I found an article a while back claiming that Western people went to India [1], and placed themselves on the top of the Hindu caste system. This might have happened, but I’m now of the view that the reason for the genetic overlap between some Europeans and Africans, on the one hand, and Asians generally, on the other, is because of a migration-back to the West, in particular to Scandinavia and Nigeria. First, it is accepted that the Roma are closely related to the Dalit caste of India, based upon genetics. Further, it is obvious that some people in Scandinavia and Nigeria are related to Indians, specifically, both are related to the Munda people, who are in turn not related to the Roma at all. The logical conclusion, is that the Munda people are not of the Dalit class, and that some Western people, including Africans, are related to non-Dalit Indians. The fact that some Africans plainly descend from non-Dalit Indians (again with basically no relationship to the Dalit) places doubt on the claim that Europeans invented the Hindu caste system, and is instead consistent with the claim that the Hindu caste system is ancient, and was carried back to Europe and Africa during a much earlier migration back to the West. Finally, when we look at Buddhist countries, where there is no caste system, we plainly see a closer relationship to the Roma, in particular, in Mongolia, and to a lesser extent, in Thailand. And again, this is notable, because the Munda have basically no genetic connection to the Roma at all, suggesting the caste system was strictly enforced, and as a consequence, some Europeans and Africans also have basically no genetic connection to the Roma. Therefore, it is at least consistent with the facts that Buddhism lead to a change in the genetics of parts of Asia, presumably on account of the absence of a caste system, creating a more genetically heterogeneous society that included people of Dalit descent.

Returning to the hypothesis in [1], it is therefore of course possible that some Europeans and Africans simply descend from ancient, non-Dalit Indians, rather than the other way around. Moreover, Europeans and Africans generally do have a meaningful connection to the Roma, even in Scandinavia, suggesting again that the caste system did not originate in the West. There are however, as noted, exceptions, in particular, the Icelandic and the Igbo, who have, again, no noticeable genetic relationship to the Roma. This is at least consistent with the hypothesis that both people descend from an ancient, proto-Hindu society, and by that, I mean a society that actively enforced a caste system, excluding genetically Dalit people, even if they didn’t have a written religion where the Dalit were effectively cut-off from reproduction with others.

We see this also in Jarkhand India, Java, the Solomon Islands, and to a lesser extent, Indonesia, where again, we find people with basically no genetic relationship to the Dalit. It is of course possible that Hinduism proper is responsible for this in Java, but it makes no sense at all to assume that Hinduism is responsible for the absence of a genetic relationship between the people of the Solomon Islands and the Dalit. It makes more sense to instead assume that Hinduism memorialized ancient, existing, ethnic mating practices in Asia and the Pacific, and that Buddhists consciously abandoned these practices, thereby changing demographics in at least Mongolia and Thailand. Interestingly, there’s at least some evidence that something similar was happening in the Maritime Archaic, where people that are closely related to Jews only mated with each other, even though the genomes in question almost certainly predate Judaism, and in any case, it is not credible to claim that there were practicing Jews in Canada before Christ. The net point being, that as religion, and written systems generally, developed, they memorialized existing practices, including what populations were perceived as acceptable for marriage and mating generally. This hypothesis would therefore view at least some early religions as codifying potentially ancient behaviors, that predate written language altogether.