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Reconstructing the population history of the Nicobarese

European Journal of Human Genetics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Nicobarese are the major tribal groups in the Nicobar district, situated south of the Andaman group of Islands. Linguistic phylogeny suggests that the linguistic ancestors of the Nicobarese settled the Nicobar archipelago in the early Holocene. So far, genetic research on them is low-resolution and restricted to the haploid DNA markers. Therefore, in the present analysis, we have used the high-resolution biparental (1554 published and 5 newly genotyped Nicobarese individuals) and uniparental genetic markers and looked at the genetic association of Nicobarese with the South and Southeast Asian populations. We report a common ancestral component shared among the Austroasiatic of South and Southeast Asia. Our analyses have suggested that the Nicobarese peoples retain this ancestral Austroasiatic predominant component in their genomes in the highest proportion. On the Southeast Asian mainland, the Htin Mal, who speak an Austroasiatic language of the Khmuic branch, represent a population that has preserved their ethnic distinctness from other groups over time and consequently shown the highest drift with the Nicobarese. The analysis based on haplotypes indicated a significant level of genomic segment sharing across linguistic groups, indicating an ancient broader distribution of Austroasiatic populations in Southeast Asia. Based on the temporal analyses of haploid DNA, it is suggested that the forebears of the Nicobarese people may have arrived on the Nicobar Islands in the last 5000 YBP. Therefore, among the modern populations, the Nicobarese peoples and the Htin Mal language community represent good genetic proxies for ancient Austroasiatics.

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Fig. 1: The PCA and ADMIXTURE analyses showing the genetic affinity and ancestral genetic components of the Nicobarse with other Asian populations.
Fig. 2: The genographic distribution of putative Austroasiatic specific component and shared drift analysis of the Nicobarese.
Fig. 3: The haplotype based fineStructure analysis showing the chunk donation to Nicobarese.
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

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Data availability

The data is available on request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

RKM is supported by Malaviya-PDF (IoE/MPDF/2020-21) grant. NR is supported by SERB-CRG/20-21/006762 and In-House BSIP Institutional Project No. 7.3 also NR is thankful to Director, BSIP Lucknow for providing the laboratory support. GC is supported by ICMR ad-hoc grants (2021-6389), (2021-11289) and BHU IoE incentive grant BHU (6031). PPS is supported by the RJP-PDF grant of Banaras Hindu University. SD is supported by the CSIR-JRF fellowship. KT is supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (JCB/2019/000027).

Funding

The research is supported by ICMR ad-hoc grants (2021-6389).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Rahul Kumar Mishra, Prajjval Pratap Singh, Niraj Rai.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Cytogenetics Laboratory, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    Rahul Kumar Mishra, Prajjval Pratap Singh, Shailesh Desai & Gyaneshwer Chaubey

  2. Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow, India

    Niraj Rai

  3. Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, India

    Niraj Rai

  4. Department of Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    Pratik Pandey & Sachin Kr. Tiwary

  5. Department of Zoology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India

    Rakesh Tamang

  6. Amrita School of Biotechnology, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Clappana, India

    Prashanth Suravajhala

  7. DNA Unit, Regional Forensic Science Laboratory, Jabalpur, India

    Pankaj Shrivastava

  8. CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India

    Kumarasamy Thangaraj

  9. Tata Institute for Genetics and Society, Bengaluru, India

    Kumarasamy Thangaraj

  10. Linguistics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    George van Driem

Authors
  1. Rahul Kumar Mishra
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Contributions

KT, GC, and GvD designed and supervised the study. KT collected the samples. RKM, PPS, NR, SD, PP, SKT, RT, PrS, and PS collected the anthropological information. PPS, NR, and RT performed Affymatrix genotyping. RKM, PPS, NR, SD, PP, SKT, GC, RT, PrS, and PS performed data analysis and interpretations. RKM, PPS, GC, GvD, and KT wrote the manuscript with inputs from other co-authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kumarasamy Thangaraj, George van Driem or Gyaneshwer Chaubey.

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This study is ethically approved by the institutional ethical committee of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and CSIR-CCMB, Hyderabad.

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Mishra, R.K., Singh, P.P., Rai, N. et al. Reconstructing the population history of the Nicobarese. Eur J Hum Genet (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41431-024-01720-w

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