Data from ageing study finds most Indians descended from 3 ancient populations in Iran, Eurasia, South Asia

Analysing present-day genomes collected via an ageing study, researchers have shown that most Indians descend from three ancestral groups: Neolithic Iranian farmers, Eurasian Steppe pastoralists, and South Asian hunter-gatherers.

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Neolithic, also known as 'New Stone Age', featured the development of agriculture and polished stone tools.

The study "fills a critical gap" in how historic migration and social structures helped shape India's populations -- genetically the most diverse in the world, yet underrepresented in global datasets, the team from the University of California-Berkeley (US), All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, among other institutes, said.

They reconstructed the evolutionary history of India over the past 50,000 years at fine scale using whole genome sequences of 2,762 linguistically diverse individuals from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India, Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD).

The findings, published in the journal Cell, will also help reveal the source and dynamics of how historic populations in the subcontinent adapted, along with their disease vulnerability, the authors said.

"This study fills a critical gap and reshapes our understanding of how ancient migrations, archaic admixture, and social structures have shaped Indian genetic variation," senior author Priya Moorjani, from the University of California, Berkeley, said.

"Studying these sub-populations allows us to explore how ancient ancestry, geography, language, and social practices interacted to shape genetic variation. We hope our study will provide a deeper understanding of the origin of functional variation and inform precision health strategies in India," Moorjani said.