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Dr. Niraj Rai

I'm an Archaeogeneticist working Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow, India. I started my journey in the field of ancient DNA (aDNA) while working on relics excavated on St. Augustine Church in Goa during my Ph.D at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, India. 

INTERVIEWS

The Ancient Harappan Genome and its impact on the Aryan Migration Theory
53:10
The Aryan Invasion Debate
01:23:09
DR. NIRAJ RAI - REVISITING THE PAST TO NARROWING THE LITERARY ERRORS
39:19
Day 3 S3 - Revisiting AIT, Indian Science, Chronology |  Nilesh O, Niraj Rai, Abhijit C, Shiv S, SD
01:23:02
Aryan Invasion Theory: Prove AIT, Win 2 Cr | David Frawley, Niraj Rai, Abhijit, Aravind, Sanjay
01:48:48
What Good, Digging Up the Past?
01:04:32
Dr. Niraj Rai: India's Genetic History, Aryan-Dravidian Myth Debunked | Abhijit Chavda Podcast 3
01:34:55
Revisiting Genetic Histories: DNA Evidence Challenges Aryan Invasion Theory | Dr. Niraj Rai
01:12:49

SELECTED ARTICLES

An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers

We report an ancient genome from the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). The individual we sequenced fits as a mixture of people related to ancient Iranians (the largest component) and Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers, a unique profile that matches ancient DNA from 11 genetic outliers from sites in Iran and Turkmenistan in cultural communication with the IVC. These individuals had little if any Steppe pastoralist-derived ancestry, showing that it was not ubiquitous in northwest South Asia during the IVC as it is today. The Iranian-related ancestry in the IVC derives from a lineage leading to early Iranian farmers, herders, and hunter-gatherers before their ancestors separated, contradicting the hypothesis that the shared ancestry between early Iranians and South Asians reflects a large-scale spread of western Iranian farmers east. Instead, sampled ancient genomes from the Iranian plateau and IVC descend from different groups of hunter-gatherers who began farming without being connected by substantial movement of people.

Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences 

© 2023 by Niraj Rai and Satya Prakash

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