Talk:Proto-Australoid

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Cleanup
This article needs copyediting (which I can do, but not tonite), editing for clarity (which I can do some of but not all because I don't know the subject well enough to know what was intended), and hopefully some citations/sources/links, which hopefully someone with an interest in the topic can do.--Anchoress 06:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * First sweep of copyediting done. Capitalisation was inconsistent and is not my strength, so I tried to make it consistent but I don't know if I did it right. I'm wondering about cap conventions about the following words:
 * Australoid
 * Makran
 * dravidian
 * red sea
 * proto-australoids
 * I know it'll need at least one more sweep of copyediting, I'll come back to this or if someone else gets to it first then cool.--Anchoress 00:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I've noticed that the tense is contradictory in places, but I don't know the conventions for fixing it; the problem is that the article is concurrently covering both the historical and present-day examples of the race, and not making a distinction between them (for instance, their physical description is probably consistent over time, but is the description of their diet historical, or modern? If it's modern, is it consistent across all the pockets of this race throughout Australasia?).--Anchoress 01:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Question about content
Please, explain, who exactly are "Proto-Australoids" and "Negritos"? I guess that Proto-Australoids are the Veddas+some continental Indian tribes, but who are Negritos? The nearest Negritos I know live on the Andamanese Islands. Cartouche, 19th August 2006
 * I don't know who you are asking but I moved it out of the 'cleanup' section because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with cleanup. I didn't write the article and I don't know anything more about the topic than you do (probably a lot less), and if the article itself doesn't answer the question maybe the best thing for you to do would be to find some refs and add the info? Anchoress 01:50, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Websites on Proto-Australoids
I don't know if these will be any good, but it's a start.


 * Bioethics of India


 * May be gone - cached page


 * What is a Tamil? Excellently-sourced


 * Assam People

--Anchoress 01:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

the first two links dont work and the third link what is a tamil is taken from an afrocentric/black supremacist site. please post credible information that means something.

do not post links from afrocentrics like runoko rashidi and cheikh anta diop —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.160.80.235 (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Evidence!
I see no evidence for this. Citations are most definately needed. To say a group of "Proto-Australoids" "are known to have spoken" a particular language is especially ridiculous sounding. D.E. Cottrell 05:13, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. I was the one who added all the citation tags; I thought at the time I might have gone overboard, but looking back now (after a couple of months) I think it's actually an exceptionally sloppy article. I'd almost favour scrapping it and starting over (except I'm not volunteering :-).)--Anchoress 05:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

WTF?
I can't understand why this page has been reduced to a few lines. I checked the history and there was actually an article here at some stage... maybe not brilliantly written but at least there was some info. I'm disinclined to add what little I know on the subject if it's just going to be deleted.--Matt Oid 09:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Physical anthropology vs. genetics
Are there any references identifying the southern Out of Africa migration postulated based on mtDNA and Y lineages, and the earlier idea of an Australoid physical type based on similarity of appearance between indigenous Australians and some peoples in India? It seems they are being casually equated because they are both placed in about the same region. Please, find citations for this, or it should go. --JWB (talk) 22:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are a few including:


 * Lahr MM, Foley R: Multiple dispersals and modern human origins. Evol Anthropol 1994; 3: 48–60.


 * Cavalli-Sforza LL, Menozzi P, Piazza A: History and geography of human genes. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994.


 * Quintana-Murci L, Semino O, Bandelt HJ, Passarino G, McElreavey K, Santachiara-Benerecetti AS: Genetic evidence on an early exit of Homo sapiens sapiens from Africa through eastern Africa. Nat Genet 1999; 23: 437–441.


 * Redd AJ, Roberts-Thomson J, Karafet T et al: Gene flow from the Indian subcontinent to Australia: evidence from the Y chromosome. Curr Biol 2002; 12: 673–677.

Twalls (talk) 05:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Cavalli-Sforza et al. covers Australoids on pp. 355-356 of the Abridged Edition and specifically says genetic relationship had *not* been found among "Australoid" populations.

Lahr and Foley does not mention the word "Australoid" at all.

Redd et al. does not mention the word "Australoid" either. It does reconstruct a genetic relationship between India and Australia, but at a much more recent timescale than the original Out of Africa migration.

I don't see a PDF of Quintana-Murci et al. A later article reviewing it does not use the term Australoid and also finds the whole "southern route" hypothesis to be not supported by genetics. --JWB (talk) 04:19, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks - that certainly warrants a closer look, then. I got those citations from another study that used them to support that point. I'll review and get back. Twalls (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what was that other study that used them to support that point? I'd like to take a look at it too. --JWB (talk) 15:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

There are still no references substantiating this, and most of the current material in the article should go.

Currently there are 3 refs in the article, one to Campbell (I added Google Books link) which mentions Proto-Australoid the anthropological term for a hypothesized population element in the Indian subcontinent within the last few thousand years, and two to Spencer Wells about the hypothesized "southern route" migration much earlier, tens of thousands of years ago, but with nothing connecting them to the "Proto-Australoid" concept.

I will remove the material in a month or so if the situation hasn't changed. --JWB (talk) 21:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Removed black and white picture
the picture is archaic and there is no way of knowing where it was taken. furthermore i feel it is better to present a proper picture. this is an old archaic picture of people no longer living. its like showing pictures of archaic egyptians. its meaningless.

i think more suitable pics would be those of aboriginals living in australia. or closely related groups such as samoans or tongans or other such proper pictures. not archaic pictures of now extinct populations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arjuna316 (talk • contribs) 19:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Hey twalls i corrected it sorry about that.
thanks twalls i corrected the information. i deleted it by mistake. also just to let u know the migrations happened from asia to australia not the other way around. i will also add later discussion about the genetic isolation of aboriginals from the rest of the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arjuna316 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks! Twalls (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Removed some of the see also links
i removed some of the links in the see also section because if it is the case then we would have to start discussing the genetics of every country in south and south east asia. this is meaningless and waste of time.

this section is for the aboriginal people of australia. why not use it to discuss the genetics of the aboriginal australian population. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arjuna316 (talk • contribs) 20:55, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The term "Australoid" was coined specifically to include non-Australians, i.e. some people in India. It is not the same as Indigenous Australian. --JWB (talk) 19:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

australoid is no longer in use the only people who support this theory are black supremacists or afrocentrics

if u really wanted to include some populations it would be the entire south east asia because that is were the land bridge was formed to move into australia. if u wanted to include india then u would probably have to include the middle east as well. then u will end up including everyone.

which is the reason i felt that this section should deal only with aboriginals, samoans, tongans or similar related groups. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.160.80.235 (talk) 10:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Look at Google Scholar search on Proto-Australoid and you will see the term is used almost exclusively in physical anthropology of Indian populations, and that most publications are by Indian scientists. This is what the article is supposed to document, and actually did to some extent until the article was blanked on 25 October 2006 with no justification.

I agree that the material on the initial migration of modern humans from Africa should not be the focus of this article. It should be refocused on the actual use of the term Proto-Australoid, which is physical anthropology of India.

Either Australoid or Proto-Australoid are not particularly associated with Afrocentrists - they use a hodgepodge of terms and seem to particularly like "Negrito", and they are the ones who indiscriminately include SE Asia and Middle East as you are suggesting, and practically every part of the globe except possibly Northern Europe. In the Google Scholar results, only result #10 by WB Chandler is Afrocentric. --JWB (talk) 15:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I propose to return to the version before most of the article was removed on 25 October 2006 which actually had information on the term as used in physical anthropology, instead of material about the Out of Africa model which does not use this term and is better covered in its own article. I will do this in a few weeks if there are no objections. --JWB (talk) 23:56, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Anti-Afrocentrism is advocacy too. The claim that the terms Australoid or Proto-Australoid are 'associated with Black Supremacists and Afrocentrists', even if the claim would be true, is no reason in itself to dismiss it. MrSativa (talk) 17:21, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments/corrections
The straight/wavy to curly hair of ancestral mammals (including primates) does intuitively indicate that straight/wavy or curly hair was also the ancestral trait for modern humans. Could not the population of early modern humans have included both contemporarily appearing Aboriginal Australians (not continental Indians: the continental Indian is a mixture of racial types, not just Proto-Australoid) and contemporarily appearing sub-Saharan Africans (and/or "Negritos")? In other words, why are you suggesting an either/or scenario in the population? Could not a biracial (perhaps even multiracial) population have been evolutionarily feasible, just as multiple races exist today? Furthermore, the Proto-Australoid race designation is correct, your "Afro-Negrito" designation incorrect. The origin of the Afro-Negrito population of Australia is still unclear; but the Australian Aborigines could not have had an "Afro-Negrito ancestral component," because (a) even today the Aboriginal Australians (Australoids) sometimes indigenously (i.e., not only through white Caucasian intermarriage) exhibit such Caucasian characteristics as blond hair and blue eyes (Unesco Courier (July 1978?)); hence, the Aboriginal Australian or Australoid designation as Archaic Caucasoid remains correct; (b) the Afro-Negrito population in Australia is too small (hence, their physical characteristics are too much in the minority, when one considers this and the Aboriginal Australian (Australoid) populations together) to be ancestral, although Windschuttle and Gillin may be correct in positing that the Afro-Negritos are an older Australian people whom the Australoid Aborigines met when the latter arrived in Australia (Windschuttle and Gillin, "The Extinction of the Australian Pygmies," Quadrant, June 2002). Presumably the 18-century British who discovered the Australoids in Australia noticed the latter's blond hair and blue eyes characteristics; otherwise, these Britishers would not have designated the Australoids "primitive Caucasoids."

Although controversial, the Proto-Australoids' tentative association by some authors with mtDNA haplogroup M and Y-chromosome Haplogroup C (the earliest Homo sapiens lineages thought to have migrated outside of Africa) survives academic scrutiny and hence enjoys sufficient support. I hope you are striving for scientific accuracy, not catering to such political movements as Afrocentrism. Ultimately, we need to know all the facts, regardless of our sympathies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cevene (talk • contribs)
 * Albinism occurs all over the world. Also, I would like to add that according to Wikipedia, haplogroups C, D and E are all around the same age, between 50kya and 55kya. The Andamanese are still Haplogroup D, and they look like Central Africans. The Semang in Malaysia also look like Central Africans today. Also, do you know that 25% of Aboriginal male haplogroups are European. Same by the way with todays' Bushmen regards of Bantu African and European dna. MrSativa (talk) 17:32, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

General problems

 * This article is under cited, speculative, POV and generally not fit for WP. Improve or remove..... Andrewjlockley (talk) 22:12, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is real material on the term Proto-Australoid (see Google Scholar) but the current article is a rehash of the Out of Africa hypothesis which is unrelated to that material . --JWB (talk) 04:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This article seems to treat basically the same subject as Coastal Migration (if we disregard the part about the Americas). A good website about the subject is andaman.org. However, I suppose this article should really be about a certain (apparently very old) component of the indigenous population of South Asia. Then the overlap would be with Genetics and archeogenetics of South Asia. I'm not sure if this article is even necessary. Perhaps whatever information is salvageable from it should be merged into those other articles. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:21, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Non-sequitur
The article says:

"Nevertheless, given the overwhelming evidence that humanity arose recently (~200,000 years ago) in sub-Saharan Africa, the extreme rarity of straight/wavy or even curly hair in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa in favor of tightly coiled Afro-hair suggests that, long before the development of our species (Homo sapiens sapiens), the ancestors of the first modern human migrants out of Africa had already adapted to conditions selecting for the unique sub-Saharan African afro-hair texture. In this sense, as suggested by Windshuttle and Gillin (2002), an intimation that the early modern humans resembled contemporary Aboriginal Australians or even continental Indians is less parsimonious than the assertion that they more likely resembled contemporary sub-Saharan Africans (and/or "Negritos") in appearance."

So because basically everyone who lives outside sub-Saharan Africa has straight/curly/wavy (anything but sub-Saharan tight coils, in other words), that means the ancestors of modern non-African populations had tightly coiled sub-Saharan hair? Have you ever heard of the old saying, "does not compute"? I'm removing this paragraph until someone can come up with something more objective (and which doesn't cater to afrocentric lies). I mean, yes, we all originated in Africa, but the above paragraph just does not make sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.48.56.129 (talk) 01:02, 18 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The non sequitur has arosen because another IP user had removed a critical sentence preceding that paragraph. If I understand Windschuttle & Gillin right, their reasoning is that afro-hair (together with dark skin?) represents an innovation of H. sapiens sapiens (after the loss of body hair?). Presumably, Asian migrants then reverted to the ancestral state (neoteny?). I'm not quite sure I follow this reasoning, and I don't want to say that it is particularly forceful or compelling, but you'd have to read the original argument anyway. I don't think it is helpful to simply delete the text as it seems to come from Windschuttle & Gillin. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:54, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

"Parsimonious" ...since 2008???
I am appalled that someone came in and plopped the word, "parsimonious," in a number of places in this "article"; that is, places where it makes absolutely no grammatical sense.

Parsimonious, at best, is used to describe frugality (rationing of supplies during WWII was a parsimonious measure), but is more typically used to describe Scrooge-like attitudes and protocol.

Today, 18 February, 2013, I stumbled into this article for the first time, ever: A quick check reveals more than 4 years have passed since someone added "parsimonious" in multiple places, and no one has bothered to correct it over all this time.

In hopes of someone else coming along and doing something about not only the blatant misuse of the word, "parsimonious," but also the many other issues present in this article, I have replaced "parsimonious" with synonyms most English-speaking wikipedia readers, young and old alike, will understand, which means they will also understand that much of what is contained in this article does *not* make sense.

While I could have used other multisyllabic synonyms for "parsimonious," such as "penurious," I wanted to keep it at a primary grade level so *everyone* can see something is wrong. http://thesaurus.com/browse/parsimonious

As it stands--on 18 February, 2013--this article's best use is as a premier example of how "race" is not a science, but rather an artificial social construct used by one group to assert control over another via notions of "superiority," based on outward physical appearance: Note continued struggle of some contributors to this article to come to terms with the fact human life originates from Africa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.57.33.143 (talk) 01:25, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * While I agree that this article reflects a pseudoscientific concept, and should be adjusted to reflect that, you seem to be ignorant of scientific terminology. "Parsimonious" is used in science to describe the hypothesis that best adheres to Occam's Razor. Admittedly, the fact that I've mostly heard it used in biology adds to the worryingly outdated racialism of this article. The whole thing (except the "Historical Race Concepts" nav box at the bottom) presents ancient race theories as a present concern and really should be fixed to present the term in the historical context in which it was studied as serious science.  Not by me though.  I ain't touching this with a barge pole. —Quintucket (talk) 03:10, 9 October 2013 (UTC)