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The article talks about the controversy over Black Athena written by Martin Bernal and Afro-Asiatic roots of the Greek culture, background of Europe's Indo-Aryan or Phoenician-Semitic to be the reason behind the the rise of Mediterranean powers, European civilization and Hellenism. It talks about Edmund Dickinson's work Delphi Phoenizantes as a contribution to the debate of oriental roots of European culture, the Book of Joshua and significance of Greek mythology.

The article discusses Reinhold Grünnendahl outrage at the idea that the Aryan notion connects German Indology to national socialism and genocide. Topics cited include Grünnendahl's concerns over Edward W. Said's endorsement Indology which jeopardizes any factual debate about the history of German scholarship and Grünnendahl's belief that it is grotesque that the Germans continued to trace a seamless cultural-historical lineage centered on the Aryan leitmotif.

There is no indication from the previous mtDNA studies that west Eurasian-specific subclades have evolved within India and played a role in the spread of languages and the origins of the caste system. To address these issues, we have screened 14,198 individuals (4208 from this study) and analyzed 112 mitogenomes (41 new sequences) to trace west Eurasian maternal ancestry. This has led to the identification of two autochthonous subhaplogroups-HV14a1 and U1a1a4, which are likely to have originated in the Dravidian-speaking populations approximately 10.5-17.9 thousand years ago (kya). The carriers of these maternal lineages might have settled in South India during the time of the spread of the Dravidian language. In addition to this, we have identified several subsets of autochthonous U7 lineages, including U7a1, U7a2b, U7a3, U7a6, U7a7, and U7c, which seem to have originated particularly in the higher-ranked caste populations in relatively recent times (2.6-8.0 kya with an average of 5.7 kya). These lineages have provided crucial clues to the differentiation of the caste system that has occurred during the recent past and possibly, this might have been influenced by the Indo-Aryan migration. The remaining west Eurasian lineages observed in the higher-ranked caste groups, like the Brahmins, were found to cluster with populations who possibly arrived from west Asia during more recent times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims/hypothesis. Our aim was to characterise the genetic and immunological features associated with Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus in a cohort of Indo-Aryan children resident in the United Kingdom.¶Methods. Children with Type I diabetes (n = 53), unaffected first-degree relatives (n = 146) and unrelated healthy control children (n = 54) were typed for alleles of the HLA-DRB1, HLA-DQA1 and HLA-DQB1 genes. Islet cell antibodies and antibodies to glutamic acid decarboxylase, protein tyrosine phosphatase-2 (IA-2ic) and insulin were measured in the diabetic and control children.¶Results. The DRB1*03.DQA1*05.DQB1*02 haplotype was positively associated with the disease, occurring in 78 % of diabetic children compared with 22.6 % of healthy children (pc < 2.4 × 10–5). In simplex families, this haplotype was transmitted more frequently to the diabetic children than to their unaffected siblings (p < 1 × 10–4). The DRB1*04.DQA1* 03.DQB1*0302 haplotype was also transmitted preferentially to the diabetic probands (p < 0.025) but was not associated with disease in the case control study. Islet-related autoantibodies were detected in 89.6 % of diabetic patients compared with 11.8 % of control children (p < 1 × 10–6). Although protein tyrosine phosphatase-2 autoantibodies were detected more frequently among DRB1*04-positive diabetic patients compared with patients lacking this allele, the overall frequency of these autoantibodies was lower than observed in Europid diabetic subjects. This could reflect the absence of a disease association with DRB1*04 in the Indo-Aryan cohort.¶Conclusion/interpretation. Type I diabetes in our Indo-Aryan cohort is similar to the disease observed in Anglo-Europeans but has important immunogenetic differences. The low frequency of protein tyrosine phosphatase-2 autoantibodies among the Indo-Aryan diabetic children could have important implications for the design of future strategies for disease prediction in this population. [Diabetologia (2000) 43: 450–456] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]