The Kurmi are a Shudra caste of non-elite tillers and reside mostly in the North Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Something cool I found while studying about this caste was that the first Prime Minister of Mauritius was a Kurmi. The name Kurmi probably comes from a Sanskrit word for tiller.
We have one high quality Kurmi sample (500k snps) and this gives us an opportunity to take a look at their ancestry profile closely. There is a lot of discussion on the ancestry of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas from North India, but not much around North Indian Shudras. So, this will be helpful.
Using ADMIXTOOLS 2, this is what I get for the lone Kurmi sample (evo_10)
Onge (AASI proxy): 37.7 ± 2.41%
This shows us that Shudra castes such as Kurmis have about 15-16% Sintashta-like ancestry, which is similar to how much Sintashta South Indian Brahmins have but have much higher Onge/AASI like ancestry than those South Indian Brahmins. This confirms what Razib Khan had said before, that South India saw higher IVC wave while in North India it was Aryans mixing with much purer AASI which is what gives the unique profile we see here of relatively high steppe plus high onge.
File of the run
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ReplyDeleteAryamsha,
ReplyDeleteJust a small correction - The first prime minister of Mauritius was from koeri caste not Kurmi (at least the information within the wiki link you attached says so).
However, the former head of state and President of Guyana was a kurmi, Chedi Jagan
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddi_Jagan