New Study Shows Romany Gypsies Originated in India

Submitted by Milica on Sun, 2004-09-26 23:09
A new genetic study places the origins of Romany gypsies as India rather than Egypt as previously believed.

Luba Kalaydjieva of the University of Western Australia has presented new genetic evidence that gypsies emerged from India around 1000 years ago. Based on genetic mutations, Kalaydjieva believes that the cultural group came from a much smaller population than earlier believed.

I don't know how reliable this is...

Submitted by dmnsqrl on Thu, 2004-10-07 12:21.
I don't know how reliable this is... but when I was in high school there was a book about Gypsies in my local library... maybe something time-life related (yeah, I know, doesn't fill me with confidence) that was looking at the "we think they're from India because of language similarity" angle and they came across something about how a ruler in.... Turkey, maybe (or that area) had had a lot of slaves from India and something happened that deposed him and all the slaves were suddenly 'free to go'. The authors of the book further came across evidence that in the area they believed the slaves had originally come from customs were very strict about escaped slaves... something about burying them in a pit full of unpleasant substances while still alive. This book theorized that the founders of the Rom may have been these slaves who were 'free' but had no where to return to. *shrug* I don't know, but that could explain a relatively small (a few thousand or so) founding population...

But who knows? :)

Was good to read in the original

Submitted by Eleyne on Mon, 2004-10-04 02:04.
Was good to read in the original article that they do not claim to be the first to suggest the Romany came from India. This isn't new news - it was suggested based on linguistic evidence a couple of hundred years ago. This new evidence does confirm that with genetic evidence.