ஆப்பிரிக்காவில் தொடங்கிய மானுட வலசை

ஆப்பிரிக்காவில் தொடங்கிய மனிதகுலத்தின் வலசைச் செலவு இன்றும் தொடர்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறது.

டிஸ்கவரி சேனலில் 'மைக்கேல் வுட்' எடுத்துள்ள ஸ்டோரி ஆப் இந்தியா ஏப்ரல் 16, இரவு 8 மணியில் இருந்து ஒளிபரப்பாக உள்ளது. மொத்தம் 6 தொகுதிகள், ஒவ்வொரு புதன்கிழமையும். (மறுபரப்பு ஞாயிறுகளில் காலை 11 மணிக்கு).பேரா. பிச்சப்பன் தொடங்கிய திரு. விருமாண்டியின் மரபணுச் சோதனைகள், கேரளம், ... என்று செல்லும் அந்த முக்கியமான
தொலைக்காட்சித் தொடரை யுட்யூப் போன்ற தளங்களில் வலையேற்றத் தமிழன்பர்களை வேண்டுகிறேன்.

http://www.thehindu.com/mp/2008/04/08/stories/2008040850020100.htm

http://www.hindu.com/seta/2007/08/23/stories/2007082350011500.htm

நா. கணேசன்

எனக்கு இச் செய்தி கிடைத்த இடம்:

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=26&theme=&usrsess=1&id=198268

http://tinyurl.com/6o72j6

Identity saved from crisis

Where are we from? In a soon-to-be-screened documentary series we are introduced to Virumandi in whose DNA is the marker of the first human migrant from Africa, writes Mathures Paul
‘Our ancestors first walked out of Africa only 70,000 or 80,000 years ago, round the shores of the Arabian Sea and down into south India... When they came here to India they must have been overwhelmed by the fertility... Life was super abundant. So, here some of them stayed and they were the first Indians... And all non-Africans on the planet can trace their descent from those early migrations into India. The rest of the world was populated from here. Mother India indeed... And amazingly so long ago those first Indians have left their trail...’ says historian Michael Wood.
Around 70,000 years ago the first men migrated into India from Africa and possibly the vast stretches of fertile land made them stay on before spreading to other countries. Destiny or luck led Dr Ramasamy Pitchappan, professor emeritus and regional director ~ Genographic-India department (immunology), School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, to a village in Tamil Nadu a few years ago. After the DNA of tribal villagers was tested, a clue that unveils the migrational history was found. He came across a man called Virumandi and in his DNA (Gene M130) was the marker of the first human migration that took place around 70,000 years ago. This important piece of information will be presented in The Story of India ~ a six-part series on Discovery Channel ~ which Michael Wood will anchor. During the course of the series, Wood tries to seek what keeps Indians united irrespective of caste, creed, religion or culture.

For Dr Pitchappan work started in 1996 and the journey has been a long, but fruitful, one. His team took samples from college students and tried to identify the markers. Michael Wood entered the picture only six or seven months back when he heard about the research. Fascinated, he delved deeper and learnt more about how the story of India began. “We provided evidence of the first migration to India... A few years passed between collecting samples and coming up with further enquiries. When my team approached the college, all the students had left. Old registers unveiled some addresses and one day I travelled 180 kilometres to meet three people. One person had already left the place, the second individual was not at home and here we have the third person, who during my visit was absent at home,” says Dr Pitchappan.
First his team isolated the DNA from the solution and then looked for specific markers in the solution, ancient markers which provide clues about migrational pattern. In his DNA was the marker of that first human migration. “Virumandi’s tribe practise south India’s and the world’s oldest form of marriage with first cousins. That way they have handed down some of mankind’s earliest genes. Some 50,000 or 60,000 years ago some people with M130 gene came over here and luckily somebody stayed on in this village and expanded and this we could identify. Now the entire village carries M130... The population slowly spread.”

The series captures more than just the story of one individual. Before languages were born, didn’t we communicate? We did. Mantras that were chanted then, are still heard in a village in Kerala.

An ancient clan of Brahmins lives here. The documentary shows the preparation for an ancient ceremony for the god of fire that takes 12 days to perform. For centuries these incantations or mantras have been passed down from father to son, only among Brahmins, exact in every sound. But some of the mantras are not in any known language. Only recently have our scientists been allowed to record them and tried to make sense of the chants... “The nearest analogue came from the animal kingdom. It was bird songs. These songs are perhaps tens of thousands of years old, passed down before human speech existed,” says the anchor.

These two incidents mark the beginning of The Story of India, before Wood travels to the site of the Harappan civilisation and then appears in Kolkata to learn more about the origins of Sanskrit. Nobody knows for certain as to why the Harappan civilisation disappeared, probably it was the climate. “The key was the shifting and drying up of rivers. Climate change isn’t just happening now, it happened in the past. All early settlements completely disappeared and caused this major shift eastwards into the central part of the Ganges plain. So climate change might have shifted the centre of gravity of Indian history, people moved following the rivers eastwards to new lands in a forested world that’s been sacred from that day to this, the plains of the river Ganges.”

The anchor takes us to the early centuries of AD and tells the story of the forgotten empire of the Kushans that ruled India in the first centuries AD.
The partition of India saw the migration of 14 million people, the largest in history; and up to a million died. Today, India is a global giant and it is predicted by some that by the 2030’s India’s GDP will overtake that of the USA. Yet, what holds us together? Dr Pitchappan has an answer... “Langauge can be adopted and the same with religion. It’s a kind of belief system. You believe in your system, in your education or in your capacity or in your family... whatever way you feel like... You have all the liberty to feel who you are. Because of this reason that India has become such a cosmos of humanity with a diversity but still with a unity.”
As Michael Wood says, “identity is never static, always in the making but never made.”

(The Story of India will be screened on Discovery Channel starting 16 April at 8 p.m.)