When we think about our ancestors, our minds tend to wander to geography. We introduce our progenitors by noting they were Norwegian, Brazilian, Indonesian, or members of an American Native tribe. Personal genetic tests, such as those offered by Ancestry and 23andMe, offer customers a travel log of their lineages' global journeys. And some of our more obvious phenotypic markers, such as hair and skin color, evolved in relationship with the lands our ancestors called home.
Lost within this land-locked focus is the fact that social and cultural factors—how our ancestors cohabitated and interacted with each other—also influence gene flow. In doing so, these factors shaped our evolution and genetic diversity. As a new study has found, for the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, such social and cultural factors may be more important to their genetic variation than the deserts, grasslands, and tropical forests between them.
A new kind of mother tongue
A map showing the locations of 33 Indian populations alongside plot graphs showing the relations between sociolinguistic groups and genetic structures.
Credit: Molecular Biology and Evolution
The new study, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, began when Aritra Bose, who earned his doctorate at Purdue in genetics and data science, was researching the close ties between genes and geography in Europe. Originally from Calcutta, India, Bose wondered if such a strong link would be true of his home country. He teamed up with Peristera Paschou, a population geneticist and associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue University, and Petros Drineas, associate head of Purdue's Department of Computer Science, to find out.
"Our genome carries the signature of our ancestors, and the genetic structure of modern populations has been shaped by the forces of evolution. What we are looking for is what led different groups of people to come together and what drove them apart," Paschou, who led the study with Drineas, said in a press release. "To understand the genetics of human populations, we created a model that allows us to consider jointly many different factors that may have shaped genetics."
The researchers developed a computer model called COGG (Correlation Optimization of Genetics and Geodemographics) to analyze population genetic substructure. They then feed COGG a dataset featuring 981 individuals from 90 Indian groups, further merging that with a dataset of 1,323 individuals from 50 Eurasian populations. The model crunched the numbers and found something surprising.
Studies looking at European populations have typically found a strong correlation between genotype and geography. As one National Geographic writer put it when discussing a study published in Nature: "The result was startling—the genetic and geopolitical maps of Europe overlap to a remarkable degree. On the two-dimensional genetic map, you can make out Italy's boot and the Iberian peninsula [sic] where Spain and Portugal sit. The Scandinavian countries appear in the right order and in the south-east, Cyprus sits distinctly off the 'coast' of Greece."
Such a confluence of the geo and the genome was not found in the India study; in fact, the analysis showed a weak correlation between genotype and geography. Instead, it was shared language that proved the major genetic link.
The researchers found that people who speak the same language were much more likely to be closely related, regardless of where they lived on the subcontinent. For example, their analysis showed that Indo-European and Dravidian speakers shared genetic drift with Europeans, while Tibeto-Burman speaking tribes shared it with East Asians.
Social structure also showed a stronger correlation than geography in their analysis. The researchers hypothesized this correlation originated from the social stratification imposed by India's caste system.
For several thousands of years, the caste system divided Hindus into hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (duty). Marriage was strictly limited within one's caste, resulting in a long history of endogamy. Though the caste system was effectively expunged in 1950 by the Indian government, such endogamy held sway over Indian society long enough to have a powerful effect on the country's historic gene flow.
"Our results clearly show that endogamy and language families are pivotal in studying the genetic stratification of Indian populations," the researchers write in the study.
New dimensions for understanding ancestry
None of this is to say that geography played no part in the ancestral gene flow of India, nor that social and cultural factors didn't influence genotypes across Europe. They most certainly did. That Nature study, for example, discovered genetic clusters in Switzerland that were language-based. And Europe's geographic distribution may have more to do with historical sociopolitical realities than environmental ones.
The point of both studies, however, is not to tie our genetic history to land or language, but to understand how genes flowed throughout historical societies.
"It sheds light on how genetics work in our society," Bose said in the same release. "This is the first model that can take into account social, cultural, environmental and linguistic factors that shape the gene flow of populations. It helps us to understand what factors contribute to the genetic puzzle that is India. It disentangles the puzzle."
With an improved knowledge of historic gene flow, scientists may be able to further biomedical research to better detect rare genetic variants, assess individual risks to certain diseases, and predict which populations may be more or less susceptible to particular drugs. By opening the avenues we use to understand our genetic history, we can hopefully advance such knowledge and understanding.
The news that Donald Trump got sick with COVID-19 prompted "karma" to trend on social media. The President downplayed the virus, openly mocked the practice of wearing masks, shared misinformation, and held super spreader events for thousands of followers. But what happened to him was not necessarily karma (or at least, we can't really know). Chances are, karma is not what you think it is.
Karma is not just a mechanism by which the universe brings snarky retribution for someone's misdeeds. It's not simple luck or even destiny. It's a Sanskrit word that means "action," "work," or "deed," and it really speaks of the spiritual cycle of cause and effect. The good intentions and deeds you perform result in an addition of good karma, while the bad ones add to the bad karma. Notice that karma doesn't necessarily have to be negative. It's more a law of consequences than a particular reward or punishment.
The notion is linked to the idea of samsara, which also originated in India and means "wandering." It is paramount to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Taoism, and refers to the belief that all living beings go through cycles of birth and rebirth, which may continue indefinitely. With the details depending on the religion, the kind of karma you accumulate on the wheel of life or "karmic cycle" can influence both the future of your present life, but also the one you may have coming up. The soul transmigrates after death, bringing Karmic impulses from the life just finished into the new one. Conversely, it's important to note that karma you are experiencing today may be a product of not just your actions in this lifetime but based on what happened in the lives you had in the past.
If you're wondering, being reborn as an animal is looked at as an undesirable rebirth, leading to much additional suffering. Having a human rebirth would land you closer to being able to get off the karmic soul train.
How do you escape samsara? By working towards achieving enlightenment, or "Nirvana." Once you get there through good karmic deeds and spiritual practices, your desires and sufferings will go away and you will find peace and happiness. Of course, your physical body will die and you will no longer be reborn, but on the plus side, you will be awake to the true nature of reality and if you're Hindu, you'd reunite with Brahman, the universal God or soul.
Thanga Wheel of LIfe
Credit: Adobe Stock
7th-century Upanishads described the law of karma causality in this poetic way:
Now as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be;
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;
he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.
It's significant to point out, the laws of karma, caused by individual actions, can affect the life you are leading. But what's also recognized are intentions. They are just as important in your karmic profile and the effect they have on you. Unintentional actions do not have that much influence. Even performing a good deed that stems out of questionable intentions can bring you negative karma.
Karmic theory also recognizes two forms of karma — the phalas and the samskaras. A phala is a karmic effect (visible or invisible) that's immediate or within your current lifetime. Samskaras, on the other hand, are invisible effects, that are produced inside you, impacting your ability to be happy or unhappy. This extends both to this and future lives.
While the specifics of karma theory differ based on specific spiritual practice, one thing may be for certain – what goes around comes around.
Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Life~ Samsara Cyclic Existence
Mental decolonisation
Menu page for Arda.ir, the website of the Persian Tolkien Society.
Image: Arda.ir
Where on earth was Middle-earth? Based on a few hints by Tolkien himself, we've always sort-of assumed that his stories of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" were centered on Europe, but so long ago that the shape of the coasts and the land has changed.
But perhaps that's too easy and too Eurocentric an assumption; perhaps, like so many other things these days, Tolkien's fantasy realm too is in dire need of mental decolonisation.
And here's an excellent occasion: an Iranian Tolkienologist has found intriguing hints that the writer based some of Middle-earth's topography on mountains, rivers, and islands located in and near present-day Pakistan.
As mentioned in a previous article – recently reposted on the Strange Maps Facebook page on the occasion of the death of Ian Holm – Tolkien admitted that "The Shire is based on rural England, and not on any other country in the world," and that "the action of the story takes place in the North-West of 'Middle-earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean."
Non-European topography
If you look at it like that, yes: that does resemble Mordor...
Image: Mohammad Reza Kamali, reproduced with kind permission
Extrapolating from the location of the Shire in Middle-earth and from other clues dropped by Tolkien, geophysics and geology professor Peter Bird matched the geography of Middle-earth with that of Europe (more about that in the aforementioned article).
However, seeing Middle-earth as a mere palimpsest for present-day Europe is to place an undue limit on the imagination of its creator. As Tolkien also said about the shape of his world: "[It] was devised 'dramatically' rather than geologically or paleontologically."
In other words, certain parts of Middle-earth may very well have been inspired by other places than European ones. It is telling that it took a non-European connoisseur of Tolkien's topography to find some examples.
"Seen that map before"
The Indus river is a prominent geographical feature of Pakistan. Its course is similar to that of the Anduin, the Great River of Middle-earth.
Image: Mohammad Reza Kamali, reproduced with kind permission
In an article published on Arda.ir, the web page for the Persian Tolkien Society, Mohammad Reza Kamali writes that during several years of cartographic study, "I found that maybe there are real lands [that] could have inspired Professor Tolkien, and some of them are not in Europe."
Around 2012, Kamali's eye stopped when it came across a Google Map of Central Asia that showed the mountain chain of the Himalayas, the peaks of the Pamirs bunched together in an almost circular area, and the huge, flat oval of the Takla Makan desert, bounded to the north by the Tian-Shan mountains.
"I had seen that map before," he writes. "This is of course Mordor, the land of Sauron and the dark powers of Middle-earth, where Frodo and Sam destroy the One Ring."
In Tolkien's world, the Himalayas transform into Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Shadow; and the Tian Shan into Ered Lithui, the Ash Mountains. And the circle-shaped Pamirs "are the same shape and in exactly the same corner as the Udûn of Mordor, where Frodo and Sam originally tried getting into Mordor, via the Black Gate."
Similar shapes
A US Marine Corps helicopter flying over the Tarbela Dam on the Indus river in Pakistan. At its center: a former river island which may have been the inspiration for Cair Andros, a ship-shaped island in Middle-earth's Anduin river.
Image: Paul Duncan (USMC), public domain
Mulling over these similarities, Kamali became convinced that Tolkien's map work was heavily inspired by Asia. Looking further, he found more evidence. Consider Anduin, the Great River of Middle-earth, in whose waters the One Ring was lost for more than two thousand years.
On Tolkien's map, the Anduin bends toward the sea in a shape similar to that of another great river: the Indus, which runs the length of Pakistan. Like the Anduin, it flows to the west of a major mountain chain. A prominent feature of the Anduin is the river island of Cair Andros, just north of Osgiliath. Its name means 'Ship of Long Foam', a reference to its long and narrow shape, and the sharpness of its rocks, which split the waters of the Anduin like a prow.
Kamali is not entirely sure, but proposes that Tolkien may have been inspired by a similar-shaped island in the Indus. Now integrated into the Tarbela Dam, which was inaugurated in 1976, it would still have been a separate island in the 1930s and '40s, when Tolkien dreamed up his map.
Kutch as Tolfalas Island
During the rainy season, the coastal region of Kutch, near the mouth of the Indus, turns into an island that resembles Tolfalas Island, near the mouth of the Anduin.
Image: Mohammad Reza Kamali, reproduced with kind permission
Turning our eyes to the mouth of the Anduin and Indus, we see another pair of islands, and Kamali is more certain about the real one having inspired the fictional one. The fictional one is Tolfalas Island, the largest island in Belfalas Bay.
At first glance, it doesn't seem to have a real-life counterpart near where the Indus joins the Arabian Sea. But take a look at the coastal part of the Indian state of Gujarat. It is known as Kutch, a name which apparently refers to its alternately wet and dry states. In the rainy season, the shallow wetlands flood and Kutch becomes an island – the biggest island in the Gulf of Kutch, and not too dissimilar to Tolfalas Island.
General knowledge
1909 map showing British India in pink (direct British control) and yellow (princely states). Circled: Kutch, clearly recognisable as an island.
Image: Edinburgh Geographical Institute; J. G. Bartholomew and Sons, public domain
But are these similarities really more than coincidences? Why would Tolkien, who was based in Oxford and steeped in English lore and Germanic mythology, turn to the Indian subcontinent for topographical inspiration? Perhaps because cartographic knowledge of that part of the world was far more general in Britain then than it is now. Until the late 1940s, the countries we know today as India and Pakistan were part of the British Empire. Detailed maps of the region would have been standard fare for British atlases.
Kamali is convinced that the topographical features on Tolkien's map of Middle-earth are not mere fantasy, but derive from actual places in our world, and were 'riddled' onto the map. In that case, we may look forward to more discoveries of Tolkien's real-world inspiration.
From Frodingham to Frodo
J.R.R. Tolkien in 1916, when he was 24. Around that time, he was stationed near the village of Frodingham, which may have given him the inspiration for the name of the main protagonist in Lord of the Rings.
Image: public domain
Here's one example of Tolkienography—if that's what we can call the effect of actual geography on this particular writer's imagination—which I gleaned myself, some years ago in East Yorkshire. A local historian told me that Tolkien had been stationed in the area during the First World War, and had apparently stored away some local place names for later use. The name Frodo, he said, derived from a town where he had attended a few dances – Frodingham, a village across the Humber in northern Lincolnshire, not far from Scunthorpe (Scunto? We dodged a bullet there).
Whether that story is entirely true or not is beside the point. As fantasy fans know, any grail quest is ultimately about the quest, not the grail. In fact, to quote Mr Kamali, the treasure is important only because it's well hidden, "by a clever professor who enjoys riddles."
Unless otherwise indicated, illustrations are from Mr Kamali's article on Arda.ir, reproduced with kind permission.
Strange Maps #1036
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
India now has nearly 3,000 tigers living in the wild. Due to concentrated conservation efforts and stricter wildlife policies, India's tiger population soared 33 percent between 2014 and 2018. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who recently presented the latest tiger census, said that the population has risen from 2,226 in 2014 to 2,967 in 2018.
The worldwide tiger population has been in a steep decline. With an estimated global population of 4,000 — India is home to around 70 percent of the world's tigers.
Mr. Modi remarked that India is "now one of the biggest and most secure habitats of the tiger."
Nearly a decade ago, India had embarked on a nationwide goal to double its Bengal tiger population by 2022. They've now reached that goal four years ahead of schedule. In order to protect their gains and expand their tiger population, they'll have to keep enforcing their wildlife policies while also ensuring the safety of their new sanctuaries.
India’s tiger reserves
Wildlife Institute of India National Tiger Conservation Authority
In the past 10 years, India has created nearly two dozen new reserves. Aside from creating space for tigers to live and prosper, these protective areas also create new spaces for wildlife and forests to flourish.
Tens of thousands of Indian officials and scientists track and count these tigers once every four years. They utilize a mixture of camera traps and video recognition software that creates a three-dimensional representation of each individual tiger. They usually have to cover a landmass of about 193,000 square miles.
The conservation efforts come in the wake of a devastating loss that occurred over the span of the past century. It's estimated that between 1875 and 1925, 80,000 tigers were killed in just India alone. Sports hunting and official governmental sponsored killing sprees by kings and officials of the era sanctioned and encouraged this mass slaughter.
Eventually, the Indian government came to its senses and in 1972 enacted a law that essentially made it illegal to kill or capture any kind of protected wild animal. With continued awareness and strict enforcement, the hunting died down. With the help of global conservationists, India invested more money into the protection and growth of their reserves.
In certain parts of India, there is still strife between local villages and tigers. More will have to be done to educate the populace in these areas and strengthen the reserves.
Tiger conservation threats
Some estimates suggest that the tigers are only breeding and living in 10 percent of the total habitat set aside for them. The tigers are underutilizing their space, which often makes them wander outside of these areas and come into conflict with villagers nearby.
Another report, titled "Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) of Tiger Reserves 2018," showed that at least half of India's reserves are facing encroachment threats from infrastructure like roads and rail lines.
Conservationists fear that the isolated conflicts that usually occurs on the edge of the reserves, will increase as protected areas grow. Tiger reserves are still threatened by illegal poachers, pollution, unchecked industrialism and climate change.
Modi believes that India's tiger habitats should be expanded:
"There is a very old debate — development or environment. . . and, both sides present views as if each is mutually exclusive."
He understands that there needs to be a balance struck between proper economic development and the protection of the environment.
"In our policies, in our economics, we have to change the conversation about conservation. India will build more roads and India will have cleaner rivers. India will have better train connectivity and also greater tree coverage. India will build more homes for our citizens and at the same time create quality habitats for animals. India will have a vibrant marine economy and healthier marine ecology. This balance is what will contribute to a strong and inclusive India."
This may just be the beginning of a tiger resurgence, if this type of thought prevails over India's tiger conservationist efforts.
