Cultural, linguistic and historical studies have suggested that the Roma are originating from South Asia and migrated towards Europe between the 5th and 10th century [2]. Their possible migration route could include the Caucasus and the Anatolian Peninsula [2, 3]. Roma were driven from the Balkans into Europe by the Ottoman conquest campaigns in the 11th and 12th centuries and became widespread throughout Europe in the 15th century already [2]. Most of the Roma people live currently mainly in the Balkans, the Iberian Peninsula and also in East-Central Europe [4, 5].
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While studies based on Y-chromosome markers or mtDNA provided valuable information about Roma history, the limitations of this investigation are clear, since they provide information only about the paternal or maternal lineages, and cannot show us the whole genealogy of Roma as it is. Study of autosomal data provides the simultaneous analysis of multiple genealogies, which can provide additional information about the history of Roma. Recent studies, based on genome-wide autosomal single nucleotide polymorphism data, were able to determine the source of South Asian and European ancestry of Roma and the fact that Roma are an admixed ethnic group with West Eurasian and South Asian ancestry [11, 12]. These studies estimated the proportion of West Eurasian ancestry of Roma and also the date of European gene flow that shaped the Roma population into its current state. Founder events that can be held responsible for the high level of genome-wide homozygous-by-descent segments estimated in Roma were also investigated. Both studies place the origin of Romani people to the Northwest region of India inhabited mainly by Punjabi, Gujarati and Kashmiri Pandit.
Here we analyzed whole genome SNP array data from a set of 179 European Roma samples and an extended set of Indian samples. We attempted to refine these findings by applying a dataset containing higher number of Roma samples, which could model the Roma population living in Europe more accurately. Utilization of significantly higher number of Indian ethnic groups allowed also to reinvestigate the source of South Asian ancestry by providing a much higher resolution of the Indian population. A recent study reported that the source of Indian ancestry of Roma is most likely Northwest India [11]. In this study, ethnic groups living also in Pakistan (Pashtun or Pathan and Sindhi) were applied besides Indian ethnic groups to represent the population of Northwest India. In order to investigate the extent of Pakistani involvement of the South Asian ancestry of Romani people, we included also seven Pakistani groups in our tests.
We used the Refined IBD algorithm of Beagle 4 [20] to identify the source of European and South Asian ancestries of Roma and to estimate the extent of homozygous by descent segments present in Romani people. We created two distinct datasets for these analyses.
Besides estimating identity-by-descent segments between pairs of individuals, Refined IBD is also simultaneously seeks shared segments of homozygosity-by-descent (HBD), which allows us to estimate the extent of homozygous DNA segments derived from a single source in case of Romani people. In the HBD analyses, we used the same settings of Refined IBD as in IBD analyses. For estimating the extent of HBD of Roma and other worldwide populations, we created a merged dataset containing Roma samples and all HGDP data (n = 1190 from 52 populations, 294,740 SNPs). We computed the overall length of HBD segments in Roma and worldwide HGDP populations and plotted as a function of the number of estimated HBD segments. The regional groups of HGDP populations were the following: European (Adygei, Basque, French, North Italian, Orcadian, Russian, Sardinian, Tuscan), West Asian (Bedouin, Druze, Palestinian), Central and South Asian (Balochi, Brahui, Burusho, Hazara, Kalash, Makrani, Pashtun, Sindhi, Uyghur), East Asian (Cambodian, Dai, Daur, Han Chinese, Hezhen, Japanese, Lahu, Miao, Mongolian, Naxi, Orogen, She, Tu, Tujia, Xibo, Yakut, Yi), African (Bantu, Biaka Pygmy, Mandeka, Mbuti Pygmy, Mozabite, San, Yoruba) Native American (Colombian, Karitiana, Maya, Pima, Surui), Oceanian (Melanesian, Papuan).
Besides PCA and clustering analyses we applied also the method of the TreeMix algorithm in order to place Romani people on a tree based on a maximum likelihood estimation approach. First we estimated the relationship of Roma with worldwide HapMap populations (Fig. 4a). This analysis show that GIH (Gujarati Indians in Houston, Texas), representing here the South Asians, and Roma fall the same branch as the European populations CEU and TSI (Toscani in Italy), showing that both populations have recent West Eurasian ancestry. The second TreeMix analysis show similar results regarding the relationship of Europeans and Indians (Fig. 4b). Indian populations show various extent of West Eurasian ancestry and also show significant gene flow from West Eurasia to North India. The algorithm placed the Romani people the closest to Europeans, as they have the greatest extent of West Eurasian ancestry from the investigated populations, which can be related to South Asia.
Previous tests were able to refer only to the West Eurasian ancestry of Roma, which includes also their admixture with West Eurasians before their exodus and during their migration period (populations of the Caucasus region, from the Middle East and also Central Asia) besides their admixture with Europeans. Using identity-by-descent segment analysis, we investigated the relationship of Europeans and the Roma. In order to find the South Asian origin of Romani people, we also investigated the IBD sharing between South Asians (Indian and Pakistani populations) and the Roma population.
Using our extended datasets of Roma and Indian samples and involving also Pakistani samples in our tests, we performed IBD analysis. Our results suggest that the source of South Asian ancestry of Roma could expand to the Pakistani area. Our results showed an even greater involvement of Northwest Indian populations in the South Asian ancestry of the Romani people.
We also measured the individual genome-wide HBD in Roma compared to worldwide populations. Using significantly higher number of Roma individuals, which gives us a more representative sample size of Romani people, individual genome-wide HBD showed an even more degree than the results of previous studies suggested.
Using genome-wide SNP array data of extended number of Roma individuals and Indian groups confirmed that the South Asian source of Roma ancestry originates likely from the Northwest region of India, with a less significant involvement of Central India. Investigated Northwest and Central Indian ethnic groups were the Meghawal, Gujarati, Bhil, Jain, Gond, Kharia and Satnami. However, the area of origin might also extend to the region of Pakistan, the neighboring country of India, since Pakistani populations Balochi, Brahui, Burusho, Kalash, Makrani, Pashtun and Sindhi showed a significant relatedness to Romani people according to our analyses. We estimated that the West Eurasian ancestry of Roma originates mainly from East and Central European populations, represented here with Bosnians, Croatians, Czechs, Hungarians, Polish, Romanians, Serbians, Slovakians, Russian and Ukrainian. These data corresponds to the demographic data of European Roma.
Using a uniquely high number of Roma samples and Indian groups allowed us to further investigate the ancestry of Romani people. This study aimed to refine the findings of previous studies that investigated the history of Roma based on genome-wide SNP array data.
In conclusion, the results of our study suggest that the West Eurasian ancestry of Roma originates likely from Central and East Europe, and Northwest India plays an even more important role in the South Asian ancestry of Roma than previous studies suggested. Our results also suggest that besides Northwest Indian populations, Pakistani populations play also an important role of the source of South Asian ancestry of Romani people. These new findings extend the South Asian origin of the Romani people making the Pakistani region a similarly important source of ancestry for the Romani people as the Indian subcontinent.
Furthermore, the state has a stake in attributing premature marriages to an essentialist notion of culture and divorcing such practices from the larger social landscape in which they occur. Such an approach strategically serves to absolve the state from the guilt entailed in neglecting to take preventative measures. Case in point: the BBC reported that "The [Ana Maria Cioaba] case prompted EU Social affairs Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou to tell Roma people not to plead for help in fighting discrimination while abusing the rights of their own people."9 Characterising such oppressive practices as purely cultural not only serves to justify the state's failure to intervene to correct a problem it helped effectuate, but it also bestows upon the state a carte blanche in terms of its treatment of Roma. Delineating juvenile marriage as an internal, Roma-on-Roma offense, and conceptualising it as disconnected from state-sponsored inequities excuses the state's disengagement with the matter. As noted in Ms Diamantopoulou's troubling statement, construing early marriage as a quintessential example of unalloyed cultural/internal oppression facilitates the inhumane assertion that "they" do not deserve "help in fighting [external] discrimination." Such an air of moral uprightness is predicated upon the state not only ignoring its role as a catalyst deeply implicated in the "internal" problems of minorities, but also ignoring its own patriarchal shortcomings. After all, it is not only Roma that "abuse the rights of their own people" - mainstream European societies also maintain a hierarchy which cultivates power differentials between men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, and the able-bodied and disabled, to name a few, but would anyone make the argument that because they do so, they deserve to, let's say, be invaded and ruled by a tyrannical outside government? 2ff7e9595c
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