project)


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Cucchi notes that the Neolithic too does not enter into

Anatolia beyond the southeastern and central regions of the

peninsula (2005b:434). Rather it takes a sea route to reach the

Aegean, Balkan and Italian-Adriatic areas in the next couple

of millennia (Fig.7 too corroborates this finding). And

Mus m. domesticus too does not enter into Anatolia beyond its

southeastern region, reaches Cyprus by sea (2005b:437-8;

2005a:61-77) and spares Crete (2005b:434). Thus farming,

house mice and J2b (and J2b2) all the three do not penetrate

Anatolia beyond a certain point and prefer to move together

by sea route to Cyprus, Balkans, Greece and Italy.Not only this, the distribution of the two European

sub-species of domestic mice domesticus and musculus

overlaps the distribution of language families and human

Y-chromosomal lineages, in such a way that Bulgaria acts as a

break zone between the two sub-species of the domestic mice

(Vanlerberghe et al), the South European and East European

languages and the human Y-chromosomal lineages J2 and

R1a1a. However, this overlap of the three does not occur in

West and Northwest Europe because the advent of mice into

these areas was delayed until the Iron Age. Thus the western

coast of Europe has been captured by the southern subspecies

of mice domestucus, which reaches up to Sweden and

Denmark (Bozikova:364).

Y-Chromosomal Lineage R1a1a or M17 (Old names EU19,

R1a, R1a1)

We note in Underhills map (2010) that the male human

lineage R1a1a (M17) originates from Gujarat-Sind in India

15000 years back and then moves north, enters Central Asia,

then reaches steppe region, north of Caspian Sea, then moves

west to north Pontic area, spreads in Russia, then Central

Europe (Colour Fig.3).


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OFMICEANDMEN / 341

On the origin of R1a1*20 Underhill noted: Analysis of

associated STR diversity profiles revealed that among the

R1a1a*(xM458) chromosomes the highest diversity is

observed among populations of the Indus Valley yielding

coalescent times above 14 KYA (thousands of years ago),

whereas the R1a1a* diversity declines toward Europe where

its maximum diversity and coalescent times of 11.2 KYA are

observed in Poland, Slovakia and Crete. As islands such as

Crete have been subject to multiple episodes of colonization

from different source regions, it is not inconsistent that R1a1a*

Td predates the date of its first colonization by the first farmers

approximately 9 KYA. Also noteworthy is the drop in R1a1a*

diversity away from the Indus Valley toward central Asia

(Kyrgyzstan 5.6 KYA) and the Altai region (8.1 KYA) that

marks the eastern boundary of significant R1a1a* spread.

(2010:2 pdf version).

Fig.9. Y chromosomal DNA marker R1a1a (M17) distribution.

It overlaps the range ofMus m. musculus. The inset picture gives the age

of this lineage at different places (Source: Underhill 2010).

20 (*) is added to indicate the original non-mutated form of the DNA

haplogroups. The STR diversity of a DNAhaplogroup in any area is marker of

age of the haplogroup in that area.


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Thus Crete and Turkey received Indian migrations by two

routes and at two different times. The earlier one was the wave

of R1a1a reaching there round the Caspian Sea, and the much

later one (with farming) was J2b. A third migration to these

places by J2a too took place although its source and time has

not yet been decided.

We can see in Figs. 3 and 4, and Colour Fig. 3 that exactly

the same route as the R1a1a has been adopted by

Mus musculus musculus. We have already noticed that this

mouse sub-species had reached west and north Europe before

domesticus. R1a1a too reached Europe before J2b, as noticedby Underhill (supra).

This whole area of R1a1a dispersal is inhabited today by

Indo-European speakers, except a tract in the Central Asia.

However, it has been found that this area too had been

inhabited by Indo-European (Tocharian) speakers until a

thousand years back. Males of the 4000 years old mummies

recovered from Tarim Basin have all revealed the R1a1a DNA

(Chunxiang Li 2010). Tarim mummies have been interpreted

by Eurocentric minds as White European invasion of Central

Asia (Mallory 2008; Light 1999; Hemphill 2004).

Thus we note that this male lineage of Indian origin (R1a1a)

is associated with Indo-European languages, and also with

migrating mouse Mus m. musculus. Thus although Wells

(2001) and Passarino (2001) had postulated a wrong direction

of DNA migration (from Central Asia to India), Wellss

identification of this lineage as a marker of speakers of Indo-

European language is true as far as the tract of land spreading

from Northwest India to Europe via Central Asia and Russia is

concerned.

Cognate words for mouse are found exclusively within the

Indo-European family of languages. Dr Nicholas Kazanas has

noted the philological distribution and variation of mus which

in fact correlate well with the archaeological findings(Kazanas 2009a:162-163, n29). He examines the cognates for


28/37

OFMICEANDMEN / 343mouse in the Indo-European family of languages and notes

that Celtic and Baltic languages do not have a cognate word

for mus. He writes, Of the animals, a most revealing case is

the mouse (208). The cogn stem does not appear in C and B;

Shas mus, Gkmus, L mus, Gmc mus, Sl my|su, Alb mand Arm

mu-kn. These stems hang isolated in all these languages. In S

again we find a full vb mu > mu-n-ti steals and a large

family of related words: mu-aka stealer, mouse (cf car

move > caraka ; yc ask > ycaka); mu-van(t) robber,

muka(ra) testicle; mui clenched fist; etc. Again

S displays O[rganic] C[oherence] whereas the others showbreakdown and heavy loss(es).21 (square brackets added).

This is consistent with the archaeological finding that mice

did not arrive in the western and northwestern regions of

Europe with the wave of advance of the Neolithic culture per

se, and its associated Indo-European language (vide supra).

Thus, Indo-European languages reached Baltic and Celtic

areas without mice. This led to the loss of cognates meaning

mouse from these languages. Several thousand years later

when the mouse arrived into these areas, fresh words had to be

coined in these languages to mean mouse.22 Hence there is

an absence of cognates of mus in these two language families.

The diversity of the derived words from mus in Sanskrit, as

discussed by Kazanas, is an indicator of longer association of

Sanskrit with the mouse. We may remember here that in

genetics, the place which shows maximum diversity of

derived lineages of any DNA haplogroup is considered the

home or place of origin of that lineage. And linguistics claims

that it follows the laws of genetics and evolution.

It will not be out of place to mention here the findings of

Gray and Atkinson (2003). They found by computer

21 Abbreviations: cogn=cognate; C=Celtic; B=Baltic; S=Sanskrit; Sl=Slavic,

L=Latin; Gk=Greek; Gmc=Germanic; Alb=Albanian; Arm=Armenian.22 Proto-Celtic *lukot-, which may have derived from Proto-Celtic *luko-

meaning black; Lithuanian and Latvianpele.


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generated results that the time of divergence for branches of

Indo-European family should be about 9000 ybp to 7,500

ybp. 12,000 years back is precisely the time when the R1a1a

left India for Central AsiaRussiaGermany, and a couple

of thousand years after that J2b left India for IranWest

AsiaSouth Europe. Clearly this is consistent with the time of

migration of R1a1a to Russia and Germany and J2b to Iran

from India, and fixes the date of PIE before 10,000 ybp.

It is worthwhile reminding ourselves though, the fallacies of

the linguistic methods, which Dixon (1997) epitomized with

his assertion, based on the linguistic data, that the age of Indo-European could be anything 4,000 years BP or 40,000

years BP or any date in between. Dixon also noted that the

family tree method could not be generalized, and cannot be

applicable everywhere. Similar were the views of Swadesh,

the father of the linguistic dating method, about uncertainties

of the dates from this method (Crystal:331).

Conclusion: The story of the migration of mice provides a

valuable insight into the story of human, and thereby

linguistic, migration. If combined with human genetic studies,

archaeology and objective philology, similar ancillary

studies may serve as a powerful tool to knowing our past.

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