Development of typological classification and its relationship to microdifferentiation in ethnic India

The history of the racial classification of the people of India can be looked at in three temporal phases: (1) at the nationallevel, the initial studies of racial classification attempted along with the Census of India; (2) at the regional level, studies byanthropologists and statisticians following systematic sampling and statistical procedures were conducted after the initialnational-level studies and (3) population-specific studies in different regions across the country including micro-evolutionary studies of individual populations followed the regional studies. Initially the racial classification was part of theCensus survey conducted by British anthropologists in some parts of the country among castes and tribes and was based ona few physical traits. This was followed by a systematic anthropometric survey in particulars regions (e.g., UP, Bengal, etc.)by anthropologists and statisticians. This was followed by population specific micro-evolutionary studies across differentregions by numerous anthropologists investigating the role of selection, drift, migration and admixture and other populationstructure variables among endogamous castes and tribes.

HLA-DRB1 alleles in four Amerindian populations from Argentina and Paraguay

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is one of the biological systems of major polymorphisms. The study of HLA class II variability has allowed the identification of several alleles that are characteristic to Amerindian populations, and it is an excellent tool to define the relations and biological affinities among them. In this work, we analyzed the allelic distribution of the HLA-DRB1 class II locus in four Amerindian populations: Mapuche (n = 34) and Tehuelche (n = 23) from the Patagonian region of Argentina, and Wichi SV (n = 24) and Lengua (n = 17) from the Argentinean and Paraguayan Chaco regions, respectively. In all of these groups, relatively high frequencies of Amerindian HLA-DRB1 alleles were observed (DRB1*0403, DRB1*0407, DRB1*0411, DRB1*0417, DRB1*0802, DRB1*0901, DRB1*1402, DRB1*1406 and DRB1*1602). However, we also detected the presence of non-Amerindian variants in Mapuche (35 percent) and Tehuelche (22 percent). We compared our data with those obtained in six indigenous groups of the Argentinean Chaco region and in a sample from Buenos Aires City. The genetic distance dendrogram showed a clear-cut division between the Patagonian and Chaco populations, which formed two different clusters. In spite of their linguistic differences, it can be inferred that the biological affinities observed are in concordance with the geographic distributions and interethnic relations established among the groups studied.