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.
As to Russian gypsy music,it is absolutely NOT like Hungarian and played on different instruments.The Hungarian cymbolum,which gives the music its haunting sound,is NOT used by any other gypsies.
As to what gypsies may or may not have added to American culture,outside of a word or two,frankly,I can't think of anything the gypsies have added.
Bank DID get suspicious, actually chased EVERYONE out...including their customer who had triggered the event.
Had they reacted and separated the players things might well have come out differently.
It took five hours for anyone to notify me.
A little defensive are we?
I'll say it again - not worth the air they breathe.
I hate them for that as well!
My dear deceased Dad told me that on Pepin Hill in MN during the
Great Depression every one took care of their neighbors. The only time anything was stolen was when the gypsies would sweep through. Any animals that weren't locked up would disappear. That is a fact he has mentioned many times to me.
Strangely enough, the Gypsies in India are from the Western state of Rajasthan and are supposed to be descended from nomadic Scyths etc who invaded India in the years pre-Alexander.
Though, that is one pretty girl dancing there in the pic
Sitar=father of guitar? I think that may have been the lute.
The first thing that happens when a culture comes to America--everybody wants to try the food. No Gypsy food.
Music? From where I sit, and what I've heard, the music people tell me is Gypsy sounds more like what a Western ear might like to think is Gypsy. That is, the vagabond romance of it all, not an authentic sound. I doubt we have anything in our repetoire that is anything but pastiche.
As for poetry--there is none. What we know of Gypsy language is the little that the Gypsies could not prevent our learning.
No art, other than Artful Dodging.
Amazing, is it not? There is no culture like this one--an utter nothing.
Don't know about babies, but if you aren't careful when visiting tourist sites in Europe, they will steal your wallet. ;~))
If a culture inhabits a land for hundreds of years, with no music, art, myths (poetry) or even a good meal...I'd say it's more likely that there's nothing there rather than some treasure remains tantalizingly hidden.
But a lot of academics have made fools of themselves searching.
If the Gypsies went to LA in WWII, why are there few problems with Gypsies in southern California? I've lived here all my life, and every year there is a story in the papers about the "Johnson families" but Gypsies here, such as they are, seem to stick to fortune telling and related scams. Maybe it's because most driveways here are concrete!
Having the opportunity for regular employment at good wages can have that effect. Several years back I met a fellow peddling hightech equipment for a Silicon Valley company ~ he was named Majoram and his father had grown up in a traveling wagon.
You have to remember, Gypsies, as a people, have been subjected to intense persecution and isolation from mainstream life for a long time.
Much of their less savory behavior is a reaction to their lives' conditions.
BTW, not all the folks in fortune telling are Gypsies.
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