Gonds and their neighbors: a study in genetic diversity
- Lucknow Ethnographic & Folk Culture Society 1987
- 82p.
An anthropological study on the inter-relationship between different tribal populations of India combin ing genetical studies with the approach of social and cultural anthropology. The emphasis is on the importance of geographical proximity in producing biological closeness between populations.
The micro-level study has been carried out among five major tribal populations living in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and its data com bined with the published morpholo gical data on 46 populations of Peninsular India. The data reveals morphological and genetic heterogeneity between tribes studied. The Gondi-speaking populations were significantly, found to have less affinities with each other than to geographically closer non Gondi speaking populations.
The study reveals that geographical factors more than linguistic or cultural factors appear to be contributing to the genetic diversity between the tribal populations.