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Of Mice and Men: DNA, Archaeological and Linguistic correlation of the two linked journeys of mice and men
Premendra Priyadarshi, (Dr) email: priyadarshi101@hotmail.com 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 subspecies 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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migrated 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 IndoEuropean 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, noncommensal 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 Rattus, 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 (Mus musculus) 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 of Mus, 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 of Mus is indirect evidence that Homo erectus lived in India during most of this period, because we know that commensal species of Mus 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 the domestic 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 Mus musculus was one of the early species of Mus. 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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This 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 house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) 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 not occur 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 could not 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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have 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-sink theory of Dias (1996). Human population of source area needs to have some specific features, 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 first sedentary 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 anthropophilous 1 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 compared to 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 linguisticpopulation 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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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.

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 many authorities believe the Neolithic was imported to West Asia from somewhere else. Although, recent researches have revealed that modern

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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 geographic spread 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 in the 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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Although 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 out Renfrews 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. We know from other works that India had the highest human population density during much of prehistory (Petraglia, 2009:1, pdf). 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 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 in fields located near human settlements.

ii)

iii)

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 and travelled with man over a long period and longdistances. Today, their DNAs serve to trace human prehistory. For lice: Toups 2011; for gut bacterium H. pylori: Falush 2003 and Linz, 2007.

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West Asia, Europe, Southeast Asia and Polynesia (RajabiMaham, 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 a position 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 India comprises 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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Fig.2. Distribution of Mus cervicolor in rice fields in the SEA, from Groves 1984.

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 of musculus, 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 (YDNA) R1a1a (Underhill 2010); O2a (Kumar 2007) and J2b (Sengupta 2006; Priyadarshi 2011a) exactly overlap those of the three Mus musculus sub-species respectively.

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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Fig.4. Showing farming and Austro-Asiatic language migration to the Southeast Asia as male lineage (Y-Chr) O2a. This migration overlaps mice migration of castaneus sub-sp. (Source: Kumar et al 2007).

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.

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Fig.5. DNA dendrogram showing the house mice origin from India. Source: Darvish, Bonhomme and Orth 2006.

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 chuchunder in Hindi. Its Sanskrit is shalyaka-vata which may be a source of English

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shrew, 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 Fertile Crescent 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-agriculture 4 began first in India, possibly much earlier than we imagine which kept mice
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.
4

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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.

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 of M. musculus musculus mimics that of R1a1a (Figure from Bonhomme et al 2007).

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 of Mus musculus domesticus (Tollenaere, 2010).

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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.

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 questions about human prehistory, noted Aplin.

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Fig.7. Routes of migration of six different DNA lineages of Rattus rattus, as found in the DNA study by Aplin (2008) (Source: CSIRO 2008).

Tollenaere noted, Phylogeographic patterns supported the hypothesis of human-mediated colonization of R. 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

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Y-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. Rattus norvegicus (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
Although 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.
5

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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 are found 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 Mus 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, and then migrated to West Asia, and from there to the Southeast Europe (Tables 1 and 2; Fig.7).

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Table 1: STR Variance of Y chromosomal Haplogroups J2b and J2 Haplogroup India Iran (South west Asia)
0.337

West Asia/ Anatolia

Balkans/ Europe

J2b (M12) J2 (M172)

0.436 0.8410

0.248 0.5211

0.1919

STR Variance of Y-Chromosomal Haplogroups (Greater variance indicates older age of DNA lineage at that place) Table 2 Iran West Asia/ Anatolia
Not available Not available 18,600 years12 8,600 years13

Haplogroup India
J2 (M172) J2b (M12; also M102) This is a descendant of J2 (above) Not available Not available

Balkans/ Europe

12,300 years in Battaglias study; 14 6,700 years at Nekomedeia (Macedonia)15

Sengupta 2006:212, Fig. 4. 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 Ibid 13 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.
7

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Haplogroup India
J2b2 (M241 13,800 This is a years16 descendant of J2b (above)

Iran
Not available

West Asia/ Anatolia

10,100 years17

Balkans/ Europe
5,800 years (Central Italy); 5,400 years (Albania); 2,900 years (Greece);18 4,800 years19

Table showing age of Y-Chromosomal Haplogroups J2b and J2 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 Mus 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 dominated the 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
Sengupta, p. 216. 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 2, p. 826. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.
17 16

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et 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 IndoEuropean 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 both the 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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Fig.9. Y chromosomal DNA marker R1a1a (M17) distribution. It overlaps the range of Mus m. musculus. The inset picture gives the age of this lineage at different places (Source: Underhill 2010).

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).
(*) 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.
20

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VEDIC VENUES

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 noticed by 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 IndoEuropean 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

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mouse 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; S has mus, Gk mus, L mus, Gmc mus, Sl my|su, Alb m and 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 show breakdown 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 *lukomeaning black; Lithuanian and Latvian pele.

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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 IndoEuropean 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. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aplin K. 2008, Prehistory of the worlds greatest pest, the black rat (Rattus rattus), based on a global survey of its mitochondrial DNA, Research Paper presented at the Australian National University Archaeological Science 2008 Conference. Auffray J.C. et al 1990, The house mouse progression in Eurasia: a palaeontological and archaeozoological approach Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 41 (1325). Bajomi, D. et al 1999, 20-year examination of the habitats of an urban Norway rat, Rattus norvegicus Berk. (Mammalia: Muridae) population W. Robinson et al (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Urban Pests.

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