Nishada Kingdom

wikipedia |  Besides the Papuans, Australian Aboriginals, Melanesians, and Negritos, the "Australoid" category is often taken to include various tribes of India. The inclusion of Indian tribes in the group is not well-defined, and is closely related to the question of the original peopling of India, and the possible shared ancestry between Indian and Australian populations of the Upper Paleolithic. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1996, p. 382) by American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza in their text, The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994, P. 241) all use the term.^{[clarification needed]}

 

Tee suggested Australoid ancestry of the original South Asian populations has long remained an open question. It was embraced by Indian anthropologists as emphasizing the deep antiquity of Indian prehistory. Australoid hunter-gatherer and fisherman tribes of the interior of India were identified with the Nishada Kingdom described in the Mahabharata. Panchanan Mitra (1923) following Vincenzo Giuffrida-Ruggeri (1913) recognizes a Pre-Dravidian Australo-Veddaic stratum in India.^[19] Alternatively, the Dravidians themselves have been claimed as originally of Australoid stock,^[20] a view held by Biraja Sankar Guha among others.^[21]

 

South Indian tribes specifically described as having Australoid affinities include the Oraon, Munda, Santal, Bhil, Gondi, the Kadars of Kerala, the Kurumba and Irula of the Nilgiris, the Paniyans of Malabar, the Uralis, Kannikars, Mithuvan and Chenchus.^[22] but other Indian anthropologists of the post-colonial period, such as S. P. Sharma (1971) and D. N. Majumdar (1946, 1965), have gone as far as claiming Australoid ancestry, to a greater or lesser extent, for almost all the castes and tribes of India.^[23] Newer Indian anthropology studies about cranial morphology do not support an Australoid ancestry in South Asian populations.^[5]

 

According to a large craniometric study (Raghavan and Bulbeck et al. 2013) the native populations of South Asia have distinct craniometric and anthropologic ancestry. Both southern and northern groups are most similar to each other and have generally closer affinities to various "Caucasoid" groups. The study further showed that the native South Asians (including the Vedda) form a distinct group and are not aligned to the "Australoid" group. However, Raghavan and Bulbeck et al., while noting the differences of South Asian from Andamanese and Australoid crania, also explain that this is not in conflict with genetic evidence (found by Reich et al. in 2009) showing a common ancestry and genetic affinity between South Asians and the native Andamanese (a group sometimes considered to be related to Australoids), stating: "The distinctiveness of Andamanese and southern Indian crania need not challenge the finding by Reich et al. for an “Ancestral South Indian” ancestry shared by southern Indians and Andamanese" [the latter being a Southern Eurasian population possibly related to Australoid peoples] and that "some populations are craniometrically specialised while others are not...What the present analysis adds is that southern Indians also have specialised craniometrics. Andamanese on the other hand have unspecialised craniometrics...Therefore, southern Indians' craniometric distinctiveness from Andamanese should be interpreted as a result of their craniometric specialisation rather than as evidence against a shared, ancient ancestry with Andamanese.^[24]