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.
Scots-Irish-Welsh are not always blue-eyed and freckled--look at Catherine Zeta Jones. And there's the Cherokees to consider . There were also many Gypsy tribes who'd make their way up and down the hills.
One story of Appalachia and Gypsies intersecting in Depression era--a Gypsy thief was captured and put in the country jailhouse to await trial. All the Gypsy tribes circled their wagons in town and at sundown commenced to cry and wail and make an awful commotion. Sheriff decided that the better part of justice was to cut a quick deal--and the Gypsies got their member out of jail and beat a hasty exit from the county.
Is this the reason he started outsourcing to India?
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He says they came from India, but that they were once thought to have come from Egypt originally which is where they got the name "Gypsies".
There's a temptation to be PC when discussing Gypsies--what can be understood by "gaijos" about their culture would indicate that a clever theft or con is something to be proud of. Gypsies do not like physical contact with non-Gypsies. We are "unclean". They have a distaste for cats.
Point of one interest--Gypsies, like hobos, would create little signs along the road that would only have significance for fellow Gypsies. These are called "Patterans". I saw one for sale in a catalog years ago--it was a figure of a cat marketed by the retailers as a " hobo sign that there was a nice lady ahead who would feed you."
Quite the contrary. A cat is an unclean animal because it licks itself and takes all the uncleaness inside itself...if a patteran was the figure of a cat, it didn't indicate anything pleasant.
They pulled some of the most despicable cons on elderly and helpless people I have ever heard of. They are pretty sorry imo.
Yup. I should have stated such in my first post. I read years ago that it is recorded somewhere(?) that a king in the Indus Valley awarded the king of Persia 10,000 of his subjects and there is some indication that this occured more than once. Somehow they made their way from Iran through Egypt and into Europe and were called Gypsies by the Europeans because they believed they came from Egypt.
Not terribly likely, I suspect, as they would have had to traverse thousands of miles of solidly Muslim territory to reach Europe.
It is most likely that they are descended from one of the many "criminal castes" of India, which you can still read about in the old pre-PC Indian literature.
g
They originate in Ireland and Scotland.
If we are talking of a relatively small population of about 1,000 people, there would not have been a serious problem in avoiding the Islamic conquest of the area.
If anyone remembers, it also had featured a Miami cop who had gone over to the good side. He was a gypsie who was trying to stop their cons. He had a tremendous advantage as he knew all their scams.
BTW I am reasonably sure one of the Irish Travelers came by my Fathers house one day. I was outside and he asked if I wanted my driveway paved. He was driving a new high end 4wd pickup and was a very sharp looking guy. I was familiar with the group and of course told him no.
A few days later I noticed where they had conned some other people in the neighborhood.
We've known this for decades because the Romany Languages are clearly descended from Sanskrit.
Maybe they were persecuted because of excessive lying and thieving?
My mother told me she would sell me to the gypsies if I didn't behave,
Yup. They got my dad, twice, on the paving thing. You won't believe how much he paid for just a little paving.
Yes, but as the article points out:
"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 [Professor Luba Kalaydjieva] 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."
LOL, I would always hide when I saw them coming.
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