Raj Pradip Chakraborty

South Asia has been an important crossroad of human migration since apparently 50KYA.The present population in this sub continent are regarded as conglomeration of many endogamous groups who speaks more than 700 languages/Dialects. The genomics of present population revealed about the story of migration since out of Africa event, which occurred around 70 Kya.This paper focusing on human migration in South Asia from the perspective of genomics of present population,which includes analysis of DNA markers of Y chromosomes, mitochondria and autosomal admixure data.

North East India has been a narrow land bridge for human dispersals between South Asia and South East Asia since ‘Out of Africa’ event. As per 1971 census, more than 220 ethno-linguistic population groups exist in North East India. Here two most populous language families viz. Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman meet, the other two language families being Austro-Asiatic and Kra-Dai. To understand the genesis of the populations of North East India, it is imperative to understand the genesis of Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman speakers; as both of them are the oldest language groups. Majority of present ethno-linguistic groups belong to Tibeto-Burman language family whereas only ‘Khasi’ belong to Austro-Asiatic language family. Knowing about the fact that a multidisciplinary effort is needed to paint a full picture, but keeping in mind the paucity of records of significance from disciplines like Archaeology, Paleoclimatology, this paper has given more importance to the records from genomics and to, a lesser degree, historical linguistics. This study mainly deals with the data from previous studies which include Mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosomal DNA, autosomal DNA admixture of modern populations and ancient DNA of South East Asia. The study finds that ancestry of present Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman populations are biased with South East Asians moreover each of these language family speakers are also biased with a particular paternal genetic clan or Y-DNA haplogroup giving rise to ‘Father tongue hypothesis’. Ancient DNA data signalling towards significant genomic turnover during late Neolithic age to Bronze age which might be the reason of a geographically-confined Khasi population who were probably replaced by Tibeto-Burman speakers. The study also emphasises whole genome sequencing, GIS, remote sensing technique to gather quality data to achieve more correct picture.

Key words: Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic, mitochondrial DNA, Y-DNA, autosomal DNA,Ancient  DNA etc.