Posted on 09/06/2004 3:51:50 PM PDT by blam
Romany Gypsies came out of India
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Monday, 6 September 2004
A Romany woman dances in downtown Prague during the third annual Khamoro Festival of Roma music and culture (Image: Reuters/Petr Josek)
Legend has it that European Gypsies came from Egypt but a new genetic study has shown they came from a small population that emerged from ancestors in India around 1000 years ago.
The research, by Professor Luba Kalaydjieva of the University of Western Australia and team, looked at the origins of eight to 10 million people in Europe commonly known as Gypsies.
Roma, Romani or Romany are other names for this community, which has featured in movies such as Latcho Drom.
"[The research] is the best evidence yet of the Indian origins of the Gypsies," the researchers write in an article published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The researchers were first alerted to the idea that the Romany may be descended from a small founder population when they discovered that certain genetic mutations in the population were shared in people who were not directly related.
This occurs in other groups that have developed from small founder populations such as the Finns, Ashkenazi Jews, the population of Quebec in Canada and possibly the Australian island state of Tasmania, Kalaydjieva, told ABC Science Online.
Kalaydjieva and team have been studying the genetics of Romany people for over 10 years.
In this recent study, which will be published in the October issue of the journal, the researchers analysed five genetic mutations linked to certain diseases, such as the neuromuscular disorder myasthenia.
The aim was to try and estimate when the original founder population arose and when it split off into different groups of Romany.
The researchers studied the diversity of the chromosomes that carry the genetic markers. Over successive generations, the region around the genetic markers become more and more diverse.
By applying a known rate of genetic change in DNA, the researchers worked out the founder population emerged from the ancestral population 32 to 40 generations ago, or 800 to 1000 years ago.
An Indian origin
As well as looking at over 1100 samples of Romany from Europe, they studied six samples from India and found that the similarity in genetic markers supported the theory that the founder group, of perhaps under 1000 people, came from India.
The idea that Romany people came from India was first proposed 200 years ago based on similarities between their language and the Indian language Sanskrit, said Kalaydjieva. But such studies were inconclusive.
"There are quite a few examples where a population adopts a language but this does not necessarily mean its biological roots belong to the same place as the larger population that speaks this language," she said.
"So from the biological point of view we have provided we have provided the best evidence so far that this is indeed a population that derives from the Indian subcontinent."
Kalaydjieva and team's analysis of disease genetic markers supported the scientists' previous research on male and female genetic markers.
"It all points in the same direction," she said.
Gypsy: a loaded term
Kalaydjieva said scientists commonly used the term "Gypsy" but this was politically and historically loaded.
"Initially Gypsies were called Gypsies because Europeans believed, and this was a legend that the Gypsies maintained themselves, that they came from Egypt," she said.
But she said Gypsies had been persecuted due to superstition, racism and prejudice. The term Gypsy had become increasingly given a pejorative meaning, being used to describe a social category with a wandering nomadic way of life, rather than a biological population. Many people from that group now preferred to be called Roma, Romani or Romany.
She said the term Romani or Romany, strictly speaking linguistically and historically, described Balkan Gypsies. These people were a sub-group of European Gypsies and the scientific term Gypsy was a more generic term to cover the biological population.
Today people descended from European Gypsies live all over the world, even Australia. In Bulgaria alone there are at least 50 groups with different traditions, cultures, dialects and adopted religions.
GGG Ping.
This is not news. It has been commonly accepted that Gypsies came from India.
At the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, I thought I'd relate a personal story.
My parents rented one of their houses to Gypsies in Whittier, CA, about 20 years ago. They trashed the place and stuck them with the rent.
My mother told me the same thing. Do you suppose that was wishful thinking?
I wonder why they migrated out of India 1,000 years ago. Could it have anything to do with the spread of Islam?
My father in law rented a place to Gypsies in Houston 40 years ago & when they left they even took the door knobs.
Everybody knows they came from the region of India.
I wonder if they included Scottish and Irish Travelers ~ or Russian animal trainers?
"Gypsies....Tramps and Thieves..........."
When I was a child, my mother told me that Gypsies steal babies.
Why would they steal babies? To make them work in the circus? My husband heard that too.
They always painted his barn and outbuildings for him. They slaughtered designated pigs free of charge, hung the meat in the smokehouse, and didn't steal anything.
In earlier times pieces of his land had served as burial grounds for "slavecatchers" sent up from Kentucky to retrieve runaway slaves. They never returned to Kentucky with or without slaves.
One gathers the Gypsies knew they trod on truly sacred ground when they came to that place.
A brief note ~ there's a theory that the original Gypsy population fled India ahead of Moslem invaders.
We have some Gypsy words in our vernacular--"Punch" means "five"--five fruits for a drink, or five fingers for a fist. "Shiv"--knife.
A cryptic culture, with no music, art, storytelling. No Gypsy restaurants. Any music we think of as Gypsy is largely a romanticized Balkan pastiche, more Hungarian than Romani. To be frank, Gypsies have contributed practically nothing to Western culture except their own image as romantic vagabonds.
The reputation for itinterant thievery and con-artistry is well-deserved, but they have also managed this without a commensurate reputation for violence.
I saw a documentary a while back--may have been on the discovery channel, may have been Nova, I don't remember which. The Gypsies were a warrior caste that went to fight the Persians, and kept going west. Their migration can be traced by the words their language acquired in each region they moved through.
Dreaded red x on the image.
But still an interesting article.
Thanks!
Another skill was in making inexpensive costume jewelry ~ aka "junk jewelry". For several centuries they had a near monopoly in that particular business. When WWII came along, most American Gypsies relocated to Los Angeles to work in the aircraft plans working with aluminum. Their skill with light metals was of immense value at that time. Every now and then you find a young person of Gypsy ancestry searching for "cultural contact" to find out what it was Grandpa and Grandma left behind.
Ain't America a great land ~ it even assimilates Gypsies ~ and a Bill Clinton whose grandmother told fortunes in traveling carnivals can become President.
My sister is a labor and delivery nurse and her hubby is an OB-GYN. They say when a gypsy comes into the hospital to deliver a baby, the staff immediately clears everything possible out of the labor room before the patient is brought in or it will all be gone when the family leaves.
OTOH, when I was young my grandmother had two friends, two other grandmas right around her age, that were neighbors of hers. They were sisters, except one was a child that was born into the family and the other had been adopted. How that happened was that the father allowed a band of gypsies to squat for a few days on his land. When they decided to move on, a little baby girl in the group was ill. So they just left her behind so that they could leave. Imagine that. Just left behind because she was sick. Didn't steal a baby, they just dumped her.
In Hugo's novel,"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" La Esmerelda was often refered to as "The Egyptian". It was a common belief.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.