Scientists from Sri Lanka and India have discovered that the Vedda have a great genetic resemblance to the Dravidian-speaking Irula, Paniya, and Pallar people of Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, as well as the Austroasiatic Munda-speaking Santhal and Juang tribes of Odisha.
A recent study has discovered that the Vedda people of Sri Lanka, who have long been thought to be the island’s first humans, have close genetic ties to five tribal tribes in India.
This finding supports the theory that the Vedda people sprang from the earliest modern human populations on the Indian subcontinent.
The Austroasiatic Munda-speaking Santhal and Juang tribes in Odisha, as well as the Dravidian-speaking Irula, Paniya, and Pallar tribes in Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, have significant genetic similarities with the Vedda, according to research conducted by a team of Indian and Sri Lankan experts.
The scientific journal Mitochondrion released their work this week, and it shows that the Vedda share more genetic similarities with these five tribes than with the Sinhalese or Tamil populations of Sri Lanka, with whom they have lived on the island for generations.
A population geneticist at Banaras Hindu University who oversaw the study. “It shows Sri Lanka as an amazing place where three populations living side by side interacted very differently with one another.“The Vedda have remained largely isolated; they’ve maintained their identity through very low mixing,” Chaubey told The Telegraph. “The Sinhala and Tamil are massively mixed; you could call them genetically nearly indistinguishable.”According to archeological digs, modern humans have been living in Sri Lanka for at least 30,000 years.
The Vedda, who were hunter-gatherers originally, are thought to be the direct ancestors of the island’s first settlers and are the only indigenous people left on the island.
The Vedda has long intrigued anthropologists, historians, and scientists because of its distinct language and culture.Because of their unique language and culture, the Vedas have long piqued the interest of anthropologists, historians, and scientists.
Their genetic ancestry and affiliations with Indian populations are shown by the study.
The original language of the Vedda is linguistically distinct from all other languages. It was one of three such linguistically isolated languages on the subcontinent, the other two being Kusunda in Nepal and Nihali, which is spoken in central India.
In order to conduct their research, the scientists took blood samples from 37 healthy Vedda people who were unrelated to one another.
They then extracted genetic material from these samples and compared the genomic segments with those from other groups.
In order to conduct their research, the scientists took blood samples from 37 healthy Vedda people who were unrelated to one another.
They then extracted genetic material from these samples and compared the genomic segments with those from other groups.
According to an investigation of their maternal lineage, the Vedda are descended from individuals who traveled from the Indian subcontinent approximately 55,000 years ago. These people were probably a branch of modern humans that migrated from Africa into Asia and India.
The close genetic kinship between the Vedda and ancient Indian tribal communities demonstrates their profoundly shared genetic heritage.The study highlights a distinct demographic history of the Vedda.” According to the research, the Vedda people have maintained their genetic isolation despite living close to the Sinhalese and Tamil communities.
The findings indicated the Vedda had maintained their unique genetic composition with little to no gene flow from nearby Sinhalese and Tamil communities in Sri Lanka.